The Dallas Morning News is conducting a reader poll on which sport requires the best athletes. I though y'all might wish to share your opinions. [See lower left quadrant of the page] http://www.hsgametime.com/dfw/ [Dang, wasn't able to edit the thread title]
Athletics. But being serious, I don't understand what this focus on the "best athletes" is all about, as it seems utterly pointless as its not all that common to have one person who is the best at everything, or for someone with the best physical attributes to automatically be able to adapt to every sport.
Define "athlete." Baseball requires excellent hand-eye coordination. Football requires strength and explosive speed. Soccer requires endurance and toughness. Apples and oranges.
Different sports require totally different skills/attributes etc... It will NEVER be settled what requires better athletes because there will always be biased opinions. Think about it, what serious soccer player do you know that would say american football or baseball or swimming are sports that require more athleticism. It also goes for other sports too. Here in mississippi football is the dominant sport really...They SWEAR soccer is a wussy sport even though they've never played it. Personally, nothing requires more all around athleticism and skill than soccer.
"Requires" is a strange choice of words. Athletic ability certainly helps you play soccer, but the great thing about soccer is that you don't have to be big, or fast, or strong, or highly coordinated to be successful. It would certainly help, but its not required for success. You can make up for a lot in other areas. Anyone can learn ball skills. Anyone can develop fitness. It may be harder for some than others, but a player's dedication is more important than any other single attribute to achieve success. Let me phrase it another way. Natural athletic ability is not a substitute for dedicated practice in soccer.
Very good post. Maybe I meant "to excel at". Or maybe I meant "the attributes which best compliment the skills needed to play soccer." Or something. But I sure wasn't precise enough. Hell, I play soccer and nobody's accused me of being a tough guy or a marathon man!
The choice of words, of course, wasn't mine. I guess we could ask the Dallas Morning News beat writer who came up with the question. That aside, while the dictionary definition of "athlete" is quite broad, I think, in context, the author of the question is most likely referring to raw physical gifts. For example, if you look at (American) football recruiting lists you will very often see, if addition to specific positions, a category called "athlete." My sense is the word most often connotes an unusual blend of overall physical tools within which which most if not all of the basic tools are present to a remarkable extent. Not just strength. Not just speed. Not just quickness. Not just balance, Not just fine motor skills. Not just raw cognitive "processing power" to work out spatial relationships (the seeming ability to see the game as if it is moving slower), but a potent cocktail of all of the foregoing. As for "requires", I suspect the question could be put this way, in which sport would an absence or notable weakness of one of more of these categories be the most detrimental to competitive success?
Bigredfutbol has called it the way I see it as well. A 5'2" 95-pound young woman who happens to be a figure skater is an athlete. Would they even get a look in soccer, volleyball, basketball, etc.? Of course not. Is a NASCAR driver an "athlete?" The media thinks so. Is the kid who takes a snowmobile down a hill at full throttle and does a flip with it (I was watching the X Games last night) or a motocross racer an athlete? The media thinks so. Is the jockey an athlete on the back of a thoroughbred an athlete? Or is the horse the athlete? Both? Each sport requires a different type of "athlete." Would you agree that a dude sitting at a poker table in Vegas playing Texas Hold 'em with a big pile of chips an "athlete?" Maybe only at the buffet afterwards...
So much of this stuff consists of preconceptions. If you go to France, one of the things you will notice is that rugby is very popular among the wealthier classes. If you talk to those fans, you will hear from them that soccer is a sport that is dominated by the superior African athletes, whereas rugby is a sport that is more open to the "traditional" Frenchman. This belief set of course is exactly the opposite of that held in the U.S., which is that U.S. football/rugby is for the black guys, and soccer is for the second-tier athletes who aren't good enough to play football.
My son played U9 soccer with a boy who is now one of the area's better HS basketball guards. I think that many people would have a hard time envisioning a slow, unsuccessful soccer athlete becoming a fast hotshot basketball guard, but such was the case.
I am watching my son's U8 club players play in a basketball league. There seems to be little to no correlation between their current soccer skills and basketball skills. Some studs in soccer are nightmeres in basketball. And some of the average soccer players are unbelievably skilled in basketball. It has been interesting to watch to reveal my preconceptions to myself.
Update: The Dallas Morning News has a special pull-out section each Thursday devoted specifically to High School Sports. The final results of the poll were published in today's edition. Of 979 votes cast: Soccer 30% Basketball 27% Football 23% Track 7% Wrestling 6% All others 7%
I think the soccer guys stuffed the ballot! The people in my office pretty much universally think that the kids at the big soccer clubs, say the Dallas Cup type teams, are boys who weren't athletic enough to play the big sports. I'm pretty sure that my officemates, annoying as they might be, are pretty representative of mainstream USA.
John: No one said this was a "scientific poll", much less a serious one The DMN only conducts the poll in an effort to stimulate traffic, so in that sense they got what they wanted (even if soccer fans voted may have disproportionately to their numbers in the general population.