One of the most interesting studies of energy expenditure is also one of the most scientific. Two Scottish scientists, John Durnin of Glasgow and Reginald Passmore of Edinburgh, started with the modest theory that ‘a certain level of physical activity is required to maintain normal health and to prevent degenerative diseases, notably obesity and cardiac disease.’ They then conducted their own experiments, and sought out reports of those conducted by others in an effort to determine the caloric expenditure per minute for the various sports. Unfortunately, since the investigators were British, they focused on sports native to their country and ignored certain major American sports, but their conclusions can be extrapolated.
ENERGY EXPENDITURES DURING RECREATIONS EXPRESSED IN KCALS PER MINUTE
The chief pleasure to be derived from this study, however, comes in the uninhibited observations of the authors. Cricket. ‘This is a sophisticated English game, which neither Scots nor Americans have the wit to understand.’ Croquet. “Success at the game requires skill, judgment and an active dislike of your opponent.’ Cycling. ‘The Tour de France, which lasts three weeks, must be one of the most arduous of sporting events.’ Fishing. ‘We are unable to appreciate the interest that thousands of English fishermen find in spending a cold winter day crouched on a little campstool by the side of a sluggish canal with their eyes fixed on a float. This appears to be a sedentary pastime.’ Football (Soccer). ‘Few boys play football after leaving school, and it is exceptional to continue to play after leaving the university. In our opinion many school and university authorities have placed too much emphasis on football. There are many other better forms of active recreation for boys and young men.’ Gardening. ‘Even those over eighty years can derive benefit from simple tasks in a garden.’ Field hockey. ‘Hockey is an excellent game to teach in schools. The best players in the world come from India and Pakistan, and these countries might well send a mission to provide technical aid to the underdeveloped U.S.A.’ Swimming. ‘This is perhaps the ideal form of exercise.’
I believe that the reader who has inspected these various summaries of research will have acquired a better understanding of where his preferred sport stands in relation to others, so far as physical demand is concerned, and this was my experience. But it was not until I had completed the above analyses that I received my biggest surprise. It came from a most unlikely source, the conductor of a symphony orchestra. I had attended a Saturday night concert of the New York Philharmonic, and at its conclusion I went to the Green Room to congratulate André Kostelanetz, who had conducted. ‘I’m heading uptown to meet an interesting friend,’ he told me. ‘Care to come along?’
The friend turned out to be Dr. James Nicholas, the tall and handsome medical doctor who serves as orthopedist for the New York Jets, and when he learned of my interest in sports, he invited Kostelanetz and me to the Jets-Buffalo game the next day, when O. J. Simpson was expected to go over the 2,000-yard mark for rushing in a single season.
Sunday was a horrible day, with a December wind whipping snow across Shea Stadium and about half the ticket holders staying home to watch the game on television. Simpson was outstanding. Namath was desperate. Receivers had no chance of holding on to passes. And the day ended in a dismal fog, with everyone chilled to the bone and the Jets losers again.
After the game Dr. Nicholas took me down to the Jets’ dressing room, where Weeb Ewbank was making a tearful and final farewell to coaching and where Joe Namath talked with me as he undressed at the close of this painful season. I was appalled at the massive knee braces he wore, and hefted them as he took them off.
‘Twenty-five pounds,’ he told me. I slipped them on and could scarcely move. Joe said that Dr. Nicholas had devised the braces and that they had kept him going. I said I couldn’t conceive of playing a game like football in such armor, and Joe said, ‘If you had knees like mine, you’d be lucky to find gear like that.’
It was at this point that Dr. Nicholas joined us, and when he saw my interest in the braces he surprised me by saying, ‘I’m conducting a major study on the physical demand made by certain sports,’ and with this we were off on a long discussion of our two studies. I was astonished that he had covered in such depth the very field I was interested in.
In succeeding weeks we compared notes and exchanged data. The figures I now offer are markedly superior to mine, for three reasons: they cover many more cases; they have been compiled by a trained expert; and he had at his disposal several trained interviewers and diagnosticians. I place considerably more reliance on Dr. Nicholas’ figures than I do on my own.
Dr. Nicholas, known affectionately to football players whose knees he has saved as ‘Nick the Knife,’ identified twenty-one components of an athletic act, grouping them into three categories: neuromuscular-physical (endurance, reaction time); mental-psychometric (intelligence, alertness); environmental (playing conditions, equipment). He then applied these criteria to sixty-one different sports, covering eight on my list, to which I add four others which he rated high.
