Sport: the RPG

Agility: 3

Balance: 4

Power: 2

Speed: 2

Vision: 6

If sport were a role-playing game, I would be under-leveled. My stats would be on a par with giant rats. Maybe I'd score higher in areas not specific to physical activity, but incidentally advantageous to sport: communication, positioning, vision, and so on.

But those numbers I gave are just generous guesses on a ten-point scale. What if I had a more accurate measure?

That's what Under Armour, a leading designer of sports equipment, is doing with their video-game-sounding program "Combine360".

C360, as they refer to it, uses a series of physical tests to measure strength, speed, flexibility, and a host of other sporting attributes. They also integrate psychometric questionnaires to give an overall score out of 120, divided into several categories.

Coaches test packs of young athletes, giving them a score, which the kids can use to get a place on the youth team they want to play for. They also test professional athletes, giving them a score and showing them where to improve. Or which stats to grind. Regular testing can give them a quantifiable record of their improvement.

Under Armour compare the test to SATs, but exams just test our performance on exams. They mostly measure our memory of a subject, rather than our aptitude for a task. C360 is far more similar to an RPG character's stats screen — it shows attributes, which can be used to estimate athletes' performance in real situations.

Anthing can happen with the role of a D20. Anything can happen in sports. Underlying character attributes load the dice though, and this is the character sheet for athletes.

I just wanted to share something that looked like a video game, but if you want to learn more you can do so here.