I think it’s a lot easier to put Belichick on the coach/manager Rushmore than it is to put Brady on the athlete one.
The Mount Rushmore of....Athletes?
- Thread starter BaseballJones
- Start date
I love how you start off with a long list of athletes that has 23 North Americans, 2 South Americans, 2 Europeans and no Asians, Africans or Australians. If you want to ignore the rest of the world fine, but at least then limit the scope of the question to the pantheon of North American Athletes.
To go global let me suggest the following additions:
- Eddy Merckx (greatest untainted road cyclist ever)
- Ingemar Stenmark and Alberto Tomba (alpine skiing)
- Bjorn Daehlie (cross country skiing)
- Sochin Tendulkar and Sunil Gavaskar (cricket)
- Gareth Edwards and Dan Carter (rugby)
- Roger Bannister and Haile Gebrselassie (distance running)
- Diana Nyad (1st to swim Cuba - Florida), Alison Streeter (Queen of the Channel: 39 crossings including 3 2-way solo crossings and 1 3-way solo crossing in 34 hours and 40 min) and Julie Bradshaw (faster butterfly crossing of the Channel!)
- Jahangir Khan (greatest squash player)
- WG Grace (the Babe Ruth of cricket)
- Dhyan Chand (field hockey)
- Ronnie O'Sullivan (snooker)
That's well and good criticism but did you think that maybe I've never heard of like 99% of those international people and have literally zero way of assessing them?
Who would top the list by giving equal weight to the following categories:
- Strength
- Speed/quickness
- Endurance
- Hand-eye coordination
- The Wayne Gretzky “I skate to where puck is going to be” vision/information processing sense
I agree - that's why I said you should limit the category to North America. Makes it more honest
Oh no, I got it alright. I just went in another direction...you know, wide left.
I'd say reflexes need to be up there, and I don't see how you'd be left with a bunch of basketball and hockey players by those criteria. There are at least a dozen sports that test those attributes more.
I’m not sure that makes sense except as an overly simplistic take. Yes, everything starts with holding a club and striking a ball with it but at a minimum long game, short game, and putting are all wildly different skills. They can be broken down quite a bit beyond that too. Hitting a driver isn’t much like hitting a 7-iron, hiring half wedges isn’t much like sand shots or chipping, etc. Doing any number of different things on the course can require different skills/abilities.
2 Mountains in our Fictional universe. Or at least the Front and Back of the same mountain.
1 For Team sports (Mostly the "big 4 US Sports"). This fictional mountain is in the US after all.
And 1 for individuals.
Team
Gretzky
Brady
Jordan
Ruth
(with maybe an almost complete Pele tucked in best we can Teddy Roosevelt style)
Individual
Bolt
Nicklaus
Nadia Comaneci
Phelps
Ali
Then I would build a Unified Sports Hall of Greatness and a hotel with views of this mountain.
1 For Team sports (Mostly the "big 4 US Sports"). This fictional mountain is in the US after all.
And 1 for individuals.
Team
Gretzky
Brady
Jordan
Ruth
(with maybe an almost complete Pele tucked in best we can Teddy Roosevelt style)
Individual
Bolt
Nicklaus
Nadia Comaneci
Phelps
Ali
Then I would build a Unified Sports Hall of Greatness and a hotel with views of this mountain.
You could say that about baseball. Sure, hitting, fielding, base running, but Jim Thome just made the hall of fame by his skill in just one of them, in fact just part of one of them: home run hitting. In golf, there are 14 different clubs; OK, the swing isn’t different across all of them, but big difference between a sand wedge swing and a drive. There are finesse, touch shots (always my downfall) and power shots. The ball can be above or below your feet; you may need to draw or fade the ball. Finally, there’s putting, from whence comes the term “yips”.
Tiger before his problems, Nicklaus are easily in my top 10.
And if this were truly a "Rushmore of Athletics" the we should have 4 Decathletes on it. Or 3 Decathletes and Bo Jackson.
Context Matters. "one skill" can be summarized as Catching a Ball for a WR or good hand eye coordination for a hitter. But it takes much more then just a single thing to be the GOAT in your sport. Ali i think is the best example. Transcended his sport and was STILL a Great boxer (even if not the Greatest).
I even have a location for our project.
Goat Mountain Montana.
