Alright, so there's obviously no way to figure out for sure what sport out there really is the best. However, I doubt there's another sport around that makes a better case than lacrosse, which is one of the fastest growing sports in the country.
First off, let's take a peek back into history to see where lacrosse all started. The game of lacrosse is very old, and started developing almost a millennium ago with the native people of North America. Although this was where the sport of lacrosse originated, there were definitely a lot of differences. Back then, lacrosse was much more intense. Instead of a field being the 110 yards that it is today, lacrosse fields back when the game was first created were sometimes a couple of miles long. Games would last for days on end, and there was a heavy emphasis on "the spirit of warfare". It's safe to say that if the game remained this way, the NCAA probably would not sanction it. However, as the game developed, the field and games got shorter, and began to resemble the lacrosse that we know and love today.
Although lacrosse games aren't the sort of "mini-wars" that they were during the game's inception, lacrosse is still pretty damn intense. The sport that is probably the closest to lacrosse is ice hockey. For people unfamiliar with the "lax", it's basically hockey, on land, with a ball instead of a puck, up in the air, and with a lot less pads. Instead of it taking place on freezing cold ice, the sun shines and makes everyone sweat their asses off. The game is also a lot more high scoring with nets twice the size as the ones in hockey.
On the topic of the nets, it's important to give a little shoutout to lacrosse goalies. These guys go out, stand in net without any leg protection whatsoever, and do whatever they can to get in front of a chunk of rubber that can sometimes fly at over 90mph. I think we can all agree that these goalies have a screw loose somewhere, but they're unbelievably necessary to the game.
Lacrosse really is an incredible game. It combines the hits of football, the running of soccer, the blistering speed of basketball, and the strategy of just about every other sport. All of this mixes together to create one of the most entertaining to watch, and even more enjoyable to play sports out there. The game is full of bone-crushing contact and doesn't stop moving from the first face-off to the final horn. The goals are elegant, and, unlike baseball, it's actually America's past time (for baseball to be a past time, it probably shouldn't have another sport that was in place hundreds of years prior...)
I rest my case.
If you're still not convinced, just watch this GIF of Kyle Wharton for Johns Hopkins Lax with one of the prettiest goals in history a few times.
