The Toughest Job in Sports

Crushing heat and humidity flooded Manila's Philippine Coliseum on this October morning in 1975, enveloping the 25,000 spectators and the two weary and pained fighters in the middle of the ring. Muhammad Ali and Smokin' Joe Frazier were taking it to the mountain for the third time, both resolved to tear out the other's very soul and annihilate a rivalry that had spanned five bitter years. Only Ali, that child of the heavens, would touch the summit.

His body heavier with age, Ali still fired those flashing and vicious left jabs, now backed with real power, and they snapped Frazier's bobbing but unguarded head in the first three rounds. Then Frazier, crouched low, began waging his own personal inquisition in the sixth. Like a starving and desperate wolf, he ripped at the champion's chest and kidneys, unleashing that legendary and evil left hook to Ali's jaw. The fight festered into a noble but wicked war until the 14th, which Ali later described as being "like death. The closest thing to dyin' that I know of." Ali barely stumbled off his stool for the last round, but Frazier's manager, Eddie Futch, saw his fighter as a spent shell lying cold, with not a wisp of smoke remaining. "Joe, I'm going to stop it," said Futch.

"I want him, boss," said Frazier, whose eyes were swollen shut.

"Sit down, son, it's all over."

Indeed, at the age of 31, it was essentially all over for the former heavyweight champion. He had fought only 35 professional fights, won 32, 27 by knockout, and, after losing one more fight, would be resigned to the less punishing vocation of singing and dancing. This self-described "fightin' machine," this man of inestimable heart and will, was through in a sport that's been called modified murder for damn good reasons. Frazier knew countless pugs who had absorbed too many blows to the skull and who now shuffled through a world they perceived with half-somnambulant minds. They slurred their speech, and Frazier wanted no such fate.

But what more could be asked of a man in peacetime? Or in the world of sport? What athletic task could compare with entering a confined space and facing men like Ali or the brutish George Foreman in the ancient and ultimate test of man versus man, a duel of the fists?

For Frazier, fighting Ali is a hell of a lot less terrifying than swimming. He would rather be tied up in the ropes and pummeled by Earnie Shavers than go near the water. To him, Mark Spitz is one tough mutha, a conclusion formed during Frazier's memorable performance in the Superstars competition, in which he nearly drowned a few seconds after hitting the pool. For Frazier, who fears no man or beast, there are several sports he considers far more difficult and dangerous than his own.

Hockey goalie? "Lawdy," says Frazier, whistling through his teeth at the thought of a frozen puck rocketing his way in excess of 100 miles per hour, "I don't want nothin' comin' at me that I can't stop. That's why you don't see no black hockey players. Blacks don't fool with sports that put you on ice, on snow, in the air or in water. You won't find us skiing, swimming, skating or parachuting. Those are too dangerous, man. Now, I wouldn't mind playing football, runnin' with the ball. But then I wouldn't (continued on page 246) Toughest Job in Sports (continued from page 165) want 11 guys jumpin' on me. I'd get up and want to fight and one of them would have to drop. But I'd take any of them on one on one."

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They call Robert Brazile Dr. Doom around the National Football League. The Houston Oilers linebacker is 6'4" and 238 pounds of speed, agility, power and zealous enthusiasm. He is clearly one of the hardest hitters in the league, a man you don't mess with. "You tell Joe Frazier to come get me," says Brazile. "I take him one on one . . . if I can wear my helmet. I'd play goalie in hockey, but I don't want to do nothing where I get hit in the face. I'll fight Joe, you tell him that, but I'm wearing my helmet."

Tennis pro Arthur Ashe would love to mix it up in the ring with a fighter of his own weight--say a Sugar Ray Leonard or a Roberto Duran. "But I'd never be a pitcher in baseball," he says. "Man, Dave Parker would line one up the middle and it would take my head off."

John Garrett, goalie for the Hartford Whalers of the National Hockey League, thinks tending the nets is a piece of cake, but you could never get him behind the wheel of a race car. Ace driver Richard Petty, however, thinks being a goalie "looks awful dangerous." Rams quarterback Pat Haden thinks Petty is fooling with fire. Houston Rockets forward Rick Barry thinks he could get enamored of speed but, despite being a large man of 6'8" and 215 pounds, is like Brazile. "I don't want to get hit in the face, either," says Barry. They all think downhill skiers ought to be locked away for their own safety.

