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Athletes That Are Universally Respected And Liked (1 Viewer)

ChiefD said:
Bo Jackson
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While I have seen a few Bama fans ask for his autograph and seemingly admire him - I know there are some Bama fans that hate him passionately. If they are willing to kill trees they can hate Bo. 

 
ffldrew said:
Jimmy Connors was not a fan - they pretty much hated each other butting heads over Davis Cup and ATP union. Connors was banned from French Open due in part to the fight.
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I think we can still say universally even with Connors’ opinion. Jimmy himself was a grade A d-bag.

 
this guy forever has my respect and well wishes and deep admiration - no matter the wrong turns he subsequently made.

who  knows how this affected him ... it may have been intregal in the demons that consumed him. 

"of all the words of tongue or pen, these four are saddest: "it might have been" 

 
Zigg said:
Steve Nash
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Friend of mine who was a cabbie in AZ gave him a ride one time. He had two younger female compatriots with him, dropped them off, then got dropped off at his own house where he scaled the wall to his own house and presumably snuck back inside.

Not a reason to not like him, just sharing. :shrug:

 
otb_lifer said:
this guy forever has my respect and well wishes and deep admiration - no matter the wrong turns he subsequently made.

who knows how this affected him ... it may have been intregal in the demons that consumed him. 

"of all the words of tongue or pen, these four are saddest: "it might have been"
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I'm all about the forgiveness of him. 

Also in agreement on Muhammad Ali: No white athlete would ever get the pass that Ali did.

 
Good Posting Judge said:
Counterpoint: He also dealt with a lot of White Nonsense.
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I get that this is shtick and terseness for the point of making a point but allow me to quibble with both what he dealt with and how pernicious it was...

Most universally-liked people don't join organizations like the Nation Of Islam and subscribe to that nonsense no matter how much nonsense they put up with from others, especially when that nonsense turns geopolitical and takes positions on the Middle East of all places.

I can certainly sympathize with those that have been

  1. disenfranchised
  2. discriminated against
  3. not given a voice in geopolitics
But to go out and preach against a race, against Judaism by espousing Zionist control of America, and to call someone like Frazier an "Uncle Tom" for existing is way sort of beyond it, IMO.

Wolfe tears Clay up in one of his New Journo pieces on him, a piece written during his pre-Ali days. Wolfe said he wondered why he didn't like him at all considering he generally relates to people like that, and in retrospect realizes it was during his conversion from Clay to Ali.

Doesn't strike me even as historically a nice guy no matter how people want to talk about White Nonsense, which actually seems to underplay the black experience in the sixties. White Nonsense is way more pernicious that just that. It's segregation, sit-ins, lunch counters, and a whole host of things that dehumanized one race in the name of nothing other than rank ignorance. 

/endsoapbox

 
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otb_lifer said:
some NYers from days gone by ...

Gil Hodges

Rod Gilbert

Dave DeBusschere

Roy White

Donnie Baseball

Ed Kranepool

Mike Bossy

Roy Campenella

George Martin

Thurman Munson 

Catfish Hunter
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You can add Willie Randolph and Greg Nettles to the NYers list

 
For me it's Joe Thomas(LT)CLE.

Before he was even drafted as a top 3 pick he seemed to have his head on straight. Heard the news he was drafted by CLE in 2007 while he was out on a boat fishing with his old man on Lake Michigan.

Started at LT for the Browns as a rookie and played the next 10,363 snaps in a row pretty much at a sustained All-Pro level. Only a torn triceps pried him out of the lineup in 2017. Think about that for a second. He played for a DECADE for the CLEVELAND BROWNS and never missed ONE SNAP. On a CLE team that won 10 games his rookie season and never reached .500 thereafter he never rotated out at the end of yet another abysmal season playing outdoors in NOV/DEC in CLE. To the best of my knowledge he never held out, never demanded a trade to a better team(could you find a worse one?). He just played like an All-Pro.... every down...... every SEASON. That is just a level of sustained excellence in the face of adversity I'm not sure that I've ever seen, and we may never see again.

On top of all that it seems that now that he's retired he's giving more interviews and he sounds exactly like the same type of guy that would go fishing with his father during the first round of the NFL draft. He just seems like a guy that gets it. It's a shame that millions of characters have been typed with regards to a guy like Josh Gordon and maybe 1/1000th of the media attention has been spent on a guy like Joe Thomas. 

 
BoltBacker said:
For me it's Joe Thomas(LT)CLE.

Before he was even drafted as a top 3 pick he seemed to have his head on straight. Heard the news he was drafted by CLE in 2007 while he was out on a boat fishing with his old man on Lake Michigan.

Started at LT for the Browns as a rookie and played the next 10,363 snaps in a row pretty much at a sustained All-Pro level. Only a torn triceps pried him out of the lineup in 2017. Think about that for a second. He played for a DECADE for the CLEVELAND BROWNS and never missed ONE SNAP. On a CLE team that won 10 games his rookie season and never reached .500 thereafter he never rotated out at the end of yet another abysmal season playing outdoors in NOV/DEC in CLE. To the best of my knowledge he never held out, never demanded a trade to a better team(could you find a worse one?). He just played like an All-Pro.... every down...... every SEASON. That is just a level of sustained excellence in the face of adversity I'm not sure that I've ever seen, and we may never see again.

On top of all that it seems that now that he's retired he's giving more interviews and he sounds exactly like the same type of guy that would go fishing with his father during the first round of the NFL draft. He just seems like a guy that gets it. It's a shame that millions of characters have been typed with regards to a guy like Josh Gordon and maybe 1/1000th of the media attention has been spent on a guy like Joe Thomas. 
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I still laugh at the clods who criticized Joe for honoring his commitment to go fishing with his dad rather than attend or at least watch himself get drafted. Class guy even if he had a few dumb detractors for that one day.

