Finally, the age old question has been answered

[cevik]

Ice Hockey is a tougher sport than Football.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/sportSkills">Read it and weep you Football freaks!.

[daveNYC]

I find the fact that they even list fishing as a sport to be questionable.

[Sky]

Boxing is not as difficult on any level as MMA. I call shenanigans on that list.

[Alluvian]

I don't care which is tougher.  Just which is more entertaining to me.  And for me that is football.  I like the extra strategy and armchair coaching that distinct plays give.

Is hard to judge since football to my eyes has the largest range of skillsets of any given sport.  I don't mean the most skill needed, I just mean that the skills to play quarterback are nothing like the skills needed to play lineman or receiver.

Hockey has the VERY distinct goalie position, but I think you could take a good offensive player and put him on defense rather easily.  That may not be true of defense because I don't know if they can take shots on goal worth shit or not.

In football I think offense and defense can be flipped somewhat easily, a good receiver with some practice has the physical skills to be a cornerback or safety.  But on offense/special teams it is abit different.  Lineman won't be able to really play any other position very well.  QB MIGHT be able to and in some cases can play other positions well (Vick), but you can be a great QB while being LOUSY at every other conceivable position (Montana/Marino).  Running back and Reciever and Tight end have a lot of overlap and many players could learn to apply the skills of one to being good at another.  Kicker and punter are quite unique skills again.

[Murgos]

Boxing is not as difficult on any level as MMA. I call shenanigans on that list.

Yes, but I find boxing far more entertaining than MMA, a good boxing match is head and shoulders above all but the very best MMA matches.  And a great boxing match is just truly amazing and fully earns that nickname of the 'sweet science'.   Isn't it interesting that the more they try to take MMA and make it enjoyable to watch the more they have to change the rules to be more like either boxing or wrestling?

[Mr_PeaCH]

The top 10 (or so) is pretty compelling... except I find Gymnastics a bit out of place.  Looking at the scoring methods and the results; from about 5 to 14 you have all these sports separated by about 3 points.  And they gave Gymastics a 10 for Flexibility... No other sport got a 10 in any other category, let alone very many others getting any sort of high marks in Flexibilty.  Also, where do they come off rating Gymnastics so high in Nerves... higher than virtually any 'contact' sports which just seems wrong.

Get Gymnastics out of the top 10 and bump Soccer ahead of Baseball would be my thinking.

And fwiw I'd have to agree with Tennis placing so high after thinking that over a bit as well.

[Teleku]

I'm just like how they placed Football, Basketball, and Baseball above Rugby.  Take that Eurofag football haters!

[schild]

Gymnastics is 10x harder than baseball. In fact I would rank baseball as the most pussified sport ever made. Perfect for fat, lazy bleacher bums.

[Rasix]

That can hit a 100mph fastball or track down a line drive in center.. mmm k.  It's a difficult sport. Perhaps you're thinking of bowling.

Still, the list is far from perfect.  Less physically taxing yet fucking impossible to play a professional level sports like Golf get ranked way the fuck down there.  Sure any jackass can play, but few will ever be anything approaching good.

[Kenrick]

Rowing should be higher.

[Margalis]

Baseball is not physically taxing, but it IS difficult. Baseball takes some very specialized skills that most people never come close to having. You can be a great athlete, practice a lot, and STILL suck at baseball.

In basketball and football you can draft someone and expect them to contribute pretty soon. In baseball it's very rare for someone to be drafted even as a mature college player and make an immediate contribution.

The average person playing baseball might get one or two hits in an entire season.

[Disco Stu]

Some of the ratings are fucked. Baseball scores higher in durability than skateboarding, surfing and field hockey. In the same catagory gymnastics(which overall should have been in the top 3) and long distance cycling tied with Steer Wrestling.

[stray]

Some of the ratings are fucked. Baseball scores higher in durability than skateboarding

Yeah, one look at Duane Peters would tell you otherwise.

[Daydreamer]

If their item for Karate is for competetive sparing then their score is alright in my book, but if they meant martial arts as a whole their numbers are a worth less than my soiled, smelly, semen encrusted socks.  I went into Karate short, fat, and ugly and came out short, fat, ugly, only eight years older.  It took 15-20 hours a week of working my ass off in my college's cafeteria in tendem with hoofing it around our sprawling hilly campus to get me in reasonable shape.

[Alluvian]

Nothing for BMX or Bicycle freestyle.  Ah well.  The freestyle should have been REALLY high on the durability if they mean vert.  Dave Mirra is a fucking roadmap of pain.  Has broken more bones than there are bones in the human body (due to multiple breaks of most commonly broken bones).  At least that is the story I heard from one of those 'learn about the competitors' videos during some xgames.  Maybe I have the guys name wrong, but I am pretty sure it was mirra.

[Rodent]

Yes, the list seems borked alright. But atleast they had one thing right. Hockey > Football.

[UD_Delt]

I question the placing of Football vs. Wrestling as well. I did both in High School and wrestling was much tougher in my opinion. I think the Endurance, Speed, and Durability scores are too low and the Strength score is too high.

In general I think all of the one-on-one sports should be tougher than team sports. Team sports are much more forgiving of small mistakes and the attributes of individuals are less important than the attributes of the entire team.

[cevik]

Hockey > Football.

I <3 Rodent..

And no, I don't mean I fucking teabag Rodent, you sick fucks..

[WayAbvPar]

Hockey > Football.

I <3 Rodent..

And no, I don't mean I fucking teabag Rodent, you sick fucks..

