The Undefeated just finished a fairly large project where they ranked The 50 Greatest Black Athletes of All-Time. They basically polled 10,000 random people and had them rank black athletes on several different categories.
http://theundefeated.com/features/50-greatest-black-athletes/
The Undefeated partnered with
SurveyMonkey to poll the public on the 50 Greatest Black Athletes. In April, 10,350 adults were asked to rank 200 athletes on 20 different surveys. Respondents were asked how great of an athlete each person was/is using a scale of 1 to 10 stars. The athletes were ranked in order based on their average scores to form a top 50 list. From there, the top 60 athletes (including the first 10 who didn’t make the cut to 50) were used to create a final ranking. Each athlete was ranked on four factors: overall ranking, dominance, inspiration and impact on society. Average scores were calculated from each factor to create a composite score. Athletes were ranked in order by their composite score to determine our final list, which will be unveiled in groups of 10 per week for five weeks. We’ll have
more on how the public voted – broken down by race, age, gender, education level and census region – after the final group is revealed. The Undefeated’s Justin Tinsley, Jerry Bembry and Aaron Dodson wrote the biographies of the athletes, although they didn’t agree with some of the rankings. But the people have spoken, and the results should spark some serious debate.
Like any list like this, particularly one that is voted on by the general public, there is going to be some really questionable choices. I understand why they made it a mass public poll, because that is a good way to gauge mass cultural influence rather than having a cast of 25 sportswriters or fellow athletes. They have a lot of other info on the website about how everyone voted, broken down by race, gender, age, income, etc. I think though, most people will read the list and look at it as rather insignificant due to some of the odd oversights.
The Top Five:
1.Michael Jordan
2. Jackie Robinson
3. Muhammad Ali
4. Willie Mays
5. Jesse Owens
About as good as you can get; pretty much perfect imo. No real recency bias, peak collection of all-time greats who also had large social and cultural impacts. Things are looking good.
Next Five:
6. Serena Williams
7. Henry Aaron
8. Simone Biles
9. Gabby Douglas
10. Jerry Rice
So obviously there is some recency bias with the Olympics last summer. If you did this in 1989 Flo-Jo would probably be ranked really high as well. I'm not sure about putting Olympians this high, almost all of them fade away after a while. 50 years from now everyone will be talking about Serena, Rice and Aaron as sporting legends but unless you have an extraordinary cultural impact like Jesse Owens, people probably forget about you. Biles finished sixth in impact on society, which seems crazy high (Ali finished eighth). The other three are also well known for peaking about as long as anyone else ever has in their sports, so it is weird to kind of compare them to gymnasts who peak over what, five years at most.
11-20
11. Magic Johnson
12. Walter Payton
13. Kareem Abdual-Jabbar
14. Usain Bolt
15. Venus Williams
16. Shaquille O'Neal
17. Julius Erving
18. Satchel Paige
19. Emmitt Smith
20. Gale Sayers
I probably wouldn't have Venus that high, but she was the first African-American woman to be ranked World No. 1 and her dominance early in the 2000s is kind of overshadowed by Serena's longer, more-dominant run. Kareem might be the GOAT at basketball and was also very socially conscious, he would be a Top Ten guy for me, probably. I don't know how you can put Gale Sayers and Emmitt Smith ahead of Jim Brown, who a lot of people think is the greatest athlete of all-time, period, not to mention his status as one of the first black athletes to dominate a major sport and his social activism. When I first heard about this list I imagined he would be Top 5, hard to see him not cracking the the top 20.
21-30
21. Wilma Rudolph
22. Pele
23. Joe Louis
24. Sugar Ray Leonard
25. Bo Jackson
26. Wilt Chamberlain
27. Jackie-Joyner Kersee
28. Steph Curry
29. LeBron James
30. Jim Brown
Starts to hit the fan right about here. Pele is obviously hampered by the fact that he wasn't really an American athlete; if we are encompassing the whole globe here he should obviously be higher. He is the only soccer player on the list, so no other black soccer players like Eusebio make the list. Joe Louis likely would be higher on a list with more legitimate voting, culturally he has to be one of the five or so most significant black athletes. Bo has a tremendous mystique about him and he was an all-time great college athlete and his hip injury robbed him of that; but I wouldn't put him over Jim Brown, or Barry Sanders, or Deion Sanders for that matter.
Steph Curry over LeBron? What has Curry done that LeBron hasn't? Appeal more to children? The opening sentence on Steph Curry's mini-bio is insane: "The allure of Stephen Curry is simple: No one predicted he’d be a serviceable player, let alone a two-time MVP, two-time NBA champion and future Hall of Famer. " Wait, nobody predicted Curry would be a serviceable player? When? When he was an infant? There were plenty of people who questioned his ability to transition to his game to the NBA. However, many people, maybe even a majority, figured that Curry could at least be a serviceable NBA player, at the very least his excellent shooting would translate. Sure, few saw him becoming a major star, but come on, nobody thought he would be serviceable? That is how you choose to explain why Curry ranks higher than James?
31-40
31. Michael Johnson
32. Carl Lewis
33. Florence Joyner Griffith
34. Hershel Walker
35. George Foreman
36. Bill Russell
37. Ken Griffey Jr.
38. Arthur Ashe
39. Sugar Ray Robinson
40. Roberto Clemente
Track athletes, and Olympians in general are doing pretty well, which kind of explains the Douglas/Biles Ranking. No Joe Frazier yet, although plenty of any boxers have been named. I really don't know enough about boxing to compare Frazier to Robinson or Frazier to Foreman. Bill Russell this late is a joke. He ranked 38 in dominance, even though he won 11 championships out of 13 seasons played. Clemente being one of the first Latin-American baseball stars as well as being a genuinely inspiring human being may warrant higher consideration. Griffey Jr. is higher than I thought, I think he is still thought of very highly by a big segment of the population (not that they would have any reason not to, but was Griffey better than Frank Robinson or Rickey Henderson.
41-50.
41. Ernie Banks
42. Larry Fitzgerald
43. Reggie Jackson
44. Barry Sanders
45. Joe Frazier
46. David Robinson
47. Derek Jeter
48. Earl Campbell
49. Isiah Thomas
50. Tim Duncan
Interesting grouping. Fitzgerald probably doesn't belong on the list, he has gotten a lot of publicity because he is a great teammate and his lack of top-level counting numbers kind of get excused due to his lack of consistent QB play. I don't think he was much better than contemporaries like Steve Smith or Andre Johnson, let alone Terrell Owens or Randy Moss. David Robinson was a very good player and an even better human being, but I wouldn't rank him over Duncan.
The list also missed some really key figures, like Tiger Woods, Oscar Robertson, Lawrence Taylor (no NFL defensive players at all), Deion Sanders, Jack Johnson and a slew of others. There was also a clear disdain for people with well-known black marks on their resumes, whether that be Tiger Woods, Barry Bonds, or more extremely, OJ.
I know I just spent a ton of time crapping on the list, but it is really interesting and they have a bunch of supplemental articles like on why Bill Russell finished 36th and why Tiger wasn't on the list. The folks at The Undefeated were actually very candid about the process and basically know that it was an extremely flawed study.