The Olympics highlight a great thing about football

For whatever reason, the Meerdink household ended up watching a disproportionate amount of the coverage for one very specific event in this year’s Olympic games: the women’s triathlon.

I don’t know why, but we just got hooked on it, and ended up watching virtually the entire race. As far as my expertise on these things go, it seemed like a pretty hotly contested event. The top competitors were dead even heading into the final segment, and it wasn’t until late in the run that the eventual gold medalist separated herself from the field.

But on top of the frankly unusually interesting competition, something stood out to me watching the race: all of the competitors looked exactly the same! The triathlon apparently selects for a very specific body type, and as soon as my wife and I noticed this, we couldn’t help but fixate on it. It was almost like watching a race of clones.

This isn’t unique in high level sports, and it’s unusually evident at the Olympics. All the swimmers have the same body type. So do cyclists, sprinters, and the various jumpers, all finely developed to fit in with their respective events. I dare you to go out and find me a long, willowy shot putter.

It’s the funny side effect of these very specific sports: you need to hone your body in a very specific way to be competitive. And the extent to which these athletes achieve that is remarkable.

And yet, it’s the exact opposite thing that draws me to football again and again. Not only do you have a diverse range of body types on the field at once, you have incredible variation even within a lot of positions.

Christian Watson and Jayden Reed, for instance, are about as dissimilar as two players could be. Watson is above the 90th percentile in height and hand size and above the 60th percentile in weight, arm length, and wingspan, while Reed isn’t higher than the 18th percentile in any of those measures but hand size, where he’s a 30th percentile player. In short, Watson big, Reed small.

Yet, both are highly effective receivers at their best, succeeding in ways that maximize their physical gifts. Watson has overwhelming size and speed, running past and jumping over opposing defensive backs. Reed, though small, is as quick as a hiccup and can shake just about any defender that lines up across from him just as easily as you or I walk to the mailbox.

This shows up time and time again throughout the Packers roster and across the sport. Mike Daniels was famously small for a defensive lineman. Gilbert Brown was famously large. David Bakhtiari was undersized for a tackle. Jared Veldheer was only undersized for a power forward. Aaron Jones was listed at 205 but played lighter. AJ Dillon was listed at 247 but played heavier.

The comparisons go on and on, and they make football a uniquely egalitarian sport, especially for how much it depends and thrives on physical contact and confrontation. As long as you can get the job done, it doesn’t matter if you’re big, small, or in between. It might help to be built one way or another, but as long as you can find a way to succeed, on the field, your body type really doesn’t matter all that much.