ESPN ranking near criminal for where it puts Roger Federer versus Novak Djokovic

ESPN likes to rank things. With every rating everywhere, there are going to be inconsistencies and mistakes. The four-letter network is not a true tennis site. ESPN's recent ranking of the top 100 professional athletes since 2000 proves that.

The issue begins in the first part of their write-up when it comes to Serena Williams, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, and Roger Federer. The site asks after a paragraph mentioning Williams, "Except, if you are going to pick a tennis player, what about Roger Federer?"

The issue isn't that ESPN does not choose a tennis player - they list several, rightfully and thankfully - but that their lead-in implies maybe tennis players are good enough athletes to name many. Maybe they should have rewritten the intro in a way not to imply there were going to be tennis players left out.

Novak Djokovic should have been rated higher than Roger Federer in recent ESPN ranking

Instead - again, thankfully - four tennis players are in the top 12. Yes! Finally some fantastic respect for the best sport in the world. In other words, of the best professional athletes this century, 33 percent of the top 12 play tennis.

ESPN lists Williams second overall, just behind swimmer Michael Phelps. Fair enough. Williams could have been ranked at the top, but it's impossible to argue with Phelps as the choice. The problem is that the next tennis icon is not Djokovic but Federer.

Federer was a phenomenal player and a great human being. He ascended to be the best of tennis during a time when there was no dominant player and just before Nadal and Djokovic matured into the players they would become. Once they did, Federer became less successful. The Swiss was still great, but not quite as great. His tennis was beautiful and impossible to emulate fully and he is arguably one of the five best players ever.

But Djokovic and Nadal accomplished more. Bot the Serb and the Spaniard also hold a head-to-head advantage over Federer. Both have more Grand Slam victories (Federer has 20, Nadal has 22, and Djokovic has 24). The Serb also has spent more than 100 weeks atop the ATP rankings compared to anyone else ever. Djokovic was even more successful into his 30s which is extremely rare for a tennis player.

The main reason is that he is a fantastic athlete, both mentally and physically. His numbers are better than Federer (and Nadal). In a rating of best athletes, ESPN made the right decision to include a lot of tennis players, but the second-best player behind Serena Williams should have been Novak Djokovic and not Roger Federer.

More tennis news and analysis: