Pro Sports Naughy List: March 2006

Monday, March 06, 2006

Vick Admits to Driving Charges

Trouble knows where Mike's brother lives. Marcus Vick the younger brother of Mike Vick the Atlanta Falcons star quarterback is in the news again. Vick pleaded guilty to charges related to a Dec. 17 traffic stop in which he was driving 38 mph in a 25 mph zone and driving with a suspended license. That charge was reduced to driving with an invalid license.

His never ending string of both team and legal problems will definitly hurt his 2006 NFL draft hopes.

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Top 10 strange sports scandals

The saying used to be: "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all." But as we grow older, that noble maxim mutates to: "If you don't have anything nice to say, meet me at the water cooler."

Flockton Grey: Money won is much sweeter than money earned, but when Flockton Grey, a British racehorse, won a race at Leicester racecourse in 1982 by an unconscionable 20 lengths, the mood around the track was more sour than sweet. The margin of victory provoked suspicion of fraud and an investigation ensued. It was uncovered that the horse's owner, Ken Richardson, had switched the two-year-old Flockton Grey for a seasoned three-year-old ringer.

Spanish Paralympians: Pretending to be stupid generally has minimal benefits, but the Spanish Paralympic Committee saw otherwise. They produced fake documents for 10 of the 12 members on their 2000 Paralympics basketball team, falsely claiming that they had IQs below 85. With an amazing performance, their intellectually able team captured the gold medal in a tournament for the intellectually disabled. It was soon discovered that the majority of their team members had no mental deficiencies to speak of and their medals were stripped.

Kobe Bryant: A night to remember took on a new meaning for basketball superstar Kobe Bryant after a sojourn at The Lodge and Spa at Cordillera Hotel in Edwards, Colorado. The Los Angeles Lakers guard was charged with sexual assault after a 19-year-old woman accused Bryant of raping her in his hotel room. A couple of days later, Bryant held a press conference, claiming that he did have sexual relations with her, but that the sex was consensual. When the trial began, Bryant's lawyers focused their efforts on sullying the credibility of the accuser, and with minimal tangible evidence, the case was dismissed.

Rosie Ruiz: The simple things in life can be completed without breaking a sweat, but not a 26.2-mile race. When 23-year-old Rosie Ruiz crossed the finish line of the 1980 Boston Marathon with the third-fastest time ever for a female runner while barely glistening, speculation started to mount. That wariness was justified when a few onlookers communicated that they saw Ruiz join the race in the final mile, where she sprinted to the finish line. She was stripped of her olive wreath and the rightful winner, Jacqueline Gareau, was crowned.

Danny Almonte: The advantages of a fake ID are usually to ameliorate the opportunities for underage drinking and clubbing, not to play in Little League Baseball. In 2001, Danny Almonte led his Bronx, New York team all the way to third place in the Little League World Series when he pitched the first perfect game since 1957, but a conflicting birth certificate surfaced during his team's run. His family's copy stated that he was born in 1989, but his Dominican home town's official copy stated he was born in 1987, making him two years too old for eligibility.

Jamie Sale and David Pelletier: Canadian figure-skating pair Jamie Sale and David Pelletier performed a near-perfect program only to receive ordinary ordinals from the judges in the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics. They tried to just smile it off, but they remained puzzled, along with pundits and skating aficionados worldwide. A probe ensued, exposing collusion between Russian and French judges, who agreed to swap votes in a sordid deal. Eventually, the Canadian duo was awarded gold medals and received a share of first place

BALCO: Steroids and performance-enhancing drugs have always been the elephant in the room that nobody wants to address, but when the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative â a sports nutrition center in California â was exposed in 2004 for mass producing and distributing illegal anabolic steroids, the topic of drugs in sports became a hot one. BALCO's founder Victor Conte was quick to drag sports icons down with him, as baseball legend Barry Bonds and American track star Marion Jones were tainted by their association with Conte.

Mike Danton: In 2004, Mike Danton, a former St. Louis Blues player, enlisted the help of a 19-year-old girl to hire a hit man, who was actually a police dispatcher. The FBI was quickly alerted and Danton was convicted of plotting to commit murder, with the exact target still unknown. The details were muddy and the suspected motives were varied. Some believed Danton was trying to remove a gay lover threatening to out him, while others claimed he was attempting to end a miserable relationship with his agent, David Frost.

Patrick Dennehy: The story started when Baylor basketball player Patrick Dennehy was reported missing in June 2003. A month later, after teammate Carlton Dotson was charged for murder, Dennehy's dead body was found in chest-high weeds. The police had been tipped off after Dotson told a cousin of his that he shot and killed Dennehy during an argument. But the black eye didn't end there for Baylor University's basketball program, as Dennehy's girlfriend reported violations to the NCAA.

Tonya Harding: The leg bone is connected to the knee bone, and knowing that, American figure skater Tonya Harding calculated that it would be more difficult for her rival to compete if she hired a man to take out her knee. Harding hired Shane Stant to put fellow American Nancy Kerrigan out of commission at the 1994 U.S. Figure Skating Championships, paving the way for Harding's victory. Soon after, her ex-husband cut a plea bargain deal in which he spilled the beans of their scheme and implicated Harding.

The BCS formula will go unchanged this offseason for the first time since 1999. BCS officials rejected a proposal to replace the computers with longhand calculations performed by Vince Young.

The Steelers had to cancel a private showing of a new DVD of season highlights on Wednesday night due to a bomb scare. Like the Super Bowl, though, it turned out to be a dud.

U.S. gold medal-winning speedskaters Apolo Anton Ohno and Joey Cheek will appear on separate Wheaties boxes. In other Olympic news, Bode Miller's reputation will appear on milk cartons.

FOX Sports Network aired the 1,000th episode of the Best Damn Sports Show Period on Wednesday. FOX pledges to make the next 1,000 shows just as crappy.

One study estimates that March Madness could cost America's businesses as much as $3.8 billion in lost productivity from distracted workers following the action from the office. Even worse, all that frenzied fandom doesn't even pay off for the employees since the office pool is always won by Sue from Accounting anyway.

Pro Sports Naughy List

Monday, March 06, 2006

Vick Admits to Driving Charges

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