Open Mic: Which Sport has the Best Physical Athletes?

Football has the best pound-for-pound athletes from a physical perspective.  

The NFL Scouting Combine is the annual job fair for prospective new NFL players. For six days from the location selected, college football players are put through a series of drills, tests and interviews with more than 600 NFL personnel, including head coaches, general managers and scouts.  

These drills include the 40-yard dash, the bench press, vertical jump, broad jump, three-cone drill, 20-yard shuffle, and the 60-yard shuffle.  

The bench press, quite simply, is a test of strength in which players bench press 225 pounds as many times as possible.  

The 40-yard dash is one of the most popular drills at the combine as tenths of a second can greatly affect a player's future. Players are timed in 10-, 20-, and 40-yard increments to see how quickly they explode off the line and how quickly they reach the top speed.  

Players stand flat-footed in front of a pole that has plastic flags sticking out of it. Players jump from a standing position and try to swat as many of those flags as they can.  

Like the vertical jump, the broad jump is done from a standing position, but this drill measures how far a player can jump.  

Players start in a three-point stance in front of three cones that are set up in a triangle or L shape, with each cone five yards apart. They then sprint five yards to one cone, sprint back to the starting cone, and head back to the second cone where they run around it and cut right to the third cone.

The players then run a circle around the third cone from the inside to the outside and run around the second cone before returning to the first cone.  

The 20-yard shuttle is designed to test lateral speed and coordination. The player starts in a three-point stance. When the whistle blows, the players run five yards to one side, touching the yard line.
They then sprint 10 yards in the other direction and again touch the yard line, at which point they sprint back to the yard line they started from.  

The only difference between the 60-yard shuttle and the 20-yard shuttle is that instead of running five yards, 10 yards then five yards, the players run 10 yards to one side, then back 20 yards and then 10 yards to the starting point.  

Each drill demonstrates the player’s individual skills in quickness, footwork, and the ability to adapt in sudden football scenarios.  

These drills do not include position-specific drills for the quarterback, wide receiver, defensive backs, tight ends, and offensive linemen.

These strenuous exercises exonerate the physical ability of the athletes.  In essence, the outcomes of each drill are in a sense worth millions of dollars.  

Athletes usually peak physically after a few seasons.  However, football players are required to perform at a high level from the beginning of their careers.  

The wide range of exercises performed at the NFL combine applies to different sports and clearly shows that football players are the best pound for pound physical athletes.