New study: corps & band => sports injuries

[Kamarag]

Jim Rome was right. Not right to the degree that he thinks he is, but right nonetheless.

Drum corps and band, for all the effort put into comparing the activities to sports, aren't sports, and don't have the physical impact contact sports do. Period.

Aerobic? Yes. Intense? Sure? But you cannot compare band/corps with football/hockey/basketball, or a host of other contact sports (and many non-contact sports).

Edited June 4, 2009 by Kamarag

[fourouttheforty]

I haven't seen it, if anyone can link to an ESPN.com clip or YouTube, that'd be great, since I have no idea when they replay Jim Rome on the West coast.

Has anyone been paralyzed doing drum corps? Not that I know of. Hell, has anyone died doing drum corps? Not that I know of. Have these things happened to football players? YES. Drum corps is painful, sure, but you are very disillusioned if you think they are on the same level.

Jim Rome compared drum corps to cheerleading just to be an ### (but he's not all that off-base if you look at competitive cheerleading), but I'd compare drum corps more with dance or theater than with a sport.

Everyone who's upset by this really needs to take a step back. It's just drum corps!

[Lance]

I didn't realize that an activity with a greater propensity for debilitating injuries made it more "athletic" than another. With that argument, you could say that pro football players are better athletes than those in just about any activity. Even the ones who need to stop every few feet for the oxygen mask, I guess, since they get beat up the worst.

[hrnguy500]

We need to emphasize that drum corps and marching band does take a great deal of energy like we all know but the common man doesn't think. The article said that this activity can result in injuries "similar" to competitive sports. It never made the claim that MB/DC is the most grueling of all activities. If someone says we work harder than the football team is a little bit silly. The article was just trying to give us credibility in our efforts to combat the typical "toot your flute" comments we have all received through the years.

I would make comparisons of DC to non combative/contact sports like running, tennis, cross country skiing etc.

Jim Rome is tool. I didn't see the show but I can only imagine the remarks he made.

[JamMan]

Yeah, drum corps only involves drum on harnesses, spinning metal poles, and 40 lbs. horns...

Neither does, oh, let's see:

Archery

Any track even

Kayak

Cycling

Diving

Equestrian

Gymnastics

Trampoline (ok, so maybe that's not much of a sport either)

Pentathlon

Rowing

Sailing

Shooting

Swimming

Synchronized Swimming

Triathlon

Weightlifting

And from the Winter Olympics:

Skiing

Biathlon

Biathlon

Bobsleigh

Cross-Country Skiing

Curling

Figure Skating

Freestyle Skiing

Luge

Nordic Combined

Skeleton

Ski Jumping

Snowboard

Speed Skating

Actually, MOST of these are sports. I guess I should have defined "sport" in my first post. I see sport as an activity (either judged or directly competitive) whereas those competing may change strategy MID-PERFORMANCE. Can corps do that? No. Can snowboarders? Yes. Simple.

[NR_Ohiobando]

Rome is a jackass. I haven't seen the broadcast, but comparing 2 different athletic activities doesn't make much sense to me. Everything has it's own difficulties and loopholes to make it better/worse than others.

Case in point, Baseball vs. Football. Football is more contact with other players, but if you're an infielder in the MLB you're taking some ridiculously high speed ground balls and line drives constantly.

Which one's harder? #### if I know, it doesn't really matter. Both are ridiculously tough to play at the top level.

Same goes for Drum Corps. It's an entirely different beast. It's not easy by any means, it's just different.

To be honest I'd rather see Chris Evert beat the crap out of Jim Rome.

[84BDsop]

Hell, has anyone died doing drum corps?

Joel Magnuson (sp?) Kilties Sr mellophone...massive heart attack on the field DURING their prelims performance 2005.

Some guy from Skyliners hit by lightning in the late 80s.

Those are 2 that come to mind....now they aren't directly related to performing a corps show...but your question was kinda open-ended

[Galen]

I just watched Jim Rome mention this study on his show today. Now, as much as I love marching band and drum corps, and I certainly didn't care for how Jim presented this (very smug and condescending), I do have to say that I agree more with him.

That study is fine and all, and we know how hard some of these groups work. He even mentioned the "drum corps guy" knowing full well that what they do is even more physical and demanding, so I didn't take that as a cut down. I saw that as Jim Rome knowing the difference between band and corps, at least to some degree.

But he is right. As hard as we work in this activity, band and corps, your top D1 athletes, especially in football (for which the comparison was made) have to work out all year. Their conditioning is much more detailed and brutal. They are getting their you know what kicked in on a daily basis. The speeds they must hit to run their route, make the catch, run the ball, or stay with their man are just ridiculous. Getting sacked and thrown on your butt 6 to 10 times a game, or getting slammed to the ground by a lineman, hitting speeds of 4.4 (40 yard dash) to run or catch a pass is a totally different thing, and you don't do it for 11.5 minutes, you do it for 60 minutes (game time).

Spring training for drum corps is certainly at a new level and very physical, but 2-a-days at Ohio State or USC or Florida is something of a different beast, and I doubt most band kids could or would want to take part.

What Rome doesn't say, however, and where the comparison must emphasize the differences is this: it takes a lot of talent to play a musical instrument, twirl a flag, dance, drum, and march. The tempo, rhythms, complex themes, orchestration, tuning, use of body in a balletic way, and so much more is what makes marching band and drum corps so unique and fun, and challenging. But true division 1 athletes these kids are not. Yes, we can point to a few who might be. great! But overall, we are more about talent and art, and they are more about physical power and speed. There are some similarities, but the differences are obvious to most...I would think!

JW

I heard his radio show this afternoon and he was going on about the same thing. He did make a distinction between "top level drum corps/marching band" and your run-of-the-mill college band, where "the trombone players are fat and the drummers all burn tree". It did actually get good when he had a caller on who had played D-1 football as well as marched with a world class drum corps (and world class were the caller's words) and did a good breakdown of the study. He made another good distinction between the level of activity and actually got Rome to agree with him in saying that there was a better comparison to be made between corps and motion-based sports like cross-country, swimming, soccer and other non-contact sports.

Because we all know that drum corps is a non-contact sport. Well, unless you're rehearsing at NIU

[Old School Contra Guy]

This whole subject came up on a local level about a year and a half ago. A local sports director blogged about cheerleaders not being athletes. It digressed to band, etc. http://www.wibw.com/blogs/jb/13845032.html . Even our own "Crunchy Tenor" got involved. Start at the bottom of the page if you wish to read the archieve.

[drumcorpsfan4567]

The way he dissed the activity on his show was unfair. It might not be quite as physically demanding as Div I college athletics, but it isn't that far off. I sent him and email and I included a link to a video from a certain site of Phantom Regiment jazz running part of Firebird during 2007 in what was a pretty athletic feat.