So what is the toughest job in sports? What is the most ball-busting, nerve-racking sport or position that demands the most of a man or a woman? What draws upon every resource of physical skill, preparation, intelligence, mental cool, gamesmanship and all the other elements that go into athletics? Is it catching hockey pucks in the throat? Having blitzing linebackers pour through the line like a tsunami and tear you into dog meat before you can even set up to pass? Is it catching a knuckle-ball pitcher one night, nursing those bruises for 22 hours and then catching a 101-mph flame thrower while trying to concentrate on your slumping batting average? How about risking death in a race car? Quarterbacks get slammed to the turf, but they don't go up in flames.

When the Playboy editors asked me to try to determine the toughest job in sports, I knew I was in for trouble. The topic has fueled bar debates for years. I have one friend who firmly believes that professional bowlers are the Greek gods of athletics. Says I have a closed mind to their unbelievable skills. Another touts baseball hitters and worships at the shrine of Ted Williams, leaving his mind as open as that of a Moonie.

The toughest job in sports is obviously that of sportswriter, especially on an assignment like this. I fully expect jai-alai players to write hate letters in Basque, motocross riders to send boxes of dirt C.O.D. and rugby players bottles of flatulence, such is their range of expression. But the editors assured me that this was not a political issue and that people with opposing views would not be allowed equal time in the pages of the magazine. If I were to meet an irate reader in a bar, however, I'd be on my own.

For the sake of limiting the controversy to a small-scale conventional war, I decided to enlist the aid of experts. We would determine a set of measurements--20 or so traits that defined toughness--and apply them to a handful of sports. No sweat.

My first contact was George Plimpton--the Bogey Man, Bozo of the Bruins in the hockey nets, the Paper Lion. George would know the toughest job in sports.

"Every sport has its moment of crisis," says Plimpton from his New York office. "But rating them wouldn't mean anything. The ultimate is, of course, auto racing. But, no, the toughest thing I ever did was play the triangle with the New York Philharmonic. If you make a mistake, you destroy the whole thing. You can't make an error." Thanks, George.

Since so much of athletics deals with the mind, I called Dr. Bruce Ogilvie, a 59-year-old sports psychologist at San Jose State University. Dr. Ogilvie has probed the brains of tens of thousands of athletes since 1953, in questionnaires, lengthy and repeated interviews and counseling sessions. He's been an advisor to numerous college, professional and Olympic teams, helping coaches judge the mind set of athletes and helping athletes cope with their own special brand of psychic problems. Ogilvie works with the Portland Trail Blazers and the Los Angeles Lakers and has spent time with the Houston Astros and the San Diego Chargers, among others. If you've ever filled out a psychological sports questionnaire, chances are it was Ogilvie's. He knows what makes athletes tick, or fail to tick, and for the mental side of sports jobs is perhaps the foremost expert in the country.

To get to the nuts and bolts, the physical requirements, I went to see Dr. Marvin Clein, the chairman of the physical education and sport sciences department at the University of Denver. A kinesiologist and former coach, the 51-year-old Dr. Clein is a pioneer in the field of sport sciences. He has been a consultant to Olympic teams and professional franchises and has analyzed and trained more than 1500 athletes, many of whom have either won a world or national championship or made their national team in a sport.

He has worked with national teams from six countries and has analyzed Denver's Nuggets of the N.B.A. and Broncos of the N.F.L. He has made special cases of athletes such as baseball's Toby Harrah and individual players from seven N.F.L. teams.

Clein takes a raw athlete and puts him or her through a battery of physical and psychological tests, checking mental factors, speed, flexibility, reaction time, strength and every measurable component of athletics. He says that top athletes come from a select gene pool and that certain anatomical and physiological traits determine whether an athlete will succeed or fail on a world-class level. Once that's been figured, he can prescribe a training regimen to push an athlete to his ultimate potential. Clein is the man who helped mold Dorothy Hamill into a champion: and if you want to reach the top in a sport, he is the chief Svengali of the Western world.

Clein uses human physical performance as a base for his research and consults with experts in every field that could limit that performance: sociology, psychology, biomechanics, physiology. His Denver laboratory is a warehouse of facts and figures. Neither Ogilvie nor Clein has ever played triangle in an orchestra.

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"Perhaps the prime categories you need to measure are body coordination and required precision of performance," says Clein. "That is what is most affected by nervous tension. Nervous tension gets into the motor-neural processes and interferes with fine skills. The best athletes can concentrate and relax under stress. But watch a basketball player miss an easy shot in a pinch or a golfer tighten up on a simple putt. That's what we're talking about. It's the yips that hurt precision."

Clein next contributed the information for special physiological and special anatomical requirements. Each of these categories could be broken down into 20 or 30 subgroupings. It is difficult to compare the foot speed a race-car driver must have in shifting down, a matter of half seconds, with the .20 of a second a baseball hitter has to pull the trigger on a fastball. A boxer needs strength, but he also needs power. A bronco rider needs balance, but a basketball player needs even more, along with jumping ability, good eyesight and eye-hand coordination. If you lump those together, a high physiology rating simply means you're a good all-round athlete. Therefore, a decathlete, a basketball player and a boxer are high, the three sports that require a man to be a top athlete. With physiology in mind, some of those other sports--like race-car driving and golfing--strain the definition of athlete.

The anatomical rating, in turn, could strain the definition of human. "A good baseball pitcher should have long arms, hands and fingers to give him leverage and velocity on the ball." says Clein by way of example. "And a long trunk, tapered upper body and long lower legs, all things that will help throw harder and faster than someone without those characteristics." A large muscle mass will make those levers superior (which still doesn't explain Pirate pitcher Kent Tekulve, who has a mass approaching zero specific gravity and looks like a walking crane).

We included need for physical preparation, just how hard and how extensively an athlete must prepare his body. Whereas an Olympic decathlete must be a finely tuned and balanced hunk, conditioned to perfection for his task, a golfer can smoke three packs a day, eat a pound of cheese and gulp a six-pack of beer every night with no appreciable effects on his game. Complexity of skill preparation is a different matter. The same golfer must work on his drives, fairway and pitch shots and somehow figure out how to putt on greens that can be fast, slow or tilted at bizarre angles. The sports that demand those most disparate skills are clearly harder to prepare for than something like, say, running.

A marathoner, however, expends nearly every ounce of his energy in a race, so we added energy expenditure as a category. Golfers can dance all night after a round: Marathoners wish their legs were removable.

We also decided to assess the complexity of the game and the athletic intelligence required to master the basics. "There are at least 25 different types of intellectual abilities," says Clein. "and the one that really matters much here is athletic intelligence, the need of an athlete to understand what he personally is doing and what the opposition is doing, the ability to pick up and interpret visual cues and react to them--problem-solving ability on the run, quickly and with the proper response." This definition of intelligence surely helps explain how Leon Spinks once became heavayweight champ.

Following athletic intelligence closely is application of strategy. Even though many coaches now call plays from the side lines, a quarterback must direct an entire team. He is responsible for the plays, game plan and audibles at the line. Likewise, a catcher must spend time positioning fielders and telling a thickheaded pitcher that the bimbo at the plate hasn't hit a curve in three seasons. A hockey goalie, on the other hand, has less strategy, except to keep the puck away from his face and out of the nets.

"I also feel we should consider opportunity for environmental distractions," adds Clein. "Those who play in controlled environments, like basketball players and hockey goalies, do not have the disadvantages of someone who must contend with muddy fields, wind, rain and, say, for instance, patches of ice, as is the case with a downhill skier."

Since athletes in some sports get injured far more often than in others, we broke the injury category into two parts: frequency of injuries and severity of injuries. Bronco riders, downhill skiers and quarterbacks have limbs broken like rotten trees in a hurricane. Nothing pleases an N.F.L. defensive lineman more than ringing the opposing Q.B.'s clacker. Some football injuries are, indeed, severe, but they don't match the possibilities in racecar driving. Severity of injuries for drivers can be terminal, therefore, only they and the boxers received the high death rating.

Our part-time consultant George Plimpton suggests that athletes fear humiliation more than any physical threat. "They all tell me that the toughest thing is sinking a short putt in golf. A five-year-old child can do it, but put $50.000 on the line and men who've made millions in the sport find something inside them breaking to pieces. They get the yips. Rookies, the young golfers, say it's psychological, but the veterans know that something in the body goes. Something physical happens when they have faced that situation so many times."

Plimpton feels that even marble shooters at a high competitive level experience the same kind of pressure and so need the same kind of mental toughness. Staying consistently on top is difficult in any sport, but Clein believes it is more so in some than in others. We included a category called degree of success in which we measured how an athlete can fall from the pinnacle of his sport to obscurity or simply lose his stuff. When you're hot, you're hot. When you're not, how quickly does the news spread?

Following Ogilvie's advice, we added proximity of the fans and potential for fan abuse. Explains Ogilvie: "We call it the potential for external punishment. Many athletes need the affection of the fans, and when it is taken away or they lose favor with those fans, it can hurt them greatly. They also internalize punishment if they perform poorly and it starts to hurt their performance. It leads to fear. I could list perhaps 100 catchers in baseball who developed such a phobic reaction that they could no longer make a throw to second. They lived in fear that a runner would break for the base. and they washed out of the sport. These things happen with great frequency, but it is something not often talked about. Quarterbacks I've talked with, almost to a man, say the same thing." he says. "They develop the skin of a crocodile when it comes to the fans, just to survive. And the fact that the fans are a good 150 yards away helps create a mental distance as well as a physical one."

