Mt. Rushmore of world Sports.

Bradman, Jordan, Gretzky, Ali

Pele is not the consensus greatest football player like the guys above are usually regarded as the greatest in their own respective sport. He's more like the Bill Russel of football.

[QUOTE=HardwoodLegend]Usain Bolt and Takeru Kobayashi deserve spots.[/QUOTE]
Bolt has been accused of roiding (I don't believe it though) and Kobayashi got screwed over by the establishment. Though he is, in my opinion, the greatest in his craft

Muhammad Ali
Michael "Air" Jordan
Pele
Wayne Gretzky



-Tiger Woods came close but the big drop in performance last 5 years since the scandal has closed the book on him permanently.
-Babe Ruth comes very close, but I feel as if quite a few other mlb players come close to him in shear impact.

[QUOTE=bladefd]Muhammad Ali
Michael "Air" Jordan
Pele
Wayne Gretzky
[/QUOTE]

If we omit Babe Ruth we also omit any f*cking cricket player.

These are the consensus global sports (golf is not a sport, cricket is a colonial pass time).

I'd drop Ali for a track and field star but it is too tricky to find consensus.

[QUOTE=Manute for Ever!]Melbourne Cricket Ground seats approximately 100,000 people. City of Melbourne has a population of about 3,000,000.

[IMG]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/34/Mcg_internal_odi_medium.jpg/800px-Mcg_internal_odi_medium.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/93/MCG_Crowd.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://media.lifehacker.com.au/mt/MCG_stadium.jpg[/IMG][/QUOTE]

Whoop-dee-f*ckin-doo! Baseball draws half of that in 30 cities 81 times per year. Math skews baseball.

And leave the 'world sport' shit at home, it is ONLY popular in ex-colonial haunts and the numbers skew large because of India's participation.

We could make using chopsticks a sport and it would be the most popular because 2 Billion Asians use them.

UK, Aus, NZ, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, SA, and West Indies...dassit! The only countries that can compete for a world championship.

That puts you similar to hockey or baseball. Take away British India (India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh) and you got a bunch of tiny countries, with small populations.

This is Mt. Rushmore, not Mt. Rushhour, cricket gets cut, so does baseball.

What a useless rant. Take away the biggest country that plays the sport and that's supposed to mean something. Take away USA, how big is basketball? Cricket is at least as global as basketball. Yes, there are eight countries that are competitive. How many countries are competitive in basketball?

[QUOTE=nightprowler10]What a useless rant. Take away the biggest country that plays the sport and that's supposed to mean something. Take away USA, how big is basketball? Cricket is at least as global as basketball. Yes, there are eight countries that are competitive. How many countries are competitive in basketball?[/QUOTE]
India would contribute tonnes of viewers

[QUOTE=JohnFreeman]India would contribute tonnes of viewers[/QUOTE]
Im not sure i understand how that affects cricket's global standing. The sport was considered global before the '83 world cup when India won and cricket REALLY took off there. Having India as a key player has changed cricket but there were the same 8 major nations playing then that are still Test class.

[QUOTE=AJ2k8]Ok so in cricket you bat until you get out and there are two batsmen on the field at the same time. For every time you run to the other side of the pitch it equals a run, for every ball hit over the boundary on the full is counted as 6 runs and for every ball you hit past the boundary (not on the full) is counted as 4 runs.

An innings is basically a team's batting session which lasts until either 10players get out, time runs out or the side declares. A test match (the most commonly played type of cricket) lasts a maximum of 5 days and each team has 2 innings so the innings can go on for a while.

He's average is just his amount of runs scored in his career divided by how many times he got out.

[B]The amazing thing about Bradman's average is that the next best average in test cricket history is by Graeme Pollock who averaged 60.97.[/B]


Dont know if that explains it well enough:confusedshrug:[/QUOTE]


All I need to hear. 99.94 drops to 60.97 :eek:

[QUOTE=BasedTom]Bradman, Jordan, Gretzky, Ali

Pele is not the consensus greatest football player like the guys above are usually regarded as the greatest in their own respective sport. He's more like the Bill Russel of football.[/QUOTE]

Ali isn't the greatest boxer, either. It would probably be someone like SRR.


My Mt. Rushmore featuring my 4 fav sports:

Jerry Rice
Michael Jordan
Babe Ruth
Fedor Emelianenko or Anderson Silva

Jordan, Federer, Ali, Pele, Bekele, D

MJ, Ali, Tiger, Stone Cold Steve Austin

:bowdown:

[QUOTE=qrich]All I need to hear. 99.94 drops to 60.97 :eek:[/QUOTE]
The thing with Pollock is that, through no fault of his own**, his career was cut short at the age of 26 after playing 7 years of cricket. In comparison Bradman's career spanned 20 years. Pollock went on to play a ton of domestic cricket where he averaged 55, so you could argue had he played more cricket at the top level his average would have most likely dropped below 60.97. Pollock is still a great of the game mind you, but his average has always been a bit suspect in my mind.

If you were to "disqualify" Pollock from this discussion I think the next best average is Garfield Sobers with an average of [B]57.78[/B].

**Pollock was South African. During the Apartheid era his career was cut short when the rest of the World boycotted South Africa.

MJ, Ali, Cruijff, Federer

Merckx could be in there as well.

MJ
Ruth
Ali
Pele