Overshadowed By Controversy / Sports

People

• Ty Cobb. While he is one of the greatest baseball players of all time, his reputation suffers from allegations of racism and violence, largely stemming from a couple of biographies that were released following his death, even though said biographies were later largely discredited:
  • Cobb's reputation as an extremely violent man was fanned by his first biographer, sportswriter Al Stump, whose stories about Cobb have been discredited as sensationalized, and in some part proven to be entirely fictional. He was famously crotchety and unpleasant, but the stories of violence and cruelty are no longer credited.
  • While it is held that Cobb did have racist views early on his life, this would have been extremely unremarkable for a white man born in rural Georgia in the 1880s. There's no evidence that he was any more racist than any other white ballplayer of his time and background. More to the point, his views on race evolved and mellowed after his retirement from baseball; he became a proponent of the integration of the sport well before Jackie Robinson actually broke the color line in 1947 (which is remarkable for a white man, especially a white ballplayer, born in rural Georgia in the 1880s).
• "Shoeless" Joe Jackson, one of the controversial eight "Black Sox" involved with a Chicago White Sox's 1919 World Series scandal, was the only one of the eight banned figures to be considered worthy of deserving entry into the Baseball Hall of Fame.^note Proof of his worthiness is that he's the "Joe" alluded to in the common American idiom "Say it ain't so, Joe!" after a story claiming that a kid asked him that after he left the court (nowadays largely considered to be apocryphal, as Jackson himself said that the exchange never occurred). In 2020 MLB announced that players would be removed from the "ineligible list" upon death, which was retroactively applied to all players that passed away before 2020 (including Shoeless Joe, who lived from 1887-1951), however the Baseball Hall of Fame hasn't yet commented on the situation.
• Cyclist Lance Armstrong, winner of a record-breaking seven Tour de France contests. All were stripped afterward when it turned out he had used a complicated and watertight system to use doping. It seems unlikely he will ever be trusted again.
• This trope is so pervasive in the NFL that This Very Wiki has an entire page about it. Many of those examples are listed below.
• American soccer player Hope Solo has had her legacy as one of the best goalkeepers in the women's sport permanently stained by her arrest on charges of assaulting her half-sister and nephew. It doesn't help that many were quick to accuse her case of exemplifying a Double Standard in American sports, pointing to multiple cases of male athletes suffering far more immediate and serious consequences from their leagues for violent behavior.
• Tonya Harding, a promising figure skater able to pull extremely difficult tricks that few were able to back then, like the triple axel jump, rose to international infamy after being accused of having ordered an attack on fellow figure skater Nancy Kerrigan with a telescoping baton so she could defeat her rival that way.^note She has always maintained it was not her idea, but her abusive and obsessive ex-husband's. The case came out afterward and she was found guilty of racketeering, stripped of all her titles, and banned from figure skating for life. Since then, she only gets in the news media for the kind of behavior you wouldn't want to become famous for; it doesn't help that, whether innocent or not, she has some serious character flaws that make it difficult for her to endear herself to the public. Harding continues to have some fans though, especially among people who believe her to be the victim of a smear campaign, or for Taking the Heat for something her husband ordered someone else to do. The biopic I, Tonya even states once it gets to the period that "now this is what you all paid for..."
• Boxer Mike Tyson, once a boxing world champion, is more notorious for the numerous violent incidents in his private life, including being convicted of rape and biting off Evander Holyfield's ear, and saying he wanted to eat Lennox Lewis' children.^note Made even funnier by the fact that Lewis had no children at the time. The other things he is known for now are being the near unbeatable final boss of the NES port of Punch-Out!!, and for his appearances as a Cloudcuckoolander in works like The Hangover and Mike Tyson Mysteries.
• O. J. Simpson's achievements as a football player and actor (even having a starring role in The Naked Gun film trilogy) have been overshadowed by the controversy over his involvement, and possible guilt, in the murder of his second ex-wife, Nicole Brown, and her friend, Ron Goldman. Most people today know him solely for the murder trial or for subsequently getting arrested for stealing what he alleges was property stolen from him.
• Tim Tebow:
  • Among the general public, Tebow is better known for bringing his conservative Christian beliefs onto the field than he is for his football and baseball careers, mainly because he wasn't any good at either sport on the professional level. Some people considered his overt displays of his piety to be unproblematic, while others (including other Christians) said he was choosing an inappropriate time and place to demonstrate his beliefs, and that he was cheapening his faith by "showboating". Not helping matters is that his former habit of wearing references to biblical verses on his eye black is widely perceived to have led to the NCAA making a rule banning messages in eye black, leading to the new prohibition being nicknamed "the Tebow rule".^note The NCAA denies that Tebow had anything to do with the imposition of the rule. There are many who, in retrospect, view the controversy as an uncanny foreshadowing of a similar controversy that ignited over Colin Kaepernick's kneeling.
  • Tebow's managed to be this in a second sport. After his pro football career ended, Tebow decided he'd like to try his hand at professional baseball (despite the fact that by this point the 28-year-old Tebow was several years older than most minor leaguers and hadn't played in a competitive baseball game since his junior year of high school). The New York Mets signed him to a minor league contract in 2016. His substandard performance (his career batting average over three years is a miserable .223) and rapid movement up the Mets' minor league ladder despite no signs of improvement has led to accusations both from fans and players that Tebow is a sideshow who is just there to sell tickets and move merchandise while taking up a roster spot that could have been used on a legitimate prospect.^note To be fair he did sell a lot of merchandise and tickets during a time that minor league baseball was struggling so badly that Major League Baseball had to step in and take over in 2021.
• Tennis player John McEnroe was one of the most glorious champions in his sport, even managing to give Björn Borg a difficult time during Wimbledon 1980. Yet he mostly lives on in people's memories for his Hair-Trigger Temper and profane yelling at various referees during many matches. It has gotten to the point that there's more demand to see that kind of archive footage again than him winning his matches.
• Nick Kyrgios used to be praised as a bright young talent who beat Rafael Nadal at the 2014 Wimbledon Championships as a teenager. Then at the 2015 Rogers Cup during a match against Stan Wawrinka, he made a snide comment under his breath about how his countryman Thanasi Kokkinakis had banged Wawrinka's new girlfriend. His mic picked it up, the public love for him turned to derision overnight, and ever since then 90% of all headlines about him have been about his continued controversial and attention-seeking behavior rather than about his actual tennis results.
• French soccer champion Zinedine Zidane is world-famous for an incident during his final game, where he headbutted Italian player Marco Materazzi after the latter insulted him. Said final match was the 2006 World Cup Final, and Zidane's subsequent sending-off is widely agreed to have cost France the title.
• Former NBA player Latrell Sprewell is less well-known for his accomplishments than he is for his various troubles. The first serious controversy was a 1997 incident where he choked and elbowed Golden State Warriors head coach P. J. Carlesimo, resulting in him being suspended for 68 games. During this suspension, he pled no contest to charges of reckless driving after injuring two people in a 90 mph car accident. Then in 2005, he unexpectedly ended his career when he refused a $21 million contract offer from the Minnesota Timberwolves, which he implied wouldn't be enough to feed his children. And then you have his very turbulent personal life and legal and financial problems since the end of his career, such as being accused of trying to strangle a woman mid-coitus and getting his yacht repossessed after failing to continue paying for it.
• Nowadays, Dennis Rodman is known less for his Hall of Fame basketball career and more for being a very bizarre person outside the paint (the series The Last Dance devotes time to some of it, like leaving training camps to party in Las Vegas or take part in wrestling events), including a widely-criticized friendship with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un years after his retirement from basketball.
• Penn State's Joe Paterno is the winningest coach in major college football history, but will forever be remembered in connection with longtime assistant coach and serial child molester Jerry Sandusky. The NCAA initially stripped Penn State of nearly all of Paterno's wins as a result of the scandal, but they were eventually reinstated through a legal settlement in 2015.
• Despite Michael Schumacher being one of the most successful Formula One drivers of all time, including jointly holding the record for the most titles, he is still remembered for his controversial actions in some races, especially in the finale of the 1997 season when he deliberately crashed into Jacques Villeneuve to try and stop him from winning the championship. He failed, retired from the race, and was disqualified from the championship, while Villeneuve got the points he needed to become champion. This has, admittedly, eased off since a near-fatal skiing accident in 2013 that he is still recovering from.
• During his very short F1 career, Nelson Piquet Jr. became infamous for the "crashgate scandal" in the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix. On the fourteenth lap of the race, he deliberately crashed into the wall, forcing the safety car and helping his teammate, Fernando Alonso, finish first thanks to an early pit stop. Unlike many cases listed here, he has since made a name for himself in other racing categories, including NASCAR (which had an infamous reputation for being very hard for drivers coming from open-wheel racing background to adapt) and Formula E (winning the inaugural championship).
• Ryan Lochte was known for being one of the best swimmers in the world, winning multiple Olympic medals. Then during the 2016 Rio Olympics, he, along with some other swimmers, drunkenly vandalized a gas station bathroom and caused a confrontation with a security guard. After the fact, Lochte made up a story about being robbed at gunpoint to cover up the incident and flew back to America, leaving the other swimmers involved to deal with the fallout in Rio. Once the attempted cover-up came to light, nearly any mention of Lochte in the media referenced the incident.
• Double-amputee sprinter Oscar Pistorius is nowadays more known for shooting his girlfriend dead, for which he was convicted in 2015, than for his track career that included a stint in the actual Olympics alongside multiple stints in the Paralympics.
• Violette Morris was a very talented French athlete who proved impressive in a wide variety of sports. But it's pretty safe to say most people aware of her remember her as a spy for and later collaborator with Nazi Germany. Reviled for her treachery and brutality, she was assassinated by the French Resistance in 1944.
