It’s been a tough year for Essendon fans.
For months they were the headline act of a ruthless and relentless media circus, their coach was banished and the rest of the ensemble cast received unprecedented penalties.
Finals were out of the question and a $3million fine and the stripping of draft picks means the future is just as bleak.
Yet things really aren’t as bad at Essendon, or in the AFL, as we would like to believe.
The AFL’s “darkest day” is a mere patch on the cloak of controversy slowly smothering the sporting landscape.
To prove it, City Journal found five of the strangest and most scandalous sport stories we’ve seen recently.
They’re stories that might even make you proud to be an Essendon supporter.
5. Oklahoma State
College athletics is meant to be the purest of sporting arenas where players are also full-time students who play for no money at all. Yet the cost of filling 100,000 seat football stadiums and maintaining elite programs have led many universities to break strict National Collegiate Athletic Association regulations. None more recently than Oklahoma State who have been accused in a five-part Sports Illustrated investigation of paying some players more than $10,000 a year in under-the-table payments, getting tutors to do players’ homework, tolerating and enabling recreational drug-use and using an escort service to recruit players.
Oklahoma St bench picture via vagabond by nature
4. Manti Te’o
While the Oklahoma State players were getting sex paid for them another college footballer was simply making his woman up. Until January Manti Te’o was the darling of college football. He had led Notre Dame to a national championship loss against Alabama, was runner-up in the Heisman trophy and had done it all after his grandma and girlfriend Lennay Kekua had died six hours apart. That was until Deadspin.com revealed that the whole story was a hoax. In reality Lennay Kekua was a character created by Te’o’s friend Ronaiah Tuiasosopo who had fallen in love with the footballer. It is believed Te’o had no idea about the hoax and was just the victim of a cruel and embarrassing prank.
Manti Te’o photo via Neon Tommy
3. Serie A match fixing
Match fixing hardly seems scandalous in Italian soccer anymore due to how often it seems to occur. In 2012 the league held trials into 22 clubs and 52 players who were believed to have fixed 33 matches. The league’s biggest scandal occurred in 2006 when 26 people were charged with sporting fraud and three Serie A clubs were relegated, including 29-time league leader Juventus who were stripped of two championships, a Champions League place and made to start the next season with a 30-point deduction. How did Juventus general manager Luciano Moggi defend his actions? “Look, I’m not a saint but I’ve not been in the company of angels.”
2. Lance Armstrong
No list of sporting controversies would be complete without perhaps the dirtiest athlete we have ever seen, Lance Armstrong. For more than a decade Armstrong maintained his innocence in a sport riddled by guilt. He sued those who defied the legitimacy of his seven Tour de France titles with such aggression that he made James Hird look as defiant as a poodle in a thunderstorm. Eventually in August last year USADA stripped Armstrong of all his titles and banned him for life from all events that follow the World Anti-Doping Authority code. Armstrong confessed for the first time to taking drugs in January during an interview with Oprah.
Armstrong interview with Oprah photo via lwpkommunikacio
1. Penn State
Never has the sporting world been so appalled and horrified as when reports of sexual abuse started coming out of Pennsylvania State’s football program. In October 2012 the face of college football was changed forever when assistant coach Jerry Sandusky was found guilty of 45 counts of child sex abuse, convicted of molesting 10 boys over a 15-year period and jailed for 30-60 years. The school’s former president, senior vice-president and athletic director are all charged with perjury, obstruction, endangering the welfare of children, failure to properly report suspected abuse and conspiracy for their part in trying to cover up the scandal.
Do you agree with our list? What do you think have been the biggest recent sporting scandals? Comment Below or tweet us @Cityjournalrmit