Hey, we're not judging. I hope you two kids can make it work!

[Sky]

Yes, but I find boxing far more entertaining than MMA, a good boxing match is head and shoulders above all but the very best MMA matches.  And a great boxing match is just truly amazing and fully earns that nickname of the 'sweet science'.   Isn't it interesting that the more they try to take MMA and make it enjoyable to watch the more they have to change the rules to be more like either boxing or wrestling?

I hear ya, man. Problem with MMA was it was so unbalanced. Soem of these heavyweight boxers in the early days were totally unprepared for ju-jitsu, which is why Royce dominated. The reason they are changing the rules are twofold as I see it: 1) to make the sport more mainstream and 2) to even out some differences in fighting styles, ie: balance.

I'll admit I still love boxing, but if I had a choice between the two it's really whichever has the more talented, evenly matched matchup.

I would rather watch heavyweights in MMA, though, I despise them in boxing. One round of boxing, 11 rounds of hanging on each other throwing an occasional haymaker. Take off those big soft gloves and it's real messy, heh. In boxing I like middleweightish divisions, the lightweights can't really deal out the damage to each other, and the heavyweights I've already mentioned.

[Alluvian]

Yes, heavyweight turns into group hugging way too fast.  That is my luck anytime I turn on boxing I see 8 rounds of two sweaty guys hugging each other and occasionally throwing a limp punch that misses.  Compare that to lightweight kickboxing or something and heavyweight boxing loses all interest to me.

[Sky]

Hockey > Football.

I <3 Rodent..

And no, I don't mean I fucking teabag Rodent, you sick fucks..

Hmm. Have I finally made my mark on 'teh cumminuty' after all these years by ruining the heart emoticon for everyone??




I can live with that.

[penfold]

I'd put muay thai near boxing, the use of all limbs, knee's, elbows etc requires more physical effort than boxing, with all the other requisites being similar to boxing as well. Higher on the list though, im not sure, the death/brain injury rates in muay thai or indeed many other sports are no where near that of boxing, perhaps due to numbers of people who box, perhaps due to boxing rules and scoring.

MMA? At the top of the profession there are superb, highly skilled athletes, but theres still plenty of big overweight types/musclebound roidheads who gas quickly. As well as that there's still space for an unskilled guy to do well (Sapp, most of Prides new heavyweights), something far rarer (unknown?) in boxing. MMA could probably be above wrestling though, seeing its more or less wrestling with strikes thrown in.

MMA/Vale Tudo is my sport of choice though, both to follow and to practice, although, being MMA(mixed martial arts) boxing, wrestling and martial arts are a part of it, so it encompasses most of the top 6.

[ClydeJr]

I can't believe they gave soccer such a low score in Nerve. Trying to jump in the air to head a ball that goalie just kicked is scary as hell at times. Miscalculate or get bumped in mid-air and you could get a broken nose. Then there's the ever fun "I'm standing 10 yards in front of this free kick with my hands protecting my nuts and this guy is going to kick directly at my head and I can't flinch" game.

[Rasix]

Soccer shootouts have got to be the most nerve racking situation in all of sports.  

Long ago, I was on a club team in a championship game of a local tournament (Southbank classic I think it was).  The game came down to a shootout and I was I think 8 on the depth list for shooting.  This means if it's tied after 5, it goes to sudden death.  It got to me, by this time I was about shaking and about ready to vomit.   I miss my kick (goalie chose the right side) the other team makes it.  And for the next couple of hours while we wait for second place, I get to feel like I just let someone rob my family while I was holding an M16.  Nothing quite like having the entire weight of a team + families hopes riding on kick.  Amplify this professionally and often the entire hopes and dreams of a nation are riding on your play.

Last World Cup, a Columbian player ended up scoring on his own team and was executed by drug lords I believe less than a month after returning home.  They yelled "GOAAALLLLLLLLLL" as they shot him apparently.

PS.  Happy end to the first story.  The team that won was playing with a red carded goalie (one game suspension).  So we ended up getting the victory (after they took the trophies and ran home).

[Romp]

they dont have Australian Rules Football in that list and its meant to be one of the toughest sports around, as far as fitness goes the players are apparently fitter than any in any other team sport.

Kinda agree about soccer shootouts but I think shooting free thows in the last second of a close basketball game is similar.

[Nebu]

We identified 10 categories, or skills, that go into athleticism, and then asked our eight panelists to assign a number from 1 to 10 to the demands each sport makes of each of those 10 skills. By totalling and averaging their responses, we arrived at a degree-of-difficulty number for each sport on a 1 to 100 scale. That number places the difficulty of performing each sport in context with the other sports we rated.

Personally, I was a 3 sport athlete in high school and played Division I football in college.  Most people have no clue about the intricacies involved in the sport and could never come to appreciate it.  I include sports writers in the group of wanna-bes that will never fully appreciate the feeling of having a 260 lb man with 5% body fat bearing down on your ass with world class speed.  

There's really no way to rank these sports... publishing crap like this confirms it.  How many people in the world can do what Lance Armstrong does?  Who can argue that Iron Man triathletes aren't tough? Is what Tiger Woods does easy?

All sports are demanding and tough, just in a different way.  The fearlessness of a boxer, the hand-to-eye of a baseball player, the finesse of a golfer, the flexibility of a gymnast... who's to say which is the toughest.  We only have to look at history's 2 sports athletes to see this is true.  Anyone remember Michael Jordan in a White Sox uniform?