1. Brett Favre

A biopic on Bob Dylan recently came out. ***Spoiler Alert*** He’s not on this Poll. But it begs the question: “How many dick pics must one man send before we call him the greatest gunslinger in the world?” Of course Dylan’s question is rhetorical and not meant to be answered, because we don’t know how many and we don’t know how “message and data rates may apply,” given the gunslinger’s specific cell phone plan, especially considering the fact that older gunslingers may skew towards older plans that do not allow for one flat rate for unlimited dick pics, especially decades ago during the heights of their dick-pic slinging. So like the age old question, "How many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop?” the answer to Dylan’s dick pic question is something “the world may never know.” However, the wise Mr. Owl does conclude “3”* and we do know Brett Favre did take his bite out of the proverbial NFL Tootsie Pop (whatever the hell that means) with 3 straight NFL MVPs in the 1990s, sharing his final one with notable fellow gunslinger (but less-likely to be a dick-pic sender) Barry Sanders. We also know that just three decades later the ole’ grizzled gray-bearded gunslinger has outdone himself with his back-to-back-to-back-to-back gunslinging atop this highly-respected and highly-competitive Poll. In fact, no one not named Brett Favre has ever been #1 on the #1 gunslinging Poll in human history, this Great Gunslinger Poll.

Favre’s run in dominating this Poll upon its inauguration (and even before, which is an amazing-physics-defying gunslinging feat) is reminiscent of the Green Bay Packer organization his gunslinging revived in the 90s dominating the Super Bowl Era from even before the onset, winning not only the first two Super Bowls in 1967 and 1968, but preceding that by winning three NFL championships earlier that decade. Just as the Packers were the best football team as the NFL transitioned into the Super Bowl Era, Brett Favre has long been the world’s top gunslinger** as we have transitioned into the Common Gunslinger Era (C.G.E.) with the onset of this Prestigious Poll in 2022. Because the Packers won a whopping 5 championships in the ‘60s under Vince Lombardi, in 1970 the NFL changed the name of the trophy you got for winning the Super Bowl from the boring, very unlinguistically gunslinging World Professional Football Championship Trophy to the Vince Lombardi Trophy. It only seems logically fitting Favre would be honored in a somewhat similar fashion for being the driving force of another transitional era in another pivotal point in human history, which we are currently in, where we are finally beginning to honor great gunslingers for their dynamic deeds, where in the (hopefully near) future when one receives a dick pic on their phone one might instead simply say they got a Brett Favre Trophy just like one says they get a Lombardi Trophy for winning the Super Bowl as Brett Favre may be rightly called the Vince Lombardi of dick-pic sending and the Vince Lombardi of Gunslinging, if he weren’t already called the Brett Favre of Gunslinging, #1 Gunslinger on Your #1 High Noon Poll, or the Godfather of Gunslinging–-or Defendant, if you are in a Mississippi courtroom and the plaintiffs are little kids who had money stolen from them by an aging, legendary gunslinger.

Whether seeking sex or the stealing of money, a great gunslinger knows how to sling a text message without worry of self-incrimination and is more likely to destroy common human decency than destroy a cell phone, like a notable non-gunslinger may be inclined to boringly do. Which brings us back to the dick-pic question at hand, Dylan’s question. We do know Favre sent at least one dick pic, or as the mathematicians put it: "greater than or equal to one"/"≥". We also know that Brett Favre has thrown 336 career interceptions, the most all-time in one of sports most cherished and unbreakable records that combines the great ability to be good and play through injury, just the like the Great Gunslingers of Old brushed off a bullet hole or two with a shot of whiskey (or two), while also avoiding the evils of check-down-Charlieitis (very reasonably not covered by any reputable non-backalley healthcare plan) by gunslinging so many interceptions. The only QB that looked like he might flirt with this record was fellow gunslinger Eli Manning. But Manning fell short, perhaps because he lacked the dick-pic-sending propensity, some gunslinging analysts might speculate, in what may have been a classic misunderstanding of how the elite of the elite gunslingers flirt, how the truly top gunslingers go about courting (women and/or courtroom time). So does all this mean that Favre sent 336 dick pics in his lifetime?

Maybe. Maybe not.

It could very well be more complicated than this, more intricate than old, raw, unlubricated numbers. Advanced metrics are all the rage nowadays. Statistics, math, equations, percentages, etc.: current people love that stuff. So maybe we should consider the fact that Brett Favre threw interceptions on 3.3% of his regular season passes. From that, we might deduce that he also sent dick pics on 3.3% of his text messages. So if we were ever able to get his phone records to see the raw data of total text messages sent, and if he steals more from poor little kids we might be able to attain such data in a Freedom of Information Act request, then we could then multiply that whole number by 0.033 to approximate the total number of dick pics sent. Conversely, a non-gunslinger who probably has more Super Bowls under his belt than dick pics, Tom Brady, threw interceptions on a boringly-low less-than-2% of his passes, the interception rate Mendoza Line for gunslingers: no respectable gunslinger poll can call you a gunslinger if you make a poor decisions on less than 2% of your opportunities to do so.

But what if a dick pic is not similar to an interception after all? What if we are to look at dick pics in a completely different way, viewing them in a different light, like the Great Modeling Photoshoots of Old? Well then, those holding such a novel perspective on dick pics may very well equate a dick pic sent to a touchdown thrown. Favre threw a total of 508 touchdowns, the most at the time of his retirement. As such, it is likely he sent the most amount of dick pics at the time of his retirement; or, in numerical terms: 508. When we put this impressive number in proper context and get probability involved, we can see just how significant it is. Brett Favre threw touchdowns on 5% of his passes, so inspirational is his gunslinging success that researchers now use Favre’s touchdown rate of 5% as the common threshold to rejecting old incorrect assumptions and accepting new discoveries; sure, other factors like context or ignorance derived from not being up-to-date on this Poll could lead to other percentages used, but even when not used, Favre’s interception rate of 5% is still universally understood to the be the standard alpha. So once again, if we are ever able to get his phone records of total text messages sent, and we might if he returns to his old habit of stealing from poor kids, then we could then multiply that by 0.05 to approximate the total number of dick pics sent. But we can currently roughly estimate that if you were to receive 20 text messages from Brett Favre, one of them would likely be a dick pic.

A regular season dick pick that is, as we should also note we have simply been talking about regular season touchdowns and interceptions thus far; we haven’t even taken postseason dick pics into the equation, which typically face stiffer defenses, tighter coverage, and more challenging gameplans designed by more accomplished coaches. When all of this is combined with the desperation of single-elimination postseason play, Brett Favre likely sent somewhere between 30 and 74 playoff dick pics, a confidence dick-pic interval calculated (slightly differently than statisticians do to gain their less gunslinging confidence intervals) by taking his postseason interceptions (30) and adding those to his postseasons touchdown tosses (44) while being wide-minded enough to recognize that analysts could equally reasonably interpret his dick pics sent as interceptions and/or touchdowns thrown.

While we do not (yet) know the exact quality gap between a Favorian regular season dick pic and a Favorian postseason dick pick, we do indeed know that they all collectively led to one Lombardi Trophy for the great gunslinger, which appropriately equals the one dick pick we know for sure he sent, the one publicly-confirmed Brett Favre Trophy. If we further combine numerology with stats in this study, we note that the 95 (from our 95% postseason dick pic confidence interval) + 5 (the percentage of touchdowns thrown on his regular season passes) = 100, signifying wholeness and complete confidence Favre deserves to be #1 on this Poll.

But whatever numbers you decide to use, however you interpret the data, we know this was a guy unafraid, in the midst of great pressure, toss, to hurl, to thrust a touchdown, interception, or dick pic. At least we do know that Favre is a savory gunslinger that never sent dick pics to kids. He would never do that. He doesn’t give to kids. He steals from them. Maybe not the man you want around your kid’s piggy bank. Maybe not the man you want to see wearing your Crocs. But definitely the man you want to see atop any great gunslinger Poll.

2. Deion Sanders

While gunslinging’s premiere time slot has traditionally been high noon, Sanders brought it to Prime Time, a nickname he earned as a youngster on the basketball court. But it was his early-’90s interdisciplinary identity of football and baseball that regularly made his gunslinging must-see primetime television. As the premier dual-threat gunslinger of the ‘90s, alongside fellow two-sport gunslinger Bo Jackson whose gunslinging was cut short by injury all too common in the gunslinger world, Sanders recognized the value of arriving in town guns akimbo well before Harry Potter finally followed suit in 2019 as Sanders would draw dollar signs in the batter’s box with his lumber***. It would only be 2022 when the market would begin to truly comprehend Sanders’ vision in the first trustworthy Gunslinger Poll and at last catch up here in 2025 when he would get onto the Poll, at this very impressive riding-shotgun-to-Brett Favre position.