• Former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick sparked controversy due to his kneeling during the national anthem during the 2016 NFL season to protest racial oppression and police brutality. Although he did not violate any rules (NFL players were encouraged to stand during the anthem but were not required to do so), a backlash against Kaepernick led to him getting blackballed from the NFL. This ultimately backfired when other NFL players began kneeling during the anthem, and Donald Trump's protests and demands that the players who do so be fired only added further fuel to the fire. While Kaepernick's actions and the controversy that followed them were re-analyzed in 2020 after several high-profile deaths of African Americans, most notably George Floyd in May 2020, at the hands of police officers sparked massive protests across America, it still meant that nowadays, Kaepernick is better known as an activist than a football player that once took the 49ers to the Super Bowl under his prowess.
• Marion Jones was a superstar track and field runner in the '90s with lots of charm and charisma, and was famous for winning five medals in the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney. However, rumors began to spread that she was using steroids after the medical company Balco was exposed for giving many famous athletes illegal drugs that were undetectable by drug test back then. Jones was one of the athletes named. She was successfully able to deny it, until she was caught up in an insurance fraud racket. She made a deal to confess to using steroids in order to reduce jail time. Her medals were stripped and she is now known as one of the greatest Olympic tragedies.
• English former football player and manager Paul "Gazza" Gascoigne is nowadays best known for his alcoholism, his serious mental issues, and his repeated run-ins with the law.
• Larry Nassar, while never well known by the public, was a reputable physician in American gymnastics circles, being the USA Gymnastics national team doctor for some time and also the house doctor for the Karolyi Ranch of Béla and Márta Károlyi fame.^note Which was also the official USA Gymnastics and women's national gymnastics team training grounds. This changed when two former gymnasts publicly accused Nassar of sexual abuse in 2016. This led to other women accusing him of sexual abuse as well, with more than 300 victims eventually coming forward. These allegations would ultimately expose a pattern of sexual abuse that had been prevalent since at least 1992. As a result, it's almost impossible that he will ever recover his former reputation, as he was sentenced to 60 years for child porn in federal prison in 2017. He was also sentenced in 2018 to 40 to 175 years in state prison for the sexual abuse. The judge who sentenced him for the latter called it his "death warrant"^note Speaking of which, coach John Geddert (of 2012 U.S. Olympic team fame) shot and killed himself in a rest stop bathroom stall upon learning he had been indicted for multiple felonies related to the case, among them sexual assault, racketeering, and 20 counts of human trafficking and forced labor. The controversy also spread over to the entire USA Gymnastics organization and Michigan State University, both longtime employers of Nassar, which led to huge repercussions for both. USAG severed its ties with the Károlyis during the sentencing phase of Nassar's state trial, leading to the closure of Karolyi Ranch. And then USAG itself filed for bankruptcy, shortly after the US Olympic & Paralympic Committee took the first steps toward stripping USAG of its role as the official US governing body for that sport.
• The steroid era has tainted numerous baseball players' legacies due to them either admitting to taking steroids, getting caught, or being believed to have done so. Some of the most notable examples include Jose Canseco, Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Alex Rodriguez.
• Outside of his involvement in the MLB steroid controversy, Sammy Sosa is primarily known for the controversy surrounding his mysteriously lightening skin, later admitted to be the result of using bleaching creams; Sosa whitening his skin was heavily criticized as colorist, and eventually became a subject of mockery and further backlash after an infamous TV interview in 2018 where a combination of studio lighting and a poorly thought-out outfit made his skin appear bright pink◊.
• Pete Rose was a highly popular baseball player and manager (even holding both positions simultaneously for a few years), beloved for his enthusiastic playing style, especially his tendency to dive at bases headfirst. He remains MLB's all-time leader in hits (4,256, which no player has come close to since) and holds several other records and awards as well. However, his career crashing down in 1989, when he was discovered to have placed bets on his own games and ejected from the game for life, as well as banned from induction into the Hall of Fame. He did get selected as a member of the "All-Century Team" in 1999, but the controversy still dogged him as he awkwardly had to respond to questions about the scandal rather than his accomplishments in the sport.
• Donald Sterling, then-owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, became one of the most infamous names in professional basketball overnight when private recordings of him making racist comments were released by TMZ in April 2014. After being hit with near-universal condemnation, he was banned from the National Basketball Association for life and fined $2.5 million by the league.
• Michael Vick is best known for the fact that he was discovered to have been running and participating in various dog fighting rings, which derailed his football career for a couple of years.
• Conor McGregor, while still a popular mixed martial artist, is difficult to discuss without mentioning his public life and rowdy behavior.
• It's all but impossible to talk about mixed martial artist War Machine (born Jonathan Paul Koppenhaver) without talking about his numerous felony convictions, most notoriously the time when he viciously beat and raped his ex-girlfriend. It certainly doesn't help that his criminal behavior eventually got him an aggregate sentence of life in prison.
• Multiple sumo wrestlers (the most famous being Yamamotoyama Ryūta, the heaviest Japanese-born sumo wrestler in history) have had their careers irrevocably tainted when they were forced to retire by the Japan Sumo Association (JSA) after it found them guilty of match fixing in April 2011.
• Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa and his parents gave a profoundly tone-deaf interview in which they proudly attributed his football skills to putting him through brutal corporal punishment in his childhood, including beating him with a belt to make him left-handed. Interviewer Tom Rinaldi also got quite a bit of flak for refusing to challenge this at all. Tua has also recently been well-known for an infamous period of back-to-back concussions (with visible problems at hand in each game) in two weeks^*(actually a five day period between a Sunday match against Buffalo and a Thursday Night Football match against Cincinnati) during the 2022 NFL season while playing for the Dolphins.
• Many NFL stars' careers have been derailed by scandals involving them abusing women (Ray Rice and Kareem Hunt to name a couple) or their children (Adrian Peterson).
• Aaron Hernandez is less known for being recognized as an All-American during his days at the University of Florida or being one half of one of the NFL's most dominant tight end duos during his three seasons with the New England Patriots than he is for being convicted of the murder of Odin Lloyd and committing suicide in prison.
• Offensive guard Richie Incognito is most well-known for his ring-leading role in the bullying of teammate Jonathan Martin which got him suspended from the Miami Dolphins (the team he was playing for at the time).
• Former Baltimore Colts player Jerry Richardson established the Carolina Panthers franchise in 1993, becoming the first former NFL player since George Halas to become a team owner. However, in 2017, allegations of him committing sexual harassment and using racial slurs were unearthed by Sports Illustrated, which led the NFL to fine him $2.75 million dollars the next year, and he would sell the team afterwards.
• Sal Alosi's career as a strength and conditioning coach has been eclipsed by multiple incidents during his involvement with the New York Jets. These incidents include him tripping Miami Dolphins gunner Nolan Carroll during a 2010 game, instructing inactive Jets players to line up along the sideline so as to potentially impede opposing players, getting into a fistfight with Jets cornerback Darrelle Revis, and verbally abusing a chiropractor out of anger at "petty issues involving towels and water".
• Football commentator Jimmy "The Greek" Snyder was never completely free of controversy, due to his involvement in bookmaking and his feuds with sportscasters Brent Musburger and Phyllis George. That being said, he landed in some very hot water in 1988 due to him making some extremely questionable comments about African American athletes. One of the most infamous of these remarks was him claiming that African Americans were (supposedly) naturally superior athletes at least in part because black slaves in the Antebellum South had been selectively bred to produce more physically capable offspring. Needless to say, he was quickly fired by CBS, and what he said was widely condemned as both incredibly inaccurate and profoundly tone-deaf. Snyder sued in retaliation, but lost his lawsuit.
• English Rugby League footballer Terry Newton is most well-known for being one of the first athletes to test positive for human growth hormone, as well as for hanging himself while under the influence of drugs and alcohol.
• South Korean baseball player Cho Sung-min's turbulent marriage to (and subsequent messy divorce from) actress Choi Jin-sil garnered considerably more media attention than his career, especially after he got arrested for beating her in 2004. After Choi committed suicide in 2008, Cho got into a messy custody battle with her family over the children he fathered with her. In 2012, he was arrested again, this time for his involvement in a Bar Brawl. The next year, he hanged himself.
• William D. Cox's time as owner of the Philadelphia Phillies was undoubtedly a time of great success for the team, though many players groused about his hands-on management style. Then he was accused of betting on his own team. He initially denied any wrongdoing on his part (though he did say some of his business associates bet on the Phillies), but was forced to cop to it as the investigation progressed. This resulted in him being suspended indefinitely.
• Former Cincinnati Reds owner Marge Schott was and is undoubtedly best known for the many, many offensive things said by her. These remarks include complaining about having to pay José Rijo "three million to sit on his butt" while he was recovering from an elbow injury, being upset at the sudden death of umpire John McSherry because it would postpone a game, saying that she didn't want her players to wear earrings because "only fruits wear earrings", and especially her numerous racist comments and apparent Nazi sympathies^note "This show is about as interesting as Marge Scott reading excerpts from Mein Kampf!".
• Matt Kuchar became the most hated person in golf after his caddy for a tournament in Mexico complained about being paid just a tiny fraction of what's typical for the sport. He didn't help himself at all with a response that basically the guy should be thankful for any scraps Kuchar deigned to toss his way, making himself look both racist and elitist in a sport that's been trying extremely hard to distance itself from that reputation. After months of public shaming from both the general public and numerous other golfers, he finally coughed up what he should have paid.
• Dale Earnhardt (Sr.) is often considered one of the greatest NASCAR drivers of all time, becoming the second driver to ever win seven Winston Cup Championships^note Today just the NASCAR Cup Series, Jimmie Johnson would become the third driver to win 7 titles in 2016 and holding 76 wins to his name, but most people only know him for his death in the 2001 Daytona 500.
