I appreciate and relate to the sentiment of FrankD's post. I also value fact checking. However my limited knowledge of Linguistics, suggests Frank, like many promoting an idea, used what linguists refer to as a deletion.

The issue with a linguistic "deletion" is that they invite misunderstanding. Frank posted - "a Sports Illustrated athlete of the year," and the word winner is not part of his phrase. That c/b what he meant or he could have meant nominee and probably didn't mean tomato can.

This phenomena is curious because it has become so common in Pennsylvania Ave neighborhoods and accounts. In a related search of Wikipedia I discovered actual winners of SI athlete of the year include Lance Armstrong, Mark McGuire and Curt Schilling to name a few which history and subsequent facts did not result in increased popularity.

In their prime we concluded Lance had superior training technique, Mark was a genetic anomaly and Curt well maybe success spoiled him. Today we suppose BBT has superior training techniques, Arrogate is a physical freak and to date the team's accomplishments are like no other. Until they make a movie about the horse and cast a gal as attractive as Diane Lane (Streets of Fire fame .. eh Richie) and age the Arrogate story I can say with certainty I'm glad I fell asleep Sat morning when planning to bet against Arrogate.