The Digital Footprints of Ten of the Greatest Living Legends in Sports

What is PeekScore?: PeekScore is a rank from 1 to 10, assigned to every person. The higher someone’s score, the “more important” they are on the web. In calculating your PeekScore and updating it often, PeekYou takes into account your known presence and activity on the Internet, including but not limited to; your blogging, participation in social networks, the number of your friends, followers, or readers, the amount of web content you create, and your prominence in the news.

Hello there PeekScore faithful. The premise of this entry could not be simpler. The staff here at the PeekScore blog compiled a list of ten living, international superstar athletes; 7 retired, 3 still active. Each considered at least great by most, and by many considered to be the very greatest of all time at his chosen sport. With the list compiled – after some amount of debate here at the office – we set about sorting these esteemed gentlemen not according to our relatively subjective assessments of their athletic prowess or records, but according to their PeekScores.

To varying degrees each of these gentlemen is a national, and in many cases an international, brand. As such, nearly all has at a minimum an official website, and often a website connected to a more corporate, charitable, and/or commercial venture. All are, to varying degrees, headline worthy and well documented throughout the web, and their mostly healthy PeekScores surely reflect this. Some have official Twitter and/or Facebook accounts, and the international superstar topping our list has both, with followers on each numbering in the millions. In the relatively social media shy company of the remainder of this list, his victory was assured.

I know this is a matter where many have strong opinions. What are yours? Who doesn’t belong on our list? Who would you have included instead? Who might you have expected to see have a higher PeekScore? Or lower? Let us know in the comments.

Rank Picture Name Sport PeekScore
1

Sachin Tendulkar Cricket 10.00 / 10
2

Tiger Woods Golf 9.56 / 10
3

Wayne Gretzky Hockey 9.09 / 10
4

Michael Jordan Basketball 9.07 / 10
5

Roger Federer Tennis 8.95 / 10
6

Muhammad Ali Boxing 8.62 / 10
7

Pelé
Football/Soccer 8.05 / 10
8

Diego Maradona Football/Soccer 8.05 / 10
9

Jim Brown NFL Football 8.04 / 10
10

Willie Mays Baseball 6.01 / 10

A Comparison of the Online Lives of the World’s Top-Paid Athletes

What is PeekScore?: PeekScore is a rank from 1 to 10, assigned to every person. The higher someone’s score, the “more important” they are on the web. In calculating your PeekScore and updating it often, PeekYou takes into account your known presence and activity on the Internet, including but not limited to; your blogging, participation in social networks, the number of your friends, followers, or readers, the amount of web content you create, and your prominence in the news.

This concept today could not be simpler: Below is a list of last year’s ten highest paid athletes in the world. In keeping with the kinds of things we get up to here at the PeekScore blog, we’ve decided to see to what degree their compensation corresponds to their visibility, activity, and presence here in cyberspace. We already know that in the case of some of the individuals listed below, a great many don’t believe their athletic abilities alone have gone very far in justifying their arguably obscene, and objectively handsome, paydays. But what of these athletes’ efforts and abilities to reach their spotty, slouchy lessers out here in the ever-expanding, in both size and import, online realm? The PeekScores provide their answers, scientifically and objectively as always.

Who do you like on this list? Who would you have preferred to see on this list? Who do you believe should be the top earning athletes? Do you hate A-Rod? Comment and let us know. (AND PLEASE KEEP SCROLLING ONCE YOU READ THE LIST, FOR FURTHER COMMENTARY.)

Rank Picture Name Earnings from May ’10 – May ’11 PeekScore
1

Cristiano Ronaldo
$38 million
10 / 10
2

LeBron James
$48 million
9.66 / 10
3

Tiger Woods
$75 million
9.56 / 10
4

Lionel Messi
$32.3 million
9.05 / 10
5

David Beckham
$40 million
9.01/ 10
6

Roger Federer
$47 million
8.95 / 10
7

Kobe Bryant
$53 million
8.76 / 10
8

Michael Schumacher
$34 million
8.05 / 10
9

Alex Rodriguez
$35 million
8.04 / 10
10

Phil Mickelson
$46.5 million
7.74 / 10

AND NOW, AS PROMISED, FURTHER COMMENTARY FROM THE FOLKS AT THE PEEKSCORE BLOG:

This list is not meant so much as a companion to the top earning models list, as it is merely coincidentally a different group of mostly genetically blessed individuals whose efforts, time, and mere presence are extremely well remunerated. It is for the good of mankind that we not associate the lists with one another even in casual conversation, nor even in an informal, relatively frivolous blogging context. Regardless of all the well-meaning talk of the meek one day inheriting our burdened little globe, the fact is that proclamation was initially made two-thousand years ago, and last we checked the meek – some of whom are employed here – were still left empty-handed. If anyone’s to be remaining standing tall when it all goes down, let’s face it; it’s going to be the prettiest, the fastest, and the richest. If they pull themselves away from their mirrors, baby oil, and piles of money long enough to recognize this fact, our inevitable demise will only be hastened.

