Tuesday, July 20, 2010

WHERE HAVE YOU GONE, JOE DIMAGGIO? According to the annual Harris Interactive annual poll conducted last month -- and you know I'm a fan of accurate polling -- Kobe Bryant has moved from fourth place into a tie with Tiger Woods for the title of America's Favorite Sports Star. Woods had held the title solo since 2006. Woods, Derek Jeter, Brett Favre, Michael Jordan and Dale Earnhardt Jr. have each placed in the top ten every year since at least 2004, and Drew Brees (replacing Albert Pujols) is the sole wholly new member of the top 10.

On the women's side, it's Serena-Venus-Danica for the second straight year.

9 comments:

  1. Adam C.6:55 PM

    Interesting:  LeBron dropped three ticks even before The Decision.  

    Surprising:  Kobe is number one male among women.  Guess the Colorado incident really is behind him.

    Weird:  Jeter is number one male among Whites.  Huh?  Lot of Yankee fans, I guess, but I'm surprised this wasn't a football player.

    Amazing:  Seven years after his final retirement as a player, Jordan still is comfortably within the overall top 10 (and has been every year since 1993).   Or maybe it's that he's the most popular majority owner of a pro sports franchise.

    Possible dissertation topic:  Among the men, all but one (Jordan) are currently active -- yes, I'm assuming Favre comes back, but really, he's Favre, he'll come back.  Yet among the women, five are retired from active competition (Hamm, Kournikova, Leslie, King, and Navratilova).

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  2. Baseball and basketball players historically do better than football players for the simple reason that their faces are visible during play.  Also, fascinating that despite the general popularity of NASCAR, it's only represented by one person.  (Though it suffers from the "masked man" syndrome to some extent, since you don't see faces during a race.)

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  3. On the last one, it's because tennis is the only women's sport that most people pay attention to in non-Olympic years.

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  4. Anonymous9:17 PM

    For the live of me I cannot understand how Brett Favre has made the list since leaving Green Bay.  Who in their right mind would like him outside of fans of his current team? 

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  5. Adam C.9:24 PM

    In addition to being an overrated tax cheat, Jeter has long been an overrated defensive player.

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  6. Joseph J. Finn9:43 PM

    That's corporate tool who's the best athlete of his generation, thankyouverymuch.

    And car drivers are not athletes.  Neither are jockeys.

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  7. <span>That's corporate tool who's the best athlete of his generation, thankyouverymuch.</span>

    Corporate tool, and degenerate gambler and serial philanderer, and egotistical maniac, and worst of all, drafter of Kwame Brown.

    Best basketball player surely, but would the best athlete of his generation have failed so epically at the only other sport he attempted?

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