The 9 biggest losers in sports in 2014
You win some, you lose some. And sometimes, you lose in epic, inglorious fashion.
Rather than recap the year's most triumphant highlights, here is the worst sports had to offer in 2014, spanning both on-field embarrassments and off-field villainy. Consider these the MVPs of failure, incompetence, and shame.
1. Roger Goodell
For much of the year, Roger Goodell looked like a man trying to eat soup with chopsticks. His league mired in scandal, the bumbling commissioner of the National Football League capriciously vanquished pot smokers while treating domestic violence like a crime on par with jaywalking.
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Only when threatened with a sponsorship mutiny did he backtrack in a flurry of vacuous mea culpas, revealing himself as inept, incompetent, and insensitive. Along the way, he and his minions probably lied quite a bit. And his face-saving punishment of Ray Rice — an indefinite ban following an initial two-game suspension — crumbled when a judge determined the league had zero basis for the double-dip punishment.
On top of that, Goodell still found time to preside over a crooked concussion settlement that screws the players while benefiting their lawyers, fine players for the heinous crime of not speaking to the media, leech fun from the game's endzones, and claim a racist team name "honors Native Americans." This is the man entrusted to run a $9 billion empire.
2. Donald Sterling
After a secret recording of Sterling's racist remarks emerged, NBA commissioner Adam Silver banned the former Los Angeles Clippers boss for life and, in a unanimous vote, the league owners then took the unprecedented step of stripping him of his team.
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Sterling didn't go without a fight, suing and countersuing the league, commissioner Adam Silver, and his wife for billions of dollars. After an appeals court rejected the addled ex-owner's last legal Hail Mary, the NBA approved the Clips' $2 billion sale to former Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer.
3. Brazil's soccer team
The 2014 World Cup was supposed to be Brazil's shining moment of glory, with the heavily favored home team winning it all to splash a golden veneer on the corruption, financial mismanagement, and populist protest that presaged the tournament. But in one of the most unbelievable collapses in World Cup history, Brazil conceded five goals to Germany in 18 minutes — four of them coming in a humiliating six-minute stretch that Brazil's coach later dubbed "six minutes of nightmares." The embarrassment can be summed up in one image:
Germany would go on to win the semifinal game 7-1. Brazil had a chance to salvage some dignity in the third-place match against the Netherlands, but turned in another stinker, losing 3-0. Scolari and his staff resigned in disgrace two days after the tournament ended.
4. Alex Rodriguez
A-Rod's year began with an arbitrator upholding his season-long ban from baseball for cheating and lying about cheating. It did not get better from there. In June, he dropped his third and final "I'm taking you all down with me" lawsuit, this one against his own team for supposedly sabotaging him. One month later, his lawyers sued him, alleging unpaid bills.
Then this fall came a report that A-Rod admitted his doping regimen to the feds while throwing his cousin and alleged drug mule under the bus. Naturally, his cousin's wife responded by dishing on the time Rodriguez allegedly relieved himself on her floor.
The Yankees owe Rodriguez at least $61 million over the next three years but consider him so broken they're openly shopping for a replacement.
5. Under Armour
The high-tech apparel company debuted their ballyhooed speedskating suits just in time for the 2014 Winter Olympics. Developed in conjunction with aerospace giant Lockheed Martin, and given exclusively to the American team, the newfangled design was trumpeted as the "fastest speedskating suit ever made."
Yet America's dominant skaters earned just a single medal — a silver, in an event where two of their three competitors crashed on the first turn — and Suitgate was born. American speedskaters ditched the suits midway through the Games, and an internal review later identified them as one reason for the team's poor performance.
6. Jameis Winston
In 2013, Jameis Winston won the Heisman Trophy while leading Florida State to the national title. This year has not gone quite so well for him.
In April, Winston was arrested for shoplifting crab legs. Florida State suspended him one game for shouting crude — and arguably sexist — remarks on campus. And a stunning New York Times investigation revealed how the college and local police obstructed an investigation into allegations Winston raped a fellow student in 2012. In December, the college opened a (much-belated) disciplinary hearing on two separate sexual assault and endangerment allegations against the QB.
7. Luis Suarez
Hungry for a World Cup victory this summer, Uruguayan striker Luis Suarez instead sank his teeth into a fellow footballer. In an opening round matchup with Italy, the heel with a noted vampiric streak bit into defender Giorgio Chiellini's shoulder, then collapsed as if he'd been the one turned into a mid-game snack.
FIFA suspended Suarez for four months. As far as we know, Suarez has not bitten anyone since.
8. Aaron Hernandez
Already in jail awaiting one murder trial, former Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez was charged in May with two more counts of first-degree murder. According to prosecutors, a 2012 Boston nightclub scuffle ended with Hernandez firing the fatal shots in a drive-by that killed two men, Daniel de Abreu and Safiro Furtado. In February, the victims' families filed $6 million wrongful death suits against Hernandez.
9. Sochi's terrible bathrooms
The Sochi Olympics introduced the world to what is thankfully not a sanctioned Olympic event: Tandem pooping.
The host city's nightmarish, Escher-esque facilities inspired much mockery in the media, and served as a potent symbol for the dysfunction of Putin's Olympics. Given that the Games went off better than expected, though, perhaps the biggest losers here were not the toilets themselves, but the poor athletes who had to use them.
Jon Terbush is an associate editor at TheWeek.com covering politics, sports, and other things he finds interesting. He has previously written for Talking Points Memo, Raw Story, and Business Insider.
