Better Athletes?

Nike Presents the Lie of American Football and it is a big lie.

D over at DCenters notes the problem of the latest Nike ad featuring Shawne Merriman (Go Terps) and Stephen Jackson. The commercial gives the impression of football as a fluid sport, which everyone knows it is not.

However, I love this particular line:

A football player will spring fifty yards and trot to the sidelines for oxygen. A left back will sprint fifty yards and then have to reverse directions and sprint back fifty yards to cover the counter-attack.

What's more, that defender will do the same thing probably three dozen times a game in an inactive game. It would not surpise me to see that the average soccer midfielder runs 5 or 6 miles a game at various paces. A running back might be lucky to run half a mile total in a game--including running to and from the sidelines.

Now tell me, whose the better athlete.