How do athletes avoid humiliation-- the fear and loathing of the locker room? Ogilvie suggests another category, lack of opportunity to rationalize failure. He says that many athletes internalize failure, especially when there is no one else to blame for their mistakes. That is especially true in sports in which an athlete stands alone and has no teammates to blame for screwing up. If Walter Payton has a bad day, it means his blockers didn't block. If Duane Bobick gets his block knocked off by Ken Norton, it's Bobick and Bobick alone who suffers the humiliation.

We assessed the element of confrontation, the ultimate test of sport. Looking another human square in the eye, gunfighterlike, and going at it. A physical confrontation, pitting strength against strength, quickness against quickness, nerve against nerve. It is a primitive fear and passion that infects all men. Boxing is a clear standout here, for what could be more personal than a hard right to the snoot? Perhaps a kick to the groin, but that is condoned in none of our sports. Interpersonal conflict, however, puts great stress on a man's will.

We felt that concentration time must be a factor. According to Ogilvie, there are several degrees of concentration. Race-car drivers have to focus the entire time they are in a race, a matter of hours. It's intense. A downhill skier is intense, too, perhaps even more so, but for only a couple of minutes. A marathoner, however, tries to unconcentrate. lest he become aware of the stupidity of his actions and quit for his own good.

Finally, we looked at the frequency of crucial moments. How often does a game or a match hang in the balance, where an individual's mistake makes the difference between winning and losing? Ali was a master at rising to the occasion, reaching for presence and strength when all seemed lost. Jerry West was such a clutch player, and he faced those moments often in his career, much more often than most basketball players. Every moment for a downhill skier and a driver is a crucial moment. Those requirements of grace under pressure test the mettle of any performer.

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We grouped sports relative to one another in the categories. If one stood out one way or another, it was the only sport to get a one or a five. Those that were similar in the categories got similar values. Finally, we added the point totals, treating each category equally. (The chart appears below.) The rankings follow:

14. Marathoner, 44 points. Sorry, Bill Rodgers and all you zealous harriers around the country, but your sport just doesn't match up on the board. Sure, running a marathon takes a lot of training (5), expends incredible energy (5) and does seem to require special anatomical traits (5)--such as lack of a brain. But despite all the self-indulgent crap in the horribly boring books on running and the autoerotic blather in running magazines, it just doesn't take much else from an athlete. A marathon man needs the athletic intelligence of a buffalo to put one foot in front of the other. Precision? The most complex thing a runner has to do is lace an overpriced jogging shoe. His task is to run from point A to point B faster than somebody else. "I think running is so popular because it doesn't require many other skills," says Clein. Sorry, that's just the way it is.

13. Bronco rider, 46 points. There aren't many cowboys who don't walk with a limp. There are also quite a few cracked skulls in the rodeo circuit. We gave them a max rating (5) for frequency of injuries and a 4 for severity. Bronco and bull riders hang on for life for eight to ten agonizing seconds, their crotches taking a sterilizing kind of beating. Every moment they are on an animal is crucial (5). But, for the most part, they put their hands in a rope, say a prayer, watch the gate open and pick themselves out of the dirt when it's over.

12. Hockey goalie, 53 points. A major surprise. Playing goal is dangerous. Bernie Parent, the sterling tender for the Philadelphia Flyers, was poked in the eye by a stick last year and will never play again. Pucks act like baseball knuckle balls, floating in at crazy angles or flying like a bullet. If a goalie comes out of the crease, he's fair game for a body check, just like any other player.

But goal tending has changed in the past few years. Almost all teams split tending duties and goalies now work only half as many games. And nearly all wear masks. Old goalies had faces that looked like they'd been run through a sewing machine, stitch marks crossing stitch marks. Hartford Whalers John Garrett admits that as athletes, goalies are not that great. "You've got to have quickness of hands and feet, and intelligence helps in learning the angles of shots. But you see 500 shots in practice and it gets pretty automatic."

Indeed, Clein says the goalie's job is "reactive" and the goalie learns from simply catching a lot of shots. Preparing takes little skill and almost no strategy is required. "You have to anticipate," says Garrett, "but by now I know where the puck is coming from. I might have problems if it's deflected, but it's not like trying to pass a football with linemen diving on you." Still, we wonder why so many goalies turn to voodoo for comfort after a season or two. The potential for humiliation is enormous. If times vomiting during the season were a category, goalies would rank much higher.