Context Matters. "one skill" can be summarized as Catching a Ball for a WR or good hand eye coordination for a hitter. But it takes much more then just a single thing to be the GOAT in your sport. Ali i think is the best example. Transcended his sport and was STILL a Great boxer (even if not the Greatest).
I even have a location for our project.
Goat Mountain Montana.
Are people who are nominating Ali doing it for overall social and political impact as well as fighting prowess, or just on the basis of his skill as a boxer?
He’s the face of boxing for most people, no? Maybe very different for people who know and follow the sport. I just mean general public he’s probably the biggest icon.
The latter, I think. Others can speak for themselves, but I don’t regard myself sufficiently informed on boxing to put together any kind of GOAT boxing list. Not even close.
I mentioned Ali yesterday because I am fascinated and haunted a bit by lost promise. Bo Jackson, Tony Conigliaro and less dramatically, Ted Williams.
There seems little doubt that Ali’s lost 3.5 years came at the heart of his career. Now maybe he winds up in the same place at an earlier age had those years not been taken, because you have only so many fights in you. I don’t know.
Impressionistically, to me, Ali came back as a different fighter. Older for sure, heavier no doubt. Henry Cooper notwithstanding, pre-layoff Ali was often untouchable. What if THAT guy had been allowed to run his natural course?
Ted Williams WOULD have hit like he always hit, so it’s a matter of math. This, I am not sure.
I mentioned Ali yesterday because I am fascinated and haunted a bit by lost promise. Bo Jackson, Tony Conigliaro and less dramatically, Ted Williams.
There seems little doubt that Ali’s lost 3.5 years came at the heart of his career. Now maybe he winds up in the same place at an earlier age had those years not been taken, because you have only so many fights in you. I don’t know.
Impressionistically, to me, Ali came back as a different fighter. Older for sure, heavier no doubt. Henry Cooper notwithstanding, pre-layoff Ali was often untouchable. What if THAT guy had been allowed to run his natural course?
Ted Williams WOULD have hit like he always hit, so it’s a matter of math. This, I am not sure.
Damn, I wish I had time for some input on this thread. Love the discussion, but I'm too slammed to make time to add content. If this has legs into the weekend, I may revisit.
But Ted Williams, baseball and fishing Hall of Fames.
But Ted Williams, baseball and fishing Hall of Fames.
A lot of people say this, and it's true to an extent. However, keep in mind he came back at 29, which is still very young for a heavyweight. Also, keep in mind the quality of his competition totally changed after his return. His big fights before being banned were Liston - who was powerful but slow - Cooper, who you acknowledge got his mitts on him a bit, Patterson who was old and small, and Terrell who had a ton of power but also wasn't very quick.
It wasn't until after he returned that he started fighting other Hall of Famers like Norton and Frazier and Foreman. Maybe he looked slow because he was 29 and not 25, or maybe he looked less untouchable because he was in with better guys.
Point taken.
For young’ins, I don’t think there was a more searing chapter in American sports in the 20th century than the Ali-Frazier trilogy. Or a greater display of heart. They brought out the best in each other, and damn near killed each other. If Joe’s corner had not thrown the towel in Manila ...?
For young’ins, I don’t think there was a more searing chapter in American sports in the 20th century than the Ali-Frazier trilogy. Or a greater display of heart. They brought out the best in each other, and damn near killed each other. If Joe’s corner had not thrown the towel in Manila ...?
Jim Brown was an all-time great football player, an all-time great lacrosse player, and was also a phenomenal track athlete. An incredible blend of power, explosiveness, quickness, speed, endurance, and various eye-hand skills (catching a football, using a lacrosse stick). Elite in three completely different sports.
It's interesting, because Ali's corner was seriously considering doing the same. That 15th round would've been incredible, if they'd both come out, but life threatening.
Yup. And he dropped the at the height of his powers and walked away. Awesome.
Because I think Orr was a better player than Gretzky. But they're both Canadian, so I guess they don't count?
For this exercise I think of it like this.
IDKS about boxing, at least not more then then Joe average. But,
They didnt ask Ray Robinson, Joe Louis or Floyd Mayweather to light the Olympic flame. Yea I know its cheating as Robinson and Louis were long dead and Mayweather was boxing in that Olympics, but I think the point stands. Even had they been alive, Ali was a logical and respected choice.
