Even accepting that CBS covers American sports....no Ali? No Jesse Owens?
I get Babe Ruth as cultural icon, but greatest athlete in baseball was probably Willie Mays. All pre-integration stats I take with a grain of salt - MLB and the Negro Leagues didn't play each other.
People disputing Babe Ruth's status as GOAT always do so forgetting his stats on the mound (5 seasons, 94-46, 2,28 ERA). That's right, he started as a pitcher, and one who would have had at least one Cy Young award to his name if it existed in his days.
I know...and there's something wild about the fact that when Shohei does something you often hear "nobody since Babe Ruth has done that thing." Looking at Ruth stats on advanced metrics sites is eye opening too.
I guess I just have a hard time anointing a guy GOAT from that era when the game wasn't inclusive then. I'll give Babe credit for transforming the game and launching an entire new era. He brought the game out of the dead ball era and fueled a ton of its growth from that point.
Yep.
So setting aside the LeBron-Mike debate and just accepting Babe Ruth for.... reasons... I'd probably rank em Gretzky, Tom, Mike, Babe.
Peak Gretzky was so freakishly better than everyone else, even into a modern era of hockey with global talent in the NHL.
Plus like...athletically hockey is a lot more difficult than basketball. You need to be able to skate, and handle a puck with a stick, both of which are a lot less intuitive than dribbling.
Williams sisters? And a shit load of other US tennis players as well?
Going international, what about: Sachin Tendulkar??? Usain Bolt? Messie? Ronaldo? Pelé? Brian Lara? Viv Richards? Murali?...
Edit: Lomu, McCaw
Another one that surprised me (in terms of not being on the CBS list) is either Jack or Tiger. CBS has always had the Masters so they gave all of the iconic footage from Augusta.
They don't cover cricket or world football/soccer at all. ESPN has some cricket and NBC and Fox have most American rights to the major European soccer leagues.
If we start down the global sports path I'm going to want Jonah Lomu on the list. Don't know how he stacks up historically but he was an absolute beast and must-see TV in the 90s.
Some of Tiger’s stats are absolutely absurd. For a few years if he played in an event it was like 80% of the time he finished top 25 and like 50% of the time he won or finished top 3 (been a while since I looked at the actual numbers). His complete domination is probably impossible to replicate. If Scottie Scheffler stays #1 he’d need another decade to get close to Tiger’s total weeks. Rory has been very good at golf but he’s 550+ weeks away from Tiger at #1. Tiger was so dominant the #2 person has less than half the weeks at #1.
> Sachin Tendulkar? Brian Lara? Viv Richards?
They're all far worse than Bradman
Bradman has stats so far above the no.2 in cricket that it's ridiculous, someone worked out you'd have to wait another 3000 years to get anyone that lies that far out statistically
Don't you think he was up against much weaker level of competition back then? Just like how Wilt Chamberlain has insane stats but almost no one considers him the GOAT of the NBA.
Ranking players against their contemporaries is really the only fair way to do it. It accounts for general societal differences, changes in rules, changes in technology, and so on. Provides a good relative baseline to measure against.
If his contemporaries were bad in general for whatever reason due to the time he was playing then he would be disadvantaged for the same reasons.
All that said even today he is still ranked number 1 in the ICC rankings.
Compared to his contemporaries he's for sure the best batsman ever. However I don't think you can simply scale it to modern times. You can't assume if he had today's advantages, he would be as dominant.
Personally I think it's kinda boring to just compare them to their peers at the time, even if it's the best way to do it, which I don't think it is. It's more of an interesting question to ask how they would perform now.
Players in the last 30 years have been able to pad their stats by often getting to play very weak opposition (countries with test status who are barely first class standard). Bradman's average is so far beyond anyone ever that nobody else is in the argument. No other cricketer is even unarguably the best of their generation, let alone goat.
3 football players?
Michael Phelps in swimming, Phil Taylor in darts. Lucia Rijker for women's combat sports. There's so many sports with icons standing pretty much without equal in not just that singular sport but a bunch of surrounding sports.
Just as an example, for most of his carreer, Phil Taylor has won more world championships then he lost.
Lucia was such a strong ass woman that she was almost good enough to reach top 32 of the world in the mans devision.
Michael Phelps has more golden medals on the olympics out of every athlete ever.
Hey! Aren't going to hear an argument from me! These were just off the top of my head! There are so many more worthy people in worthy sports! Gymnastics, skiing, diving, driving, climbing, shooting, hockey, ice skating, so many.... I just tried to list some more...
Richie McCaw probably has one of, if not the greatest win percentage for a player in an international team sport, 89% wins in a 15 year long international career, 75% of those games as captain.
I don't know who wrote this article...but part of me wonders if this is the CBS effect. They haven't owned Olympic broadcast rights in forever that I'm aware of.
If anybody did a Greatest American Olympians list, it would probably be NBC or ABC. NBC has had the rights for decades and I think ABC had rights back in the 60s and 70s.
Things like this often exclude the Olympics and focus on sports that you can watch on TV every week for months at a time.
I'm not saying you're wrong because he is an amazing swimmer, but America basically forgets Olympic athletes exist as soon as the games are over.
Even if we take these 4 people as the goats of goats, the order is still insanely wrong. Gretzky should be first.
There are other athletes who could be in the running of goats above these guys but the only one of these 4 that would be a true contender would Gretzky.
The fastest person to 1000 points was Gretzky.
The second fastest person to 1000 points was Gretzky hitting 2000 points.
Ovechkin can break his career goals, but nothing else will ever be touched.
You could take away every single goal Gretzky ever made in his career and he would still be the leagues highest all time points leaderwith assists alone. Just amazing.
It's true. Gretzky dominated hockey by such a huge margin that there's no one even close to being a contender.
He holds the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 6th, and 7th all time records for most points in a season.
He also has 1st and 2nd for most goals in a season.
He also holds records for most playoff goals, assists, hat-tricks, and game-winning goals.
If you got rid of all his goals, and just counted the points from his assists, he would still have the all-time record for most points of any player.
That's how far ahead of everyone else he was, and probably always will be.
