Could Jim Thorpe have played professional sports if he was 25 today?

Jim Brown would have only been an average back in today's game..

Yes

Those guys smoked, and weight training was frowned upon. Humans have evolved very little in ~100 years. Put a guy from the early 20th century on current training methods and nutrition, and he'd be indistinguishable from a modern athlete.

If any athlete from the days of yore had been born 25 years ago, they would have had the same motivation and knowledge as today's athletes with regards to strength and conditioning, legal PED's (eg. creatine) and illegal PED's (eg. steroids, HGH, etc.), and they would have been bigger, stronger and faster versions of themselves. The best athletes in their era would have been among the best athletes in any era. As for Jim Thorpe, I doubt that he could make it in MLB today, since he was only a journeyman baseball player in his era, and that was long before MLB integrated or saw the influx of Hispanics and Asians that it has today.

quote:

---

Sure, if he had access to the same nutrition and training.

---

People tend to forget that that's the key in the equation.

It's not like the human species has evolved into some super athlete species in a matter of under 100 years. That's just absurd.

quote:

---

Jim Brown would have only been an average back in today's game..

---

Stupid is as STUPID does.....

Baugh said the defense could, and would, hit the QB until the whistle blew, whether he had the ball or not. Roughing the passer? What's that??

quote:

---

Those guys smoked, and weight training was frowned upon. Humans have evolved very little in ~100 years. Put a guy from the early 20th century on current training methods and nutrition, and he'd be indistinguishable from a modern athlete.

---

A little LSU history to put this in perspective. LSU Hall of Famer Glenn "Slats" Hardin was a sprinter/hurdler who did the heavy lifting on LSU's 1933 track and field team which won the schools first national championship in any sport. He was the 1936 Olympic gold medalist, the 1932 Olympic silver medalist and a two-time NCAA champion in the 400 meter hurdles, as well as being a rival, friend and 1936 Olympic teammate of Jesse Owens. He was undefeated in the 400 meter-hurdles from 1932 to 1936 and set the world record which stood for 19 years.

A couple of years ago, I had a conversation with Hardin's son Billy, who was the 1964 NCAA 400-meter hurdles champion, in which he described what it was like to be a track and field athlete in his father's era. Of course I had already suspected that the training methods were a lot more primitive than today's methods, but he also pointed out that the 1936 Olympic team had to take a nine-day ship ride over rough seas to get to Berlin, which totally interrupted their normal training regimen right before the Olympics were due to start. Today's Olympic track and field athletes typically fly to the site of the Olympics two weeks before the track and field competition starts to give themselves time to acclimate and recover from jet lag.

And let's not forget that Hardin competed his entire career on dirt tracks. He was an old man in his 60's before he ever set foot on Bernie Moore stadium's first synthetic track. Billy recalled that day, saying that his father took a few steps, jumped up and down a couple of times, and then let out a sigh and said, "Ooooh, what I wouldn't give to be young just for one day to run on this track".

Listening to these stories in amazement were two other LSU track and field greats, 2008 NCAA 100-meter champion and Beijing Olympic 100-meter silver medalist Richard Thompson and 2007 NCAA 400-meter hurdles champion Isa Phillips. After hearing Billy Hardin put that era in perspective, both Thompson and Phillips were convinced that Slats Hardin would have no problem competing with today's athletes.

Hardin's best time in the 400-meter hurdles stood as the school record until 1964 and still ranks him in the top ten in school history. Jesse Owens' best distance in the long jump stood as the world record until 1960 and the Ohio State school record until May 2013. And now you know the rest of the story.

quote:

---

My opinion is based on the rationale that A) blacks weren't part of the equation, B) population increase means more extremes/outliers, and C) pre and post natal nutrition was inferior back then.

---

Well, obviously if you had a time machine and went back and grabbed legendary athletes and brought them to the present they would be disadvantaged compared to modern athletes.

But given access to equal nutrition and training regimens, I don't think there's any basis to say they couldn't stack up. I don't thick base athleticism has improved that greatly over the last 100 years.