TWELVE SPORTS GRADED ON THE NICHOLAS CHART
Sport Partial Score
13 Physical Factors Total Score
All 21 Factors
Prizefighting 37 51
Basketball 35 50
Football 36 56
Hockey 37 54
Soccer 32 44
Tennis 26 42
Baseball 27 44
Golf 23 39
Ballet 37 55
Fencing 35 49
Gymnastics 36 50
Judo 36 51
Dr. James A. Nicholas, M.D., Sports Classification Chart, 1975
The similarity of rankings between the Nicholas list and my own is striking. We both place football and basketball high. We both rank football and hockey about even. And we both place golf far to the rear. Here are the total scores for the other sports Dr. Nicholas cited:
FORTY-NINE SPORTS GRADED ON THE NICHOLAS CHART
Archery 28
Auto racing 45
Badminton 40
Ballroom dance 27
Bicycling 36
Big-game hunting 45
Billiards 27
Bobsledding 39
Bowling 29
Bridge 26
Bullfighting 55
Calisthenics 33
Canoeing 37
Camping 23
Circus acts 48
Cricket 44
Curling 36
Diving 45
Equestrian 46
Field hockey 36
Figure skating 41
Fishing, deep-sea 33
Handball 37
Hiking 18
Ice Follies 50
Jai alai 52
Jockey 52
Karate 50
Lacrosse 38
Modern dance 28
Motorcycling 37
Mountain climbing 47
Paddleball 42
Polo 50
Rodeo 49
Racing 46
Rugby 52
Sailing 43
Scuba diving 37
Skiing 41
Snowmobiling 38
Surfing 50
Swimming 39
Table tennis 34
Tap dance 37
Tumbling 45
Volleyball 44
Water polo 44
Yachting 46
Of special significance, I think, is the very high mark given by Nicholas to ballet. This is justified because he takes into consideration such intangibles as intelligence and creativity, which are not factors in my study and which do not represent actual physical demand. But his figures do emphasize a point I have recently made to college students who have asked me what courses they should take in order to become writers:
If I had a daughter or son determined to be a writer—and by that I mean poet or dramatist or novelist or advertising writer—naturally I’d expect them to be competent in their own language and to know something about psychology and the history of what fine writers have
accomplished in the past. But the two courses I’d make obligatory would be one in ceramics, so that you could feel form emerging from inchoate clay. I think this is very important, that you have a feeling for form and a sense of how it’s achieved.
And the second course would be eurhythmic dancing, so that you could feel within your own body the capacity that you have for movement and form and dramatic shifts in perspective. Of course, if you can’t locate a class in such dancing, you might pick up the same sensations in a long game of basketball or tennis, where the ebb and flow of movement is pronounced. Or perhaps in any other sport requiring bold shifts of movement What the artist requires is a sense of emerging form, a kinesthetic sense of what the human body is capable of. If you marry those sensory capacities to a first-rate brain, you have a good chance of becoming an artist.
I developed these conclusions many years ago but lacked confidence in setting them forth, for they seemed both peculiar and arbitrary. But when I read Johan Huizinga’s masterful Homo Ludens (Man the Player of Games) I found that as early as 1938 he had expressed ideas far in advance of mine. Indeed, he envisioned most of life as a game, but it was George Leonard who expressed exactly my attitude in his poetic and learned discourse The Ultimate Athlete:
Out of a lifetime of sports spectating, the moments that live for us are pure dance. We may forget league standings and final scores and even who won, but we can never forget certain dancelike movements … Perhaps it is actually this desire for the transcendant rather than for mere victory that keeps us locked to our television sets on those sunny afternoons when we ourselves might be out playing. Perhaps even the most avid team supporter, dispirited and surly after a defeat of ‘his’ team, has gained an unspoken understanding of the dance that will keep him coming back again and again, regardless of the final score …
If only one subject were to be required in school, it should be, in my opinion, some form of dance—from nursery school through a Ph.D. I can’t say that the dancer is the Ultimate Athlete. I am quite certain, however, that the Ultimate Athlete is a dancer.
I endorse the conclusions stated in that second paragraph. The exquisite moments I have known in sports have related more to the dance of the human figure than to anything else; the spiritual freedom I have often found in games has derived specifically from the dancing body seeking new forms and new releases.
A more important conclusion from these studies is that certain sports contribute less to general health than others. Golf, boating and fishing place so little demand upon the lungs and heart that many critics feel their practitioners should not be called athletes. The same deficiency can be charged against numerous similar activities. However, several cautionary judgments must be made.
Any activity whatever which takes a man or woman out of doors is healthful. Even if it involves no physical exertion—riding in a car through a pleasant landscape, for example—it is constructive if it provides a chance to breathe fresh air and an escape, however temporary, from customary tensions.
It is therefore a hundred times better to play golf than not to play it, with one precaution. If golf creates a greater tension than it releases, which is often the case, then the playing of golf could be a detriment rather than an asset. Since it involves no large-muscle exertion and since it places no demand upon heart or lungs, its positive virtues are limited.
The problem is quite different from that posed by tennis, for in the latter game one has a live opponent against whom one is contesting, and frustrations can be easily discharged, even if specific shots go astray. Also, at the height of tension one can smash the ball, run vigorously to the net, lunge sideways to retrieve a return, and in many other ways get rid of one’s frustrations while working up a healthy sweat. The natural anger that the fierce competitor generates can be instantly discharged, which is not always the case in golf, where one often competes against oneself, against an impersonal par.