• Juan Pablo Montoya is a pretty accomplished open wheel driver, winning the Indianapolis 500 twice and 22 total races between IndyCar, CART, and Formula 1. He's best known for being the guy that crashed into the jet drier and set the track itself on fire during the 2012 Daytona 500, which wasn't even his fault.^note He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time when his axle broke and he lost control of the car. Both his teammates also wrecked out of the race with broken axles, they just weren't unlucky enough to be a few feet away from a jet engine when it happened. Fortunately no one besides Montoya's reputation was injured.
• Australian rugby player Israel Folau has become better known for his staunch homophobia than for his rugby career. Rugby Australia was also criticized for refusing to punish him, although they did eventually draw the line in May 2019 and banned him.
• Frank Winterstein, another Australian rugby player, has been hit with this, not over his own behavior but that of his wife, social media influencer and anti-vax zealot Taylor Winterstein. Thanks in large part to a fearmongering campaign by Winterstein in her native Samoa, vaccination rates on the island plummeted and triggered a huge measles outbreak that infected 5,700 people and killed 83.
• Bob Knight was one of college basketball's most successful and innovative coaches. However, most people know him for his volatile temper and violent behavior, especially infamous episodes like him throwing a chair across the court during a game, being recorded on video grabbing one of his players by the neck, and getting arrested in Puerto Rico for assaulting a cop (and he would not return to face trial and sentencing for that before his death in 2023). These incidents and others eventually led to him being fired by Indiana University.
• Al Campanis was the first Greek-American player in MLB history, and spent nearly twenty years as general manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Nevertheless, it's hard to talk about him without bringing up an interview he had on Nightline where he told Ted Koppel that blacks were often poor swimmers because "they don't have the buoyancy" and seemingly implied that they didn't have the necessary intelligence to be managers. He was fired for these statements less than 48 hours after this interview.
• Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson is undoubtedly best-known for being caught doping multiple times, which led to multiple awards and records of his being rescinded, and eventually ended his career. His refusal to accept responsibility certainly hasn't helped.
• Once upon a time, David Icke was famous for his career as a footballer-turned-sports broadcaster. Then in the early 1990s, he claimed to be a "Son of the Godhead" and predicted that the world would soon be devastated by geological natural disasters, statements which turned him from a respected household name to a laughing-stock overnight. Nowadays, he's now best known by far for his belief that the Earth has been hijacked by interdimensional reptilian beings known as the Archons that feed on fear (something even notorious conspiracy theorist Alex Jones thinks is insane), as well as accusations that he's an anti-Semite.
• Avery Brundage is regarded as a highly influential figure in the modern Olympics, being president of the International Olympic Committee from 1952 to 1972 and the only American (and only non-European) to attain that position. However, several of his influences are among his more questionable qualities, such as his obvious racism, particularly on display in the Games of 1936 (when Brundage, as head of the then-American Olympic Committee, successfully prevented a US boycott of the Games, held in Nazi Germany), 1968 (where he bitterly complained about the political demonstrations in it largely by African-Americans, even refering to the Black Power salute incident at it as "the nasty demonstration against the American flag by negroes"), and 1972 (where his decision of continuing the games after the Munich massacre was controversial, and even among those who supported continuing the games, Brundage comparting it with issues regarding Rhodesia's participation was criticized^note Due to Rhodesia having unilaterally declared its independence from the United Kingdom in 1965 and having a white minority government similar to Apartheid South Africa, in 1968 the United Nations Security Council asked nations not to honor its passports, and the Mexican government, set to host the Olympics that year, complied with the ban, and despite Brundage supporting Rhodesian participation at Mexico City, he was overruled by the rest of the IOC. For Munich in 1972, the IOC decided to allow the Rhodesians to compete under the banner of British subjects (which by international law they were), but African nations threatened to boycott if the Rhodesians were allowed to participate, and at its Munich session in 1972 just before the Games, the IOC narrowly voted to exclude the Rhodesians. Brundage was so livid at the decision, believing that the IOC had yielded to blackmail, that he was reportedly actually looking forward to the Games to clear his mind from the issue, and in his speech at the memorial service where he announced that the Games would go on, he described it as being "subjected to two savage attacks", the other being having "lost the Rhodesian battle against naked political blackmail."), and his close ties to the Nazi Party, which remained even after its dissolution.
• NBA referee Tim Donaghy officiated in 772 regular season games and twenty playoff games over the course of thirteen years. But he's best known for his role in the 2007 NBA betting scandal, which forced him to resign from the league and got him sent to federal prison.
• Boxing promoter Don King helped promote some of the most prominent names in the sport, as well as iconic matches like the Rumble in the Jungle and the Thrilla in Manilla. Nevertheless, he's an infamous figure for rumored ties to organized crime, allegedly cheating and threatening multiple boxers, and having killed two people.
• Former baseball pitcher turned sports commentator Curt Schilling is known nowadays for his far-right political views, including some Islamophobic comments that got him fired from Fox Sports, and mocking a transgender coworker, which got him fired from ESPN. He has since become a political propagandist for the alt-right and a contributor to Breitbart, further disassociating him from sports. Because of this, it has seriously hurt his chances of making the Baseball Hall of Fame, despite being considered one of the best pitchers in baseball and winning multiple World Series championships between the Arizona Diamondbacks (including a Co-MVP award with fellow pitcher Randy Johnson) and the Boston Red Sox (with his first championship there being notable for ending the Red Sox's curse at the time and being a part of a 3-0 series comeback to a 4-3 win over the heated rivaling New York Yankees while pitching with one of his socks being bloodied from a foot injury).
• Puerto Rican boxer Luis Resto is known solely for cheating in a 1983 fight with Billy Collins Jr. with Weighted Gloves by allowing his trainer to remove the padding from his gloves and soak his hand wraps in plaster of Paris, causing his punches to hit harder than they normally would have. This incident made him effectively persona non grata in the boxing world, especially after it was revealed that Collins's vision was permanently blurred after the match, which ended his career and may have driven him to kill himself nine months later (he died in a car crash, but is largely believed that the crash was intentional). Resto was stripped of his license and later convicted on assault and conspiracy charges.
• Hansie Cronje, the South African cricketer, used to be recognized as one of the greatest captains at the international level. That was until his involvement in a match fixing scandal came to light, which is what he is mostly remembered for since then.
• Baseball player Roberto Osuna received a year-long suspension in 2018 for allegedly assaulting the mother of his son. The case ended inconclusively and he was quickly snapped up by the Astros after the suspension ended, but any chance of his being known for anything else ended at the 2019 World Series, when during clubhouse celebrations after the Astros won Game 6 of the 2019 ALCS, Astros assistant manager Brandon Taubman bizarrely went out of his way to draw attention to it by aggressively shouting "Thank God we got Osuna! I'm so fucking glad we got Osuna!" to a group of nearby female reporters, in what appearing to be him taunting them (one of them was wearing a bracelet promoting awareness of domestic violence), when Osuna hadn't even been particularly notable in the game just played. The rest of the team’s management then accused the reporters of completely making the story up despite numerous witnesses, until they were finally forced to admit it was true and fire Taubman a few days later. Meanwhile, Osuna himself understandably just tried to keep completely out of the whole mess.^note As detailed in the "Teams & Organizations" folder below the controversy surrounding the Astros soon got much, much worse
• In most countries, French footballer Thierry Henry is regarded as one of the best players and has won many honours, including League titles in France, England and Spain, the Champions League, the European Championship and World Cup. In addition, he is also France's highest-ever goal scorer. In Ireland, however, he’s remembered as the player who handled the ball in the build-up to the goal that cost them a place at the 2010 World Cup.
• The Greek footballer Giorgos Katidis is largely remembered as the player who gave a Nazi salute to the crowd after scoring a goal, which got him indefinitely banned from all Greek national teams.
• Uruguayan footballer Luis Suárez is often regarded as one of the best players of the 21st century. This is presumably overlooked by Otman Bakkal, Branislav Ivanovic and Giorgio Chellini, all of whom he has bitten during his career. It is no doubt also overlooked by Patrice Evra, who he racially abused during a game (and then refused to shake Evra's hand when their respective clubs next met). Or by Fulham fans after making an obscene gesture towards them. And all his awards and achievements are definitely overlooked by anybody of Ghanaian descent after saving the ball with his hands in the last few minutes of extra time in their quarter-final in the 2010 World Cup; had the ball gone in, Ghana would have become the first African team to ever make it to a World Cup semifinal. He then added insult to injury by celebrating the resulting penalty hitting the crossbar. (Ghana would then lose the penalty shoot-out. Unsurprisingly, he was booed every time he touched the ball in the third-place play-off, having been banned in the semifinal.)
• Egyptian former judoka Islam El Shehaby saw his reputation tarnished overnight when, after being defeated at the 2016 Summer Olympics by Israeli Or Sasson, he refused to shake Sasson's hand. This display of poor sportsmanship earned him widespread ire, the sardonic moniker "Islam El SheBaby", and a severe reprimand from the Disciplinary Committee of the IOC. He was sent home before the closing ceremony, and the backlash was so severe that he retired from judo.
• Japanese judoka Masato Uchishiba won two Olympic gold medals, among other awards. But nowadays, he's far more well known for allegations that he committed sexual harassment during his time coaching the women's judo team at Kyushu University of Nursing and Social Welfare, along with a 2013 sexual misconduct conviction.
• Ron Atkinson was a highly respected football manager of Manchester United during the 1980s and became a famous football commentator for ITV during the 1990s and early 2000s, but today most people know his name for making racist remarks about the black Chelsea player Marcel Desailly following Chelsea's 3–1 loss to Monaco in the 2004 Championships League semi-final while thinking the microphone was switched off. Transmission in the UK had finished, but not so for many countries in the Middle East where his remarks were broadcast to viewers. He promptly announced his resignation from both ITV and as a columnist from The Guardian newspaper following public knowledge of what he had said. It didn't help that—over a decade later—he tried to defend his remarks as "repeating words used by two other managers at the time" and discussed the neglect to switch the microphone off in an accusatory manner as if the production team was to blame for his remarks, which was regarded as a non-apologetic cop-out.
