IDIOT OF THE YEAR: 40 of the dullest tools from 2021's shed

Happy holidays, you filthy animals, and welcome to Deadspin’s annual IDIOT OF THE YEAR extravaganza. Within these hallowed slides are 50 of the year’s least bearable dorks, whose transgressions range from “just kinda silly,” to “dangerously stupid,” to “Trevor Bauer.” The IDIOT OF THE YEAR selections ahead were voted on by an expert team of Deadspin staffers, whose first round of balloting was thrown out after they’d unanimously picked themselves No. 1. With that conflict of interest loophole sewn up, the team tried again. This list is the product of that scrupulous process. The qualities considered included, but were not limited to: Volume/Wrongness Coefficient: Look, nobody cares if you’re wildly off the mark about everything in private. But please don’t shout about it on national television. Established Track Record of Idiocy: Has the candidate enjoyed sustained excellence in the field? Memorableness: There are many stupid things that happen each day, so time is the ultimate arbiter. If you forgot the person behind the idiocy, chances are it was not sufficiently resonant. Is It Trevor Bauer? If it is Trevor Bauer, they are an idiot. What follows is a vaguely depressing cross-section of athletics and culture. We invite you to laugh with us not out of spite, but because it’s the best defense mechanism one might hope to muster against the Lovecraftian nightmare that is sports. 50. Tim Peel source: Getty Images Hockey, perhaps more than any other sport, makes a big deal of “letting the players decide.” Except Tim Peel made it clear that they do the exact opposite of that. Because when refs are intentionally trying to balance penalties and power plays, that’s rigging the game. Peel is hardly an outlier, and any hockey fan of any passion level is familiar with the term, “make ‘em even call.” You know you’re getting a soft call against you after three straight power plays. Which is the exact opposite of the whole idea here. Again, the players “can decide” that one team should have a power play, because one of the players deciding is an uncoordinated clod who couldn’t keep up with Connor McDavid. They’ve decided that guy sucks and needs to sit. In Peel’s world, every player is the same, all an 85 on the EA meter, and things should just happen randomly. Except he’s said it out loud, so instead of just feeling and suspecting, now we know for sure. 49. Johnny Damon source: Getty Images Johnny Damon did, in fairness, beat us to the punch when he titled his autobiography Idiot. But that highbrow work was published more than a decade ago, and there’s been so much more to celebrate since then. Most notably this year was his drunken interaction with cops — and his subsequent DUI arrest — in central Florida. Oh, the gamut of stupidity that was run. The encounter, which was caught on glorious video, featured a clearly sauced Damon repeatedly telling arresting officers that “blue lives matter,” as if it were a magical password that could make his legal troubles disappear. Damon drunkenly opined that the traffic stop was politically motivated, as he was an ardent supporter of then-President Trump. (Again, the man’s autobiography is called Idiot.) Police reminded Damon that he was in the midst of a traffic stop — because he forgot — and assured him that the incident was not caused by his politics, but by his driving nearly four times over the blood-alcohol limit. This did not prevent his wife, Michelle Mangan-Damon, from trying to physically intercede in her husband’s arrest, earning herself a charge of battery on a law enforcement officer. They’re perfect for each other. 48. Kristi Noem source: Getty Images In case you forgot why South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem was an honorable mention in our March IDIOT OF THE MONTH edition, she gave us a refresher on her odious politics just this week. Noem introduced a bill to bar transgender women and girls from participating in female sports. As always, those pretending to protect the sanctity of women’s sports don’t actually care about women’s sports, they’re just trying to further marginalize transgender people. That’s what made her an idiot in March, and it’s why she’s an idiot now. “Gov. Noem’s proposed legislation is clearly fueled by a fear and misunderstanding of transgender people in our state,” South Dakota ACLU leader Jett Jonelis said in response. 47. Kevin Mather source: Getty Images If you want to know why baseball is in a lockout right now, and why the players view the owners as basically the Uruk-hai, you don’t really need to go any further than former Mariners CEO Kevin Mather. He gave the game away in one speech to the rotary club. This, in itself, tells you plenty. Mather got caught complaining about the English language skills of various players, and bitching about paying a Japanese interpreter $75,000 a year. That’s how much these dickbags want to nickel and dime everything for an organization that’s worth a couple billion. For Mather, $75K is a nuisance. MLB owners find $75K on the kleenex when they blow their noses. Mather also let the cat out of the bag by saying that Jarred Kelenic and Logan Gilbert wouldn’t be called up until their service time would duck under the wire to stay under team control for another year. Or how they viewed Kyle Seager, one of the few players worth a shit on the Ms for the past few years while they swan dived into the muck on purpose, as “overpaid.” Mather made it clear just how callously executives view players, how they’re viewed as just assets. At the heart of this lockout, that’s what everything is really about. Except Mather isn’t part of it anymore. Thanks to yelling the quiet part loud, he’s out on his ass. 46. Kevin “KFC” Clancy All’s well that ends well now that Tiger Woods is alive, relatively healthy, and back on the course, so this one could have ended a lot worse for Barstool personality Kevin Clancy, aka KFC. After Woods’ severe car crash in February, Clancy took to Twitter to tell everyone that it was a “hoax” — and when the LA County Sheriff’s Department confirmed the details of the