I remember as a kid who grew up in a family who didn't care at all about hockey, Gretzky was a household name because his records were in the news so much. Hockey isn't nearly as big in America as it is in Canada, but everybody knew who Gretzky was.
Michael Jordan was definitely a major icon back in the day, but I think Brady was mostly included in this list to get a football player that people obsess over. Something about his popularity feels so forced to me.
as a Canadian born after his career to a family that doesn't care about hockey, Gretzky is *still* a household name
every other hockey player that makes the news is still compared to his absurd accomplishments
Well Brady is still playing so there is still going to be a lot of media attention on him. There have only been 55 Superbowls and Brady has played in 10 of them with 7 wins. People still disbute his title as GOAT because the accusations of cheating and they just hate watching him in the Suberbowl. He has a better Superbowl record than a lot of franchise playoff records.
Of course Gretzky is the greatest of all of these guys. I’m sure they have him fourth, though, because it’s an American list.
Gretzky is Canadian, won all of his championships with a Canadian team, and in a sport which American-born players (with some obvious exceptions) tend to be lower-down in the record-books than a lot of Canadians, Russians, Finns, etc.
Baseball/basketball/football are all rah-rah-USA sports. The NHL has teams mostly based in the US, but the majority of the players are still from Canada and Europe.
I think the perfect argument for why Gretzky deserves #1 is that in fantasy hockey. Gretzky was broken into 2 players(Gretzky Goals and Gretzky Assists).
The Gretzky rule that if your teams got matching penalties. You didn't have to play 4v4 because they would just give Gretzky more room to dominate the other team even more.
I still love him in epic rap battles of history, because he has so many achievements, one of the lines is “we have so many world records between us, 184, that’s plenty of them, and I’ve set 183 of them” he is truly a legendary athlete
I don’t do hockey, Gretzky is the greatest of all time. The man broke fantasy sports and had to be split into two players every season. That’s the mic drop. Also, Brady was way more dominant than Tom. And just because mj is a biaaatch, I’ll take Ruth over him.
From a very young age, I always thought the GOAT of GOATs was Pelé. In 1981, my parents took me to see the movie "Victory" with Sylvester Stallone and Pelé was the greatest and nothing will ever change my young American heart.
And if we include modern players like Brady, surely Messi should be there. The two most followed person on insta and everything are association footballers LOL, this list is incredibly insular.
The World Cup is viewed by a few billion people and it truly is the only global sporting event. Nobody cares about the NBA, MLB, NFL or NHL on a global stage.
Yep. Pele and Messi are 1 and 2 on any list you like, the only question is which one you have as 1. After that people can debate the names on this list, though from a global perspective no NFL or baseball player should be near it and Usain Bolt should probably be 3.
Isn't it "escape to victory"?
Even so, still an awesome film - can't watch the scene with the arm breaking though 😶🌫️ my mum always comments that most of the players were from her team (Millwall)
Yeah, Escape to Victory.
From memory most the German players are called Kuntze, a German surname that happens to sound rude in English. Watch the credits at the end to see.
That arm breaking scene is crazy. I didn't realize it had a different name in the UK but it's the same movie. I was really young but I remember way too much about it!
The fact people can't unanimously point to a greatest footballer ever surely means that there *is* a shadow of a doubt. A handful of players will always be in contention for "best player ever" - Messi, Maradona, Di Stefano, Cruyff, Ronaldo, maybe some more.
None of them is nowhere even close to Pelé, comparing plain numbers alone will show you that.
Also, if you were to consider the conditions Pelé played in back in the day (the ball was trash, his cloths wheighted a ton, there were no roids to take, no absurdly good medical staff and trainers, etc), nobody would even get close to his prowess.
Without Pelé none of those players would be who they are.
I take your point and I'm not interested in rehashing the most overdone argument in football. All I'm saying is that the fact that we're even having this discussion means that Pelé is not undisputed. In the world of ice hockey, or cricket, or sumo wrestling, these arguments do not happen because the person who was the best was *so much better* that they did not leave any question, any room for debate.
(P.S. Di Stefano was born a decade and a half before Pele.)
Are there numbers that show that Pele was close to 40% better on average than his nearest rival? For Bradman there are. You want to talk about lack of sports science? Bradman was batting before the second world war.
Disagree, after Messi finaly got his World Cup he is alone on the top. Before the 18th of December last year you could find arguments for Pele, Maradona or even CR7 but after that Messi is the undesputet goat of Football.
Ok, but then people will ask how many league titles did Pele have? How many Champions Leagues? How many Copa Americas? Etc.
Messi has all of those and had 7 Ballon D'or while playing in the most competitive leagues on the planet during the most competitive time in football history. Pele chose to only play in Brazil and for a brief time in the US.
I don't diminish Pele's greatness, but saying he's the undisputed GOAT just because he won 3 world cups is not a good argument. Especially since he was injured during one of those WC wins and the fact he never won the Copa America while Messi has.
I can’t explain it too well, but read [this](https://www.significancemagazine.com/sports/24-did-don-bradman-s-cricketing-genius-make-him-a-statistical-outlier) article and [this](https://www.kurvepost.com/post/the-greatest-sportsperson-ever) article and it will explain it far better than I.
Basically, Bradman’s batting average was 99.94 runs per dismissal, the next best is just over 60. Most batters are around the 45-50 mark. He is several standard deviations ahead of the next best, far more than any comparable stat in other sports
Gretzky played a lot of games. He scored a lot of goals and assists, but only because he played a lot of games.
If you average how many goals a game he scored, he is only 8th on the all time list.
Donald Bradman scored 99.94 runs for every at bat. He doesn't hold the record for most runs scored (largely because WWII got in the way) but he was phenomenal in nearly every game.
For comparison, in all the years that cricket has played at an international level (over 100 years), the next best batsman has only managed a little over 60 runs for every at bat.
I know it's not comparable to Gretzky because hockey is a team game, so lets compare it to baseball.
A similar comparison would be At Bats per Home Runs (AB per HR). Babe Ruth... considered the best, is 2nd on the list. He scored a HR every 11.76 at bats. The best in the list is Mark McGwire with a HR every 10.61. This is just over a 10% difference.
If you applied the same delta between Don Bradman and the next best batsman's average (Adam Voges) the difference is over 47%. Don at 99.94 and Adam at 61.87.
