Which sports run the most?

Stats from football, basketball, soccer and tennis show who burns the most shoe leather

Analysis of professional sports shows that some athletes run as much as 9.5 miles during a game while others move for just 11 minutes total.

BY TRACY MILLER

Even off the mound, most baseball players wouldn't break a half-mile of running per game, and for pitchers like CC Sabathia it's far less.

Whether they're pounding pavement, squeaking down a court or sprinting across the turf, you'd expect most professional athletes to do quite a bit of running over the course of a day's work. But that's not always the case.

Gizmodo looked at data from STATS — a company that uses a motion-tracking technology called SportVu to collect detailed statistics on players from a number of sports — to see which athletes really run the most. Here's what they found.

Receivers like Victor Cruz cover the most ground in football, but it's still just over a mile.

Baseball: Of all the stats tracked in baseball, average running distance isn't one of them. Some New Yorkers walk a greater distance to work each day than the average player runs during a game, which is likely less than half a mile even for multiple home run hitters and fielders. The bases are only 90 feet apart after all, Gizmodo notes.

Football: SportVu found that cornerbacks and wide receivers, who tend to run the most, run about 1.25 miles per game, so it's safe to assume most players run less. An analysis by the Wall Street Journal found the average American football player only moves, let alone runs, for 11 minutes per game.

MICHAEL FIALA/REUTERSTennis players like Ana Ivanovic of Serbia may run several miles during a five-set match.

Basketball: NBA players run nowhere near the oft-cited five miles per game. According to STATS, the player who ran the farthest per game in 2012 was Luol Deng of the Chicago Bulls, at 2.72 miles on average.

JESSICA RINALDI/REUTERSNew York Red Bulls' Thierry Henry (l.) competes for the ball with Toronto FC's Julian de Guzman. Soccer players can sprint around 7 miles per game, depending on which position they play.

Tennis: Don't let the relatively small court fool you. Depending on their style of game, players may run 3 to 5 miles during a five-set match, and in some cases even more. That's a lot of back-and-forth.



And the winner is...

Soccer: Long games, a massive field and a constantly moving ball add up to serious distance for soccer players. STATS puts the average at 7 miles per game depending on position, and as much as 9.5 miles for some players (not including goalies, of course).