We’ll leadoff with Sanders as the electrifying leadoff hitter in the pre-Strike years for the Atlanta Braves that jumpstarted their decades of dominance in otherwise boring fashion on the baseball diamond while jumpstarting Sanders’ even more prolonged decades of exciting gunslinging dominance. While his baseball production was just below All-Star level, he was your prototypical leadoff hitter and prototypical gunslinger who could transform your standard-brand above-average play to exciting high-level gunslinging.

He had a flare for the dramatic on the field: hitting an inside the park homerun against Bo Jackson and his Royals in an early matchup of the multidisciplinary gunslingers, hitting over .500 against the Blue Jays in the 1992 World Series, and leading the NL in triples in ‘92 while playing under a 100 games. He would continue gunslinging on the basepaths by leading the NL two years later in similarly limited time in the important gunslinger stat of caught stealing. While Sanders’ lifetime WAR (Wins Above Replacement) was just above 5 for his career, his lifetime GSAWAR (Gunslinging Above WAR) was off the charts on the diamond. In other words, when a player it markedly more exciting than their actual value to their team winning, there is a good chance they are a good gunslinger.

He also had a flare for the dramatic off the field: infamously (in non-gunslinging circles) or famously (in cooler circles, like this Poll, when people circle it) drenching Tim McCarver with ice water–three times–in the Braves locker room after the NLCS, showing that gunslinging is not just a sport, but rather an entire lifestyle, a way of being: when the curtain goes down, real gunslingers are still slinging.

Had Sanders offered the world only this gunslinging on the baseball diamond (and in the baseball clubhouse), it would have been enough to be one of the world’s good gunslingers. But he is much more than one of the world’s good gunslingers: he is one of the world’s great gunslingers (citation: Prestigious Poll, this). And it was his gridiron gunslinging greatness that got him to that level in between all of the other gunslinging he was doing.

With the world-class speed that allowed him to run in a track meet in between games of a college baseball doubleheader he also played in, he dashed into the NFL in mythical style, with a 40 yard-dash at the combine that has been topic of gunslinging conversation for years to come. In typical great gunslinger fashion, the facts get misty and mix with the myths as word of mouth made this gunslinging moment even greater, with people telling all kinds of stories about Sanders’ famous 40-yard combine dash, including him backpedaling it sub 4.40 in street shoes. Sanders, also a great gunslinger gabber, added to the legend by claiming he didn’t even stretch:

“You wanna know why?”

Yes do we great gunslinger.

“Because I never seen a Cheetah stretch before he go get his prey.”

That is certainly the mentality of a great gunslinger. A mentality this great gunslinger embodied from the moment he showed up in town, arriving in style, often in a stretch limo (apparently the only stretch he needs). A mentality that included gunslinger gratefulness from the gridiron get-go, gracefully making no secret of his gratitude for the lowly Lions passing on him on draft day as he would have asked “for so much money they’d of had to put me on layaway.”

He was not on layaway with the Atlanta Falcons. In his very first game, he had a 68-yard punt return touchdown against the L.A. Rams as Sanders has been every sense of gunslinging High Noon Hollywood ever since, showing the Rams what they were supposed to be doing in L.A., role modeling true gunslinging behavior. Sanders’ sensational rookie campaign put otherwise-sorry and perpetually-losing Atlanta on the NFL map and the cover of Sports Illustrated (more important than maps at the time), as he became the first Falcon to grace the cover, allowing the ease of any Audubon angst and adverse attention by alleviating the Aves absence.

In 1993, he entered free agency in what was a chance for any franchise to sign gridiron gunslinging greatness and win a championship. Appropriately enough, it was the 49ers who decided to win the west in a modern-day Gold Rush that remains one of the best pickups in NFL history for allowing San Fran to finally get the over that Cowboy dynastic hump to capture their (at the time) NFL-high 5th Lombardi Trophy and finally get that monkey off of Steve Young’s back.

But the next year, the NFC and subsequently the NFL world (as the AFC never won the Super Bowl in those days) tilted back to Dallas as this hired gun signed with the Cowboys to help propel them to their 3rd Super Bowl of the 90s, matching the Niners all-time with 5 Lombardis, and making Sanders back-to-back champ.

While the mid-90s marked the pinnacle of this great gunslinger’s athletic prowess, like the Great Gunslingers of Old always do, he came out of retirement to demonstrate he’s still got the goods and remarkably proved to be a good nickelback in Baltimore’s backfield posse, at the age of 37 three years after previously retiring! Still dangerous as ever, he took one of his five picks in his two years with Baltimore to the house. Meaning the endzone, because that is one place that gunslingers are known to live.

While Rod Woodson will forever be the Sweetest Livin’ cornerback of all time with Mel Blount as a close second on the all-time Sweet Livin’ cornerback list, we have to give the nod to Deion Sanders as the best cornerback of all time. Some will denounce his lack of great tackling skills. But it doesn’t matter. His coverage skills were so good that they make concerns about his tackling**** seem petty. Gunslinging is definitely not about simply being proficient in all categories; and that is where gunslinging flows together with plain-old excellence, which by its very definition is attained not by being evenly good at a variety of related skills, but by excelling at something. Sanders excelled at coverage, which is what corners do, primarily. Sure, Blount and Woodson were certainly better tacklers, but that’s really a sub-skillset for a corner, who may not need to tackle often if no one receiver ever catches the ball in their direction. Which they hardly did on Sanders, who was perhaps the only true shutdown corner of all-time and the only shutdown corner in the memory of any living Gunslinger Pollster (voter/democracy keeper). While other very good—or even great—corners have been labelled “shutdown,” only Sanders achieved such Dust Bowl-level reductions in opposing receiver production consistently throughout his career. Greats like Darelle Revis had stints, but Revis had a shorter prime and never had the take-it-back-to-the-house capabilities inherent of the #2 gunslinger in the world. To be shutdown and to still be dangerous is to achieve a rare feat, is to be a rare gunslinger. Deion was so dominant that at times he didn’t even enter the defensive huddle. He might just stay on his side of the field, where no football would be played because the quarterback didn’t want to risk throwing the ball that way. In other words, he was so dangerous of a cornerback gunslinger, even other great gunslingers didn’t want to get in a showdown with him at high noon (Central Standard Time/1 PM Eastern).

Considering this great gunslinging combination on the gridiron and baseball diamond, it is a shame that Deion hadn’t entered this Poll earlier. But what has made him simply impossible to ignore now is his entry into the Coach Prime Era. He set the tone by appropriately stating: “I will not answer any questions unless you address me, ‘Coach Prime.'” Henceforth, here in this entry, we will thusly proceed to refer to him as Coach Prime.

With the humility benefitting a great gunslinger of his caliber, Coach Prime informed the world that “God called [me] collect to coach Jackson State.” After doing God a solid by picking up the phone call tab (Covid must have hit God’s finances unexpectedly hard) and making His wishes come true by turning the Jackson State program around, putting it in the national spotlight, and leading them to an undefeated SWAC record in his only two full seasons there, Coach Prime (no mention of a Godly phone call this time so we must assume an autodeleting Snapchat was the preferred method of heavenly communication) went out to Boulder where he immediately made relevant a sorry-ass program who had one win in the season prior to his arrival and seemed so far removed from their one national championship back in 1990, which came on the back of a gunslingingly famous Fifth Down Game.

But the Colorado football program has a way of getting unprecedented extras. Coach Prime has elevated himself to such great gunslinging levels that 60 Minutes, sensing Coach Prime was a gunslinger on the great rise on this Great Poll, broke with its previously-never-known-or-cared-about convention of not interviewing the same person in back-to-back seasons. These Great Gunslinger Polls have such an integrity that we do not make false conventions that we will later break. From the beginning, great gunslingers break false conventions. So if Coach Prime coaches his way back onto this Poll next year, he will be judged not by false conventions, but rather by how much crazy shit he says or does.

3. Alexander Ovechkin

After overtaking Gretzky's long-held position of NHL goal king, this veteran grizzled gunslinging great slings himself well up the Poll, overtaking many great gunslingers along the way. The fact that he is not #1 on this Poll just shows how hard gunslinging is: harder than having a scorer record in a major professional international sport, evidently.

