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so many things wrong with this post, too little time
I didn't include NASCAR because it's not an athletic sport. I almost mentioned boxing and MMA but those would be too obvious... Like asking which is the worst beer out of Bud, Coors and Miller but also including Milwaukee's Best Light.
That said, there are certainly some football players who might be close in intellect to a boxer.
Andat all of the sensitive soccer fans. There are implied exceptions to every assertion I made in the original post. But do I really need to link all of the stories of riots and killings that occur after soccer games all over the world?
so many things wrong with this post, too little time
Also dogs are very intelligent and I've seen pictures of dogs playing poker.
The indignant responses referred to my statement about soccer fans.
What I meant to say was
Poker.
What kind of idiot calls my 10xx bb all in preflop raise with 7 2 off suit then sucks out on me on the river? by the way i was holding 2 9 off suit.
If you mean celebrities (hollywood) poker players, then yes
[QUOTE=Spurminator;3004548]I didn't include NASCAR because it's not an athletic sport. I almost mentioned boxing and MMA but those would be too obvious... Like asking which is the worst beer out of Bud, Coors and Miller but also including Milwaukee's Best Light. QUOTE]
Oh Lord...Here we go again...So now not only do I read drivers are not athletes, but now, auto racing is not an athletic sport?
Are NASCAR Drivers True Athletes?
October 5, 2008 · Print This Article
by Kara Martin… As a NASCAR fan, how many times have you heard, “racing isn’t a real sport, those drivers aren’t athletes, anyone can drive fast and turn left!” Why do we as fans constantly have to defend our favorite pastime?
Look up the definition of the word sport on dictionary.com and this is what you will find:
Sport, an athletic activity requiring skill or physical prowess and often of a compe ive nature, as racing, baseball, tennis, golf, bowling, wrestling, boxing, hunting, fishing, etc.
Bowling….really? I find it hard to call something a sport that I get better at after a couple of pitchers of beer.
Seriously, who are we to judge what is and isn’t considered sport or what makes a true athlete?
We all love to coach from the sideline or in NASCAR’s case, backseat drive. We love to think that we could do better than “so and so,” but the hard truth is, few of us in this world are truly gifted enough to prove it. Even 43rd place is better than most of us could ever hope to do.
The NFL season is 17 weeks long, basketball and baseball each 6 months in length. The NASCAR season is a grueling 10 months out of the year with very little downtime. Drivers and their crews are constantly on the go. Cup drivers often moonlight in the Nationwide, Truck and/or Dirt Track series, allowing little else but to eat, sleep and drive.
Yes
100.0%
No
0.0%
Total votes: 2
Sports physchologist Dr. Jack Stark, wrote: “Football, you go hard for 15 seconds, rest 30 or 40.” “Basketball, you have timeouts. You can’t stop a race and get out of your car. You’ve been going hard for four hours and you have to have a tremendous amount of mental toughness and a tremendous amount of drive and desire to win.”
While the income gives me the desire to win, I simply couldn’t cut it as a NASCAR driver. Heck, my mind wanders during my 15 minute commute to work. The skill needed to rank in the top 43 is as awe inspiring as it is profitable. Aric Almirola, who as of this print was in 43rd place has earned a total of $1,033,560. In my opinion he is worth every penny!
Nice work if you can get it, but you’ve got to have forte to do so.
I fancy myself to be a bit of a daredevil, I’ve been to the Richard Petty Driving Experience. In no means does that make me an expert, but what I do know is that it took my brain a full 3 laps to catch up to my body that was traveling at 160 MPH. It was the same feeling that I experienced skydiving for the first time.
NASCAR is the free-fall.
Forget that a driver must maneuver a 3,600 pound car, straining to steer the wheel around curves, debris and other drivers.
Never mind the G-forces that result from the banking turns at 180-200mph causing intense pressure on the driver’s torsos.
Disregard the lack of oxygen in the pit mixed with carbon monoxide fumes which can cause confusion and disorientation for the driver during the race.
NASCAR is the free-fall. One that lasts for 500 miles instead of a mere 9500 feet with no safety chute to soften the blow. Even the slightest mistake could prove fatal in this sport. A driver must always be aware of his car and it’s surroundings. The sheer discipline and mental strength are untouchable.
To get a driver to the finish line in one piece requires absolute perfection on the crew’s part. A stock car is a monster of metal and fuel, we’ve all seen what can happen when things go wrong.
Think of it in terms of kinetic energy.
