Top Ten Prolific Scorers of the Past Decade

The past ten years have seen amazing things from the sporting world, from impressive feats of skill, incredible games played, unbelievable comebacks, horrible tragedies, and undeniable courage. Americans love to see people score points and score often, so here is a compilation of the most prolific scorers and their accomplishments over the past decade.

Small-town hero Jackie Stiles lit up the NCAA women's basketball scoreboards for four years from 1998 to 2001 when she played for Missouri State University, and she starts our list when she broke the all-time scoring mark on March 2, 2001, in Springfield, Missouri. She would lead her team in the NCAA tournament including a 41-point performance and finishing her career with 3,393 points, the most of any women's player before or since.

Ronaldo is synonymous with the next-generation of Brazilian soccer stars who have been compared to legendary Pele. He gets a nod for scoring the most goals in a World Cup career at 15 goals in 19 total matches between 1998, 2002, and 2006. His World Cup swan song saw him score two goals against Germany in the 2006 final when Brazil won its record fifth World Cup title. No other player in a World Cup career is even close to his record and it will take at least another tournament in 2010 to see if any player such as Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi to see if they can add to their career totals.

Kobe Bryant's 81 points against the Toronto Raptors in January of 2006 is the second-most in NBA history behind Wilt Chamberlain's amazing 100 point performance in 1962. Bryant also scored 65 points against Portland in 2007. He is the only current player to have multiple games where he scored more than 60 points in a single game.

American football doesn't like field goals, but Rob Bironas of the Tennessee Titans scored an NFL-record 8 field goals in a game versus the Houston Texans in 2007. Even better, he made all 8 field goals that he attempted including the game winner in the 38-36 victory for Tennessee.

Baseball has seen many more runs scored, and Kenny Lofton started out 2000 right by scoring a run in a Major League Baseball record-tying 18 consecutive games in 2000. He tied a record originally set in 1939.

Along the lines with America's pastime, Albert Pujols is a scoring machine that has the most RBIs by a rookie for a season in the National League. One of my home team heroes, Pujols had 130 RBIs his rookie season in 2001 and has never looked back since.

The NFL has had some high-scoring games in its illustrious history, but one over the past decade stands out. Cincinnati defeated Cleveland 58-48 in late November 2004 for the second-highest scoring NFL game in history.

How's this for another impressive, yet little-known record for scoring in the NFL. The San Francisco 49ers hold the record for most consecutive games scoring at least one point with 420 NFL games between 1977 and 2004. The next highest total for a modern team is the Minnesota Vikings who scored at least once a game for 260 consecutive games between 1991 and 2007.

Australia was qualifying for the 2002 World Cup in April of 2001 when they scored a World Cup qualifying record 31 to nil (yes, that's 31-0) over American Samoa. Soccer has no mercy rule, and see some of the domination here on YouTube.

NHL games have to have one team be ahead at the end of the game in the playoffs, so this record is more about a team's inability to score for long periods. Philadelphia defated Pittsburgh in a marathon game lasting more than two and half hours of playing time and five overtimes before Keith Primeau finally scored the game winner in May of 2000. It was the NHL's longest game since 1936 and the third longest ever. The Flyers ended up losing to New Jersey in a seven game Conference Finals series.