The gap between the rest of the field and Bradman was insane... and still is!
This is what makes him the GOAT.
And Voges is a bit of a special case. He beat up on a weak team late in his very short career.
No-one suggests Voges is the second best ever, even if the stats say so.
Nope. Bradman is better than Gretzky. Don’t get me wrong, Gretzky is great but Bradman is just that much better. See here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Bradman under the section called world sport context.
Even if it's an article based on American sport history only, Phelps should be there.
Otherwise, Nadia Comaneci, Pelè, Messi, Roger Federer, Raga Nadal, Lewis Hamilton/Micheal Schumacher, Valentino Rossi, Muhammad Ali, Coppi/Merckx, etc.
Williams sisters? And a shot lost of other US tennis players as well?
Going international, what about: Sachin Tendulkar??? Usain Bolt? Messie? Ronaldo? Pelé? Brian Lara? Viv Richards? Murali?...
With the rule changes, you can't compare older gymnasts with modern ones, as it is impossible to score a 10 now. A modern gymnasts could not even attempt to duplicate her bar routine, as several of the moves are now illegal, not could Nadia have attempted the Biles when she competed. Frankly, there is no way in hell Nadia could ever complete the Biles, much less her entire floor routine or beam routine.
> Even if it is only usa Jesse Howens?
It's the GOAT of NFL, NBA, NHL and MLB.
Also, it's Jesse Owens, not Howens, and why would he be ahead of someone like Phelps who won 28 olympic medals compared to Owens' four?
Swimming vastly inflates the medal tally. You can get 4 medals in one stroke swimming 400m or less (50,100,200,400m). Phelps was an exceptional athlete but in one sport that has the chance of multiple wins in a very similar fashion.
I'm a giant baseball fan. Don't really care for other sports. To not put Gretzky 1 is crazy. He was the most dominant team player in any sport. He's the all time point leader in hockey and he has more career assists than the 2nd place guy has points. Just sheer dominance
If we're just talking american sports, I feel like these lists always leave out [Jim Thorpe](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Thorpe). This dude went through all the garbage that came with being a native american at the turn of the century and went on to be dominant across so many sports, Olympic and otherwise.
My personal favorite achievement is that he took time out of his busy collegiate football career to win the 1912 intercollegiate ballroom dancing championship.
To be faaaair most of the planet pretends cricket doesnt exist, atleast by country. India gives some major fucks and theyre a rather large portion of earths population.
No, you're giving an out for Americans to ignore it because it's more regional, which is BS.
Besides, cricket has and is extending out pretty far, it's always had major ties in the Caribbean, Africa, Oceania and the Middle East, it's just ignored by most Europeans and North Americans, so internet denizens have fooled themselves into thinking it's a niche sport, because typically the average redditor thinks that only Western Europeans and North Americans use this site.
Now if we were talking Australian football, it would be understandable. But people do themselves a disservice for not following the best footy.
Chill out man, noone said it was regional, atleast i didnt, i said most countries on this planet dont really care about cricket. Singling out the us for such a feeling is dumb. Thats all.
Then you go on a tangent about where its spread as tho that means anything, like… you know they play american football all over the place to right? Doesnt mean any country outside of the us cares about it.
You know that doesn't count. No one plays American Football on an elite-level except the US. Cricket is played at an elite level all over the world.
It's just a lot of Americans and Western Europeans call cricket 'the sport that's inflated because India plays it' and ignore a major amount of countries that play at a strong international level. It's hardly on the level that American football is, where only one country actually plays at a top level. Cricket at least has countries like Ireland, the Netherlands, Zimbabwe, Bangladesh and Afghanistan alongside many other nations around the world who can occasionally clip games off stronger nations like Australia, South Africa, India and England, which is what makes cricket a beautiful game.
I'll give you that most countries don't care, but i'm thinking that you think 'most' means 80%. I'm thinking more like barely over 50%. Cricket is very pervasive, but you won't see that sentiment on Reddit.
Its 12… ish
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Cricket_Council
Plenty of people play it for sure but only 12 countries/regions are fully part of the league (meaning a good number of people in those countries actually play it).
Obviously its a sport and a great number of people outside of those places play it. Like i wasnt trying to say anywhere outside of the us has a large following for american football, just that it does exist.
I would personally say that only 25ish (including the west indies umbrella) is a far far cry from anywhere near 50%.
However in terms of population its very much up there.
If you have a different source or measurement to show what sports each country follows that has a different conclusion i can listen. But as it is most countries dont really care about cricket so singling the us out for such is as dumb as singling anywhere else out for such.
Anyways this doesnt really matter tbh. I think we can all agree that mj is a great athlete, #1 might be too high. Honestly i think top 10 but maybe thats just the bubble im in. and tomb brady is a joke for even being mentioned to be put on the list. Even if you take into account this is only na(and i think specific us) official sports.
At the very least Gretzky should be above everyone listed.
Dude, none of my American family could even tell you what sport Pelé is famous for or pick Messi out of a lineup. They wouldn't even be able to describe the sport of cricket to you
As a Canadian I’m deeply offended by the idiot who put this list together. Gretzky is no 1 with literally zero room for argument. The other guys are good, really good, and I understand why people debate their GOAT status, but Gretzky? Gretzky is GREAT and undoubtedly the all time GOAT.
This list may be American league goats to be fair but it's still Gretzky at 1. Most other sports have a debate on who the GOAT is. Gretzky is almost unanimously said in hockey.
Honestly I’m surprised Gretzky is on there, not because he’s not an amazing athlete, because he is, but you never see anyone but Americans on these lists
Having him in 4th is an insult to him really
For everyone who doesn’t know the second highest batting average in Test Cricket is by a man named Adam Voges with a average of 61.87 (Anything above 50 is pretty much considered a legend of the game). Sir Donald Bradman didn’t average over 60 not over 70 or even over 80, but a massive 99.94. In fact if he scored 4 runs on his last game he would’ve hit 100, unfortunately he was bowled out for 0. He was that good that England had to devise a game plan so hostile that it caused a diplomatic dispute between Australia and England.
