Whats a tougher sport to play: Football or Hockey?

Question

You play 81 games as opposed to 16, plus playoffs, and your constantly shoved and checked into hard boards and slippery ice as opposed to grass.

Answer 1

Hockey, you almost have to be a UFC fighter to be a hockey player in the NHL.

Hockey fights per NHL season

Season # of fights

2006–07 497

2005–06 466

2003–04 789

Answer 2

id say hockey is a harder sport to play, but football is harder on your body.

Answer 3

you have to be tougher to be a hockey player... a more grinding schedule and in hockey, you cant run out of bounds

Answer 4

Just to learn to skate the way they do is harder.

Answer 5

hockey.

LETS GO CAPS!!!!!!!!!

Answer 6

100% hockey! not even comparable.

Answer 7

it's really hard to tell you the truth but i would say  football less padding

Answer 8

Hockey, I have played both at a competitive level, and the talent it takes to be good at hockey is tougher to develop then that of football...  

Answer 9

To play hockey ya gotta be so much tougher than u would have to be to play football. In hockey ur constantly getting checked in to the boards, and teams often break out into huge fights and some end up going to a hospital. Go red wings.

Answer 10

you have to be tough to play both.  they are completely different sports though.  football is more physically burdening.  hockey is a more difficult sport to play.  it depends on your definition of "tough".

EDIT - Okay, even if you like hockey more, there's no way you can deny that football is FAR more physical than hockey, an already very physical sport.  In hockey, there are huge hits, you're on ice, there are boards, glass, and many other fun things to get thrown into that hurt, a lot.  Still, it is not the main focus of the game.  Hockey is a blend of finesse and physical play, a perfect blend in my opinion.  Of course you have to fight to play hockey, but football players can fight too.  I'm not saying Bob Probert wouldn't whoop the f*ck out of Ray Lewis, because he would, but in football, you should be hitting somebody with the intent of killing them on EVERY PLAY.  If you don't have the ball, your only function in life is to lay out as many of the enemy as possible, even if the play is away from you.  There should be 22 players making contact, and by contact I mean head to head, trying to put them on their back contact.  As an occasional blueliner when I wasn't in net, this is the same way I played in hockey.  Still, it is not the job of every player on the team to crush somebody every play.  I just did it because I like it when people on the other team are on their back, laying on the ice struggling to breathe.  In football, that is the only objective.  I love the finesse aspect of hockey almost as much as the physical aspect.  It's a different sport.  You have to be equally tough to play both.  You can't say you have to be tougher to play either though.  Football is the most physical sport on the planet.  Hockey is a fusion of every aspect you could possible cram into one sport, which makes it tougher (more DIFFICULT) to learn and perfect.  Hockey is a physical and skill sport.  Football is a match of pure athleticism with a touch of hand eye coordination.  After that, it comes down to shear killer instinct.  Football and Hockey are two completely different sports that can't really be compared.  It's all a matter of personal preference.  I love hockey, football, and lacrosse all the same because of the diverse athletic aspects they force you to perfect.  All full contact sports are brutal, and none of the three I mentioned can truly be called "tougher" than the other.

Answer 11

Is Hockey Hard? " I don't know, you tell me. We need to have the strength and power of a football player, the stamina of a marathon runner, and the concentration of a brain surgeon. But we need to put all this together while moving at high speeds on a cold and slippery surface while 5 other guys use sticks to try and kill us, oh yeah did i mention that this whole time we're standing on blades 1/8 of an inch thick? Is ice hockey hard? I don't know you tell me. Next question."  

Answer 12

Grass isnt the easiest thing to land on.Plus you have mud conditions.

Hockey is a very tough sport,avoiding huge players knocking the h**l out of you,avoiding very sharp sticks and skates,avoid getting nailed with a frozen rubber disk and all the while trying to score.

Football you're trying to avoid 345 LB lineman,then once you get past them you have to deal with a 275 LB Linebacker and don't even try to catch a ball going down the middle against a guy like Ray Lewis.

You also have to play preseason games along with the playoffs.If you played more then 20 games in football there would be many serious injuries and maybe worse in the sport.  

Answer 13

Hockey is a much tougher sport.

The amount of actual game action of a football game is approximately 12-13 minutes (or what a 4th line player might play in hockey- contrast that with the 25-30 minutes per game that a top-line player might play) with long stoppages in between plays.  The rest of the time is spent with the clock running while teams huddle up, stand about, and do whatever.  Hockey games have little dead time with the clock running.

In winning the Stanley Cup, Detroit played 104 games (82 regular season, and four playoff rounds of 6, 4, 6, and 6 games).  The Giants, by comparison, played 20 games (16 regular season, 4 playoff).  The Giants played one overtime game of less than 10 minutes.  Detroit played several OT games, including a 3OT game.  

Conditioning: hockey players are much better athletes; they're not only fast but cover large distances.  Look at an NFL lineman.  

Hitting: there's more hitting in hockey than in football.  The number of hits per game in hockey outnumber football.

Fighting: bare-knuckle in hockey with no helmets.  Football is padded hands, helmets with facial protection.  Georges Laraque, Derek Boogard, Donald Brashear would flat destroy anyone in the NFL.  Have you seen Boogard?  He's scary.  Want to stop a fight in the NFL?  Let 'em go at it without helmets or gloves.  Bare-knuckle.  Go ahead boys, have at it.  Didn't think so.

Injuries: See "Malone, Ryan".  Next item.

Weather: Football games are played in domes as well as in open-air.  The Winter Classic is the only open-air game (in 2003 it was dangerously cold, in 2008 it snowed).

Intangibles: Skating.  Go ahead, football types.  Do everything you do, but on skates.  

Answer 14

Hockey....more than 1 game a week

Hockey....just as much hitting as football and into a wall not just the ground

Hockey....there are no sissy kickers

Hockey....Its played of fr*cken ICE!

Hockey....your main objective is to hit a galvanized frozen peice of rubber smaller than a McDonalds hamburger as hard as you can at a net over 90 mph, and there is some one who's objective is to sit there and try and get in between the puck and the net......

Answer 15

there's a reason there are only 16 games a season in football.  it's a very demanding sport.  the whole game is collisions, whether it's the o and d line going at it, the safety's stopping the WR, getting sacked, etc.  the point of football is to stop the team from scoring with nothing but their bodies and they obviously do this by constant physical contact.  there is less padding in football than hockey too.

hockey is also extremely demanding though.  skating up and down and up and down is really exhausting, getting checked into boards, hitting the ice hard, etc.  but the sport is not about stopping the team from scoring with your body, it's with a stick and a goalie, so though there is a lot of contact, it's still a lot less often than football and not nearly as hard hitting, most of the time.  

if hockey really were that much tougher, how could they possibly play 5 times as many games as football?  there's a reason they have at least one, sometimes 2 backup players for football.  the two sports have common goals (scoring) but go about stopping it in extremely different ways.  

i say football.