SI's Signs Of The Apocalypse

SI's Signs Of The Apocalypse

Alan Powdrill/Getty Images

For the last 20 years, <italics>Sports Illustrated</italics> has collected and featured weekly signs from the world of sports that the Apocalypse is upon us: Tales of frenzied fans, egomaniacal coaches, future Hall of Famers who run afoul of the law, mind-boggling bureaucracy, violent behavior and tastelessness run amok... Here were the signs of 2012.

Royal Mint/AFP/Getty Images

The United Kingdom's Royal Mint is releasing a series of 29 new 50-pence pieces, each featuring a different Olympic sport, including a soccer coin that on one side features a diagram explaining the concept of "offside." <italics>Jan. 16 issue</italics>

Thorsten Wagner/Bongarts/Getty Images

In order to learn how to "best reach each player," the coach of top-division German soccer team Hannover 96, Mirko Slomka, asked his players to fill out a survey about their sexual interests, with 128 questions ranging from their erotic preferences to their most intimate fantasies. <italics>Jan. 23 issue</italics>

Jason Todd/Getty Images; Tosmania/Stephane Gizard/Getty Images

Corner Canyon High, a new school set to open in Draper, Utah, in 2013, had its request for a team nickname, the Cougars (the No. 1 choice in a poll of future students), rejected by the school board on the grounds that it would be offensive to some middle-aged women. <italics>Jan. 30 issue</italics>

Renee Keith/Vetta/Getty Images

A new fitness audio app for smartphones motivates runners with a postapocalyptic narrative about zombies?replete with groans from the undead?who are chasing them. <italics>Feb. 6 issue</italics>

Jean Pierre Clatot/AFP/Getty Images

Donald Trump announced plans to build a cemetery at his Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J., adjacent to the 5th hole that will be the final resting place for himself, his family and any club members who, presumably, pay an extra fee for interment. <italics>Feb. 13 issue</italics>

Paulo Whitaker/Reuters

The Brazilian soccer club Corinthians announced that it would confine star striker Adriano to a hotel at the team's headquarters so that it could monitor the player's food intake and control his ballooning weight. <italics>Feb. 20 issue</italics>

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Squaw Valley resort in Olympic Valley, Calif., last week opened the world's first ski-through Starbucks. Feb. 27 issue

Steve Mason/Getty Images

The girls' swim team at a Maryland high school was stripped of its county championship after officials discovered that one of its members had broken a rule by shaving her legs on-site before the title meet. <italics>March 5 issue</italics>

Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images

A Home Depot in Tuscaloosa has replaced its traditional aisle numbers with numerals corresponding to the years of the Crimson Tide's 14 football national championships. <italics>March 12 issue</italics>

Andreas Rentz/Bongarts/Getty Images

After being knocked unconscious on a play in a Belgian amateur soccer league match (suffering a concussion and three displaced vertebrae), midfielder Julien Lecomte was issued a yellow card for diving; then?because it was his second yellow of the game?given a red card while being carted off the pitch. <italics>March 19 issue</italics>

The owner of the Arena Football League's Pittsburgh Power cut his entire team two hours before its season opener, during a pregame meal at an Olive Garden, after the players announced they would go on strike due to unfair compensation. <italics>March 26 issue</italics>

Piyal Hosain/Fotos International/Getty Images

Organizers of the Arab Shooting Championships in Kuwait last week mistakenly played the parody version of the Kazakhstan national anthem from the movie Borat (including lines like "Greatest country in the world/All other countries are run by little girls") while Kazakh shooter Maria Dmitrienko was being awarded the gold medal in the 75 target event. <italics>April 2 issue</italics>

Image Source, Streeter Lecka, Ronald Martinez/Getty Images

Police had to be called to a dialysis clinic in Georgetown, Ky., on March 26, five days before Kentucky and Louisville met in the Final Four, to break up an altercation between two patients: a 68-year-old Wildcats fan and a 71-year-old Cardinals supporter. <italics>April 9 issue</italics>

Al Tielemans/SI

Three years after the restaurant chain dropped him as a sponsor, John Daly returned to Hooters last week to serve as Head Rules Official for a pre-Masters chicken-wing-eating contest in Augusta. <italics>April 16 issue</italics>

Ron Howard/Redferns/Getty Images

Organizers of the London Olympics reached out to the manager of The Who to ask if former drummer Keith Moon would be willing to participate in the Games' closing ceremony. Moon died in 1978. <italics>April 23 issue</italics>

