The Morning Win: Who is the GOAT of GOATs?
In short, it's probably the Greek god Pan. And I know technically Pan is only half-goat, but I don't know a single other goat with an eponymous flute. Did you know that ancient Greeks considered Pan the patron god of fields, groves, wooden glens and theatrical criticism? I just learned that from his Wikipedia page, but color me impressed. Pretty darn good for a goat.
Oh, wait: This is supposed to be about Tom Brady.
A spirited debate between my colleagues Charles Curtis and Nick Schwartz on Monday aimed to determine whether Brady is the most accomplished athlete of all-time. But those guys don't yet have their very own newsletter, so I get to relitigate their argument in this space without fear of their incisive counterpoints.
Obviously it's an impossible thing to settle definitively, and probably it has a lot to do with how you define sports accomplishments. Like Charles pointed out, Michael Phelps won 28 Olympic medals, many of them individual. But -- and don't correct me if you disagree -- my sense is that the average American reading this newsletter cares a lot more about football than about swimming, and my evidence is that people talk about football more than once every four years. Also, Phelps couldn't even outswim a fake shark.
Serena Williams has a better case against Brady, in that she has been the best or among the best in a prominent individual sport for an extremely long time. Williams won her first grand slam title in 1999, which is wild. This woman has been at the top of her sport for 20 straight years, and she doesn't have the whole Bill Belichick-run football operation around her to fall back on.
Charles and Nick don't even bother mentioning a baseball player, which makes sense because no single baseball player impacts every game the way a quarterback or a star basketball player does. But in the interest of please-like-my-sport, I'll note that Babe Ruth was really just astonishingly good at baseball and won seven rings.
I wish I had a hotter take than this conclusion: Tom Brady is a prism through which you can see whatever your heart wants to see. You can point out, accurately, that he's the most accomplished and probably the most valuable player ever in what is now the most popular American sport, and maybe that makes him the GOAT of GOATs.
But I will counter, just as accurately, that he is a known cheater with a jerk face, and I have no inclination to bestow upon him any more honors than he has already earned. So I'm calling this one for Michael Jordan.
Monday's big winner
Sean McVay. The Rams' coach put his stunningly good memory on display during Super Bowl media appearances, when he remembered details of plays from his high-school days. Big deal. I'm older than McVay, and I still remember the name of the 300-pound kid I knocked down with a block on an inside trap play that went for a 45-yard touchdown run on homecoming of my sophomore year. I won't say his name here to save him embarrassment in case potential employers Google him, but I know it. To be fair, McVay probably has a lot more career football highlights to remember than I do.
Quick hits
- For The Win's Andrew Joseph took in a USMNT soccer friendly against Panama which, for some reason, was held in the actual, football-sized stadium that hosts Arizona Cardinals games. The match drew less than 10,000 fans in a venue that holds over 60,000. It's not a great look. Have these dudes never been in bands? Play a smaller room and it'll rock way harder.
- Extremely tall man Anthony Davis let the New Orleans Pelicans know he wants to be traded, meaning we get to have fun with trade speculation. I have nothing but respect for anyone with a firm enough handle on the NBA's byzantine salary-cap structure to explain the particulars of the Rose Rule to me.
- Baseball owners are using the sport's luxury-tax threshold as an excuse to not spend money on Bryce Harper and Manny Machado. On top of the general indignity of it, I imagine it's super annoying for those guys to not even know where they'll be expected to show up when spring training starts in a couple weeks.
This day in dumb sports
This marks the fourth anniversary of Marshawn Lynch (sort of) breaking his Super Bowl media week silence, which had featured him repeating, "I'm only here so I don't get fined." It was way more entertaining than most athlete media appearances, and it ended when an alarm went off on Lynch's phone to let him know he had fulfilled his obligation and could leave without getting fined.