When Jay and Stu agree I am prepared to be educated, but I was surprised to see this.
Both lists above have a lot of players from '75-'95 (Efren, Earl, Buddy, Miz, Parica, Varner, Sigel). And they include none of the greats after 2000. Were those years really so tough that the 7th best player from then could beat the best from the last 20 years? Has pool gotten worse in the last 25 years?
I'm skeptical. If we go by dominance over peers then certainly, there is no way anyone can dominate today given the depth of talent internationally. But I just struggle to see how the Miz beats out SVB for example, both in play and in resume.
No worries. Many ways to keep score. I'd really love to hear more about the Miz and why he's on the list. I have his book and know his resume. But for those who saw him play I'd love to hear more about him. I've seen his youtube videos and some of his accu-stats but wasn't around at tournaments to really be in the know.
Shane was my #11 and Alex Pagulayan my #12. I think the players of the recent past are still putting their career resumes together and some of them may qualify for this list very soon. Shane may crack the top 5 before he's hung up his cue.
Agreed that comparing someone like Mizerak to Shane is a difficult task, but Mizerak was about the scariest opponent you could draw in the straight pool era (post Mosconi/Greenleaf/Crane, of course), and that's including Sigel. Steve owned Sigel early in their careers, but Mike's game eventually passed Steve's. That said, Steve won four consecutive US Open 14.1 events, each of which probably had almost twenty future hall of famers in the field, and that's among the greatest accomplishments in the history of our sport.
Of course, how you size it all up is arguable. It's no secret in my case that I don't weigh action matches in evidence when it comes to polls like these, otherwise, like Jay, I put Jose Parica on my list. Jose, at his best, was, in my opinion, even more feared than Shane as an action player, but if action counts, they both belong in the top 10. To me, however, greatness is measured in titles.
The difficulty of comparing players across eras is something we often touch upon on the forum, and this kind of thread highlights the difficulty. Finally, I don't think the matter of whether players as a group have improved is relevant here. A player's greatness can only be measured by his performance against his peers/contemporaries.