Blue White Illustrated

MILLION DOLLAR QUARTET Saquon Barkley is one of four all-time greats who are bidding farewell to PSU ruth is, there is no such thing. There is no greatest ever. There has never been a best of all time. The comparisons are too subjective, the timescales too broad, often spanning decades. As a scientific matter, it's im- possibly complex and made all the more imperfect by discrepancies between eras, shifting geographic dynamics and the evolution of sport. For every Michael Jordan, there is a LeBron James. For every Joe Montana, a Tom Brady. For every Ted Williams, a Willie Mays. There's always someone else, and the changing variables cause most convic- tions to carry a contemporary bias. But it is this kind of debate that makes sports the fascination that they are and what keeps the conversations humming. At Penn State this past season, four new athletes have been thrown into the dia- logue, all capable of making a case for all-time-great status: Saquon Barkley in football, Tony Carr in basketball, Zain Retherford in wrestling and Andrew Sturtz in hockey. It's not often that four of a school's most popular sports teams have a once- in-a-generation athlete on their roster at the same time. And it's even more rare when those athletes all make their cur- tain calls within a few months of each other. So as Barkley, Carr, Retherford and Sturtz officially sign off on their days as student- athletes, let's take a moment to reflect on the rarity of what we just witnessed. As they concurrently move on to the next phase of their ath- letic careers, each earning well-deserved paydays, they put a stamp on their con- vincing applications to be considered the best to have ever worn their respec- tive uniforms. Hyperbolic as it might sound, they have numbers to back up those claims, and right now their re- sumes sit side by side atop the piles. Barkley might not be Penn State's best football player of all time, but his grace and humility alone make him one of a kind. Standing atop the school's all-time leaderboard for rushing and kick-return touchdowns, with two Big Ten Offensive Player of the Year awards along with All- America citations and a host of other accolades – all that's just filler for the Coplay, Pa., native. The only data he needs to show is the film. "I have never coached or seen a player who can affect the JUDGMENT CALL T ROOM TO RUN Barkley surges for extra yardage against Pitt last season. Photo by Steve Manuel

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