TheTwinAndreBen
3 stacks
Can't buy this argument based on eras. It is like saying that Barack Obama is a better public speaker than Abraham Lincoln because of teleprompters or that JK Rowling is a better writer than William Faulkner because she sold more books. . Greatness lies in how you do within your generation, now how you do against a previous generation.
Uhhhhh, except that the things you are comparing are subjective, and Thorpe was a decathlete which is completely objective.
Go to wiki and compare Jim Thorpes personal bests in decathlon vs. today's best decathlete, Ashton Eaton. In all the comparable events, Eaton's marks are ahead of Thorpe's by a decent margin. (Thorpe's best long jump was 23 feet, Eaton's is 27 feet, etc etc.)
By that metric it would be hard to say that Thorpe is a better athlete than Eaton, in fact, he's not. Comparing those objective metrics leads to the obvious conclusion that sports/fitness/nutritional science has made modern athletes much bigger, faster and stronger.
Given that Thorpe does not compare to the best decathlete of our era, it's not exactly a reach to say that Bo Jackson or AP would bowl him the fuck over on a football field. Nice try, though.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashton_Eaton
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Thorpe
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