• Adelina Sotnikova is a well-accomplished figure skater, being a two-time European silver medalist, a two-time Rostelecom Cup bronze medalist, and a four-time Russian national champion, as well as the 2014 Olympic champion in ladies' figure skating. However, the circumstances of her 2014 Olympic champion title have overshadowed her other achievements, due to Sotnikova receiving what many consider to be an inflated score for her long program, one with noticeable flaws, as well as the fact that she had defeated South Korea's Yuna Kim, the 2010 Olympic champion who was the favorite for gold medal but had to settle for silver. Many people, including veteran skaters, were shocked at this outcome, many commentators for various networks were outraged and confused at the judges' decision ^note Hilariously, two Italian commentators were so furious on Yuna Kim's behalf that they momentarily forgot about Carolina Kostner, their own countryman, winning the bronze medal, and Yuna Kim's fans were especially outraged, to the point where 'Yuna Kim was Robbed' became a trend on social media. Not helping the controversy was the judges' panel consisting of two Russian officials, a Russian judge ^note who happened to be Alla Shekhovtsova, the wife of the then-president of the Figure Skating Federation of Russia, and a Ukrainian judge ^note who was suspended for a year after the 1998 Winter Olympics, where he was caught trying to fix the ice dancing event on tape, and footage of one of the judges hugging Sotnikova outside the arena only added fuel to the fire, as it further raised suspicions of bias towards Russian athletes among the judges. Ironically, it's been speculated that this victory completely ruined Sotnikova's career in figure skating, as she wound up withdrawing from the 2014-15 competitive season, and didn't take part in any competitions from 2016 onward before officially announcing her retirement from figure skating in March 2020. Today, Sotnikova is internationally known as the one who robbed Yuna Kim of a second gold medal at the 2014 Winter Olympics, and it's highly unlikely she will be able to fully shake off that reputation outside her native Russia.
• North Korean gymnast Kim Gwang-suk is known for her exemplary uneven bars work, but more known for being at the center of one of the most prominent age falsification scandals in gymnastics history. Because of her small stature and the fact that her age was listed as fifteen for three consecutive years, serious questions were raised about her age and her eligibility for senior competition. This falsification meant the North Korean women's gymnastics team was banned from the 1993 World Championships.
• Alexei Yagudin is widely known as the 2002 Olympic champion in men's figure skating. Since June 2020, however, he's more well-known for making extremely homophobic and transphobic comments to former figure skater Adam Rippon (who is openly gay) in response to Rippon's posts announcing his $1,000 donation to the Okra Project, a charity aimed at helping underprivileged black transgender people. Rippon had responded by donating another $1,000 to the charity in Yagudin's name, while Yagudin himself has yet to shake off the controversy.
• Morgan Ciprès was once an accomplished pair skater, being a six-time French national champion, the 2019 European champion, and the 2018 Worlds bronze medallist together with former partner Vanessa James. As of December 2019, all his accomplishments have been overshadowed by allegations of sending sexually-explicit photos to a 13-year-old female student at his Florida training center back in December of 2017. Also implicated in the incident were his former coaches John Zimmerman, Silvia Fontana, and Vinny Dispenza, who knew of the allegations but threatened the girl and her family into keeping silent so as not to impede James and Ciprès' preparations for the 2018 Winter Olympics. Now facing a third-degree felony charge and an arrest warrant by the Florida state attorney, Ciprès retired in disgrace, leaving little doubt that his career is officially over.
  • Also implicated in the scandal was Didier Gailhaguet, the controversial former president of the French Federation of Ice Sports (FFSG). Once known for coaching Surya Bonaly and for his role in the pair skating scandal at the 2002 Olympics, his career came to an end in February 2020 after former pair skater Sarah Abitbol accused him of protecting skating coach Gilles Beyer against accusations of sexually abusing his students when they were minors, including Abitbol herself. Since this had coincided with Gailhaguet's efforts at defending Ciprès, it caused a nationwide scandal across France, resulting in an ultimatum from Roxana Maracineanu, the French Sports Minister, that Gailhaguet resign or FFSG would be decertified. Gailhaguet ultimately resigned in the wake of the scandal, and there's little doubt that this will forever tarnish his name and overshadow all his other work.
• Former pair skater John Zimmerman was once known for being a three-time U.S. national champion and the 2002 Worlds bronze medallist along with former skating partner Kyoko Ina. Post-retirement, he and his wife, former singles skater Silvia Fontana, became well-known for coaching French pair skating duo Vanessa James/Morgan Ciprès. Today, however, he's more well-known for covering up alleged sexual abuse committed by Ciprès against a 13-year-old girl through intimidation tactics so as not to impede the duo's training for the 2018 Winter Olympics. Zimmerman tried to deny the allegations, but in March 2021, he was suspended by SafeSport for emotional abuse and failing to report the incident, ending his coaching career.
• The late John Coughlin was once highly-respected in the American figure skating scene, being a two-time U.S. national champion and the 2012 Four Continents silver medallist in pair skating. As of 2019, it's become difficult to discuss him and his accomplishments due to the allegations of sexual assault against him, or his suicide one day after being suspended from figure skating for these allegations in January 2019. The scandal only continued to unfold in the months following his death as more skaters opened up about being sexually abused by Coughlin, including his former skating partner Bridget Namiotka, U.S. ladies' champion Ashley Wagner, and former skater Melissa Bulanhagui. Today, his name has been tarnished by the sexual assault allegations around him, and any discussion about him will inevitably bring up either the accusations or his suicide.
• Russian ice-dancing duo and 2009 World Champions Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin came under fire with their costumes for their Aboriginal-Australian-inspired original dance during the 2009-10 skating season, where they wore dark-coloured bodysuits with white tribal markings, red loin-cloths and fake eucalyptus leaves. Many Aboriginal Australian elders decried their costumes and performances as offensive and akin to a minstrel show, and there was even a debate over whether the routine was truly offensive or a respectful tribute to aboriginal cultures in Australia. In the end, Domnina and Shabalin's costumes were altered for the 2010 Winter Olympics, and they went on to win the bronze medal, but this incident has still left a fairly prominent mark on their skating careers.
• Richard Callaghan was once a prominent figure skating coach in America, with his most famous student being Tara Lipinski, the 1998 Olympic champion in the ladies' figure skating event. This has since been overshadowed by sexual abuse allegations after Adam Schmidt and Craig Maurizi, two of his former students, sued him for sexual misconduct in 2019 and 2020. Maurizi, in particular, had accused Callaghan of grooming him into a relationship when the former was a minor, and many of these allegations date all the way back to the 1970's. He has since been suspended for 3 years, along with receiving a 15 year probation and 100 hours of community service.
• Chris Dawson was a prominent Australian rugby league footballer in the 1970's, playing second row alongside his identical twin brother Paul for the Newtown Jets. But Dawson is lesser known these days for his football career and more for the cloud of suspicion that has been following him ever since the 1982 disappearance of his wife, Lynette, and the revelation that he had been engaging in an affair with a 16-year-old student at the high school where he had been employed as a P.E. teacher after he left football; it was strongly suspected, but not yet proven in court, that Dawson murdered his wife in order to allow his underage mistress (who he later married) to move in with him. In August 2022, he was found guilty of murdering his wife.
• Former ice dancer Tatiana Navka is known for being the 2006 Olympic Champion, a two-time World Champion, and a three-time European Champion with her former partner Roman Kostomarov. Since her retirement, she's become more well-known for being the wife of Dmitry Peskov, who is the press secretary for Russian president Vladimir Putin himself. Other controversies include her and her skating partner dressing up as Holocaust concentration camp prisoners on the Russian version of Dancing on Ice, and her homophobic comments about Spanish gymnast Cristofer Benítez in 2021, when she implied that any man who took part in rhythmic gymnastics was taking part in a "feminine sport", which drew considerable backlash from many prominent skaters both in and outside of Russia.
• Figure skating coach Peter Oppegard was once remembered as a three-time U.S. national champion and as the 1988 Olympic bronze medalist in pair skating with his former partner Jill Watson. Since February 2021, Oppegard is more known for allegations of physical abuse against his students, including throwing hot water and coffee at the skaters he'd coached at the East West Ice Palace in California, and even biting pair skater Jessica Pfund on her right arm during a training session in 2013, when Pfund was only 15 years old. With multiple allegations surrounding him, it's safe to say that this is what he will be known about more than his other accomplishments.
• Aljona Savchenko, the 2018 Olympic Champion and one of the most decorated pair skaters of her generation, came under fire in June 2021 after she announced that she planned to un-retire and return to competition, this time representing the United States instead of Germany. This alone is not bad. What made it controversial was her decision to partner up with pair skater TJ Nyman, who has never competed on a senior level^note his career highlight is a 5th place finish at the 2018 Junior World Championships with former partner Sarah Feng, and who is currently facing multiple allegations of sexual abuse and misconduct, and coercion and rape against minors. Furthermore, Savchenko and Nyman were planning on training with Dalilah Sappenfield, Nyman's coach and an equally controversial figure who has been accused of enabling a culture of sexual abuse among her students. Savchenko has faced considerable backlash for her decision, which only worsened when footage of her kissing Nyman^note It's important to note that Savchenko is a married woman circulated the Internet. While Savchenko would eventually split up with Nyman and return to coaching, this incident has tarnished her reputation considerably.
• Skating coach Dalilah Sappenfield is well-known for her focus on pair skating in the American figure skating scene; her most prominent students being Alexa Scimeca Knierim/Chris Knierim, the 2018 Olympic bronze medallists in the figure skating team event. As of 2021, she is now known for allegations of fostering a toxic and abusive environment in her rink, involving heavy verbal abuse against female skaters^note Tarah Kayne, one of her former students, had even turned to self-harm due to the severe abuse, being inappropriately involved in her students' personal and romantic lives, and covering for the late John Coughlin, a former student who committed suicide in the wake of sexual assault allegations. Sappenfield has since been temporarily suspended by the U.S. Center for SafeSport, and there's little doubt that this is what she will be remembered for among the American skating world.
