We love to celebrate the great individual moments in sports.Kirk Gibsons home run in the 1988 World Series. Brandi Chastains winning goal to end the 1999 World Cup. Michael Jordans final shot as a Chicago Bull clinching the 1998 Finals. And on and on. Moments of wonder define CM Punk Jersey our experiences as fans of sports.But too often, the extended periods of greatne s are overlooked in favor of those flashier splices of time. With this ranking, welooked through The Sporting News long history we were founded in 1886 to find the greatest individual seasons in sports history. They might sometimes lack the drama of the moments, but they showcase the level of dominance needed to succeed over the grind of a season.The challenge of creating a list of the greatest seasons was daunting, but engro sing. What sports fan wouldnt want to research and remember the best athletes weve ever watched, competing at elite levels and commanding the attention of fans and opponents alike? The list could have been hundreds of seasons long, and still worthy seasons would have been left on the cutting room floor.Weve chosen 50.A ranking like this requires ground rules, so let’s dig in. We are looking at best seasons however a sports season might be defined and not best events, so lets start with the big one: We did not include athletes whose primary succe s happened in the Olympic Games. So, no Michael Phelps and no Simone Biles. Again, were looking at seasons and the Olympic Games are an event. A ma sive, huge, world-stopping event, sure, but still e sentially one event. Boxing and MMA dont have set schedules, either, so theyre out. The line has to be drawn somewhere, so its drawn there. For some sports, the “season” doesn’t fit nicely into Denis Savard Jersey one calendar year, but we’re confining everything to 12-month stretches.Also, humans only. Sorry, Secretariat.We included, e sentially, the sports we cover at The Sporting News: NFL, NBA/WNBA, MLB, NHL, college hoops, college football, soccer, golf,tennis and motor sports. No disrespect to other sports, but these are the ones we know best. Also, this: Each athlete included gets only one entry. So while superstars such as Babe Ruth, Wilt Chamberlain and Wayne Gretzky had several unbelievable, transcendent seasons, were only picking one per athlete. Also, superstars who were superstars both in college and at the pro level only get one. So (spoiler!), in this list you’ll see Lew Alcindor’s UCLA greatne s instead of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s Laker domination.And heres a note about championships: They are great, and were used throughout the proce s as tiebreakers to determinewhich individual seasonto use or which athlete to choose, but the lack of a title is not a disqualification. We are not holding the failings of a team against an individual, and we are not letting one or two games determine who makes the list. For example (another spoiler alert), LeBron James Cavaliers beat Steph Currys Warriors in the 2016 NBA Finals, but Currys overall season was FAR superior to James season by any objective measure. Stephs 2015-16 is on the list, while James 2015-16 is not.Here are the top 50 individual seasons of all time.50. Walter Johnson, 1913 As ranked by WAR the Baseball-Reference formula Johnsons incredible 1913 season stands alone with a 15.1 mark. No other hurler has even topped 12.5; Johnsons 13.2 in 1912 is alone in second Chris Chelios Jersey place. The tall right-hander known as The Big Train was unstoppable in both seasons, but especially so in 1913, posting a 1.14 ERA and 11 shutouts in 346 brilliant innings. Heres how good Johnson was in 1913; in his 12th outing of the season, he gave up five runs in eight innings and that raised his ERA all the way up to 0.81. Yeah. The highest his ERA was after a game all season was 1.37, and he followed that outing with 34 consecutive shutout innings, including 15 in one game. From the May 22, 1913 i sue of The Sporting News: “During the first month of the American League season, 50 players had the misfortune to be compelled to bat against Walter Johnson, who was in the meantime hell-bent on shattering to infinitesimal smithereens every pitching record extant.”49. Tim Tebow, 2007The Tim Tebow stories will stand the test of time in Gainesville, and they will start with his unforgettable 2007 season. The lefty threw for 3,286 yards and 32 touchdowns as a sophomore, completing 66.9 percent of his pa ses and throwing just six interceptions. And he 895 rushed for 895 yards and 23 more touchdowns, becoming the first player in college football history to throw and run for at least 20 touchdowns in the same season.48. O.J. Simpson, 1973One year after reaching the 1,000-yard plateau for the first time in his career, Simpson became the first player in NFL history to reach 2,000 yards in a season, finishing with 2,003 in 14 games for Buffalo in 1973. In Week 1, he rushed for 250 yards and two scores on the road against New England. He capped the season with 219 yards at home against the Patriots and 200 on the road against the Jets. The Bills went 9-0 when he gained at least 123 yards and were 0-5 when he was under that total. Seven other players have reached the 2,000-yard mark since then, but all needed 16 games. Of that group, only Barry Sanders had a better yards-per-carry than Simpson (6 Brent Seabrook Jersey .1 to 6.0).47. Glen Robinson, 1993-94The Big Dog was darn near unstoppable in his junior season at Purdue. Robinson averaged 30.3 points and 10.1 rebounds for the Boilermakers, becoming the first and still only player from a power-conference school ever to reach the 1,000-point plateau in the season. The Big Ten was brutally tough (seven NCAA Tournament teams), but that didnt matter. In leading Purdue to a 29-5 record and No. 1 seed in March Madne s, Robinson had 49 against Illinois and 40 against Ohio State, then dropped in a school-record (for the postseason) 44 points in the NCAA John Hayden Jersey Tournament in a win against Kansas.46. Cam Newton, 2010Newton played just one full season of college football, but he made the most of it. He e sentially duplicated Tebow’s season, but did everything just a little bit better. His coming-out party was against No. 12 South Carolina in Week 4, when he completed 16 of 21 pa ses for 158 yards and two touchdowns and also ran for 176 yards and three TDs. His crowning moment was, without a doubt, the annual Iron Bowl, when he led the Tigers all the way back from a 24-point deficit, throwing three touchdown pa ses and rushing for another. He finished with 2,854 yards pa sing, 1,473 rushing and 50 total TDs (30 throwing, 20 running) and Auburn finished a perfect 14-0 to claim the national championship.45. Lewis Hamilton, 2020The 2020 season wasnt the first time Hamilton won 11 races in a season, but its the only time he turned the trick amid a global pandemic. Hamilton finished fourth in the season-opener in Austria, t
