Anti-Sportsmen of the Year

Author:
SI Staff
Publish date:
Nov 18, 2013

Anti-Sportsmen of the Year

Richie Incognito

Incognito hit into the unsportsmanlike triple play of bullying, racial slurs and sexual harassment. Incognito's bullying is allegedly responsible for starting left tackle Jonathan Martin's sudden departure from the team midway through the season. According to Martin, Incognito harassed him constantly, left a threatening voicemail in which he called Martin a racial slur, and stuck Martin with a $15,000 bill for a Las Vegas trip the then-rookie didn't even take. After the Dolphins suspended Incognito indefinitely, details emerged of a police report filed a year earlier by a volunteer at a Dolphins charity golf tournament, who alleged Incognito sexually harassed her with a golf club.

Riley Cooper

Cooper got into hot water this offseason when a video of him shouting a racial slur at a Kenny Chesney concert surfaced on CrossingBroad.com. In the video, Cooper was visibly intoxicated and challenged onlookers to fights. He briefly left the Eagles in the preseason to seek counseling, but has since returned and posted a productive season.

Kevin Garnett and Carmelo Anthony

Garnett is widely known as one of the biggest purveyors of smack talk in the NBA. He is also known to cross the line at times -- remember his cancer-related comment to Detroit Pistons forward Charlie Villanueva? So it should come as no surprise that a verbal altercation involving Garnett boiled over. In a game in early January against the Knicks, Garnett reportedly made a derogatory comment to Anthony regarding his wife, LaLa Vazquez. An altercation ensued, and Anthony confronted Garnett both outside the Boston locker room and by the Celtics' bus. The confrontations led to a one-game suspension for Melo.

Giorgos Katidis

The 20-year-old AEK Athens midfielder celebrated a game-winning goal in March with a Nazi salute. Following the game, the Greek soccer federation EPO banned him for life from participating on any national teams. For his part, Katidis claimed to have never heard of Adolf Hitler and not to know what the gesture meant. AEK Athens eventually suspended him for the rest of the year; Katidis is now trying to salvage a career with Italian Serie B club Novara.

Eden Hazard

Hazard, a Belgian midfielder for Chelsea, made headlines in January when he was sent off in a semifinal match for kicking a ballboy. The boy was lying on the ball in an apparent effort to waste time, and Hazard kicked him in his midsection in an attempt to dislodge the ball. Hazard was given a red card and Chelsea went on to lose 2-0. Hazard said later on television that he and the ball boy apologized to one another. The midfielder served a three-game suspension.

Ryan Braun

In July, the Brewers slugger agreed to a deal with MLB that suspended him for 65 games, the remainder of the 2013 season. Braun admitted he had used performance-enhancing drugs dating to his 2011 MVP season. He tested positive in 2011, but avoided a suspension at the time by successfully impugning the handler of his positive sample.

Alex Rodriguez

When word got out that MLB was targeting a dozen players who had connections with the Biogenesis Laboratory, one name stood out: Rodriguez. A-Rod had admitted to steroid use in the past, but he had reportedly been in MLB's crosshairs for suspected continuing use of performance-enhancing drugs. Though the other players in MLB's investigation all agreed to suspensions, Rodriguez refused to admit wrongdoing in exchange for lighter penalties. Thus, he was handed a 211-game suspension that would have covered the rest of 2013 as well as the entire 2014 season. Rodriguez appealed the suspension, and was able to play out the rest of 2013 while the appeals process dragged on. The legal battle has continued into the offseason, most recently with Rodriguez filing a suit against MLB alleging various improprieties in the way MLB obtained evidence to use against Rodriguez.

Roy Hibbert

The normally affable Hibbert had an out-of-character press conference following a Pacers win over the Heat in the 2013 playoffs. While discussing guarding LeBron James, Hibbert said, "He stretched me out so much. No homo." Later in the same session, Hibbert called the media "m-----------s" who didn't watch the Pacers play. Hibbert publicly apologized almost immediately after the press conference.

Carlos Quentin

After Dodgers pitcher Zack Greinke hit Quentin with a pitch in an April game, the Padres outfielder charged the mound. Although baseball's 'Unwritten Rules' are a notorious gray area, it is decidedly unsporting to injure another player in a brawl, which is what Quentin did, breaking Greinke's collarbone. The incident led to a benches-clearing brawl and Quentin was suspended for eight games. Greinke missed a month due to the injury.

Von Miller

Simply failing an NFL drug test usually isn't enough to label an anti-sportsman. But conspiring with a urine sample collector to corrupt the results of that test? That's a one-way ticket to this list. After Miller's four-game suspension was increased to six games, reports began to emerge that Miller worked with a sample collector in Miami to fudge the results. Denver went 6-0 while he served his suspension.