…I mean, I had never even heard of Tom Brady before his name started to be bandied around a few places as “the best athlete EVAH.” Everybody knows Michael Jordan. Heck, I’ve heard of most of the other American Football players mentioned in this thread. But Brady draws a blank. Apart from “being the definition of a field general” what is it about Brady that puts him ahead of so many of the other names mentioned in this thread?
It’s basically that he combines an exceptionally long career, astounding individual accomplishments, and a remarkable number of championships.
I think Brown, Payton, and Sanders are probably all in the conversation for RB.
If you’ve never heard of Brady then you’ve never followed American football.
…I mean, congratulations on figuring out that I don’t follow a niche sport that is really only popular in one country?
But that kinda makes my point. I don’t follow American football but I’ve heard of all the other American football players named in this thread. I don’t follow basketball but I’ve heard of all the basketball players named in this thread. I don’t follow soccer but I’ve heard of all the players in this thread. But I’ve never heard of Tom Brady, and I would think that if we are going to call somebody the “single most dominant athlete in the history of team sports” or as some have argued on twitter “the best athlete of all time” then how much that player is known outside of America reflects how dominant they really are. We all know Michael Jordan: his name is pretty synonymous with basketball. You can’t say the same for Brady.
Actually, you can. I have no idea why you never heard of him, but you are certainly are not the norm.
…outside of America? What makes you so sure of that? Do you really think Jordan and Brady would have equal levels of name recognition outside of the USA?
This reminds me of one of my favorite stories regarding Ichiro Suzuki, the future Hall of Fame baseball Outfielder, who grew up in Japan (and played in Japan before coming over to MLB). In 2017, he’d been in the US for 18 years:
They played 34 matches in Britain but not against England every time (e.g they played twice against Scotland).
Still, they weren’t bad.
I’d pick Brady as the more impressive of the two, simply because football is a lot more violent. A lot of QBs don’t make it to age 43 in the league, let alone win the Super Bowl. Again.
Back when I cared about such things, I was a Bears fan. I heard later that Jim McMahon (of the championship team, 85-86) now keeps pads of paper next to all the phones in his house because when someone calls, he has to write it all down. He won’t simply forget what was said…he’ll forget the person called at all.
Also from that championship team Dave Duerson committed suicide.
Duerson was found dead at his Sunny Isles Beach, Florida[5] home on February 17, 2011. The Miami-Dade County medical examiner reported that Duerson died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest.[6] He sent a text message to his family saying he wanted his brain to be used for research at the Boston University School of Medicine, which is conducting research into chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a neurodegenerative disease, which can be caused by playing football.[7]
I’m sure basketball players have aches and pains as well, but not like that.
In the last two hours I have polled the 34 members of my college class via WhatsApp. These are 50-something males in South Asia, the Middle East, UK, the Far East and a few in North America. They follow a lot of sport, football (soccer), cricket, tennis, golf, rugby, F1, NBA, the Olympics, Cycling, etc. Sport is by far the #1 topic year round.
So far 16 have responded, most of them in Europe and Middle East (folks further East are sleeping).
- have never heard of either Walter Payton or Tom Brady (5)
- heard of Tom Brady but not Walter Payton (9)
- heard of both (2, both North American)
There are zero responses so far of anyone who has heard of Walter Payton but not Tom Brady.
So it certainly seems like you are a wild outlier.
…in the last two minutes I polled everybody in my household and apart from me 0% of them had heard of Tom Brady.
So perhaps maybe I’m not a wild outlier?
Or maybe, just maybe you missed my point? Did you happen to also ask how many of them had heard of Michael Jordan?
And perhaps if you had done this same poll a week ago (before the internet exploded with “Tom Brady is the greatest athlete of all-time”) they might not have heard of him? Because I know who he is now. And if you had asked me the same question today I too would have answered in the affirmative, but if you had asked me last week I would have given the same answer as Ichiro Suzuki’s coach.
Thanks, I should have spotted that.
When he won his 5th Super Bowl title (4 years ago) and passed the rest of the QBs who had won 4, the discussion tipped to the majority of fans thinking he was the GOAT. Then he won his 6th two years ago. And his 7th this year. There are some people who still don’t think he’s the GOAT but they may never acknowledge it.
I haven’t really seen much discussion about him being the greatest athlete of all time. Football isn’t really comparable to other sports; to have great success requires a team around you, great coaching, and some good luck. And even the most ardent Brady fans acknowledge that he is great not because of his athletic gifts but in spite of them. He’s one of the slowest QBs in the NFL for example, and he doesn’t have a cannon of an arm like Aaron Rogers or the scrambling ability of Patrick Mahomes. His gifts are more mental acuity, vision, and quick decision making.
But I suspect this boils down to NFL football just not being that popular around the world, where as basketball is much more of a global sport. Whether people have heard of Brady is much more of a hit or miss because they’re just not that likely to have seen much football coverage. But that’s a popularity measure, not an athletic one.
Outside North America, Jordan is wildly more well known. American football is not a major sport outside the USA and Canada. It is rather like being surprised if an American didn’t know Japan’s greatest sumo wrestler.
…its tweets like this that have been popping up all week that I’m talking about.
Look at who they compared him to:
I’ve had heard of all of those people, but I was like “who is that Tom Brady fella?”
The Ranfurly Shield is the most prestigious rugby trophy IMHO played for in NZ: but we don’t generally regard winning the Shield as something we would credit individual players with. I mean, Terry Wright scored 53 tries and was part of the team that held the Shield for 9 years and 61 defenses: but that doesn’t mean “he’s the single most dominant athlete in the history of sports”. From what you’ve said he’s one of the slowest QB’s and doesn’t have the greatest arm. Having great mental acuity, vision, and quick decision making puts him in the realm of guys like Grant Fox or Steve Waugh than at the level of Michael Jordan. That isn’t an insult. Fox and Waugh are legends, two of the finest players to every play in their respective code. But nobody would seriously put them up against a guy like Jordan. That’s a very different level.
And while we are throwing names in the ring: I’ve never seen a player dominate a field as much as the late Jonah Lomu. One of the few players in any sport that could literally stomp all over the opposition. Also a great sportsman and a nice guy. Gone too soon.
…in case you’ve never seen him in action, here is a video of some of Jonah Lomu’s greatest hits. (I’m not arguing that he’s more dominant that Jordan or Brady, this thread just reminded me of him and thought I would share this)
What matters is results. Wayne Gretzky was not the fastest or strongest hockey player ever, or even on his own team at any given time, actually. He was extremely well conditioned and a wonderful stickhandler but not by traditional measures an amazingly strong or fast man. What he had was RESULTS; he redefined the standards of his sport to an extent far beyond pretty much anyone in any major team professional sports I can think of except maybe Babe Ruth, and Ruth has since been matched in most respects by someone or another. He was statistically essentially the Don Bradman of hockey except, rather importantly, he played five times as many games in his sport as Bradman did in his. The extent of Gretzky’s dominance was so great it was disorienting.
Whatever the argument for Brady over other football players, it’s hard to reasonably explain how he approaches Wayne Gretzky.
Of course, the other problem with Brady is that when we speak of the likes of Michael Jordan or Wayne Gretzky, those players had a literally fundamental effect on the business and popularity of their sport in a way Brady hasn’t.
But that wasn’t the point I was responding to. The poster said that he’d heard of other NFL players mentioned in this thread, just not Tom Brady. I’m just not sure how to explain that except for random chance, and the fact that Brady is current and the others were from different era.
…I’m not entirely sure what else I have to explain. American Football isn’t a worldwide sport. Tom Brady isn’t a household name outside of America. It isn’t “random chance” that I had never heard of him. It would have been random chance if I had heard of him. We’ve got our own sports we follow, our own sporting heroes. The only time that American Football comes up is during the superbowl and normally the attention is on the adverts or the half-time show. This year (and I’m still not sure why) it was centered on Tom Brady.
I mean you said it yourself.
Yep. That’s true. And I hate to break it to you but most of the rest of the world aren’t following American football. I’m sure that there are plenty of people around the world that do follow American football and have heard of Tom Brady. But I don’t know why you would think that they would be the rule and not the exception.
Here’s the sports section of our most popular news website here:
America’s Cup. Rugby Union. Netball. Tennis. Cricket. Snowboarding. Māori sport. Fishing. Gymnastics. Basketball. The White Ferns. Soccer. Rugby League. Golf. There are entire sections dedicated to Combat Sports, Racing, Motorsports and even Esports. But they don’t have an American Football section. Because outside of a relatively small fan base nobody really follows it here.
For us while domestic competition is important, its the international games and rivalry’s that draw the most attention. New Zealand vs South Africa in Rugby Union. New Zealand vs Australia in Netball. We generally view American Football (and this isn’t a value judgement) as a big domestic competition. So it doesn’t resonate here.
And to bring it back to the OP after everything I’ve learned in this thread: no, I don’t think Tom Brady is more dominant than Michael Jordan: I don’t think its even close.