by Michael DeLuca
It’s a debate that’s been had time and time again, but now there’s a new name to add to the list of all-time greatest athletes, U.S. super swimmer Michael Phelps. I’ll count down from #10 to #1 my top ten athletes of all time…and no, I’m not going to count horses.
10. John Elway- Elway may have been just as good of a baseball player as he was a football player. While there are many who can play two sports, few choose the rigors of the NFL when another option is present. Elway did and went on to play 16 seasons for the Denver Broncos, capping his career with consecutive Super Bowl victories!
9. Lance Armstrong – This guy biked the crap out of a bunch of foreigners while battling cancer.
8. Gordie Howe- It’s hard to consider hockey players great athletes because let’s be honest…every good hockey player you know sucked at every other sport. Howe, on the other hand, got the nod based upon adding durability (he retired at 52) and fighting to his scoring, skating, and passing repertoire.
7. Wilt Chamberlain - Look, I’ve done the calculations and studied every angle…it’s impossible to have slept with over 20,000 women. Despite being a liar, Chamberlain was one of the greatest basketball players of all time and excelled at track and field well before his NBA days.
6. Jackie Robinson - As a point guard for the UCLA Bruins, Robinson twice led the Pac 10 in scoring. He was also an All-American running back. He played a third sport as well that I hear he was pretty good at.
5. Dave Winfield - Only athlete ever to be drafted in three professional sports; basketball, football, and baseball. Not only was Winfield a rare combination of power and speed, but he was an extremely accomplished pitcher while in college at Minnesota as well.
4. Edison Arantes do Nascimento- Alright I’m screwing with you. You probably know him better as Pele. Hands down greatest player in the history of soccer. Only guy to ever win three World Cup titles. The sport may be as boring as watching slugs mate, but these guys are incredible athletes.
3. Jim Brown – In addition to football, Brown excelled at baseball, basketball, lacrosse, and boxing. He could have played professionally in any of these sports. He chose football and went on to be arguably the best running back in NFL history. Oh yeah, he placed fifth in the 1956 decathlon championship.
2. Michael Jordan- There’s no other professional who ever dominated his sport quite like MJ. From his electrifying dunks to his clutch jumpers, #23 was simply the man on the basketball court. Jordan, at 31 years of age, played minor league baseball and is also an accomplished golfer.
1. Bo Jackson – No other athlete has dominated two professional sports the way Bo Jackson did. And while many will name athlete after athlete who could have performed at a high level in two sports but chose to focus on one, the proof is in the pudding. In his rookie season, 1987, Bo averaged 6.8 yard per carry. In 1989, Bo hit 32 home runs and stole 26 bases.
Hey, notice something. That’s right…no Phelps. C’mon now, the guy swims for Pete’s sake. Granted what he’s doing is impressive, but all of this “greatest athlete” crap is purely media driven. Sure if I extended this list out a bit, he’d poke his head in. But it’s more fun to leave him out while everybody else is busy swinging from his sack.
I agree. Phelps belongs on a list, bt not this one. He belongs on, “Most likely to be the next person Sportscenter blows waaaaay out of proportion, “Most likely to make Ryan Seacrest jealous,” or “Most likely to be no where to be found in 5 years.”
As for the list: Lance Armstrong? C’mon Duke. He did steriods and America won’t accept it. Why do we kill Bonds for the same thing but not Lance? Because Owen Wilson worshiped him in You, Me, and Dupree? Ditto Vince Vaughn in “Dodgeball”? He’s a pompous jerk (he left his wife who cared for him during his darkest days of cancer for Sheryl Crow {media hog anyone} and then stole Kate Hudson from his supposed good friend Owen Wilson who battled depression the FIRST time she left him. Yea, there’s a real role model. A liar-drug user and a home wrecker. He’s classless and wouldn’t be on my list even if he did have an ounce of class.
On a lighter note, I hated Deion Sanders for his attitude, greediness, and bad rapping, but he belongs on a top-10 athlete list for his various achievments. Ditto Donovan McNabb (I know what your thinking, homer, but he was a great basketball player at Syracuse, and good baseball player as a kid),Julius Peppers,Charlie Ward,Tom Glavine (an accomplished hockey player and scratch golfer) and Brian Jordan.
Sanders and Peppers got consideration. As did Tony Gonzalez, who you did not mention. I didn’t take character, personality, morals, or ethics into account when creating this list, just pure athletic ability.
Great fodder, Jackson gets the top spot…hmmm…maybe, but a career .250 can’t be the best athlete of all-time. Great accomplishment that he played both and played them both well, but even Dieon was a .263 hitter and stole 186 bases. Jackson did hit 141 home runs, but then again Dave Bell even hit 123.
Pele…beat it. Its soccer.
Where is Tiger, I don’t like the guy or the sport, but the guy is pretty amazing.
Jim Thorpe missed your list too, and he even had a higher MLB average then Jackson did.
