Tiger not one of the top 50 greatest black athletes? - Printable Version
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Tiger not one of the top 50 greatest black athletes? - magnus - 08-13-2017
Slightly old news, but I'm not very current. =)
Was skimming through The Undefeated's list of top 50 black athletes of all time (http://theundefeated.com/features/50-greatest-black-athletes/) as determined by a public SurveyMonkey poll combined with some straightforward math, and noticed that Tiger Woods was not anywhere to be found.
Where would you rank him on that list? (contributing categories included Impact on Society, Dominance, and Inspiration)
Perhaps for the sake of argument, what would his rank have been after his last Majors win?Â
Re: Tiger not one of the top 50 greatest black athletes? - JohnR34231 - 08-13-2017
I don't see OJ on the list, either, so I can't help wondering if off the playing field misdeeds prevent someone who should be there from making it.
Re: Tiger not one of the top 50 greatest black athletes? - ATLCard - 08-13-2017
Tiger vs OJ? Tiger made a lot of terrible mistakes and is paying the price, but he didn't kill anybody. Maybe Tiger vs Barry Bonds is a better analogy. I see some people on the list with similar personal issues to Tiger, and think his absence from the list is striking.
https://theundefeated.com/features/50-greatest-black-athletes-not-including-tiger-woods-oversight-injustice/
Re: Tiger not one of the top 50 greatest black athletes? - washingtonismoney - 08-13-2017
The list is a bit mind-boggling personally. For example, to take just one, David Robinson outranking Tim Duncan is absurd.
Re: Tiger not one of the top 50 greatest black athletes? - JohnR34231 - 08-13-2017
(08-13-2017, 06:02 AM)ATLcard link Wrote:Tiger vs OJ? Tiger made a lot of terrible mistakes and is paying the price, but he didn't kill anybody. Maybe Tiger vs Barry Bonds is a better analogy. I see some people on the list with similar personal issues to Tiger, and think his absence from the list is striking.
https://theundefeated.com/features/50-greatest-black-athletes-not-including-tiger-woods-oversight-injustice/
OK, fine. What's your theory as to why he didn't make it, then?
(Actually, the poll is a composite of the opinions of thousands of people, some of which were no doubt pretty informed on the subject and some of which probably weren't. To try to figure out a rhyme or reason for the rankings is IMO a fruitless task.)
Re: Tiger not one of the top 50 greatest black athletes? - Mick - 08-13-2017
(08-13-2017, 06:36 AM)JPRI link Wrote:[quote author=ATLcard link=topic=17155.msg197061#msg197061 date=1502629358]
Tiger vs OJ? Tiger made a lot of terrible mistakes and is paying the price, but he didn't kill anybody. Maybe Tiger vs Barry Bonds is a better analogy. I see some people on the list with similar personal issues to Tiger, and think his absence from the list is striking.
https://theundefeated.com/features/50-greatest-black-athletes-not-including-tiger-woods-oversight-injustice/
OK, fine. What's your theory as to why he didn't make it, then?
(Actually, the poll is a composite of the opinions of thousands of people, some of which were no doubt pretty informed on the subject and some of which probably weren't. To try to figure out a rhyme or reason for the rankings is IMO a fruitless task.)
[/quote]
I'll make two points that touch on why Tiger didn't make the list of the Top 50 greatest black athletes.
