That is funny, but actually, in my prime I definitely could have kept up with an NFL player. I was a sprinter on my track team in high school, fastest person in my school. I usually ran 100 m in under 12 seconds, which would equate to about a 4.35 40-yard dash time if my calculations are correct. Alas, that speed was still not fast enough to get any track scholarships anywhere, and the rest of my football skills were well below collegiate standards, so I went to college on a geek scholarship instead!
These days, obviously I'm not so fast, but I did get a good laugh a couple years ago in my neighborhood. There's a nice high school kid in our neighborhood who is in great shape and runs X-country and track. He challenged me to a friendly race, and kept nagging me, so my wife finally told me to just get it over with and do it. He proposed a race around the neighborhood, which is about .6 of a mile. I said I was sure I would keel over and die if I tried to run that far. So I said how about from this mailbox to that mailbox. He negotiated the race to the mailbox after that, so I agreed. I crushed him in the race to my original mailbox, at which point I stopped running. He ran on to the next mailbox and then came back and asked why I stopped running because I was winning. I said I stopped because I knew I wasn;t going to even make it to the next mailbox!
Yeah . . . "back in the day" . . . our football coach had us run 40 yard time trials and I had the 2nd fastest time on our team at 4.90. My strength was the initial acceleration. I tried the 100 in track a few times and I could smoke everyone for the first 30-40 yards, they would catch up with me at about 50 yards, then shortly after, all I could see was everyone else's tail lights.
My football coach wanted me to be a back or receiver, but I've never had very good ball handling skills so I knew I wouldn't be good a those positions. I ended up playing guard so they could have me pull and get out and block downfield.
In track, I did long jump, triple jump, and the first leg of the mile relay.
That's funny, I was the opposite. I never could get up to full speed quickly enough, but once I got there I tended to catch up whatever ground I had lost. In track, I did the 100, 200, 400 relay, and mile relay.
Actually, I was a catcher in baseball and a goalie in hockey (which you might have gathered from the Stanley Cup pic is my favorite sport), positions not usually equated with speed. I always got a kick out of opposing baseball teams scratching their heads when they would see the catcher batting leadoff! Or running to back up first base on a ground ball and beating the batter to the bag...
I felt like shouting out "Run, Forrest, Run!!!"