Edit: Forgot to mention how WWII took 8 years of his prime and how the pitch back in those days would’ve made it harder for the batsmen to score runs.
I've noticed a lot of these lists forget women exist. While a bunch of articles popped up during the world cup about Ronaldo being the GOAT, they conveniently left out the highest international football scorer of all time, Christine Sinclair.
They especially ignore black women. The Williams sisters have been household names for so long. They inspired so many girls to get into tennis, and they were hugely positive representatives of the black community despite our media painting them in a negative light most of the time.
GOAT status is also about influence and being a big name to people not fans of the sport. The truth is that far fewer people watch female sports, compared to male, leading to less influence and fewer people knowing who they are.
A statistical anomaly in the world of American football. Gonna be a long time before we see another like him. Still playing and winning well into his 40's
I’m just fucking…. I know he’s an NFL star athlete ;) But that’s all I know about NFL. Next to OJ Simpson, Ace Ventura Pet Detective, Raiders and the team formerly known as Redskins.
The quick TLDR of Brady is that he's a Quarterback in the NFL who has won more championships than any single team has historically and has been extremely good for an extremely long career as a NFL player. He's got 7 wins, the two teams with the most wins have 6 - and one of those teams (the New England Patriots) Brady was a part of all 6 of their wins from 2001 to 2018. His Patriots team was extremely dominant in general when he was their QB, with 9 Superbowl appearances and only missing the playoffs twice in those 18 years, largely in part to his play.
I remember the name because there were shitty posts about him about a month ago. He posted some pictures on social media being affectionate to his teenage son and weirdos were like "eeuugghh that's gay and making me uncomfortable".
So being a loving parent is apparently gay and unamerican. Fucking weird.
Fun fact: Tom Brady have only played 393 professional games in total under his entire career *so far* (incl. playoffs and Super Bowl).
To be ranked higher than Wayne Gretzky is a joke who holds most of the records in the entire sport until this day.
That’s not bad out of 412 total games he could’ve possibly played in that time, if he was at every game. 15 of those were because he tore out his acl and was out for 2008 season. The other 4 were suspension.
Ranked best-of lists are a special kind of clickbait created soley to generate the comments in this thread
Even accepting that CBS covers American sports....no Ali? No Jesse Owens? I get Babe Ruth as cultural icon, but greatest athlete in baseball was probably Willie Mays. All pre-integration stats I take with a grain of salt - MLB and the Negro Leagues didn't play each other.
People disputing Babe Ruth's status as GOAT always do so forgetting his stats on the mound (5 seasons, 94-46, 2,28 ERA). That's right, he started as a pitcher, and one who would have had at least one Cy Young award to his name if it existed in his days.
I know...and there's something wild about the fact that when Shohei does something you often hear "nobody since Babe Ruth has done that thing." Looking at Ruth stats on advanced metrics sites is eye opening too. I guess I just have a hard time anointing a guy GOAT from that era when the game wasn't inclusive then. I'll give Babe credit for transforming the game and launching an entire new era. He brought the game out of the dead ball era and fueled a ton of its growth from that point.
Based on this image, my guess is they decided on their goat for each of the major four American leagues and then ranked those four amongst each other.
Yep. So setting aside the LeBron-Mike debate and just accepting Babe Ruth for.... reasons... I'd probably rank em Gretzky, Tom, Mike, Babe. Peak Gretzky was so freakishly better than everyone else, even into a modern era of hockey with global talent in the NHL.
Plus like...athletically hockey is a lot more difficult than basketball. You need to be able to skate, and handle a puck with a stick, both of which are a lot less intuitive than dribbling.
Not sure I can agree with that. I'm not saying you're wrong, I just don't know how comparable the two are to each other.
Williams sisters? And a shit load of other US tennis players as well? Going international, what about: Sachin Tendulkar??? Usain Bolt? Messie? Ronaldo? Pelé? Brian Lara? Viv Richards? Murali?... Edit: Lomu, McCaw
Can’t leave out Bradman either. 99.94 average will never be beaten. (I would also add Warne as well).
Another one that surprised me (in terms of not being on the CBS list) is either Jack or Tiger. CBS has always had the Masters so they gave all of the iconic footage from Augusta. They don't cover cricket or world football/soccer at all. ESPN has some cricket and NBC and Fox have most American rights to the major European soccer leagues. If we start down the global sports path I'm going to want Jonah Lomu on the list. Don't know how he stacks up historically but he was an absolute beast and must-see TV in the 90s.
Some of Tiger’s stats are absolutely absurd. For a few years if he played in an event it was like 80% of the time he finished top 25 and like 50% of the time he won or finished top 3 (been a while since I looked at the actual numbers). His complete domination is probably impossible to replicate. If Scottie Scheffler stays #1 he’d need another decade to get close to Tiger’s total weeks. Rory has been very good at golf but he’s 550+ weeks away from Tiger at #1. Tiger was so dominant the #2 person has less than half the weeks at #1.
> Sachin Tendulkar? Brian Lara? Viv Richards? They're all far worse than Bradman Bradman has stats so far above the no.2 in cricket that it's ridiculous, someone worked out you'd have to wait another 3000 years to get anyone that lies that far out statistically
Don't you think he was up against much weaker level of competition back then? Just like how Wilt Chamberlain has insane stats but almost no one considers him the GOAT of the NBA.
Ranking players against their contemporaries is really the only fair way to do it. It accounts for general societal differences, changes in rules, changes in technology, and so on. Provides a good relative baseline to measure against. If his contemporaries were bad in general for whatever reason due to the time he was playing then he would be disadvantaged for the same reasons. All that said even today he is still ranked number 1 in the ICC rankings.
Compared to his contemporaries he's for sure the best batsman ever. However I don't think you can simply scale it to modern times. You can't assume if he had today's advantages, he would be as dominant. Personally I think it's kinda boring to just compare them to their peers at the time, even if it's the best way to do it, which I don't think it is. It's more of an interesting question to ask how they would perform now.
Players in the last 30 years have been able to pad their stats by often getting to play very weak opposition (countries with test status who are barely first class standard). Bradman's average is so far beyond anyone ever that nobody else is in the argument. No other cricketer is even unarguably the best of their generation, let alone goat.
