Everyone
remembers the worst bloopers on the field, but we shouldn’t forget
that some of the biggest sporting bloopers happen off the field, long
after the game has been played. Whether you like Philadelphia
Eagles football or the
LA Lakers, all sports fans come together to take pleasure in the
occasional PR mishap or the business blunder that the players would
rather forget.
It’s
always fun to play Devil’s Advocate, and it’s always nice to
remain open-minded, but there’s also a limit, as Rashard Mendenhall
found out. After the death of Osama Bin Laden, the Arizona Cardinals’
running back took to Twitter to share his views. While the Daily News
splashed the message, “Rot In Hell” over its front page,
Mendenhall sought a calmer, more balanced reaction from his
followers.
“What
kind of person celebrates death? It’s amazing how people can HATE a
man they have never even heard speak. We’ve only heard one side…”
his first tweet read. Rather than stop there, he followed up saying,
“We’ll never know what really happened. I just have a hard time
believing a plane could take a skyscraper down demolition style.”
In
2009 Tiger Woods lost his wife and went through the humiliation of
having his intimate text messages and voicemails shared with the
world after details of his affairs started leaking. Tiger got the
vast majority of his earnings from endorsements, and so the deal also
struck right at the heart of his earnings.
Luckily
for Tiger, things are now improving. Last year he reclaimed his
position as the world’s
highest-paid athlete. He brought in $65 million in endorsements
and managed to make a total of just over $78 million for the year. He
is also now in a serious relationship with Lindsey Vonn, the ski
racer, and so his love life is back on track.
Lance
Armstrong won the Tour De France seven times in a row, and he was
regularly accused of doping throughout his career. His response was
always the same: despite being tested so many times throughout his
career, he had never failed a test.
In
June 2004, The Sunday Times published a damming account of the
measures the cyclist had taken in order to avoid testing positive,
based on the work of journalists Pierre Ballester and David Walsh for
their book L.A. Confidentiel. This included the revelation that
Armstrong was given a backdated prescription for saddle sores so that
he could be seen to have a proper reason for having steroids in his
bloodstream.
Armstrong
sued The Sunday Times for libel. A High Court judge said that The
Sunday Times had effectively made accusations of guilt, without
sufficient evidence on which to base their accusation, and so the
Sunday Times were forced to settle out of court. While the Sunday
Times effectively lost the case, it’s Armstrong who is the loser
today. After the fatal USADA report, it is estimated that he lost $75
million dollars in one day.
