The world of sports is filled with heroes and villains. And douchebags. What follows is a list of the douchebags. If you root for any of these people, there’s a 100 percent chance your friends talk shit about you behind your back and you might want to reconsider your life choices.
Mike Krzyzewski
Coach K(ranky pants) is held up as a bastion of all that is right with college athletics. He molds boys into young men and he does it the “right way.” And that is total garbage. He’s a sore loser who lectures opponents in the handshake line after a loss, yells and curses at teenagers and brushes off anyone in the media who doesn’t hail him as a fearless leader. It’s OK to hate Duke and it’s definitely OK to hate Coach K.
Kobe Bryant
This Michael Jordan wannabe came up one title short, four MVPs short and about a million fans short of His Airness. Along the way he proved incapable of showing a single genuine emotion except when he got caught cheating on his wife and immediately panicked, snitching on Shaq to the investigators. As a lifelong Kobe hater, I couldn’t possibly have scripted a better final season for the Black Mamba. (That’s another thing, who makes up his own nickname?)
Jim Nantz
Nobody drapes a wet blanket over an exciting moment in sports quite like Jim Nantz. His monotone whisper is the same while announcing a three-foot birdie putt or a Super Bowl touchdown. And let’s not forget after decades in broadcasting, the best he could come up with as his catchphrase is, “Hello friends.” I’m not your friend, Jim. And stop staring at me with that murderous grin. It’s creeping me out.
Roger Goodell
When you run a sport full of millionaire rapists and wife beaters and somehow still come off as the biggest douche in the group, you might want to change how you go about your business.
Anyone who has ever played on the Yankees
Sign on with the team and you are forced to groom and dress a certain way. The most popular player on the team for the last 20 years finally retired about three years too late and is a slightly better hitter than Harold Baines, but gets treated like a combination of Barry Bonds and Babe Ruth. Even their former players are insufferable, with the likes of old-timer Goose Gossage going out of his way to lambast Jose Bautista’s bat flipping, which may well have provided the most exciting moment from last year’s playoffs.
Nick Saban
Would it kill this man to be happy for five seconds? He’s won every national title since the BCS was invented and he hasn’t cracked a single smile. This sanctimonious shithead spends all of his time with the local media lecturing them about how he only cares about the next game, even though everything he wears is covered in corporate sponsors. And let’s never forget how he wound up in Alabama in the first place: After a string of very public and continuous denials about leaving the Miami Dolphins, who he lead to a 15-17 record, he bolted with three years left on his contract the second the ‘Bama gig was available.
John Calipari
He’s trying to single-handedly destroy college basketball by assembling a new superteam of freshman every year to pump up their draft value — and the young kids love him. The only problem: he commits so many rule violations that all of those wins he racks up are promptly erased from the record books the second he bolts for the next lucrative job offer, leaving everyone else at the school to clean up his mess.
Hope Solo
The only thing worse than the charges against her that she assaulted her half-sister and her teenage nephew is that her primary public defense is not coming from her teammates (who hate her) but husband Jerramy Stevens, who himself has been convicted of assault and accused of rape. Real power couple there.
Johnny Manziel
Let’s say millions and millions of dollars were on the line and all you had to do to get some of those millions would be to stop getting caught drinking on Instagram. Do you think you could do that for a few months? Maybe not go out on a work night for a couple weeks? For millions of dollars? Yeah, Johnny Football can’t seem to figure that out.
Joakim Noah
He’s been hurt most of the year, but don’t forget just how irritating this guy can be on a basketball court. Watching that loose ponytail flap in the wind as he runs up and down the court is just the start of things. The relentless, overzealous clapping, the chest thumping, the jersey popping, the screaming (so much screaming). Side note: I’m a Bulls fan, and I still feel this way. I can’t even imagine what opposing fans think. (Although the photo above gives me a good idea.)
A.J. Pierzynski
This baseball player-sized pile of neck fat gives catchers a bad name. He was officially voted “the most hated player in baseball” in a survey of his peers. He got 24 percent more votes than Alex Rodriguez. 24 percent. Alex Rodriguez. Nothing more needs to be said.
John Lackey
He looks like he shoots snot rockets in the parking lot as he walks his family into the neighborhood Chili’s.
Pete Carroll
The coach of the Seahawks is like a morning person and the rest of us are like that person who hasn’t had his coffee yet. Watching Carroll prance around the sideline clapping his hands after every play is like walking into the office on a Monday morning and finding that morning person sitting on your desk ready to tell you all about their weekend.
St. Louis Cardinals fans
For some reason, these jerk-offs parade themselves around as “The Best Fans In Baseball.” Unfortunately a more accurate label would be “The Most Overweight And Overtly Racist And Homophobic On Twitter Fans In Baseball.”
Jonathan Papelbon
Who punches his own teammates? Not cool, bro.