Kinetic energy (Ek), is a measure of how much work—or damage—an object can do in motion. The more massive an object and the faster it’s moving, the more kinetic energy it has. (Ek equals one-half mass times velocity squared, to be precise.) For example, a 3600-pound stock car running at 180 mph has a kinetic energy of 3.9 million ft.-lb. If you were to catapult a 150-pound man into the air with the same energy, he would travel 5 miles.
Pretty heavy stuff!
Tell me again why NASCAR drivers aren’t considered true athletes?!
I follow basketball far more closely than football or baseball, so I could probably many more examples of stupid basketball players than I could for the other two. The most I would say is that I think football is the one where a stupid person with the right physical gifts could excel, at least at the right position. Obviously a good QB has to have a pretty damn good brain to be able to keep track of 21 other people running full speed and deciding in a split second what they should do based on those other 21 people's actions. However, someone like a nose tackle, whose job description boils down to "be huge, push the other guy in front of you, don't let someone from the other team past you" could be a fairly dim bulb and still be one of the best in the league. Being smart would probably be a helpful sort of thing, but not a hard and fast requirement.
Since when is a poker player considered an athlete?
On that note my vote would have to go to chess players.
What was the question?
nascar is as much a sport as compe ive computer gaming, that's why.
Exactly.
Mr. Generalizer!! You can point to isolated events in every sport. Logical people understand we were talking as a whole. You must play every sport but soccer.
So educate me. Given that so many goals are scored on power plays, why do so many players commit penalties that could be avoided? Is this done on purpose in some instances? Is there some strategy behind hooking your opponent and having to leave the ice for two minutes?
It's not like basketball where a foul might net 2 points in a game where 200 total points are scored. These are 2-1, 3-2 games where one penalty for roughing could determine the outcome of the game.
It could be to prevent a sure goal, taking your chances on a 2min PK (thats penalty kill).
It could be because the rules have become MUCH more strict after the lockout (2004-05).
It could be that you have 10 players on the ice traveling at an average speed of 20mph (thats average) trying to coral and control a 3" x 1" puck on 200ft sheet of ice. Its fast. Very very fast. And if you get beat (that is, caught standing still), your natural reaction is to reach out and get a piece.
You can avoid doing that by being an exceptional skater, but not everyone in the league is so gifted. Having said that, there isnt a player in the NHL who couldnt lap one of us on one go around an NHL rink.
The game is incredibly fast, but a lot of people dont seem to get that because its a low scoring affair. Which is fine with us NHL fans. You see an NHL game live and you'll become hooked instantly. You really dont realize how insanely fast these guys are going, even when it looks like theyre just putzing up the ice on TV. Quick story: Sergei Fedorov was regarded as one of the fastest players in his hay-day (mid-90s). Yet his skating always looked effortless. I went to a Wings game around that time and will never forget seeing #91 skate by. Head up, handling a puck, avoiding multiple opposing players sticks/hits and still blowing by so fast that when he came in front of my seats, he was gone so quickly I didnt even know who was carrying the puck (the glass has a way of obstructing angled views, theyre overrated). He scored on a beatiful wrister.
Fair point. And damned be the guy who takes that stupid penalty late in a game that costs his team the 2 points. But hockey has fighting, it has hitting, it is very physical and very punishing.It's not like basketball where a foul might net 2 points in a game where 200 total points are scored. These are 2-1, 3-2 games where one penalty for roughing could determine the outcome of the game.
A roughing penalty in the last 10 mins of the second period is a uva lot different than a roughing penalty in the last 10 mins of the third. Players know that, coaches know that, refs know that.
But if a guy is coming thru your goalie's crease every time he's in your end, you need to send a message to him that that wont be tolerated. You get the facewash, you get the little poke in your stomach from the butt-end of the stick, you get slashed across the shins and hands. Or invariably, you get punched in your mouth to remind you not to come in my goalie's air space. Dont even think about it, because that will get you hurt (not injured).
Which is why you hear about guys "paying the price" in hockey more than any other sport, IMO (except for QBs in football, they pay the price a lot as well). When there is a loose puck in your zone and theres a better than 50% chance you can get to it before the opponent, or you have an opportunity to make a play on it, a hockey player is expected to sacrifice his body to make that play. Because you may win the foot race to the puck, but the opponent is going to ing drill you with every fiber of his being. So if youre reaching a little too far for the puck, or approached it with too much speed and awkwardly slowed down, youre going on the IR.
Its that high impact aspect of the game that sets the men apart from the boys. The really, really good players (superstars) never put themselves in those kind of situations because theyre good enough to never let them happen (ok, rarely). Its the third and fourth line guys who have to pay a price to be in the league. They arent as fast, they arent as skilled and dont have nearly the hockey-sense. So they have to make the hard plays, theyre the linemen of hockey. They get their noses dirty every shift of every game, and if theyre not, there is someone below them on the depth chart willing to.