11. Golfer, 55 points. Golf offers little room for error, especially on the green. Moreover, the best and worst players on the pro tour are separated by very few strokes. The game requires high precision (5) and years of practice are needed to hone the basic skills (another 5). A swing only a few millimeters off on impact will put the ball out of bounds, in a sand trap or water hazard, or worse. Golfers face a uniquely complicated task (5). "What's hard for golfers," says Ogilvie, "is to slide in and out of concentration. They must figure out what to do with a shot, clear their heads and hit the ball. Then they are back figuring the next shot. As with figure skating, emotions here are a great detriment." The putting skill is most susceptible to nerves. Arnold Palmer and Sam Snead are still great from tee to green, but it is sad to watch them agonize on putts.

Rating the toughest jobs in Sports

With the help of Dr. Marvin Clein, a pioneer in the field of sport sciences, we compiled this list of 20 ratings categories--and then assigned each sport a value in each category based on a scale of one to five, with five being tops. The way we see it, how can you argue with numbers?

Jack Nicklaus agrees that concentration is the hardest part of golf. He also thinks there isn't a sport he wouldn't try. He was the only athlete we contacted who said he would participate in any sport--which tells you something about either golf or Nicklaus.

10. Figure skater, 56 points. A ringer thrown in by Clein. Figure skaters practice religiously, spending thousands of hours to perfect their technique. We rated the complexity of their skill preparation a solid 5, with another 5 for precision of performance. It's necessary: In the compulsory figures, a skater must skate in, say, a figure eight, and then go over it twice perfectly. Being off a quarter of an inch can cost points. And the first shape should be as geometrically perfect as possible.

Says Clein: "Dorothy Hamill is as tough an athlete as A. J. Foyt."

9.Race-car driver, 59 points. Richard Petty is the king of the stock-car racers. At the age of 42. he has won more races than any other man.

Petty has suffered a dislocated shoulder, "if you can call that a severe injury," busted ribs and a few other ailments from crashes. But nothing serious so far. "Conditioning for us is a little different than in others, sports," he says. "We have to sit and drive and it's tough mentally to pay attention for four and a half to five hours in a car that's got temperatures up to 145 degrees. You've got to tell yourself you're not tired and hot. And we don't get time outs, either. If we make a mistake, we don't go sit on the bench; we get scraped off the wall."

The tolerances in racing are surprisingly small, the margin of error for missing the line on a corner being only a matter of inches. Drivers often walk the track, checking the grooves and looking for rough spots that could give them trouble. They can spot slick patches and when it comes time to race, those woeful hazards they avoid. Many can check a track just once and relate the exact location of every deadly peril. We rated drivers the maximum of 5 for environmental distractions (and/or dangers)--a position shared only by downhill skiers. They also attained a top-of-the-scale rating in concentration, frequency of crucial moments, severity of injuries, degree of success and finally, intelligence.

Most athletes are through with their sports by the middle of their third decade of life. Race-car drivers are second only to golfers in longevity. You have to have a lot of common sense to live that long. Cale Yarborough has raced for over 20 years, David Pearson is a grandfather and Darrell Waltrip is, at 33, one of the youngsters on the circuit. That in itself cuts down their rating. These guys aren't the hell raisers they were 20 years ago, either. They read The Wall Street Journal and check their stocks. The investment kind, not the cars.

8. Tennis player, 60 points. This whole debate got started when two of the editors at Playboy found themselves arguing whether it was tougher for a tennis player to return a Roscoe Tanner serve than for Graig Nettles to catch a hot liner at third base. A Tanner serve comes from 78 feet away, traveling 153 mph. You've got to be quick. You've got to have superb eye-hand coordination to return it. But name the last player forced out of a match after being hit with a tennis ball.

"Actually, while Roscoe's serve is fast," says Arthur Ashe, "it's not heavy. John McEnroe and Tony Roche have heavy serves, the kind with speed and lots of spin, so that they nearly knock the racket out of your hand. But how often will Tanner ace you? Seven, eight times a match?"

Ashe personally doesn't rate his sport as high as we did, but tennis does require a wealth of skills (a 5 for practice). "Intelligence is not that high a requirement," says Ashe. "It can't help you win, but it might prevent you from losing. A lot of skills here come from practice, and though your legs take punishment, it's the eyes that go first, then the legs and finally the arms. Until recently, tennis players have been poorly conditioned for the sport. Only now are a few lifting weights and doing stretching exercises that might prolong their careers."