First, golf is remote for most people. It's the oldest sport (outside of archery), but it touches far fewer people than the other sports. And it is declining in popularity. I saw in the WSJ the other day that the number of golfers, as defined by playing at least one round over the course of a year, has gone down from 30 million to 24 million.Â
Second, as the non-lamented Glenn Dickey used to say, "Golf isn't a sport, it's a game."Â To a fair number of people, golfers aren't athletes.Â
There were a few others excluded. For my money, Josh Gibson should have been included. As Buck Weaver used to say, there were only two hitters that you could tell by the sound of the ball leaving the bat, and that was Babe Ruth and Josh Gibson. The Big O, Oscar Robertson.Â
As for breaking color barriers in snooty sports, I would have taken Althea Gibson, who predated Arthur Ashe by a decade and a half. Gibson won the French Open in 1956, the U. S. Open in 1957 and 1958 and Wimbledon in 1957 and 1958. As an aside, she probably wouldn't have made it, had it not been for a lot of public support by San Francisco-based Alice Marble, a star tennis player who wrote a scathing public letter decrying the entry qualifying methods (accumulating points at tournaments at whites-only clubs). Gibson also won three straight Wimbledon ladies doubles (with three different partners), 56 titles overall. She retired at 29 because she needed to make money, and tennis was amateurs only then.
And finally, they used to call the decathlon champion the World's Greatest Athlete. Ashton Eaton is the world record holder with seven international gold medals, including London and Brazil. He reached 8,000 points in just his sixth decathlon. He was the first male athlete to win three consecutive international decathlon competitions. He owns the world record in the heptathlon and is the only decathlete to have scored over 9,000 points in the decathlon (100m in 10.23, LJ in 25.85 ft, SP in 47.6 ft, HJ in 6'7", 400m in 45.0, 110HH in 13.69, discus in 142.2 ft, jav in 208.9 ft, 1500m in 4.17 min). He's the World's Greatest Athlete, just not one of the 50 best black athletes. I'm guessing that three-quarters of the people who took the SurveyMonkey survey don't even know Eaton's name.
Re: Tiger not one of the top 50 greatest black athletes? - winflop - 08-13-2017
(08-13-2017, 06:02 AM)ATLcard link Wrote:Tiger vs OJ? Tiger made a lot of terrible mistakes and is paying the price, but he didn't kill anybody. Maybe Tiger vs Barry Bonds is a better analogy. I see some people on the list with similar personal issues to Tiger, and think his absence from the list is striking.
https://theundefeated.com/features/50-greatest-black-athletes-not-including-tiger-woods-oversight-injustice/
Tiger vs Bonds? One guy had some major personal demons OFF THE COURSE. The other guy took illegal, performance-enhancing drugs to improve his performance ON THE FIELD. Not close to a comparison.
Re: Tiger not one of the top 50 greatest black athletes? - DC 86 - 08-13-2017
(08-13-2017, 08:13 AM)Mick link Wrote:As for breaking color barriers in snooty sports, I would have taken Althea Gibson, who predated Arthur Ashe by a decade and a half. Gibson won the French Open in 1956, the U. S. Open in 1957 and 1958 and Wimbledon in 1957 and 1958. As an aside, she probably wouldn't have made it, had it not been for a lot of public support by San Francisco-based Alice Marble, a star tennis player who wrote a scathing public letter decrying the entry qualifying methods (accumulating points at tournaments at whites-only clubs). Gibson also won three straight Wimbledon ladies doubles (with three different partners), 56 titles overall. She retired at 29 because she needed to make money, and tennis was amateurs only then.
And after retiring from tennis she became the first African American member of the LPGA tour, breaking the color barrier in an even less welcoming arena. While she did not have the same success as she had in tennis, she did finish in the top 50 on the money list in five separate seasons.
Re: Tiger not one of the top 50 greatest black athletes? - Phogge - 08-13-2017
The site keeps crashing on my IPAD. So, if Josh Gibson, Jack Johnson, Roy Campanella and Don Newcombe aren't on it something is wrong.
Re: Tiger not one of the top 50 greatest black athletes? - DC 86 - 08-13-2017
The list was derived from an unscientific poll so naturally there are numerous bizarre results:
- Julius Erving #17, LeBron James #29.
- Emmitt Smith #19, Jim Brown #30.
- ten NFL players (all offensive) but no Lawrence Taylor (or Deion Sanders).
- ten MLB players but no Barry Bonds.
- Gabby Douglas #9.
