OT - 50 Greatest Black Athlete Poll

This list doesn’t reflect my personal voting, and I am pretty surprised by some of the results. But, I read through the methodology and - as you'd expect - there are wide discrepancies in voting based on gender, education, race, and other factors. 

I think they got most of them right.  I agree with the top 5 for sure.

It'll be interesting who they put in their "50 Greatest White Athlete" Poll.  I would think Gretzky and Tom Brady would be included just based on championship success alone.

You've got to be kidding, Nobody ever heard of her before the last Olympics. She was a wonderful, refreshing surprise to us all and a true credit to U.S. athletics, but #8 all-time? No way.

One absolutely glaring omission is Jack Johnson, the flamboyant long-time heavy weight champ, who gave rise to the expression Great White Hope, as he crushed a succession of white challengers. Always politically incorrect, he thumbed his nose at the notion that blacks should know their place and paid dearly for it in the end. BTW, our own James Earl Jones played Johnson in 1970's The Great White Hope; a film definitely worth watching.

That's odd. I don't see a single scrappy gym rat film maven bring-your-lunch-pail-to-work athlete on that list. Must be an oversight

This list is so bad that it's funny. Personally I'd put Jessie Owens, Jack Johnson, Joe Louis, Robinson, Pele, and Ali at the top of the list. Not only were they undoubtedly the best in the world, but they also shook the world the hardest. Jordan doesn't even make my top 10.

Bo Jackson should be top 10

Hurdler Edwin Moses won two golds in the Olympics, an Olympic bronze twelve years after winning his first gold, and two World Championships.  He'd likely have another Olmpic medal - probably a gold one - if not for the US boycott of the 1980 Summer games. He was the Track & Field News athlete of the year that year despite missing the Olympics.  I'll admit to a hometown bias with him.

Josh Gibson may have been the best baseball player ever.  We'll never know, but some who saw him said he rivaled Ruth.

Mike Tyson has to be on the list if we're just looking at athletic peformance.  A number of the people on the list never had a dominant run like he did. 

 

 

These lists are always dumb, and setting aside the (in my opinion) poor premises both in the concept of the list and the criteria they use:

The top 7 make sense to me in some order. The rest of it? Great athletes there, but honestly bizarre.

And Pele at #22 is stupid. 

Either this is a worldwide list and he is top 5, or it is an Amero-centric list and he barely makes it. Prior to the careers of Lionel Messi and Christiano Ronaldo, whose places in history have not yet been fully resolved, he was considered with Diego Maradona to be one of the two greatest players in history in what is by far the world's most popular and important sport. He was and is an ambassador for the game and an icon in his native Brazil. 

Putting him at #22 is just lipservice to the idea that "yeah this guy is nice too." No, sorry, he is a Michael Jordan in his sport, and his sport is a huuuuuuge deal. And it's not like he's the only black guy to have a major impact in non-American sports. Where are they? 

That's just one problem with one place on the list. But, as people have illustrated, there are a host of others. And Jim Brown, by any criteria used by this list, is getting the shaft.

Not sure who I would knock off, though.

It's no wonder this list is a complete farce given the methodology. Per the article:

"Each athlete was ranked on four factors: overall ranking, dominance, inspiration and impact on society."

Ranking athletes from different sports is going to be subjective enough even if you limit it to what happens on the playing field, but then you add in "inspiration" and "impact to society"? Exactly how does one measure inspiration and impact? And these will be extremely biased for people we just watched/are currently watching. And what the f*%# does "Overall Ranking" mean??? Did they really ask people to give each athlete individual rankings in the 3 criteria and then an overall ranking? Shouldn't the sum (or average) of the 3 be the overall ranking??? Jeebus.  

Anytime you let the general public vote on these things, you're going to get goofy results, complete with recency bias (Simone and Gabby) as well as glaring omissions (Tiger). I realize this is mostly done in the name of content, but it would've been far more impactful to have a list created by a knowledgeable panel.

Is Puerto Rican.

He was the greatest athlete of the last half of the 20th century -- be it black, white, yellow or green.  He passes two basic tests for being considered truly great.  First of all, he was a multi sport superstar excelling at both football and lacrosse.  Secondly, he was so dominant his sport that they changed a rule to temper his success.  There are not many athletes that this can be said for (although Wilt Chamberlain is one.)  In his case, in lacrosse, reputedly they implemented a rule requiring cradling while moving up the field in order to force him to carry the ball away from his body.  (Contrast this w/ Michael Jordan for whom the NBA actually tightened rules on hand checking so as not to impede his scoring.)  Moreover, he was such an incredible physical specemin that it could be argued that at > 230 lbs he would still be a dominent player today.

Who gives a shit?!