Just a few off the top of my head: Young Wilt Chamberlain Young Shaq Michael Jordan Usain Bolt Bo Jackson LeBron James
IMO the greatest has to be someone who can be competitive in a lot of sports and who can flat out whoop everyone elses ass in a fight when he falls into an argument about this topic. Based of this criteria I would have to give it Muhammad Ali. Sports Illustrated did call him the athlete of the 20th century. Boxers are by far the most conditioned and best athletes.
No mention of Johnny Football? Heisman and a great golfer, come on!! j/k, I'd go with Bo, wish he could have stayed healthy.
This. He also had a cannon for an arm. Being able to hit a curve ball doesn't make you a great athlete. To me a "great athlete" is a physical specimen that does what he wants to do and makes it look easy. Bo, rarely worked out, never practiced hard and he could still go out there and run circles around the best players in the world. He was an all star in two of the most elite sports leagues in the world. He ran the 40 yard dash at over 200 pounds in under 4.2 seconds and high jumped over 7 feet. He is a 5 handicap in golf without never playing before he was injured and is a world-renowned archer, and on and on. It all just comes natural to him. Go back and look at pictures of him from his Royal days. He was a behemoth during an era of baseball where nearly every player was tall and lanky. He broke bats like they were toothpicks. He still has a physique without working out. If he put his mind to it when he was younger he probably could have won several Olympic metals in track and field.
I'd have to go with Bo.. I wonder what his career would've been if he didn't get his knee blown out. Also not sure how Iverson is on the list considering he doesn't even believe in practice. lol Herschel is up there considering he's fighting MMA at his age. (iirc)
It wasn't his knee, it was his hip. A dislocated hip. Which he put back into place, by himself. Dude was an ox with balls of steel.
speaking of 30 for 30.. wasn't there an Earl Campbell episode on recently? I totally missed it if so.
Yeah, I have it DVR'd. I prefer 30 for 30 though... they are the one of the few things ESPN does well.
what about Deion Sanders, he was playing baseball and football at the same time. During the 1989 season, he hit a major league home run and scored a touchdown in the NFL in the same week, the only player ever to do so. Sanders is also the only man to play in both a Super Bowl and a World Series.
In many ways, it is hard to compare athletes across eras so you have to look at what they did within that era. With Thorpe you can kind of do both. No doubt he was the greatest athlete of his generation. If Sportscenter had existed then, he would have been on every day for years. You can also look at Thorpe's 1912 Olympic medals and compare him to today's athletes. How many athletes could take gold in the Decathlan and Pentathlon during the same games? (Rhetorical question as the Pentathlon is no longer an event.) Not to mention the fact that his shoes were stolen and he competed in a pair he found in the trash while wearing extra socks because they were not the right size. Even with the equipment issue, his Decathlon 100 meter time would stand for 36 years and his 110 meter hurdles time was tops through 1952... but his 1500 meter time was legendary. In London, his time would have placed him second... by one second. Thorpe is a 4-time Hall of Famer: pro football, college football, US Olympic, and Track and Field. He also co-founded a little something called the NFL and his statue stands at the entrance the Pro Football HOF. He was named the greatest football player for the half century in 1950. And oh yes, he has an award named after that goes to the outstanding college DB, as he was both a RB and DB during his football days (as well as PK and P). Greatest football player over a 50 year span, decathlon and pentathlon gold medalist, named Athlete of the Century by a bunch of organizations, ballroom dancing champion, pro basketball and pro baseball, college All-American, etc. Jim Thorpe is the answer.
Oh, also worthy of mention in this thread is Wahoo McDaniel: football player, wrestler, bass fisherman.
Sanders was a pretty terrible baseball player. All he had was speed. Had a lousy glove, lousy arm, and no power. He hit .263 in nine seasons, with only 39 home runs. He also averaged just 20 steals per season.
