Be honest if you were good at football/baskball you wouldn't have distance running

If I had been taller and/or more solidly built I would have done cooler team sports (rugby, soccer or preferably golf). I was competitive, but my build shut me out of all but running. I can understand those many kids who would have been great runners but dumped it at age 14. However I love running, so would likely have taken it up after school.

I was probably better at baseball and soccer than I am at distance running. Of course, my prs are not pro level in running and I wasn't good enough to be pro in soccer or baseball either, so I chose to do the sport I liked best in college than one of the other sports, which I could have also played in college. My career was going to end in college regardless of the sport I chose.

I never played football so I'll never know about that sport.

I did have a friend play football at Nebraska and started his last three years. He had a legitimate shot at making the NFL. Instead he decides to hang up the football cleats and take up distance running. He is mediocre at it after about 4 years of training hard (17ish in 5k, 1:18 in half), but he enjoys it and has no regrets.

I think in general, it is only in high school that people choose to pursue the "money sport" rather than running for that reason. Also the majority of the really good runners don't choose another sport. It is mostly the mediocre kids who want to identify as football players who quit track to focus on football. The best athletes could have continued to do both if they wanted. The best football schools tend to let their players do track in the spring if they want (stanford, wisconsin, Oregon to name some examples).

You are so full of yourself about how great you were with this "one of the best corner's in the state" and all this other drivel. Are you serious with this crap?

I WAS THE BEST WIDE RECEIVER IN THE STATE AND I WAS THE BEST WIDE RECEIVER ON THE PLANET. GO STUFF IT!!!

MY NAME IS JERRY RICE.

basketball and football aren't my thing. Well basketball i don't mind, football i don't care for though. If i could be competetive in soccer or hockey i definitely would have done that over running when i was younger (not that i ever ran track). As an adult, running is a great sport though. Im decently athletic with everything but not super crazy at any one in particular so i could easily be just as good at something other than running if i wanted. Running suits me though

Chinookie wrote:

(rugby, soccer or preferably golf).

one of these things is not like the other

coach wrote:

I think most people here are too smart to play football. You could play basketball and run.

^this

To be good at football you must be dumb. So it's like saying "if you were a moron, would you have played football instead of running?" And the answer is yes.

stop lying.

you would become a basketball player if you could make millions of dollars and be able to have sex with a kardashian like lamar odom did.

the reason you don't is because you are losers that cannot win regional contests, so you have to come on here and make false accusations of doping and cheating on world class athletes like dibaba out of jealousy.

Conditiona is betta wrote:

Be honest. If you were good at football/basketball/baseball, you wouldn't have started running.

Well...duh?

I really like doing sports I can excel at. If that was football, I would have done football. If I could have been a better badminton player I would have done that. As it is, running is my (relative) best sport, so that's what I do.

Doesn't body type dictate a certain amount of success in sports? So yeah, I was 5'7 130 lbs, not exactly the body of your typical starting middle linebacker, not really the body of a power forward either.

So what you are saying is that if I had a totally different body type would I play a different sport and the answer is "yes". If I were 6'5 215 lbs of sculpted muscle I wouldn't be a long distance runner.

I played football in college. Unfortunately (or fortunately?), There aren't many adult football leagues. Basketball is more of a lifelong sport, and so is baseball (if you don't mind switching to softball, lol).

Running (and golf) caught my attention in my twenties, because they are things I can do my entire adult life...not because I wasn't good at football.

I had scholarship offers for both baseball and XC/track. I chose running because the money was better and the schools that offered it were better. If it were the other way around I would have most likely been a MLB star right now. No big deal though, I got all conference in college a few times. Worth it!

I was one of those athletes that was very good at every sport. Even in track I could sprint and I could distance run. I asked myself many times why I picked distance running, even as the football coaches were begging me to join football, promising me a starting varsity position in HS. I think it came down to two things. 1 my cross country coach was a bad ass!!! 2 I don't like being told what to do. In running my times got me my spot, in other sports its a coaches opinion. And in other sports they think yelling in a kids face is coaching.

As my college coach once inspired us, "let's face it guys, we're all here because we failed at some other sport." Harsh but fair.

I was good at baseball, but every minute of it stressed me out. Your success or failure hinged on decisions made in fractions of a second, and I was a victim of overthinking things to compensate for screwing up.

To get away from this stress, I found a refuge in running. I'm sure the stress would have come back if I were competing to win races, but I never reached that level. Things weren't as black and white - if I made the wrong decisions during a race, they would only cost me a few seconds ultimately.

True. I started xc after bench warming for football and getting cut from basketball. I liked actually doing something at competitions and having fun in practice. Football practice was rarely fun unless we were running or lifting. That should have given me a clue. At first I just planned to use xc to get in shape for basketball, but in November, I didn't even see any reason to go out for the team when I could just have more fun running.

I'd say you're right op, but after I started distance running, I wouldn't have wanted to switch to any other sport even if I suddenly found I was great at them.

You are so full of yourself about how great you were with this "one of the best corner's in the state" and all this other drivel. Are you serious with this crap?

I WAS THE BEST WIDE RECEIVER IN THE STATE AND I WAS THE BEST WIDE RECEIVER ON THE PLANET. GO STUFF IT!!!

MY NAME IS JERRY RICE.

OP was living in like North Dakota. Had to beat out 6 other kids to be best in state. You know where you can run a 51s 400m and place in the state meet.

mm wrote:

I was one of those athletes that was very good at every sport. Even in track I could sprint and I could distance run. I asked myself many times why I picked distance running, even as the football coaches were begging me to join football, promising me a starting varsity position in HS. I think it came down to two things. 1 my cross country coach was a bad ass!!! 2 I don't like being told what to do. In running my times got me my spot, in other sports its a coaches opinion. And in other sports they think yelling in a kids face is coaching.

This has similarity to my own experience. I was a decent athlete but I didn't like the coaches in most team sports. My xc coach was a quirky and interesting guy (and my track coach soph year on was great too).

I probably would have played soccer if I had the chance, but I wasn't as tight with those guys and missed the tryouts as a freshman. Some of those guys did track and I brought a few around to cross country.

I was friends with the soccer coach but really found a home in running even though at the start I was worse compared to my peers in other sports.

I don't identify with every distance runner, but a lot of us are quirky and have warped brains that have us embrace solitude. The effort to connect with the primal through sport (I.e. Going to battle, calling nike's gear pro combat, etc) has always been embarrassing to me. Is there something innate to human nature to want to be tribal and battle? Perhaps so. But if going primal, I like embracing that long hunt mentality that would be most akin to distance running.

I don't feel the need to defend our sport. If anything I can say too that running is part of my lifestyle more than it is simply a sport. And why do others feel the need to say something like running isn't a sport? When you try to build up your own preference by tearing down another it shows a lack of confidence in the primacy of your endeavor. Football can be awesome with track sucking.

Uh, this thread is a challenging everyone here to make the claim that they were good in some sport other than running, with the assumption being that if you ran, you didn't do the other sport. So logic would tell most thinking people that anyone making the claim that they were good at something else would have to do it without having proved it. I was good at football, but never proved it.

You know, I don't mind the insults, they've become the air that I breath every day. But it does bother me to see how otherwise intelligent people can't follow a simple line of logic. It makes me lose my faith in humanity. I'd like to think you guys are smart, even if we disagree. Try to live up to my expectations. Fake it if you must.

I was a much better baseball player. I just preferred track.