If there’s an acronym I’m getting really tired of seeing, it’s GOAT.
Greatest of All Time.
For one thing, it’s completely meaningless. There is no way to compare athletes from different eras, and in many instances, the Greatest tends to be someone more people have seen recently.
And comparing from sport to sport is even sillier.
Take basketball, for example. Fans debate whether Michael Jordan or LeBron James was the greatest ever, but neither of them won back-to-back NCAA titles in college, 11 NBA titles in 13 years and another NBA title as the first black coach in the major sport.
Hello, Bill Russell.
No one else has ever been as successful in a major sport, and Sport Bible ranks Russell 16th on its list of 50 greatest athletes ever. That’s not bad, but it ranks five other basketball players ahead of Russell, including Wilt Chamberlain from Russell’s own era.
And football, referred to on the list as American football.
Remember, this is a worldwide list. There were six other football players, but the only American on the list is not Tom Brady.
Joe Montana checks in at No. 6, just ahead of Michael Jordan. I think a fairly egregious omission from the top 50 is running back Jim Brown, who while playing from 1957-65 led the NFL in rushing yards every season but one. He’s also the only running back of all the greats who averaged more than five yards a carry for his entire career.
Baseball didn’t get a whole lot of respect, with just three on the list and none who played later than 1951. Babe Ruth had the most exalted position and he was just 19th.
Only three hockey players, but one of them was No. 2 on the list — Wayne Gretzky.
Maybe the biggest surprise to me was that Tiger Woods didn’t make the list at all. Jack Nicklaus at No. 26 was the only golfer. I was somewhat stunned to see Pele as low as No. 44, but that might be because of my ignorance of the sport the rest of the world calls football.
Thirteen of the 50 were people I had never heard of.
It’s tough to argue too much with the top five — Carl Lewis, Usain Bolt, Roger Federer, Gretzky and …
The only possible choice, the one who called himself the greatest.
Muhammad Ali.