(column)
The great Tom Brady retired Monday and everyone in the Internet world celebrated his career by calling him the GOAT.
The GOAT is an acronym sports fans have been using for a couple of years. It means the Greatest Of All Time. In other words, Tom Brady is the Greatest Of All Time.
Wow, just take a step back.
Sure, Tom Brady is a wonderful and phenomenal player and a one-of-a-kind talent.
But, that is still a heck of a statement.
So, of all the athletes that have ever played football, over all those years, Tom Brady is the best?
But, how can you compare him to Jim Brown or Jerry Rice or Lawrence Taylor? It seems like a pointless endeavor. How can Tom Brady be the best football player ever if he wasn’t physically dominant like a Dick Butkus or a Mean Joe Green? The game of football is about violence and toughness and physically imposing your will. Tom Brady wasn’t really part of any of that.
Even at quarterback it doesn’t seem fair to just casually say Brady is the greatest.
Yes, Brady has won seven Super Bowls (a marvelous achievement), but many people throwing around the word GOAT don’t even realize that the NFL was around for a long time before the Super Bowl even existed.
Is Tom Brady better than Bart Starr? Perhaps, but the game of football has evolved so much over 50 years, that it is basically two different sports. Sure, Bart Starr probably couldn’t compete in today’s complex high throwing offensive systems, but how do we know Brady could compete in the 1950s NFL era, back when men were men and a head on collision by a linebacker was a solid tackle?
Perhaps, Tom Brady is the greatest football player of all time. His seven Super Bowl rings will likely not be matched in our lifetimes.
The only issue with calling a modern athlete of today the greatest ever is that it seems to be said by a lot of people who don’t understand sports history. Debating about who is the greatest athlete ever can be a lots of fun, but proclaiming a new GOAT every other day seems like a bridge too far.
Thinking of the athletes we see today as the the greatest ever is only normal. You can make a heck of an argument that Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, Serena Williams were all the bests to ever play their respective sports.
But, if we gave the athletes of yesteryear the same science, training and equipment of today’s modern athlete, there is no telling what the old guys could do.
Babe Ruth may be hitting 1,000-foot home runs.
David W. Healy is the sports editor of the Delta Democrat-Times. He can be reached at dhealy@ddtonline.com.