Besides its not like Ali isnt even a Top 10 of all time Boxer. Maybe not #1 Maybe a good argument for top 7, But when added to his "social impact", showmanship and being the Face of the Sport at probably what most people think of its peak (though maybe earlier in the 20th century like the 20s or 40s was really the peak), to me, puts him over the top.
For Pure athletics I think you could argue
Thorpe
Bo Jackson
Babe Didrikson
Jenner (??) or some other Track and field Legend. Edit: Yea Jim Brown could be the 4th
What about Dion Sanders? Baseball (yea he sucked but sucking at the pro level is still pretty damn good) Football HOFer and he was an amazing Sprinter in College as a Freshman, Despite playing FB and BB at the same time.
IDKS about boxing, at least not more then then Joe average. But,
They didnt ask Ray Robinson, Joe Louis or Floyd Mayweather to light the Olympic flame. Yea I know its cheating as Robinson and Louis were long dead and Mayweather was boxing in that Olympics, but I think the point stands. Even had they been alive, Ali was a logical and respected choice.
Besides its not like Ali isnt even a Top 10 of all time Boxer. Maybe not #1 Maybe a good argument for top 7, But when added to his "social impact", showmanship and being the Face of the Sport at probably what most people think of its peak (though maybe earlier in the 20th century like the 20s or 40s was really the peak), to me, puts him over the top.
For Pure athletics I think you could argue
Thorpe
Bo Jackson
Babe Didrikson
Jenner (??) or some other Track and field Legend. Edit: Yea Jim Brown could be the 4th
What about Dion Sanders? Baseball (yea he sucked but sucking at the pro level is still pretty damn good) Football HOFer and he was an amazing Sprinter in College as a Freshman, Despite playing FB and BB at the same time.
There's a lot of debate about golf in here, which is insane, because golf requires a tremendous amount of athleticism. Any Mount Rushmore of Sports must have Tiger Woods on it.
Bo Jackson shouldn't be within a mile of the Mount. He was incredible, but his body didn't hold up. Part of being on the Mount is playing for an extended period of time. And I know Tiger blew up with injuries after 2013, but he still spent 15 years at the top of his sport. What he did might never be done again. He completely changed the game of professional golf for an entire generation of players.
Tiger is the Babe Ruth of golf.
Bo Jackson shouldn't be within a mile of the Mount. He was incredible, but his body didn't hold up. Part of being on the Mount is playing for an extended period of time. And I know Tiger blew up with injuries after 2013, but he still spent 15 years at the top of his sport. What he did might never be done again. He completely changed the game of professional golf for an entire generation of players.
Tiger is the Babe Ruth of golf.
Deion really didn't suck at baseball. On the whole he wasn't GREAT, but his best years - part time, of course - he was pretty solid.
1992 - 303 ab, 14 3b, 26 sb, .304/.346/.495/.841, 130 ops+, 3.2 bWAR
1993 - 272 ab, 18 2b, 19 sb, .276/.321/.452/.773, 105 ops+, 1.5 bWAR
Not at all bad for a football player.
1992 - 303 ab, 14 3b, 26 sb, .304/.346/.495/.841, 130 ops+, 3.2 bWAR
1993 - 272 ab, 18 2b, 19 sb, .276/.321/.452/.773, 105 ops+, 1.5 bWAR
Not at all bad for a football player.
Is this true, though? I though he ended up falling fairly short of Nicklaus' records.
Fair enough on Bo Jackson. Longevity Should be a consideration.
And Fair enough on Deion. What I meant by "Suck" was comparatively to the company being discussed in this thread when you cant even make an All star game. "Suck" was a bad choice of words.
Dont get me Wrong, I am a proponent of Deion. Amazing athlete 3 Sports at an incredibly high level.
And Fair enough on Deion. What I meant by "Suck" was comparatively to the company being discussed in this thread when you cant even make an All star game. "Suck" was a bad choice of words.
Dont get me Wrong, I am a proponent of Deion. Amazing athlete 3 Sports at an incredibly high level.
He has the 2nd most tournament wins on the PGA tour,(79) behind Sam Snead,(82) who was playing against nobody. Jack was also playing against nobody and he was 73. Tiger took on the tour in the 90s, when it was pretty good, and blew away the field for 15 years. He created all of the stud golfers you see whaling the ball today.
