OT: TV debate on greatest athlete

[PatsGuy]

Waiting for the National Cornhole Championship to finish on ESPN2 ...

Whomever wins will be the greatest athlete in the world ....

Seriously ... my vote goes to Serena Williams .... truly dominates her sport.

I think Felix Hernandez of the Mariners should at least have his name in the discussion.

Can u prov

Waiting for the National Cornhole Championship to finish on ESPN2 ...

Whomever wins will be the greatest athlete in the world ....

Seriously ... my vote goes to Serena Williams .... truly dominates her sport.

I think Felix Hernandez of the Mariners should at least have his name in the discussion.

Can u provide updates re: the Cornhole Championships? I'm hoping this becomes an Olympic Event!

 

[borg]

Lebron has mental toughness? You must be speaking of a different lebron, the one that plays in Cleveland has mentally crumbled repeatedly in the face of adversity in the playoffs. Hell, he had to get a kiss from his mommy on the bench after getting a boooo on a rough play at the rim this past nba finals...

Magic would kiss Isaah

Lebron has mental toughness? You must be speaking of a different lebron, the one that plays in Cleveland has mentally crumbled repeatedly in the face of adversity in the playoffs. Hell, he had to get a kiss from his mommy on the bench after getting a boooo on a rough play at the rim this past nba finals...

....and Magic made out with Isaiah before their games. With regards to Momma James....she was just trying to complete her "do every NBA player" bucket list before Bron Bron took his talents elsewhere

 

[Ice_Ice_Brady]

Sounds really serious if they put on Phelps, who is past his prime so why not add Federer, Nadal, and Woods? LeBron, who currently has as many titles as Eli Manning. The UConn women's basketball team, which should a dead giveaway about the stupidity of this list considering this is a team and not an athlete. And Serena Williams, who possibly is secretly a man with her huge muscles and legs, and who is great because she plays against other women who do not have the physique of a man, while she whooped playing against actual men.

 

[RelocatedPatFan]

Swimming is the only sport where you do virtually the same thing several different ways and get a medal for each. Four races of the same distance awarded Phelps four medals for using different strokes. If Carl Lewis got to run the 100m, then the 100m with his left arm behind his back, then the 100m with his right arm behind his back he would probably stack up many times more medals. There is a reason why those multiple gold records typically get earned by swimmers, before Phelps it was held by Mark Spitz for doing virtually the same thing. Being the most dominant swimmer of the Olympics and having a dozen medal earning events to do that thing over and over.

While I agree that swimming gives a person a real advantage in collecting gold medals.

Swimming strokes are largely different from one another and require different techniques/mechanics and it's not unheard of for swimmers to specialize or only be good in one particular stroke. It would be more akin to Carl Lewis running 100m dash, 100m hurdles, 100m shuttle run, aand something else. Plus having relays in said events too.

 

[patsfan13]

Sounds like the TV discussion was current athletes. In terms of historically great records, I would point out Bill Russell for team sports and Edwin Moses for individual. Athlete.

Russell 11 championships in 13 years, never lost an elimination game.

Edwin Moses

Moses was born in Dayton, Ohio. Having accepted an academic scholarship to Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, he majored in physics and industrial engineering, while competing for the school track team. Morehouse did not have its own track, so he used public high school facilities around the city to train. Initially, Moses competed mostly in the 120-yard hurdles and 440-yard dash. Before March 1976, he ran only one 400 m hurdles race, but once he began focusing on the event he made remarkable progress. His trademark technique was to take a consistent 13 steps between each of the hurdles, pulling away in the second half of the race as his rivals changed their stride pattern. That summer, he qualified for the US team for the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal. In his first international meet, Moses won the gold medal and set a world record of 47.63 seconds.

After breaking his own world record the following year, Moses lost to West Germany's Harald Schmid on 26 August 1977 in Berlin, his fourth defeat in the 400 m hurdles. Beginning the next week, when he beat Schmid by 15 meters in Düsseldorf, Moses did not lose another race for nine years, nine months and nine days.

By the time American Danny Harris beat Moses in Madrid on June 4, 1987, Moses had won 122 consecutive races, set the world record two more times, won three World Cup titles, a World Championship gold, and earned his second Olympic gold medal in Los Angeles, where he was selected to take the Olympic Oath. After losing to Harris, he won 10 more races in a row, collecting his second world gold in Rome in August of the same year, and then he finished third in the final 400 m race of his career at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul.

Amazing consistency. 122 straight wins over almost 10 years.

 

[nabwong]

Not sure if Brady would be in my top 10.

