It is hard to imagine the image of any athlete falling more dramatically than that of Tiger Woods. But NBA superstar LeBron James topped Tiger when he decided that the saga of his free agency had more biblical implications than Moses and the Ten Commandments. The messianic melodrama culminated last July in the hour-long special on ESPN dubbed The Decision. With the exception of Cop Rock, it was the worst hour in the history of television. In announcing that he was going to play for the Miami Heat, James alienated his former employer, the Cleveland Cavaliers, even more than should have been humanly possible.
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So many places to begin, so many embarrassments. What’s a sports columnist to do? Do you start with the football team’s symptomatic anatomical problems—be it Head Coach Rex Ryan’s apparent passion for feet draped over the driver’s side window, or former Jets quarterback Brett Favre’s Einsteinian theorum that a cellphone picture of his Dongasaurus is better than flowers? What about strength and conditioning coach Sal Alosi, intentionally tripping a Miami Dolphins player during punt coverage this season?
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New York Jets coach Rex Ryan for showing himself to be a blustering, profane, egocentric fool on HBO’s Hard Knocks. Playing the media is effortless these days, and Ryan got the sycophantic coverage he wanted—a refreshing antidote to the sourpuss sea of New England Patriots Head Coach Bill Belichick. Only during the season has the Achilles’ heel of Ryan revealed itself: He can’t coach.
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The University of Connecticut women’s basketball team for winning 89 straight games and topping the mark set in men’s basketball by UCLA. The two streaks are apples and oranges. Women’s basketball is women’s basketball. The only notable aspect is that the attention will only spur more universities and colleges to recruit women with the same fervor that men are scouted. Just what the nation needs—another college sport rife with excess and entitlement. Don’t settle, girls, for anything less than a tricked-out two-seater hardtop BMW convertible.
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The UConn women don’t even have the most impressive streak in Connecticut. The Trinity College men’s squash team has won 225 straight matches, the longest in college history. Set aside that only about 50 kids play squash in the country anyway, or that the average net worth of their families is more than $1 billion. Trinity has dealt with the dearth of native-born players by fielding a team almost exclusively of foreigners, making it the first college program in the country to outsource.
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Arrests of college football players are so over since there are millions of them each year. Nevertheless, Oregon State University offensive lineman Tyler Thomas scored major style points last August when police allegedly discovered him naked and alcoholically compromised in the home of a 32-year-old woman. Officers ordered Thomas to get in the prone position. Instead he got into a three-point stance and lunged at them. He missed the block but was Tasered.
Class in sports is an oxymoron. But we would be remiss not to mention the French soccer team at the 2010 World Cup last June. During the halftime of an embarrassing 2-0 loss to Mexico on the way to being eliminated in the first round, striker Nicolas Anelka reacted to his substitution by telling Coach Raymond Domenech to “go fuck yourself. You dirty son of a bitch.” The French minister of health, youth and sports, Roselyne Bachelot, said the team had “tarnished the image of France.” How is that even possible?
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YouTube. Cellphone pictures. Emails. Text messages. Nothing is private. Australian rugby player Joel Monaghan of the Canberra Raiders made that discovery in November, when a picture surfaced of him allowing a dog to perform oral sex on him. It is Australia, of course, so the incident occurred on “Mad Monday,” a tradition in which players get completely looped to commemorate the end of the season. Monaghan’s agent said of what happened, “He’s going to have to live with it the rest of his life.” Probably more.
President Obama, playing the game of basketball he loves so much, got hit with an elbow last month and needed 12 stitches in the lip. This suspiciously happened after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell had declared several weeks earlier that his overriding goal was to “deny Obama a second term.” Given the recent lame-duck session of Congress and the passage of a compromise tax package with the extension of unemployment benefits, the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and the signing of a new arms treaty with Russia, McConnell has clearly turned to Plan B. The next time the president plays basketball he will be knocked out, rendered unconscious, and on the way to the hospital will face a death panel composed of Sarah Palin, Bristol Palin, and the dead caribou.
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Soccer in Europe makes pro football in America look as exciting as women’s college basketball. British tabloids, still smarting from the country’s own lousy showing in the World Cup, went after Spain. They blamed Spain’s shocking loss to Switzerland on reporter Sara Carbonero, named the “sexiest reporter in the world” by FHM. The tabloids alleged that Carbonero’s position right behind the goal before the game distracted goalkeeper Iker Casillas, because they are an item. If you have seen pictures of Carbonero, Casillas would be insane not to be distracted. Spain won the World Cup anyway.
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