SpeedyG wrote:As far as the athletes are concerned, you are comparing apples and oranges. You look at the lineman and say they are terrible athletes because they have those huge guts. Well, that's true. But that's not their game. Look at how they push each other around, on gameday and on practice, and think of the stress they put on those arms. Nevertheless, let's look at the actual athletes of both sport and you'll see you are wrong. Prime example is Allen Iverson, who played both sports. AI, during his younger days, was one of the fastest, if not the fastest player in the NBA. He runs a 4.4 in the 40 yard dash. That's give or take, the minimum NFL teams look for in a WR or a DB. While he's an elite in the NBA as far as quickness and speed is concerned, he's simply average as far as starting WR/DB are concerned in the NFL.
I'm gonna preface this by saying I am a bigger football fan than a basketball fan (see my name). I can watch any football game. Basketball, I only watch if it's either my team (the Wizards) or a team that has a superstar like Kobe Bryant on it. With that said, Allen Iverson was a star QB and DB in high school, and he was supposedly better than Michael Vick was.
That being said, you're comparing two different "breeds" of athletes here, and it's really not fair to compare them. The NFL has a lot of "unathletic" positions (i'm looking at you, kickers and punters, although even that is changing), but when you look at their best athletes (WR/DB/RB) and compare them to the best athletes in other sports, you'll see the NFL compares very favorably, if not outclass other sports.
I disagree. When an athlete has a choice between pro-basketball and pro-football, they will choose basketball most of the time. Bigger contracts. Bigger endorsements. Guaranteed contracts. Less risk of injury. Less risk of lifelong injuries.
Think about it.
Tony Gonzalez and Antonio Gates are elite tight ends considered "basketball players" converted to football players. Why aren't they playing in NBA? Cause they weren't good enough.
Terrell Owens and Randy Moss, two of the elite wide receivers in the NFL actually prefer playing basketball over football according to interviews, but obviously weren't good enough to get to the NBA. Randy Moss had tryouts, but that was more for publicity than his actual skill.
Donovan McNabb, a star QB in the NFL, was a scrub on the Syracuse basketball team. Jason Taylor, the elite DE on the Miami Dolphins, is also a basketball player.
Also, basketball players have to catch all sorts of high speed passes, whether it be in the paint or on fast breaks. People are always ragging on Kwame Brown for having stone hands, but I've seen WR's drop wide open passes, get hit in the facemask by balls, and RB's drop the easiest screen passes. That kind of stuff just does not happen in the NBA. If it does, it is not a regular occurance like it is in the NFL.
But I reiterate, I love football. Football takes more heart and brains than the basketball does, and that is precisely why I love it.