Phelps, messi, Jordan, federer, senna, tiger, Bolt, Ali

Fu mingxia - youngest ever World champ at 12 and youngest ever Olympic champ at 13.

 

[IcyPatriot]

In terms of Brady and the athlete discussion ...

He never did race Wilfork 1 v 1 ... so there's that.

 

[lurker1965]

Back in the Days before Spy-gate E!SPN had an offseason bracket to determine the best athlete. The winner was Tiger Woods. I crap you not.
E!SPN lost all credibility before spy-gate.

 

[Patriot Missile]

All nonsense. Put Brady in a pool and he will sink to the bottom. Put Phelps under center and he would be crushed mere seconds after the ball was hiked.

Brady vs Bolt in the 100 meter? Well we have all seen his combine. Although Bolts speed may help him at Qb I'm pretty sure he wouldn't be effective in the pocket.

Federer vs Brady in a tennis match. Yep and vise versa.

Stupid as all hell to compare other sports to each other. Must be some really bored people out there.

Although golf is a good sport I find it laughable they are considered athletes mouthed in the same sentence as other sports.

 

[patfanken]

Best ATHLETE? Tom Brady isn't in the top 1000.....though an argument that he's the greatest football player of all time is perfectly legit. The thing is there are 3 things that put Tom Brady into the discussion of GOAT....and NONE of them have to do with athletic ability.

1. The single physical ability that differentiates Brady from his peers ISN'T athletic. It's his ability to PROCESS what he sees on the field better and faster than anyone else in the NFL. His edge is MENTAL not physical

2. Also on the "mental" side is his fierce competitive nature. This is what drives Brady to compete at such a high level years after he's had "nothing to prove". People forget that Brady came into the league as a "game manager" with an average to below average arm. His early stats are nothing to get excited about. But Brady has ALWAYS been about getting better. Most people thought that arm strength is what it is. You have it or you don't. Brady broke that universal rule. In fact he shattered it. His obsession with improvement kept him striving to improve his physical skills, his footwork, and arm angles to the point that by the middle of his career Brady was universally perceived as being a "strong armed QB", with one of the better arms in the league.

That is NOT supposed to happen. Can you name another example of a QB prior to Brady who came into the league with one kind of arm strength and ended it with another? I've been watching the NFL since the mid 50's and I can't think of one. However because of what Brady has accomplished, I wouldn't be surprised if it happens sometime in the future.

3. Since football is the ultimate TEAM sport. A sport where the a single individual has the LEAST effect on the outcome, Brady fell into the perfect situation with the right coaches and systems to be able to excel and thrive at all the different stages of his career

None of the things that REALLY make Brady who he is have anything to do with his athletic ability. It has been Brady's MIND that has excelled beyond his peers.

IMHO, No football players should be included in the "greatest athlete" discussion. By it's very nature, in football one's success is determined SO much by so many others, from the coaching to the 1o other players on the field, plus the 11 other playing on the other side of the ball. All are indispensable to ANY individual football player's success.

On a side note - RE Labron: You might have held up the "choke" card with him early in his career, but not recently. He was the key player in 2 titles with Miami, and what he did with this Cleveland team was nothing short of epic ,getting THAT team to game 6 of the finals

 

[Ice_Ice_Brady]

All nonsense. Put Brady in a pool and he will sink to the bottom. Put Phelps under center and he would be crushed mere seconds after the ball was hiked.

Brady vs Bolt in the 100 meter? Well we have all seen his combine. Although Bolts speed may help him at Qb I'm pretty sure he wouldn't be effective in the pocket.

Federer vs Brady in a tennis match. Yep and vise versa.

Stupid as all hell to compare other sports to each other. Must be some really bored people out there.

Although golf is a good sport I find it laughable they are considered athletes mouthed in the same sentence as other sports.

This ^

I am trying to think about if I were evaluated in my profession the same way as these athletes are.

<Theoretically, if I were the the best at what I do, it would go like this:>

I was voted the best recruiting firm owner in the world. However, I was voted the #3 best owner when you also include law firms and accounting firms. Because Joe Schmo is better at running his law firm than I am at running my recruiting firm (makes zero sense, since there are few similarities.) And of course, I am just barely in the top 10 when you compare the way I run my recruiting firm to the best in the world at running their medical firms, marketing firms, etc. (again, our goals, clients, and methods are all very different by necessity, yet people still compare and rank them.)

Anyone else want to try doing this with your profession? Try to stacking it up against other professions which have no relevance or true comparisons? How can you compare playing the quarterback position to racing in a pool? The only rankings that Brady should appear in is against other QBs, not even against other NFL players. It makes zero sense.