Good riddance to bad rubbish.
I usually say that at about the end of every year, but this one, more so than most.
I truly believe that only question as to whether we are at Decline or Fall is whether, as I told friends, our collective culture has had the Wile E. Coyote moment where, far off the cliff, he finally looks down.
That, friends, is 2014 in a nutshell.
January 1: Brian Tuohy starts off the year with a video full of evidence as to the NFL getting the exact playoffs it wants.
January 2: Months before the Michael Sam fiasco of the National Homophobia League, Chris Kluwe tells Deadspin that he was fired by a Minnesota Viking franchise full of homophobia and cowardice. An eventual lawsuit was settled out of court for a charity donation to LGBT causes, at Kluwe's request.
Kluwe's NFL career, even by his own admission, is over.
January 7: A purported-ex-employee of the NFL claims the Super Bowl champion for 2014 would be the San Diego Chargers.
January 8: Dan LeBetard reveals he was the person who sold his Baseball Hall of Fame ballot to Deadspin, to make a point.
The next day, LeBetard was stripped of his ballot and new procedures were put in place that it not happen again.
January 11: In what should've been the most obvious example of the SeaThugs' first title being handed to them, New Orleans Saint Marques Colston throws a blatant illegal forward pass to run off the final seconds of his team's "defeat" to the Hags.
January 15: Grantland posts an article about Dr. Essay Anne Vanderbilt, a golf-club inventor who was outed as a transgender person, and committed suicide as a result of being outed.
January 21: After the Hags beat the Niners to go to the Super Bowl, two members of the 12th Man were shot by a 49ers fan who was being razzed by them.
January 29: A middle-schooler was caught spiking his basketball opponents' Gatorade -- with BLEACH!
February 2: In an uncharacteristic for the recent NFL manner, the Hags decimate the Broncos to win the Super Bowl. Never mind almost every pre-game segment close to the game was about Seattle, and that we got "That Look" from Peyton Manning, not unakin to his believed demeanor before the Super Bowl loss to New Orleans.
February 7-23: The Homophobe-Lympics were held in Sochi. The only winners: Russia, Vladimir Putin, and everything opposing human decency.
February 8: Oklahoma State's Marcus Smart shoves a Texas Tech fan.
February 9: In an extraordinary interview, Michael Sam of Missouri, the co-SEC Defensive Player of the Year, publicly comes out as gay.
Within a week, during a Cotton Bowl celebration for Missouri, The Westboro Baptist Church protest of Sam was blocked by over 2,000 Missouri students.
February 20: Three years after they beat Brian Stow to a half-inch of his life, his two Dodger-fan attackers, showing no remorse whatsoever, were sentenced for 4-8 further years in prison, before the Feds get a shot at them on gun charges.
February 24: As Michael Sam began the process toward the NFL Draft, Jason Collins, after coming out to Sports Illustrated, became the first openly-gay athlete in American major-professional sports, signing a 10-day contract with the Brooklyn Nets. When he entered a game against the Lakers in Los Angeles, the Laker fans gave him a rousing ovation.
It would be his last season. He retired from the sport in November, a capable journeyman who was always seen as a hard worker.
February 26: In the regular-season tiebreaker between the two schools, a mob scene breaks out at Utah Valley University after they defeated New Mexico State for the #1 seed in the conference tournament. Two New Mexico State players were seen punching Utah Valley fans, for which they only received small suspensions.
March 1: The Sloan Conference on sports analytics at MIT becomes the center of a still-burgeoning NBA controversy: The controversy of teams tanking to improve draft position.
At the same conference, Mark Cuban actually proposed the NBA finish off college basketball by being allowed to take players who would be "one-and-done" anyway.
March 6: A fan disrupts a UC-Santa Barbara vs. Hawaii game by coming onto the floor and challenging the Hawaii coach, who had just received a technical foul for questioning a call.
March 8: Two videos (originally three, but the NFL took the third one down within two days -- and now all three are down) provided insight into the NFL's ensuring that the Seadderal Seahags became champions in 2014.
March 25: The NFL announces a rules change which will demand that all instant-replay challenges be in communication with the league's central offices in New York.
March 26: The NLRB rules the Northwestern football team has the right to unionize. The decision, obviously, is under appeal.