The Great One–-Gretzky himself–-will never sniff this Poll because his long-held NHL assist record, which by itself is higher than the point total of any other NHLer who ever laced up the skates, is not what gunslingers do. Gunslingers do what Ovi does: outduel their opponent while also outdueling their own assist totals***** by scoring goals, a lot of them. So it’s only the natural law of gunslinger justice that a great gunslinger like Ovi would have the great NHL goal record. In the last 14 seasons he only has had two gunslinging down years where he tallied more assists than goals, bringing him to an impressive career record of 14 - 5 - 1 in goals vs. assists each season. That’s a winning percentage of .725, which would be enough to win the Presidents’ Trophy most years. But once again: it is harder to be #3 on this Poll than have the best record in hockey—or become a president of a country.

Overshadowed by Ovi’s awesome achievement of breaking Gretzky’s record is the fact he scored 44 goals at the age of 39 while maintaining the appearance of a grizzled gunslinger twice that age. This wasn’t a guy holding on just to break a record. This is a gunslinger who led his team in goals on the way to the #1 seed in the Eastern Conference, the #1 guy you’d want to party with (citation: Oshie, TJ), and—much more importantly—led himself to be #3 in this Poll.

Can he climb even higher?

Let’s see. Maybe flirting with 1,000 career goals could have him flirting with even higher spots on this Poll.

4. Tyrese Haliburton’s Dad

Tyrese John Haliburton was born February 29th, 2000 to Brenda Haliburton, and John Haliburton, a great gunslinger. It is a gunslinger move to have a son born on Leap Day, just as it is a gunslinger move to leap up onto this Gunslinger Poll. So let’s leap ahead a quarter of a century to the important stuff: April 29th, 2025. Haliburton the Younger (Tyrese) hits the game-winning shot with 1.3 seconds left of Game 5 to defeat the Bucks in Round One of the NBA Playoffs. Pretty cool. But not normally anything to really write home about as the 4th vs. 5th-Seed matchup is not historically normally something that telegrams are sent to and fro the Wild Wild West about.

Until a great gunslinger gets involved.

Enter Tyrese Haliburton’s Dad.

In typical Wild West fashion, Tyrese Haliburton’s Dad runs onto the court and starts talking shit to Giannis Antetokounmpo, a much bigger man–but a much lesser gunslinger. Giannis, gifted a great gunslinging opportunity on a silver platter, chose instead to address the situation in a mature, very ungunslinger-like manner.

Tyrese Haliburton’s Dad was just doing what any father of a great gunslinger should do: model great gunslinging behavior. Great parenting. Because Tyrese Haliburton would go on to hit 3 more game-tying or game-winning shots with even less than the comfortable (by elite gunslinging standards) 1.3 seconds he had left against Milwaukee. In fact, Tyrese Haliburton would hit one such historic shot each round of the 2025 playoffs, a never before seen Grand Slam of NBA Playoff gunslinging.

In the second round, after purposely missing his second free throw with the Pacers down two, Haliburton got his own rebound, dribbled back behind the three-point line and drained a 3 to put the Pacers up 2-0 against the Eastern Conference one-seed and eventually move on to the Eastern Conference Finals to play New York where in Game 1, in shades of the great Indiana Pacer legendary gunslinger Reggie Miller, Haliburton led the Pacers to an improbable 4th-quarter comeback punctuated what looked like a miracle game-winning, buzzer beater three, initially. But his foot was on the line. So they would go on to play overtime, but the game was already in the Pacers hands as Haliburton had already delivered the Miller Time choke sign.

After grabbing control of the series and defeating the Knicks in six, Haliburton would then repeat the Game 1 routine of comeback and clutch shots with a Game 1 game-winner with three seconds left against the Thunder, ultimately leading the heavy-underdog Pacers to push OKC to the brink, when Haliburton tragically went down in the 1st quarter with a torn Achilles, as his gunslinging father looked on.

Tyrese Haliburton certainly left it all on the court, and hopefully he is able to heal, get back on the court, and get himself on this list that his dad, Tyrese Haliburton’s Dad, so elegantly graces, whether or not he’s “out of pocket” in his style choice of wearing jeans to big gunslinging events.

What’s not “out of pocket” is for a great gunslinger like Tyrese Haliburton’s Dad to wear whatever he damn well pleases and do whatever he damn well wants, getting banned from non-gunslinger-friendly arenas along the way. What’s Tyrese Haliburton’s Dad is not banned from: this Poll.

5. Reggie Miller

When your nickname is “Knick Killer,” you’re a gunslinger. When you’ve role-modeled other Knick-killing behavior for younger players, you’re a gunslinger. When you finish your college career second all-time in scoring behind Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (formerly Lew Alcindor at UCLA) with the Bruins, you’re a gunslinger. This guy is such a gunslinger that instead of following the mantra of “Go West Young Man” for gunslinging glory and greatness, Miller flipped the script and went east from California to his main gunslinging stage of Madison Square Garden where his Indiana Pacers did most of their gunslinging damage as Miller became the Godfather of the Pacers Knick-killing tradition which has culminated in the Pacers being on the only team in the Common Gunslinger Era (largely defined as whatever one can remember off the top of their head after having imbibed a shit ton of whiskey) to have eliminated the Knicks from the playoffs on their home court three times.

But the true genesis of this great gunslinger’s great gunslinging story was June 1st, 1994 when Miller went off at Madison Square Garden in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Finals against the Knicks, scoring 25 points in the 4th quarter while engaging in epic public discourse with Spike Lee sitting courtside, culminating in his famous gunslinger choke sign that has inspired the youth for generations to come (citation: Haliburton, Tyrese).

That would have been enough Madison Square greatness for your average NBA Hall of Famer, but this great gunslinger went back to Madison Square Garden the next year in the playoffs and immediately had another epic performance in Game 1 of Eastern Conference Semifinals where he gunslang 8 points in 9 seconds (or let’s say 8 seconds, because as gunslingers we can fairly round down from the official 8.9 seconds, gunslingers round to the nearest second with our stopwatches) at the end of the 4th quarter for a miraculous****** Pacers comeback.

But his remarkable feat may have been that this gunslinger came the closest to derailing Michael Jordan and destroying the great gunslinging documentary The Last Dance, when they inexplicably pushed (quite literally, Miller’s gunslinging push of Michael Jordan in Game 4 led to draining the game-winning shot over MJ) the Bulls in the Eastern Conference Finals to a seventh game, where they had a lead in Chicago they just couldn’t hold. When you look at his supporting cast, a courageous posse with as many bruising power forwards named Davis as one team could ever hope for, they had no business bringing MJ and his dynastic posse to the brink. But they did, because that’s what great gunslingers do.

And this great gunslinger’s last dance was less of a two-step than MJ’s as it was more like the last rodeo, or the last rumble in the jungle.

Precisely: the Malice in the Palace.

It was Miller’s last chance to capture that ring. The Pacers were the best team in the NBA that year with the best gunslinger in the league at the time known as Ron Artest. Sometimes, gunslinging is less compatible with winning professional championships than it is with going into the stands and fighting fans.

And getting suspended.

Yes, suspensions got things off track for the Pacers in Miller’s final season, but this great gunslinger never gave up, putting up 27 points in a valiant last effort in his final game, Game 6 of the Eastern Conference Semifinals against that bitter rival Detroit, a team Indiana probably would have defeated if they had tried to fight their fans earlier in the year.

But it only makes Miller more of a gunslinger that it was gunslinging itself that got in the way of him winning a title. So Shakespearian. So poetic. So gunslinging.

So fitting. Because this gunslinger was the purest of the pure. This great gunslinger was jacking up three-point attempts (and makes) on his way to stardom before jacking-up-threes-en route-to-stardom was cool. Three rebounds, three assists, around one steal per game. The occasional block here or there. This gunslinger didn’t bother with “stuffing the box score.” He didn’t bother with creating his own two-point shot. He was focused on that task at hand: gunslinging. From deep. Deep gunslinging. #Profundity

So while it may have seemed that just two paragraphs and two decades ago that this great gunslinger walked off into the sunset on a mid-May midwestern night after falling to the Pistons, he still slings it to this day, making Knicks fans mad as a gunslinging commentator and trolling them like it is his job.

Because it is his job as a great gunslinger.

And great gunslingers have great legacies. Before the Splash Brothers were jacking up threes in the modern-day Golden State goldrush, it was Miller Time talking trash and making choke signs. Now, because of this great gunslinger, little boys and girls across the world can decorate their notebooks with choke symbols (if Brett Favre doesn’t steal them first). Soccer moms and dads can pick their kids up from practice because they locate their cell phone and answer their kids’ calls because their potentially-lost cellular device was easily located with the beautiful Miller choke symbol on it. An athlete who might be hospitalized from dehydration if unhydrated can instead be fine and healthy after drinking water from a water bottle with a Miller choke sticker on it.

