Gordie Howe:  Howe is an interesting figure.  Many will tell you he was a big tough man.  Reality check: he was 6’1”, 205 pounds, the same size as the Fabulous Moolah.  I am bigger than Gordie Howe, and I am not even big for an accountant.  He does own various career records, but that is primarily because he played until he was 137 years old, the same age as the Fabulous Moolah.  Only once in his career did he score more than 100 points (in 1964, when he was 84 years old and played with a walker instead of skates).  His teams often contended for the Stanley Cup, but he won only four despite playing in just a six team league.  He was  a goon and a cheap shot artist who had almost as many penalty minutes as he did points. You do have to respect the fact that he played for 12 decades, and that his shirt was worn by Cameron Frye in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.  Those are his two greatest career accomplishments.

Actually, I am only having fun with Gordie.  For my money, he is the 3^rd best hockey player ever, right after the Great Gretzky, and Bobby Orr.

Michael Jordan:  I am certainly not going to dispute that Jordan is amongst the greatest athletes ever.  He was.  I just believe that his greatness has been dramatically over stated by people who should know better.  I have heard some people say that he was the greatest athlete of the 20^th century.  He was not…Babe Ruth was.  Others have said that he was the greatest basketball player ever.  Again, he was not.  That honor goes to Bill Russell, who only won 11 NBA championships.  Others have said he was amongst the handful of greatest players in the history of college basketball, which is absurd.  He was certainly a very good player at the college level, but was not even the second  best player on his own team for most of his career.  If you Google his biography, undoubtedly it will claim that he lead North Carolina to the NCAA title in 1983.  He did no such thing…he was only the 3^rd best player on that team, after James Worthy and Sam Perkins.  Others have said he was by far the best player of his generation.  This is kind of true.  He was the best player of his own generation, but he was not head and shoulders above everyone else.  He was a little bit better than Magic Johnson and Larry Bird.  Between those two they won eight NBA championshsips.  While Jordan won more than either of them (six), the reality is that he did not face elite competition during his title years.  He did not win his first title until Johnson and Bird were slowed by age.  This is not a coincidence.  His Bulls teams could not have beaten the Magic Lakers teams or the Bird Celtics teams consistently.  The teams he defeated in the finals were not elite teams.  He defeated a past its prime Lakers team, and then a series of mediocre conference champions, including the Portland Trail Blazers, Phoniex Suns, Seattle Supersonics, and Utah Jazz twice.  All good teams…none of them as good a the Celtics, Lakers, or Pistons teams of the 1980s.  It is telling that when Jordan took his two year hiatus, the NBA titles were won by the Houston Rockets, who were simply not very good.  Had Jordan and his Bulls teams played five years earlier, Jordanmight be remembered like George Gervin:  A guy who scored a lot of points, but was not a winner.

Tiger Woods:  I have heard many people say that Tiger Woods is the greatest athlete today.  Those people are over-looking one important fact: GOLF IS NOT A SPORT, AND GOLFERS ARE NOT ATHLETES.  If you are going to count Tiger Woods as an elite athlete because he a great golfer, I want to know who the best croquet, lawn darts, bowling, and billiards players are, because those activities take about as much athletic skill as does golf.  Golf was invented by wealthy middle-aged out-of-shape men in Scotland, to avoid spending time with their families eating Scottish pudding, listening to their seven year old play the bagpipes, and wearing a kilt.  Golf takes no athleticism whatsoever.  Gosh, Bob Hope was good at it.  I believe Tiger is a good athlete, but I also believe that there are a few guys in my gym who are better all around athletes than he is. 

Phil Rizutto:  This career 273 hitter was an above average shortstop who had the good fortune to have  played on many great teams. He had one terrific season (1950) in which he won the MVP and that was it.  He was elected to the Hall of Fame 38 years after he retired only because of the influence of the New Yorkmedia, which worked hard to get him elected because they liked him and because he was a Yankee.  His mediocrity as a player was more or less overlooked due to the success of the teams he played on.  It’s like KC Jones being elected to the NBA Hall of Fame, which he was:  a nice role player who won a lot of championships because of the talent around him.  Rizutto was certainly a very good player, an entertaining broadcaster, and a fine gentlemen.  But, he was not amongst the 25 best shortstops ever to play the game.

The Pittsburgh Steelers Offense of the 1970s:  The Pittsburgh Steelers of the 1970s are arguably the greatest dynasty in NFL history. They were lead by a dominant defense –  the greatest ever assembled.  The offense was above average…but nothing great.  Despite this, the offense produced five hall of famers, and the defense only produced four.  People who grew up watching this team like I did will be shocked to hear this.  Perhaps this unit’s over-rated status was exemplified by Lynn Swann, who was nothing more than an above average receiver throughout his career.  People have glorified him because of a handful of spectacular catches in two Super Bowls.  But in a nine-year career, he made three pro bowls and only one AP All Pro Team.  Let’s ompare his career to that of Stanley Morgan, who played in approximately the same era but would never be seriously considered for a the hall of fame. 

