Sports in America

by James A. Michener

  The major difference between these two groups is the fact that European children do not have the ‘benefit’ of a highly mechanized society; they do not use cars, school buses, elevators or other labor-saving devices. They must walk everywhere—even to school, frequently a long distance. Their recreation is largely based on the active use of their bodies. In this country the children are generally conveyed in private cars or by bus, and they engage in recreation as spectators rather than as participants.

  He said that the years ten through thirteen are critical so far as the loss of general fitness is concerned, but he was not hopeful that American educational patterns could do much to improve the health of children: ‘It further appears that we are unable to alleviate the situation during the time the children are in elementary schools. They leave elementary school in very much the same condition as when they entered it—if anything, a little worse.”

  When these national deficiences were given wide publicity, authorities devised a simple, clever, easily administered battery of tests of physical fitness that were administered in the school year 1957–58 to 8,500 boys and girls aged ten through seventeen. After the test scores were tabulated, norms were established.

  When the results were made public the findings were alarming. American children rated conspicuously lower than their counterparts in other countries. They were markedly deficient in upper-arm strength and shoulder development, and less agile in overall body movement. They had noticeably less endurance.

  A kind of shock passed through the physical education departments of the country, because our children had demonstrably better foods available to them and in general a better system of health care. What could account for the inferior performance, especially when in Olympic competition, or any other kind, our top athletes performed as well as those of other countries and oftentimes much better?

  The explanation was simple. Our educational system was stressing so heavily the public games played by a few semi-professional athletes posing as scholars that the general health of the student body was going unattended, and the tests proved this.

  To the credit of the physical education people, when the test results were made public, they took action. Backed by school boards who were appalled at this proof of deficiency, the educators devised new types of training programs and placed new emphasis on physical fitness. In other words, they speedily initiated programs they should have been offering for the past half-century.

  The results were so reassuring that in 1963 it was decided to administer the new tests to 9.200 children who had experienced the recommended training. When new norms were calculated, it was found that in 111 categories out of 112, there had been significant improvement. (That is, seven tests for boys in eight age groups, ten through seventeen, and the same number for girls for a total of 112. Only the softball throw for girls seventeen years old failed to produce an improved norm.)

  Some of the improvements were notable. In the first test fourteen-year-old boys did about 44 sit-ups. Five years later fourteen-year-olds could do 70. It took fifteen-year-old girls 3:18 to run-walk 600 yards the first time, but only 2:50 the second. American children are not yet the equal of their European counterparts, but they are closing the gap.

  Take, for example, a thirteen-year-old boy in the eighth grade, because this is where American young people begin to fall seriously behind their European counterparts. I shall list three figures. The first represents the 90th percentile performance, which means that the boy can do better than 89 percent of boys his age but is excelled by the top 10 percent. The second figure represents the 50th percentile, which means that half do more poorly, half do better. And the third figure represents the 10th percentile, which means that 90 percent do better and 9 percent do worse.

  PERCENTILE NORMS FOR A THIRTEEN-YEAR-OLD AMERICAN BOY

  These performances seem respectable, but as soon as the new norms were announced, Howard G. Knuttgen, in Copenhagen, tested a mixed group of Danish children and showed that 70 percent of Danish boys and 86 percent of girls achieved scores better than the mean for Americans. (For example, out of a hundred twelve-year-old American girls, only fifty could do more than 32 sit-ups, but out of a hundred Danish girls, eighty-six could do more.)

  In nations like Czechoslovakia and East Germany, which make a fetish of physical fitness, the levels would have been even higher. Knuttgen gave these three reasons for the superiority of the Danish children: 1) their children use bicycles instead of automobiles; 2) Danish schools emphasize sports requiring running and give instruction in gymnastics; 3) Danish adults participate in lifetime sports more than Americans do and this probably encourages their children to do likewise.

  There is no reason why we should expect our schoolchildren to lead the world in the seven exercises of the test; a reasonable level of performance which enhances health should suffice, and I would guess that we are achieving that level in some of our schools, but not in many.

  The question then arises as to what specific sports we should sponsor if we wish to attain the best results for the health of our nation. Here Criteria III (public entertainment) and II (health) are in competition, and the conflict can be resolved only by appeal to national priorities.

  Criterion III argues that we must continue to provide the public with sports entertainment, and I agree. The American people will always demand that our schools, colleges and universities provide such exhibitions; will approve spending public money on stadiums for exhibition rather than on tennis courts for participation; and will demand that television bring into their homes the best sports entertainment available. I see no likelihood of change in this situation.

  Criterion II, however, argues that at the same time we are emphasizing entertainment we should also be providing education at all levels in lifetime sports that will improve the health of the nation. Emphasis should be paid to those which promise maximum personal rewards and which can be utilized throughout a lifetime.

  It is necessary, therefore, that the reader analyze all sports and games to which he is addicted, or accustomed, in order to judge their relative values. Not all sports return equal rewards, and some kind of comparison between them is essential.

