30. Evan Williams
In late 2013, Evan Williams’ company went public. You might have heard of it, it’s a little thing called Twitter. The success of Twitter’s IPO meant that 2014 was the year that Evan Williams got to join the elite billionaire’s club. Yeah, that’s billionaire with a “B.” Look, it doesn’t matter if he just sat around in his underwear all year and dove into his money like Scrooge McDuck. The dude became a billionaire because of fucking Twitter. Game over, we have a winner.
29. Manuel Ferrara
Manuel Ferrara was the winner of the 2014 AVN Male Performer of the Year award, which is the porn industry’s version of the Oscars. The dude literally won an award for having sex. Also, he gets paid to do it. That somehow seems relevant.
28. Kevin Richardson
Kevin Richardson is a bro who’s winning the conservation game. But he doesn’t do it by being all self-righteous and hectoring you for donations. No, he puts on a suit and then plays soccer with a bunch of savage lions. Why? Because he’s a goddamn boss, that’s why.
27. The Rock
What did the Rock do in 2014? Well, in the words of the Great One, it doesn’t matter what the Rock did. That’s because the Rock wins simply by being the Rock. Every day, he wakes up, does Rock things, says Rock stuff, and gets paid millions of dollars to do it. Sure, he goes by Dwayne Johnson nowadays, but that’s just because lame people can’t handle him at Full Rock. But at heart, he is, was, and always will be the Rock, and the Rock will always be a winner.
26. Gabriel Medina
Nothing is more bro than surfing, and nobody wins the surfing game like Gabriel Medina. He’s on the verge of winning the ASP Tour championship and his own peers consider him the best in the world. He’s young, he’s Brazilian, and I am so goddamn jealous of this dude that I can’t even go on.
25. Martin Freeman
This is how Martin Freeman’s year went: starred in Sherlock, crossed the ocean to star in Fargo and then closed out the year with his final turn as Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies. Did you even realize how big a star he’s become? I mean, goddamn, that is a ridiculous year. He might not get the headlines of an A-Lister, but Martin Freeman pretty much had them all beat this year.
24. Travis Kalanick
2014 was the year that Uber really broke through into the mainstream. And that meant that 2014 was also a huge year for its co-founder, Travis Kalanick, who has seen his fortune balloon to over $3 billion. While taxi companies are losing their shit because they realize they’re being made irrelevant, he’s just piling up money and talking about how easy it is for him to crush ass. The latter got everyone all hot and bothered for a while – largely because everything gets people hot and bothered now, especially rich dudes talking about sex – but Travis Kalanick doesn’t really give a fuck. That’s because he’s probably boning a model in a pile of cash as we speak.
23. Tim Howard
For a couple of weeks in the summer of 2014, Tim Howard was treated like a national hero. That’s because he put on perhaps the greatest performance by a soccer keeper in World Cup history. Sure, team USA was eventually knocked out, but not before Tim Howard forced the entire world to give their begrudging respect. America, fuck yeah!
22. Jay Z
Look, one little elevator incident can’t change the fact that Jay Z still owns the game. Aside from his domination of the music industry, he’s still one half of America’s version of the royal couple, and his sports agency, Roc Nation Sports, which features Kevin Durant and Ndamukong Suh, among others, as clients, is making him a ton of money. Sure, he had to finally deal with that 100th problem, but he could handle it because he’s pretty much conquered the first 99.
21. Sam Smith
Sam Smith had one monster hit after another in 2014 and was nominated for six Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year. His debut album has already sold over two-million copies worldwide, he stole the show during his appearance on Saturday Night Live, and he was the latest bro to basically say “Yeah, I’m gay, so what?” He killed it this year.