Swann:  336 catches, 5,462 yards, 16.3 YPC, 51 touchdowns.

Morgan  557 catches, 10,716 yards,19.2 YPC, 72 touchdowns.

This is not even close.  Morgan had 65% more catches, almost twice as many yards, and 40% more touchdowns, playing on a much worse team than did Swann (Swann also had a hall of fame quarterback throwing to him).  And Swann is in the Hall of Fame and Morgan is not. Ridiculous.  And, the reputations of almost the entire offense of that era is viewed through the same unrealistic prism, all because they had the good fortune to be teamed with the greatest defense that ever was.

Bo Jackson:  Many have called Bo Jackson the greatest athlete ever, supposedly because he was great in two professional sports.  A more accurate description would be that he was mediocre in two professional sports.  He played professional baseball from 1986 – 1994.  During this time he batted less than 250 with 141 home runs and 415 RBIs, and was a one-time all star.  He hit 30 home runs and 100 RBIs only once each, and, despite making the occasional spectacular play on defense, was a below average fielder.  In four seasons in the NFL, he accumulated for 2,812 all purpose yards, and 16 touchdowns.  He was useless as a blocker and rarely caught a pass. Marshall Faulk had similar numbers in one season as Jackson accumulated during a career.  Perhaps he would have been better had he stayed healthy, but that’s the point:  he was never able to stay healthy, in high school, college, or the pros.  While he may have been one of the most talented athletes ever, he was not one of the best ever.  Eventually, you have to produce.  Jackson never did.

Muhammad Ali.  “The Greatest” was anything but.  While he was certainly one of the greatest heavy weights of all time, he was not the greatest ever and may not have even been the greatest of his era.  He had three fights against Joe Frazier.  History records that he won two of them; reality suggests that he lost all three. In his first fight against Frazier, Frazier won by unanimous decision.  In the second fight Ali won by decision.  However, Ali cheated throughout the match by pulling down on Frazier’s head during clinches (over the course of a lengthymatch this paralyzes the neck and is illegal).  Frazier’s corner complained about this throughout the fight, and the referee acknowledges that this cheating happened.  The referee gave a rather puzzling explanation for why he allowed Ali to cheat so blatantly throughout the match:  Frazier himself did not complain, only his corner men did.  Failure to complain, in his eyes, meant that the illegal tactics we acceptable.  In the 3^rd fight, Ali beat Frazier when Frazier’s corner stopped the fight after the 14^th round.  Unbeknownest to Frazier, Ali had already instructed his corner to stop the fight (this was confirmed by Ali’s doctor).  Ali quit, and Frazier wanted to keep fighting but was not allowed to (he was seen standing and arguing with his team at the end of the 14^th round).  History records Ali as the winner, but he was the one who quit and was too exhausted to continue fighting.  Ali also lost other fights, including to Ken Norton and Larry Holmes.  He also fought a so-so fighter named Jimmy Young, and won by decision.  However, this was an awful fight, but one most thought Ali lost. Young literally stepped leaned outside the ring to avoid contact on more than one occasion during the bout, a la a WWF wrestler.  Ali barely beat Chuck Wepner, who may have lost to the Fabulous Moolah had they fought (interesting footnote:  in this fight Wepne was the inspiration for Rocky Balboa and Ali for Apollo Creed).  While Ali was a great fighter, George Foreman who fought in the same era was arguably more dominant.  Ali’s career records was 56-5 with 37 knockouts.  Foreman’s record during the same era was 69-2 with 65 knockouts, fighting largely the same fighters (Foremen lost a couple of matches in the 1990s, but the 69-2 mark is more relevant in comparisons with Ali since those fights happened in roughly the same time frame as Ali’s career span). The fact that Ali beat Foreman in their only head to head bout is not persuasive.  Foremen beat Frazier and Norton easily withearly round knockouts, and both of those fighters defeated Ali. 

Joe Namath:  The most over-rated athlete in the history of western civilization.  He has attainted a place in football history because his was the first AFL team to win a Super Bowl, and because he had predicted it in advance against all odd.  In the case of Namath, the reality never lived up to the hype.  People have overlooked the fact that he had just an okay game in the Super Bowl, his supposed shining moment.  Namath threw for 208 yards, no touchdowns, and a passer rating of 83 while his team scored just 16 points.  It was the Jets defense who carried the day, limiting the Colts to only one touchdown.  For his career, Namath completed only 50% of his passes (not good even during the era in which he played), with 173 touchdowns and 220 interceptions.  His career QB rating was 65.5, a full ten points lower than that of Roman Gabriel, a contemporary of Namath who is considered a mediocre player.  Of the 150 players who have enough career attempts to qualify for career passer ranking consideration, and only 17 have a lower quarterback rating than Namath.  Namath is a case of a guy who is not even a mediocre quarterback…he is actually a bad NFL quarterback whose one shining moment has changed his image forever.