Page 12 - Sports Facts

An NFL player once got the game ball for pooping on the sideline and nobody noticing!

At the end of every victory, coaches in Football teams usually get what's called the Game Ball. It's a ball that was used during the game and commemorates the victory. They coaches usually give the game ball to a player, group of players, or coach that performed particularly well during the game. 

Sometimes, however, it happens for gross and bizarre reasons too. Wes Welker, wide receiver for the New England Patriots said in an interview that teammate Larry Izzo once had to make an emergency #2 and couldn't get to a bathroom. So he took a dump in the sidelines. What's more, nobody found out at the time. For this, he got the game ball. 

Apparently this wasn't a point of shame for the player. Welker said that Izzo would be upset if he tried to claim that the poop didn't happen. He even claimed that the game ball was his most prized possession and he even has Super Bowl rings!

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Paintball guns were invented to mark livestock!

CO2 powered pistols were originally used to mark sheep and cattle with paint to be able to differentiate between groups. So where did the sport of paintball come from? You’re probably thinking it’s just natural if you can shoot something and it won’t kill someone, people will start shooting each other, but the history behind paintball is actually quite interesting. Two friends got in an argument and were unsure how to conclude things.

They took nine people out to the woods to practice shooting using paintball guns when they decided to play a game. They hung four different colored flags in various areas and the first person to get every color and return home without being marked by paint would win. It just so happened that three of the men that participated were writers, and quickly documented their experience in papers and magazines after having such a good time.

Eventually the sport caught on and was refined to the paintball game we know today. If you want to learn more, read the inventors actual words by clicking on the link below!

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Deion Sanders is the only person to hit an MLB home run and NFL touchdown in the same week. He's also the only person to play in the World Series and the Super Bowl.

Deion Sanders is a beastly athlete. After having a successful career in Florida State, he also started a career both in Major League Baseball and the National Football League. He was very successful in both. In the 1989 season, he hit a home run and score a touch down in the same week, becoming the only player to ever do that. He is also the only man to ever play in the Super Bowl and the MLBs World series. While he won two Super Bowls, he never won a World Series, though.

Sanders was a perennial All-Pro and was named the 34th best Football player of all time in the NFL.  Since his retirement, he's been inducted to both the College and Pro Football Halls of Fame and went on to become a media analyst. 

Learn more about his awesome career here.

Australian Football makes players run more than any other sport. About 8.5 miles per game!

Australian Football League players are on the field for longer and run further than any other mainstream professional sportsmen in the world. Date reveals that AFL players run an average of 8.5 miles per game.

The English soccer league runs a couple miles less than the AFL players do. AFL fields aren’t uniform, but the dimensions of their arenas vary, which adds to their physical demand. Players actually spend an average of 5 minutes and 25 seconds per match running at over 18 kilometers per hour.

The Australian Football League was founded in 1897 as the Victorian Football League. They began with 8 teams and are responsible for governing the laws of the game. The teams were all located within the Australian state of Victoria.

The name was changed to the Australian Football League in 1990 and currently has 18 teams spread over the five states in Australia.

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An Olympic gold medalist almost died in a plane crash. Took TWO years to be able to walk again and went on to win another gold medal!

Betty Robinson was born in 1911 in Riverdale, Illinois. She ran her first 100-meter race at the age of sixteen and came in second only to the American record holder! The next time she ran, she equaled or surpassed the world record, but was not formally recognized. She attended the Amsterdam Olympics and not only won the gold medal, but shattered the world record.

She seemed to be on top of the world until in 1931, tragedy struck. While flying, something in the plane malfunctioned and it crashed. Robinson was found among the wreckage in a severe coma and was believed to be dead. The civilian that discovered her was so convinced that he stuck her in his truck and drove her body to an undertaker, who discovered she was still alive.

Seven months later she woke up, but the process of recovery was much slower. It took six months until she could even stand out of her wheelchair, and two years until she was able to walk. She missed the 1932 Olympics, and in 1936 was still unable to kneel for the start of the race, but decided to compete anyway and fulfilled the definition of resilience by winning herself a second Olympic gold!

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