This will now be our most prominent announcement every year.

When we began Notinhalloffame in 2009, the slow goal was to rank those who were not in major Halls of Fame, but once you climb one hill, you want to climb another, and then another again.  The natural perception when you cover Halls is to think you can come up with one of your own…so we did.

While looking at other sporting nations, we noticed that many had Halls of Fame dedicated to their sporting accomplishments across multiple disciplines.  Yet, the United States of America, the country with the most (and most important) athletic Halls of Fame, does not have one that covers it all.

We changed that four years ago.

Admittedly, this has been an enormous learning process for us, and we continue to figure things out as we go.   Mistakes were made, discoveries were uncovered, and we have completed three years of work and voting on the United States Athletic Hall of Fame.

Arthur Ashe was the first African-American male to be a star in the world of tennis, who faced many of the racial obstacles that Althea Gibson dealt with years before. Ashe became the first African-American male to win a Grand Slam, the first to represent the United States in a Davis Cup (he won four), and the first to earn the number one rank.

Eric Heiden had already dominated speed skating in the three years leading up to the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics, but what he accomplished at that event has never been duplicated.

Arguably the top male tennis star of the 1970s, Jimmy Connors was ranked #1 for 160 consecutive weeks from 1974 to 1978 and held that rank another 108 weeks on top of that.

A Chicago Bear for his entire professional playing career, Walter Payton would be the one to eclipse Jim Brown’s rushing record, and he for a time, he was the all-time leader in rushing yards (16,726) and all-purpose yards (21,264).

In 1973, Billie Jean King defeated Bobby Riggs, a 55-year-old former men's champion in the "Battle of the Sexes," a televised event that put more eyeballs on the sport of tennis and made her a household name. Of course, she was so much more than that.

An All-American at Tennessee, Reggie White’s pro career began in the USFL with the Memphis Showboats. He landed in Philadelphia when the USFL folded, and he quickly became the best defensive player in franchise history. White was a Defensive Player of the Year in 1987 and was chosen to six straight first team all-pros.

Considered one of the greatest female athletes regardless of sport or nationality, Jackie Joyner-Kersee won medals in four different Olympic Games, placing her in rare company.

Barry Sanders won the Heisman as a member of the Oklahoma Sooners, and the elusive running back immediately became one of the offensive players in the National Football League.

The 1990s had its share of superstars, controversies, and up-and-down times, but there was one smile that lit up every ballpark he entered, and it belonged to Ken Griffey Jr.