This is posterity. This perhaps the closest any human has come to immortality: inspiring others to gunslinging success simply by choking. And safely so—because it’s not actual choking, just symbolically so. #LiteraryDevice

Where it was once thought that education was The Great Equalizer (citation: Mann, Horace), it is actually the choke sign. For not everyone can purchase a firearm and sling with a pistol, but any man, woman, or child with two hands******* can drain (or at least dream of doing so) a game-winning shot (or what is later determined after replay to be a game-tying shot) and taunt their opponent by putting their hands around their own neck.

And so every generation can dream bigger and become greater, as Haliburton resurrecting the choke elevates Miller and also surpasses him on the Poll (which he couldn’t have done without Miller) in a way that Charles Darwin would have wanted. Yes, no man is an island (Donne, John) and we are all connected (Kutcher, Ashton, 2004), but it is not The Butterfly Effect that does so: it is the Great Gunslinger Effect.

6. Shohei Ohtani

This last year of Ohtani’s gunslinging is straight out of a Hollywood script. And no, we’re not just talking about a mediocre sports biopic profiling an athlete that gifted us an impressive feat never before accomplished. No, we are not just talking about a great Western featuring a great gunslinger whose back is against the wall because he’s in trouble with the (corrupt, anti-gunslinger) law as enemies come at him while he’s shorthanded: not only in the sense that he’s down members of his posse but also in the literal sense that his own hand is injured, so the normally-ambidextrous sharpshooter can currently only use one hand to get the job done and thus has to think of a new gunslinging technique to save himself.

No, we aren’t talking about one of those movies. We are talking about both of those beautiful hit movie premises wonderfully wrapped into one, not unlike Ohtani is a wonderful pitcher and hitter all wrapped into one.

But just last year Ohtani was the center of controversy in the midst of a scandal that is a cornerstone of gunslinging but a cardinal sin in the mainstream sports world: gambling.

Oh, you didn’t know a couple of tens of millions of his dollars went missing here and there?

It was all your interpreter?

I believe you—and will love it (citation: Mathers, Marshall; Last Name Unknown, Rihanna)—if you lie to me with a straight face in a press conference and then hit 50 home runs and steal 50 bases–-in the same season, being the inaugural member of baseball’s 50/50 club all while leading your team to a World Series title.

Brilliant, like the Great Teflon Dons of Old who get cool rhyming nicknames by letting their right-hand man take the fall for them.

What’s especially remarkable about this Great Global Gunslinger known on his birth certificate as Shohei Ohtani is that he did all of this while being injured. Remember, the guy earned global fame by being one of the world’s top gunslingers and largely did so through the dual threat of hitting and pitching.

But then he couldn’t pitch due to injury. But rather than wallow in his sorrow of perceived limited gunslinging ability and fall off this Poll, he instead buckles down, gets down to business, impressively loses tens of millions of dollars in a great gunslinging way, and finds a new way to execute his craft by coming up with this whole 50/50 gamut.

Genius.

Gunslinging genius.

Brilliance.

Gunslinging brilliance.

So what’s the best way to get away with a multimillion dollar gunslinging gambling scandal?

More advanced gunslinging. 50/50 gunslinging. Even when he has an injured elbow, he finds a way to sling it. Other gambling gunslinging legends have fallen off this list this year. But this gambling legend continues to ascend.

Moral of the Story: Kids, if you get caught doing something wrong, just make sure to hit 50 or more home runs and steal 50 or more stolen bases in your next Major League regular season and win the World Series in the postseason. Don’t listen to some bullshit Hollywood movie about how a star is born called A Star Is Born or your parents’ BS story about a some stork who magically is in-network like other more local midwives and doesn’t even require a modest copay, when this is how stars are really born: by taking chances, but not taking responsibility.

Moral of the Gambling Story: Yes, the house always wins. But that does not mean you have to always lose if you are not the house—and most of us are not houses, because houses cannot read Gunslinger Polls (yet)—because rather than lose yourself, you can simply displace responsibility (ideally 100% of it) on your interpreter, which is an excellent reason to have an interpreter in the first place. So the next time you are thinking about gambling away tens of millions of dollars that may jeopardize your professional reputation, do the responsible thing and hire an interpreter first.

7. José Canseco

José Canseco walked, so Shohei Ohtani could run. Those are not our words, but rather the great gunslinging words of the great gunslinger José Canseco himself. Of course Canseco is referring to his own great gunslinging feat decades ago in founding the 40/40 club; and, just as 40 precedes 50 in counting by ten, Canseco’s accomplishment was an obvious necessary step in human evolution for Ohtani to found the 50/50 club just 36 years later.

Or, as Canseco’s calculations concluded: 35 years later. But great gunslingers need not be great mathematicians********. They just need to be able to count be ten (citation: Ohtani, Shohei, 2024; Canseco, José, 1988; Williams, Ken, 1922).

Ohtani’s great gunslinging feat, ever-linked to Canseco’s paving of such a path by walking it first, reminds us of Canseco’s gunslinging greatness and keeps him, along with the lack of random drug testing performed by your Premier Gunslinger Poll (citation: Williams, Ricky at #10), on this Poll for at least another year, as we recognize that we are the premier Gunslinger Poll, not the world’s premier steroid testing Poll, which would be a terrible Top 25 and is why no one has ever heard of it and you have smartly chosen to study this Poll instead of a drug-testing Top 25.

A great gunslinger like Canseco can better tell who is using steroids than any of us could anyway, as he outed many in his famous 2005 “tell-all” literary masterpiece Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant 'Roids, Smash Hits & How Baseball Got Big. While this book may be best known for exposing other steroid users, like his own Bash Brother Mark McGwire along with a slew of other top names in baseball, the book is actually a strange promotion of steroids with Canseco appointing himself the “godfather” that went around “proselytizing” and “converting” non-believers like Mark McGwire into wholesome American heroes, effectively baptizing them in bathroom stalls (nothing sexual like the Great Truck Stop Bathroom Stalls of Old; this was just two sweaty, brawny guys taking turns jamming large pointed objects into their butts).

If in Mario Puzo’s world of The Godfather: “behind every great fortune, there is a crime,” in José Canseco’s world of athletics: “behind every great athlete, there is steroid use.” While Canseco does not say that exact quote in his book, that is the essence of his message. Our paraphrasing of Canseco above is no more loose than Puzo’s deriving Don Corleone’s epigraph from the Honoré de Balzac quote: “The secret of a great success for which you are at a loss to account is a crime that has never been found out, because it was properly executed.”

In the tradition of famous literature, Canseco’s book is layered, and strange. He spread the good word so much, that other lesser gunslingers like Barry Bonds and Álex Rodríguez became enlightened enough to stop their direct path to Cooperstown and take the never-ending detour to Canseco’s 40/40 club, a place where you really have to watch your step when you step into a bathroom stall.

One might (someday) label (when wasted) this Poll the 40/40 Club of Top 25 Polls, where celebrities and cool people frequent (at least much more than Top 25 Steroid Testing Polls) as Jay-Z was so impressed with Canseco’s great gunslinging that he opened up the 40/40 Club to honor Canseco’s great gunslinging*********.

But forming the 40/40 club by itself was just the beginning of Canseco founding his own gunslinging juggernaut as Canseco has much more on his gunslinging resume than the lesser gunslinging 40/40 club members who only get a sniff of this great Poll by riding the coattails of Canseco’s gunslinging greatness and graciousness for him allowing them into his club.

Having a membership card into Canseco’s club would be the culmination of a life’s work for some and certainly something to shrewdly let “accidently” fall out of your wallet to impress a hot date to ensure a successful culmination to the evening.

But Canseco is not so immature: he thinks bigger, in gunslinging terms. He wanted to be a great gunslinger so bad that, in shades of Jim Harbaugh begging his way onto the Chicago Bears kickoff coverage team, Canseco begged his way onto the mound for the Texas Rangers in May of 1993 to give up three runs in one inning of work that would give him an elbow injury requiring one Tommy John surgery and us to recognize him as one hell of gunslinger.

While Canseco was the first Texas Rangers position player to pitch, he did not found the position-player pitching club for all of Major League Baseball like he did the 40/40 club. He just made it matter. No one gave a shit about position players pitching until Canseco bravely made that gunslinging move on May 29th, 1993.

Since Canseco tore up his elbow to pave the way in making mainstream this great gunslinging career choice option of position players risking their careers by pitching for the fun of it, a slew of other position players have obviously been inspired by Canseco’s gunslinging to hit the mound themselves, like fan favorite and guy we’d love to make this list Rowdy Tellez and notable gunslinger Shohei Ohtani, who could have graciously retired from pitching without losing any money as his contract with the Dodgers nearing a billion bucks is fully gauranteed, but realized that Canseco not only walked to 40/40 so he could run to 50/50 but that Canseco also walked to the mound to jeopardize his baseball career in 1993 so that Ohtani could walk back to the mound in 2025 and do the same.