• Wolfgang Schwarz is more known for trafficking Russian and Lithuanian women to his native Austria and for attempting to kidnap the teenage daughter of a Romanian billionaire than he is known for winning the men's figure skating gold medal at the 1968 Winter Olympics.
• Kamila Valieva was a well-accomplished figure skater, having set nine world records in her career before she became the first female skater to land a quadruple jump in Olympic competition, thus helping the Russian Olympic Committee team win the gold medal in the figure skating team event at the 2022 Winter Olympics. However, all of these accomplishments were quickly overshadowed when Valieva tested positive for trimetazidine, a banned substance, on the day after the team event. The controversy only worsened when Valieva was cleared by both the Court of Arbitration for Sport and by the World Anti-Doping Agency to compete in the women's individual skating event, due to her being a minor and thus classified as a "protected person" under WADA guidelines, which drew condemnation from multiple skaters and even the IOC. While she would end up finishing fourth in the overall event, there's little doubt that these doping allegations have tarnished Valieva's skating career in the West. That said, few people seem to blame Valieva herself for this, with most if not all of the disgust aimed toward the coaches who engaged in what is essentially child abuse.
• Eteri Tutberidze is a prominent Russian skating coach who specializes in the women's discipline, and who has coached several female skaters to international success, including three Olympic champions^note Yulia Lipnitskaya in the 2014 team event, Alina Zagitova in the 2018 women's event, and Anna Shcherbakova in the 2022 women's event, two Olympic silver medallists^note Evgenia Medvedeva in 2018 and Alexandra Trusova in 2022, and the aforementioned Kamila Valieva. Nevertheless, she's also well-known for her abusive coaching methods such as encouraging dehydration and starvation in her students, and many of her skaters have retired before the age of 18 after suffering serious injuries. In February 2022, Tutberidze faced a new level of controversy during Valieva's doping scandal at the 2022 Winter Olympics, with several skaters and coaches criticizing not only her abusive methods, but also the judges' bias towards her skaters, particularly after Valieva was cleared to compete in the women's individual event despite her positive drug test.^note This is especially egregious considering that non-Russian skaters have received harsher penalties for minor infractions. While Tutberidze is still a coach in Russia, there's little doubt that this controversy and her abusive training methods are what she will be remembered for.
• Phoenix Suns owner Robert Sarver took on a similar role to that of Donald Sterling when on September 13, 2022, a nearly year-long investigation on Sarver specifically revealed nearly two decades' worth of racist, sexist, and other harsh treatments in relation to employees of his, despite him being publicly against SB 1070 (a law in Arizona that was very strict with anti-immigration rules in place to the point of racial profiling in mind) in 2010. Despite the severity of his actions, Sarver was met with a year-long ban (starting on September 13, 2022 and officially looking to end that same day in 2023) that included him going to behavioral meetings and paying a fine of $10 million to the NBA that would be donated to charities looking to end toxic behaviors that Sarver had. However, after much condemnation later coming from the initial ruling, Sarver himself looked to sell the team to someone else instead eight days after the initial ruling commenced; the team was eventually successfully sold to former Michigan State University champion player and current CEO of United Wholesale Mortgage Mathew Ishbia and his older brother Justin Ishbia on December 20, 2022, which later was made official on February 7, 2023.
• Boston Celtics head coach Ime Udoka went from a long-time respected assistant coach (including an NBA Finals winner in 2014 with the San Antonio Spurs) and first-time head coach that led the Boston Celtics to their first NBA Finals appearance since 2010 to someone that's considered a horny hound dog of an individual due to his relationship interests with multiple female staff members within the Celtics. While it was known that Udoka was in an open relationship with actress Nia Long, his unwanted actions with said female staff members led to the Celtics specifically suspending Udoka from his head coach position for the entire 2022-23 season on September 22, though Udoka did not plan to resign from his position in the process. The Brooklyn Nets initially considered getting Udoka back into their coaching staff as the new head coach, replacing Steve Nash's position there, but ultimately reconsidered and allowed for former assistant coach and interim coach Jacque Vaughn to permanently take over for the rest of the season. Meanwhile, Udoka was eventually fired as the head coach of the Celtics on February 16, 2023 after the 2023 NBA All-Star Weekend began, with interim head coach Joe Mazzulla gaining the permanent head coaching role for them (and a contract extension) after starting his interim season with an impressive 42-17 record before the All-Star Weekend to start the season out.
• 14-time All-Star and two-time MVP Karl Malone has since, long after retiring from the sport, become more disliked and discussed outside of Utah due to his very shady actions off the court, such as impregnating a 13-year old girl before joining the NBA (with the child in question eventually becoming an NFL player named Demetrius Bell) and even hitting on Kobe Bryant’s wife during Malone's only season with the Lakers.
• During the 2022-23 season, Memphis Grizzlies point guard Ja Morant quickly went from a lovable All-Star point guard to an egotistical, wannabe gangsta between his bold comments on him saying he's perfectly okay in the Western Conference, having an entourage threaten other people during the season, and even showing off a gun he got at a nightclub, the last incident resulting in him having an eight-game suspension and having a temporary break from playing in the NBA in order for him to get his life back on track. It apparently didn't work as he was seen in another social media post waving a gun around, which earned him a 25 game suspension (at minimum^note He also has to complete a league-mandated program before he's reinstated) to start the 2023-24 season.
• Evgeni Plushenko was a prominent figure skater with many accomplishments and titles to his name. He was a three-time World champion, a four-time Grand Prix Final champion, a ten-time Russian national champion, and he won four Olympic medals over the course of his career. Nowadays, Plushenko is well known for being very pro-Putin, and he has even supported Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which resulted in him being sanctioned by the Ukrainian government in December of 2022.
• Alan Eagleson was once one of the biggest Canadian names in ice hockey, serving as head of the National Hockey League Players' Association from 1967 to 1992. Mention him today, however, and people are more likely to think of how enormously corrupt he was before anything else; his financial crimes have rendered him a pariah in a sphere where he was once treated like royalty.

Events

• Olympic Games:
  • The 1904 Summer Olympics are mainly remembered for how poorly planned they were, perhaps most infamously its men's marathon event: Run during the hottest part of the day on dusty country roads with minimal water supply, of the 32 athletes who competed, only 14 managed to complete the race, and although Frederick Lorz was greeted at the finish line as the apparent winner, he was later disqualified after it was discovered he had hitched a ride in a car for part of the race. The actual winner, Thomas Hicks, was near collapse and hallucinating by the end of the race as a side effect of being administered brandy, raw eggs, and strychnine by his trainers.
  • The 1936 Summer Olympics were notable for a number of reasons: they were the first Olympics to be televised (with its coverage of the events pioneering many techniques now used in the filming of sports), they introduced the Olympic torch relay, and Jesse Owens won four gold medals during them. But the games are mainly known for one thing: Being hosted in Berlin during the era of Nazi Germany. Not helping this was the fact that Adolf Hitler saw the games as an opportunity to promote his government and Nazi ideas of racial supremacy.
  • The 1956 Summer Olympics are best known for the infamous "Blood in the Water" match, a violent, emotionally-charged water polo game between Hungary and the Soviet Union that occurred literally weeks after the latter's military put down the former's revolution.
  • The 1968 Summer Olympics, held in Mexico City, were the first Olympic Games to be staged in Latin America and the first to be staged in a Spanish-speaking country. They were also the first to use an all-weather (smooth) track for track and field events instead of the traditional cinder track. But they're best known for three infamous controversies:
    • Students unhappy at the increasing brutality and authoritarianism of the Mexican government attempted to use the prominence brought by the Olympics to demand greater civil and democratic rights, staging protests in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas in Tlatelolco. Ten days before the games began, a mixed police and military force along with the Olympia Battalion (a secret joint force made up of soldiers, police officers and federal security agents) moved to break up the gathering. In the resulting Tlatelolco massacre, hundreds of protestors and civilians were killed and over 1000 were arrested. Though Mexico's government attempted to justify this bloodshed by claiming that the first shots had been fired by protestors, a 2001 investigation revealed that these "protestors" were actually agent provocateurs. Among Mexicans in particular, it's downright impossible to discuss said Olympics without bringing up the massacre.
    • While receiving their medals, African American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos each raised a black gloved fist in what's still considered one of the most overtly political statements in Olympic history. IOC president Avery Brundage considered what they did to be unfitting for the Olympics and ordered that they be suspended from the American team and banned from the Olympic Village. When the U.S. Olympic Committee refused, Brundage forced their compliance by threatening to ban the entire American track team if they didn't kick them out. Smith and Carlos would not participate in any future Olympic events. The third man on the podium, Australian Peter Norman, wore a human rights badge and stood in open solidarity with Smith and Carlos. As a result, he would share their fate by being quietly dropped from all future track events.
    • Czechoslovakian gymnast Věra Čáslavská quietly turned her head down and away whenever the Soviet national anthem was played, in silent protest against the Warsaw Pact invasion of her country. This led to the new regime banning her from both sporting events and international travel for many years, effectively forcing her into early retirement.^note Ironically, her use of "Jarabe tapatío" (aka the Mexican hat dance song) as the music for her floor routine and choosing to marry in the city shortly after the games ended made her immensely popular in Mexico.
  • The 1972 Summer Olympics are best known for the Munich massacre, where eleven Israeli athletes were taken hostage and murdered by the Palestinian terrorist group Black September, with some logistical assistance from West German neo-Nazis. A West German policeman was also killed during a failed attempt to rescue the hostages. It even overshadowed allegations that the men's basketball final was deliberately rigged against the American team, as well as another black power salute controversy.