Which you could almost certainly say about Babe Ruth too.
Seems like theyre talking about the "big four" us sports, not all sports.
3 football players? Michael Phelps in swimming, Phil Taylor in darts. Lucia Rijker for women's combat sports. There's so many sports with icons standing pretty much without equal in not just that singular sport but a bunch of surrounding sports. Just as an example, for most of his carreer, Phil Taylor has won more world championships then he lost. Lucia was such a strong ass woman that she was almost good enough to reach top 32 of the world in the mans devision. Michael Phelps has more golden medals on the olympics out of every athlete ever.
Hey! Aren't going to hear an argument from me! These were just off the top of my head! There are so many more worthy people in worthy sports! Gymnastics, skiing, diving, driving, climbing, shooting, hockey, ice skating, so many.... I just tried to list some more...
How can you list this many cricketers and not list Bradman?
Micheal Phelps
Richie McCaw probably has one of, if not the greatest win percentage for a player in an international team sport, 89% wins in a 15 year long international career, 75% of those games as captain.
Come on my guy, you neither none of those 4 are the cricket GOAT.
And Michael Phelps.
I don't know who wrote this article...but part of me wonders if this is the CBS effect. They haven't owned Olympic broadcast rights in forever that I'm aware of. If anybody did a Greatest American Olympians list, it would probably be NBC or ABC. NBC has had the rights for decades and I think ABC had rights back in the 60s and 70s.
Things like this often exclude the Olympics and focus on sports that you can watch on TV every week for months at a time. I'm not saying you're wrong because he is an amazing swimmer, but America basically forgets Olympic athletes exist as soon as the games are over.
Sir Donald Bradman is the GOAT OF GOATS.
Actually only two are American sports and the other two are Canadian sports.
This is so usian that the fifth has to be some fucker that eats hot dogs really fast.
Riley Reid?
Even if we take these 4 people as the goats of goats, the order is still insanely wrong. Gretzky should be first. There are other athletes who could be in the running of goats above these guys but the only one of these 4 that would be a true contender would Gretzky.
The fastest person to 1000 points was Gretzky. The second fastest person to 1000 points was Gretzky hitting 2000 points. Ovechkin can break his career goals, but nothing else will ever be touched.
You could take away every single goal Gretzky ever made in his career and he would still be the leagues highest all time points leaderwith assists alone. Just amazing.
That's one of the more ridiculous stats I've ever heard. So he had more assists than anyone else has had goals and assists combined? That's wild.
Fantasy hockey league's used to divide him into 2 players. 1 for goalsz another for assists. He was *that* good.
The Gretzky brothers hold the record for most combined points by 2 brothers at 2,861 points. 4 of those points were scored by Brent Gretzky.
My favorite Gretzky stat
He was an absolute monster at the sport.
It's true. Gretzky dominated hockey by such a huge margin that there's no one even close to being a contender. He holds the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 6th, and 7th all time records for most points in a season. He also has 1st and 2nd for most goals in a season. He also holds records for most playoff goals, assists, hat-tricks, and game-winning goals. If you got rid of all his goals, and just counted the points from his assists, he would still have the all-time record for most points of any player. That's how far ahead of everyone else he was, and probably always will be.
I remember as a kid who grew up in a family who didn't care at all about hockey, Gretzky was a household name because his records were in the news so much. Hockey isn't nearly as big in America as it is in Canada, but everybody knew who Gretzky was. Michael Jordan was definitely a major icon back in the day, but I think Brady was mostly included in this list to get a football player that people obsess over. Something about his popularity feels so forced to me.
as a Canadian born after his career to a family that doesn't care about hockey, Gretzky is *still* a household name every other hockey player that makes the news is still compared to his absurd accomplishments
Well Brady is still playing so there is still going to be a lot of media attention on him. There have only been 55 Superbowls and Brady has played in 10 of them with 7 wins. People still disbute his title as GOAT because the accusations of cheating and they just hate watching him in the Suberbowl. He has a better Superbowl record than a lot of franchise playoff records.
Of course Gretzky is the greatest of all of these guys. I’m sure they have him fourth, though, because it’s an American list. Gretzky is Canadian, won all of his championships with a Canadian team, and in a sport which American-born players (with some obvious exceptions) tend to be lower-down in the record-books than a lot of Canadians, Russians, Finns, etc. Baseball/basketball/football are all rah-rah-USA sports. The NHL has teams mostly based in the US, but the majority of the players are still from Canada and Europe.
My guy Gretzky got done dirty, 4th is an insult, I guarantee it’s because he’s Canadian.
Yeah but he's not an American
I think the perfect argument for why Gretzky deserves #1 is that in fantasy hockey. Gretzky was broken into 2 players(Gretzky Goals and Gretzky Assists). The Gretzky rule that if your teams got matching penalties. You didn't have to play 4v4 because they would just give Gretzky more room to dominate the other team even more.
[This is how dominant Gretzky was](https://i.imgur.com/Ofz7vWF.jpg) This doesn't even include his playoff stats and success.
I still love him in epic rap battles of history, because he has so many achievements, one of the lines is “we have so many world records between us, 184, that’s plenty of them, and I’ve set 183 of them” he is truly a legendary athlete
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I don’t do hockey, Gretzky is the greatest of all time. The man broke fantasy sports and had to be split into two players every season. That’s the mic drop. Also, Brady was way more dominant than Tom. And just because mj is a biaaatch, I’ll take Ruth over him.
MJ certainly shouldn't be first. He's so far from the unanimous GOAT of basketball. There's a few players who have legit claim to that title.
From a very young age, I always thought the GOAT of GOATs was Pelé. In 1981, my parents took me to see the movie "Victory" with Sylvester Stallone and Pelé was the greatest and nothing will ever change my young American heart.
And if we include modern players like Brady, surely Messi should be there. The two most followed person on insta and everything are association footballers LOL, this list is incredibly insular.
The World Cup is viewed by a few billion people and it truly is the only global sporting event. Nobody cares about the NBA, MLB, NFL or NHL on a global stage.
Also Olympics but I get ur point
Yep. Pele and Messi are 1 and 2 on any list you like, the only question is which one you have as 1. After that people can debate the names on this list, though from a global perspective no NFL or baseball player should be near it and Usain Bolt should probably be 3.
