Hello Everybody!

First off, I just want to say that this is my first attempt at a blog, so bear with me in it's crudity.

Alright, with that said here we go.

We all know that everyone has an opinion, and not everyone is going to agree with everyone else's, and really that's the beauty of it. Well, the other night I was having a "discussion" with a buddy of mine and the topic was athletes, more specificly who is and who is not an athlete (sport wise, not individually). We also "talked" about what is a sport and what is not, but that's a blog for another day. Well, obviously we had differing opinions. Is a football player more of an athlete than a hockey player? Or is a basketball player more of an athlete than a tennis player? etc....... So what I want to know from everyone is this. How would you rank athletes? In particular, where would you rank NASCAR drivers? Or do you even consider them athletes at all?  Also, how do you feel about animals being considered athletes? Can you realisticly compare Secretariat to Michael Jordan? Or any other human athlete for that matter. So again, based on sport, please rank athletes as you see fit. If you want to go that in depth to rank them on an individual level, that's fine too. If you want to give some sort of justification to your rankings it is openly welcomed. I just want to know what other people think as far as the heirarchy of athletes go.

Thanks, and I'm looking forward to your opinions.

Nova