Professional athletes have to have a tremendous amount of skill, many of them have a tremendous amount of fame as well. They should be the exception to this graph.
Well...you do have to be really good to get recognition. Take any NFL team, there's always one or two names you hear. Everyone else is "oh he's on that team" recognized, but it isn't "oh that's the guy that ____ the ____ when ___ did ___ to ___". Most aren't people who the masses can recite their statistics.
Justin beiber, Nikki, and many more