Since Canseco’s poor decision in 1993, many people–-not just ballplayers–-have obviously been inspired by Canseco’s poor decision-making to make poor decisions themselves, as there have been a lot of poor choices made by a lot of people since 1993 (citation: ignorant people who have not read this Poll; et al.).

Miraculously, a lot of those poor decisions have been made by Canseco himself. Fortunately, a lot of those poor decisions were gunslinging decisions. Where boxing promoter David Feldman was “disgusted” by Canseco having “deceived” him by having his twin brother Ozzie box in his stead, we are simply in awe of a great gunslinging move. I mean, if José Canseco were able to pull one over on us and get his twin brother Ozzie on this Great Poll instead of him, we wouldn’t cry a river like non-gunslinger Justin Timberlake*********, we would just simply sit back, drink some whiskey, and toast the great gunslinger that is Canseco, whether José or Ozzie.

To be honest, we have barely scratched the surface of Canseco’s great gunslinging here; we won’t get into all of it this time around and we don’t know if the proper way to write it is Canseco’s gunslinging or the Cansecos’ gunslinging: because there’s no telling if it was José or Ozzie who did it, or a combination thereof. So, for all we know, José has already already snuck Ozzie onto this Poll.

8. Mike Tyson

Iron Mike claimed his first heavyweight belt a little over half a year before he was old enough to legally drink and he claims his first appearance on this Prestigious Poll a little over half a year before he’s old enough to call himself 60. Yes, he certainly could have been on this Poll as a young 20-year-4-month-and-22-day-old capturing his first heavyweight title. But prestigious things like this Poll didn’t exist back then. And he could have probably have still been on this Poll earlier, but there are so many Great Gunslingers in this world of ours whose most limited resource is the 25 slots in a Top 25 Gunslinger Poll (imagine, for comparison’s sake, if there were only 25 barrels of oil left in the world).

Iron Mike Tyson reminded us of just how much of a gunslinger he is when he fought Jake Paul. Iron Mike may have officially lost the fight, but he earned $20 million and his way onto the only list that matters: this Poll. To be clear, that’s not because Tyson used a portion of that $20 million to buy loads of Sweet Livin’ Merch; unfortunately that did not happen as we can only hope for such kind (as in generous) kind (as in type) of gunslinging corruption in the future.

There will certainly be controversy as naysayers will object and protest that Tyson was disappointing in the fight and didn’t look like a gunslinger. But remember: an integral part of being a gunslinger is putting on a spectacle (citation: shootouts on Main Street to entertain the whole family when there’s nothing else to do in town). Besides, it was an extra time for Tyson in the gunslinging arena after his famously gunslingingly honest interview following his loss to Kevin McBride two decades ago that was supposed to his last time in the ring, already at the ripe gunslinging age of 38.

We must also continue to remind ourselves that the Old, Grizzled Great Gunslinger was 58 years old at the time of the Jake Paul fight (and even older when you are reading this) and that is a feat in itself. I mean seriously: 58 years old! By that age, most athletes are well retired from sports and kicking back on the couch while collecting residuals from testosterone supplement ads. A truly great gunslinger knows supplements are not the answer to testosterone decline in aging men when the answer to such a problem is much more natural and organic: poor decision-making is the key ingredient to curb declining testosterone levels as the male ages.

And Mike Tyson is certainly no stranger to poor decision-making. At any age. Arrested 38 times by the time he became a teenager, Tyson had well-prepared himself for some good gunslinging in adulthood, such as trying to fight a silverback gorilla. In one impressive gunslinging sequence, Tyson attacks Don King, knocks out his bodyguard, impresses a police officer with his gunslinging gestures so much that the police, in shades of Wyatt Earp blurring the boundaries of the law enforcement duties for the sake of a good gunslinging story, escort Tyson, along with his bricks of cocaine and marijuana, to his hotel.

Tyson is an ageless gunslinger: his gunslinging is timeless and will certainly continued to be studied by future generations and civilizations (the descendants of the ones he didn’t eat, of course, for he did once promise to eat your children as he apparently reads Jonathan Swift through a literal lens).

So let’s give those future generations (the stronger ones that didn’t get eaten as kids) something a little more to study:

Tyson jumped into the scene at a young age, becoming the youngest heavyweight champ of all time. Even though at 5’ 10” he was much shorter than most heavyweights, his superior gunslinging ability resulted in quick TKO after TKO, a true highlight reel of gunslinging.

But even before the title, he was a gunslinging legend. Nintendo pursued the gunslinging gamble of signing Mike Tyson to use his name in Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! (note the gunslinging use of two exclamation marks) even before he won the WBC title in 1986. Good gunslinging energy begets good gunslinging energy because we all know that on “Judgement Day”-–November 22nd, 1986–-Tyson beat down Trevor Berbick in a 2nd Round TKO that was a good day for Tyson, a good day for boxing, a good day for Nintendo, a good day for judgements, and a great day for gunslinging. A few more TKOs, crazy quotes, gunslinging moments, a friendship with fellow gunslinger and greatest rapper of all time Tupac Shakur, and an appearance in The Hangover later and here Iron Mike is in this respected, revered, and deserved spot of being near the top of this Poll. Yes, others sure wanted to be in this coveted spot on this Prestigious Poll—and planned to be here, but like Iron Mike once said:

“Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

Once known as “the Baddest Man on the Planet,” Mike Tyson is now the 8th best gunslinger on the planet. If the #1 bad man on the planet is equivalent to #8 Gunslinger in the world, that just shows you how competitive gunslinging is. We would expect you to see Mike Tyson again here on this Poll in the future. Like always, it will be a good gunslinging time. But we advise against you ever going to see him perform at Madison Square Garden.

9. Mike Ditka

From one Iron Mike to another. While Ditka may not be labeled Iron Mike for ferociously knocking out heavyweights or slinging around the iron that is the firearm as is typical of the Wild, Wild West Gunslingers in the Old American West, this Iron Mike earned his nickname for his gunslinging toughness rooted in an Aliquippa Western Pennsylvania Steel Town upbringing after been born in the nearby Steel Town of Carnegie. Such a genesis for the Iron Mike moniker will do just fine.

From the melting iron sheets of Pittsburgh-area steel mills, molten material was poured to forge the steely Iron Mike Ditka, like the Great Cannon & Cannonball Manufacturers of Old. His gunslinging credentials are numerous; and not being included on a previous Poll could have earned him the ultra-prestigious Most Notable Snubbed Gunslinger Award, like the Great Metta World Peaces of Old. But his recent runner-up finish in the World Famous Sweet Livin’ Productions World’s Best Bear Poll may be too hard to overlook. Some may rush to make the equivalency that second place in the World Famous Sweet Livin’ Productions World’s Best Bear Poll is equivalent to him placing #9 here in this Poll.

And maybe it is, for it has already been well-documented how competitive gunslinging is.

But our job here is to not rob the work of the Bill James and Billy Beane descendants of advancing future analytics by doing such great comparative studies between degrees of difficulty and voter-bloc overlap or non-overlap between bear aficionados who succinctly express their opinions in World’s Best Bear Polls and gunslinger connoisseurs who express their own intelligences collectively in the Great Gunslinger Polls representing the analysis of the Great Gunslinger Intelligentsia by analyzing the timeliness of sending a dick pic (while refraining from staring at the dick for hours on end to analyze its quality, like The Great Art Connoisseurs of Old).

No here, like the Great Gunslingers of Old homing in on a tripled-covered receiver 50 yards down the field, we must stay laser focused on the great gunslinger qualities that get someone here in the first place, like the Great Gunslingers of Old greatly discovering that a dick pic taken is equivalent to a dick pic sent, when that dick pic is on the phone of the world’s greatest gunslinger. A great gunslinger knows not how to take a dick pic without sending it. But a great gunslinger does know that an unsent dick pic is a waste of natural resources; just unlike Charlie Checkdown “wisely” avoids a sack by sending his dick pic to the running back in the flat, the great gunslinger thinks sending dick pics to running backs is dumb: just don’t take a dick pic in the first place if that’s all you’re going to do with it and instead throw a real pick that get returned for a touchdown. For such knowledge is among many of a great gunslinger’s great qualities.