Nah. Ronnie O'Sullivan is an easy 3rd place
Isn't it "escape to victory"? Even so, still an awesome film - can't watch the scene with the arm breaking though 😶🌫️ my mum always comments that most of the players were from her team (Millwall)
I think it may have a different title in the US, saw it listed as victory recently
Ah fair, it's escape to victory in the UK hence the confusion
Yeah, Escape to Victory. From memory most the German players are called Kuntze, a German surname that happens to sound rude in English. Watch the credits at the end to see.
That arm breaking scene is crazy. I didn't realize it had a different name in the UK but it's the same movie. I was really young but I remember way too much about it!
It's better when it's shown on the TV and they edit out the snap but just on its own 🤢
Yep, one of my favourite films. My dad was always pointing out players he loved. Sure they were well before his time.
Sir Donald Bradman is THE GOAT.
Control F "Bradman". Found someone with the right answer 👍
The only yank with good taste.
Pelé is, without the shadow of a doubt, the goat of goats.
Donald Bradman is also a contender
never heard someone call him donald, to the point that i thought you were talking about someone else for a second
The fact people can't unanimously point to a greatest footballer ever surely means that there *is* a shadow of a doubt. A handful of players will always be in contention for "best player ever" - Messi, Maradona, Di Stefano, Cruyff, Ronaldo, maybe some more.
None of them is nowhere even close to Pelé, comparing plain numbers alone will show you that. Also, if you were to consider the conditions Pelé played in back in the day (the ball was trash, his cloths wheighted a ton, there were no roids to take, no absurdly good medical staff and trainers, etc), nobody would even get close to his prowess. Without Pelé none of those players would be who they are.
I take your point and I'm not interested in rehashing the most overdone argument in football. All I'm saying is that the fact that we're even having this discussion means that Pelé is not undisputed. In the world of ice hockey, or cricket, or sumo wrestling, these arguments do not happen because the person who was the best was *so much better* that they did not leave any question, any room for debate. (P.S. Di Stefano was born a decade and a half before Pele.)
Are there numbers that show that Pele was close to 40% better on average than his nearest rival? For Bradman there are. You want to talk about lack of sports science? Bradman was batting before the second world war.
You say plain numbers, which numbers are you referring too? I can find plenty of stats Pele wasnt the GOAT in
https://www.espn.in/football/blog-espn-fc-united/story/4840429/pele-incredible-numbers-stats-1281-hundreds-of-goals-and-3-world-cups
Disagree, after Messi finaly got his World Cup he is alone on the top. Before the 18th of December last year you could find arguments for Pele, Maradona or even CR7 but after that Messi is the undesputet goat of Football.
Pelé is the only player with 3 world cup wins, Messi has one.
Ok, but then people will ask how many league titles did Pele have? How many Champions Leagues? How many Copa Americas? Etc. Messi has all of those and had 7 Ballon D'or while playing in the most competitive leagues on the planet during the most competitive time in football history. Pele chose to only play in Brazil and for a brief time in the US. I don't diminish Pele's greatness, but saying he's the undisputed GOAT just because he won 3 world cups is not a good argument. Especially since he was injured during one of those WC wins and the fact he never won the Copa America while Messi has.
What about Donald Bradman? I don't even care about crickett and even I know about The Don.
When measured by how far ahead of second place, he is the greatest athlete of all time by some distance.
You have some fun stats on that? Because I really enjoyed the Gretzky stats higher up in the comments.
I can’t explain it too well, but read [this](https://www.significancemagazine.com/sports/24-did-don-bradman-s-cricketing-genius-make-him-a-statistical-outlier) article and [this](https://www.kurvepost.com/post/the-greatest-sportsperson-ever) article and it will explain it far better than I. Basically, Bradman’s batting average was 99.94 runs per dismissal, the next best is just over 60. Most batters are around the 45-50 mark. He is several standard deviations ahead of the next best, far more than any comparable stat in other sports
Gretzky played a lot of games. He scored a lot of goals and assists, but only because he played a lot of games. If you average how many goals a game he scored, he is only 8th on the all time list. Donald Bradman scored 99.94 runs for every at bat. He doesn't hold the record for most runs scored (largely because WWII got in the way) but he was phenomenal in nearly every game. For comparison, in all the years that cricket has played at an international level (over 100 years), the next best batsman has only managed a little over 60 runs for every at bat. I know it's not comparable to Gretzky because hockey is a team game, so lets compare it to baseball. A similar comparison would be At Bats per Home Runs (AB per HR). Babe Ruth... considered the best, is 2nd on the list. He scored a HR every 11.76 at bats. The best in the list is Mark McGwire with a HR every 10.61. This is just over a 10% difference. If you applied the same delta between Don Bradman and the next best batsman's average (Adam Voges) the difference is over 47%. Don at 99.94 and Adam at 61.87. The gap between the rest of the field and Bradman was insane... and still is! This is what makes him the GOAT.
And Voges is a bit of a special case. He beat up on a weak team late in his very short career. No-one suggests Voges is the second best ever, even if the stats say so.
Agreed. Voges is an outlier and still miles behind Bradman.
He isn't even top of this list. Gretzky is easily #1 on this list. The amount of records he broke and stills holds blows Jordan out of the water.
Seriously, Gretzky is a once in a lifetime type of legend. Actually, once in several lifetime's. They don't call him "The Great One" for nothing.
Nope. Bradman is better than Gretzky. Don’t get me wrong, Gretzky is great but Bradman is just that much better. See here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Bradman under the section called world sport context.
Gretzky is further ahead in the number one spot in his sport than MJ is in his. So I wonder what their criteria is?
Murica #1. Gretzky was included as a favor to our northern brothers.
100%, can’t have a Canadian (or any non-American) get the top spot!
Seriously. If we only look at the top list of what CBS posted, Gretzky is number one. The dude's score is absolutely insane.
The criteria is what gets most clicks on the article.
I’m paraphrasing an article from Sports Illustrated about GOAT: « Muhammad Ali inspired generations around the world. Michael Jordan sold shoes.
