OT: Most influential U.S. athlete of the past 25 years?

[NJHusky]

It's almost a shame there wasn't a group of NBA players prior to LeBron that opened up NBA level basketball to the world on a global stage.

See post 229 lol

 

[Lafayette]

It was more than 50 years ago, but Bobby Fischer did way more than Carlsen ever did to make chess popular, at least in the US. (Probably The Queen's Gambit did too, more recently).

Yes but here we are with the 25 year rule and Chess is not even a sport. But agree on Bobby Fisher.

 

[Chin Diesel]

See post 229 lol

See post 228 lol?????

 

[Lafayette]

If we are talking actual influence:

1) LeBron - Basketball is an international sport now, like soccer, and he is the face of it
2) Tiger - Not just a great golfer, but broke down the implicit racist barrier golf had
3) Ohtani and Ichiro - I put these together. Maybe not US, but they sure transformed baseball.
5) Phelps - Swimming is really #1 Olynpic sport because of him
6) Biles - Gymnastics is the premier women's Olympic sport, if not the overall premier Olympic sport, because of her
7) Curry - Changed the way NBA basketball is played
8) Williams - Would be higher but Tennis is no where near what it was like in 70s and 80s
9) Clark - WNBA is now taken seriously because of her
10) Brady - Great yes, but did he really change anything? Marino was more influential on the sport in my opinion.

#5 Swimming is really #1 Olympic sport because there are 26 medals given out. Phelps got more medals than anyone, and once he did and people saw, even more medals came after. But yes, had influence but I'd bump down to 7-8.

#6 See #5 comment. People tuned in but IDK if more gymnasts are coming.

#8 Williams - for Women's tennis she dominated for years and grew the sport. Tennis (and Golf) are really 2 sports - men's and women's.

 

[Lafayette]

An interesting exercise would be to parse the last 125 years into 5 periods of 25 years each.

I don't think Ali wins the 1976-2000 period. His win over Foreman was in '74. But he'd crush the 1951-75 period, even over Jackie, IMHO.98 Jackie would win 1926-50 because it was just that big a thing. And Ruth wins 1900-25 as baseball was pretty much the only popular pro sport and he ushered in the live ball era with a bang.

And if we did it by decades, Ali might be the only one to win two.

Ruth was like 1/8th the reason we went from dead ball to live ball. Others were changes in the ball itself, fences, rules against spit balls, marked balls, and lights at night, no tobacco juicing the ball, and oh one deadly beaning. And Ruth.

 

[TheChamps990411]

Yes.

Ouch! Boy did BSPN do a real number on a lot of people. Her name being mentioned is laughable.