Just curious -
I’d probably rank them
1: Baseball
2: Football
3: Basketball
I have no idea where Soccer would go in that hierarchy.
I agree with those and would put soccer between football and basketball (and I’m English).
I have to disagree. American football is much more strategic than baseball. In football, each player has a specific role and assignment that is far more complicated than the roles and assignments in baseball. Even linemen have significantly difficult moves/alignments to follow correctly for each play… down to how many inches between the feet of linemen (known as ‘splits’). I’d put baseball right underneath football in my list, but the level of complexity in football is simply higher (it only LOOKS like their just running into each other willy-nilly - the quarterback in football has to be one of the most intellectually demanding positions in ANY sport).
I agree with pletchap. Football is an analogy to military battle, highly strategic. I think a lot of football coaches read military history. You have a very clear objective–move your payload through enemy territory to the zone the enemy is defending. In baseball, however, the objective is to run home (thank you, George Carlin).
Baseball is also strategic, though less than football IMHO. In both games, the offense and defensive roles are fairly static–the ball doesn’t change hands frequently.
In basketball, the game moves much faster and the ball changes hands constantly. Similar for soccer. In those sports there is still a strategy but the dynamic nature of the game requires more quick reactions and tactical thinking (though I am not particularly knowledgable of these sports).
I think you are confusing tatics with strategy, CookingWithGas. I would agree that football requires much more near term tactical planning, but with baseball’s seasons having 10 times as many games as football, a baseball coach requires much more long term strategy than his football counterpart. Of course, the real experts would be argueing about logistics. 
I think the term “requires” need to be clarified. Aside from football, you can play the sport itself without using much strategy. Baseball was played for years without things like closers, and squeeze plays. Similarly, basketball didn’t always have zones, and triangle offenses. Having rudimentary plays is integral to playing football. All the other sports use strategy to gain an edge, not because it’s necessary to enjoy or play of the game. My list is as follows:
1.** Football **
2. Baseball (as a distant second. Because it’s been popular, in the US, for a longer time. Also, players and coaches have more of an interest in statistics, and that convinces them that using strategy is more beneficially)
3. Basketball (more dynamic, leaving less time for strategic planning)
4. Soccer (FIFA only allows 7 substitutions, which allows less in-game tinkering than other sports)
I’d say Baseball, Basketball, and Soccer are all pretty close though.
I disagree with most of you Sounds like a great debate in the making…
From most strategic to least, I’d rank them as…
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Soccer – The sport is very low scoring, and the team and coach have very little control of short term tactics, except for very occaisonal set play opportunities. The play is highly dictated by longer term, flow-based concepts and strategy.
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Football - Long term strategy, in the form of chained-together tactical considerations. Games develop in discrete set plays, yet a single series of plays or scoring run seldom determines the game. Consistent strategy long-term along with continuous tactical success is critical.
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Basketball - Similar to football, but with lessened emphasis on strategy. Set plays, tactics, and individual performance outweighs the decision whether or not to run big-men or zone defense.
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Baseball - Vague wisps of strategy that are vastly outweighed by individual effort and simple statistical variations in gameplay. Low scoring, plus a relatively small amount of time that actual “ball in play” action occurs when compared to the other three sports, means that discrete tactics rule the day. Only in playoffs (5 and 7 game series) do we really see strategic considerations yield apparant results.
I agree almost completely with what GargoyleWB said immediately above me… and would also like to add that I think this will be a sort of fun debate 
Of the 4, American football is the most strategic sport. In terms of setting up offenses, defenses and special teams; reading and reacting to the other teams’s strategies, etc. Even high school football teams require at least 5-6 coaches, minimum. And this is from someone who considers baseball the most perfect game invented. Baseball is next.
There is alot of strategy within baseball. In addition to the team strategy, there are all kinds of one-on-one strategies. There are strategies related to duos, such as the pitcher-catcher and 2nd baseman-shortstop. But you could probably get by with a manager, pitching coach and 3rd base coach.
Come to think of it, I think that the minimum number of coaches required will tell you how strategically complex a sport is. Basketball is basically a kid sport, as far as strategy goes: Don’t be lazy on defense, get the ball inside to the big man, set up the pick-and-roll, etc.