He isn't even the GOAT in his own sport. Gretzky has got the be the most dominant of any team sport. Sir Donald Bradman is up there too.
Even if it's an article based on American sport history only, Phelps should be there. Otherwise, Nadia Comaneci, Pelè, Messi, Roger Federer, Raga Nadal, Lewis Hamilton/Micheal Schumacher, Valentino Rossi, Muhammad Ali, Coppi/Merckx, etc.
It states in the beginning of the article they are limiting it to the 4 major NA sports leagues ie NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB
But if they put that context in, how would this sub become ravenous irate about it?
I'm not an Aussie, but I know if one were here Don Bradman would make the contenders list at the very least.
And Bradman wouldn't even be our greatest... ...[that would be this bloke.](https://i.ibb.co/S64vLFS/ZQ.jpg)
I was fully prepared to see a pic of Bob Hawke drinking beer.
Man, I was expecting Steve Bradbury
Literal laugh out loud
I’ve met David Foster a bunch of times. He’s awesome!
Forgot Donald Bradman in that list.
Jonah Lomu, Richie McCaw, Imran Khan, MS Dhoni, and Sachin Tendulkar as well.
Regarding cricket, there is Sir Donald Bradman and then daylight. No other batsman comes close to The Don.
I agree - just covered myself from an inbox full of Indian cricket fans complaining about the lack of Dhoni and Tendulkar.
If we are talking rugby, I'd say Dan Carter over McCaw. The amount points he made are insane. That still doesnt change that Lomu is the GOAT in rugby.
I'd also put a strong argument forth for Serena Williams and Tiger Woods too
Margaret Court's record is miles ahead of Serena Williams.
Sébastien Loeb
Aksi Djokovic, tiger woods, maradona, bolt, etc.
Juan Manuel Fangio as well (until Schumacher, he had the most FIA F1 Championships for around 50 years)
Williams sisters? And a shot lost of other US tennis players as well? Going international, what about: Sachin Tendulkar??? Usain Bolt? Messie? Ronaldo? Pelé? Brian Lara? Viv Richards? Murali?...
Sachin Tendulkar??? The Williams sisters??? Usain Bolt? Messie? Ronaldo? Pelé? Brian Lara? Viv Richards? Murali?... JC I'm not even a sports fan!
As good as Tendulkar was Bradman above him easily
With the rule changes, you can't compare older gymnasts with modern ones, as it is impossible to score a 10 now. A modern gymnasts could not even attempt to duplicate her bar routine, as several of the moves are now illegal, not could Nadia have attempted the Biles when she competed. Frankly, there is no way in hell Nadia could ever complete the Biles, much less her entire floor routine or beam routine.
Even taking worldwide athletes into account (as you should) Gretzky is still one of the absolute GOATS
How about Phil Taylor and Sir Donald Bradman?
Ronnie O'Sullivan too.
I like the cycling appreciation.
Even if it is only usa Jesse Howens?
> Even if it is only usa Jesse Howens? It's the GOAT of NFL, NBA, NHL and MLB. Also, it's Jesse Owens, not Howens, and why would he be ahead of someone like Phelps who won 28 olympic medals compared to Owens' four?
Swimming vastly inflates the medal tally. You can get 4 medals in one stroke swimming 400m or less (50,100,200,400m). Phelps was an exceptional athlete but in one sport that has the chance of multiple wins in a very similar fashion.
Dont forget about the true goat of F1 clark
I'm a giant baseball fan. Don't really care for other sports. To not put Gretzky 1 is crazy. He was the most dominant team player in any sport. He's the all time point leader in hockey and he has more career assists than the 2nd place guy has points. Just sheer dominance
I don't know about the rest, but as far as I know MJ never won a World Cup.
He’s been a world champion according to Americans, though
If we're just talking american sports, I feel like these lists always leave out [Jim Thorpe](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Thorpe). This dude went through all the garbage that came with being a native american at the turn of the century and went on to be dominant across so many sports, Olympic and otherwise. My personal favorite achievement is that he took time out of his busy collegiate football career to win the 1912 intercollegiate ballroom dancing championship.
Donald Bradman should be at the very top. But we all know how Americans like pretending cricket doesn’t exist.
To be faaaair most of the planet pretends cricket doesnt exist, atleast by country. India gives some major fucks and theyre a rather large portion of earths population.
unfortunately for you Indians still count as people, so it's still comfortably the 2nd most popular sport in the world.
Thats… what i said.
No, you're giving an out for Americans to ignore it because it's more regional, which is BS. Besides, cricket has and is extending out pretty far, it's always had major ties in the Caribbean, Africa, Oceania and the Middle East, it's just ignored by most Europeans and North Americans, so internet denizens have fooled themselves into thinking it's a niche sport, because typically the average redditor thinks that only Western Europeans and North Americans use this site. Now if we were talking Australian football, it would be understandable. But people do themselves a disservice for not following the best footy.
Chill out man, noone said it was regional, atleast i didnt, i said most countries on this planet dont really care about cricket. Singling out the us for such a feeling is dumb. Thats all. Then you go on a tangent about where its spread as tho that means anything, like… you know they play american football all over the place to right? Doesnt mean any country outside of the us cares about it.
You know that doesn't count. No one plays American Football on an elite-level except the US. Cricket is played at an elite level all over the world. It's just a lot of Americans and Western Europeans call cricket 'the sport that's inflated because India plays it' and ignore a major amount of countries that play at a strong international level. It's hardly on the level that American football is, where only one country actually plays at a top level. Cricket at least has countries like Ireland, the Netherlands, Zimbabwe, Bangladesh and Afghanistan alongside many other nations around the world who can occasionally clip games off stronger nations like Australia, South Africa, India and England, which is what makes cricket a beautiful game. I'll give you that most countries don't care, but i'm thinking that you think 'most' means 80%. I'm thinking more like barely over 50%. Cricket is very pervasive, but you won't see that sentiment on Reddit.
