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ESPNTheMag.Com Presents: All-World Power Rankings

Who is the most intriguing athlete-turned-musician?

by Amanda Ozment

Getty Images
This is Neon Deion at a Nashville awards show a lil' while back. Wow.

MOST INTRIGUING ATHLETE-TURNED-MUSICIAN? WE'LL GO NEON DEION

What is All-World Power Rankings?

National Wanna Play Music Week began yesterday with a message from Dr. Phil encouraging "anyone that [sic] has always wanted to play a musical instrument but didn't know how to get started…to take that first step." We think that's a great idea. As always, if you disagree with any of this—or think Ron Artest and/or Tony Parker (or Wayman Tisdale) need to be on here—holla at us.

TOP 5
RANK (YESTERDAY) WHAT WHY
1 (145) DEION SANDERS For those of you who weren't born before 1995, Deion Sanders spent the first nine years of his professional sports career as a football player in the fall, a baseball player in the spring…and in his free time he made sweet music videos. Want more Deion? Click here.
2 (102) THE 1985 CHICAGO BEARS The 1985 Bears' legendary hit the Super Bowl Shuffle was nominated for Best Rhythm and Blues Vocal Performance…but they ended up losing to Prince, which led to this awkward situation.
3 (84) SHAQ As far as the intermingling of sports and music is concerned, two important things happened in 1993: Ice Cube messed around and got a triple double and Shaquille O'Neal dropped his first album: Shaq Diesel. Although he hasn't released anything lately, we're pretty sure that Shaq's still got it.
4 (71) DAVID ORTIZ "Me and Papi is doing a record, it's gonna be crazy," said Darryl "DMC" McDaniels of Run DMC in an interview with Boston radio station WAAF last july. Obviously this would be the natural next move for a budding reggaeton artist who lives in America eight months out of the year, right? (Here's what those lyrics look like in English.)
5 (920) DISCO GUY LAFLEUR It's no big secret that hockey superstar Guy LaFleur is widely regarded as a national hero in Canada. According to the Canadian Broadcasting Center (CBC), he's also "a man who really knows something about Saturday Night Fever." Obviously we agree with that assessment or he wouldn't have made this elite list.

HONORABLE MENTION
RANK (YESTERDAY) WHAT WHY
12 (404) CARL LEWIS Between 1984 and 1996 Carl Lewis won 10 Olympic Medals, 8 World Championships Gold Medals, and recorded his first single. Unfortunately, his only major musical performance since has been this.
28 (99) COCO CRISP He was just one of the ballplayer/artists featured on the 2005 album Oh Say Can You Sing and by far our favorite, namely because his song "We Got That Thang" includes edgy lyrics like "I'm like Mike Tyson, on account of all the ears I bite."

RISING AND FALLING
MOVEMENT WHAT
OZZIE AND LOU (The next Kris Kross.)
KB24 (He cannot be happy about this.)


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