@Gill
Tiger – Knew that one would come up in a hurry. Look, I’ll call golf a sport. And as a sport, it’s a notch above chess…which even though technically it is a sport, I refuse to call it one. But I can’t consider you an athlete if at no point during play is “moving quickly” a requisite. I don’t care whether it’s running, cycling, or swimming…but it’s got to be in there somewhere. Remember, I’m talking pure athletic ability here.
Thorpe – Yeah, I’ve read all about him. Very impressive. And if I were doing a time piece in which you were being compared only to your contemporaries, he’d be in. Fact of the matter is I feel that many factors – including diet, workout equipment, medicine, and supplementation make modern athletes superior to their predacessors.
Duke, lets see you go walk a full 36 holes of golf, four days in a row…you wont’t even play wiffle ball. I hate golf, but playing it is taxing. It wear you out physically and mentally.
When making the list I was trying to think – Hey, if we randomly pulled 10 athletic events out of a hat that included every athletic event in creation and these guy’s had to compete against one another, who might come out on top.
Funny, when I look at Tiger woods, he looks like a safety that could take you out over the middle, the guy is jacked.
If thats the case, I am throwing Tom Glavine into the mix, he is a fringe HOF pitcher and was a first round pick in the NHL draft.
Glavine’s definately in the mix. Would you put him top ten?
I have to get Tigers back. For goodness sake, the guy is jacked up. He is a freak with his workout regime. This is Tiger Woods workout, reported by Ron Kaspriske with Golf Digest in August 2004:
When he is not competing, Woods typically spends three or four hours a day, five times a week, in the gym. For these high-intensity workouts, said my source (let’s call him Deep Bunker), he varies the focus of each session from strength training to improvements in cardiovascular performance. He usually starts with 30 minutes of some kind of cardiovascular warm-up exercise such as pedaling on a stationary bike. Then he’ll perform a 30-minute session of total-body stretching, focusing on the muscles of the legs and trunk. A trainer assists him with physical therapy, manipulating his body to prepare the joints for the rigors of swinging a golf club as violently as Woods does. Everything from the kneecaps to the vertebrae are prepared for battle.
When Woods finishes his cardio workout, he moves to strength training. On high-intensity days, he lifts 80 percent of his maximum weight doing exercises such as the bench press, the shoulder press and squats. (Some people who have seen him work out estimate he can bench-press about 300 pounds.) One of the reasons Woods added 25 pounds to his frame is that he focused his weight training on lifting heavy weights in sets of six to eight repetitions.
His training involves almost anything you find in a gym–weight machines, free weights, dumbbells, medicine balls and various items for stretching and balancing, such as inflatable rubber “physio” balls and foam cylinders. But what Woods does differently from a typical weight lifter, says Deep Bunker, is that he tries to perform various exercises in movements and positions that mimic the golf swing. He works on his golf posture and grip strength while, say, lifting dumbbells.
Woods also performs many exercises that build core strength. This term, relatively new to fitness, means strengthening the muscles that stabilize your body. Core training involves keeping the torso in place while taking your limbs through different movements. This allows you to improve the muscles of the abdomen and back, key muscles needed for the twisting the body withstands during the golf swing. For instance, Woods may kneel on an inflatable ball and perform an exercise like a dumbbell curl while trying to maintain his balance on the ball. He also anchors long rubber bands to fixed positions and performs movements similar to the golf swing.
Not an athlete, I think not. He is unreal and if you don’t take time to watch him when he is action you are missing something special.
Hold on for a second. I never said he’s not an athlete, I said golf is not a true demonstration of overall athletic abiility. As far as Woods goes, I simply didn’t think he was worthy of being among the top 10 athletes of all time. Top 20 maybe, but I’d still have to put him behind guys like Julius Peppers, Tony Gonzalez, Deion Sanders, and T.O.
what the hell, who are these people? Most of you list is completed by the best at american sports that other countries don’t give a shit about. In my opinion a list of best athletes should have more sports on it. Where are all the runners, swimmers, pentathletes, skaters, ect…..
(and no its not as boring as watching slugs mate, at least it doesn’t stop every ten seconds like baseball and football. You can’t even have a world cup of football because nobody can tolerate that game.)
James,
All apologies, but my ignorant American ass has no idea what “pentathletes” are? Oddly enough, each sport you mentioned includes men in spandex…you might want to look into that.
HAHAHAHAH nice one Duke. I’m American and i like football. Call me arrogant or obnoxious, but thats just me. I’m a simple man with simple tastes.
Impressive list…but…you forget an Olympic Athlete who played pro Baseball & pro Football, helped start the NFL & was the first President of the NFL….and yeah… won two Gold Medals in the 1912 Olympics, one in the Pentathlon (5 events in 1 day) & one Gold medal in the Decathlon (10 events in 2 days) and at the same Olympiad…no other athlete in history has even tried to accomplish this much less come close to doing it…JIM THORPE !!!!!!!!!
check out the facts on our web site: http://www.Mo-IL-Olympians.org
John /1972 U.S. Olympic Team