Tiger being omitted is still mystifying, a combination I suppose of 1) golfers not considered athletes by many people, 2) his off course issues, 3) his self-identification as a "cablinasian".
Re: Tiger not one of the top 50 greatest black athletes? - 82lsju - 08-13-2017
from how they did the ranking
>> would be interesting to know who was on the initial list of 200 athletes
In February, pretesting began utilizing the SurveyMonkey Audience. Respondents were asked two open-ended questions: Who is the best athlete of all time? and What makes an athlete great? Responses from this survey supplemented a separate list cultivated by The Undefeated to curate the list of 200 athletes to rank in Phase One.
>>Â I could see golfers not doing all that well on the "Who is the best athlete of all time" for reasons mentioned by others in this thread
>>Â I'm not sure the typical survey monkey user is the best population to rank the best athletes
The Phase One survey narrowed the list of 200 athletes down to the top 60. It was conducted online on SurveyMonkey from April 10-14, 2017, among a national sample of 11,287 adults age 18 and older. Respondents for this survey were randomly selected from the nearly 3 million people who take surveys on the SurveyMonkey platform every day. Each respondent randomly received 10 athletes to rate (On a scale of 1 to 10 stars, how great of an athlete is each of the following? Skip any athlete you arent familiar with), and each athlete was rated by approximately 500 respondents.
>> not sure this is the best way to rank the final pool, pretty much the same way the narrowed the list from 200 to 60
The Phase Two survey ranked the top 60 athletes from Phase One according to four criteria, which were aspects that were mentioned as characteristics that made a great athlete in the pretesting survey
- 40% overall rating
- 20% dominance
- 20% inspiration
- 20% impact on society
Each respondent randomly received three athletes to rate on these four dimensions, which were combined to create an overall score. The athletes were ranked by the overall score to determine the top 50 Greatest Black Athletes of All Time. The Phase Two survey was conducted online on SurveyMonkey from April 26 to May 1, 2017, among a national sample of 10,523 adults age 18 and older. Respondents for this survey were randomly selected from the nearly 3 million people who take surveys on the SurveyMonkey platform every day.
>> this exercise really seems more of an effort by Survey Monkey to get some PR than a real effort to rank the best athletes.
http://theundefeated.com/features/50-greatest-black-athletes/
Re: Tiger not one of the top 50 greatest black athletes? - Hurlburt88 - 08-13-2017
Given the survey participation, I think there is a lot of "recency bias" although that doesn't explain all the head-scratching results.Â
Re: Tiger not one of the top 50 greatest black athletes? - DC 86 - 08-13-2017
(08-13-2017, 09:30 AM)hurlburt88 link Wrote:Given the survey participation, I think there is a lot of "recency bias" although that doesn't explain all the head-scratching results.
There is obvious recency bias in some cases but in terms of NBA players you have LeBron at #29 and Kobe not even in the top 50, so results are all over the board.
Re: Tiger not one of the top 50 greatest black athletes? - lex24 - 08-13-2017
Are golfers athletes. OUCH  8). I couldn't pull up the article. But given that social impact and dominance in the sport were categories, he probably should have been included. But it's golf and that may have influenced people.
A bigger omission- Jack Johnson. One of the great heavyweights. The phrase "Great White Hope" was coined as they searched for someone to beat him. Married a white woman and was arrested under the Mann Act. A civil right warrior through his actions.
Re: Tiger not one of the top 50 greatest black athletes? - BostonCard - 08-13-2017
I listened to an interview on the hot takedown podcast, and they interviewed one of the authors of the piece. He seemed to place a lot of emphasis on on the impact to society part of the ratings.
You can listen here:
Hot Takedown: The Rookie Dilemma
https://overcast.fm/+EVlmxESyw
BC
Re: Tiger not one of the top 50 greatest black athletes? - 2006alum - 08-13-2017
(08-13-2017, 10:03 AM)DC 86 link Wrote:There is obvious recency bias in some cases but in terms of NBA players you have LeBron at #29 and Kobe not even in the top 50, so results are all over the board.
