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Black Enterprise magazine has broken out it’s America’s Most Powerful Players Under 40 list for 2007. By players BE doesn’t mean athletes although several athletes made the list. This is the criteria for choosing the 65 person group:

“These celebrities have shrewdly leveraged their fame to build multimillion-dollar empires that will sustain them beyond their careers in sports and entertainment.”

These are Black Enterprise’s most powerful American athletes under 40:

• Thierry Henry, Soccer
• Lewis Hamilton, Auto Racing
• Phil Ivey, Poker Player
• LeBron James, Basketball
• LaDainian Tomlinson, Football
• Stevie Williams, Skateboarding
• Venus Williams, Tennis
• Tiger Woods, Golf

I haven’t seen the entire article, so maybe Black Enterprise clears this up, but Thierry Henry is French and Lewis Hamilton is British.. and Hamilton’s a rookie at that. I know he tore up the F1 world this year, it’s just a little early to start dousing him in anointing oil.

As far as the rest of the list, how do you have Venus and not Serena? Venus has the Steve and Barry deal, and Serena has her Aneras clothing line… AND.. The Diesel might be a shadow of Eric Dampier now, but Shaquille O’Neal has parlayed basketball into a soon to be half it’s current size empire.

BLACK ENTERPRISE Magazine Unveils Its 2007 Hot List: America’s Most Powerful Players Under 40. Courtesy of Earth Times

Tags: Tiger Woods, Venus Williams, LeBron James, Most Powerful Athletes, Black Athletes, Black Enterprise Magazine