  To clarify my own thinking on this problem, I selected eleven widely varied sports drawn from various nations. I wanted as complete a coverage as possible, and I particularly wanted to include several types with which the average sports enthusiast might not be familiar. In short, I did not want the list to be parochial. When it was completed, and the criteria for using it specified, I circulated the questionnaire among several hundred men and women interested in sports and asked them to rate the eleven types as to the degree of physical demand imposed.

  PHYSICAL DEMAND MADE BY CERTAIN SPORTS

  Here is a list of eleven sports. Grade each one on a scale from 10, the most demanding physically, down to 1, the least demanding. You may, for example, grade three of the sports at 7 should you so wish, and none at either 10 or 1.

  The following criteria should be used:

  Does this sport place a felt demand on heart and lungs?

  Does it require the repeated use of the big-body muscles?

  Does it induce substantial perspiration?

  Does participation require the athlete to be in top physical condition?

  • Baseball, 9-inning game

  • Basketball, 48-minute game

  • Bicycle race, Tour de France, 30 days

  • Football, 60-minute game

  • Golf, 18 holes

  • Ice hockey, 60-minute game

  • Jogging, 2 miles in 15 minutes

  • Marathon racing, 26 miles, 385 yards in 2 hours, 50 minutes

  • Prize fighting, 12 3-minute rounds

  • Soccer, 90-minute game

  • Tennis, singles, best of 5 sets, using tie-breaker

  The results were interesting. Bear in mind that these figures represent the thinking of some of America’s top athletes and sports directors, the real experts
who have competed in many of the sports described.

  COMPARATIVE DEMAND MADE BY ELEVEN SPORTS

  Certain notes are necessary. Several respondents wrote that in their opinion the one-day, ten-event decathlon was the most grueling sporting event ever devised, and that it should be rated 10-plus. When I circulated this opinion to others, they agreed. ‘That was why we changed the event to cover two days,’ one official explained.

  It was also believed that the late-summer football training camp was a 10-plus. ‘One of the toughest experiences an athlete can have,’ several football players reported: ‘Tape-up, morning and afternoon. Brutal practice, morning and afternoon. Wind sprints, morning and afternoon. I’d take my salt pills and vomit. I couldn’t eat till about nine o’clock at night.’ But even the most ardent football players agreed that with the two-platoon system, the game itself rated below basketball in sheer demand. Several respondents pointed out that in baseball the pitcher would rate at 5 or 6.

  There was surprising agreement on the evaluations, except for ice hockey. Even among the participants of that game, opinions differed radically, and the score of 7 is an average rather than a consensus. Some felt that hockey was the most demanding of all games, what with sprinting back and forth, the sudden stops, the requirement of body control at all times, but others pointed out that since a team has three alternate lines, no one player has to exert himself at top speed for very long. All agreed, however, that the game was hell on teeth, and I met very few hockey players who had a full set of originals.

  Judgments on tennis varied, but to a lesser degree; those who had not played the game rated it somewhat lower than shown. But all who had played it in stiff competition not only rated it high but also commended it as an excellent all-around conditioner. The judgment on golf was almost unanimous, but I must point out that the men and women I was interviewing tended to be younger than the average golfer and not yet ready for this slower but most exacting game. When they are older they may rate golf somewhat higher, but it would still stand at the bottom of the list. The judgment on baseball was also surprisingly uniform, with even those who had played the game professionally rating it at about 3.

  And everyone insisted upon one point which I should like to emphasize. To perform at peak level in any sport or game—pentathlon, football, golf, bridge, chess—one must be in top physical condition. When I start to write a long novel, which for two years will place heavy demands on my attention, my brain power, my eyes and my imagination, I go into training as severe as the program I followed when I played basketball. I eat sparingly, drink large quantities of grapefruit juice, take a daily nap, exercise vigorously in the late afternoon, and get to bed by ten-thirty. If I did not follow this regimen, I would not possibly have the energy to face the tasks I set for myself. Therefore, the problem in this questionnaire is not ‘Does super-golf require good conditioning?’ Of course it does, just as super-bridge does. The question really is ‘Which sports place the heaviest reasonable demand on the human body?’ And here the variation is substantial.

  Concurrent with the study reported above, I kept listing opinions on other sports. Rarely did someone I interviewed fail to remark that in my list of eleven I had overlooked certain sports that he was particularly interested in and on which he was qualified to have an opinion. I therefore put together a much larger list, which I offer herewith, apologizing in advance for its incompleteness and for the fact that it was compiled on a much narrower base than the preceding. However, it is valuable in reminding the reader that not all sports activity is of equal value, insofar as demand upon the big muscles, the lungs and the heart.

