Mahomes, Brown Among Multi-Sport Super Bowl Stars

The Super Bowl may be the pinnacle of the NFL season and the most-watched annual sporting event in the USA, but it isn’t merely a football spectacle.

In fact, the NFL’s big game is a showcase exhibiting the value of a multi-sport lifestyle.

An annual ritual as part of the build up to the Super Bowl game is to poll the participating players to find out how many of them were multi-sport athletes in high school. The number may surprise you. In general terms, it works out to nine out of every 10 Super Bowl players coming from a significant multi-sport background.

As recently as 2020, the Super Bowl game showed 92% of the players in the game were multi-sport athletes in high school. Just two years earlier in 2018, that number was as high as 96%.

This year’s Super Bowl game features the reigning NFL champion Kansas City Chiefs looking to win a third successive title against the Philadelphia Eagles. And there are significant multi-sport stars lining up on both sides of the line of scrimmage.

Perhaps the most well-known multi-sport athlete in the game is Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes. Not only was he an ace pitcher in high school, Mahomes also pitched college ball at Texas Tech. He was so good that he was selected in the MLB Draft by the Detroit Tigers. His father, of course, was long-time MLB pitcher Patrick Mahomes Sr.

When you watch Mahomes on the gridiron, it’s easy to decipher the baseball influence on his quarterback play. He makes many of his pass completions through unorthodox, off-balance throws, often while on the move to avoid pursuing would-be tacklers. These are exactly the types of throws you are called to make all the time when fielding a batted ball on the diamond during a baseball game.

For the Eagles, wide receiver A.J. Brown was also a high school baseball star who was coveted by pro teams. The San Diego Padres would select Brown in the 2016 MLB Draft. He played in the Under Armour All-Star Game alongside current Toronto Blue Jays shortstop Bo Bichette and actually signed with the Padres before eventually choosing football.

Brown believes that multi-sport athletes awaken muscle and intellectual pathways that aren’t as open to those who specialize in one sport. He compares getting under a football on a deep pass pattern to an outfielder tracking a fly ball. 

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