Question for Collin or someone smart

My co worker and i got into a debate of which sport is more Physically and mentally challenging Football or baseball? He says baseball (Which is funny IMO) On average how many plays does a NFL QB have to remember?

 

You were obviously talking to a baseball fan. Nobody that is in to football would think that. It is not even close. Football is the more mentally and physically taxing sport.

 

our offensive playbook is around 900 pages.

 

its only mentally taxing for people that don't understand it. . .


so where does that put you?

 

The smart guy that answered the question.

 

Physically, you really can't compare the 2. Football is a car wreck once a week, whereupon you then get a week to recover before you do it all over again. But the nature of the game is that you can also get drugged up to get through the one day. Baseball is a total grind and during the course of the season, you really don't ever get a chance to heal. Plus, you are traveling all the time - and for anyone who wants to underestimate that, get a job where you travel for a living, it takes more out of you than you will ever know.

Mentally, I wouldn't profess to know how difficult it is to memorize a playbook, but I highly doubt that it is hard as it is made out to be. That's not to say it's easy, but I think if you paid most people the same amount that a backup QB makes, they could handle the mental aspect of playing the position (obviously not the physical execution pieces though). While baseball obviously doesn't have a playbook, it's more like chess where there are literally limitless options, depending on the specific situations.

The one thing that both share, and in fact almost all sports share, is that once you decide on the plan, you still have to execute that plan and that is where things get difficult.

 

There is more of a mental aspect to Baseball than physical but to me it is not even close to what football is. Baseball to me is more about muscle memory and developing the eye to pick up to ball and the be able to comprehend the rotation at least for a hitter.

Football offers something unique almost every play and is a much more complex sport to coach relying on 11 men working in symphonic like harmony. There is to me many more variables that change from one play to the next which creates a much tougher mental environment. Physically it is obvious.

 

It's like comparing sprints & marathons; they're just too different. If I have to designate one as "tougher," then I'd say football, but they're each difficult in very different ways. Use of amphetamines in baseball was ubiquitous precisely because of the grind from staying focused for 162 games in 185 or so days.