  • The 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal saw Nadia Comăneci earn the first perfect ten in gymnastics. However, in Canada at least, they are best known for the city of Montreal racking up an astronomical level of debt in order to pay for the staging of the games (the 720 percent cost overrun for the games remains the highest in IOC history) and the (much-delayed) construction of the venues. A notable target is Olympic Stadium, which was not completed until long after the games were held, and which has been plagued with issues ever since. Its derisive nickname of "The Big Owe" is not far off the mark; its cost would not be fully paid off until 2006, by which time both of its post-Olympic tenants, the CFL's Montreal Alouettes and MLB's Montreal Expos, had departed for pastures new.^note Between 1976 and 2006, the Alouettes folded and revived twice. They eventually moved to the team's original home, a considerably older and smaller but far more centrally located stadium. As for the Expos, they moved south of the border to Washington, D.C. to become the Washington Nationals. Costs aside, the Montreal Olympics were also known for a controversial ban of the Taiwanese team due to pressure from mainland China and a 29-country boycott owing to the IOC's refusal to ban the New Zealand team thanks to the New Zealand rugby team touring apartheid South Africa earlier that year^note They weren't banned because rugby wasn't a Olympic sport and the IOC had no jurisdiction. Also, Team Canada failed to win a single gold medal on home turf.
  • The 1980 Summer Olympics were and are best known for a large-scale boycott against them, resulting from them being held in Moscow during the widely-condemned Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan.
  • Four years later, the Soviet Union and thirteen other countries retaliated by boycotting the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, which led to an extremely low point for the McDonald's promotional team. It's hard to talk about either of these games without bringing up this fact.
  • The 1988 Summer Olympics saw three notable controversies during the games themselves:
    • Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson had set a world record during the men's 100m event, only to be stripped of his gold medal after the event, when he'd tested positive for anabolic steroids.
    • The men's light middleweight boxing event saw Park Si-Hun of South Korea defeat American Roy Jones, Jr. in a highly controversial 3-2 vote among the judges. Eleven years later, it was found that three of the judges had been bribed by South Korean officials.
    • American diver Greg Louganis infamously struck his head on the springboard during the preliminary rounds, suffering a concussion as a result, though he would go on to win the gold medal in the event.^note this briefly resurfaced to public attention in 1995 when Louganis revealed he had been diagnosed as HIV-positive six months prior to that Olympics. It would be pointed out that the chlorine in the water killed the HIV virus given that the only path of transmission from one competitor to another would be through an open wound; though this led to criticism of Louganis for not disclosing the HIV diagnosis after his initial head injury
  • Much like the games that occurred 24 years beforehand, the 1996 Summer Olympics are also mostly known because of an infamous terrorist attack. In this case, it was the Centennial Olympic Park bombing, committed by an anti-abortion extremist named Eric Rudolph. Not only was the bombing itself one of the most well-known events of the games, it also sparked a related controversy after Richard Jewell — a security guard whose actions undoubtedly saved many lives — was falsely focused on as the presumed culprit by the news media, leading him to sue for defamation.
  • The 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney also saw a few controversies:
    • American track star Marion Jones became the first female track and field athlete to win 5 medals in a single Olympics, having won 3 gold medals and 2 bronze medals. 7 years later, Jones was stripped of her medals after admitting to using anabolic steroids before the Olympics, and she was officially scrapped from Olympic records.
    • Dong Fangxiao won a bronze medal with the Chinese team in the women's gymnastics team event, but in 2010, an investigation uncovered that her age had been falsified, and that she was actually 14 years old when she'd won the medal (gymnasts must be 16 in order to compete in the Olympics). As a result, the Chinese women's team was stripped of their medals.
    • Andreea Raducan of Romania won the gold medal in the women's gymnastics all-around event, only to be stripped of it after testing positive for pseudoephedrine, a banned stimulant at the time. She attempted to have her medal reinstated 15 years later, but was ultimately unsuccessful.
  • The 2002 Winter Olympics was surrounded by major controversies:
    • The bidding for that Olympics was also marred by significant allegations of bribery on the part of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee when 4 IOC members were accused of taking gifts during the bidding period. After four separate investigations were launched; several members of SLOC - including leaders Tom Welch and David Johnson - resigned, while the Justice Department filed 15 charges of bribery and fraud. Eventually; Bain Capital CEO Mitt Romney took the helm of the organizing committee and succeeded in reorganizing the committee, organizing security for these - the first Olympics after the September 11th attacks - and turning the budget from a $379 million deficit to a $100 million surplus; reigniting Romney's dormant political aspirations^note prior to this; Romney's only run for office was in 1994, when in a very Republican-friendly year, he was unsuccessful in ousting incumbent Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy; though Romney managed to hold Kennedy to 58% of the vote, the lowest of any Senate race for Kennedy since he was first elected in a 1962 special election to finish the term of the seat given up when elder brother John was elected President in 1960; as later that year Romney would be elected Governor of Massachusetts, eventually becoming the 2012 Republican nominee for President of the United States and serving since 2019 as a Senator from Utah.
    • Hours before R. Kelly was scheduled to perform during the opening ceremonies; the Chicago Sun-Times revealed that a sex tape existed that alleged to have shown Kelly having sex with, and also urinating on an underage girl. Surprisingly, Kelly was permitted to perform after denying that was him, though he would be indicted that June on 21 counts of child pornography (later reduced to 14); of which he was eventually acquitted in 2008.^note Kelly would eventually be convicted on 9 counts - including 8 counts of violating the Mann Act relating to taking minors across state lines for sexual purposes - in a separate trial in 2021, and was given a 30 year sentence in June 2022. He was later convicted of three counts of producing child pornography in Illinois - though being acquitted on charges of fixing the 2008 state trial - and still faces further charges in California. As of May 2023, Kelly is appealing the convictions
    • A major, sport-changing controversy took place in the pairs' figure skating events, when Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze of Russia took the gold medal over Jamie Salé and David Pelletier of Canada in the free skate event. While the results had already outraged both Canadian and American audiences and media, who strongly suspected cheating and bribery due to the fact that the Russians had made noticeable mistakes while the Canadians had skated flawlessly, the scandal erupted even further when Marie-Reine Le Gougne, the French judge on the panel, confessed to swapping votes with another judge as part of a deal to give the ice dancing gold to the French team. In the end, Salé and Pelletier were awarded gold medals, while Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze got to keep their medals as well, and Le Gougne was suspended by the ISU for three years, and the ISU judging system was changed to keep the judges' votes anonymous for future competitions.
  • The 2008 Summer Olympics marked the first time that the Olympics were hosted in China. However, there were several controversies to take place in the lead-up to the games, and during the games themselves:
    • The Chinese government faced a lot of scrutiny for the immense pressure they'd placed on athletes and coaches to win, which reached a head when Liu Xiang, who won China's first Olympic gold in the 110 metre hurdles at the 2004 Olympics, had pulled out of the heats with an injury. It had soon come out that many coaches were told that all personal achievements of the Chinese athletes would be meaningless if they didn't win gold, and one of the rowing coaches was even fired by China's sporting federation for arguing against this mindset.
    • Many pro-Tibetan independence groups called for a boycott of the Olympics until China granted independence to Tibet, and some protesters had even disrupted the torch lighting ceremony in Olympia, which quickly became a problem for the entire torch relay.
    • It was found that child actress Lin Miaoke didn't actually sing the "Ode to the Motherland" during the flag-raising segment of the opening ceremony, but she had been lip-syncing over the pre-recorded voice of child singer Yang Peiyi. Not helping matters was the chief musical director explaining that while Yang's voice was better, Lin's appearance was ultimately more appealing.
  • The 2014 Winter Olympics had a whole bunch of controversies:
    • Some Circassian organizations objected to the games being held on land that was Circassian until 1864, and demanded that the games be cancelled or moved unless the Russian government apologized for the acts of ethnic cleansing Circassians suffered in the 19th century.
    • Concerns were expressed over Russia's infamously homophobic policies, especially the notorious ban on "LGBT propaganda".
    • Not helping Russia's image was the fact that severe cost overruns made these games the most expensive in Olympics history, which many commentators blamed on corruption.
    • Probably the biggest controversy was the massive Russian state-sponsored doping program uncovered in the aftermath of the games, which resulted about a third of the Russian team being banned from the Rio Olympics (and later the entire Russian team being banned from both the Tokyo Olympics and the Beijing Winter Olympics when Russia refused to comply with anti-doping rules^note athletes who could prove they were clean were allowed to compete, but had to do so representing the ROC and were forbidden from using their flag or hearing their national anthem).
  • The 2016 Summer Olympics marked the first time that the Olympics were held in South America, though they didn't happen without some controversies:
    • A Zika virus outbreak in Brazil, starting in 2015, caused widespread concerns for the Olympics, resulting in several athletes to decline from taking part in the games.
    • During the games, Ryan Lochte from the United States' men's swimming team caused a controversy when he and three other US swimmers claimed to have been robbed at gunpoint after a night out in Rio, by "armed robbers posing as police". Later details soon emerged, revealing that the "armed robbers" were actually security guards at a gas station that the swimmers had allegedly vandalized. Many Brazilians were not pleased by their antics, and Lochte was suspended for 4 months by USA Swimming.
    • These Olympics also saw multiple anti-Israel incidents, most notably Egyptian judoka Islam El Shehaby refusing to bow to Israeli Or Sasson after losing to him in a first-round match. Another incident was Joud Fahmy of Saudi Arabia being accused of forfeiting her match to avoid competing against Gili Cohen of Israel.
  • The 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing marked the first time that a city has hosted both the summer and winter Olympic games. But even that was overshadowed by multiple controversies both in the lead-up and during the games:
    • Ten countries declined to send any diplomats or official representatives to Beijing due to the ongoing Uyghur genocide in China, and many human rights groups abroad have protested and called for a boycott in the months leading up to the games.
