When you do inter-sports lists, life obviously gets messy. Obviously, you’ve only done the four historically biggest North American sports here which removes some of the complication at least. By my calculation, you have 32 MLB, 28 NFL, 20 NBA and 20 NHL. I’m not sure what the right split is, but I would think the NHL is over-represented here and quite substantially as that. I think by pretty much any metric it is the smallest of the major North American sports and I don’t think you can argue it modernized any sooner than the others. One way I think we can see that the NHL is over-represented is that of your 20 NHL guys here, 16 are Canadian. There are no other Canadians on the overall list, so 16% of the All-Time – All-Time are from north of the border. To use your own expression, that’s just statistically unlikely. By my rough count, 71 are American, with the remainder being overseas guys from MLB, NHL and NBA. So there are roughly 4 and a half times more Americans than Canadians. Given that the US has roughly 10 times as many people, that in itself makes the ratio look warped. But we also know that the US is exceptionally good at sport in general. Your tennis and golf lists for example are packed with Americans with not a Canadian in sight, and if you did lists for other international sports- track, swimming, boxing etc- you’d see the same thing. So, if anything, I’d think a 10-1 ration, American to Canadian would be generous.
If you take the number of NHL players down by half and add a few from each of the other sports, you’d have 8 Canadians and probably close to 80 Americans, which sounds a bit more realistic to me.
Hey Stirlo, yes, combining sports gets murky and I get where you’re coming from, but the population base for the all-time all time is the athletes of the four major sports leagues. It’s not the populations of the U.S./Canada/The World etc. The fact that the vast majority of players from one of the leagues is Canadian will inherently mean this list will have a disproportionate number of Canadians on it. If we’re looking at a way to determine what a fair representation for each sport would be, we need to look at the total number of players who have played in the NFL, MLB, NHL, and NBA. The way the list is created is to take the top-100 rankings of the four major team sports, and literally conduct a draft of the most impressive resumes. The first comparison is Gretzky vs. LeBron vs. Brady vs. Bonds. Gretzky goes #1. The next comparison is Ovechkin vs. LeBron vs. Brady vs. Bonds. Brady goes #2. The next comparison is Ovechkin vs. LeBron vs. Jerry Rice vs. Bonds, and so on and so on. For this exercise, the NHL, MLB, NBA, and NFL are all considered to be equally skilled. Baseball and football have more positions and have been around for 100+ years, so there are going to be more elite resumes from those sports than from the NBA and the NHL, which is reflected in the list. If we’re going strictly by the numbers, the ratio should be close to the number of starters in a sport. For instance, 11:9:6:5. Of course, the ratio won’t be exact because different leagues have been around for longer than others.
Another way to look at this would be too look at the football list only. Every player on the list is American. If we’re using the demographics of the world population, then this list would be statistically improbable. If the US has 10 times as many people as Canada, then there should be several Canadians on the football list, not zero. Of course, the population of the list is just NFL players, so it makes sense that the football list wouldn’t have the same demographics as the world population. The same is for the all-time all-time list. The population base is just the players from the four major sports, not the total populations of Canada, the U.S., or the world.
FWIW, the all-time all-time draft is something I’ll conduct every few years. I don’t look at the previous draft when doing a new one. It’s a fresh comparison each time it is conducted. Since the all-time all-time is constructed via a draft of the four top-100 lists, it will have the same basic shape from list to list, but it will undoubtedly have a different number of players from each sport, with football and baseball leading the way, and basketball and hockey less represented. Each iteration is meant to be a snapshot. I don’t chart movement from one iteration to the next like I do for the top-100 lists in each sport.
Hi Jake, OK, that makes sense based on your methodology. For me, an overall list would reflect the level of competition in each sport and therefore how difficult it is to dominate. Hockey is just not as big a sport, and as a competitive one as the others. But if you are treating them as equal, fair enough.
I understand if you think lebron is better than Jordan but on a all sports list I’d give the edge to Jordan because he was easily the most known athlete in his time people new him as much as guys like hitler maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration but you get the point and I think the same way about Babe Ruth. I used to not know anything about baseball or basketball but I knew these two names and the whole world did. Babe Ruth and MJ were world wide but I understand that this is who is the better player and not who’s more popular but I hope that you take this in to consideration.
Hey anon,
Your last sentence is the key. The first megastar in any industry will always be the most known/famous. Jordan will always be more revered and famous than LeBron James. Babe Ruth will always be the most famous and revered baseball player of all-time. This list, of course, is not meant to be a measure of popularity. In fact, that isn’t a consideration at all. It really just comes down to two things: What did you accomplish, and how difficult was the era that you accomplished it in? A list of the most influential athletes of all-time would be pretty cool to see. I suspect you’d see Babe Ruth and Michael Jordan right at the top.
