You vs. Champions

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

This thread is all about what would happen if you had to play a top class person / team at their sport. Your answers will constitute research into which sports represent the best opportunities for the totally hopeless to achieve respectable scorelines. And which sports would see the totally hopeless scoring ZERO/NIL/LOVE over and over again.

People who are actually good at sports are free to submit posts also, describing how well they would do against the best there is.

For my part:

FOOTBALL: A whole team of me against, say, Man Utd, would lose approximately 40-0, if we could manage to waste enough time. The whole team would need substituting after 10 minutes owing to exhaustion, but it would not be allowed. We'd get a few touches of the ball, but very very rarely get beyond the half-way line, from where our only shot of the game would be taken (failing to get as far as the penalty area).

SNOOKER: If I were playing Ronnie O'Sullivan in a best of 19 frames match, I would be beaten 10-0. BUT I would score some points in two or three of the frames, I think. This is because I would smash the reds when I was breaking, pool-style, and I might get one fluke in the whole match. With Ronnie breaking, I'd go for impossible long shots, expecting one to go in eventually. My other chance would be if he got a 'kick' during one of his tediously big breaks. Then I might get a chance to pot a red, and I wouldn't be surprised if I went on to score a break of anything up to 15 points.

TENNIS: Against anyone in the top 1000 (or 1000000), I'd be beaten 6-0 6-0. I think I might get maybe two points in the whole game. One from a double fault. The other owing to the ball hitting the edge of my raquet and rebounding miraculously.

CHESS: I could probably go head-to-head with anyone for three moves apiece, as long as they didn't try any funny openings. As long as the first two moves were 1. e4 e5, in fact.

HORSE-RACING: As long as it didn't involve jumps, and with the right horse, I reckon I could finish last with dignity. I've never been on a horse, so I might be wrong.

BOXING: I'm quite good at getting beaten up, and I do move quite quickly, so - as long as my opponent thought I was a proper boxer and everything, so being a bit wary - I think I could easily do 20 seconds in the ring with anyone (including count).

― Eyeball Kicks (Eyeball Kicks), Monday, 11 August 2003 23:23 (twenty-two years ago)

trained boxers will kick your ass quick

― nnnh oh oh nnnh nnnh oh (James Blount), Monday, 11 August 2003 23:43 (twenty-two years ago)

In his book Tilting At Windmills, Andy O'Brien identifies Crazy Golf as the sport you're mostly likely to be OK at compared to the actual best people at it. Judging by me and my mates playing Crazy Golf this is pretty much true - I'd guess we'd be an average of one shot per hold behind a CG champion, which isn't great but isn't a whitewash either.

The same goes for other game-type things like Ten Pin Bowling - there is some kind of upper limit to the scoring and if you're average you will lose every time but you might not look too much of a chump. The lack of chump potential is probably why these things aren't proper sports.

― Tom (Groke), Monday, 11 August 2003 23:47 (twenty-two years ago)

NASCAR: I would initiate a pileup coming out of the first turn.

PGA GOLF: I would shank everything and have more fun than everybody else. I would also finish three hours and several hundred behind everyone else.

CRICKET: I would spend all my time asking about the rules and being very confused.

ARCHERY: I would hit the target once and only once and the rest of my arrows would wind up in the dirt or sticking sideways out of a hay bale.

HOCKEY: I would fall on my ass forty-seven times in the first period and wind up breaking my nose for the fourth time.

TAE KWAN DO: I would grab the guy's leg and break it accidentally, disqualifying myself.

― Millar (Millar), Monday, 11 August 2003 23:53 (twenty-two years ago)

BASEBALL - Having no depth perception I'd strike out on the first three pitches, possibly throwing my bat into the stands on accident, and then get hit in the face or the groin with the first ball that comes my way.

501 - By the time I double-in, the other guy will have won the tourney.

― miloauckerman (miloauckerman), Monday, 11 August 2003 23:58 (twenty-two years ago)

NASCAR - I'd still be fumbling around with the cigarette lighter hours after everyone else had gone home

― dave q, Tuesday, 12 August 2003 00:02 (twenty-two years ago)

Right now I'm picturing a javelin tournament and laughing hysterically

― dave q, Tuesday, 12 August 2003 00:03 (twenty-two years ago)

This isn't exactly against the best there is but AMERICAN FOOTBALL: get ball. When tacklers, ie male friends of similar age, get close to me, I scream, "Ahhh! I'm a girl! Oh my god!!" Men stop rushing me. I run into goal and scream "Boooyah suckahs!" Note: this technique got me punched in the face by a drunken good friend of mine once.

― Ally (mlescaut), Tuesday, 12 August 2003 00:13 (twenty-two years ago)

I think my best shot would be tennis, where I might be able to hit it back a few times but would never score a point.

Baseball? The Detroit Tigers would pitch their only perfect game.

Football: Tep gets pummelled while trying to remember the rules, based on hazy recollections of Nintendo games.

Hockey: Tep falls. Look out for the puck! Tep starts to get up, falls again. Look out for the players! Tep falls, stays there, cheers on whoever is nearest him with a stick.