Tennis players, like boxers and decathletes, are fine-tuned solo performers, with self-esteem to match. But there are differences. Clein explains that boxers are what he calls reducers. They demagnify pain and discomfort, desensitize any stimulation. It could be said that tennis players do the opposite: witness how many pull out of matches with minor injuries, especially if they are behind. Many players these days are emotional babies, with Ashe a noteworthy exception. They are lucky they even got rated.

7. Baseball catcher/hitter, 61 points. Johnny Bench, at 32, is an old man by baseball standards. He has caught 1624 games up to this point, a number he knows off the top of his head. Sitting in the visitors' clubhouse, he's sipping a soft drink and poring over the Astros' statistics, seeing who is hot and who is in a slump. In his 13th major-league season, he still prepares for every game. A catcher is the rival of a quarterback in application of strategy (we gave both the maximum rating), complexity of task and the total involvement in play (the frequency-of-success quotient).

Is catching the toughest job in baseball--if not in all sports? "I'd vote for it," Bench says after a moment's hesitation. "Most of these games are two hours and 45 minutes long and for half that time, you're squatting. For a catcher, the legs are the main problem." Bench needs a good 72 hours for the aches to go away, but with the 162-game season, he rarely gets that kind of rest. "And there is no time to daydream," he says. "An outfielder might be able to think about hitting when he's in the field, but I've got to call the pitches, position the defense and be involved in every play."

The only thing worse than trying to catch a 100-mph fast ball is trying to hit the sucker. The batter may well have one of the toughest jobs in sports. The difference between a superstar and a failure is the difference between three hits in ten at-bats and two in ten.

Clein laughs when he hears coaches tell baseball players to watch the bat hit the ball. "With even an average fast-ball coming in at 80 miles per hour," he says, "the hitter has to decide if and where he's going to swing before the ball is 15 to 20 feet from the pitcher's hand. The reaction times are such that he can close his eyes, because that swing is already predetermined."

A normal person's reaction time is something like .20 second, says Clein. Most baseball hitters average between .15 and .18 second, the reason for their superiority. Reaction time you are born with, but that alone does not a hitter make. A main attribute is the ability to process cues visually. Rod Carew is not a smarter hitter because he necessarily knows more about hitting than other players: but he does have a greater visual processing ability and is no doubt superior in neural muscular function, the ability to direct, adjust and coordinate movements. He has learned to react to a wider range of visual cues and be more effective with a wider range of reactions than a .250 banjo swinger. Hence the ability to go different directions with a pitch.

6. Downhill skier, 62 points. Next to race-car driving and boxing, there is no more dangerous sport than downhill skiing. Racers descend icy slopes at 90 mph and they don't wear any lenders. In the world of downhillers, broken legs are as common as hangnails; paralyzing injuries are a definite threat, death is not a stranger. Every second on the course is crucial (5). The precision and intelligence required also rate maximum scores. A mountain is a demanding playground, a dangerous environment (5). "It takes absolute concentration." says Clein, "but the skier had better do his homework, before he heads down the hill. At the speed he is traveling, if he notices a problem on the course, he's past it before he can do anything to correct it." Still, the fastest average reaction time that Clein ever recorded was turned in by pro ski racer Hank Kashiwa, a startling .12 second, equaled only by Broncos quarterback Craig Morton. This is the one sport most often mentioned by other athletes as suicide--for crazies only.

5. American soccer player, 64 points. The skills of the soccer player are remarkably similar to those required for basketball. Indeed, only three sports scored 5 in the body-coordination category--soccer, basketball and the decathlon. Soccer players also maxed out in the athletic-intelligence category. Make this a player in Brazil or Europe, where fans take this sport with violent intensity, and it just might usurp basketball for fourth place.

4. Basketball player, 69 points. Centers take more pounding than any other players on the court, but guards must quarterback the offense. Other than that, there are no clear positional differences that require separate skills, so we took basketball players as a whole. They are impressive, scoring a full five in body coordination, special physiological and anatomical requirements, and athletic intelligence.

Basketball players tend to be among the best all-round athletes in the world. In the physiological area, a basketball player requires nearly every trait--speed, quickness, strength, jumping ability--in a high dose. One could safely say that most N.B.A. players are genetic mutations, such is their physical superiority. Anatomically, they are giants. They play a strenuous 82-game regular season and must be in superb condition.

Rick Barry, the longtime all-pro forward now with the Houston Rockets, opines, "Basketball is the epitome of a team game that still requires great individual skills." He downplays the pressure situations of the game that Ogilvie rates so high. "You get paid anyway, if you win or lose," says basketball's pre-eminent mercenary. "That takes a lot of the pressure out of it."

