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Podcast Transcript
In any sport, there is always one debate that comes up. It comes up year after year, and it has been around for as long as sport has existed.
The debate is about who is the greatest of all time, or in common parlance, who is the GOAT?
Every sport has its own contenders for the GOAT. In some sports, the GOAT is pretty easy to identify. In others, it isn’t quite so clear.
Learn more about who the GOATS are in many major sports on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
This episode is going to be a bit different in that any discussion of the greatest athletes is entirely subjective. There is no definitive answer to the question of who is the greatest of all time. That is what makes it subject to such intense debate.
What I’m going to provide here is ultimately my subjective opinion, and I know for a fact that some of my opinions will spark disagreement with many of you. If you disagree, and again, I know many of you will feel free to leave your opinion on the Facebook group or Discord server, the links to which are in the show notes.
That being said, I’m going to be providing my reasons for each selection. I’m not picking them arbitrarily.
Before I get into my picks, I should provide a brief background on where the term GOAT came from.
It actually began with the boxer Muhammad Ali. Ali called himself “the greatest.” In the 1990s, after his boxing career was over, his wife began using the term GOAT as an acronym for Greatest of All Time.
The term became popularized in 2000 by the rapper LL Cool J who titled one of his albums, G.O.A.T. – The Greatest Of All Time.
The phrase became popularized, and today, it is commonly used to reference The Greatest Of All Time.
With that, let’s get started with the first GOAT, and I’ll start with a relatively easy one: ice hockey.
I don’t think there is any question that the greatest hockey GOAT has to be Wayne Gretzky.
Gretzky holds the NHL career records for goals, assists, and points. Gretzky holds eleven of the top twelve seasons for assists and the top two seasons for goals.
He won the Heart Trophy, the NHL MVP award, a record nine times. His number 99 was retired throughout the entire league.
I think he is very clearly the greatest hockey player of all time.
Another easy GOAT selection is in golf. Tiger Woods is the greatest golfer of all time.
There is really only one other condenser for the title of golf’s GOAT, and that would be Jack Nichalus. The debate between Jack and Tiger has always been over one metric: the number of wins at major tournaments.
Jack Nichalus has 18 wins, and Tiger Woods has 15. The debate usually ends there.
However, if you look at any other metric, Tiger is clearly ahead.
Tiger has 82 PGA tour wins, and Jack has 73.
The Vardon Trophy trophy is given each year to the PGA Tour player who has the best scoring average. Tiger has won it nine times. No one else as won it more than five times, and Jack Nichalus never won it.
If you include the US Amateur, which used to be considered a major, Jack won it twice, and Tiger won it three times. At the US Junior Amateur, Jack made it to the semifinals once, and Tiger won it three times.
Tiger was the tour’s top money winner ten times, and Jack was eight times.
Moreover, Tiger did all this while playing in far fewer tournaments than Jack. Jack played in 586 PGA tournaments for a winning percentage of 12.5%, while Tiger has only played in 358 tournaments for a winning percentage of 23%.
So, despite three fewer major wins, I’d still have to give the nod to Tiger for pretty much everything else.
The next sport’s GOAT I’ll name is tennis. In men’s tennis, I think the answer as of the time of recording is obvious. It is Novak Djokovic of Serbia.
Djokovic has won more majors than any other player, with 24. He’s won a record 40 ATP masters events, has been the number one player at the end of the year a record seven times, and has won an Olympic gold medal.
The only competitors for the title of GOAT would be Roger Federer and Rafel Nadal, whose careers overlapped Djokovic’s. In head-to-head competition, Djokovic has winning records against both men.
In women’s tennis, I don’t think the GOAT is quite so clear, but I would have to give the nod to Serena Williams. Many people think that this is a slam dunk, but I think that both Steffi Graff and Martina Martina Navratilova can make a good case.
Unlike the men, the careers of these three women didn’t significantly overlap.
In terms of major championships, Serena has 23, Steffi has 22, and Martina has 18. However, none of them hold the record, which is held by Marget Court at 24.
If you look at the total number of tournament wins, Martina has 167, Steffi has 107, and Serena has 73, a very large spread between the three.
Steffi finished the year at number one eight times, Martina seven times, and Serena five times.
There is one other metric that really sets them apart: doubles competition. Steffi only had one double major and never won one in mixed doubles.
Serena was one of the best doubles players in history, having won 14 doubles majors and two mixed doubles majors.
Martina, however, was arguably the greatest doubles player in history, having won 31 major doubles championships and ten mixed doubles championships.
My point in all of this is to show that it really isn’t a cut-and-dry case for either of the three women, but I’d go with Serena due to her performance in singles competition while still showing herself to be one of the greatest doubles players.
In boxing, many people think that the GOAT is Mohammed Ali. Ali was certainly great. Around the year 2000, many lists came out listing the greatest athletes of the 20th century. ESPN put Ali at number one.
My problem with that is that for Ali to be the greatest athlete, he had to be the greatest boxer, and to be the greatest boxer, he had to be the greatest heavyweight, and I don’t think he was the greatest heavyweight.
That claim has to go to Joe Lewis, who held the championship for 12 years and won 25 consecutive title defenses.
While Joe Lewis might be the greatest heavyweight, does that make him the greatest boxer pound for pound?
I’d have to go with Sugar Ray Robinson, the consensus pound-for-pound best boxer of all time. Almost every boxing magazine and expert ranks Robinson as the greatest boxer. He had a career total of 201 professional wins with only 19 losses and six draws.
From 1943 to 1951, he had a 91-fight winning streak. He held the welterweight title for five years from 1946 to 1951, then won the middleweight title, then retired, and won the middleweight title back.
