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Jim Thorpe wasn't simply the greatest athlete between 1910 and 1920. He may well have been the greatest athlete ever.
Both of Thorpe's parents were part Native American, with his father having Sac and Fox heritage and his mother, Potowatomi and Kickapoo blood. Thorpe went to school at the Carlisle (Pa.) Indian Industrial School. While there, he led the school's football team to the National Collegiate Championship, defeating such traditional powerhouses as Harvard and Army along the way. That feat would be the modern equivalent of an MIT beating the likes of Nebraska and Oklahoma.
As a track star, Thorpe won gold medals in both the pentathlon and decathlon (the two most demanding and multi-disciplined events) at the 1912 Olympic games. Thorpe would end up having a Hall of Fame career in professional football and was named the National Football League's first president.
If those achievements weren't enough, Thorpe also played major league baseball for six seasons, playing for the Giants, Reds and Braves between 1913 and 1919.
"He was the greatest athlete of his time, maybe the greatest of any time in any land and he needed no gilded geegaws to prove it," wrote Red Smith, one of the greatest sportswriters in history. "The proof is in the records and the memories of the men who knew him and watched him and played with him."
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