Race also played a brobdingnagian role. FiveThirtyEight had a terrific piece on this; non-white voters ranked Kobe 36th, while white voters ranked him dead last of every athlete in the poll. Not sure why, but white voters really didn't like Kobe. They apparently also don't like Serena Williams and Lebron James. The best non-sinister reason I can guess is that I would bet white voters disproportionately know black football and baseball players better than basketball players, and probably care more about football and baseball too, so some of it is simply voting for athletes in the sport with which you have the strongest affinity.
Re: Tiger not one of the top 50 greatest black athletes? - vataha - 08-13-2017
"He seemed to place a lot of emphasis on on the impact to society part of the ratings." If that is the basis for consideration and ultimately inclusion then Tiger warrants serious consideration. Personal flaws and demons aside, Tiger was a recent revelation much in the same way Arnold Palmer was in his time. Tiger captured notice and interest for many of us who were peripheral golf fans. I checked into the majors as well as the tournaments played on idyllic courses. Tiger made me tune into EVERY tournament he played, even if I left the TV on and went out to do yard work for a half hour or so. I came back in to watch HIM. Interest in golf spiked astronomically directly due to him. New bedroom (no pun intended) communities built around golf courses were erected (no pun intended) because of the Tiger phenomenon. ( See communities in Brentwood, Contra Costa, Co.) These communities are now taking three golf courses and paring down to one! The Tiger affect is now fools gold and tumbleweeds. Nike has bailed from the golf game and that is due to one mans' star having risen then shot its load. I think Tiger epitomizes impact on society AND economics.
Re: Tiger not one of the top 50 greatest black athletes? - SF_Cardinal_Fan - 08-14-2017
(08-13-2017, 08:17 AM)winflop link Wrote:Tiger vs Bonds? One guy had some major personal demons OFF THE COURSE. The other guy took illegal, performance-enhancing drugs to improve his performance ON THE FIELD. Not close to a comparison.
Following his first major incident, the November 2009 car accident, Tiger admitted that he used the drug Ambien.
Prior to 2009 I had always assumed that Tiger's "calm under pressure" was in large part due to his mom's Buddhist influence, including her training him to meditate. But once the Ambien usage was revealed, I question if that too did not also assist Tiger during tournament play.
Re: Tiger not one of the top 50 greatest black athletes? - CornFed - 08-14-2017
(08-14-2017, 06:12 AM)SF_Cardinal_Fan link Wrote:[quote author=winflop link=topic=17155.msg197071#msg197071 date=1502637455]
Tiger vs Bonds? One guy had some major personal demons OFF THE COURSE. The other guy took illegal, performance-enhancing drugs to improve his performance ON THE FIELD. Not close to a comparison.
Following his first major incident, the November 2009 car accident, Tiger admitted that he used the drug Ambien.
Prior to 2009 I had always assumed that Tiger's "calm under pressure" was in large part due to his mom's Buddhist influence, including her training him to meditate. But once the Ambien usage was revealed, I question if that too did not also assist Tiger during tournament play.
[/quote]
I have never had to use Ambien, but it seems insane to me to think of using ANY significant sedative during high-pressure golf competition. He got pretty amped up at some points during his rounds, which doesn't square w/ being on a sedative.
As an aside there was a brief flurry of controversy on the Seniors Tour (when it was known as such) about suspected use of beta-blockers. I don't know where that went, but I don't recall any bans or testing. Does anyone know? Is it just self-enforced by the players? Or is such medication still in use?
Re: Tiger not one of the top 50 greatest black athletes? - ATLCard - 08-14-2017
Getting more sleep is definitely performance-enhancing, but I don't think that is controversial in the sports-doping world. I second the thought that taking Ambien before going out on the course would be insane. Adderall or modafinal, different story.