The week of March 29: Ray Rice is indicted by a grand jury for assaulting his then-fiancee Janay in an elevator in an Atlantic City casino.
~ April 1: Chris Kluwe jumps into the foray on athlete pay in college, admitting he wrote papers for athletes at $10/page
April 3: St. Louis Cardinal Matt Adams shoves a Cincinnati fan lightly for the latter's attempt to catch a foul ball which had made the stands.
Around the fortieth anniversary of Hank Aaron's 715th home run: John Rocker (and others) had to open up his fucking mouth again.
April 17: San Francisco 49er Aldon Smith was arrested by the TSA for yelling "Bomb!" at LAX.
April 20: Reports surface that Jameis Winston is not the only person believed to have committed sexual assault under the color of Florida State football.
April 22: Russell Allen of the Jacksonville Jaguars becomes the latest case-study as to why football is unsafe at any speed. Allen suffered a stroke during a game, killing a dime-sized area on his brain, and still finished the game, only finding out afterward what had actually happened.
April 26: TMZ releases audio in which Los Angeles Clipper owner Donald Sterling does not want black people brought to his games.
Within three days, Sterling, soon found a certifiable lunatic on far more than being the worst owner in sports, is banned from the NBA for life, under pain of an immediate playoff work stoppage.
May 10: Michael Sam is finally drafted with a seventh-round supplemental draft pick by the St. Louis Rams. "Family values" idiots across the country have their heads explode when the emotion of the moment is recorded for the correct news posterity by ESPN.
May 19: The NBA formally begins the process to remove Donald and Rochelle Sterling from the Association.
May 21: Mitch Williams is suspended from MLB Network when it is learned that he got tossed from a youth tournament for ordering a pitcher to bean a "pussy" player.
Also, the NFL was sued by a bunch of former players, saying painkillers were pushed on them, disregarding the risks. To no one's surprise, the lawsuit was dismissed in December.
May 30: Former Microsoft head Steve Ballmer purchases the LA Clippers for a mind-boggling $2,000,000,000, rewriting the entire sports franchise valuation landscape.
June-July: After a serious amount of work by Declan Hill chronicling match-fixing all over soccer, the World Cup stoops to new lows in match-fixing, including a result so bizarre in the semifinal, the only question is whether the hosts were fixed to get there, or took the biggest dive in world sports history when they got there!
June 12: A document surfaces showing the complete ownership of the Super Bowl host city by the NFL every year -- Minneapolis produced the requirements it had to provide the NFL, mostly at their own cost and not to the league!, to host the National Holiday falling on the first Sunday in February.
June 24: Luis Suarez, for at least the third time in his farcical career, bites an opponent. The only reason he is ever allowed to play again - he's Luis Suarez!
June 26: Ghana fixes a match with Portugal to ensure the United States advances to a second-round date with Belgium. Not that the USA didn't earn it, but the Ghana-Portugal match was fixed, right down to a $3,000,000 cash payment given to the players (provided by whom??) the late-night before the match!
July 9: 1-7. Brazil is eliminated from the World Cup in utterly inconceivable fashion by Germany, in a match which can only be kindly believed a rigged farce.
Deadspin produces a photo, purporting that someone bet $20US that not only would Germany win the game by 7-1, but Khedira would score -- and he did!
July 17: ESPN does what they've wanted to do: The Tiger Channel -- a Tiger-only feed of his play in the British Open.
July 19: Carolina's Greg Hardy has calls for him to be suspended for an act of domestic violence.
July 21: A report is floated as a trial balloon to try to get the "Group of Five" non-major FBS conferences completely separated from the rest of FBS, and play their games in the Spring instead.
July 23: California passes the strictest anti-football laws in the nation, eliminating off-season contact (effective TODAY, January 1, 2015!), codifying into state law a concussion protocol, etc.
July 24: Ray Rice suspended two games and fined a third game check for the Janay incident.
July 25: Stephen A. Smith steps into the Ray Rice fiasco hard -- and this was six weeks before we found out the rest of it!
And that's just through July! We haven't even gotten to "Sports Gone Insane" yet!!!
Part 2 later, maybe today, maybe the weekend...
Oh, and Fuck Rapeis Winston.
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