Caryn Levy/PGA TOUR via Getty Images

Police in suburban Philadelphia arrested on charges of trespassing and theft four people?some in scuba gear?who had been diving into country club ponds and reselling the roughly 8,000 golf balls that they retrieved. <italics>April 30 issue</italics>

Greg Nelson/SI

AshleyMadison.com, a dating website for people who want to have affairs, offered a $1 million reward to any woman who could prove that she has had sexual relations with self-professed virgin Tim Tebow. <italics>May 7 issue</italics>

Greg Wood/AFP/Getty Images

A stunt woman in Sydney broke a Guinness World Record by riding a motorized toilet at a speed of 46 mph. <italics>May 14 issue</italics>

Jorge Guerrero/AFP/Getty Images

A soccer player in Norway's fifth division was red-carded and thrown out of a game after he argued in defense of an opponent, saying that the other man had not, in fact, fouled him and wasn't deserving of a penalty. <italics>May 21 issue</italics>

Rachel Delgado/AP

A 12-year-old San Antonio boy received a one-day suspension from middle school after he had a portrait of Spurs forward Matt Bonner?a fellow redhead and his favorite NBA player?shaved into the back of his head; the school declared the haircut a distraction and a violation of the dress code. <italics> May 28 issue</italics>

Simon Bruty/SI

To honor 12 of his favorite Olympians, Thomas Manly, 28, of Birmingham, England, officially changed his name to Thomas Steve Redgrave Matthew Pinsent Linford Christie Ian Thorpe Daley Thompson Chris Hoy Sebastian Coe Carl Lewis Steve Ovett Jonathan Edwards Ben Ainslie Usain Bolt Manly. <italics>June 4 issue</italics>

Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images; Getty Images/Cultura RF

NBA forward DeShawn Stevenson revealed in an Instagram photo that he had an ATM machine (transaction fee: $4.50) installed in his kitchen. <italics>June 11 issue</italics>

Tomatoskin/Getty Images

Movie producers in Argentina have already commissioned a script for a sequel to the yet-to-be-released animated film, Foosball 3D, about the table top soccer game. <italics>June 18 issue</italics>

J. Meric/Getty Images

James Hearns, a senior linebacker from Tallahassee's Lincoln High who has committed to Florida, was ejected from a football camp at Florida State for performing the Gator Chomp. <italics>June 25 issue</italics>

MCSO

Police in Mesa, Ariz., were able to identify the suspect in a shooting (who later confessed) by the Yankees logo tattooed on his forehead. <italics>July 2 issue</italics>

Heinz Kluetmeier/SI

In order to help limit grunting among its younger players?while leaving established pros such as Maria Sharapova alone?the Women's Tennis Association announced that it would develop a hand-held device that can "objectively measure on-court grunting levels." <italics>July 9-16 issue</italics>

Fred Vuich/SI

Prosecutors in Jackson, Mich., are considering charges for a woman who kept the body of a dead friend around for 18 months so that she could watch NASCAR races with him. <italics>July 23 issue</italics>

Jim Mone, Pat Sullivan/AP

Minnesota governor Mark Dayton defended a string of recently arrested Vikings players, including star running back Adrian Peterson, by comparing them to soldiers returning home from war with post-traumatic stress disorder. <italics>July 30 issue</italics>

Joe Murphy/Getty Images

Uchenna Nwabuike, a sophomore linebacker at SMU, told Dallas police that he believes the person who stole $3,000 worth of electronics from his off-campus home in April is a prostitute whom he had not paid when he left her alone in the house. <italics>Aug. 6 issue</italics>

Bill Frakes/SI

A medical marijuana dispensary in Orange County, Calif., has started selling a strain of cannabis dubbed Usain Bolt OG, after the speed with which it affects users. <italics>Aug. 20 issue</italics>

A Worcester (Mass.) Tornadoes game in the independent Can-Am baseball league was delayed for an hour when repo men sent by a court attempted to seize the team's equipment for the Tornadoes' failure to pay a cleaning company. <italics>Aug. 27 issue</italics>

A five-year-old boy in Oklahoma City who wore a Michigan football T-shirt to his first day of kindergarten was ordered to wear it inside out because of a dress code that prohibits sports-team apparel that does not support an Oklahoma school. <italics>Sept. 3 issue</italics>