While I don’t know soccer very well, I can’t imagine it being too complex. I mean, I’m sure that various formations matter, as well as various attack plans. But when there are so many 1-0 games, with fluky type goals, outcomes seem more random than anything else.
Speaking as a guy who, well, knows a hell of a lot about baseball, there’s two problems with this analysis:
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Football does not have any more actual ball-in-play action than baseball does. Football is, in fact, probably the least “active” of all major professional sports; the average game lasts over three hours but includes less than ten minutes of actual play.
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It’s still not clear what people mean by “strategy.”
I would argue that you are exactly wrong, and that baseball has far LESS strategy in a short series than it does over the course of a season. In a short series, luck is everything and a team’s depth has little to do with success; it’s over the course of a season that strategy really has an impact in terms of roster composition, role selection, and the use or over-use of players, especially pitchers. “Discrete tactics” have very little impact on baseball; for all the blather you hear Joe Morgan parrot about basestealing and bunting and double switches, those things are really not that important, whereas intelligent, long term strategy is incredible important. Football has simply no equivalent to that; a guy either stays healthy and lasts 16 games, or he doesn’t.
On the other hand, football has vastly more complication in tactical terms. No comparison at all. The game is meant to encourage extreme specialization. I’d disagree that it’s really in any way similar to war - for one thing, tactics aren’t really as important in war as people believe, either - but it’s way, way more tactically complex than any other sport I can think of.
Baseball and football, however, can at least be compared. I don’t think you can compare them at all to basketball, hockey, or soccer. Baseball and football are discrete, non-flowing sports; they stop and start constantly. Neither sport has much action; they’re very slow, and most of the time a game is being “played” there is no play going on. Consequently, there are opportunities for major tactical decisions - e.g. removing and replacing players from play - practically every minute. Once play begins it happens in verys short spurts, 2 to 7 seconds or thereabouts, and the players have little time to do things on the fly; they must execute plays as dictated by the situation they were anticipating.
In basketball, hockey, and soccer, play is essentially continual; it does stop, but play can go for minutes at a time and you get vastly more action; 48, 60, and 90 minutes of actual play. Consequently, the coaches do not have the opportunity to always execute pre-set plays in discrete steps. The play must often be dictated by the players themselves in the process of playing. I assure you that Wayne Gretzky was as great or greater a strategic mind as any NFL quarterback; he may well have been the most strategically aware athlete to ever live, but the decisions he made were within the flow of the game.
I agree, which is actually why I believe it is most complex of all. Complexity of individual plays = more variables in longer term = more strategy (long term gametime thinking required). I don’t think we should include the fact that baseball has a longer season - I was thinking purely on the level of the game. Barring the ‘season’ mentality (which is important, don’t get me wrong), on the level of the single game football is by far the most complex and hence more strategy is required.
I’ve always thought that the “strategy” of football is over-rated. I think the broadcasters just need to have something to talk about with all the downtime. Also with baseball: “In the past 19 times So-and-So has been in such-and-such a situation at 5:15pm in this stadium playing against What’s-his-name with so many outs he has succeeded 13 times.” What the hell do they need to say things like that for, and how much do they pay someone to dig up such pointless information.
And then there are the post-game interviews. “So Coach So-and-So (or quarterback Such-and-Such), what do think about the game?”
“Well, we went out there to win, and we did.”
Really? You meaning you weren’t trying to lose? And you won? I missed that part.
And do they really need all those coaches? (Assistant Deputy Assistant Line Coach, and the like?) Either you made the pass or got the yardage or you didn’t. Granted, a lot of things happen in play, but videotape and post-game debriefing should be enough.
Either that, or you just don’t understand the game at all.
See, this is exactly how I would define tactics, but not strategy. But it is the effect of cumulative tactics that results in strategic effectiveness. I would agree with you that Football is the most tactically complex of the four sports, which has the side-effect of allowing a high amount of strategic consideration (hence my #2 ranking).
Soccer, while not having the tactical complexity or the raw strategic variations possible in football, is the most highly dependent upon strategy for success due to the limited opportunities for tactical…um…tactics…for lack of a better word. Thus, soccer is most strategic
I think there is something to what the guy’s trying to say, though. Broadcasters and such DO tend to overemphasize the most minute decisions in an effort to create interest and drama.
