Thoughts on GOAT lists

Greatest Of All Time. Greatest team, greatest players, greatest coaches. The problem is that you are rarely comparing apples and apples. The factors were different. The young have an arrogant bias toward modern players, and the old have a nostalgic bias to the good old days, and the point can never be proven. That is what makes it so much fun. By instituting the playoff system in almost every sport, we have taken away the delightful pastime of arguing about who was the best in a given year, but we can still argue about who was the best in different years. Sure, Babe Ruth did not look particularly athletic, but what would he have looked like had he lived in the era of modern training. What would modern musclemen look like had they lived in the era when no one worked on weights? It is great fun.

One thing I am certain of, however: unless there is a change in the rules, my grandchildren will never see college basketball teams as good as the ones I saw. Any GOAT list is weighted very heavily toward teams of the past, and for good reasons because of the early exits to the pros. Can you imagine Lew Alcindor playing four years in college today? Similarly, individual players rarely have the opportunity to make a case as a GOAT in college, because one year just really does not get it done when compared with guys who did it for three or four years.