The men on this list and the women on the world’s best paid models list would find themselves with a horrific combination of fitness, attractiveness, fortune, and global influence (as measured by their PeekScores) at their disposal were the individuals represented on each ever to get together and resolve to pool their considerable gifts. It is attributable either to their mercy or their frankly apparent stupidity, that they’ve not yet harnessed the ungodly power of their combined resources and done away with the nuisance which is we “meek,” and set about repopulating this sphere with the race of grossly overpaid juiceheads and bulimics agile, able, and visually appealing homo superiors their unions would certainly spawn.

Giselle Bündchen, who topped our models list – both in earnings and online influence – is romantically attached to the 13th best paid athlete on the planet. We people are grateful, as his relatively laughable $31 million year has kept him out of the top ten, and kept us safely out of harm’s way. Even if he’d earned enough to warrant inclusion on the list, his adequate, but unimpressive PeekScore would have found him at a meager 8th place. Their spawn is strong, but not yet strong enough to take down the combined meek, as we remain for the moment legion, and many of us still have higher PeekScores than Mr. Brady.

As we here at the PeekScore blog are largely Americans (although it must be stressed this is not true for the greater PeekYou, as a whole), and have therefore not cared about soccer since America’s brief, faddish fixation with it in the 1970s (and also a fleeting period of fascination every four years until the U.S. is inevitably knocked out of the World Cup), we don’t know as much about the gentleman topping our list as we should. But, Cristiano Ronaldo surely has earned our respect and admiration today, and we remain grateful that he and Giselle have either not comprehended – or perhaps did understand, but humanely considered – the consequences of their potential union, and granted us just this short time more to be the meek we are, and (meekly) admire their wealth, beauty, and online prowess, and their agents’ abilities to negotiate for them outlandish contracts.

If These Guys Are So Tech Savvy, How Come Their Cars Don’t Fly?: Comparing the Online Importance of the Top Ranked Formula 1™ Racers

What is PeekScore?: PeekScore is a rank from 1 to 10, assigned to every person. The higher someone’s score, the “more important” they are on the web. In calculating your PeekScore and updating it often, PeekYou takes into account your known presence and activity on the Internet, including but not limited to; your blogging, participation in social networks, the number of your friends, followers, or readers, the amount of web content you create, and your prominence in the news.

When we think of the Formula One greats of the past – such as Jackie Stewart, Jimmy Clark, Ayrton Senna, Goggles Paesano, and Racer X – we don’t much think of computers, smart phones, or terms such as “digital footrpints,” “social media,” “wiki,” “widget” or “app.” What crosses our racing minds are isolated, solitary, brave Germans and Italians zipping along – in as masculine a fashion as one can “zip” – at improbably fast speeds, in really cool looking cars. We think of how because it’s European, and we’re pretentious New Yorkers, Formula One seems somehow classier than NASCAR. And, really, we think most of all of the horrible smell of the burning rayon from when the carpet nearly caught fire when the AFX Daytona Race Set got too hot, and how we had to figure out a way to cover the burn because mom and dad were gonna be really peeved off, and how the instructions absolutely warned not to use the stupid thing on carpet… but who reads instructions at 7 years of age, and on Christmas morning? Yeah, we sure think about a lot of things when talk turns to Formula One, but cyberspace and the importance of certain individuals within it generally are not among them.

No matter, though, to where our thoughts may wander, particularly as we’re not terribly bright, and as – despite the degree to which we forgo our beloved world wide web in our own thoughts of Formula One – the top 10 racers in the current Formula One standings (as of 5/29/11) are a well and fully wired-in lot. Check out these PeekScores below, and marvel at the degrees to which these speedy fellas, in their well-sponsored jumpsuits, clearly utilize the phenomenal tools of the internet to keep in the world’s minds their tireless (no pun) efforts to drive even faster than the next guy.

If the internet were a race, which it totally is incidentally, then today Fernando Alonso would be the winner. Let us all greet him in the winner’s circle.

Do you have a favorite racer not featured below? Do you prefer NASCAR? Do you hate auto-racing? Do they have winner’s circles in Formula One? Let us know.

Rank Picture Name Place in the 5/29/11 Standings PeekScore
1

Fernando Alonso
5
10 / 10
2

Sebastian Vettel
1
10/ 10
3

Nick Heidfeld
6
9.23 / 10
4

Jenson Button
4
9.17 / 10
5

Lewis Hamilton
2
9.09/ 10
6

Mark Webber
3
9.01 / 10
7

Nico Rosberg
7
8.35 / 10
8

Felipe Massa
8
8.03 / 10
9

Kamui Kobayashi
10
7.70 / 10
10

Vitaly Petrov
9
8.07 / 10