It’s not hard at all to understand.

It really isn’t.

As such, then, this story won’t be long. It doesn’t have to be. So it won’t.

The prevailing logic being used to measure the greatness of athletes, especially those from long-ago eras when the circumstances were extraordinarily different, such as Major League Baseball’s Willie Mays and the NBA’s Jerry West, both of whom passed away recently, and former Browns running back Jim Brown, who left us 13 months ago, is not how they would fare against today’s players, but rather how much more superior were they to players of their own era.

Brown is the greatest NFL player of all-time not because he could dazzle even today, because he couldn’t since the present-day players are so much bigger, stronger and faster than those he went against from 1957-65, but instead how much better he was than those players. Was the gap between Brown and his peers bigger than that of any other player and his peers? Yes, it was, so Brown is the best ever.

Simple, right?

Yes, of course it is.

Then why all the problems in figuring it out?

I have no idea.

Steve King