Biggest Villains in Sports History | Page 3 | The Boneyard

Biggest Villains in Sports History

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TheHorde said:
Putting Laettner on the 92 Dream Team squad definitely riled his haters up to another level.
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The Laettner hatred was pretty gross. It's fine to root against college players but the hatred that kid got in college was over the top and much of it wasn't rooted in any sort of reality. You're right he got ripped apart for being on the Dream Team too when the reality is there was a requirement/agreement at the time to have one college player on the team as it was their first year with a team full of NBA players. Laettner was clearly the most deserving after winning every college player of the year award possible and going back to back.
 
Scoe said:
I gotta say Bob Diaco, he had me fired up for UConn football before he coached a game and then he enraged me with his calls like the fake fg on a gw drive and the stupid fakes never stopped, so for that he's pure evil.
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I let him off the hook when he gave an interview a few years later and said (or words to the effect of) "UConn gave me everything I needed, our record was on me."
 
Waquoit said:
I let him off the hook when he gave an interview a few years later and said (or words to the effect of) "UConn gave me everything I needed, our record was on me."
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Yeah, he just was not ready. It was an awful hire and it was readily appearant as soon as his teams took the field. .......and his recruiting was off the charts bad.....big, tall, very slow basketball teams......
 
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superjohn said:
The Laettner hatred was pretty gross. It's fine to root against college players but the hatred that kid got in college was over the top and much of it wasn't rooted in any sort of reality. You're right he got ripped apart for being on the Dream Team too when the reality is there was a requirement/agreement at the time to have one college player on the team as it was their first year with a team full of NBA players. Laettner was clearly the most deserving after winning every college player of the year award possible and going back to back.
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I’d say Shaq was more deserving, but Laettner’s playing style was closer to what the Dream Team guys would be playing against. So for Laettner to practice against them to prepare them probably made sense.
 
Inyatkin said:
Tom Brady was a villain to opponents, but not to his teammates. Christian Laettner's teammates hated him (see: Bobby Hurley)
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Greatness and villainess are two different things. People hate Brady because all he did was win. By that logic, Jordan should be hated too.
 
Have to admit the Laettner 30 for 30 did humanize him a little. Reality is that he was an amazing college player who was envied and was a fierce competitor. Still a classic villain, though. And worst of all, he loved and thrived on it.

Laimbeer and Bonds were definitely villains, as both played the part and were completely apathetic about it.

I have a tough time with ARod as a villain, though. Incredible player who was soft as toilet paper. His fragile narcissism made him an easy target, and he usually crumbled under pressure (save 09) because he was too brittle to think people didn't love him.

Tyson definitely qualified for a while. OJ pretty much became and embraced his boss-status villainy. Draymond?

I guess it's in your definition of a villain. I think a villain is someone who has a sense of self-awareness that they are a jerk. But they love it and use it to their advantage, which just initiates the avalanche. ARod doesn't fit there, for me. Neither does Grayson Allen, who I've heard is actually a really nice guy. Just a brat.
 
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boog204 said:
Have to admit the Laettner 30 for 30 did humanize him a little. Reality is that he was an amazing college player who was envied and was a fierce competitor. Still a classic villain, though. And worst of all, he loved and thrived on it.

Laimbeer and Bonds were definitely villains, as both played the part and were completely apathetic about it.

I have a tough time with ARod as a villain, though. Incredible player who was soft as toilet paper. His fragile narcissism made him an easy target, and he usually crumbled under pressure (save 09) because he was too brittle to think people didn't love him.

Tyson definitely qualified for a while. OJ pretty much became and embraced his boss-status villainy. Draymond?

I guess it's in your definition of a villain. I think a villain is someone who has a sense of self-awareness that they are a jerk. But they love it and use it to their advantage, which just initiates the avalanche. ARod doesn't fit there, for me. Neither does Grayson Allen, who I've heard is actually a really nice guy. Just a brat.
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Even as a Red Sox fan, I’d agree that I don’t think ARod truly belongs in the villain category.
 
Angel Hernandez find a person that has a good thing to say about that guy.