Basketball: *puff puff* All right, go defense, I'm gonna just have a cigarette here ... *puff puff* Yeah, about that play, I don't know, it sure sounded like a lot of running ... *puff puff*

Chess: "What? There's no Fireball card? What the fuck kind of chess are you playing, comrade?"

― Tep (ktepi), Tuesday, 12 August 2003 00:13 (twenty-two years ago)

I'm pretty good at
basketball as long as I'm
playing in my mind

― Haikunym (Haikunym), Tuesday, 12 August 2003 00:28 (twenty-two years ago)

I may be alone in having experienced this! I thought I was a very good table tennis player (I think I was the best in the first year at Cambridge when I was there), and then I came up against the UK #3 at the time, a regular international. I guess he's have rated top 50, maybe top 30, in Europe. He didn't need to take the game very seriously, and I was a good player, so I did pick up a few points. If he'd brought his best game and concentrated, it might easily have been 21-0, 21-0.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Tuesday, 12 August 2003 11:32 (twenty-two years ago)

I once played John Lowe at darts and lost the leg with around 120 points left on the board, which to be honest was as well as I could have done. (nb this was at a time when I was playing about three times a week and didn't have the chronic yips)

I faced one ball from Devon Malcolm - I never even saw it or got my bat raised.

― chris (chris), Tuesday, 12 August 2003 11:50 (twenty-two years ago)

I reckon he just pretended to bowl the ball, Chris.

― Tim (Tim), Tuesday, 12 August 2003 12:07 (twenty-two years ago)

I heard it Tim, it made a kind of fizzing noise (although this may have been in my pants)

― chris (chris), Tuesday, 12 August 2003 12:32 (twenty-two years ago)

Tennis really isn't as hard as many people think it is. Unless you're aiming to defeat Serena Williams, it's actually not that difficult to get into. The major error many people make in attempting tennis for the first time is trying too hard to make a powerful impression. As long as you just manage to make contact with the ball with your racket, that's half the work right there.

But since the premise of this thread is actually DEFEATING CHAMPIONS, maybe bowling's the best sport of all for the objective you're aiming for. Doesn't seem as though it would be a sport you'd have to devote endless hours and many years to to get good at. (Watch, someone will probably post on about how bowling is actually much harder than it is and that they're the bowling champion of [insert place] and they've devoted [insert huge amount of time] to practicing it in order for them to get good at it.)

― Just Deanna (Dee the Lurker), Tuesday, 12 August 2003 17:47 (twenty-two years ago)

Team of me Vs Australian cricket team:

If Australia bat first:

Lose by Innings and 480runs

If I bat first:

Lose by 10 wickets

― jel -- (jel), Tuesday, 12 August 2003 19:19 (twenty-two years ago)

How would you do against England?

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Tuesday, 12 August 2003 20:03 (twenty-two years ago)

I would lose everything involving hitting a ball by scoring 0 points. And can't think of any sporty event I might have a shot at completing. Maybe some kind of endurance even where it doesn't matter if you move very slowly.

― isadora (isadora), Tuesday, 12 August 2003 21:44 (twenty-two years ago)

As long as you just manage to make contact with the ball with your racket, that's half the work right there.

That's actually true, but I know I would lose by a lot anyway, and it's because if I'm going up against a tennis champion, it's gonna be somebody who can zing the damn ball into whatever corner I'm not near, and after a few times of that, what with the running and the vooming, I would just let the ball go and figure, well, fuck it.

― Tep (ktepi), Tuesday, 12 August 2003 21:53 (twenty-two years ago)

Me: 1 metre 60
Javier Sotomayor: 2 metres 40

Doesn't sound so bad?

My sport is badminton, but while I was a decent school team/borough player, I was never tested against anyone too good. I could probably win the odd rally but since you need to serve to win points, I don't imagine that'd happen.

I used to play cricket with my cousin who's been selected for (but not actually played for, though that may change tomorrow) the England test team. He was only a teenager, but there was simply no point in letting him bowl to you. Least fun knockabout ever.

― Mark C (Mark C), Wednesday, 13 August 2003 07:53 (twenty-two years ago)

Why are old people better at bowling? Is it that they don't let the young people play or is it that you genuinely do get better, which isnt the case with most hand-eye co-ordination sports.

― Tom (Groke), Wednesday, 13 August 2003 08:02 (twenty-two years ago)

If I was somehow able to run together all the good things I've ever done on a tennis court (and this highlights reel would pretty much peter out around 1989), including the two occasions I've hit four aces in a game, I'd give myself a 20% chance of holding serve once, maybe twice, vs Roddick or Sampras. Drop that to 5% vs Agassi or Federer. I'd take maybe two points off their serve in the whole match, though not through double faults - they'd be too smart to risk anything other than a two-thirds pace kicker against such a feeble opponent. Maybe Roger would get bored with the effortless steamrollering late on and start experimenting, maybe chucking in a few errors.

I could win a round vs Lennox Lewis only by launching my body at his face from a cannon.

― Michael Jones (MichaelJ), Wednesday, 13 August 2003 10:40 (twenty-two years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.