And Mike Ditka is ripe with them (gunslinger qualities, even if lacking in the dick-pics-sent-and-heavily-reported-on-publicly department). His sideline blowups are legendary. While there are too many to properly focus on here, “The Audible” must be given proper attention because it not only stands apart from other sideline blowups of lesser gunslingers who lack a sideline blowup with a name, it is may be what took another elitely-great gunslinger’s raw gunslinger potential in Jim Harbaugh and helped him reach his gunslinging potential and mold him into the Great Gunslinger will see today on (***Spoiler Alert***) this Poll and last year’s Poll. We must credit Iron Mike for this rather than Harbaugh’s parents because otherwise Jim Harbaugh might simply be John Harbaugh, a highly successful, Super Bowl-winning NFL coach who is destined for the Hall of Fame, but someone who will unlikely ever sniff this Poll, even if he wouldn’t be bad to have deep in your posse, a side character who barely gets his name in the credits as he is barely more than an extra.

If you disagree with this fine finding, then you disagree with the scientific method and probably should exit this Poll at this point and return to looking at unscientific filth on the Other Internet because you clearly do not understand the importance of limiting variables in scientific research, something God clearly understands Himself when He decided to limit the variables of the Harbaugh Gunslinger Study by giving Jim and John Harbaugh the exact same parents, initials, and upbringing with the only notable difference that anyone cares about being Jim Harbaugh studied vigorously under the tutelage of the Great Gunslinger Iron Mike Ditka while John was evidently doing something else that no one cares about and obviously less worthwhile to the point of being a pointless, completely worthless waste of time.

But Iron Mike has done so much more than simply save Jim Harbaugh from merely being John Harbaugh. Just like the Sweeter of Internets takes you out of the dark, bitter darkness of the Other Internet, so too did Mike Ditka take us out of the Dark Ages of disease, sword fights, bayonet charges, “3 yards and a cloud of dust,” and gunslingers not seeing the tight end as a proper target. In other words, Iron Mike Ditka single-handedly transformed the tight end position, taking the ground blocking game of the tight end to an aerial attack, where the tight end became a feared receiver, a lovable gunslinger like Rob Gronkowski, who could thrive with silly antics in any surroundings, from the anti-gunslinger environment of Bill Belichick to the No Risk It: No Biscuit lifestyle of Bruce Arians. Just like, as noted earlier, without José Canseco there is no Shohei Ohtani (citation: Canseco, José, tweets) without Iron Mike Ditka there is no Rob Gronkowski—or even if the Gronwkowski parents were inspired to have unprotected gunslinging sex that resulted in the younger Rob, Rob would have grown up to be a boring block tight end that one of us have ever heard.

If a boring, non-gunslinger tight end trips and fall in the forest, does it make a sound?

No, not on this gunslinger Poll it doesn’t.

And Iron Mike Ditka has made a lot of sounds.

The echoes of Ditka’s gunslinging reverberate far and wide. Ditka’s 1961 rookie receiving yards for a tight end record was just broken in the 16th game of the now-17 game season by Brock Bower in December of 2024. Mind you, the 1961 NFL season was a freshly-minted 14 games long. And ever heard of gunslingers like Dave Casper (“the Ghost”) or Shannon Sharpe? Iron Mike Ditka paved the way for them. Yes, there’s no way Travis Kelce would be having sex with Taylor Swift if it weren’t fit for Iron Mike Ditka. Just like the overtalked about family trees and coaching trees, Ditka has a prosperous, underrated, and under-discussed gunslinger tree.

And it’s not limited to the tight end position. He famously traded the farm for Ricky Williams: all of the Saints picks in the 1999–-as well as their first and third round picks in the 2000 Draft, in what may have given society the impression that Y2K was real. While some anti-gunslinger journalists claim this “tarnished” Dikta’s legacy, it actually cemented his legacy as an all-time great gunslinger. The list of 1999 New Orleans Saints draftees is unique and literally one of a kind: outside of these Great Gunslinger Polls, it is the lone list of anything anywhere that is 100% pure gunslinger, with no additives or preservatives or other non-gunslinger garbagishy trash.

That is why it was celebrated with the top celebratory symbol of all time: a cigar. The image of Ditka with a cigar and Hawaiian shirt on draft day is so legendary that it has been used as a historical reference point in this millennium to explain sports and life.

Then he wore dreads and “married” Williams.

All of this helped make the NFL Draft the blockbuster even it now is helped it elevate its status to #8 on last year’s Poll.

Yes, Mike Ditka is a modern-day Midas, turning everything he touches into pure gunslinging gold.

And now this great gunslinging guy in his Golden Years is introduced in articles as a cigar enthusiast, but after now—after being on this Great Gunslinger Poll—he will be casually introduced as a gunslinger. A great gunslinger at that. For who else among us can look ourselves in the mirror and say we drafted the next great gunslinger on this Poll?

10. Ricky Williams

Errick Lynne Williams Jr. was born into this regular world May 21, 1977 to Sandy and Errick Williams, his biological parents. But he was born into this gunslinging world April 17th, 1999 to his gunslinging godfather Mike Ditka who, in a gunslinger-style baptism, bet the ranch (which in this case was the rest of the Saints 1999 draft and two of its first three picks following millennium) in going up from the 12th overall pick to the 5th overall to select this generational and unique gunslinger of Ricky Williams.

Was it worth it?

Yes.

Many, if not most, disagree.

But look at it this way. If Ditka lost the trade, what did Washington do with the ranch? Does anyone remember the Washington GM who traded for all those picks? Does anyone remember the players? They didn’t cash in those picks like the Cowboys did with the Herschel Walker trade to form their 1990s dynasty. And more importantly, none of those Washington draftees became gunslingers. They are nowhere to be found in this Poll, forgotten by history–-and maybe even by their own friends and families. But we know who Iron Mike Ditka is. And we know who Ricky Williams is.

Williams was in fact an underrated NFL running back, to a degree. His soft-spoken, helmet-wearing-during-interviews, weed-smoking, Ayurvedic, meditation, holistic medicine personality sometimes makes people forget just how much of a physical, brutal runner he was. He accumulated just barely eclipsed 10,000 rushing yards in his NFL career, a truly impressive feat that means no one should ever associate “bust” with this Williams, a word you may hear non-gunslinging commentators or fans murmur when they hear his name.

His stats are even more impressive when we consider that he spent his first three years were spent on the dismal New Orleans Saints before going to Miami in 2002 and leading the league with a whopping 1,853 yards, all of this when defenses were way more focused on him than the arm of Jay Fiedler “On the Roof” or Ray “no nickname” Lucas. In fact, Williams was the focal point of his teams’ offenses his whole NFL career: his stats are not simply the byproduct of longevity and he was not a player easily replaced. His team was worse when he was not playing. When in spring of 2004 Ricky Williams made the gunslinging move of choosing weed over football, the Dolphins plummeted to 4-12, suffering their first losing season since all the way back in 1988, resulting in Dave “Wannstache” Wannstedt resigning after starting 1-8 that year without Williams. Williams was back for 12 games in 2005 and–-what do you know–-the Dolphins were back on the positive side of the ledger with a 9-and-7 record. Williams was suspended by the NFL for the 2006 season (more weed? We will likely never know) and–-what do you know–-the Dolphins were back to losing with a 6-and-10 record.

Meanwhile, Williams was gunslinging north of the border in Toronto for the Argonauts, a team in the CFL with a gunslinging name that everyone has to Google to find out what it means if they are people honest with themselves. This caused a lot of gunslinger controversy, perhaps marking the lowest point ever in Canadian-American relations. Adding fuel to the fire (that was perhaps eventually used by Williams to light a joint) was gunslinger Joe Theismann mistakenly criticizing the Argonauts for signing an “addict,” when he probably meant to praise them for signing a gunslinger. We all make mistakes, like Theismann throwing twice as many touchdowns to interceptions in his final NFL season. But Theismann’s best gunslinging move himself was to change the pronunciation of his name from THEES-man to THY-z-man to rhyme with Heisman so he would have a better shot at the award. Genius. Not enough for him to actually win the award or get his own spot on the Poll, but enough to get mention here—and maybe one day earn forgiveness from God for criticizing one of God’s best: Ricky Williams, who helped spur the word argonaut’s comeback in usage.

In 2007 Williams returned to the Dolphins for a measly 6 carries and so, you guessed it, they were a POS team with a 1-and-15 record. The next three years he was back to playing full time and they were back to relevancy.

Williams is truly an underrated NFL running back, with a legendary college career we didn’t even have time to touch on because of all of the other gunslinging in his resume. He is also an underrated, under-the-radar gunslinger because he is so laidback and smokes so much weed. But that doesn’t mean that he won’t run you over if you're between him and the first down marker or end zone–-or this spot on this Prestigious Poll.

As the 5th overall pick in the 1999 NFL Draft, and 10th on this Poll, it is can be easy to deduce that getting on this Poll (at least in this position on the Poll) is twice as hard as being drafted in the first round of the NFL draft. So, how much would your average GM trade to get a top-ten gunslinger? Wow, that is a question for the ages!!!

