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John Budris is one of 13 HOFMAG.com Senior Staff to contribute a list of the Top Ten Most Influential People in Sports History. How does it compare with your own choices or the lists of the other HOFMAG.com writers in the box to the right? Find out all the results, from Who's #1 to "also ran" in HOFMAG.com's Top 10 Most Influential People in Sports History. 10. Lance Armstrong – Went from his deathbed to taming the Alps and became the greatest endurance athlete in history. And he created a generation of cyclists in his rearview mirror. 9. George Halas – His family and he are the bedrock upon which the modern foundation of the NFL rests. 8. Babe Ruth – Gave baseball CPR at just the right historical moment after the Black Sox scandal nearly killed the national pastime. 7. Walter O'Malley – Was the most hated man in Brooklyn, but he was the pioneer who in 1958 took the Dodgers and baseball's Manifest Destiny to the West Coast. Before O'Malley, baseball ended in St. Louis. 6. Red Auerbach – Propelled a second rate game into an art form with players like Bob Cousy and Bill Russell and moved the NBA into contention with the NFL and MLB as a bonafide national sport. 5. Curt Flood – His historic challenge to baseball's "reserve clause" paved the way to free agency and Marvin Miller's chance to create a new generation of millionaires out of utility players. It also cost Flood his career. 4. Muhammad Ali – Was America's best tasting ambassador, known and loved worldwide more than Coca Cola. 3. Billly Jean King – Made our daughters into jocks and kick-started Title IX, 37 words of law that got them the money to do it. 2. Branch Rickey – Signed more than one black man, Jackie Robinson, to a boy's game. He and Robinson held a mirror to a nation. 1. Roone Arledge – Brought the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat into our living rooms and taught a nation how to watch all sports his way. Monday Night Football included. Alternate:
Ralph Dale Earnhardt, Sr. – Was the Babe Ruth of NASCAR, the man most responsible for a generation of cheering motor heads in a giant of a sport that roared beneath the radar of Northeast snobs. John Budris is the editor of HOFMAG.com.
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