Why do people care about Superbowl?

[Al B. Sure!]

I'm done. You're a joke, Asher. The NHL tests jumping in more ways than the NFL does. They measure the vertical, the broad, and the best of 4 jumps. They wouldn't do that unless they thought explosive leg strength gauged by jumping was a useful measure.

[giblets]

Albert still seems to be struggling with the concept that different sports require strength in different areas

[giblets]

I'm done. You're a joke, Asher. The NHL tests jumping in more ways than the NFL does. They measure the vertical, the broad, and the best of 4 jumps. They wouldn't do that unless they thought explosive leg strength gauged by jumping was a useful measure.

That doesn't mean the NFL and NHL value those things equally.

[N35t0r]

Answer: No, I'd die, crushed horribly against a wall.

Every sport has a different skill set and requires a different kind of 'training'. Most have some overlap, but when you have certain things that are mutually exclusive (endurance and strength, for example) it's impossible to excel on more than one sport, unless the overlap is extreme, and even then, limited time for practise means that excellence in one sport usually comes at the expense of excellence in another.

[Al B. Sure!]

Answer: No, I'd die, crushed horribly against a wall.

Every sport has a different skill set and requires a different kind of 'training'. Most have some overlap, but when you have certain things that are mutually exclusive (endurance and strength, for example) it's impossible to excel on more than one sport, unless the overlap is extreme, and even then, limited time for practise means that excellence in one sport usually comes at the expense of excellence in another.

Yes. That's why the point is to take the sport out of athletics and measure actual pure physical ability.

Of course the strongest and biggest football players will be bottom of the barrel when asked to run a 10K. Of course the marathoner would struggle at the absolute strength measures. But when you do all the tests and take them as a whole, certain sports will be, let's say, top-10 across most domains while others which are pure specialists will only excel in one area and be at the bottom of others. So what would that mean? That the former group are sports with better all-around athletes than the latter.

My contention is that football players will be in the former group. Their only weakness would be pure endurance but considering how skill position players like RB's and WR's are built, those positions would likely still do very well at endurance. WR's, for example, do sprints every 45 seconds when their team has the ball. They clearly have a strong anaerobic and aerobic base.

Consider suicides and gassers. Do those exercises not involve endurance? Is endurance not being trained heavily with those activities?

[giblets]

Yes. That's why the point is to take the sport out of athletics and measure actual pure physical ability.

You can't do that, dummy.

[Al B. Sure!]

You can't do that, dummy.

SO WHAT THE **** ARE PHYSICAL FITNESS TESTS THEN?!

[giblets]

SO WHAT THE **** ARE PHYSICAL FITNESS TESTS THEN?!

Arbitrary.

[giblets]

Albert thinks you can measure a means to an end without taking the end into account. That is pretty stupid.

[Asher]

Yep.

[Al B. Sure!]

What?

There is nothing stupid about my premise. Take everyone and have them run, jump, lift, do pushups, etc. and measure.

The marathoner will be the best at distance running, the sprinter at short distance, the Olympic lifter will be the strongest, the gymnast will be the strongest per lb of bodyweight and have the best balance, etc.

We already intuitively know that. But who would be #3 at short distance? Would that same athlete be #4 in strength? If so, who's the better pure athlete? The Olympic lifter who would be #1 in strength or the athlete who is #4 in strength but also the 3rd best sprinter? The latter obviously would be the better pure, all-around athlete.

Obviously, sports (as in games; not track and field, lifting, gymnastics, etc.) require multi-role athletes so football, soccer, basketball, hockey, etc. players are not specialists in the same way that an Olympic lifter or a marathoner is. They would have much more overlap between all the athletic domains.

Suppose this hypothetical situation arised in which the soccer player was #4 in endurance (behind let's say a marathoner, a cyclist, and a triathlete) but he was in the middle of speed, at the bottom of the strength, and middling in other domains. The basketball player ended up being #5 in endurance but was significantly faster and stronger than the soccer player, and around the same level as the soccer player in other domains. Beyond that being cool to know and compare, it would incline one to give an edge to the basketball player depending on just by how many orders of magnitude he is faster and stronger than the soccer player. Obviously, the weighting of these areas would be arbitrary but it still would give a good indication of the relative strengths and weaknesses of athletes from various sports while simultaneously allowing you to make general statements about which sport produces the better all-around athletes.

[Asher]

Your premise is fundamentally stupid. You could collect all kinds of metrics of all kinds of specific tests. You would find that hockey players have the most ab and back strength, football players have strongest upper body strength, marathon runners have the most endurance, etc. Then what the **** do you do?

Remember that it's all about tradeoffs. Someone who has lots of muscle mass will invariably be slower than someone without. Some sports value balance more than overall weight as well.

[Al B. Sure!]

Your premise is fundamentally stupid. You could collect all kinds of metrics of all kinds of specific tests. You would find that hockey players have the most ab and back strength, football players have strongest upper body strength, marathon runners have the most endurance, etc. Then what the **** do you do?

Remember that it's all about tradeoffs. Someone who has lots of muscle mass will invariably be slower than someone without. Some sports value balance more than overall weight as well.

Yet to use Dexter McCluster as an example, I doubt his trade-offs are significant. The guy is extremely strong for his size overall while also being very fast and agile and I suspect considering his size, he's pretty good at endurance, as well. His compactness would give him ideal balance.

That is my point. Certain athletes don't make those same trade-offs. They're better overall athletes.

[N35t0r]

What?

There is nothing stupid about my premise. Take everyone and have them run, jump, lift, do pushups, etc. and measure.

The marathoner will be the best at distance running, the sprinter at short distance, the Olympic lifter will be the strongest, the gymnast will be the strongest per lb of bodyweight and have the best balance, etc.

We already intuitively know that. But who would be #3 at short distance? Would that same athlete be #4 in strength? If so, who's the better pure athlete? The Olympic lifter who would be #1 in strength or the athlete who is #4 in strength but also the 3rd best sprinter? The latter obviously would be the better pure, all-around athlete.

Only this is false. there are thousands of good marathon runners who are better at running than any of the best 10 bench pressers. Thousands of short distance sprinters better at sprinting than any of the 10 best lifters. What good is your athlete is he's #4 in strength of the group, but still there's thousands of better lifters out there?

[Al B. Sure!]

Only this is false. there are thousands of good marathon runners who are better at running than any of the best 10 bench pressers. Thousands of short distance sprinters better at sprinting than any of the 10 best lifters. What good is your athlete is he's #4 in strength of the group, but still there's thousands of better lifters out there?

What? That doesn't make any sense. Obviously you wouldn't count every athlete in every sport since obviously different sports have different numbers of participants. The idea would be to take an example athlete from each sport.

What the hell? Really, dude?