The Sports Pyramid

(Pre.S. - You'll need to read my previous blog for context.)

What is the scoring scale?
As I wrote Friday’s blog, I analyzed my theory that all sports are not equal. After I wrote Friday’s blog, I concluded that not all talents and skills are equal either. By applying the foundational principle of my whole theory (that versatility and translatability determine the level of sports and their athletes) to specific talent and skills, I came up with individual values for talents and skills by identifying the degree to which each translates to all sports. I surprised myself by concluding that coordination is the most versatile and therefore valuable athletic talent. My reasoning is that coordination translates well for every sport at nearly every position. Simply put: No sport exists that doesn’t require a certain degree of coordination. Likewise, I determined the values of other talents and skills by using the same criteria. The more sports a talent or skill is useful for to a high degree; the greater value it receives.

Coordination – 10 points
Speed – 9 points
Quickness – 9 points
Endurance/Stamina – 9 points
Agility – 8 points
Strength – 8 points
Hustle/Maximum Exertion – 7 points
Leaping Ability – 7 points
Size – 7 points
Swinging (Golf swing, baseball swing, cricket swing, tennis swing) – 6 points
All other skills (dribbling a soccer or basketball, throwing a football, skiing, driving a car, punching, etc…) – 5 points

The Nephilim are among us
Why is basketball the top sport? Because it requires every one of the major talents in abundance and is played internationally and available for everyone (all races and genders) to play. Those factors make basketball the purest sport and its athletes – generally speaking – the best athletes in the world. With a few exceptions (Frankensteins like Eric Montross, Greg Ostertag, Manute Bol and Gheorge Muresan), only the most elite of the elite athletes play NBA basketball. In fact, it may be the only sport where an average onlooker can predict if someone will play professionally 20 years before that someone is even born. All you have to do is look at someone’s parents. If they are not both/either extremely tall or extremely athletic, their child will almost certainly not be a basketball player.

That said, basketball players are born, not made. Prime example being me. As a creature looking increasingly similar to George Costanza every day, no amount of effort or hard work would have landed me in the NBA. Whereas, maybe if I would have been drilled everyday for three hours by a ruthless coach, I could have done the rings at the Olympics or maybe even played Division II football. Alternately, Lebron James is an experiment by God to make the perfect athlete. And in line with my theory that the best athletes are the ones whose skills translate the best to other sports, there is literally not one thing Lebron James could not do athletically, not one sport he could not have excelled at. If he would have grown up in Brazil, he would have been the best midfielder the world has ever seen. If Sweden, the best hockey forward ever.

That type of transferability of all-around athletic skill is more consistently the case with basketball players than players in any other sport, which makes sense because basketball requires every player to do a little bit of everything. Therefore, basketball, in my opinion is an easy selection as the top sport.

Am I biased?
Definitely, but I tried to keep that at a minimum in my evaluations. If I allowed my bias to dictate my perspective, I would have made football the top sport because it is my favorite as well as the dominant sport in my home region. Instead, I included soccer, which I know very little about, as the No. 2 sport, and hockey, also know nothing about, in my top 5.

Do I hate yankees?
No more than I hate confederates. As mentioned above, I did include hockey in my top 5. I also included figure skating in Tier 4 ahead of golf and car racing, two sports that are very popular in my home region. I did include most of the Winter Olympic sports in Tier 5, but only because most of them require only 1 or 2 talents and skills and therefore do not require their participants to be great athletes. I also put several Summer Olympic sports down there as well.

Why isn’t football No. 1?
Football is hard to assess with my scale. Yes, the game as a whole requires all of the major talents and several different skills (throwing, catching, tackling, punting, kicking, etc…), BUT not every player is required to do everything. For example, the skills required to be a punter are not the same skills required to be an offensive tackle. Likewise, the skills required to be a quarterback are not the same as the skills required to be a wide receiver. Unlike basketball, where centers and point guards perform the same tasks (dribbling, shooting, jumping, etc…) in varying degrees, it’s difficult to measure the athleticism of football players as a whole. If you measure the athleticism of specific position groups, wide receivers would possibly be even more athletic than basketball players BUT punters and kickers would probably be Tier 5. As a result, I don’t think it’s fair to put football in the discussion with basketball as the top sport.

Tier 2 and The Seclusion Deduction
Also, football receives a special 10-point penalty (The Seclusion Deduction) for its lack of international appeal and accessibility. So does hockey, the decathlon and lacrosse – which receives a double penalty. Each of these sports require most, if not all, of the major talents but they are only played by limited amounts of people. If a sport is not played by everyone, it’s difficult to determine the relative athletic skill of the people who do play. For example, if American football was widely played by Scandinavians, we might find that a lot of Scandinavians are better suited for the sport than the people who currently play it. Since no Scandinavians actually play the sport, it’s difficult to say that the players in the NFL are actually the best suited (although they are incredibly well-suited) in the world for their sport. The same example could also be used for hockey and lacrosse by substituting Southerners and urban youths for Scandinavians.

In contrast, since the entire world (all races and genders) plays basketball and soccer, it’s safe to assume the elite in both sports are actually the best suited for their respective sports in the world.

What about soccer?
The main difference between soccer and basketball is size. You don’t have to be huge to excel at soccer. Consequently, the average soccer player can’t excel at quite as many things as the average basketball player. However, that is about the only thing separating the two sports. Like basketball, every soccer player is required to do everything. They run. They jump. They have to be extremely coordinated to dribble. Have to be strong. They’re incredible athletes who, for the most part, could transfer their skills to high degrees in every other sport.

Up Next: The Best Don’t Always Win.