    • The Beijing Olympic Committee received a lot of criticism for the quality of the athletes' accommodations; namely, poor-quality food, insufficient quarantine facilities, and even a lack of training equipment.
    • During the games, there were at least five athletes reported for doping violations. Most notably, the medal ceremony for the figure skating team event was delayed after Kamila Valieva from the Russian Olympic Committee tested positive for a banned substance. Not helping matters was when she was cleared to compete in the individual women's skating event despite her positive test.
• Super Bowl:
  • Super Bowl XXXVIII is more known for the halftime show with Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake and the Wardrobe Malfunction that took place in it than it is for the game itself.
  • Super Bowl XLVII is primarily known for the power outage that took place during the second half of the game.
  • Super Bowl LIII was infamous for several reasons:
    • Both the NFC and AFC Championship games were affected by questionable officiating,^note In the NFC Championship, a case of pass-interference by the Los Angeles Rams, which should have given the New Orleans Saints an automatic first down, got missed, forcing the Saints to settle for a field goal and go into overtime, which the Rams ended up winning. In the AFC Championship, the Kansas City Chiefs were hit with a highly specious roughing the passer penalty halfway through the fourth quarter when Chris Jones lightly brushed Tom Brady on the shoulder; the resulting penalty helped the New England Patriots drive for a touchdown to take a 24-21 lead, and also ultimately winning in overtime. leaving many people, especially Saints fans, feeling that neither team deserved to be there.
    • It's regarded as perhaps the worst game in Super Bowl history, with a score of only 13-3 favoring the Patriots. Only one touchdown was scored by New England in that entire match; the rest of the points during that Super Bowl were scored through nothing but field goals.
    • Following the death of SpongeBob SquarePants creator Stephen Hillenburg, a petition was made to have the song "Sweet Victory", one of the show's most iconic musical numbers, played during the Super Bowl halftime show as a tribute to him. Despite the petition reaching its goal, and numerous teases that the NFL would indeed include the song in their halftime, the most glaring being that it was played prior to the game, "Sweet Victory" was never actually sung. This received widespread outrage from not only SpongeBob fans, but the animation community as a whole who felt that the NFL and PepsiCo disrespected Hillenberg's legacy and made the efforts to get them to have "Sweet Victory" sung for the halftime show feel pointless. There was, however, a brief animation of Squidward introducing the actual halftime singers, but many didn't think it was nearly enough, in addition to looking more like an incredibly blatant case of Bait-and-Switch.
    • Maroon 5, Travis Scott, and Big Boi's decisions to play at halftime were highly criticized, as many bands and musicians had previously turned down performing out of protest for the NFL's treatment of Colin Kaepernick.
• The 2000 Paralympic Games in Sydney are best known for the Spanish Basketball ID team being stripped of their gold medals when an undercover reporter exposed that ten of the team's twelve members were just pretending to be mentally handicapped. Allegedly, the Spanish Paralympic team did not administer the required IQ tests, and was intentionally letting non-disabled athletes in for other events so they could have a better chance at medals and sponsorship deals.
• The 1996 boxing match between Bruce Seldon and Mike Tyson is notable for being Tyson's final heavyweight championship victory. But to most people, it's best known for being the fight Tupac Shakur attended on the night he was fatally shot.
• The Indianapolis 500:
  • The 1964 Indianapolis 500 is mostly remembered not for AJ Foyt’s second 500 victory, but instead for the seven-car crash and resulting massive fire on the second lap that killed drivers Dave MacDonald and Eddie Sachs when MacDonald’s fuel tank ruptured after he struck the wall and ignited the 75 gallons of gasoline in his tank. The conflagration led to safety improvements and rule changes that effectively ended the era of gasoline-powered engines at the 500; nearly every competitor switched to methanol fuel in 1965, which would remain the standard race fuel for the next 40 years.
  • The 1973 Indianapolis 500 is often regarded as one of (if not the) worst races in the event’s entire history. Art Pollard died in a qualifying crash, David “Salt” Walther was badly burned and permanently disfigured in a first lap crash that also injured 13 spectators, Swede Savage was critically injured in a lap 58 crash and would die a month later, and one of the safety vehicles responding to Savage’s crash accidentally struck and killed a pit crew member. And when the race wasn’t delayed by bad accidents it was delayed by bad weather. Originally scheduled to run on the Memorial Day holiday, by the time they cleaned up Walther’s crash it had started raining, and it kept on raining the rest of that day and the next. They finally restarted the race two days later, by which time most of the fans had already gone home, and it still ended up being cut short by even more rain, ending after only 133 laps. The traditional postrace victory banquet was also cancelled because by then all the teams and drivers just wanted to get out of there.
  • The 1981 Indianapolis 500 is infamous for two near-fatal incidents and, more famously in latter days, Bobby Unser passing fourteen lapped cars under yellow, which, at the time, was against the rules but went unnoticed, and ABC's very biased reporting of the incident. Unser was stripped of his win, then had it reinstated, costing him $1 million in commercial endorsements by his estimate and essentially forcing him to retire from racing, which only added to the controversy (and the legend of the Andretti Curse). Unser and Andretti were close friends prior to this, and it took 37 years before they finally buried the hatchet.
  • The 1996 Indianapolis 500 was overshadowed by the "split" between Championship Auto Racing Teams and the Indy Racing League, especially since the latter was a "spec series" that many of the previous winners refused to participate in, leaving the field for the crown jewel of American open-wheel racing to be filled with relative unknowns, unproven rookies, and aging "backmarkers". Then the IRL announced a controversial "25/8" rule that guaranteed the top 25 IRL cars were automatically "locked in" and only the remaining 8 positions in the field would be open to qualifying on speed, which shattered the 80+ year tradition of only the "fastest 33" making it (and part of the reason why CART drivers refused to participate).
  • The 1996 500 is also sometimes overshadowed by the US 500 held by CART on the same day, which had a 20 car pileup during the prerace parade laps. This came after CART spent the weeks leading up to the race touting that the true racers were going to be racing in the US 500 and not the Indy 500, which up until said accident was relatively clean and competitive.^note While the remainder of the Indy 500 would get more messy, the damage was already done. CART never recovered from this, and the stigma stuck with the organization until its reunification with the Indy Racing League in 2008.^note CART filed for bankruptcy in 2003 with the liquidated assets being reorganized into the Champ Car World Series in 2004, but the stigma remained.
  • The 2011 500 wasn't controversial in itself, but is sadly best known today for its winner, Dan Wheldon, being killed in a crash that very much was controversial a few months later. As a matter of fact, the Wheldon crash did a lot of damage to Indy Car as a whole, severely damaging the brand's popularity.
• The 2001 Daytona 500 is remembered mostly for Dale Earnhardt's fatal wreck on the last lap. His death also overshadowed an 18 car pileup on Lap 173. Since Earnhardt was such a prominent figure, NASCAR would implement stricter safety measures for racers (which have been effective, as of 2022 Earnhardt is the last driver to be killed during a NASCAR race.)
• The 1994 Formula One season was won by Michael Schumacher for the first time. However, that season was marred by the deaths of three-time champion, Ayrton Senna (witnessed by Schumacher, who was directly behind in second position) and Roland Ratzenberger during the San Marino Grand Prix, and by allegations that several teams, but most particularly Schumacher's Benetton team, broke the sport's technical regulations.
• The 1896 heavyweight championship boxing match of Bob Fitzsimmons vs. Tom Sharkey is best known for having been fixed, as well as accusations that referee Wyatt Earp (yes, that Wyatt Earp) was involved with the fix. Earp's calling of the match was so criticized at the time that it followed him for years afterwards, to the point it was reported that when he died in 1929, he was perhaps more well-known for his decision in the title fight than his actions at the O.K. Corral gunfight (for which he would become better-known after his death).
• In perhaps the oldest case of this happening in the world of sport, the January 13, 532, chariot races at the Hippodrome of Constantinople are notorious for being the event that sparked the Nika riots.
• The 1932-33 Ashes Tour is best known even in the world of cricket as the Bodyline Ashes, which triggered an international incident that nearly worked in the Axis's favour over unnecessary roughness.
• The 1985 European Cup Final saw Juventus become the first team to win all three European club competitions^note the European Cup (now Champions League), the UEFA Cup (now Europa League) and the European Cup Winners' Cup. It also saw a riot before the match, which resulted in the deaths of 39 Juventus fans and saw English clubs indefinitely banned from UEFA's competitions (which, except for Liverpool - who, being deemed responsible, were banned for an extra year - was lifted in 1990).
• The 1989 FA Cup semi-final match between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest is almost exclusively remembered for the Hillsborough disaster, an infamous human crush that killed 97 spectators.
• The Kansas City Royals won their first World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals in 1985, but that series is better remembered for one of the worst officiating calls in baseball history. In the bottom of the ninth of Game 6, umpire Don Denkinger ruled Jorge Orta safe at first when the throw clearly beat him there^note In the fourth inning of the same game, Royals player Frank White had been called out at second in a questionable call (replays showed he actually beat the tag); since he likely would have scored on Sheridan's single two pitches later had the call been made correctly, it could be argued that the two bad calls effectively cancelled each other out. The Cardinals imploded, losing that game and getting routed in Game 7. Not helping matters is Denkinger ejecting Cardinals manager Whitey Herzog and pitcher Joaquín Andújar in the clincher which led to fans sending him death threats.
• Naomi Osaka's victory in the 2018 U.S. Open has been overshadowed by Serena Williams accusing umpire Carlos Ramos of sexism and racism after he penalized her during the second set, and the subsequent debate about whether or not Williams was right.
• Boston Marathon:
  • The 1980 Boston Marathon is best known for a cheating scandal. Rosie Ruiz, the declared winner in the female category, was discovered to have not actually run the entire race eight days later and had her title stripped from her.
