FanNation - The Republic of Sport

I have to get this off of my chest... I was listening to the Mike and Mike show a while back and Golic was acctually trying to argue that athletes from past generations would be better players than the guys today.... His argument made me so mad that I haven't listened to the show since then.  Not only is he wrong, he is completely bass akwards wrong. 

 If you were to matchup the players from today vs. the players from past generations, the players from today would win 100 percent of the time.  The three sports they talked about were basketball, football and baseball, and in every case the modern player would win.

Football:
This is the easiest of the three sports to argue, of the three this sport depends on the most athleticism.  When you look at the players and teams from the past and compare them to the players of today the gap is exceptional. For Example, when you look at the athletes that were on the field for the 72 Dolphins, widely considered to be the best team of all time.  Not only would that team not be competitive in todays NFL, they probably would get thier jocks handed to them by last years Boise State team.  Even if you think the 85 Bears were better, I've got some bad news... they would get blown out even if they took on the Oakland Raiders.

 Basketball:
Pardon the pun, but this is another "slam dunk" for the modern athlete. In Golic's argument, he said that guys like Larry Bird and Bill Russell would still dominate in todays game, and to Golic I say... Are you retarded??  Yes those guys were extremely skilled and in Bird's case could probalby shoot better than most of the guys today, but how would you expect Bird to ever get a shot off?  The players are so much faster, longer and athletic that there is absolutely no way that Bird gets even one tenth of the shots that he did back in the day.  As for Russell, he has a better chance of competing because of his height, but still would not be able to play with the guys of today.  The amount of physical pounding that takes place in the frontcourt these days would send guys like Russell and Jabbar to not only the bench, but also the DL.  They were skilled and all, but they could not physically play with the athletes of today.

 Baseball:
Now, I'll admit, this is the hardest argument.  Baseball is inherently more of a skill driven sport, witch allows for less than stellar athletes to comete (see, David Wells).  But here I also believe that the player of yesteryear would not be able to compete with the players of today.  Older pitchers wouldn't be able to dominate like they did back then.  Hitters from the past would not be able to compete based solely on the fact that there are more pitches today than there were back then.  Babe Ruth never saw a cut fastball or a splitter, heck he didn't even know that the slider existed back then.  As for pitchers, there is a possiblility, the biggest argument against them is that the rules have changed, in today's game the plate belongs to the batter, not the pitcher. With all the body armor and helmets, etc. the hitters are no longer afraid of the inside fastball, witch takes out half of the repertoire of guys like Bob Gibson and Nolan Ryan.

Finally, there were some exeptionally skilled players in the past, but if you compare them to athletes of today, there is absolutly no chance that they are better...