I am talking about the greatest athlete, in terms of physical ability, that you have ever seen, rather than the most dominant athlete of a particular sport. My top 5 are... 1) Bo Jackson...in terms of pure physical ability, he is the best I have ever seen...Blazing 4.2 speed, incredible strength and power, a cannon for an arm ( once saw him throw a strike to home plate from the wall in center filed...FLAT FOOTED! )...agility, could reverse dunk, all around the most impressive physical athlete I have ever seen. 2) Dave Winfield...Hate this guy, but he was an unbelievable athlete. Experts say he could easily have gone pro in basketball or football had he not chosen baseball. 6'6", could run, jump, was agile and smooth as hell...Still hate him, though. 3) Hakeem Olajuwon...yeah, yeah..homerism, you'll say. But for a man of that size to move the way he did, with that combination of agility, strength, quickness and speed...wow! 4) Deion Sanders...Could seemingly do whatever he wanted. Moved across the field like he was playing at a different speed. Yeah, he was a jerk...but he backed it up. Pro in two major sports, and could have been great at basketball too, according to...er...Deion. 5) Hershel Walker...Olympic level track athlete and bob-sled guy...oh, and one of the most physically talented running backs ever. Wasn't as smooth as the other guys on this list, but if you want strength/speed, it's hard to overlook Hershel. Hon. Mention...Vince Carter, John Elway, Michael Jordan, Randy Moss, Carl Lewis ( hate, hate, hate this guy!)...
If you're going by physical ability, Shaq has to be up there. For a man his size, he is nimble and quick and has decent ball-handling skills. Plus, he's a bull in the post.
1. Scotty Brooks 2. Phil Nevin 3. Zan Tabak 4. Jason Collier 5. Surge Zwikker In all Seriousness....Bo. Unbelievable Athelete. And UNSTOPPABLE in the Original mack daddy football game. Tecmo Bowl.
This is an interesting question. Here are some that I have seen personally (and in no particular order)... Clyde Drexler--Our High School played his (in a tournament I think--the memory's hazy) and for most of the game nothing stood out to these young eyes. Then he got the ball at mid-court and in an instant was jamming. It seemed like he only took two steps from mid-court. The whole place was stunned and it was then most of us realized there was a different talent level beyond what we had been exposed to. I think Bernard Malamud has a passage where he describes a hotshot baseball fan stepping into the batting cage to face the "Sandy Koufax Machine" for the first time and coming out realizing he would never play in the majors. It was like that only more. Reggie White--Big, Fast, Strong. BIG, FAST, REALLY STRONG. Impossible for one man (and usually two) to block him. Shook hands with him once and felt like a five-year old, even though I am not a small man. Did I mention he was big, fast, and strong? Earl Campbell--What can you say about a Hall of Fame running back who could have been an All-Pro at Linebacker? The guy loved to hit. Remember the Isaiah Robertson play against the Rams? Unbelieveable. I saw him once at a nightclub in Austin. He had on stretch pants, which is probably all he could get to fit around his thighs. The image still stays with me of those thighs in stretch pants... freakishly huge. Lloyd Archie--Who? He was a guy I went to high school with. All-State in football for three years. Parade All-American as a Senior. Played WR, RB, QB and Safety as needed. All Tourney Team for the BBall State Championships. Track star. One of the most highly recruited kids of his year, he signed with the Cougars when they were good. (Another alumni of my school, Allen Polk, was playing running back there at the time.) Lloyd never made the grades, went to Navarro Jr. College, where I think he led them to a National Championship and then faded from the scene. Makes me wonder how many great athletes there are out there that never make it. Ali--I never saw a bout, but did see him on the streets in DC once and at the Olympics in Atlanta. Ali--does anything more need be said?
In my opinion, it's Barry Sanders (I assume were not talking about track and field). Also, I think typically NFL Linebackers are pretty amazing. Because they're so huge and still have so much speed and quickness! 6'3" 250 pound guys running 4.5s. That's just insane. Guy like LT, Ray Lewis, and LaVar Arrington are just freaks.
Diego Maradona-just amazing http://www.jonahlomu.com/ - a freak of nature that few of you know about Barry Sanders-silky Carl Lewis-arrogant but superb Michael Johnson- fastest a human body has ever traveled on its own
*groan* I actually remember that God-Awful movie...Vincent wouldn't win this title, but he might win the Most Dramatic Descent Into Looking Terrible award...You ever seen him later in life, say 5-10 years after Airwolf? He looks like something the cat coughed up...last year. He makes Mickey Rourke and the guy who played Buddy Holly ( Gary Buscey-sp?) look well preserved. Only real competition is Keith Richards, who wins hands down for Best Impersonation of An Old Corpse...
Damn!!! Your from Huntsville? We played you guys in a district playoff game (Basketball) in 1979. Archie was incredible, but then the entire Huntsville team was awesome. We were actually beaten before they even threw the Jump Ball. We were trying not to watch the warmups, but every one of those Huntsville guys would try to out do the other in a dunking contest during warmups!!!. It was an amazing display that totally psyched our team out. We felt we didn't even belong on the same court. And I won't mention being pelted by pennies sitting on the bench. Lloyd Archie did have a very bright future. I never saw him play football (except for highlights on the news), but I know he was an awesome basketball player.
What High School Bob? In 1979 we had (I was not on the team) 7 people on the All-District Team and 3 on the All-Tourney Team and won the State Title for the second year in a row. Along the way, we beat the eventual 4-A champs as well (we were 3-A). I think all but two players went on to play some kind of college or JC ball and one of the ones that didn't was Terry Hoage who became an All-American Safety at Georgia and played in the pros a bunch of years.