He also singlehandedly raised the incomes of every golfer who plays today by a significant percentage. And Tiger still has an outside shot to catch Snead, although he probably won't win 4 majors to tie Jack.(18 to 14)
Still, he was playing against better competition, altered the sport, and dominated it for almost two decades. He is a legend. What he did won't happen again, in my opinion.
Again, honest question - what's the criteria for determining his competition is "better." Is it that golf is a more international game now? Are there more participants? I can look back at the heavyweight division in the 60s and 70s and say Ali's competition was better and it was because Americans over 6' and 200 pounds were just as likely to box as play football. Why is golf more competitive now?
The bolded is HIGHLY debatable. I certainly think you could use the deeper field of Tiger's era as an argument on that side, but then look at the fact that Nicklaus competed against all-time greats like Player, Palmer, Watson, Trevino, Faldo, Norman, Ballesteros, Casper, Floyd, Miller, Littler, Boros, Crenshaw, Irwin, Kite (all hall-of-famers), etc., as an argument for the other side.
Maybe Tiger's competition was better than Jack's, but to say that Nicklaus played against "nobody" is quite an overstatement.
It's way more international, there are way more courses, and access to the game has increased for everyone.(this has more of an effect today) But in Tiger's case, it's definitely the international dudes he was going against. It's much more broad today, of course.
Jack and Snead never had to worry about dudes from overseas coming in and dominating.
Reply 2:
I think it is incorrect to devalue the accomplishments of an athlete from a previous generation due to the lesser talent level of their opposition especially while you are also giving a modern athlete credit for altering their sport. As if the sport would have been where it was before Tiger without those players from previous generations.
Steroids sure screws up this conversation ... I'm convinced Bonds at his full-roid Zenith was significantly better than any other hitter ever (could hit any pitch within six inches of the strike zone out of the park) and Clemens otherwise could be in the discussion.
What I like is that there's at least a case to be made to go: Williams, Orr, Bird, Brady.
But...
Gretzky, Brady, Jordan, Williams
Williams' candidacy propped up when you factor in lost time to military service; Ruth's limited by fact that he played entirely before integration.
If we put coaches up there, Herb Brooks
What I like is that there's at least a case to be made to go: Williams, Orr, Bird, Brady.
But...
Gretzky, Brady, Jordan, Williams
Williams' candidacy propped up when you factor in lost time to military service; Ruth's limited by fact that he played entirely before integration.
If we put coaches up there, Herb Brooks
Wait, wait, wait...if you're going to start including coaches, Herb Brooks doesn't even come close, Miracle on Ice notwithstanding. I mean, I love the guy and all, but as a HC he won less than 200 games over an entire career.
Let's see...
Our own BB or ole Red, John Wooden, Joe McCarthy, Phil Jackson, Aldoph Rupp, Bear Bryant, Knute Rockne, [gulp] Scotty Bowman, Mike Krzyzewski, Pat Summitt, Bobby Knight, Pat Riley to name a few. Or if you want to drop down to the HS level: John Curtis, head football coach at John Curtis Christian in River Ridge, LA, who, with a record of 558-62-6 and 26 state championships is the winningest active HS coach (second all-time to now-retired John McKissick (620-156-13, and 10 State Championships at Summerville, SC).
The coaching part of the discussion is probably worth its own thread.
Let's see...
Our own BB or ole Red, John Wooden, Joe McCarthy, Phil Jackson, Aldoph Rupp, Bear Bryant, Knute Rockne, [gulp] Scotty Bowman, Mike Krzyzewski, Pat Summitt, Bobby Knight, Pat Riley to name a few. Or if you want to drop down to the HS level: John Curtis, head football coach at John Curtis Christian in River Ridge, LA, who, with a record of 558-62-6 and 26 state championships is the winningest active HS coach (second all-time to now-retired John McKissick (620-156-13, and 10 State Championships at Summerville, SC).
The coaching part of the discussion is probably worth its own thread.
Part of it is definitely being more international. There used to be a random handful of internationals that were legit competitors - Ballesteros, Els, Faldo, Player and Price mostly, with bouts of competition from guys like Woosnam, Olazabal, Montgomerie and Lyle, spanning a long term. Now you have a host of internationals - Rose, Day, McIlroy, Garcia, Scott, Stenson, Kaymer, Oostie, Kim, Matsuyama, etc. that are legit contenders every week and in every major, with young guys like Rahm coming on fast and guys that are fading but we’re legit like Westwood and McDowell. US you have a much thicker slate than Nicklaus did as well.