Current Dodgers ownership/management

John fisher



One thing I’ll say about Christian laetner and Duke in general. A large part of why they were hated as much as they were loved was due to the media. They won yes but they also got such a favorable hero edit it made lots of people sick. The media made them into the ultimate force for what was good and right in college basketball. They supposedly won the right way, they wore their uniforms the right way, they were clean cut good guys. The narrative was sickening and was kinda false. Bobby Hurley was a kid from jersey City not some suburban kid who stayed up shooting in the driveway. Laettner was in the medias eye everybody’s all American what players should aspire to be but in reality he was a complete ass who was disliked by many on his own team.

Last thing I keep seeing guys listed like OJ, Barry Bonds, and Ty Cobb being posted. In my opinion I wouldn’t classify them as villains in term of sports. Say what you will about them off the field but in it they never cheated the game they played hard and sacrificed their bodies. To be a villain in my mind you have to do something to dishonor the game on the field.
 
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boog204 said:
Have to admit the Laettner 30 for 30 did humanize him a little. Reality is that he was an amazing college player who was envied and was a fierce competitor. Still a classic villain, though. And worst of all, he loved and thrived on it.

Laimbeer and Bonds were definitely villains, as both played the part and were completely apathetic about it.

I have a tough time with ARod as a villain, though. Incredible player who was soft as toilet paper. His fragile narcissism made him an easy target, and he usually crumbled under pressure (save 09) because he was too brittle to think people didn't love him.

Tyson definitely qualified for a while. OJ pretty much became and embraced his boss-status villainy. Draymond?

I guess it's in your definition of a villain. I think a villain is someone who has a sense of self-awareness that they are a jerk. But they love it and use it to their advantage, which just initiates the avalanche. ARod doesn't fit there, for me. Neither does Grayson Allen, who I've heard is actually a really nice guy. Just a brat.
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The thing that really got me and I remember it as a kid was how much grown men hated Laettner and the things they said about him. They pretended he was a silver spoon rich kid from Scarsdale and they chanted all sorts of homophobic slurs at him. The reality is he grew up with no money in upstate New York and worked on a farm and as a janitor in high school. He is also straight.

He was the best college player, the clutchest. He was cocky and good looking too. I get why that pissed off other fans at the time but they created this whole idea of what he was and none of it was true.
 
Bernard Pollard, injured Brady to start the 2008 season, injured Welker a week before the playoffs, injured Gronk a week before the playoffs, later joins the Ravens in 2012 who defeated the Pats in Foxboro. In that game Pollard forced a fumble on a crushing hit, forget the rbs name.
 
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Scoe said:
Bernard Pollard, injured Brady to start the 2008 season, injured Welker a week before the playoffs, injured Gronk a week before the playoffs, later joins the Ravens in 2012 who defeated the Pats in Foxboro. In that game Pollard forced a fumble on a crushing hit, forget the rbs name.
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Pollard injured Gronk’s ankle in the 2011 season AFC Championship Game. I was there. Gronk was a shell of himself during the Super Bowl. Pollard injured Brady’s knee because Sammy Morris didn’t pick up his blitz. Kevin Faulk was suspended for that game. It’s really something how things can change NFL history. Faulk likely would have executed that block.
 
cullaville said:
Please read this and then tell me that the US lost because of the play om the third replay of the game's final 3 seconds.

en.wikipedia.org

1972 Olympic men's basketball final - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
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I'm not going to read that, I was watching real time. We had two guys guarding one and that ball was in the air a long time. But I'm not saying we didn't get ripped off. Not very often do you have someone coming out of the stands demanding a do-over and actually getting one. It was a travesty. Still, play some D, please.
 
I jotted down a list before I looked at this thread. Laetner, Lambier, Rocker, Tatum all mentioned. How did we get 4 pages in on a UConn board without Patrick Ewing getting mentioned? Nothing really wrong with him as a person, but he was just so dominant and menacing that he was a villain at the time. No mention of John McEnroe either?
 
There's the murderers OJ, Rae Carruth, and Hernandez (multiple victims) but how has nobody mentioned another CT guy Romo, as in Bill Romanowski? If he could murder a guy on the field and get away with it I'm pretty sure he would do it.

 
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