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Robert Creamer 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. Bobby Jones and Tiger Woods – Jones made golf a major sport by attracting thousands of new fans to the game in the 1920s and 1930s with his astonishing play and by establishing the Masters Tournament. Woods in the 1990s and 2000s made golf immensely lucrative by attracting hundreds of thousands of new fans with his even more astonishing play. 9. Jimmy Van Alen – His introduction of the tiebreaker point system ended marathon matches and turned tennis into a crowd-pleasing spectator sport throughout the world. 8. Mike Tyson – After reviving boxing as a major spectacle by becoming at a young age one of the most exciting heavyweight champions ever, he all but destroyed major interest in it with his brutal, irrational and ultimately self-defeating behavior. 7. Michael Jordan – His exceptional talent forced acceptance of the exciting – if technically illegal "extra step" – of playground basketball that dominates the game today. 6. Peter Uberroth – In 1984 in Los Angeles he commercialized the Olympic Games and changed a foundering semi-amateur spectacle into a huge semi-professional success, thus reviving worldwide interest in staging the quadrennial games. 5. Babe Ruth – Through his own extraordinary ability, he established the home run as the primary weapon and biggest attraction in baseball, a pattern that continues today. 4. Knute Rockne – As a player and coach, he moved college football into the modern era, drawing the attention of millions to a game that had attracted only parochial interest before. 3. Bert Bell – As commissioner of professional football, he introduced the draft of college players and financial equity among the teams, establishing the pattern that carried the pro game to the forefront of American sports. 2. Jackie Robinson – Not just for breaking the color barrier in baseball but for showing America that along with great talent blacks in any area can combine such talent with personal dignity, exceptional intelligence and fiery ambition. 1. Lee de Forest – Called the "father of radio and grandfather of television," de Forest's work in wireless communication "substantially altered the character of 20th Century life" and nowhere more radically than in sports. Post Script: No slight to Branch Rickey, who had the vision to integrate baseball and who found the right man to do it, but it was Robinson who did it, who had the visual and social impact. No hockey, no soccer – great players, yes, but I can't come up with an "influential." I know nothing about the highly popular field of motor sports. And with all due respect to Billie Jean King, she has not been as important to tennis as Jimmy Van Alen. Robert Creamer is considered by many to be America's greatest living sportswriter.
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