I know many men who would be better off not playing golf, because consistently they end the day in worse emotional shape than when they started, whereas had they been playing tennis or some similar sport with an attacking opponent, they might have ended the day exhausted emotionally as well as physically, which is a marvelous condition to be in occasionally. The professional golfer Billy Casper had these facts in mind when a friend assured him, ‘Every time you go fishing, Billy, you add a day to your life,’ to which Casper replied, ‘Every time you play a round of competitive golf, a day is subtracted. It’s a tie.’
A different kind of precaution applies to boating and fishing. I have done a great deal of each and have been much impressed by the fact that the great enemy of the boater or the fisherman is constipation, because one remains inactive for long periods of time. Yet one is in fresh air and the appetite flourishes. Especially in the company of good friends, one eats excessively and perhaps drinks too much, so that after a week one’s health is apt to have deteriorated rather than improved.
I have noticed that the one sure way to determine whether a man is a real fisherman or boater is to note whether, when he unpacks his gear on the first afternoon, he has brought along a supply of dried prunes and fresh cabbage, the first to gnaw on during the idle moments, the second to make into cole slaw, which should be eaten at every meal, including breakfast.
But I repeat my first conclusion: anything that takes a human being out of doors and places him or her in contact with nature is bound to be beneficial. Strenuous sports not only do this; they also place heavy demands upon the system, and this is conducive to better health.
The health benefits derived from participation in sports seem obvious. Are there accompanying dangers?
Yes, and they are substantial. They divide into two groups, normal dangers to the young and special dangers to the old.
As to the young, Dr. Nicholas, who has specialized in this field and keeps national records, reports that each year sports in America are responsible for seventeen million accidents serious enough to require the attentions of a doctor. ‘That’s more casualties in one year than American troops suffered in all our wars put together,’ he says. And six million of the accidents leave permanent results, but some are no more serious than a scar.
‘Look at it this way,’ he says. ‘Suppose an epidemic swept this country and left six million children crippled, injured or with some residual scar or other effect. You’d say, “What a catastrophe!”
‘Suppose I told you that in California there are two hundred and fifty people hurt every month just from motorcycle accidents. Permanent crippling to the hip. Some of them die. Suppose I told you that forty thousand people a year suffer crippled knees as a result of sport. How do those figures compare with twenty-five thousand polio victims, which we considered a catastrophe?’
Dr. Nicholas estimates that for young people under the age of fifteen who participate in the normal American sports, their parents can anticipate one accident each year for every three players. Some of the accidents can be fatal. Over many years I kept a running record of the number of deaths occurring each season which could be attributed to football. Few sports fans have bothered to notice, but each year in December one of the wire services issues a brief paragraph tabulating the number of football deaths for that year, and during the time I kept my records the number hovered around thirty-eight.
This meant that year after year, in all parts of the country, boys and young men were regularly being killed at the rate of thirty-eight a year, and no one seemed to care very much about the total. However, when a specific death occurred in a specific community, as had happened in my town when I was a boy, it created something of a scandal … for a brief period. But on the whole, our nation was prepared to accept a regular plague of deaths without protest
For some years I kept a record of each reported death. In August and September an appalling number of young men died from heat prostration, some because their coaches honestly believed that intake of water during practice was injurious, others because their coaches tho
ught that for a boy to require water was a sign of weakness. One cup of water, arriving at the right time, could have saved many lives over the span I studied, and the deprivation of this water was the consequence of ignorance.
In October and November the causes for death shifted away from heat prostration to those dreadful injuries of neck and spine, caused again by specific coaching procedures. It was considered gallant for a tackier to thrust his head into an on-charging halfback, or for the halfback to go head-down right at a would-be tackier. In either case, a neck could be snapped or a backbone fractured, and if death did not result, lifelong incapacitation did. There are many towns in this country which harbor some young man who is spending his life in a wheelchair as a result of improper instructions.
In the weeks that I was working on this chapter, the following cases drifted across my desk without my having made any special conscious effort to compile them:
• Kenton, Ohio. Mark Valentine, seventeen years old, a heavy lineman, dies after running two miles in under twelve minutes during a heat wave in mid-August.
• Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Bill Arnold, twenty years old, dies as a result of a heat stroke incurred while practicing football in early September.
• Honesdale, Pennsylvania. Walter Richard Wilkinson, seventeen years old, dies of exhaustion after a two-hour-and-fifteen-minute football practice in full uniform during a heat wave in early September.
• Dothan, Alabama. Jon Davis, fifteen years old, dies of a broken neck sustained in a tackling drill held in the gymnasium in mid-September.
• Harleton, Texas. Terry Ray Muse, sixteen years old, dies following his collapse while playing a football game in mid-September.
• Chicago, Illinois. Marco Cervantes, seventeen years old, dies from brain damage suffered while butting into a 200-pound linebacker in late October.
• Livingston, New Jersey. Bob Taratko, seventeen years old, dies following a pileup in a high school football game in early November.