The GOAT in gymnastics is another easy one. Simone Biles.
She has won 11 Olympic medals so far, including seven golds, making her the second most decorated Olympic gymnast. She also won the all-around gold medal twice.
However, where she really separates herself from everyone else is her performance at the world championships. She has won 30 medals at the world championships, including 23 gold medals, far more than anyone else.
She was also a trailblazer who had no fewer than five different vaults, jumps, and moves named after her.
In swimming, the GOAT is one of the most obvious: Michael Phelps. Phelps has won 28 Olympic medals, 23 of which are gold. This is more than double the number of the next closest male swimmer. He set world records in seven of the eight events he participated in.
The greatest female swimmer is Katie Ledecky, who has 14 Olympic medals, 9 of which are gold. Ledecky swims longer distances, which have fewer events than at shorter distances.
She has recently announced that she will be competing at the 2028 Olympics, which means the odds are good that she will increase her medal tally.
In the game of Cricket, the GOAT is also a relatively easy choice. It is the great Australian batsman Don Bradman.
Bradman had a batting average of 99.94, which is the number of runs scored divided by the number of outs made. No one is even close to Brandman in terms of his batting. The next closest batting average is over 30 points lower, and to be above 50 is considered to be great.
His dominance over everyone else is so great that it is hard to find another sport with such a wide gap between the first and second person.
Let’s now move to a sport that generates a lot of passion and probably controversy: association football or soccer.
With apologies to many great players, I think the three candidates for GOAT are Ronaldo, Pele, and Lionel Messi.
Pele has 762 career goals, Messi has 838, and Ronaldo has 895.
It would seem that Ronaldo has an edge, but he has also played significantly more games. On a per-game basis, Messi has scored more goals and had more assists, among other metrics.
Messi has been awarded the Golden Ball eight times, a record six European Golden Shoes, and was named the world’s best player for a record eight times by FIFA.
Pele won three World Cups, Messi won one, and Ronaldo won none. However, Messi and Ronaldo have had much more successful club careers than Pele, with Messi having a slight edge in terms of team trophies won.
I’d have to get the edge to Messi as the GOAT of football, although the gap between him and Ronaldo isn’t as great as most think.
What about baseball? Baseball has an abundance of statistics and almost all of the top level advanced statistics which try to evaluate career performance and contribution all point to the same person: Babe Ruth.
Despite having played over 100 years ago, he is one of a very small number of players in history to have excelled at both pitching and hitting. He won seven championships and led the league in some statistical category a record 157 times.
At his retirement, he was the career leader in home runs, RBIs, and walks. To this day he still has the highest slugging percentage and the second highest on base percentage in history.
In American football, it is difficult to select a single person because each position is completely different.
For my greatest defensive player, I’m going to go with the Minister of Defense, Reggie White. He was selected to 13 Pro Bowls, was a 13-time All-Pro, and was a two-time Defensive Player of the Year.
He is second in career sacks behind Bruce Smith by only two sacks. However, he also spent two years playing in the USFL, where he registered 23.5 sacks.
The greatest running back in history, I think, has to be Jim Brown. He retired early, but he was the greatest running back in an era of great runningbacks. He was a three-time MVP and led the league in rushing eight times. Even the father of Barry Sanders, the next greatest runningback, thought that his son wasn’t as good as Jim Brown.
The greatest receiver would be Jerry Rice, which is the easiest selection as he holds pretty much every single receiving record.
As for quarterback, as much as it pains me to say it, I’d have to go with the seven-time Super Bowl champ, Tom Brady, who also happens to be the career leader in touchdown passes, attempts, and completions.
I’ll end with what I think will be my most controversial selection, but it is belief that I’ve held for a long time and I think the evidence supports it, the GOAT in basketball.
I do not think it is Michael Jordan. He was great, to be sure, but I’d have to go with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
People often point to Jordan’s six titles, but Kareem also won six titles. Jordan won five MVPs, and Kareem won six.
Jordan won an NCAA championship, and Kareem won three. Jordan was named NCAA Player of the Year, Kareem won it a record three times and was also named Outstanding Player of the NCAA tournament three times.
The only reason Kareem didn’t win four of each of the above awards instead of three was because, at the time, freshmen weren’t allowed to play. He was also named the high school player of the year twice.
Jordan didn’t win a playoff series in his first two years. Kareem carried an expansion franchise, the Milwaukee Bucks, to an NBA championship in just its second season of existence.
Kareem retired as the all-time NBA scoring leader, third in rebounds, and first in blocked shots.
One of the big strikes against Jordan was that he voluntarily quit the game for almost two years in his prime to play minor league baseball. This wasn’t like being injured or being drafted. It was something he had full control over and had to be considered in his overall evaluation.
I’ll end the episode by bringing up the GOAT of GOATs, the greatest of the greats in all sports, and someone familiar to every member of the completionist club, the great Alan Francis, the world’s greatest horseshoe pitcher.
Just days before I recorded this episode, Alan Francis, on whom I’ve done a previous episode, won his 28th horseshoe pitching world championship. He won it in a totally dominating fashion, just like he has won the vast majority of his world championships.
He is 54 years old and still the greatest at his sport by a wide margin, which means he could still win world championships when he is in his 60s against competitors a third his age.
I’m sure almost no one disagrees with all of my GOAT picks, but I’m also sure that almost everyone will disagree with at least one of my GOAT picks.
That is just the nature of the GOAT debate.
If you want to share your picks for the GOAT in any of the sports I’ve mentioned or some I didn’t, feel free to head over the Facebook Group or the Discord server to share your GOATs.
