Saquon Barkley, Caitlin Clark lead annual Athlete of the Year list

She didn’t win a pro title. She didn’t win a college championship. She didn’t win a medal.

But not since Jackie Robinson has an athlete with so little hardware made so resounding an impact in a single year.

Caitlin Clark picked up the torch for women’s sports once carried by such giants as Babe Didrikson Zaharias, Billie Jean King, Martina Navratilova, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Mia Hamm, Serena and Venus Williams, and, to different degrees, Alex Morgan and Megan Rapinoe. But it was King, early in her magnificent life, who championed the Title IX legislation that guaranteed opportunities for us to witness the greatness of Clark.

How great? At Iowa, she won her second consecutive national player of the year award and set the Division I scoring record for men and women, partially because she also set the record for three-pointers. She led the nation in assists last season and finished third all-time in assists. For the second straight season, her Hawkeyes finished runner-up in the NCAA Tournament, where she set the record for tournament scoring; the final against South Carolina was the second-most watched non-Olympic women’s sporting event in U.S. history.

Drafted first overall by the Indiana Fever, Clark was the WNBA Rookie of the Year, set the single-season and single-game assist records, made the All-Star Game, and was voted first-team All-WNBA. The league’s attendance saw a 48% increase over 2023; her team set a home attendance record for the league and routinely was moved to larger venues; viewership increased 170% over 2023; and merchandise sales spiked by 600%.

The last athlete to have this sort of impact as an amateur and a pro in the same year was Michael Jordan, who, beginning in 1984, was the NCAA player of the year, an Olympic gold medalist before the Dream Team era, and NBA Rookie of the Year (1984-85), not to mention a record-breaking Nike shoe endorser.

Nothing these days comes without controversy. A flashy and provocative player, Clark earned criticism for her on-court antics. She got beat up, like many rookies in many sports do, and some said she was being singled out. She wasn’t included on Team USA for its Olympic gold-medal run. And, often, she was subject to unfair off-court critiques that contended she unfairly benefited from being white, especially in light of her estimated $11 million haul in NIL and endorsement money in 2024.

She handled these critiques with a grace worthy of Robinson himself, and, when named Time magazine’s Athlete of the Year, offered this tribute:

“I want to say I’ve earned every single thing, but as a white person, there is privilege. A lot of those players in the league that have been really good have been Black players. This league has kind of been built on them.”

Now, it’s being built on her.

Clark tops an intriguing mix of national candidates, whose rankings I gladly would scramble. None is more intriguing than the best of the Eagles.

After averaging 869 rushing yards in his first six seasons, all with the Giants, Barkley, 27, enters Week 18 with 2,005 yards, more than 1,000 above his average, is the ninth runner to hit 2,000, and is eighth on the single-season record books. He’s 100 yards from Eric Dickerson for the single-season record.

» READ MORE: He used to be their babysitter. Now, Saquon Barkley is on pace to break the NFL’s single-season rushing record.

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of Barkley’s season is that the NFL has, in the past 20 years, by dint of protections for quarterbacks and receivers, virtually legislated running the football out of the game; the Eagles’ highest-paid players are two receivers, a quarterback, and a tackle paid to protect him. Only one rusher inside the top 20 all-time list made his mark within the past decade, and that was Derrick Henry four years ago.

It might seem myopic for a Philly sportswriter to place a player who won’t win MVP this high on the list, but what we’ve witnessed this season in the context of the modern NFL is objectively historic.

It isn’t just the nine worldwide wins, or the record $29.2 million in winnings, or the Masters/Players/Olympics/FedEx Cup list of accomplishments. All of those can be diminished by the absence on the PGA Tour of banned LIV Golf stars such as Bryson DeChambeau, Jon Rahm, and Brooks Koepka.

What cannot be diminished: Scheffler’s PGA Tour scoring average of 68.01 is the best all-time.

» READ MORE: Marcus Hayes: Scottie Scheffler’s uncluttered mind earns him a second Masters title in three years

That’s his actual average, not his adjusted average — a formula that factors in the rest of the competitors, sort of like the way baseball metrics factor in ballparks. His adjusted average was 68.63, which ranks seventh all-time. Tiger Woods holds spots Nos. 1 though 6, most recently in 2009. In other words, Scheffler had the best scoring season in 15 years.

He also got arrested and was briefly detained at the PGA Championship, where he eventually finished tied for eighth, and welcomed his first child.

He wasn’t the NFL MVP last season, and he won’t be this season, but he’s the best player and the most valuable, and nobody disputes that.

Mahomes has won 19 of 20 games, won his third Super Bowl, and his second Super Bowl in a row, as well as his third Super Bowl MVP and second Super Bowl MVP in a row.

I despise recognizing designated hitters, but Ohtani’s season was so astounding that I’ll make an exception here. He’s the first DH in baseball history to win an MVP. He was named such in part because he became the first 50-homer, 50-steal player in history in a season in which recovery from elbow surgery kept him off the mound, where he was 34-16 with a 2.84 ERA the three previous seasons. Also, he led the NL with 134 runs, 54 homers, 130 RBIs, and a 1.036 OPS.

My DH bias is warranted — I’ve still never chosen a DH to receive one of my Hall of Fame votes — but excluding from this list the best baseball player who ever played in a record-setting year would have been absurd.

Nelly Korda’s five-win streak tied the record set by all-time greats Nancy Lopez (1978) and Annika Sorenstam (2004-05) and laid the foundation for her LPGA Player of the Year campaign, which included her second major championship title. Her seven wins were the most by a player in 13 years and the most by a U.S. player in 34 years. … Nikola Jokić won his third NBA MVP in four seasons by finishing in the top 10 in points, rebounds, assists and steals, the only player in league history to finish in the top 10 in all four in a season. Only Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (six), Michael Jordan and Bill Russell (five), LeBron James and Wilt Chamberlain (four), and Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, and Moses Malone have won at least three. … Simone Biles won three gold medals and a silver in a triumphant return to Olympic gymnastics.