What is the toughest sport to go pro in?

honey, baseball is the most difficult.

lacrosse is the easiest

What do you consider as going pro in T&F?

Actually, going pro in baseball is relatively easy. Making it to the MLB is difficult.

No its not easy to get a signed contract to go pro. Its far from easy. You really dont know what your talking about. Out of all the high school baseball players the percentage is very small who get offered pro contracts.

I also say baseball is the easiest to go pro in, if you count all the A's and other leauges outside that.

NBA - not many people (12?) per team, and lots of competition from all over the world.

I was drafted by the Reds out of high school. I sat the bench on my fraternities IM basketball team.

Ron Cey wrote:

No its not easy to get a signed contract to go pro. Its far from easy. You really dont know what your talking about. Out of all the high school baseball players the percentage is very small who get offered pro contracts.

I know several people that got drafted and put in the farm system in baseball. I wouldn't say it's among the hardest. They are great players, but I don't think they put in a lot of hard training to get there (compared to other sports). If that's what we're using as the measurement of "toughest to go pro in".

Do you know Cy Young winner Roy Holliday (sp?)? He went to high school near me and graduated the same year I did. He was just a monster talent from when he was really young. My opinion is that baseball takes more natural talent to be a professional, and less dedication and work.

I'd still like to know what we're using as a measurement of "going pro" and what we consider the measurement for "toughest".

And those frat boys wouldnt have a snowball chance in hell of hitting a baseball. Its the hardest thing in sports. Fail seven times out of ten and your in the Hall of Fame.

Yeah, I knew two people from my highschool conference who signed contracts in highschool with major league teams. They never played a lick in the big leagues but got a nice signing bonus. This is not that rare to happen.

I would say without a doubt the NBA or the NFL is the toughest professional sport to get into.

As someone has already mentioned, the NBA has under 15 guys or so a team and you know that a very large percentage of kids grow up playing basketball.

The NFL is probably the next hardest due to the amount of teams and players and no real true minor league system like baseball.

Tennis, Golf, Track, Soccer, Baseball all have several leagues and competitions below the top of the line competition but I would still consider those things professional ranks.

I only cared to include Baseball, Football, Soccer, Basketball, Golf, Tennis and Track in consideration.

Other sports might be hard to get into the pro ranks due to little numbers of events (swimming/lacrosse).

Than again, I don't know much about anything.

Ron Cey wrote:

And those frat boys wouldnt have a snowball chance in hell of hitting a baseball. Its the hardest thing in sports. Fail seven times out of ten and your in the Hall of Fame.

I think the hardest think to do in sports in running a 3:45 mile, or is it to hit two foul shots to win the NBA championships, or is it to hit a hole in one, or is it to hit a penalty shot in hockey or soccer, or is it ........

It would be almost impossible to say what is the hardest thing to do in sports but it is not impossible to say that hitting a baseball is definetly not the hardest thing to do in sports.

NFL - hardest to get in, easiest to stay once there.

well If you are in the top 3 in NCAA in track and field you might make it pro in track (be signed by someone). If you can be signed out of high school for a sport it can not be compared to track and field. So that says it can't be baseball. Almost 2000 people get drafted. Football it is hard but almost every college team gets someone to go pro. I think it is still hard no matter what sport and I don't have a certain answer because if you do percentage of the world who play the sport and who makes it pro then it is soccer.

mopp wrote:

The NFL is probably the next hardest due to the amount of teams and players and no real true minor league system like baseball.

I think the NFL does have similar "minor" league systems. There is the Europe league, where Kurt Warner came from. The Canadian League, where Doug Flutie went for a while. And there is Arena football.

I still think it's a b!tch to make it as a pro football player. Heck though, you'd think becoming a pro placekicker in football wouldn't be too hard. Maybe I'm underestimating it, but it seems like that might be one of the easier tickets to the pros possible. You know when they have females playing for NCAA teams as place kickers, that the competition at that position isn't very high.

Female place kickers on NCAA teams are more for press than anything else. Also there are a lot of pro leagues around for Bball. Europe and South America have several leagues. I think Asia has some leagues too. Same with golf, several lesser pro leagues around the world.

I would think that football is the worst sport in which to go pro. The average career, for those who make it, is 2-3 years. Many of those who are lucky to stick around a few have health problems, or pass awaty at an early age

The best would have to be golf. While spots on the PGA tour are limited, and you have to pay expenses out of pocket, golf has to be the sweetest deal.

What do other pro athletes do on days off, play golf.

step up wrote:

Female place kickers on NCAA teams are more for press than anything else. Also there are a lot of pro leagues around for Bball. Europe and South America have several leagues. I think Asia has some leagues too. Same with golf, several lesser pro leagues around the world.

So you're telling me that universities purposefully have a crappy player on their team for press coverage? I'm not sure I buy this argument.

lmb wrote:

I would think that football is the worst sport in which to go pro. The average career, for those who make it, is 2-3 years. Many of those who are lucky to stick around a few have health problems, or pass awaty at an early age

The best would have to be golf. While spots on the PGA tour are limited, and you have to pay expenses out of pocket, golf has to be the sweetest deal.

What do other pro athletes do on days off, play golf.

This is off topic, but also an interesting discussion. Football is ridiculous. There is a freshman at CU that they wrote a whole article on in the newspaper about how he's trying to "beef up" for the collegiate level. He's eating something like 8,000 calories per day and it's all sh!t that has tons of fat and cholesterol in it, in addition to the protein that he needs. But seriously, this guy will probably have a heart attack before he's 50 and here they are writing an article about how awesome it is and how dedicated he is. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

I've always thought pro golf is the best deal. Get paid to play a game that retired people play for leisure? That's a sweet fuggin deal.