American football is the most complex and strategic of all popular sports.

Con made strong points regarding the complexity of roles in sports. Essentially, Con is stating that other sports are more complex because regardless of the number of roles, every player is required to be more dynamic. I am stating that football is more complex because the roles themselves are more dynamic. Truthfully, this could go either way depending on whether you feel more complexity lies within the variety of roles, or the variety of responsibilities within a role. I suppose both could be used as examples of complexity. The key difference I would point out, regarding this debate, is that I was claiming the sport was the most complex, not the individual player. If you are looking at the entire sport, I would think that the variety in roles takes precedence, as opposed to looking at an athlete where the complexity of their specific role would take precedence. A rugby player could have a more complex role without belonging to the more complex sport. Here an analogy: A microwave is more complex than a spark plug, but a jet engine (which could not function without the spark plug) is more complex than a microwave. You could also say that playing bag pipes is more complex than playing a trumpet. But that conducting an orchestra is more complex than playing bag pipes. In other words, the parts don't have to be complex in order to construct a complex mechanism. That being said, even if voters agree that Con is correct regarding complexity and roles; that's only 1 in 4 categories. I don't think there is any comparing the complexity of football regarding plays, rules, and scoring. Another thing I wanted to address is Con's notion that a football player only has to memorize their job in a specific play and that it's repeatable, and basically easy. What Con didn't mention is that over 400 unique plays have to be memorized and executed perfectly by every player in order for that play to have chance. It's very different from the fluidity we see in other sports where there is much heavier emphasis on improvisation. In soccer or hockey things can fall apart and breakdown, but still be corrected on the fly successfully. There is far less emphasis on memorization. It's more of a go with the flow atmosphere in which everyone is trying to do the same thing on offense or defence. An example of the difference in difficulty level would be if I were called to go play an MLS game today, as opposed to being called up to play an NFL game. In the soccer match, I would basically know what to do, I just wouldn't do it well. In the football game, I wouldn't have clue. I wouldn't know where to line up, or any idea how to proceed once the ball was snapped. The average Joe playing football would look far more lost than the person playing soccer (although they would both look pretty foolish). Another similar example are the sports we play at my job. We play softball, soccer, and flag football year round. The softball and soccer games require no preparation. None whatsoever. We don't practice, we don't meet up before the games to refresh our game plan. Everyone just knows what to do, and the team with the most athletic players, or hardest hitting batter win the game. Football on the other hand does require preparation. We have to meet before the season to make a playbook. We have to practice once a week and before the game so that everyone is comfortable with the various plays and their roles. As opposed to the other sports, the best teams in the football league are the most organized teams. Simply put, when we start the football season it is much more involved. There are just more things that you have to know in order to move the ball one foot. Without even analyzing it, the football games just seem more complex. It's one of the reasons football is one of the only sports where you don't see pick-up games at parks. How would anybody know what to do without organizing and memorizing plays? I'll save the strategic aspect of the game for later rounds.