  MASTER LIST OF SPORTS RATED AS TO DEMAND ON MUSCLES, LUNGS, HEART

  A legitimate question arises when one studies these estimates. Are some activities with very low scores really sports? Or are they something else? This debate was launched when someone voiced his opinion that golfers did not qualify as athletes. I have heard considerable controversy on this point and find myself unhesitatingly on the side of the golfers. Apart from the fact just mentioned, that they had better be in topflight condition if they want to play topflight golf, I suspect that many of them could have excelled in other sports which place a greater demand on the body. In my opinion Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Johnny Miller are athletes and good ones.

  But I wonder about some other sports. For example, in the preceding chapter when Artemius Crandall, the superior black running back, looked over the roster of the Kansas City Chiefs, he saw only three plavers past the age of thirty, and those three were specialists. What would he have thought of harness racing, where Earle Avery was a leading driver at age seventy-five and Joe Hylan at age eighty. Obviously, if football and harness racing are both sports, they impose radically different demands.

  As my study progressed I was careful to check it against previous evaluations, and it will be interesting to compare my findings with those of experts who had spent many years at their work. I shall summarize them briefly.

  The first study of specific athletic exercises came in 1943, when researchers at Harvard University devised the beautifully simple but effective Harvard Step Test, in which the athlete to be tested is asked to step up and down a twenty-inch step thirty times a minute for five minutes. The subject’s pulse rate is then taken three times during the first three and a half minutes following the exercise. A complicated formula is applied to the figures, and an index is arrived at—the higher the number, the quicker the subject’s return to a normal pulse rate.

  AN INDEX OF THE CAPACITY OF THE HEART TO RECOVER FROM THE EXERCISE OF THE HARVARD STEP TEST

  The implications of this test are threefold. 1) The athlete with a high score has accustomed his heart to a heavy demand; therefore, it is less excited by any demand and able to return quickly to normal because it is in better condition. 2) It is good to have such a heart, and vigorous exercise is the way to get one. 3) A pentathlon performer engages in a sport that is markedly more demanding than target shooting. Notice also that according to these results, the demands made by basketball are greater than those made by football, which confirms my unscientific study.

  Dr. Robert E. Johnson, of the department of physiology and biophysics at the University of Illinois attacked the same problem with different assumptions. He reasoned that the number of calories consumed in the performance of a given sport yields an index of the energy required. The more calories consumed, the more demanding the sport.

  THE NUMBER OF CALORIES PER HOUR EXPENDED IN CERTAIN SPORTS

  In 1972 Dr. Lawrence A. Golding, of Kent State University, a leading expert on the physiology of exercise, achieved nationwide publicity when a reporter from a Cleveland newspaper asked him to rank various sports according to the degree of physical fitness required by participants. The question was not an improper one to put to Dr. Golding, for he had spent the past decades doing intensive work on coronary aftermaths, dehydration as a cause of serious injury to athletes, drug use by athletes, acclimatization for athletes moving from one altitude to another, and the personal training habits of champions.

  As a consequence of such studies Dr. Golding gave it as his opinion that the various sports should be listed as follows insofar as demand upon the athlete’s physical fitness was concerned: at the top, track; followed by swimming, cross-country skiing, soccer, ice hockey, basketball, football, tennis, baseball, golf; and at the bottom, bowling.

  This report occasioned so much comment that Dr. Golding had to remind his questioners that his list represented merely his off-the-cuff estimate and was not based on any scientific evidence. In a letter to me he stated:

  It was my personal ranking based on my own experience in testing a great number of athletes and knowing what various sports demand physically from their participants. I am sure that the order could be changed slightly; however, I am confident that track and field participants, swimmers, cross-country skiers etc., are among the most cardiovascularly fit athletes … Unfortunately, no objective study w
as done, so I can’t really send you the results of any particular testing.

  Until such testing has been accomplished, Dr. Golding’s list does bear the personal authority of an expert in the field.

  Dr. Kenneth H. Cooper, author of the popular book on aerobics, did conduct experiments on the oxygen intake of athletes under stress, and his findings seem of great importance to me, because they were the first to yield a specific index of how hard the lungs are working (the higher the index number, the greater the oxygen utilization):

  RELATIVE DEMANDS ON THE OXYGEN SYSTEM OF THE HUMAN BODY DURING THIRTY MINUTES OF ACTIVE PARTICIPATION

  The implications of this study are crucial to the thesis of this book. 1) Forced heavy breathing, and thus the intake of large amounts of oxygen, encourages the heart to set up alternative feed lines, which may save a life in later years. 2) Such intake is the best way to combat emphysema, the degenerative disease of the lungs. 3) Jogging, here called running-walking, is, in my experience, the most miserable form of sport, but one of the most effective. If an individual can possibly do anything else, he or she should, but if nothing else is available—no gymnasium, no tennis court, no attractive open space—jogging in place for even five minutes before an open window can be a life-saver. I have a high regard for Exercycles, which I have used to good advantage. In China, I was impressed by the early-morning exhibitions of shadow-boxing with which so many officials began their day. And I know men and women who have derived much good from isometric exercises at their desks.