What Sports Have Progressed the Most and the Least?
A friend of mine (whose hobby is tennis) found it hard to rank the all-time tennis players – because of how much the tennis players have progressed – more so than in other sports he claimed. He argued that even a player as recent and as great as Pete Sampras (pro playing career 1988 -2002) would lose 6-0, 6-0, 6-0 to today's No.1 Carlos Alcaraz or Novak Djokovic at his peak.
I am not doubting that (although Sampras might sneak in a game or two) but I question whether tennis has the biggest skill gap between generations. Today’s American Football players have increased strength, speed, and size (especially among lineman) and is such a physical sport that you wouldn’t have to go back very far in time before this year’s Super Bowl champs (or an all-pro team that played together) would destroy that year’s best.
Michael Jordan could still compete in today's NBA because he was such a phenomenal athlete but he is an outlier. What about his Bulls vs OKC (putting the 3-point shot aside)? OKC is winning but not by the same margin as a comparable NFL matchup. Same for Wilt Chamberlain but not the 1967 76ers.
What about Hockey, Soccer, or Baseball? How far back would you have to go before the matchups are blowouts? For International audiences I suspect the gap in Rugby would be similar to American Football and Cricket similar to Baseball.
What about Golf? Probably not as big a gap. Boxing? That’s a tough one since I still see Muhammad Ali in 1967 beating today’s heavyweight champion. But again, he’s an outlier and boxing, like football, has strength and speed but not size because of weight classes (in heavyweights it may be a small factor). Wrestling? Volleyball? Skiing?
In Gymnastics Simone Biles is light years better than even fairly recent world champions and same for Ilia Malinin in Figure Skating.
Track and Field and Swimming can be measured by the improvement in times (if we could magically remove steroids from the picture) so they are easier comparisons all-time. But you still can’t compare them to other sports because the other sports don’t have that convenient measuring stick.
What do you think? Which sports have progressed the most in skill and which ones the least?