People use the term GOAT wrong and it is slowly starting to piss me off. GOAT means “Greatest of all time”, it refers to the best person within a particular field. An example could be “who is the best Hockey player right now?” After some time you might come up with a name that sounds right. But the discussion doesn’t end there, for who is truly the best ever? Who is the GOAT?
The acronym GOAT has a long history in sports and in Hip hop. LL Cool J is often credited as its originator, however, the term has been used in sports for a long time, with the Boxer Muhammed Ali calling himself the greatest. (1)
I hear the term being used in rap a lot. “The Company Man” Justin Hunt has made countless videos on who is the GOAT of Hip-Hop where he outlines different arguments for and against an artist being the GOAT. I highly recommend his work if you are interested in Hip-Hop.
There are some problems with GOAT discussions that I feel are worth mentioning.
The first thing to keep in mind when discussing GOATs is that it all depends on the criteria. Some people value different things and while I will be putting up some parameters that I feel are important when discussing who the different GOATS are, there will always be people who disagree with what constitutes the GOAT and what metrics are important.
The GOAT discussion is about arguments: how do you defend your position while taking down the opposition? This is what GOAT discussions are all about. It’s about opinion and how one presents a view. In most, if not all cases the answer is going to be subjective. As I said in my post on scores, the criteria and how you score something is also a subjective exercise.
If you have two footballers one scores 100 goals in friendlies and the other scores 50 in the champions league. You could say the first is better because he has simply scored more goals than the other. Alternatively, you could say the other is better for he has scored against stronger opponents. It depends on if you value the quality of opposition or total output. Always keep in mind that people have different criteria for who they think is the GOAT
Another problem with the GOAT discussion is that people are overly nostalgic for a particular time period. These people can be hard to convince. They are the people who think Kendrik can’t be the GOAT because he didn’t start in the 90s. They are also the people who typically thinks Maradonna is better than Messi.
I will say in their defense that you do need time when it comes to who the greatest of all TIME is. The best right now is different from who the greatest is. People can be biased in many ways. If you grow up watching a footballer you really admire, you might think he is the GOAT, but the footballer you like is different from the GOAT (unless you can argue your point).
Another infuriating part of the GOAT discussion is if people don’t know enough about a subject. Eminem is by far the most popular rapper, but he is also the rapper for people who don’t really listen to rap (in my opinion and experience). This means he will be mentioned in a GOAT discussion by people who simply do not know Hip-Hop or its history. The GOAT discussion is only fun if the people in the discussion know what they are talking about.
It can be difficult to compare people from different time periods. How do you compare a player like Messi to Di Stefano? One of them is playing right now, and the other played in the sixties when the picture was black and white, and the ball was made of hard heavy leather.
It is important to keep in mind the best right now would be a lot better than the people from back then. Of course, a boxer like Anthony Joshua would beat Joe Lewis if you were to bring Lewis into the present, but this is not the most important factor. The term is not BOAT, but GOAT, you have to think of it in terms of context elements like how strong the operation was. How much did he change the sport? In other words how big was his influence?
It can still be hard to grasp why the GOAT as a concept is always up for debate. The idea behind the term is not to find out who the definitive greatest is, but it’s about the discussion and arguments.
I think it was Ronaldinho who once said something like,
there is no real GOAT, there are different people being the best at different times.
This is the correct take, BUT! That is also kind of boring and no fun. It is much more fun to argue about who the greatest is, and that is what we are going to do.
People use the term wrong!
People have ruined the term at this point. Everyone is throwing GOAT around with no idea of what it really means. Let’s take a look at how people use it wrong.
First of all, there can only be one GOAT. It is called The greatest of all times, there can’t be multiple GOATs. In football, people refer to Messi and Ronaldo as the GOATs. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of what the term means. The term GOAT is supposed to incompetence who the best of the best compared to anyone from any decade. By having more than one GOAT the term loses all meaning.
To me, it seems like people are using the term GOATs as someone worthy of being in the discussion of who is the GOAT. I still think this is the wrong way of doing it, people need to have faith in their opinion and commit. It doesn’t mean that you can’t enjoy both Messi and Ronaldo and it doesn’t mean that both of them weren’t fantastic in their prime. But one is better. One has to be the GOAT.
I also saw a comment saying something like Ronaldo was the GOAT five years ago, but he is washed up now and no good. This comment triggers the fuck out of me. Whether Ronaldo is the GOAT or not is not important. The reason it annoys me is that. It shows a fundamental lack of understanding of what the term means. GOAT is of ALL TIME, focus on time. If you are the GOAT you will always be the GOAT until someone else comes and takes the title. If you are the GOAT and then end your career you will still be the GOAT.
The status of GOAT is not something you lose, its something someone else takes from you. – quote ME!
Guidelines for GOAT Discussions
Have criteria
The GOAT is a concept that is all about providing an argument for something or someone. To do so, one must have some criteria. As stated before, different people value different things, but it is vital for the discussion to have criteria otherwise it becomes people arguing about who they “feel” is the best.
Focus on people, not things
The GOAT discussion works best when talking about singular people. While you could have discussions about the greatest band of all time, the discussion of the greatest company would be an odd one to have.
Don’t go too broad
Some things are just too hard to narrow down, the greatest musician is way too broad a category. The same is true for sports. It would be too difficult to find the greatest sportsman of all time. How do you even compare a knockout in boxing, with a champions league goal or a touchdown in an NFL final?
The END
References
- (Where Did The G.O.A.T. Title Come From? (2019, May 20). Genius. Retrieved March 5, 2022, from https://genius.com/a/where-did-the-g-o-a-t-title-come-from)