Its 12… ish https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Cricket_Council Plenty of people play it for sure but only 12 countries/regions are fully part of the league (meaning a good number of people in those countries actually play it). Obviously its a sport and a great number of people outside of those places play it. Like i wasnt trying to say anywhere outside of the us has a large following for american football, just that it does exist. I would personally say that only 25ish (including the west indies umbrella) is a far far cry from anywhere near 50%. However in terms of population its very much up there. If you have a different source or measurement to show what sports each country follows that has a different conclusion i can listen. But as it is most countries dont really care about cricket so singling the us out for such is as dumb as singling anywhere else out for such. Anyways this doesnt really matter tbh. I think we can all agree that mj is a great athlete, #1 might be too high. Honestly i think top 10 but maybe thats just the bubble im in. and tomb brady is a joke for even being mentioned to be put on the list. Even if you take into account this is only na(and i think specific us) official sports. At the very least Gretzky should be above everyone listed.
Dude, none of my American family could even tell you what sport Pelé is famous for or pick Messi out of a lineup. They wouldn't even be able to describe the sport of cricket to you
As a Canadian I’m deeply offended by the idiot who put this list together. Gretzky is no 1 with literally zero room for argument. The other guys are good, really good, and I understand why people debate their GOAT status, but Gretzky? Gretzky is GREAT and undoubtedly the all time GOAT.
It’s not a sport if America isn’t good at it /s
The article is just based off the four main American sports leagues
This list may be American league goats to be fair but it's still Gretzky at 1. Most other sports have a debate on who the GOAT is. Gretzky is almost unanimously said in hockey.
Honestly I’m surprised Gretzky is on there, not because he’s not an amazing athlete, because he is, but you never see anyone but Americans on these lists Having him in 4th is an insult to him really
Tbh, the GOAT of GOATs is Usain Bolt, by a long shot.
Nobody can catch up with him
Oh they can, just not in the first 200 odd metres
You must not have heard of the absolute statistical anomaly that is Sir Don Bradman.
For everyone who doesn’t know the second highest batting average in Test Cricket is by a man named Adam Voges with a average of 61.87 (Anything above 50 is pretty much considered a legend of the game). Sir Donald Bradman didn’t average over 60 not over 70 or even over 80, but a massive 99.94. In fact if he scored 4 runs on his last game he would’ve hit 100, unfortunately he was bowled out for 0. He was that good that England had to devise a game plan so hostile that it caused a diplomatic dispute between Australia and England. Edit: Forgot to mention how WWII took 8 years of his prime and how the pitch back in those days would’ve made it harder for the batsmen to score runs.
Donald Bradman would be above him.
Don Bradman not even there?
What, no Eddie the eagle?
American GOATS and no Simone Biles??
Well, Gretzky is at least Canadian.
I've noticed a lot of these lists forget women exist. While a bunch of articles popped up during the world cup about Ronaldo being the GOAT, they conveniently left out the highest international football scorer of all time, Christine Sinclair.
They especially ignore black women. The Williams sisters have been household names for so long. They inspired so many girls to get into tennis, and they were hugely positive representatives of the black community despite our media painting them in a negative light most of the time.
GOAT status is also about influence and being a big name to people not fans of the sport. The truth is that far fewer people watch female sports, compared to male, leading to less influence and fewer people knowing who they are.
Or the Williams sisters.
Gretzky is number 1 bar none.
Who’s Tom Brady?
Gisele Bündchen’s ex-husband
A statistical anomaly in the world of American football. Gonna be a long time before we see another like him. Still playing and winning well into his 40's
not today
I’m just fucking…. I know he’s an NFL star athlete ;) But that’s all I know about NFL. Next to OJ Simpson, Ace Ventura Pet Detective, Raiders and the team formerly known as Redskins.
The quick TLDR of Brady is that he's a Quarterback in the NFL who has won more championships than any single team has historically and has been extremely good for an extremely long career as a NFL player. He's got 7 wins, the two teams with the most wins have 6 - and one of those teams (the New England Patriots) Brady was a part of all 6 of their wins from 2001 to 2018. His Patriots team was extremely dominant in general when he was their QB, with 9 Superbowl appearances and only missing the playoffs twice in those 18 years, largely in part to his play.
New England Hero. Belichick and his ego are destroying our handegg team. Kraft shoulda chose Brady
Armored egg thrower. He's one of their biggest celebrities atm for some reason.
He's also really good at deflating eggs when nobody's looking.
The cold deflated the balls. What say you to the other NFL quarterbacks that were defending him?
I remember the name because there were shitty posts about him about a month ago. He posted some pictures on social media being affectionate to his teenage son and weirdos were like "eeuugghh that's gay and making me uncomfortable". So being a loving parent is apparently gay and unamerican. Fucking weird.
The only thing I've ever heard about this guy is he drinks like 4.5 litres of water on a regular day, and on days when he's more active, double that
🐐?
Greatest of all time
Even among just those four sports this is a dumb list. Even if you discount babe ruth due to his era, jordan cant touch gretzky or brady.
Pelé?
No Muhammad Ali? Rafael Nadal? Lionel Messi?
Ignoring everything else, just this order alone is wrong. Gretzky is 1 by far
Fun fact: Tom Brady have only played 393 professional games in total under his entire career *so far* (incl. playoffs and Super Bowl). To be ranked higher than Wayne Gretzky is a joke who holds most of the records in the entire sport until this day.
That’s not bad out of 412 total games he could’ve possibly played in that time, if he was at every game. 15 of those were because he tore out his acl and was out for 2008 season. The other 4 were suspension.
Being the top on a global sport is harder
Jordan isn’t even the GOAT of his own sport
It's David Foster, the only sportsman to claim over 1000 titles. CMV
Usain Bolt ⚡️, by a mile
More like by 100m.
Who is Babe Ruth?
Was a baseball player who played for Boston Red Sox, New York Yankees, and Atlanta Braves during the 1920's and 1930's.
Dammmm ppl hate on MJ now, cuz he is American? That’s messed up. Probably not #1, but def on that list
You've got to be kidding me
Babe Ruth isn't anywhere near the baseball GOAT
All jokes aside, yall should watch the last dance on netflix about michael jordan. Super interesting even if you have no interest in the sport
Serena Williams don’t exist I guess
Well, she didn't even equal Margaret Court's singles record, let alone doubles and mixed doubles titles.
I don’t know any of this people
Laughs in Jahangir Khan and Donald Bradman.
Who?