Two Wolverines on ESPN's List of All-Time Unfulfilled Potential
ESPN came up with a list of the 25 athletes with the greatest unfulfilled potential. There are two Michigan athletes on this "coulda-been" list. I could have easily guessed Drew Henson, but not Roy Tarpley. Guess I can't argue.
Also, a Buckeye is No. 1 on the list.
http://espn.go.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/15447349/top-25-unfulfilled-…
ESPN is number 1 on my unfullfilled potential list followed by MTV.
Here's a list of movies that didn't fulfill their potential, or, more correctly, didn't contain the content I expected:
-Deep Impact; Holes; Pacific Rim; Freddy Got Fingered; Octopussy; and, last but not least, Catcher in the Rear...
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Freddy vs Jason. Way more potential!
Did you really want to see Freddy get fingered? If Drew Barrymore wanted no part of this why would you?
the reached the height of their potentials, let us bask in it for a couple of years, then sold out in glorious fashions.
Yes, some of those guys had big potential. Ryan Leaf had big potential. Clarett was a really good college FR, but he wasn't Barry Sanders. Bo Jackson was awesome in college, played well when healthy, and then played baseball. Freddy Adu? Hype.
I dunno, seems kinda like a stupid list to me. But yeah, "60 ESPN experts" I guess were polled, so yeah...
They close the thing with "people that left us wanting more" and I think that's a fair thing for a list to contain. It's just not really what their list contained.
overhyped
immature
roided up
and bad luck with injuries.
it's difficult to see Bo Jackson tied in with Ryan Leaf or Todd Marinovich
Bo doesn't belong anywhere near this list.
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When you have a vague and ambiguous term like "unfulfilled potential," you're bound to get some disagreement over how to define the term. Thus, as you say, some guys on the list that seemingly had unlimited potential and others that were simply over-hyped. The big head scratcher to me is Akili Smith. Sure he was a bust as a draft pick, but so are a handful of other players every year. I also don't get Matt Leinart.
I feel like what they were shooting for were guys who could have been all timers but for something either outside of their control (injuries) or off the field problems (drugs), but some "panelesits" didn't get the memo and included guys that just didnt pan out. Drew Henson is probably more the latter, though I guess there's the argument that focusing on baseball robbed him of his potential on the football field.
I think Bo Jackson is on the list, and ranked relatively low, because he truly was awesome and was showing it when his hip injury prematurely derailed his career. Now he is remembered more as an oddity of a time when it was possible to play professionally in two sports rather than one of the greatest in either sport.
going from the leading player on a ncaa championship team to never taking a snap in the nfl is a pretty solid examplar of missed potential.
that was an all-star in both MLB and the NFL, until a hip injury turned him into a pedestrian pro athlete.
I'm guessing you don't need more than one hand to count the people who have been all-stars in two professional sports. Heck, there aren't that many people that even play two professional sports.
They are confusing two things. They talk about "unfulfilled potential," but they seem to think that's the same thing as "when reality falls short of expectations." For example, Freddy Adu. No doubt reality fell short of many people's expectations. But I don't think the potential was really there; people just thought he had a higher ceiling than he did.
Is that his actual age, though?
This is fucking stupid. Any list about unfullfilled potential that includes (i.e. compares) Bo Jackson and Aaron Hernandez is absolute horseshit.
For what it's worth, if we just stick with dudes with enormous potential who blew it due to misbehavior and/or bad choices I'd say Tarpley and Henson are good choices. Tarpley was a generational talent who was still great for several years in spite of the cocaine.
Tangentially.... My all time M greats are Kramer, Oosterbaan, Carter, Woodson, and Harmon. I'm fairly well convinced that if Antonio Bass didn't get hurt, he would have been a sixth on that list.
Bo Jackson was a physical specimen like nobody had ever seen before, and he only wound up playing 4 years in the NFL. Aaron Hernandez was busy redefining the TE position along with Gronk before winding up in jail for life. It's not a list of busts necessarily. Just "damn, what could have been..."
Valid point, but like some of the posters above categorizing these players might have been a better idea. I just can't stand the thought of comparing the greatest Tecmo Super Bowl player ever to a convicted murderer.
Herschel and Jim Brown were on that athletic level unlike any other.
Deion, Allen Iverson, Lebron James and Lawrence Taylor would come in a notch just below.
Talking pure athleticism of course.
Like him or not, athletically, Lebron deserves to be in the first mentioned. Of course, i don't care for him - so im fine with the omission.
Also, athletically speaking, Derrick Thomas has a very good case being inserted above everyones favorite - Lawrence Taylor. Although he played a nice long career - he did go downhill fairly quickly. But in his prime (college/early pro) there was not a single pass rusher better.
Also, just like Bo Jackson, there is another great at his position that did not get play out his full career and therefore never gets mentioned as an all-time great. My 'under the radar' guy no one talks about, yet was probably one of the best safeties in NFL history (including the guy who comes to most peoples minds in the same era - Ronnie Lott) is Kenny Easley. Stud.
when you have passed up Michael Jordan and Kevin Durant to pick the guys who are #2 and #1 on ESPN's All-time List of Unfulfilled Potential, you've got to be thinking about what could have been. At the time, I thought the Bowie pick was solid; not so much with Oden.
How the hell does Tim Tebow not make the top 25 - he goes from winning a playoff game to not making any NFL team??? Also, Andy Katzenmoyer deserves to be on the list and Tony Mandarich needs to be much higher up - he was the can't miss kid.
"How the hell does Tim Tebow not make the top 25 - he goes from winning a playoff game to not making any NFL team???"
Because GOD is a Broncos fan and does not like the JETS ....clearly.
Tebow couldn't stay away from the weight room and wouldn't play fullback/running back. He was coached to change his workouts in order to shed a little bulk which in theory would free up his throwing motion and subsequently improve his accuracy. But he had to go in and pound the weights.
I sort of believe it.
Tebow had "hype," not pro potential. I don't believe there was any point in his career where people looked at his game and thought that he had hall-of-fame tools.
Nobody seriously wonders "what could've been" with Tebow. Not even his fans. They wanted to see him get a shot, yes, but he basically maxed out what he was capable of in the pros. That is entirely unlike most of the other people on that list.
Broncos fans were completely shocked when McDaniels drafted him -- seemed like the move of a desperate franchise looking to fill the seats (ahem, Cleveland ...looking at you, Johnny Manziel) ..and then after the debacle that was McDaniels and his return to New England, some cried SABBOTAGE!!!
And never, ever, ever, ever, ever doubt the loyalty of the Tebow Fans ...they are insane and utterly illogical.
But wasn't TT a 1st round pick of what is generally considered a "winning", not a perenial losing, organization - Denver. And as part of their ownership/management group is a former Super Bowl qb named John Elway.
so stoked when I got Brien Taylor's rookie card.
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Mine was Eddie Milner. I just googled him to see what he was up to and he died last year. I'm getting old. Mortality sucks.
Antonio Bass would be #1 on that list
The fact that Henson was still able to come back after like five years without a single football snap and have his fifteen minutes as a starting NFL quarterback after his minor-league baseball sojourn is indication enough that he made the wrong decision. Yes, he took the money, but all it took was one more year at Michigan and he would have secured himself a longer, more lucrative, more successful professional sports career. It's infuriating to think what could have been if he'd stuck around.
Also, where's Len Bias on this list?
"All left us wanting more."
If career-ending injuries are on the table, what happened to Bias should count, too.