The Sports Curmudgeon

Someone posed the following question to me:

Who are the three most arrogant people in sports?

I can’t possibly answer that because I can’t cut the list to only three people. And as I mused over a longer list that I intended to send back to him, I realized that I ought to just go through the list here and share my thoughts. And then I’ll ask you for some contributions of your own.

I’ll put people in categories just to keep jumping from players to coaches to owners to whatevers. If you want to rank these folks, go to town. If you want to add to the list, have at it. Here is the genre of responses I am not going to be receptive to:

These folks are really nice people and they are merely misunderstood.

Owners

Danny Boy Snyder: He knows more than anyone on Planet Earth about football players and football coaches. If you doubt that, ask him. If you are part of the media in Washington and are afraid to ask him, then just look at his actions. I promise you that the media in Washington would not dare ask him how Jeff George worked out or how dominant Bruce Smith has been with the Redskins or whether or not Deion Sanders was a productive player or why Marty Schottenheimer can’t coach.

Jerry Jones: He is the owner who thought bringing Danny Boy Snyder into the league was a good idea. Same goes for Barry Switzer. Shante Carver and Quincy Carter too. In the face of that evidence, he still thinks he is responsible for the Cowboys’ success in the mid-90s. JJ, the clue phone is ringing…

George Steinbrenner: If he does not win an award for sports arrogance in any given year, this guy has to get a lifetime achievement award.

Al Davis: If paranoia were an Olympic sport, he’d be a shoo-in for the Gold Medal.

(Nota Bene: Mark Cuban is not on this list because he is not really arrogant. Cuban is merely annoying and childish.)

General Managers

Jerry Krause: Without MJ on the Bulls, this guy’s teams never won a championship. After he announced that players don’t win titles and that systems do, he did not field a team that won 35 games in a year. In case there is any misunderstanding here, systems plus players win championships.

George Young: Another former GM who ran Dan Reeves out of town so he could hire Jim Fassel. That is about as smart as telling Catherine Zeta-Jones to hit the road so you can start dating Anna Nicole Smith. What the hell was he thinking? Oh yeah, wasn’t he also around for the Ray Handley era?

Bo Schembechler: When he pretended to know something about baseball so he could pretend to be the GM of the Tigers and collect whatever salary he scammed out of the Tigers’ owner, this genius fired Ernie Harwell. Is there any more that needs to be said than that?

Coaches

Bob Knight: Once again, someone who has to win a lifetime achievement award if he does not get one for any fixed period of time.

Steve Spurrier: You don’t think he got the moniker “Steve Superior” for nothing, do you?

Dennis Green: Always extolled the virtues and infallibility of “his system”. It turns out that “his system” was devoted to coddling superannuated juvenile delinquents with just enough time off for Denny so that he could find that quick escape route to “the high road”.

Bo Schembechler: Nominated in a second category because this pantload perfected the art of losing the final game of the season.

Larry Eustachy/Mike Price/Rick Neuheisel: For salaries in excess of $1M per year, you are supposed to be able to keep your drinking/whoring/gambling completely private. The emphasis here is on “completely” and “private” in case that last sentence was too difficult for any of them to parse.

Bobby Valentine: He knows more about baseball than any other person on the planet. You don’t think so? Just ask him. Have Bobby Valentine and Danny Boy Snyder ever been seen in the same room at the same time?

Pat Riley: For all the hype and media attention lavished on him, here is something that rarely seems to be reported: He has never won a championship without someone named Kareem playing center.

Players [I have to use restraint here or this could go on for 50 pages.]

Allen Iverson: He got offended when people complained that he did not go to practice. “Who needs that?” he wondered aloud. The reason you have to go to practice is that you shoot less than 40% from the floor and that needs to be improved.

Rasheed Wallace: Can his ego plus his temper fit in the Astrodome? It would be a tight fit. Now, tell me what his claim to fame might be?

Glen “Big Dog” Robinson: Even without his nickname, he has all the letters in his name to spell LOSER. This guy is indeed a loser even though he addresses himself regularly in the third person and in his canine persona. Whoever let this “Big Dog” out should be made to clean up all the droppings he has left in arenas around the league.

Chris Webber: He has lied about his “heritage” and his tough life growing up for so long he probably believes it now. Unfortunately, he thought he was bulletproof when it came to fibbing and he tried to “Clinton” his way through some grand jury testimony. Ooops!

The 1972 Miami Dolphins: We know you went undefeated. Do you really think you have to remind us every year? Or do you need an acceptable excuse to open those champagne bottles every year – as opposed to just needing to open them? Leave the corks in the bottles or jam the corks up your butts.

Randy Moss: Forget the details here; this is a short rant and not a tome. It turns out that he was one of Denny Green’s superannuated delinquents.

Keyshawn Johnson: If all you did was to throw him the damned ball, you’d score very few touchdowns.

Terrell Owens: If he had done his “autograph the football” routine when Night Train Lane was covering him, he would have eaten his meals for the next eight weeks through a straw. And if anyone wanted to retrieve the pen as a “collectable”, you’d need to bring along a proctologist with some long tweezers!

Barry Bonds: Bandbox ballparks + diluted pitching + juiced baseballs + juiced up muscles + riding his personal Barcalounger in the clubhouse = a legend in his own mind.

José Canseco: You are not blackballed from baseball; you can’t play anymore. In addition, you are under house arrest making trips to the batters’ box problematic.

Sportswriters/Announcers

Howard Cosell: The gold standard for arrogance.

Ken Burns: Watching his interminable series on baseball should be declared unconstitutional on the grounds that it is cruel and unusual punishment. The elegiac symmetry of the emerald chessboard; pardon me while I gargle with razor blades.

Phil Mushnick (NY Post): Who died and left him in charge of setting the standards for everything that is good and right in sports and the society? That’s my job, dammit.

Christine Brennan (USA Today): Somewhere there is an issue in sports that has nothing whatsoever to do with whether or not one of more of the people involved has a penis. Someday, she may find that issue.

Furman Bisher (Atlanta Journal-Constitution): Some people who have been involved in sports after 1970 are actually decent people. Maybe things were better in the good old days, but not everything.

Meilssa Isaacson (Chicago Tribune): And just how would you like it if you had to read columns that made you feel as if a barrel of saccharine had been dumped on you? That bad, huh?

Jim Rome: Is there such a thing as “Adult Onset Autism”? Why not?

Jerry Glanville/Tom Arnold/Bill Maas/Stuart Scott: See “Jim Rome” above.

Joe Theisman: Can he ever do a replay without saying, “Let me tell you what happened here…” We know what happened; we saw it too.

No Known Category

Don King: Only in America. Ain’t that the truth?

Vince McMahon: Proving daily that P.T. Barnum was spot on.

OJ Simpson: He actually believes that he has us thinking that he is looking for the real killer(s).

Myles Brand: He promised that university presidents would lead the way to true academic reform in collegiate athletics. You can still hear the giggling from the offices of the athletic departments around the country.

Faye Vincent: Feels compelled to comment on things happening in baseball and all the comments are negative. However, when he and his running buddy Bart Giamatti ran the game for about 5 years, they did nothing to promote the long-term interests of the game. He needs to drink a nice, tall, frosty and refreshing glass of Just Shut The Hell Up!

OK, I have certainly forgotten a boatload of people who could be on this list and if you send me other nominees, I’ll compile them and do a follow up to this at a later date. Remember, the category here is “arrogant” - not “odious” or “pompous”.

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…