Simon Bruty/SI

A bottle of water supposedly taken from an ice bath in which double Olympic gold medalist Mo Farah of Great Britain soaked during the London Games was for sale on eBay with a minimum bid of $1,000. <italics>Sept. 10 issue</italics>

Giuseppe Cacace/AFP/Getty Images

In order to prevent injuries, the Napoli soccer club, currently in second place in Italy's Serie A, has banned its players from having sex for two days before every match. <italics>Sept. 17 issue</italics>

David E. Klutho/SI

To create the signature rude sound that accompanies a player's advancement to another level in the new mobile game Fart Cat, designers used a recording of the horn that blares every time the Blues score a goal at Scottrade Center in St. Louis. <italics>Sept. 24 issue</italics>

The Bakersfield (Calif.) Condors minor league hockey team originally billed its Dec. 27 game against the Stockton Thunder as Our City Isn't Bankrupt Night -- a reference to Stockton's filing for Chapter 9 protection in June -- then, after complaints of insensitivity, changed the name to Boomtown Bakersfield Night. <italics>Oct. 1 issue</italics>

Robert Beck/SI

A Chinese hospital used a photo of former world-record hurdler and national hero Liu Xiang crumpled on the track after he crashed into the first hurdle at the London Olympics -- accompanied by the words "Falling immediately after the start! ... men's unspeakable agony" -- to promote a cure for male sexual dysfunction. <italics>Oct. 8 issue</italics>

Matthew Emmons/US Presswire

The Dallas Cowboys opened a Victoria's Secret Pink store inside Cowboys Stadium. <italics>Oct. 15 issue</italics>

Electronic Arts

During the NHL lockout the Montreal Gazette is playing out the Canadiens' season on EA Sports's <italics>NHL 13</italics>, game by game, and publishing news stories off the results of the simulated matchups. <italics>Oct. 22 issue</italics>

Nikolas Giakoumidis/AP

In an effort to raise funding, the Voukefalas amateur soccer club in Larissa, Greece, has signed two local brothels as sponsors and is wearing their logos on pink practice jerseys. <italics>Oct. 29 issue</italics>

A fan in Detroit -- who confirmed he was serious -- placed an ad on Craigslist offering to trade his house for World Series tickets. <italics>Nov. 5 issue</italics>

Adam Gault/Getty Images

After an 18-month investigation in Broward County, Fla., nine men were arrested and charged with running an illegal gambling ring that took in more than $100,000 in wagers on peewee football games; seven of the nine were youth team coaches. <italics>Nov. 12 issue</italics>

Clay Patrick McBride/SI

For $1,950, members of the Urban Daddy Perks club can have NFL free agent and Giants alltime leading rusher Tiki Barber join them for a game of flag football, basketball, kickball or, in the words of the Perks website, "pretty much any sport/gentlemanly activity you can think of." <italics>Nov. 19 issue</italics>

Koji Sasahara/AP

Kenichi Ito of Japan, who says he spent nine years developing his technique, modeled on the gait of the African patas monkey, set a world record (17.47 seconds) for running 100 meters on all fours. <italics>Nov. 26 issue</italics>

John Biever/SI

A Notre Dame fan in Chicago asked for Likes on a special Facebook page he set up to help him persuade his wife to name their soon-to-arrive daughter Manti. <italics>Dec. 3 issue</italics>

Matt West/BPI/Icon SMI

To celebrate his first Premier League goal of the season, Manchester City striker Mario Balotelli had a quotation from Genghis Khan tattooed on his chest: "I am the punishment of God. If you had no committed great sins, God would not have sent A punishment like me upon you." <italics>Dec. 10 issue</italics>

Mark Goldman/Icon SMI

Writing that he was "sick of the losing" and "sick of watching bad basketball," a fan in Washington, D.C., posted an offer on Craigslist to pay $10 to anyone who would take his two tickets to the Wizards' Dec. 8 game against the Warriors. <italics>Dec. 17 issue</italics>

Hammacher Schlemmer

This season's Hammacher Schlemmer catalog offers a full-sized replica of the Porsche 917 driven by Steve McQueen in the movie Le Mans?featuring race-worn tires and, under the flip-up bodywork, a 1:32-scale wooden slot car track?for $125,000. <italics>Dec. 24 issue</italics> Sports Illustrated Book of the Apocalypse: Two Decades of Sports Absurdity