When you do inter-sports lists, life obviously gets messy. Obviously, you’ve only done the four historically biggest North American sports here which removes some of the complication at least. By my calculation, you have 32 MLB, 28 NFL, 20 NBA and 20 NHL. I’m not sure what the right split is, but I would think the NHL is over-represented here and quite substantially as that. I think by pretty much any metric it is the smallest of the major North American sports and I don’t think you can argue it modernized any sooner than the others. One way I think we can see that the NHL is over-represented is that of your 20 NHL guys here, 16 are Canadian. There are no other Canadians on the overall list, so 16% of the All-Time – All-Time are from north of the border. To use your own expression, that’s just statistically unlikely. By my rough count, 71 are American, with the remainder being overseas guys from MLB, NHL and NBA. So there are roughly 4 and a half times more Americans than Canadians. Given that the US has roughly 10 times as many people, that in itself makes the ratio look warped. But we also know that the US is exceptionally good at sport in general. Your tennis and golf lists for example are packed with Americans with not a Canadian in sight, and if you did lists for other international sports- track, swimming, boxing etc- you’d see the same thing. So, if anything, I’d think a 10-1 ration, American to Canadian would be generous.
If you take the number of NHL players down by half and add a few from each of the other sports, you’d have 8 Canadians and probably close to 80 Americans, which sounds a bit more realistic to me.
Hey Stirlo, yes, combining sports gets murky and I get where you’re coming from, but the population base for the all-time all time is the athletes of the four major sports leagues. It’s not the populations of the U.S./Canada/The World etc. The fact that the vast majority of players from one of the leagues is Canadian will inherently mean this list will have a disproportionate number of Canadians on it. If we’re looking at a way to determine what a fair representation for each sport would be, we need to look at the total number of players who have played in the NFL, MLB, NHL, and NBA. The way the list is created is to take the top-100 rankings of the four major team sports, and literally conduct a draft of the most impressive resumes. The first comparison is Gretzky vs. LeBron vs. Brady vs. Bonds. Gretzky goes #1. The next comparison is Ovechkin vs. LeBron vs. Brady vs. Bonds. Brady goes #2. The next comparison is Ovechkin vs. LeBron vs. Jerry Rice vs. Bonds, and so on and so on. For this exercise, the NHL, MLB, NBA, and NFL are all considered to be equally skilled. Baseball and football have more positions and have been around for 100+ years, so there are going to be more elite resumes from those sports than from the NBA and the NHL, which is reflected in the list. If we’re going strictly by the numbers, the ratio should be close to the number of starters in a sport. For instance, 11:9:6:5. Of course, the ratio won’t be exact because different leagues have been around for longer than others.
Another way to look at this would be too look at the football list only. Every player on the list is American. If we’re using the demographics of the world population, then this list would be statistically improbable. If the US has 10 times as many people as Canada, then there should be several Canadians on the football list, not zero. Of course, the population of the list is just NFL players, so it makes sense that the football list wouldn’t have the same demographics as the world population. The same is for the all-time all-time list. The population base is just the players from the four major sports, not the total populations of Canada, the U.S., or the world.
FWIW, the all-time all-time draft is something I’ll conduct every few years. I don’t look at the previous draft when doing a new one. It’s a fresh comparison each time it is conducted. Since the all-time all-time is constructed via a draft of the four top-100 lists, it will have the same basic shape from list to list, but it will undoubtedly have a different number of players from each sport, with football and baseball leading the way, and basketball and hockey less represented. Each iteration is meant to be a snapshot. I don’t chart movement from one iteration to the next like I do for the top-100 lists in each sport.
Hi Jake, OK, that makes sense based on your methodology. For me, an overall list would reflect the level of competition in each sport and therefore how difficult it is to dominate. Hockey is just not as big a sport, and as a competitive one as the others. But if you are treating them as equal, fair enough.
I understand if you think lebron is better than Jordan but on a all sports list I’d give the edge to Jordan because he was easily the most known athlete in his time people new him as much as guys like hitler maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration but you get the point and I think the same way about Babe Ruth. I used to not know anything about baseball or basketball but I knew these two names and the whole world did. Babe Ruth and MJ were world wide but I understand that this is who is the better player and not who’s more popular but I hope that you take this in to consideration.
Hey anon,
Your last sentence is the key. The first megastar in any industry will always be the most known/famous. Jordan will always be more revered and famous than LeBron James. Babe Ruth will always be the most famous and revered baseball player of all-time. This list, of course, is not meant to be a measure of popularity. In fact, that isn’t a consideration at all. It really just comes down to two things: What did you accomplish, and how difficult was the era that you accomplished it in? A list of the most influential athletes of all-time would be pretty cool to see. I suspect you’d see Babe Ruth and Michael Jordan right at the top.