I’d like to see Alex Zanardi or Serena. Zanardi isn’t exactly famous, so he doesn’t have a shot, plus he’s Italian. Serena while not the number one female tennis player, she was without a doubt the best this year, but always a controversial figure. Those two would be my personal picks, but logic says Phelps. Dude went out on top. Hard to beat that, but since he already won, I guess someone else will.
Edit: Since the winner doesn’t have to play sports, what about Travis Tygart? For bringing down LA, he’s somebody’s hero.
Please don’t let Serena win anything ever again. She’s a classless brat and a horribly sore loser. And that’s saying something, as tennis players in general are pretty snotty. She’s pretty much the only player I actively root to lose, no matter who she’s playing. (Venus seems lovely, however, and it’s unfortunate Serena ended up being the long-lasting sister).
They didn’t give it to Frank Robinson. Really, I’d look for something bigger than what amounts to an arbitrary statistical “Crown” in a Sportsman of the Year. Cabrera didn’t set any records. He wasn’t the best player in baseball or a big comeback story.
I’d guess Nate Silver and ‘stat geeks.’ They can write about Silver as well as the stat geek comparison between Cabrera and Trout during the MVP debate.
I think it is amazing that Federer is likely to end his career without ever getting picked.
Frank Robinson won it in… what, 1967? It wasn’t uncommon then, was it?
Ignorance fought!!
Then there’s zero argument for him I would say.
As a lifelong Yankee fan, I would love to see RA Dickey get it.
I say Lebron. Won the NBA MVP, won the NBA championship, won the Finals MVP, and was clearly the best player on the Olympic team that won the gold medal.
Looks like everyone who picked LeBron was right.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/magazine/sportsman/
As I said earlier, I’d have voted for Usain Bolt, but LeBron seems like a perfectly fine choice to me, too.
Any number of people could have won it without much complaint, but based on who SI has given it to in the past, LeBron seemed the most likely choice to me - they reward somebody for what he did both in one of the four major sports and for wearing a USA Olympic uniform of some sort.
The next question is, which will be greater this year:
(a) The number of people who write to SI asking, or at least threatening, to cancel their subscription because of this choice;
(b) The number of people who write to SI asking, or at least threatening, to cancel their subscription after the next swimsuit issue?
IIRC, ESPN took a poll of who fans wanted to win the NBA Finals (Miami or Oklahoma City), and the only two states that voted for the Heat were Florida (of course) and Washington (presumably, they didn’t want the former Seattle SuperSonics to win after leaving town). I have a feeling this choice won’t be overwhelmingly popular.
Not exactly an in-depth analysis, but I found myself thinking about this last night and realized I hadn’t considered LeBron and that he was the obvious choice. It’s not just that he won an NBA title and gold at the Olympics, it’s that in the process of winning a championship he performed at an amazingly high level in the playoffs (so much for his not being clutch) and demonstrated that he’s by far the best basketball player in the world. Considering the context of his career it was that much more enormous. Andy Murray had a great breakthrough and Serena Williams was incredible in the second half of the season - and if she can complete another “Serena Slam” she needs to be in this discussion in 2013, but that’s a ways off - and Phelps was great even if he didn’t quite reach the levels he did in 2008. But to me it was LeBron’s year.
Hey, don’t give me that “of course” stuff. Most of use hate the Heat. We’re just too depressed to vote in polls.