Quote Originally Posted by Biggin View Post
You could try to type out a five page report, and still be wrong. But not for the reasons you listed, it has nothing to do with opinions.

If we take out the so-called opinion qualifiers, like excitement and anticipation, we still have a few fact-based qualifiers to determine which sport is the best in the US.

One, the easiest one, revenue. Which sport brings in the most revenue overall? Easily football.
Now, lets look at the level of preparation and gameplanning. Which sport devotes that much time to a specific opponent every week besides football? Football gameplans are by far the most specific, intricate gameplans in any sport. More hours are spent, more gameplans are developed, the level of familiarity with opponents and the time spent on a specific opponent makes football obviously the biggest strategical sport in mainstream.

Next, how important are the games? To be a great sport, EVERY game has to have incredible meaning. 162, 82, or 16? In which sport does every individual game count as much? When games mean more, the level of intensity and gameplanning goes up. When games are more meaningful, we get higher performance and effort on the whole every week.

No other sport requires the level of athlete. Not to mention these incredible athletes RUN INTO EACH OTHER, causing incredible damage to each other.

Ok now let's delve into some more qualifiers. What other sport requires as much devotion? The willingness to sacrifice health on the long term for their sport? And that reflects on the field. Football players have to give up simple things like no headaches or knees to play their sport for a long time. Name another sport where athletes who are 300+ pounds smash into each other, risking horrible injury, at least 16 games a year and least 50 snaps a game?
Take a good defensive tackle or offensive tackle. An OT plays about 50 plays a game, running full force into a 300 pound man on every snap. Thats 300 plays a year. What other major sport requires that level of physicality and devotion?

Since we arent doing opinions, I wont mention the excitement, the environment, the level of devotion by fans, but I have to mention one other thing:
the PASSION.
Football breeds a passion unmatched by any other sport. Whether its players, coaches, fans, owners, whatever, football creates an incredible passion for the sport.
It takes an insane amount of passion to convince a healthy 300 pound guy to play DT in teh NFL. The money is nice, but NBA/MLB players make a sh1t ton of money as well and those players are not asked to be as devoted to their game. They dont have to hurt each other to make a living.

thats not to say that basketball or baseball players arent very passionate about their sport. They are, some very much so. But they arent asked to intentionally hit and hurt another player to be successful in their sport. They arent asked to be injured almost every game yet still compete. NBA players have great passion, some of them, but the passion from NFL players dwarfs that, simply because they have to injure or be injured. The NFL creates higher stakes for its players, meaning they have to be more prepared and more devoted to their sport to be successful.


To say you are as big a football fan as the next guy obviously isnt true if you are arguing that the NFL is not the best overall sport in the US. I laid out my reasoning, why I believe that the NFL is the greatest. I dont see how thats even arguable to be honest. I pointed out how important each game is, the level of revenue brought in by the sport, and the level of gameplanning and preparation required by football is unmatched by another major sport.

I cant say 100% positive that football is the best sport. We have no metric to determine that. But I can lay out excellent points behind my reasoning and give as to why myself and many others determined that football IS the best sport. NOT my favorite sport, but the BEST sport.

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Riiight, as I can see you're going to be full of it and not even hear the other side, so why bother? But I will, since your argument is weak at best. And which is it? Are we talking the US or the world here?


You specifically say that popularity doesn't equal greatest, but point to revenue(which is nothing but a popularity contest) as your first point of your argument.

Preparation into game plan is absolutely ridiculous, I would hope they put more preparation into game plan when I have A WEEK before the next game. Other sports don't have that luxury considering it's a bit more grueling playing 4-5 times a week. That one was just absurd, how can that even be considered?

The games are more meaningful and that somehow dwindles the other sports because they have to play more games? That goes with the second gem above, the format of the scheduling somehow makes it a factor as the greatest sport? lmao

Those two lines really just made me laugh. You're telling me that a sport that half of the players that are just overweight goliaths that make a living hand-checking other overweight goliaths 8 seconds at a time and usually on ONE SIDE OF THE BALL requires the greatest athletes of all of sports? ahahahaha. Riiiiight.


That devotion one is again laughable, what other sport requires the athlete to play a whopping 300 plays a year? How about all of them, that's how many minutes of actual playing time? 30? This one isn't even close, in the other two major sports the athletes play on both sides of the ball, far more many times and if we're talking a much faster paced basketball game then it's really not even close to devotion for the sport - even though that's iffy to judge an athletes devotion to anything...which brings me to your next piece.

Passion. Since you possess the ability to judge passion of ANYONE, I don't even know where to start with this one. I'll take an atmosphere at a college basketball game or NBA playoff game as good as any NFL game played a year. Never is an football player taught to HURT anyone, it may happen because it's a contact sport, but I've never heard any right-minded coach to tell his players to seriously injure or anything close to it to play the game...football players aren't asked that, sorry. There's enough rules and pads to make the injuries of the everyday game worth the million dollar paycheck. If we were talking rugby or MMA, you might have a point.

Again, you keep flip-flopping to world or US? Which is it? And I'm just realistic actually and not a blind homer to say that my FAVORITE sport is the greatest on earth. Your argument was incredibly flawed, hell a big chunk of it is based on scheduling, the other a popularity contest you contradicted yourself on and unmeasurable factors like passion? I don't even know why I'm arguing about it, I've said it can't even be determined and this petty argument you laid out sure as hell didn't convince anyone or change any minds. You say you lay out this solid as nails argument that can't be touch(ha) and then say exactly what the hell I said from the beginning - it CAN'T BE DETERMINED AND IS A MATTER OF PREFERENCE. Probably done with the thread altogether since it's a ridiculous debate.