 
BoltBacker said:
For me it's Joe Thomas(LT)CLE.

Before he was even drafted as a top 3 pick he seemed to have his head on straight. Heard the news he was drafted by CLE in 2007 while he was out on a boat fishing with his old man on Lake Michigan.

Started at LT for the Browns as a rookie and played the next 10,363 snaps in a row pretty much at a sustained All-Pro level. Only a torn triceps pried him out of the lineup in 2017. Think about that for a second. He played for a DECADE for the CLEVELAND BROWNS and never missed ONE SNAP. On a CLE team that won 10 games his rookie season and never reached .500 thereafter he never rotated out at the end of yet another abysmal season playing outdoors in NOV/DEC in CLE. To the best of my knowledge he never held out, never demanded a trade to a better team(could you find a worse one?). He just played like an All-Pro.... every down...... every SEASON. That is just a level of sustained excellence in the face of adversity I'm not sure that I've ever seen, and we may never see again.

On top of all that it seems that now that he's retired he's giving more interviews and he sounds exactly like the same type of guy that would go fishing with his father during the first round of the NFL draft. He just seems like a guy that gets it. It's a shame that millions of characters have been typed with regards to a guy like Josh Gordon and maybe 1/1000th of the media attention has been spent on a guy like Joe Thomas. 
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Joe is a Wisconsin kid from the laid back Milwaukee suburb of Brookfield where I once roamed. Of course he's a good dude.

 
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rockaction said:
I get that this is shtick and terseness for the point of making a point but allow me to quibble with both what he dealt with and how pernicious it was...

Most universally-liked people don't join organizations like the Nation Of Islam and subscribe to that nonsense no matter how much nonsense they put up with from others, especially when that nonsense turns geopolitical and takes positions on the Middle East of all places.

I can certainly sympathize with those that have been

  1. disenfranchised
  2. discriminated against
  3. not given a voice in geopolitics
But to go out and preach against a race, against Judaism by espousing Zionist control of America, and to call someone like Frazier an "Uncle Tom" for existing is way sort of beyond it, IMO.

Wolfe tears Clay up in one of his New Journo pieces on him, a piece written during his pre-Ali days. Wolfe said he wondered why he didn't like him at all considering he generally relates to people like that, and in retrospect realizes it was during his conversion from Clay to Ali.

Doesn't strike me even as historically a nice guy no matter how people want to talk about White Nonsense, which actually seems to underplay the black experience in the sixties. White Nonsense is way more pernicious that just that. It's segregation, sit-ins, lunch counters, and a whole host of things that dehumanized one race in the name of nothing other than rank ignorance. 

/endsoapbox
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Muslims shouldn't take positions on what happens in the Middle East?

I thought about this, and if a hypothetical white guy said "You know, I don't think white people can really get along with other types of people", and then decided to reconfigure his life so he had as little contact with other people of other races as possible, I don't really have a problem with it. I saw someone on Twitter joke the other day that "we had our own water fountains and movie theatres and then this (guy) MLK came along." And Killer Mike noted in his Netflix show that during segregation, money stayed within the black community much longer. Black people spent their money at black-owned businesses, not outside ones.

And, from a black person's perspective, when they look at the unbroken chain of awful behavior towards their people from whites for centuries, not ending in 1865 whatsoever, I get where it's coming from. Maybe the hypothetical "chill white separatist" feels the same way. The issue with separatism is, of course, when one group wants to "cleanse" or "clear out" the other races or people, which is kind of where 99% of white people who want separation between the races end up.

The NOI has a lot of issues. They're not great people. And Ali was an extremely flaVVed person as well. But he also worked closely with (and greatly trusted) Bob Arum, who's Jewish. So I dunno. Maybe if someone would write a book or produce a documentary about the guy we could know more.

 
Good Posting Judge said:
Muslims shouldn't take positions on what happens in the Middle East?
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No, when people that endorse the theory that Zionists control either the U.S. media and/or government, one can be sure that Some Sort Of Nonsense is likely to flow thenceforth, and that a statement like that certainly betrays their ultimate perception of what is happening in the Middle East, geopolitically and racially and religiously speaking. They should be taken as seriously as that original statement, and their arguments thusly judged in that context. 

Good Posting Judge said:
But he also worked closely with (and greatly trusted) Bob Arum, who's Jewish.
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I'm glad Ali was friends with Bob Arum. Some of his closest friends were white. And Jewish. :rolleyes:

Good Posting Judge said:
The NOI has a lot of issues. So I dunno. Maybe if someone would write a book or produce a documentary about the guy we could know more.
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This is the understatement of the year. Saying the NOI "has a lot of issues" is like saying that the KKK has a "problem in its top-down administration."  As for the documentary, I'm waiting for one that isn't hagiography. I won't hold my breath.

Ali is certainly complicated, but to call him a slam dunk as beloved within the context of culture is to (pardon me) whitewash his actual statements and actions with apologies and apologias worthy of archaic religiosity and religions. It's a hard sell, but something with which our media seems obsessed as pertains to the memory of ALI. As it is, I'm one of the dissenters that don't need either the media harangue about societal context or left-wing apparatchiks getting scoldy about how to view someone's actual statements and deeds.

 
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I'm not even going into the Killer Mike and black vs. white separatist shtick. That would take way, way too long to do. (I started to, but then just quit.)

 
Doug Glanville was beloved by both fans and media when he played for the Phillies. Excellent dude, they all reported. 

 
May not be well known beyond diehard NHL fans, but HOF defenseman Brian Leetch was one of the nicest guys to ever lace up a pair of skates and was highly respected throughout the hockey community. 

 
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