So it creates a very "chippy" game.
Did I even mention that of the 4 major sports, only one has all players on the "field" carrying makeshift weapons? Yeah, tends to get out of hand, therefore the players have to police themselves to a certain degree. One bad temper and someone else may never play the game again. Its rare but it does happen. Usually doesnt end well for the offender though.
So are we talking about athletes or fans? Seems to me like you're pretty dumb if you can't even keep your weak ass argument togetherAnd
The most important reason, as DR already said, is pace of the game. It is so much faster than any other sport and you don't get that until you see it live.
cheerleaders
To answer your question directly, yes there is a strategy behind taking roughing penalties (or slashing, or hooking, holding, etc).
Most of the "obstruction" penalties (hooking, holding, tripping, interference) happen because the offender got beat on a play and if he doesnt take that penalty, its a glorious scoring chance for the opposition (with the skill in the NHL, that usually means goal unless your goalie is a HOFer). So he takes his chances with his teammates killing a 2min PP. His teammates have done and will do the same thing from time to time, but it doesnt excuse his getting beat on the play. Its risk management.
The roughing/fighting penalties are for one reason and one reason only. Intimidation. Usually its the other team's best players on the receving end of those kinds of penalties to try and get them off their game, to get them thinking about you and not the play at hand. Although, there are quite a few bottom line guys who are exceptional at getting opposing players to take penalties on them because they play a certain way (Tomas Holmstrom, Ryan Smyth, Gary Roberts) or talk exceptionally well and hit everything in their sites (Jarkko Rutuu, Jordan Tootoo, etc) or both.
Hockey is a game of injury and playing thru it, no matter the pain. The stories of some of the players went thru to play in big games is beyond my threshold of pain, and I always thought I had a pretty high threshold. Brent Gilchrist comes to mind when I say that.
It was either 1997 or 1998 (he played for the Wings) and he tore his groin muscle clean from the bone, meaning it was just floating around. It hurt to move one inch much less play a professional sport. But he did. Steve Yzerman talked about the pregame speeches from the coaches where they had to raise their voices to talk over the screams coming from the training room where Mr. Gilchrist was getting 10-20 cortozone shots directly into his groin and the severed muscle with a 10" needle (thru his stomach area and groin area) to temporarily numb the pain just so he could play.
He didnt play for two seasons afterwords recovering from the surgery it took to repair. It isnt a 16 game season played in under 3-4 months either. To miss two years of your career to injury in hockey usually means you career is completely over. It basically was for him, but he got to skate with the Stanley Cup and I am quite sure he would do it all again given the chance.
I'd be willing to be that the NFL has a greater PCT of athletes that are college graduates than any other pro-sports league.
Sure a college education isn't the last word on intelligence, but it's a better indicator than anything mentioned by anyone else in this thread so far.
I bet there is a greater PCT of Soccer athletes that grew up in villages where they drank their own sewage regularly at some point, than any other pro sport.
Out of the sports that weren't played by cavemen, which automatically win this argument...I'd say baseball has the stupidest athletes.
Higher graduation rate doesn't mean they are any smarter. I've known some stupid smart people, myself included.
Good answers by DR. I've been to games and I've really enjoyed them... I can certainly appreciate the speed of the game and the chaos involved with large men skating in different directions at that pace. I'd probably be more of a hockey fan if I had grown up in more of a hockey town and if it didn't occur simultaneously with basketball season.
But there have been 6,559 penalties assessed in the NHL this season. There have been 780 fights. I understand the game is different than other sports, but to me this would be like having a brawl break out in every baseball game... when, in fact, they're relatively rare despite the fact that it is a game where a hard ball is being thrown in your vicinity at 90-100 mph.
I can buy that messages need to be sent in hockey at times, just like a brush back in baseball, but I have a hard time believing that less than a majority of the power plays handed to the opponent could be avoided with more "hockey-sense" (as you said) and less thuggery.
I look at the bottom of the list of most penalized teams in the NHL this year and I see the Detroit Red Wings. Significant/irrelevant? I don't know. I suppose the Flyers might have something to say about it.
I made an aside statement about soccer fans and even referenced athletes in the next sentence. This isn't a term paper, not every statement has to directly support or relate to the thesis.So are we talking about athletes or fans? Seems to me like you're pretty dumb if you can't even keep your weak ass argument together
Last edited by Spurminator; 01-05-2009 at 05:23 PM.
From the same post:
Way to prove your point...Soccer Fan.
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