Philly March Madness: Choosing the Greatest Philly Athlete of the Last 30 Years

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With Selection Sunday officially behind us and the NCAA tournamentawaiting, we here at The 700 Level have decided it's time to have alittle March Madness of our own. Over the next three weeks, we'll beholding playoffs to conclusively decide who, among 64 prime candidatesselected, is the greatest Philly athlete of modern times. One by one,we'll be holding seeded match-ups, for which we ask you to cast yourvote to help decide who should advance, until just one lucky soulremains, standing in adulation with "One Shining Moment" blaring in thebackground.

And how did we decide on the field of 64? Well, we took a nicecross-section of the statistically-accomplished, the post-season proven,and the fan-favorite Philly-based jocks of recent years. Here were our selection qualifications:

  • Onlyathletes from the four major Philadelphia professional sports teams.Extending to college and individual sport-based athletes blurs the linetoo much between Philly vs. not Philly, and we're more comfortabledealing with the Big Four types anwyay.
  • Only athletes who played more than half their Philly career after theyear 1980. Not too many of us were around for the years before that, andyou gotta draw the line somewhere before you start trying to compareCole Hamels and Brian Dawkins with Grover Cleveland Alexander and ChuckBednarik. 
  • Onlyathletes who played at least four full years in the City of BrotherlyLove. It hurts to exclude recent sensations like Roy Halladay andMichael Vick, as well as one-or-two-season wonders like Terrell Owensand Dikembe Mutombo, but we wanted this to be a contest for thoseathletes who had really put in the time to become permanently associatedwith Philadelphia, and figured that a full presidential term was a goodminimum amount of service.

As for how you should be voting, you can use whatever criteria youlike (and undoubtedly will), but we'll be casting our votes for theathletes that did the most for their respective squads during theirtours of duty, that accomplished the most on a team and individuallevel, and that best defined what Philly Sports were essentially aboutfor the last three-plus decades.

We hope you enjoy voting for your athletes of choice, and encourageyou to have it out in the comments section below to make a case for yourparticular selections. Of course there will be no right answerto many of these, and one man's obvious chalk selection will beanother's likely upset pick. But rather than getting too hung up on thesolitary matchups, we also hope that you take this entire project as alarger tribute to the last 31 years of Philly sports, and thestandard-bearers that made those years so memorable.

Enjoy, and let us know how you do in your office pool.

Click here to start voting on the matchups.

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