Bo Jackson by a mile in my book. In football I've never seen his combination of power and speed. There are guys who had both but nobody who had them to the degree that he did. He literally could run over middle linebackers and out run cornerbacks. On the baseball field he was just a freak. I remember his throws, the towering homers, and the blazing speed. There is a story told about him from high school about how he hit this infield pop fly and rounded the bases before the ball hit the ground. Metal bat of course but still, that's ridiculous. Buck O'Neil, Royals scout and former Negro Leaguer, likes to tell this story about the sound of Bo hitting a baseball. He says he's only heard that sound three times in his life and the names are Babe Ruth, Josh Gibson, and Bo Jackson. It was a damn shame he got injured so badly. A sad day for sports and what he could have been.
I went to Eisenhower High School. We played you guys in the first round. The game was over by halftime. I actually think they had some of the ballboys playing in the 2nd half. Damn, I remember Terry Hoage was on that team. That team was loaded. They could have beaten some small college teams.
I'm pretty sure I was at that game. The year before (1978) was, I think, the best team. Royce Craft, later a QB at Rice was a starter along with 4 juniors. Lloyd Archie was the 6th man. Hoage was a great athlete in his own right, just got overshadowed in HS by Archie. Hoage could dunk from a standstill and had crazy hops. I still remember his block of the Notre Dame field goal attempt in the Sugar Bowl and how Keith Jackson at first thought he had to have leaped onto someone's back he was so high. Hoage worked his ass off to become a great football player and it didn't hurt that he was damn smart and knew how to win. After college, he played for the Saints, Eagles, Redskins, 49ers, and Cardinals, winning a Super Bowl Ring with Washington. He won a State Championship in High School (Basketball), a National Championship in College, and a Super Bowl. Not bad. Here's the UGA write-up-- TERRY HOAGE FS, 6-3, 205, Huntsville, Texas Georgia head coach Vince Dooley called Terry Hoage "the best defensive player I've ever coached and maybe the best one I've ever seen." It's a great tribute to the two-time consensus All-America from Huntsville, Texas, who had only one scholarship offer as a high school senior - the one from Georgia. Hoage was almost strictly a bystander as a freshman in 1980 - at least until the Sugar Bowl game against Notre Dame. He blocked an Irish field goal attempt which turned the momentum in favor of the Dogs as they went on to defeat Notre Dame and win the national championship. He was a starter his sophomore season in 1981 but didn't intercept a single pass. Then, in 1982, Hoage seemed to blossom. He led the nation in interceptions with 12, was a consensus All-America, and was named the 1982 SEC Defensive Player of the Year by UPI. After intercepting three passes against Vanderbilt in 1982, Commodore head coach George MacIntyre said, "Hoage is a genius in a football uniform." In '83, Hoage took up where he left off. Despite a late-season injury and the fact opposing offenses geared their attacks away from him, Hoage still found ways to excel. He blocked three field goal attempts in 1983 and recorded four QB sacks. He was named a consensus All-America for the second straight year. Hoage also finished fifth in the 1983 Heisman Trophy balloting - the highest finish ever by a defensive back. "Terry Hoage may be the best I've seen at his position in at least the last 10 years, maybe the best ever," said ABC-TV analyst Frank Broyles. "He combines the end, cornerback, and safety positions better than anybody in college football." But Hoage's ability to excel was not limited to the playing field. He was also a two-time Academic All-America selection possessing a 3.71 grade point average majoring in Genetics. In December of 1983, Hoage was named recipient of an NCAA Post-Graduate Scholarship as well as a post-graduate grant from the National Football Foundation and Hall of Fame - the two most prestigious academic awards in college sports. One week after he helped Georgia to a 10-9 Cotton Bowl victory over Texas, Hoage was back in Dallas to accept the NCAA Top Five Award which goes annually to the top five college athletes in America. In his four-year career at Georgia, the Bulldogs won three SEC championships, one national title, played in four major bowl games, and posted a record of 43-4-1 -- unmatched by any other college team during that period. For a man nobody seemed to want as a high school senior, the 6-3, 205 pound All-American found his way into the books as one of the greatest defensive players ever to play the college game.
More Huntsville footnotes for Bob-- The Bunce brothers went to Huntsville. (Where are you Danny?) David went to UH and earned mention in Dream's bio as the guy who guarded him during practice. Mark Price was around for awhile when his dad was coaching at Sam, but he was too young to play varsity. Still, everyone in town knew he was going to be really good. Our best baseball player, Richard Linklater, went on to fame in another field.
Thats awesome rimrocker. I do remember a Terry Hoage at Georgia, but had no idea that was the same guy. Maybe you might remember another great basketball player from that same time period. All I can remember is his last name was Stevenson (I think). He played for Hitchcock. He and Lloyd Archie were the two that we played that stood head and shoulders above everyone else. We also played against Humble, they had Mike Mosley (son of Washington Redskins kicker Mark Mosley) He was a super athlete as well. But no where near Stevenson and Archie, or Hoage for that matter.
I was at Foot Action a few months ago. I was having a nice convo. with the guy working there, and it turned out that he went to my church. He asked me if I played ball and I said yes. My mom asked him if he played in my church league and he said that he did when he was little. She said that he should play in it, because it's pretty fun. LOL. He said,'I play on an AAU team.' My mom then asked him if he was playing in college and he said that he was going to play at Kansas, but he won't play next season, because they want him to bulk up first. Well it turns out that he has a 42 inch vertical. I go to my church's school, and I play high school ball, so I was on our school's summer league team. He went to one of our game. And did a reverse over the head dunk. It looked like he wasn't even trying, like he could do it without any effort. He is probably the most athletic person that I've ever actually really met.
