If the defensive backs, wide receivers, and quarterbacks
so of the more than 20 people on a football field, 3 to 5 of them must be coordinated. big deal. imho football is not a sport; it's pro wrestling in shoulder pads.
...had taken up tennis instead of football, I'd venture to say that the current level of competition would be measurably higher
this is too simplistic. what you should really say is, if there were no other sports in the world besides tennis, the level of competition would be higher. that is simply a function of the size of the sampling pool. but that applies for any sport. and i would contend that the sports that have the highest "level of competition" are those that draw on the largest percentage of the population. in this case, even a minor (in the US) sport like tennis has football beat hands down. and in fact the level of competition in soccer makes football look like a joke.
football is only played in the US. soccer and tennis are played everywhere in the world. wouldn't you say that the entire world is a better sampling pool for talent than just the US? football is played mainly by people with very unusual body sizes (in excess of 300 lbs, in excess of 6 ft, etc.). as i mentioned, the average NFL team has 11 people weighing 300 lbs or more. so obviously, being overweight is highly correlated with success in pro football. in contrast, being overweight is not at all correlated with success in real sports like tennis and soccer.
there are not too many people in the population over 300 lbs (or over 7 ft as in basketball). therefore, the "competition" for positions with these size requirements is not very high, compared to the competition for a position where an acceptable size is, say, 5'10 and 160 lbs. so sports that draw on the median body size portion of the population are likely to have higher competition, while those who draw on an extremely minute portion of the population have lower competition. based on this perspective, i'd have to say that the most uncompetitive position in all of American pro sports is the basketball center. the NBA should raise the rim to 20 feet in height so that more normal-sized people could compete. this would definitely raise the skill level of the NBA. unskilled players like Shaq would have to quit.
certainly there are some great athletes in the NFL, and i suspect they could have succeeded elsewhere given the chance. but i would point out that more than half of the players on the field are not really athletes. they are just very large people that specialize in hitting other very large people in choreographed manners. that is why it reminds me of pro wrestling. |