How much would Mike Ditka trade to get a top-ten gunslinger? Well, we do know that. It is simple mathematics:

2 first round picks x 2 = 4 first round picks

2 third round picks x 2 = 4 third round picks

1 fourth round pick x 2 = 2 fourth round picks

1 fifth round pick x 2 = 2 fifth round picks

1 sixth round pick x 2 = 2 sixth round picks

1 seventh round pick x 2 = 2 seventh round picks.

By multiplying Ditka’s NFL Draft Day deal for Williams by two (doubling), the value of which society values a top-ten gunslinger in comparison to a top-ten NFL Draft Pick, we can clearly see that this spot on this Prestigious Poll is worth (in terms of NFL Draft currency) 4 first rounds pick, 4 third round picks, 2 fourth round picks, 2 fifth round picks, 2 sixth round picks, and 2 seventh round picks.

So next time anyone tries to tell you Ricky Williams was a bust, tell them to shut their mouth or else their beloved NFL team won’t have another first round pick until the next decade rolls around and won’t have any draft pick at all for the next two years. If they don’t believe you, give them the link to this Poll—as well as a lot of whisky.

11. Jim Harbaugh

What separates a top gunslinger like Jim Harbaugh from a meddling, middle-of-the-road gunslinger like his Super Bowl-winning, future-Hall-of-Fame head coach brother John Harbaugh?

You already know the answer to this riddle from above:

Being coached under the tutelage of another great gunslinger, Iron Mike Ditka. Sure, parents, teachers, and people that show us right from wrong have some influence on our lives, but usually in a very boring low-desert kind of way compared to the delightfully hair-raising high-desert gunslinging influences gunslingers can have on us. How many head coaches, let alone one those in the midst of a dominant run that included a Super Bowl victory just a couple years earlier, would start their first round rookie quarterback–-on special teams?

One.

How many first-rounders drafted as QBs would beg successfully beg their way onto special teams and, ipso de facto, eventually onto this Poll.

One. Yes, this great gunslinger with the legal name of Jim Harbaugh wanted to play so badly that he lobbied to get onto the kickoff coverage team–-and a great gunslinger like Mike Ditka allowed it. We can only (correctly) surmise that this was the genesis of great gunslinging for Jim, “a guy whose idea of fun on a snowy day is 467 push-ups.”

A couple years later he would be the Bears starting quarterback and lead them to an 11-5 record but couldn’t play in the playoffs because of injury. The Bears would repeat the 11-5 record the following year with a healthy Harbaugh for the playoffs, but they would lose at home to the evil, upstart Dallas Cowboys; that would be Ditka’s last playoff game and the height of these two gunslingers’ football success together (outside of the brilliant special teams idea, obviously).

But far from the height of their collaborations for great gunslinging moments. That came on October 4th, 1992, Week 5 of the NFL season, a seminal moment for gunslinging, as well as a seminal moment for the Metrodome, as well as a seminal moment for Minnesota, as well as seminal moment for the Bears, as well as a seminal moment for sports. The aging Chicago Bears entered the Metrodome in Minnesota with a 2-2 record against the ascending Vikings under first-year head coach Dennis Green, whose Vikings were a game ahead of Chicago in the division with a 3-1 record. Chicago was dominating the game, up 20-0 in the 4th quarter with the ball–-until former first-round special teamer Jim Harbaugh made the gunslinging move of calling an audible that running back Neal Anderson didn’t hear, but Vikings safety Todd Scott saw as he intercepted Harbaugh and returned it for a pick-six that would spark the Vikings in an incredible comeback victory—and a great run in the 1990s for the franchise under Dennis Green; Ditka would be fired at the end of the season. But more important than all of that was the seminal sideline meltdown and postgame comments it fueled in the great gunslinger Iron Mike Ditka. There are many audibles in the course of a football career, but only one “The Audible.” #OnlyOneDefiniteArticle That is the greatness that happens when great gunslingers get together and inspire each other.

Some may argue that it may have been better to simply audible out of any play altogether and just send a dick pic. But the technology wasn’t there at the time.

Some more successful but subdued gunslinging in Indianapolis later, along with burning bridges and rules while winning games at any head coaching job he ever got, and Jim Harbaugh is here at this prestigious spot on this Poll. Sure, you will note that it is lower than last year, when Harbaugh was fresh off of burning NCAA and Big Ten rules on his path to bringing a national title to Ann Arbor; in quite a contrast, since then then he has simply quietly won games for the Los Angeles Chargers, but we do fully predict this great gunslinger will reach for the holster more in the future and reclaim higher places on this Poll and our gunslinging hearts.

12. Terry Bradshaw

“I’m a gunslinger, not a mailman.”

That is gunslinger poetry. Right from the lips of the great gunslinger Terry Bradshaw. He penned that poem as an in-game response to Steelers offensive tackle Tunch Ilkin who asked Bradshaw, during his last NFL game when his gunslinging elbow was shot, why he was slinging the ball around the field so much instead of running it and protecting his elbow.

Load management.

Pitch counts.

Protection.

Those are not words or phrases in the gunslinger’s vocabulary. Hollywood Henderson once derogatorily said Bradshaw couldn’t spell cat if you spotted him the c-a. Obviously that’s not true. What is true is that Bradshaw could not spell “careful” if you spotted him the c, the a, the r, the e, the f, and u. Or even say “play it safe” if you spotted him the “play” and “it.” He only knows how to play it fraught with danger, how to sling it. That’s the mentality that allows him to spell gunslinger if you spot him the g-u-n-s-l-i-n-g-e; that’s the mentality that allows him to spell gunslinger if you spot him the double-covered receiver 50 yards downfield; that’s the mentality that helped Bradshaw lead the Steelers to a 34-7 blowout victory in a must-win game against the feared Jets New York Sack Exchange. That’s the gunslinger mentality that helped Bradshaw lead the Steelers to 4 Super Bowls in the 1970s to forge the greatest dynasty of all time: the Steel Curtain.

It all was sparked by a gunslinger of a play: the Immaculate Reception. 4th and 10 on their own 40 yard-line and facing playoff elimination and a cold, dark winter ahead, Bradshaw could have done the non-gunslinging Kirk Cousins move and checked it down for three yards on a 4th & 8 to end the season in a similar situation that obviously did not spark a dynasty, but did indeed lead to a dark, snowy winter in Minnesota and a big, problematic Daniel Jones contract for the New York Giants, simultaneously ruining the fortunes of two franchises with one play-it-safe anti-gunslinger play.

But instead of that Cousins nonsense, Bradshaw ran around in the backfield and slung it, and when you sling it, something good can happen, like Franco Harris appearing out of nowhere, like the Great Angels in the Outfield of Old for the hapless Baby Boomer Buccos reemerging as an Angel in the Backfield for the previously hapless Steelers, snag the ball barely off the ground and run it into for a game-winning touchdown that would give the Steelers their first postseason win and help propel them (not that same year) to that dynastic glory which helped codify Bradshaw’s gunslinger-friendly nickname, The Blond Bomber, from his Louisiana Tech Days, where he also had a second, and even more gunslinger-friendly nickname, The Rifleman.

Bradshaw indeed had a rifle for an arm; it was simply electric. Where wide receiver screens and other runs-after-the-catch, like the Great Accessories-After-the-Facts of Old, may account for many of the long “passes” nowadays, Bradshaw did in the true gunslinger way, like the Great Phil Collins Songs of Old later sampled by 2Pac: in the air. In true gunslinger fashion, he did his slinging while being “tough as nails,” surviving devastating body slams and injuries. And like the Great Gunslingers of Old in the Great Wild, Wild Wests of Old turning to the Great Snake Oil Salesmen of Old to ail their aching bodies, Bradshaw tried the Great Miracle, Magical Cures of Old (and perhaps new, at the time, but now old again) to cure his ailing elbow.

When magic was not necessarily providing all of the healing help needed to completely heal his body and he had to check in to a more traditionally-recognized medical facility (hospital), he did so in the most ironically prophetic gunslinging fashion: using as a savvy pseudonym the infamous non-gunslinger name Tom Brady as to not attract any attention from people looking for the famous gunslinger, Terry Bradshaw. While there was a five-year-old Tom Brady that would grow up to become the greatest quarterback of all time, a desire to do so probably fueled by compensation for the lack of poor decision-making necessary to become a great gunslinger like Bradshaw who could throw a jaw-dropping 46 interceptions in just his first two seasons, an accomplishment that would take the younger Brady his 5th year in the league to achieve.