Another part is equipment and - as I spoke to earlier - fitness. Golfers are legit athletes these days; most are sculpted and the average tour pro no longer looks like a Stadler or even a Kite or Watson. About the most out of shape golfer you could cite is Mickelson and he’s dropped weight or maybe Westwood who i’d label just as thick, not chubby or fat. I guess Reed is a bit chubby. Equipment wise, I think it speaks a bit more to Nicklaus over Tiger because back then the sweet spot on a persimmon driver was about the size of a dime and everyone played blades, so it’s probably more impressive what he did before modern tech, but as far as winning goes, he had a huge advantage with his brute strength and distance. If you look at average driving distance then and now, it’s much more clustered than it used to be. Nicklaus had all the parts of the game, but having that big of an advantage in distance was huge and was also a part of Tiger’s early dominance, before tech really evolved and courses started getting stretched. The literally called it ‘Tiger-proofing’ a course and even Augusta did it. Think about that for a second, courses actually started redesigning because he was so much longer than the rest of the field. The most prestigious course in the country went through multiple renovations essentially because of one player.
As others have stated, he is the sole reason golf got to the heights it did, that purses got so high, that tv coverage became so universal, that the game became so international and that more minorities started playing. And the current stars will tell you all that themselves and often do.
Thanks. Makes sense. But, didn't most of the internationals you listed come on after Tiger's decline? And, didn't a lot of the conditioning stuff start after Tiger had made others need to turn to it to catch up? I guess what I'm asking is for how long did Tiger actually win against those top internationals in top shape?
Good point! I think I was putting in an implicit criteria - "depth of talent pool". It's one reason why I wouldn't put 4 decathletes on the Mount Rushmore. Track loses many of its best athletes to football, and decathlon loses many of its best athletes to sprinting.
Yes and no. Golf isn’t as linear as to who wins majors. The top level of competition got a lot stronger and the secondary level - ones that could turn it on and win any given week but usually weren’t consistently in the conversation - got a lot healthier. I’d argue not only did the top 20 get stronger but also the following 21-50. He won Tour player of the year just four years ago, well after the car accident and beginning of his decline. He spent almost six years consecutively as top ranked golfer in the world and has over twice as many weeks in that spot as number two on that list (683 v. 331, Greg Norman).
The current field of internationals has certainly taken a step forward, but part of that is his absence and also, again, fitness and technology. But it didn’t happen overnight and golf is much more of a weekly grind than other sports, more jockeying, more competition from out of nowhere. The competition level on average is far and away more - I don’t know if this is the right term but - randomly consistent? It might not be the same guy every week but you’re damn sure someone is going to bring their game on a weekly basis, be it an international or an American.
The fitness angle certainly played a part during his run. As I noted, Duval was on course for a HoF career and essentially ruined his career by trying to keep up with Tiger. He’s admitted as much. And it led to a new breed of golfer that starts out like that, as an athlete, instead of going into another sport. Lang of these guys could be legit players in other sports if they had chosen that route. But, in part, because of Tiger they chose golf.
Michael Phelps should be nowhere near this conversation. Your sport awarding a gazillion gold medals for doing minor variations of the same thing should not elevate your status as an athlete. The strongest guy or the best fighter or wrestler or whatever wins one gold medal and Michael Phelps gets 9? It's dumb. If weightlifting were like swimming they would award a medal for every possible exercise you can do in the gym. Then we could hear how someone is the greatest Olympian ever because he won the squat, the curl, the bench, the incline bench, the dumbbell press, the deadlift, the overhead press and 2 different individual medleys incorporating various lifts that measure the same strengths as things he already won other medals in.
Also, weight classes are dumb.
Also, weight classes are dumb.
What about someone like Heiden? It's just speed skating, right? But what he did was win at EVERY SINGLE distance. It would be like a guy winning both the 100m and the 10,000m - a feat that's virtually impossible, but Heiden did the speed skating equivalent.
He was also a good cyclist who competed in the Tour de France and completed the Giro d'Italia
I think we can all acknowledge that running/skating distances is a much different challenge than switching up a stroke.