While watching sports , have you ever stopped ( halfway through a bowl of Cheetos ) to question , “ How far are those bozo in reality bleed ? ” It ’s a common query , one that ’s historically been capable mostly to guesswork , Thanks to some late technical development , though , we can now actually apply some data to it .
So which of your Cuban sandwich are putting in the laborious yards ?
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Basketball
There ’s anold married woman ’ talethat the average NBA participant will range five miles every secret plan . Not quite . Many NBA team have start usinga organisation called SportVU , a specialised movement tracking system that enabling teams to get far more detailed stats about their thespian . In the 2012 season , the instrumentalist that execute the farthest per game was Luol Deng of the Chicago Bulls , who averaged 2.72 miles per game . That ’s no where near the five international mile myth , but regard how much of that is sprint , it ’s still very impressive .
Football (American)
Football players have an talkative 100 - yard field , and spend hr moving up and down it . So it would seem like they do a lot of running . That ’s genuine enough — while the chunk is in play . Butaccording to the Wall Street Journal , instrumentalist are only actually moving for 11 minutes on average during an NFL game . Only 11 minutes of action ! The rest is mostly standing around , with the occasional momentum - kill penalization review thrown in for good measure .
Kinda breaks the warmness , does n’t it ? Again , turning to a chart over atSportVU , it seems that even the players that launch the most ( cornerback and wide recipient , generally ) only run about 1.25 miles per biz . That said , some of them are reaching speeds of 21.5 miles per hour , which is scary tight for fashion plate that size of it .
Tennis
How far you run in lawn tennis depend on what style of game you play . Some players stay close to the back line and move back and forth a lot , some game only go three sets , some go five , etc . Tennis has been maintain runway of run stats for quite a while now , though , and you often reckon those number during television broadcast .
It ’s not uncommon for a player to draw more than three miles during a five set equal , though in more utmost cases , players have run more than five . That is particularly telling when you consider how tiny a lawn tennis motor lodge is ( 27 substructure all-encompassing for singles ) . We ’re verbalize about hundreds ( maybe thousands ) of sharp guiding changes . Makes the knees screamjust thinking about it . This image is from the final set of the last compeer of the 2012 Australian surface . The distances extend ( bottom right wing ) is for the entire tournament . That ’s diffuse out over seven peer , but keep in mind that most of those compeer only lasted three set .
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Baseball
Ah - hahahahaha . Seriously ? C’m on , swerve it out . Most baseball participant wo n’t run 100 yards during the grade of a game , unless you count the slow trot on and off the field between inning . The bases are only 90 feet apart , so even if you hit three homer in a game , that ’s only 1,080 foot . Even if an outfielder did that and chased balls like crazy on defensive he in all probability would n’t weaken half a mile . Nobody evaluate how far baseball players are range , because nobody cares and the answers would likely just be embarrassing .
Soccer (Fútbol)
This should n’t surprise anyone who ’s played the game , but soccer instrumentalist ( also know as “ football players ” if you come from a lilliputian place call “ Everywhere That Is n’t the United States ” ) run their ball off . Games last 90 minutes , they have a magnanimous field ( between 100 yard and 130 yards farseeing and 50 to 100 yards all-inclusive ) , the ball is always in move and may travel expectant distances in a issue of seconds , requiring the player to give chase . Obviously , there is some variation depending on the side they play — midfielders launch the most ; the netkeeper not so much — but it ’s not rare for a histrion to average out seven mile per game . Seven!SportVU has get over playersrunning as much as 9.5 miles in a biz .
So , if someday you find yourself depend on an inter - sport half - marathon , the smart money is on the association football histrion . Those guys have some serious endurance chops . In demarcation , I imagine we make out why baseball is the American interest . Whatever , pass the Pringles .
Top Image credit : Getty Images / Al Messerschmidt

Huddle Image credit : Getting Images / Christian Petersen
AthletesFIFAfootballsoccerSportsTennis
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