Each week, we put together a list of the top ten athlete searches for Lycos Sports. Anna Kournikova is nearly always #1. Allen Iverson is nearly always #2. Michael Jordan is now near the top of the list.
The lower end of the list belongs to a revolving set of tennis stars and slam dunk artists, plus English soccer star David Beckham and skateboarder Tony Hawk. But there's one name that still hasn't shown up: Barry Bonds.
We mention this a lot, but the fact is that athletes (with the exception of Anna K.) get far fewer searches on Lycos than models, actors, or musicians. But even when compared to other athletes, the interest in Barry Bonds is beyond tepid.
Each week we have waited for the Internet to wake up and start paying attention to Bonds' assault on the home run title (not to mention the walk title). And each week, Bonds rises just slightly. Bonds searches finally perked up this week, climbing 50 percent, but that?s still not high enough to get Bonds onto our list of top ten athletes.
When it comes to popularity, Bonds can't hold a candle to the sluggers of the 1998 home run race. Barry Bonds searches didn't pass Sammy Sosa searches until three weeks ago, and they didn't pass Mark McGwire searches until two weeks ago. That's despite the fact that, while Bonds is having one of the three greatest offensive seasons in baseball history, McGwire is hitting under .200.
Now, we don't know how popular Sosa and McGwire were with Lycos users back in 1998, since the Lycos 50 didn't exist then. But given the amount of publicity they received in both the sports and news media, it is safe to say that each of them would have been far more popular than Bonds is now. We're guessing that McGwire (and maybe Sosa as well) would have been on the Lycos 50 through August and September.
Bonds, on the other hand, has only eight percent of the searches he would need to be on the Lycos 50. Last week he received about as many queries as R&B wacko Macy Gray, the disease cystic fibrosis, and cartoon cult figures The Powerpuff Girls.
MONDAY: You'll never guess America's #1 most-searched movie.
