Greatest Athlete of all time?

NFL Network is starting a series next month on the top 100 players in NFL history. Could add some interesting fodder to this debate.

 

Its truly remarkable that all the candidates for greatest athlete ever come from the U.S.
You people ever look outside your borders?

 

Great topic, excellent discussion and outstanding contenders (the Babes, Bo, Wilt, Jackie, Jim Thorpe, Jim Brown, Dave Winfield, Lionel Conacher [sorry, not that familiar with Iron Mike Sharpe] and Secretariat.)

Another name worthy of discussion, though, is Army's Mr. Outside, Glenn Davis.

He was a three-time All-America running back, who won one Heisman Trophy and was runner-up for another. Davis averaged 8.3 yards per carry throughout his career and an astounding 11.5 yards per carry in 1945, both NCAA records that still might be standing. In his 38 games for Army, Davis had scored 59 touchdowns. Twenty-seven were over 37 yards, with his longest being 87.

He earned 10 varsity letters at West Point -- four in football, three in baseball, two in track and field and one in basketball. Branch Rickey offered him a $75,000 Dodgers contract after seeing him play as a Cadet.

But perhaps Davis's most impressive feat was his performance on the "Master of the Sword" test the Military Academy devised to test the athletic prowess of future officers. Out of a possible 1,000 points in such events as a 300-yard-run, dodge run, vertical jump, parallel bar dips, softball throw, sit-ups, chin-ups, and the standing broad jump, the average cadet scored 540. Davis scored 926.5 -- the all-time record. I believe it still stands and a lot of remarkable athletes have gone through West Point in the intervening 60-plus years.

 

Do you? Where is your suggestion?

 

No.
America.
Fuck, yeah.

 

Career or for one season?

 

I assumed they mean career. I only saw part of a commercial, so I'm not 100 percent sure.

 

If we are talking first half of the 20th century athletes how we could get this far with only mentioning Hobey Baker in reference to his award. Arguably the top hockey player of his time and simultaniously one of the top football players of his time as well, however detested professional sports so much he refused overtures form both the NHL and professional football, wound up dying at the end of the first world war when his plane crashed -- he was a test pilot -- some believe intentionally.

He was in the initaial class voted into the hockey hall of fame in 1945 -- the only American among the dozen who went in. Was later inducted into the college football hall of fame. Led Princeton to a national championship in football and two in hockey. The top college hockey player of the year is awarded the Hobey Baker Award.

Modern day athletes -- although I was always a more of a gretzky fan -- I submit for judgement Mario Lemieux: who despite being 6'4" and more than 200 pounds, played with the speed and agility of a much smaller player, but also had the size and capability to play the game of a power forward. On top of that his skill level and hand eye coordination was off the charts. So what if he only played one sport? He was the complete package as an athlete. Not to mention he came back off of battling Hodgkin's disease to post some unreal seasons. And like all hockey players he did it all on two blades an eighth of an inch thick.

 

My standards for consideration for "greatest athlete of all time" are, a player:

1) Must have been at least All-Star caliber in one sport, if not an all-time great;

2) Must have played another sport at a reasonably competitive level;

3) There has to be at least some evidence he/she could perform one or more other sports at a high level.

Bo Jackson doesn't get points for playing hockey just because NIKE once put him on skates in a commercial.

However, he was a legitimate All-Star, if only briefly, in both the NFL and MLB, and his reported sprint times suggest he could compete against (if not consistently beat) world-class sprinters.

 

Starman, where would you place Ted Williams then who was also a world class fighter pilot?

It is not really a sport, but it is competetive.