Bradshaw, the Original TB12, paved the way for quarterbacks with the initials T.B. to wear the number 12. But Bradshaw certainly had his own, unpatented TB12 Method and did certainly did not follow Tommy’s boring patented TB12 Method of abstaining from coffee, Prestigious Gunslinger Polls, and all unhealthy, bad decisions.

Even after his playing career, Bradshaw continued his gunslinging ways. Where sports networks were historically suit-and-tie non-gunslinging serious, Bradshaw brought an elite gunslinging gregariousness to the studio to help transform NFL halftime shows forever. Still not afraid of what he says, he recently told historically-low-interception-thrower, new-Steelers-QB-to-be Aaron Rodgers, to essentially “go eat bark” for being so apparently indecisive in signing with the Steelers.

Indecision and lack of interceptions, along with bark, are things great gunslingers simply cannot stomach. With even the Other Internet not being able to tell with 100% certainty how many post offices have closed since 2000, we know this: gunslingers are on the rise and Bradshaw chose the right profession in being a gunslinger rather than a mailman (no offense to the mailmen and women reading this Poll: we love and appreciate your dependable delivery of Gunslinging ballots and your abilities to keep a secret and maintain discretion while maintaining democracy).

Poetry may be a dying artform, but it is certainly poetic justice that the original TB12 is #12 on this Poll and #12 in gunslingers’ hearts when reading Polls of the top gunslingers in the world.

13. Eli Manning

He might not have gotten elected to the NFL Hall of Fame this year, but his Hall of Fame gunslinging got him elected to this Poll. While critics are debating whether or not this gunslinger deserves a one-way ticket to Canton and American football immortality, we waste are time not with such antics as there is no debating his place on this Poll as one of the greatest gunslingers in the world, giving him undenied global immortality—if not beyond, which we will know more about when Neil deGrasse Tyson starts studying and addressing gunslingers along with these Polls.

Where the critics claim Manning’s 244 career interceptions are a detriment, we recognize the positive of that being one more than Drew Brees’s 243 with an interception rate by Manning of 4.5% that nearly doubles Brees’s rather depressed rate of 2.3%. We’re not trying to get a mortgage here; we are evaluating gunslinging. More is better. Drew Brees went into the Hall of Fame last year—so what’s the debate? If you were to say that someone is nearly twice as good as someone else but is not receiving the same honor, that second someone would have the HR Department on speed dial.

Unless that second person is a gunslinger, because gunslingers don’t know HR’s phone number and nor do they care to as their lone human resource lies near their own hip in the holster. Besides, Manning never worried about his naysayers; he’d just drop back, reload, cock, and throw another gunslinging interception–-or touchdown, because he’s also got 336 of those.

If this great (but not the greatest of all time) gunslinger is starting to sound like a poor man’s Brett Favre, you got that right: not just because Manning has stolen less (as in none) money from children, but also because Manning ended his career only 92 interceptions and hundreds or thousands of concussions short of Favre as Manning somehow managed his way onto this Lofty List without ever having been known to have a concussion…

that he can remember.

Is that a gunslinging joke, Eli? Or is Manning just the real, modern-day Wyatt Earp, who also seemed to magically avoid injury or send a dick pic, and so that also leaves Eli an untold amount of dick-pics-sent away from having the gunslinging prestige of one Brett Favre.

But numerologists and people that drink a lot and marvel at coincidences alike will note that Manning’s 336 career touchdowns equals Favre’s 336 interceptions, numerically. So obviously they belong in the same conversation, with Favre leading the way for others to exit the discourse once he whips out his cell phone.

But Favre and Manning are definitely on the same gunslinging family plan as Manning is linked to Favre in even more ways as not only was Manning the only modern-day quarterback to come within a dick-pic(k)’s chance of scoring in the race to break Favre’s famed interception record, Manning also had the best shot of all to catch and surpass Favre in the ironman race to 300 consecutive QB starts. Favre ended with 297. Manning ended with 210 consecutive starts–-and counting–when anti-gunslinger advocate and guy who is better suited for the HR Department, Ben McAdoo, benched Eli Manning. What an asshat, clown, piece of shit. We don’t wish death upon anyone, but we do know karma will catch up one day to McAdoo, and he will eventually die.

McAdoo’s mini-Minions (good name for bad guys in a kids movie, by the way, which is where they belong instead of the prestigious serious adult discourse here) are probably the same people trying to block Manning’s eventual inevitable entrance into the Hall of Fame. They say he is “profoundly mediocre.” What does that even mean? And if Eli has been able to take mediocracy, long known to not be a gunslinging trait, and transform it into profundity, then great for him: that just makes him even more of a gunslinger. But “profoundly mediocre” just seems like the pretentious cousin of the more common “very mediocre” that sportscasters like to use for someone who is actually bad, which would be less than mediocre. So perhaps “profoundly mediocre” simply means mediocre whereas “very mediocre” means below average, for those butchering the English language outside of this Elite-Level Poll, which is one reason gunslingers hate this term, not only because gunslingers are not your very Average Joe and anything but the very mediocre type, but also because gunslingers revel in the romance of literature and words and “very mediocre” is a bullshit term. Someone can be very good, like a very good gunslinger who is very good at throwing interceptions (like Brett Favre). Someone can be good, like a good gunslinger who is good at throwing interceptions (like Eli Manning). Or someone can be average at throwing interceptions, and thus not a gunslinger. Or someone can be bad at throwing interceptions and thus gets into the Hall of Fame without argument (but also without adoring fans, and hoards of women marveling at their bravado). Or someone could be very bad at throwing interceptions not even be worth mentioning here. But someone cannot be very mediocre. Mediocre is just mediocre. It does not deserve an adverb. It makes no sense. So go fuck yourself and put Eli Manning into the Hall of Fame for gunslinging sake.

But the debate of Eli’s Hall-of-Fame-worthiness rages on. It shouldn’t. While Eli is certainly not in the same football category as his older brother, he is a Hall of Famer. The Hall of Fame has long given credence to Super Bowl victories, of which Eli has two: both against the dynastic Pats. And Eli captured the MVP in both of those Super Bowls. Yes, he has not even a playoff victory outside of those runs, but he had 8 wins (mostly on the road) during those two runs, knocking off the gold standard NFL franchises of Green Bay and San Fran on the road in OT in the NFC Championship in in ‘07 (actually ‘08) and ‘11 (actually ‘12) respectively to get there.

In addition, he played his entire career for one team, which is normally something that elevates one’s HOF case (or at least playing the majority of your career there as opposed to bouncing around), and that one team just happens to be in New York, a place many athletes cannot handle the pressure of.

Additionally, much of Manning’s career, especially towards the end, was marred by a terrible offensive line and absolute franchise dysfunction, which has continued almost uninterrupted since his retirement. Their poor management may largely have been underplayed because of their historic success (much of which was because of Eli) and that the Mara family has a good reputation and owned the team since its inception, exactly one century ago. In other words, it has been underdiscussed and overlooked that Manning did his gunslinging in unfavorable conditions.

All of this (amazingly interesting) discussion may have been for naught if it were not for one of the greatest gunslinging moments in NFL history that possibly prevented the Giants from getting back-to-back Super Bowls in ‘07 and ‘08. But that’s where some great gunslingers, like Plaxico Burress, cross the proverbial gunslinging line and take the gunslinging task at hand a little too literally by taking a gun to a New York night club and shooting themselves in the leg. New York is an uneasy and uninviting environment for gunslinging. Plaxico rose beyond the task, which is why he is not on the Poll. Eli rose to the challenge. That’s why he is on the Poll.

Plaxico’s shenanigan’s may be delaying Eli’s entry into the NFL Hall of Fame, but we cannot punish one gunslinger here for the misdeeds, even however well-intentioned, of his gungslinging brethren. So we keep Eli on this Poll, which is why here, in the Year of Our Gunslinger, 2025, the Great (but not necessarily Godly) Gunslinger Polls have surpassed the NFL Hall of Fame in credibility. Famed gunslinger Deion Sanders has always wanted a HOF “inner circle” or “upper level.” This is it Deion. These Polls. This is your inner circle. This is your upper level. For “Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God” and it is easier for man to enter the NFL Hall of Fame than gain entry on a Great Gunslinger Poll (citation: the Bible; more people historically in the NFL Hall of Fame, not to mention those residents living in Canton, Ohio, than have ever been on these Great Gunslinger Polls).

14. Bobby Salazar’s Salsa

“The gunslingers’ first choice of salsa!”

While this is not their official slogan and it doesn’t outright say this explicitly on their official website, the arrest record of this seminal salsa’s lead architect is pretty clear that this is a gunslinging man who makes gunslinging—and only gunslinging—salsa.

Here is a business lesson they won’t teach in traditional business schools: