Until the 21st century, no athlete wanted to be viewed as the goat.
For decades, the term was used as shorthand for “scapegoat,” the human manifestation of why a team lost in a big moment. The names live on in American sporting infamy: Bill Buckner, Jackie Smith, Scott Norwood, Chris Webber, to sculpt a grotesque Mount Rushmore. In an entertainment landscape filled with clichés, boilerplate terms and tried-and-true standbys, none were as ignominious as the goat.
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But in recent years, the whole goat discussion has been flipped on its head. GOAT culture has become a hallmark of discussing sports and broader entertainment in recent years. Now it’s shorthand for the Greatest Of All Time. Many an awkward work happy hour has been carried by debating whose bona fides are worthy of the distinction in specific categories. It’s a format which allows someone to use whatever criteria they deem fit, and there’s almost never an indisputable answer, no matter how adamant true believers are to the contrary. Some media personalities have built lucrative careers screeching at each other along these lines every day of the week, year after year, goading fans into taking up arms for their favorites.
The term has become one of the many storylines which has carried the discussion around on-field matters at the men’s World Cup in Qatar amidst the myriad of troubling off-field realities. This is almost certainly the final World Cup for two icons of the men’s game. While Cristiano Ronaldo’s waning impact and subsequent phasing out of Portugal’s lineup has played out for a global audience in real time, Lionel Messi has turned in one of the competition’s all-time great performances across 570 minutes of play. Five goals and three assists currently gives him the tie-breaker to claim this tournament’s Golden Boot award ahead of the sport’s latest sensation, Kylian Mbappé. But they both have one more match left to play at this World Cup — one that could cement Messi’s GOAT status, in the eyes of some.
But how did athletes go from losing sleep over potentially being a goat to wanting nothing more than to have the title bestowed upon them? As if the Norwood recall didn’t delight New York Giants fans enough, they’ll likely revel in memories about the term’s great harbinger.
Believe it or not, there were great athletes long before the internet age. They just weren’t concerned about whether or not they were GOATs.
From all-arounder Jim Thorpe and Babe Ruth in baseball during the 1910s-30s to the heyday of Wayne Gretzky in ice hockey and Michael Jordan in basketball during the 1980s and ‘90s, American sports has long had a fixation with distinguishing one figure as standing above the rest. It became the ultimate crowning achievement: A new benchmark by which all future exceptional athletes will be assessed.
To understand the determination to crown GOATs, one must remember the frequently associated context within American sports. Debates about a sport’s best-ever competitor date back long before ESPN built its entire programming calendar around shows having these discussions. Gretzky’s most staying nickname, after all, is The Great One.
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Still, nobody truly understood the potential marketability and value in embracing that status quite like Muhammad Ali. In 1963, then still going by Cassius Clay, he released a spoken word record titled ‘I Am The Greatest.” He was 21 years old. Recorded at the CBS 30th Street Studio, the work spanned over 45 minutes as Ali used his singular wordsmanship to inform the world of how he viewed himself.
“This kid’s got a left. This kid’s got a right,” Ali says a few stanzas in, with each line often followed by the audience of 200 people’s laughter and applause. “If he hits you once, you’re asleep for the night. And as you lie on the floor while the ref counts 10, you pray that you won’t have to fight me again. For I am the man this poem is about, the next champ of the world, there isn’t a doubt. If Cassius says a cow can lay an egg, don’t ask how. Grease that skillet.
“He is the greatest. When I say two, there’s never a third. Betting against me is completely absurd.”
What really made this record so quintessentially Ali was that it was released six months before he first won the heavyweight title belt in an upset over Sonny Liston. Record sales hit a second surge following that triumph, and it was even nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Comedy Performance. One would imagine Liston wasn’t laughing along with the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, though.
In 1992, the acronym got its first widespread usage when Ali’s wife, Lonnie, created a corporation called G.O.A.T. to handle all business related to the then retired boxing legend. Rapper and boxing enthusiast LL Cool J used G.O.A.T. as the name of his 2000 chart-topping album (don’t let that title fool you, though — in 2020 he told Essence, “I met him in passing but I would never in my wildest dreams disrespect or even think I could compete with the political statements that Muhammad Ali made for our community. That man is the greatest because he took a stand even though they stripped him of his belt so you know at the end of the day, I’m not confused about who The Greatest of All Time is.”).
Muhammad Ali, we are all stronger because of the light you shared with us. Rest in peace G.O.A.T. I love you. pic.twitter.com/frRsld7iLE
— LLCOOLJ (@llcoolj) June 4, 2016
Still, it wouldn’t quite infiltrate the broader sports lexicon for over a decade.
Using Google Trends data to track how frequently a query was searched from month to month, going back to January 2004, there’s one clear inflection point which brought the acronym into the mainstream vernacular. While “Tom Brady GOAT” had seen upticks in the two previous Februarys, his fifth Super Bowl title in the New England Patriots’ legendary comeback win from a 28-3 deficit against the Atlanta Falcons in 2017 set the new (and, to date, current) gold standard for athletes being associated with the term.
Months later, when Brady turned 40 in August of 2017, the Patriots arranged to have baby goats at their training camp to celebrate the occasion.
On Tom Brady's 40th birthday, the Patriots are offering fans a G.O.A.T. photo opportunity at training camp (yes, that is a live baby goat). pic.twitter.com/FC8g1AoNNf
— Mike Reiss (@MikeReiss) August 3, 2017
While Brady’s sixth and seventh titles also brought a surge in search traffic, neither came close to the aftermath of Super Bowl LI. Perhaps there just wasn’t a debate to be had anymore.
Still, Brady wasn’t the first catalyst for a wave in our modern GOAT era. That distinction belongs to Michael Phelps, who saw the first major uptick in Google searches in August 2016, after the swimmer brought his Olympic record to 23 gold medals with a final five triumphs in Rio. While it dwarfed the concurrent peak of track and field luminary Usain Bolt, it still doesn’t hold a candle to the aftermath of Brady’s great comeback.
With Google Trends rating peak popularity on a scale from 1 to 100 relative to the term, Phelps’ 2016 finale only registered as a 13 by comparison — higher than when Brady temporarily retired this winter (a 9, again indicating the lack of debate left in the NFL category), but still paling in comparison.
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Since then, modern luminaries have seen their peaks most commonly tied to title-winning performances, with a secondary uptick if their career comes to a close. LeBron James may still linger in Jordan’s shadow for many, but he spurred significant interest in debating his résumé in May 2018 after dragging the Cleveland Cavaliers to a shocking NBA title over the dynastic Golden State Warriors. And while James is the quintessential contender to His Airness’ throne, he was temporarily surpassed in the wake of Kobe Bryant’s death in January 2020: for scale, James’ peak rates as a 64 compared to Bryant’s 100 benchmark. In the nearly three years following Bryant’s tragic helicopter crash, James has held a notable advantage over the late legend in every single month.
Searching these figures serves as a chronology of great milestones from the past five years. Tiger Woods’ GOAT traffic crescendoed in April 2019, when the golfer won the Masters after an 11-year dry spell without a major title. Simone Biles and Sue Bird had their peaks in the lead-up to last summer’s Olympic Games in Tokyo, with Biles’ 32 outpacing Phelps’ 13 on a scale from 1 to Brady. Serena Williams may be similarly secure in status as Brady is, but her GOAT peak came when she stepped back from tennis in September.
Simone Biles really put a goat on her leotard. Legendary.
— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) May 23, 2021
What does all of this data gleaning tell us? Being a GOAT has often had two mandatory factors at play. The first is an overflowing trophy cabinet. American exceptionalism mandates that the success of athletes is weighed in gold, leaving those without titles outside of discussions about a sport’s greatest competitor. Apologies to Dan Marino, Charles Barkley and Mike Trout in that regard.
The second? It’s an obsession almost solely tied to American sports. With the exception of Gretzky, every single athlete associated with the term is from the United States —and even he came from just north of the border and played in a league (the NHL) with most of its teams residing Stateside.
There is, of course, one sport which has been curiously absent from this investigation: the world’s game. On the men’s side, winning soccer’s top titles and being American have remained entirely mutually exclusive to date. None of U.S. men’s soccer’s best, whether it’s Landon Donovan, Clint Dempsey or Christian Pulisic, register any significant traffic compared to any of the aforementioned greats in other sports. Not that they should, mind you — it just shows that while American sports fans still carry various levels of warmth for soccer, they understand their compatriots aren’t in GOAT range. On the women’s side, none of the U.S.’s stable of champions (including Mia Hamm, Michelle Akers, Megan Rapinoe and recently retired Carli Lloyd) come close to having their names associated with GOAT status as often as Biles or Williams.
Beyond the lack of traction in American culture, soccer has another factor which has made it uniquely tricky to determine its finest player. Unlike American football’s fixation with quarterbacks or basketball limiting teams to five participants at a time (therefore making greats stand out even more clearly), simply relying on goal and assist totals doesn’t tell the full tale of a player’s importance. Were they a maestro on the ball with every touch? Or a well-positioned target man who thunked in stray crosses without sparing a thought for his defensive work?
And if you want to broaden the scope beyond voters’ usual bias toward running up scoreboards, what’s truly more valuable: Scoring a goal or contributing an assist? Shouldn’t a great goalkeeper be as valuable as a talismanic striker? Where do defenders and midfielders, with their often thankless duties, stack up to the headline-grabbers among them?
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Since the 1980s, most in the sport have agreed that the debate began and often ended with just two players in mind: Pelé of Brazil and Diego Maradona of Argentina. Over time, they were joined by a modern duopoly: Lionel Messi, also of Argentina, and Cristiano Ronaldo of Portugal. Between those four, it’s Messi who has already established the new 100-impact standard this month according to Google Trends, with Ronaldo second (again, this month) around 54, then Pelé (this month, between Messi-mania and the Brazilian legend’s health scare) around 10 and Maradona at a 5 in the month of his passing (November 2020).
Messi has been a good sport about the whole thing. Ahead of the 2018 World Cup in Russia, he posed with literal goats in a photoshoot for Paper magazine. That doesn’t mean he treated it like a fluffy coronation, however. “I don’t consider myself the best,” Messi told Paper. “I think I am just another player.”
Even Messi’s new standard for men’s players is, perhaps ironically, just a 12 on our Brady Scale, though. Still, the spike suggests a couple of trends that are worth noting.
Steady growth of interest in soccer among American sports fans can lead to more cursory followers of a World Cup, which even the sport’s biggest detractors know is the biggest sporting event on the planet. If discussing pressing triggers, midfield rotations and bloated stoppage time isn’t of interest to them, there’s always the old standby: who’s the best at playing this thing, anyway? That can fill a full 10 minutes of a debate show, even if the hosts are catching up on the candidates via Wikipedia and stat sheets. It’s a topic that’s more fun without a definitive answer, after all.
Second, Messi would be the first athlete without ties to North America (well, not yet at least) to don the title. Either more of the world is starting to embrace GOAT as a debate worth having, or America’s monopoly on the title is now extending to the pitch. Throughout the month, Messi’s timeless grace has put the final touches on what many think is a settled argument: That he, not Ronaldo, not Maradona, not Pelé, is the greatest men’s soccer player of all time.
Some will point to his as-yet lack of a World Cup title as the final box to check on his application. However, that almost defeats the purpose of a GOAT debate.
But what does the sports world’s biggest GOAT think of Messi?
“I love Messi and I think he’s a great player,” Brady said in 2018, ahead of Super Bowl LII.
A great player, but he didn’t say greatest.
