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Letter From The President

A friend of mine suggested that I write a "mission statement", i.e., an expanded explanation (the 1st paragraph of both web sites gives you a cursory explanation) of what we are trying to accomplish with these sites and in addition, why I developed them. I agreed and here is my explanation; I hope you find it interesting.

Not surprisingly, I have always had a fascination with numbers, statistics, lists, and ultimately -- rankings. In high school, instead of doodling or day dreaming I would make lists if the class was boring: like best running backs or best rock bands. When I saw someone else's lists it always bothered me for two reasons: (1) they got it all "wrong"; and (2) I did not get a chance to vote. I concluded it was silly and practically meaningless for only a select few (1, 10, 100, or even 1000) to vote for a ranking/list when there are millions of people who are knowledgeable on any particular subject. How could the ranking possibly be accurate with such a small sample? How is that fair? Well, that is how the MVP awards and Hall of Fame selections are made in sports (example: 96 sportswriters and sportscasters vote for the NBA MVP). It works similarly for the Academy Awards and the Grammys. I think it is fair to say you do not need a P.h.D in movie viewing to know what a great movie is. Even worse is People magazine's (25? people) telling us who the 50 most beautiful people in the world are.

In addition to my fascination with rankings, I am also opinionated and I like to debate. My personal life experiences and observations led me to believe I was not alone in these areas. In fact, it seems like the vast majority of human beings on this planet like to voice opinions. There are six billion people on this planet, hundreds of millions of computers, and the best invention of the last twenty-five years: the world wide web. Hence, I put all this together and came up with a simple, yet creative idea: Let the whole world (or at least those with access to computers) vote, voice their opinions, list, and rank to their hearts' delight via these two web sites. The sites are meticulously designed and programmed to be as fair and accurate as possible so that these sites will be considered the "official rankings" of anything and everything in the sports and entertainment industry. (You will immediately notice that there are no suggested choices or answers -- this is to make it as fair as possible to anyone or anything that is a potential candidate for a particular question.) You can disagree with the results (and I am sure most of you will!), but at least, finally, the voting was fair, thorough, and most importantly: you got a chance to vote. Feel free to visit the "forum" to get your opinions off your chest. Politics, religion, and business are purposely left out: these are meant to be fun sites. (Porn was also left out for several reasons.)

Another neat thing about the sites (at least in my opinion and according to the feedback my friends have given me) is the uniqueness of several of the questions. For instance, I have never seen a list, ranking, or question for "What is the best acting performance ever in a movie?" Or, a more obscure sports question, "What receiver had/has the "best hands" (American Football)?" Well, here is your chance to answer these questions and many more. In fact, as I write this letter, there are over 2000 ranking questions on the sports web site and 2400 questions on the entertainment web site. There are all-time, current (essentially yearly), and new questions (mostly monthly with some weekly in the sports site), hence (because of the duplication from the monthly and weekly questions) you can answer around 7000 questions this year. I hope you still find time to go to work or school! I wrote the vast majority of the questions, however, I had lots of help as indicated in "Acknowledgments." En.Wikipedia.org was an invaluable source, and I "rank it # 1" for the best place to start any research project. I think we came up with an excellent base of questions, rankings, and categories, however, it will only get better with your help. So, feel free to go to "suggestions" if you want to suggest new ranking questions or categories. Any suggestions which are consistent with the site will be added as soon as possible.

In case you are wondering, I get one vote just like everyone else. While it is only fair -- it is killing me! Enjoy.

Mark D. Hauser
President of Sports and Entertainment Rankings, Inc.