  • The 2013 Boston Marathon is remembered for a deadly bombing that killed three people and wounded 270 others in an act of domestic terrorism.
• A 1971 Old Firm football game between Rangers and Celtic quickly became overshadowed by the 1971 Ibrox disaster, a crush among thousands in a crowd on a stairway that occurred shortly after the game had finished 1–1, resulting in over 200 injuries and 66 deaths. It has never been confirmed exactly how the crush happened, with the most likely explanation being that somebody fell over and a chain-reaction pile-up of people falling over each other followed. Even before the 1971 disaster happened, the stairways at Ibrox Park (now Ibrox Stadium) were reported to be unsafe with little movement freedom, but it was only until after the tragedy happened that the British government was spurred to investigate sports grounds safety. The tragedy still looms over football fans to this day, especially Scottish ones.
• The November 17, 1968 AFL game between the Oakland Raiders and the New York Jets is known as the "Heidi Game" for a controversy related to NBC's coverage of the event. When the game ran long, the remainder was preempted in the eastern half of the United States by a previously scheduled broadcast of a Heidi TV movie. This meant that large parts of the country missed the Raiders' exciting come-from-behind victory, where they scored two touchdowns in the final minute of the game. This prompted a renegotiation of sports programming so that there shall never again be preempting for something like this again.
• The 1991 Budweiser at The Glen is remembered for J.D. McDuffie's fatal crash on Lap 5 and the resulting reconfiguration of a bus-stop chicane and a gravel trap^note  since turned into a paved tarmac .
• The 1987 Winston 500 is remembered for the lead-up to the race, in which drivers of GM-affiliated cars were raising concerns of the dangerously high speeds of 210+ MPH causing the rear ends of their cars to lift off the track entering Turn 3 as well as Bobby Allison's car lifting off the ground and hitting the catch fence in the tri-oval due to a cut tire rather than Davey Allison getting the first victory of his career.
• The February 1, 2012 Egyptian Premier League association football match between Masry and Ahly is largely remembered for the brutal Port Said Stadium riot that followed it and resulted in the deaths of 74 people.
• The 1961 World Figure Skating Championships, originally scheduled to be held in Prague, Czechoslovakia, are remembered for being cancelled entirely, due to the entire American figure skating team being killed in the Sabena Flight 548 crash at Zaventem Airport in Brussels.
• The 2006 Collegiate American Football game between crosstown schools the University of Miami and Florida International University is remembered solely for a bench-clearing brawl in the third quarter, which led to suspensions for a combined total of 31 players on both teams, and the firing of former Miami player-turned TV commentator Lamar Thomas, who made statements supporting his former team's conduct during the game broadcast. Indeed, hardly anyone even remembers the final score (Miami beat FIU 35-0).
• The Ashes 2023, Second Test, Lord's Cricket Ground: Englishman Johnny Bairstow was controversially given out after he wandered out of his crease on the last ball of an over (the umpire had not yet called "over") and Australian wicketkeeper Alex Carey threw down the stumps. The Australians eventually won, but were subject to abuse by MCC members as they headed off through the Long Room.
• The Spanish women's team first ever World Cup finals victory, a 1-0 win over England, was quickly overshadowed by RFEF president Luis Rubiales, an already controversial figure, forcibly kissing Jenni Hermoso on the lips in the ensuing celebration, kicking off what became known as the Rubiales Affair. Her statement about not expecting the kiss and feeling uncomfortable when receiving it and Rubiales' denial of any wrongdoing with the kiss launched what became known as Spain's #MeToo Movement, called #SeAcabó (It's Over). Rubiales refused to resign from the RFEF, which stood by him, and accused Hermoso of lying, only adding fuel to the fire. Finally, in the face of 28 women refusing to be called up to the national team, he resigned on September 10th, a full 21 days after the incident.
• More people would probably remember the 2022 FIFA World Cup, held in Qatar, for the controversy than the football. It started with the award in the first place, as Qatar has no football culture to speak off, and, being in the Middle East, had unfavourable temperatures in the summer months, which led to it being declared high risk by their own technical report, which would lead to accusations of bribery and corruption within FIFA (which would become public knowledge in 2015). The problem caused by the climate would be solved by it being moved to November and December, which would result in numerous domestic leagues - especially the European ones, which provide a lot of the players - having to face disruption to their leagues and knock-on effects to the European club competitions. There would also be concerns about its treatment of migrant workers and women and its position of LGBT rights (homosexuality is illegal in Qatar), as well as the cost of hosting it (about 60 times that of the 2010 tournament). With most of these problems also existing in Saudi Arabia - the likely host of the 2034 tournament due to every other continent (other than Oceania, but none of their members are able to host it without Australia, who have already declined to bid) being unable to host that edition due to FIFA's rotation rules - most of these problems will no doubt reappear in a few years.

Teams and organizations

• FIFA spent decades facing rumors and allegations of corruption. These came to a head in 2015 after nine of its top officials and five associated businesspeople were indicted by the United States Justice Department for wire fraud, racketeering, and money laundering. Nowadays, FIFA is most widely known for its corruption among the general public.
• The Washington Commanders are no strangers to controversy, due to several different issues:
  • The Commanders were best known by non-sports fans because of their former name for many decades, the Washington Redskins, seen by many as a racial slur used against Native Americans (with their logo in particular being considered a caricature of one to some people). There were many campaigns to persuade the team to change it. None of these succeeded until July 2020, when various major outlets (including Nike and Amazon) refused to sell any more Redskins merchandise and FedEx threatened to remove its name from the team's stadium unless the name was changed, resulting in the team's much more generic name of Washington Football Team for the 2020 and 2021 seasons before being rebranded as the Commanders from 2022 onwards.
  • Even after the name change to the Commanders, the team remained embroiled in controversy, thanks to a lack of success in the playoffs (only winning the division 4 times since 1999 as of this writing), a seeming reliance on players and coaches that were more about name recognition than on-field performance (even bringing back Joe Gibbs, the Commanders' head coach from their 1980s glory days, didn't work all that well), and finally, to a workplace culture so toxic that the United States Congress felt the need to step in and investigate (with then-owner Dan Snyder refusing to testify before the committee), and accusations that Snyder had been cooking the books and not giving the other 31 owners their fair shares^note The NFL operates under a "shared revenue" system, where most of the money taken in by the 32 teams is collected by the league, then redistributed equally among the clubs. This prevents the teams in the much more lucrative markets (New York, Los Angeles, California's Bay Area, etc...) from gaining an advantage over the Buffaloes and Jacksonville's of the league. At least in theory.. The NFL Commissioner can, at his own discretion, call for the other 31 team owners alongside Snyder to vote on whether or not they should just throw him out of the league, and quite a few people were calling for this to happen. Snyder eventually hired the Bank of America to help sell the newly-christened Washington Commanders (either partially or completely) on November 2, 2022, and the sale, to a consortium led by Philadelphia-based investor Josh Harris and basketball hall-of-famer Magic Johnson, was announced in May of 2023 and approved by the other NFL owners on July 20, 2023.
• The 1980's rendition of the United States Football League is mostly remembered for two things: being the first American football league to play in the spring instead of the fall and the fact that one of the team owners, Donald Trump, pushed the league to schedule its 1986 season in direct competition with the NFL, in the belief that it would force a merger between the two leagues. This effort failed, bankrupting the USFL and driving it into obscurity.^note Well, mostly failed. The USFL filed an anti-trust lawsuit against the NFL... and won. However, the same jury also ruled that the USFL's financial problems were because of their own actions (chief among them being the suicidal idea of running head to head with the most profitable sports league in the world, though they were having serious financial problems even before the move to the fall) and awarded them only $1, which was then tripled to $3 under anti-trust laws, and finally upped to $3.76 thanks to interest accrued while the decision was being appealed. As of 2022 that check for $3.76 has not been cashed.
• The Houston Astros as a whole got hit with this when it was discovered that during the 2017 season in which they won the World Series they had engaged in a sophisticated cheating system by which an Astros staffer would watch the live video feed in the "replay room", decipher the catcher's signs, and then players would relay to the batter via banging on a trash can what pitch was coming. The scheme was revealed by former Astros pitcher Mike Fiers, who then cooperated in the investigation. The fallout cost Astros General Manager Jeff Luhnow and Manager A.J. Hinch their jobs (as well as both being suspended from the MLB for a year), and also led to resignations by Boston Red Sox Manager Alex Cora (who was the Astros bench coach in 2017) and New York Mets Manager Carlos Beltrán (a former Astros outfielder who was named as the "ringleader" by MLB's investigation). The Astros also were fined $5 million dollars and stripped of their 2020 and 2021 first-round picks in the MLB Draft. Even after Houston won the World Series in 2022 over the Philadelphia Phillies fair and square, many baseball fans still lament the Astros winning due to the memories of 2017 still being intact.
• The entire Indian e-sports scene is still very much developing, no doubt thanks to the infamous cheating scandal tied to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive player Nikhil "forsaken" Kumawat. He had been picked up by the nascent Indian branch of OpTic Gaming, seen as the biggest foray to date of a western organization investing in the country's scene, but once Kumawat was caught using an aimbot during a LAN event (infamously disguised as a program titled "Word.EXE"), OpTic pulled out and disbanded the team, killing a vast bulk of burgeoning faith in the region. While the nation is still finding its momentum in esports, the only thing most viewers of other regions know of India is the "Word.EXE" incident.
• Similar to the Commanders, The Atlanta Braves and Kansas City Chiefs have both been accused of racism towards Natives on a lesser level. Both teams have used a "Tomahawk Chop" as a rallying cry, though their on-field success has lessened the outcry somewhat. The Cleveland Indians also faced accusations for their name and their mascot logo "Chief Wahoo," and as a result, dropped the logo in 2018 and changed their name to the Guardians in 2022.

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