Paul Westphal, the all-pro guard from the Phoenix Suns, disagrees. "The fans are a factor," he says. "But you can't let them get to you. In every game, you're going to screw up, or appear to screw up, because no matter what you do, a guy can score over you. Fans affect different players. We had a guy on the Suns who did terribly at home but played great on the road. It's usually the other way around. But the fans expected so much of him and he felt he couldn't meet their expectations. Then you take John Havlicek, who didn't care if they booed or cheered, he just liked getting a reaction."

2. Decathlete, 73 points. By virtue of total points, the decathlete ties for second place with the pro quarterback. The decathlete competes against scoring tables, his heights, times and distances adding up to a combination of points. A champion cannot fall far in any event or the unrelenting tables will put him out of it. The decathlete must sprint in the 100 meters, run the 400 meters and 1500 meters, the hurdles, high-jump, toss the javelin and the discus, pole-vault, shot-put and long-jump. Each tests a different athletic function, and putting the events together over two days is a brutal ordeal. Bruce Jenner trained for six years in order to win the Olympic decathlon. The physical demands are awesome. We gave the decathlete maximum ratings in ten out of 20 categories.

The decathletes did, however, fall in the severity-of-injuries category, fan expectations and potential for fan abuse. "We can hardly get 35 people to show up for a national decathlon championship," says Jenner. "It's as exciting as watching paint dry." Half the time the fans wouldn't know whom to boo or what to boo if they even cared. Maybe if the javelin-throwing contest were turned into a javelin-catching contest, the fans would care.

2. Pro quarterback, 73 points. The fans of the N.F.L. care. "We're all human," says Pat Haden. "We say we don't hear fans and you couldn't be an efficient quarterback if you did let them bother you, but it bothers you off the field."

Haden, a Rhodes scholar, has developed a thick psychic armor. "I've gotten more reclusive and I probably haven't enjoyed playing the game as much as I did at one time," he says. "It's just made me a harder individual."

Quarterbacks may be the most intelligent players on the field, but Haden says it's "game or football intelligence" that's important. His Rhodes scholarship does not help him at all on the field. The strategy is dealing with Xs and Os, double coverage and blitzing linebackers, and not European history. Quarterbacks rated fives in intelligence, application of strategy and complexity of task. According to Clein, the quarterback has to react to seven visual cues in the 3.1 to 3.5 seconds he has to pass after the ball is snapped. Some quarterbacks have an uncanny ability to read all those things, to sense who's going to be covered and who among the secondary receivers will be open. It's a skill that almost defies teaching, yet it is something an extraordinary few hone to a science.

Bill Walsh, the innovative coach of the San Francisco 49ers, has come up with ways to help quarterbacks systematically read their cues. While coaching the receivers and quarterbacks of the San Diego Chargers a few years ago, Walsh showed Dan Fouts how to read "the passing tree," or check first the deep routes, then the middle ground and finally the safety valves. It is a quite simple technique, but it's helped turn the Chargers offense into one of the most explosive in football.

Gil Brandt, vice-president for personnel development of the Dallas Cowboys, feels that quarterbacks are generally the best all-round athletes on the team. The best jocks are made into quarterbacks and pitchers in little league and in high school.

The ideal quarterback is 6'3" to 6'4", strong and noble in the mold of Roman Gabriel. The Colts' Bert Jones is considered a prototype, a guy who can see over the line and has the rifle arm to boot. The ability to run and scramble, albeit dangerous to the coaches' heart and the quarterback's body, is considered an attribute in a Fran Tarkenton or a Roger Staubach. But the days of the slump-shouldered Johnny Unitas are over, such is the physiology required to get into professional football. Unitas wouldn't make it past the first computer program used by the so-called sophisticated scouting services. In would go data that showed Johnny U. built like a pair of pliers, and out would come Reject.

Too bad, for quarterbacks must be field generals as well as players. Unitas was inspirational to his teammates; they'd know he'd call a play to get them out of a scrape. Most coaches in the N.F.L. today call the plays from the side lines and the merits of this technique are still being judged. But Terry Bradshaw of the Steelers, acknowledged as the best clutch quarterback playing today, calls his own plays, and many feel that gives the Pittsburgh club an edge, for a quarterback has a complete handle on just what's going on on the field.

A lineman takes more straight punishment than a quarterback, who half the time hands the ball off and gets the hell out of the way. But when he's hit, he's clubbed. To be an effective passer, a quarterback has to hang in the pocket, but once the ball is gone, he is highly vulnerable; his ribs are tantalizing targets for onrushing panzers, and he's the star opponents snuff into cinders. There is, however, an N.F.L. rule that went into effect last season, a quick whistle that was to protect quarterbacks from being dismembered. In previous seasons, the injury report on quarterbacks looked like some cannibalistic butcher's bill.