I’ve watched a lot of football games. The number of football games I’ve seen where strategy and tactics actually decided the contest I can count on my fingers. The simple truth is that most football games are decided on account of how the players physically perform. Even close results can usually be attributed to one team having a superior offensive line or the quarterback underthrowing a pass that consequently gets picked and returned for a touchdown. The same goes for baseball games; you can plan and strategize all you want, but if your pitcher is throwing meatballs, you’re dead, Ted.
This is not to say strategy and tactics don’t count. Of course they do - strategy more so in baseball, tactics more so in football. But the truth is that at the level you’re usually watching on TV, the difference in tactical and strategic philosophy is not so great that it will allow a team of substantially inferior players to enjoy the likelihood of victory against a team of superior players. Results in professional sports are decided, for the most part, by four mundane things that happen BEFORE the broadcast even begins:
- Scouting and drafting,
- Roster composition decisions, e.g. trades and acquisitions,
- Physical fitness and training, and
- Practice.
Only baseball allows for real strategy, as opposed to tactics. All the others basically keep starting over from scratch. Football has a 1-number status: yards remaining. The others start absolutely over at each goal/score.
I’m having a hard time differentiating in my mind between strategies and tactics - I’m also having a hard time coming up with long-term strategies that are used in any sport that’s played one game at a time. Could someone give an example of a long term strategy in baseball that doesn’t have an equivalent in other sports?
Just looking at one NFL game from last week (New Orleans vs New England) there were 134 total plays from scrimmage. Then you can add in some kicking plays (kickoffs, punt, field goals, extra points). The game though is decided primarily in the plays from scrimmage. So there is a lot of work in make each one of those plays work as well as possible. And the coaches have to be organized and work enough in practice so that each one of the 11 players on the field knows what he has to do on that play. It’s a lot of work. An NFL playbook is incredibly complex.
NBA teams (and college teams too) have playbooks. Teams run specific offenses and defenses that are also relatively complex. It’s not easy to learn the subtleties of the game.
A baseball game has about 250-300 pitches in a game. And every pitch has the potential of being put into play and making something happen, although you might only see 50 balls put into play during a game. But on each pitch, there is a different strategy involved. The type of pitch and its location affects where each of the fielders stands, what the runners on base may do, etc. The tactics that a manager may use during a game aren’t all that complex. There aren’t that many different things a manager can ask of his players. No matter what people think.
In football and basketball, everybody on the field or court has a specific role to play and it changes constantly. In baseball, the roles played by the fielders who are not the pitcher and catcher are relatively static.
Baseball and soccer have different substitution rules than football or basketball also. So using your personnel in the former is a different matter. You need to make sure that when you remove a player, there is a good reason for it and the replacement is going to help you win today or later (if you wish to rest a good player). In football and basketball, you can pretty much mix and match whatever players you want.
Well, I used to play it, as well as baseball, but it’s been a while, and pehaps I am indeed missing something. I said over-rated, not that strategy isn’t an issue. Tactics are more of an issue, I think.
But I still just find what a lot of sports broadasters say to be filler, and kind of innane.
No one’s mentioned rugby. I have no idea what the rules or procedures are, but it sure is fun to watch.
Wow! This is the most interesting sports discussion I’ve ever seen. Admittedly, I haven’t seen a ton.
I would say football, baseball and then soccer and basketball are a tie. I consider soccer and basketball to be essentially the same game with different restrictions on how players can handle the ball. Hockey is also the same game, but on ice and with sticks.
One interesting point is whether the answer is different if you are talking about an individual gave, a series, a season or the entire year (recruiting, trades, etc.)
I would definitely say football from the whole year perspective, because of the specialization of the players and the need to balance the strengths and weaknesses of the team with new additions, and even anticipate how that will help in terms of the various opponents the team will face and the importance of various games.
Within an individual game, though, I think it mainly comes down to execution. The strategy is to have a good QB and receiver and get the team to work together to free them up, the tactics are to run a specific pass play, but the results come down to whether the ball is well thrown or well caught. The strategy took place before the game started, there are a limited number of tactics that most good coaches could figure out for the pass play based on field position and what not, and it comes down to whether they can complete the pass.
This would explain why commentary on an individual game comes down to “Well, we just went out there and played the game as best we could.”