Ranking Sports by Various Measures of Athleticism

This list is invalid! For distance running & distance cycling the score is less than 10 for Endurance!!! That's what these activities are about! Weightlifting is less than 10 for Power & strength??? What??? Sprinting is less than 10 for speed??? Come on, who did this ranking? Golf is 6 for Eye-Hand, please!

Nerve:The ability to overcome fear. Example: High-board divers, race-car drivers, ski jumpers.

What an unfair category. There are points before a race where I would rather do anything, including dive off a high-board, than run my race. I think every sport comes with an inherent nervousness before competition.

The list is idiotic. At least it's better than when they ranked HS "Sports" in terms of difficulty and cheerleading was near the top.

For the ESPN thing, I don't know why they didn't include the decathlon, as that is one of the most diverse athletic competitions around, and should have definitely scored in the top 5, if not beaten out boxing. I could easily see the Decathlon breaking down like this...

Endurance: 7

Strength: 8

Power: 8

Speed: 7

Agility: 7

Flexibility: 5

Nerve: 5

Durability: 8

Hand-Eye: 6

Analytical: 3

Which would give it a 67, good for fifth.

kohlberg wrote:

You must have a strange definition of "endurance" if you're saying that someone whose competition lasts just 2-4 minutes needs more endurance than someone whose competition lasts hours. Perhaps you're confusing endurance with aerobic capacity? Two different things.

Seriously? I probably spend 12 hours a week working on my endurance for that 2-4 minutes of racing. Long runs, medium-long runs, tempo runs, doubles. There really isn't much more to the sport other than that. Throw in some strength training, flexibility, and speed work, sure, but the endurance required to run a good mile is very high and takes up the bulk of training load. You know this, I'm sure you know this.

I've played sports like soccer, flag football, ultimate frisbee where you're running around for hours too, and the endurance required for sprinting, stopping, starting repeatedly is simply not as high. OK, soccer and ultimate maybe, but RUGBY? AUTO RACING?

The question is not how long does the competition last? A longer duration does not necessarily require greater endurance or a 3 hour billiards match would mean more endurance than a 2:10 marathon.

It's how much of each ingredient is needed in the sport. The endurance ingredient is extremely high in middle distance running.

ESPN makes money selling ads for for the cable TC channels so of course ESPN would issue biased surveys glorifying their own programming. USNWR does the same with college surveys to sell copy. Associated Press/ABC/CNN/Newspapers/Magazines companies stage phony college football polls to boost sales of their paper and web products. Bottom line is, you can't believe those surveys.

True. The bias is thick. Just look at their "panel of experts". It's a bunch of football and baseball obsessed people, and a couple of Winter sports experts.

That's how we got into this 13 Trillion Dollar US National deficit sewer sink hole. The same people borrowing $Trillions each year fake up the US $GDP$ figures then borrow more and more the next year without paying down the original debt. Nobody is checking up on them. It's a pyramid scheme that will ruin the world the way it's going.

Come on, weightlifting is totally about strength & power. It should be 10! A football lineman is not trying to see how much strength & power he can generate. He's trying to either get to the QB or stop others from getting to the QB, which requires power & strength. His power & strength is a means to and end. The weghtlifter's show of power & strengh is the end. That's all he's tryng to do and this should be rated a 10.