Robert Brazile thinks quarterbacks get injured more often because they are not used to getting hit. "It's a sin to hit a quarterback in practice," he says. "And I don't think that helps them when it's time to really take the heat." But Q.B.s are not the mountains of muscle defensive linemen and linebackers are, and letting them get crunched in practice might be more of a waste of flesh than good experience. It would also be gambling with a valuable commodity.

Since quarterbacks are the focal point, the ones who get the most credit or heat, have the most complex job on the field, they are the ones generally best rewarded. That in itself also adds to the pressure. Fans know they are highly paid and, consequently, expect more. No one is going to boo a right tackle for missing a block. For the punishment a lineman gets and the relatively small amount he is paid, one should expect him to miss an occasional block on general labor principles alone.

1. Boxer, 80 points. There are a few athletes today who receive nearly $1,000,000 a year in salary. But heavyweight champs can often command $1,000,000 and more for one fight. They deserve it, for theirs is far and away the toughest job in sports. Boxers scored fives in ten of the 20 categories.

People treat them with respect. Once a champ, they're always called "Champ." Joe Frazier says he weighs only 234 pounds, and still goes a few rounds in the gym. Joe could probably still chop down most of the current crop of contenders. "When I was in camp, I stuck with the rules," he explains. "I did what I had to do to keep in condition. I paid the price. And the loneliest part is being on the road runnin'. I hate runnin'. But you'd better do it if you get in the ring. I don't feel no aches when I get up in the morning, but I can't speak for other fighters. I know too many who slur when they talk."

Frazier never calls Ali by his name. He simply calls him "the Champ." Ali once taunted Frazier for being ugly, for not conforming to his standard of physical beauty. But after their last fight, no man receives more respect from Ali than his stubborn adversary.

"The Champ has speed and quickness," says Frazier. "People talk about how fast he was. But he didn't get away from me. I hit him just as fast as he moved. I hit him with punches that would bring down the walls of a city. He's got aches and pains to prove it."

Much has been made of the entry of former Cowboys defensive end Ed "Too Tall" Jones into boxing. At 6'9" and 253 pounds, the big guy should be able to slap around most heavies, or so he hoped. But offensive linemen can't use their hands. In Jones's first fight, a 6'2". 204-pound Mexican unknown. Yaqui Meneses, pushed him flat on his butt and then punched him rudely in the face while Jones sat there thoroughly stunned. Ernie Holmes of the Steelers is making noises about turning to pro boxing, but those footballers are going to learn it is better to be bitten by Conrad Dobler than to get hacked to pieces by a pug.

One should also consider the sociology of this sport. Boxing, like crime, has traditionally offered the poor and the disadvantaged a way to taste a little of the prime rib of life. It was the tough Jewish and Irish kids who dominated the scene prior to World War Two, minority groups who were discriminated against. Then came blacks, and now Mexicans and Central Americans, those vicious little pounders who rule the lighter weights, throwing every macho gristle in their bodies to the fight as if a loss would send them straight back to the misery of the barrio. Which it just might.

An argument could be made that the toughest job in boxing is being fodder for the champs; guys like Jerry Quarry, George Chuvalo, Duane Bobick and others receive good paydays, but they take a malefic beating in return. They can walk into the mouths of the cannons only so many times before their heads turn to cabbage; and whatever skills they once had are beaten into dull pain.

"Successful boxers," says Clein, "have to react to many visual cues and they have to analyze constantly. People don't know this, but boxers must have great athletic intelligence. [They scored the maximum.] The physical preparation is second to none. The energy expenditure in a fight is high, equaled only by decathletes and marathon runners. Interpersonal conflict is the ultimate here." There's no question that being a boxer is the toughest job in sports.

Frazier stresses the surprising opinion that boxing is actually a safe sport, amazing when you consider what a sharp blow can do to a brain encased in only a thin shell of bone. However, between November 1979 and February 1980. head injuries took the lives of four boxers, including a 13-year-old from Kentucky. "Look," says Frazier. "You know the other man is comin' to get ya. One on one. And you've got to bring some to get some."

Bring some to get some, a simple but excellent definition of the job. There are other rugged and brutal sports, some not even on our chart. But if you've got a complaint, take it up with Frazier. You'll get some kind of answer!

"I have one friend who firmly believes that professional bowlers are the Greek gods of athletics."