Not all Sports Records can be Broken

We have all heard that ‘records are meant to be broken’ but not all sports records can be broken. Some sports records will take a true super human effort for them to fall in our lifetime. Peyton Manning could put the passing touchdown mark in that company before he leaves the game.

There are four sports records that I feel are the toughest to break and just might be unbreakable.

NHL Single-Season Goal Scoring

The 1981-82 NHL season saw Wayne ‘The Great One’ Gretzky score 92 goals in just 80 games. He had 50 goals in just the first 39 games of the season. The last player to get close was Brett Hull in the 1990-91 season when he had 86 goals.

In the last 15 years the only player to break 60 in a season was Alex Ovechkin when he had 65 in the 2008-09 season. For a player to break this record they will have to stay healthy all season and average just around 1.3-goals a game. I don’t think there is a guy in the NHL today that can do that.

NFL Career Receiving Yards Leader

In 2004 when Jerry Rice hung up his cleats he left the game with 22,895 receiving yards. The next man on the list is Terrell Owens who is 6,961 yards away and not even playing in the NFL. The next man on the list who is still playing is the 33-year-old Andre Johnson and he is 9,738 yards away from just tying the mark.

For a player to break the Rice record he would have to play 20 years in the NFL averaging just over 1,145 yards a season and have a top quality QB getting him the ball. Oh, and stay healthy enough to play that long. How big is this record? 29-year-old Calvin Johnson would need to play 10 more years averaging 1,322 yards a season to get past Jerry Rice.

Baseball’s Iron Man Streak

On September 19th 1998 the streak came to an end, Cal Ripken, Jr. of the Baltimore Orioles played in his 2,632 consecutive game. He had passed Lou Gehrig’s mark in 1995, which had stood for 56 years. They are the only two men in baseball history with over 2,000 consecutive game played and could be the last.

If a player started with the first game of the year they would need to play all 162 games of the season for the next 16.2 years to break the Iron Man mark set by Ripken Jr. I just don’t see anyone being able to stay that healthy for that long but it could happen.

Baseball’s 56 Game Hitting Streak

The summer of 1941 saw Joe DiMaggio set what might be the hardest record to break. He hit safety in 56 consecutive games, a mark that has stood for 73 years. Sure there have been a couple of guys get to within 12 hits of the mark but that’s it. Most streaks fall way short of DiMaggio and I don’t think anyone will break this record.

Every baseball team has a number of specialty pitchers and hitters just don’t see the same arms enough to put together a real streak that could break the record. This one just might stand the test of time.

NFL Touchdown Passing Record

Sunday night Peyton Manning passed Brett Favre to become the all-time touchdown-passing king with 510 in his career. The Denver Broncos have 10 games left so if Manning were to just get one TD pass in each game that would set the mark at 520 and there are only three guys ho could even challenge his record.

Eli Manning is 33-years-old and is 277 behind the 520 mark. That means if he played another 7-years Eli would need to thrown 39.5 Td’s each season to catch his brother.

Tom Brady is 148 behind Peyton and is 37-years-old. If Brady could play another four years he would need to throw 37 Td’s each season to catch Manning.

The one guy who might have a shot is Drew Brees. He is 146 Td’s behind Manning but is just 35-years-old and would only need to average 29 Td’s a season over the next five years to catch Manning. That could be done but that also requires Peyton to retire at the end of the season and only add 10 Td’s to his record.

If Drew Brees don’t catch Peyton Manning then I think this record will stand for a long time.