DOMINATION IN THE ESPN MAGAZINE ERA: AN OVERALL PICTURE

We've been around since 1998. Who's completely dominated the sports world since then? Let's take a look.

The great ones don't just beat opponents, they crush themyear in and year out. That's dominance, baby. So who owned his, her or their sport to such an extent that they could lay claim to being the most dominant of all over the past 10 years? We ran the numbers to answer the sports equivalent of the age-old question: Who'd win, a lion or a shark?

First, we made a list of the decade's champions, from the Marlins to Maria Sharapova, and pulled out their five best seasons. Then, taking those stretches, we calculated the differences between the teams or athletes and their closest competitors' best five years. (We used yardsticks such as money won or NASCAR's points list in individual sports and total wins, including the postseason, or final poll rankings in team sports.) Only sports with yearly final standings were included. So apologies to Lance Armstrong, Michael Phelps, Shaun White and angler David Dudley. All of you were impressive but, alas, unrankable.

Appropriately, the performer who topped our list won in overwhelming fashion. To compete with The Dominator's 58 Tour wins and 12 majors, runner-up Roger Federer would have needed to win 30% more of his matches, and the Yankees would have needed to finish with the best record in baseball every yearby 25 games.

(1) Tiger Woods
Won $47,537,585, 32.7% more than No. 2 Vijay Singh
(2) Roger Federer
Won 393 matches, 24.8% more than Andy Roddick
(3) Annika Sorenstam
Won $12,132,225, 16.3% more than Lorena Ochoa
(4) New England Patriots
Won 80 games, 14.3% more than the Indianapolis Colts
(5) New York Yankees
Won 556 games, 9.0% more than the Boston Red Sox
(6) Duke men's basketball
Won 167 games, 7.1% more than UConn
(7) Los Angeles Sparks
Won 147 games, 5.8% more than the Houston Comets
(8) UConn women's basketball
Won 178 games, 4.7% more than Tennessee
(9) Martina Hingis
Won 328 matches, 4.1% more than Lindsay Davenport
(10) DC United
Won 279 games, 3.3% more than the Los Angeles Galaxy

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