accident, he actually doubled down and said that they were lying, too! Not really much of a reason to lie about something like this, and putting that flaming hot take out for the world to see earns him a spot on our Idiots list this year. Disappointing? Sure. Shocking? Not at all. 45. Zach Plesac source: Getty Images Don’t assume Zach Plesac has gotten any smarter after landing at No. 10 on our 2020 Idiots list — the Cleveland pitcher comes in at No. 45 this year. He’s still a colossal idiot, it’s just a sign of how incredibly dumb the world is. Having broken COVID protocol to hit the Chicago bar scene last summer, getting himself sent home from Cleveland’s road trip as a result, this year Plesac found himself in a much more timeless situation of idiocy, injuring himself by, as manager Terry Francona described it, “rather aggressively ripping off his shirt.” In the course of his rage-filled disrobing, Plesac caught his thumb on a locker room chair and broke it — the thumb, not the chair. The injury cost him the entire month of June and, really, his season. Because when you break the thumb on your throwing hand, that’s the kind of thing that can mess up your pitching. After returning in July, Plesac made 15 starts and pitched to a 5.04 ERA, serving up 14 home runs in 84 innings. He avoided surgery, but could not duck a second consecutive appearance among Deadspin’s IDIOT OF THE YEAR titans. 44. Matt Rowan Matt Rowan is no household name, but he certainly made his impact in the idiocy sphere at a girls’ high school basketball game in Norman, Oklahoma. Perhaps he thought that since he’s so irrelevant and that this occurred back in March, the world has forgotten about his idiocy. We’re here to remind you. After seeing a high school team kneel at the playing of the national anthem, Rowan said the following into a hot mic: “They’re kneeling? Fucking n——-s. I hope Norman gets their ass kicked. Fuck them. I hope they lose. C’mon, Midwest City. They’re gonna kneel like that? Hell no.” And wouldn’t you believe it — his excuse and “apology” actually somehow made the situation worse. In a statement, Rowan actually blamed the racist statement on none other than his Type 1 diabetes. His blood sugar was spiking, he said, which…caused him to say the N-word? He also made sure to let us know in the statement that he was a Baptist, a former youth pastor, and a “family man.” Well, Matt, you’re also a racist. Congrats on making Deadspin’s IDIOT OF THE YEAR rankings in spite of your complete irrelevancy. And your Type 1 diabetes. 43. Bradley Beal source: Getty Images It could be that Bradley Beal walked back his comments on the COVID-19 vaccine — “I’m still considering getting the vaccine. … I’m not sitting up here advocating or campaigning that ‘no, you should not get that vaccine!’” — or that we don’t blame athletes for things their wives tweet (“Yalllll go right ahead and play around with that vaccine if you want to”) or that people simply like him more than his non-vaccinated NBA brethren, or that he managed to claw back a point or two by publicly disavowing the support he received from Ted Cruz, but Beal should probably be higher on this list. Oh well. Only coming in at No. 43 can be his consolation prize for the gold medal he missed out on. All because he didn’t want to mess around with the vaccine, then got the COVID and couldn’t go to Tokyo. 42. Adam Silver source: Getty Images Technically, Adam Silver isn’t an idiot. The dude is way too smart for that. He has degrees from Duke and the University of Chicago. However, his decisions over the past two years have been hella head-scratching. We’re still wondering why the NBA had to have an All-Star game last season without fans in the middle of a condensed schedule. But, the reason he’s on this list is because it’s evident that the pandemic has him in a blender and he’s in over his head. After guiding the NBA between the Bubble and a season full of mandates that included no fans, or only the vaccinated ones, Silver looked like the man. Especially after he said, “As Dr. Fauci says, the virus will decide,” in October of 2020. But that was then, and this is now. Reports have since emerged that the NBA might not have run the Bubble to the level of perfection they’d let on. And right now, the league is ground to a halt with dozens of players — and counting — have been in the health and safety protocols this season, as well as the postponement of multiple NBA and G League games. Two teams, the Bulls and Nets, combined for 20 players out in December. There are analytics teams for that stat, too. They’re called epidemiologists. Whatcha gonna do, Adam? 41. Stephen A. Smith source: Getty Images The MLB not knowing how to market its star players (see Trout, Mike) is nothing new, so Shohei Ohtani not being more of an international sensation than he already is isn’t because he doesn’t speak English, as Stephen A. Smith so matter-of-factly said shortly before putting his Oxford in his mouth. He’s not a bigger star, because apparently people are still demanding athletes learn the local language. and the crack team over at MLB marketing still thinks Wheaties boxes are the best way to build a following. Come like two steps further, read the translator’s subtitles, learn someone else’s culture, watch the highlights, anything but go on First Take and yell “SPEAK ANG-LISH!” 40. Kim Mulkey source: Getty Images “After the games today and tomorrow, there’s four teams left, I think, on the men’s side and the women’s side, they need to dump the COVID testing. Wouldn’t it be a shame to keep COVID testing and then you got kids that test positive or something and they don’t get to play in the Final Four? So you just need to forget the COVID tests and get the four teams playing in each Final Four and go battle it out.” Former Baylor Women’s Basketball coach Kim Mulkey said this after her team lost a heartbreaker to UConn in a regional final game. And this was back in March, well before the virus was under control, which it’s still not. Would you like to know what question she was asked that prompted that statement? “Kim, you touched on it a little bit, but the resiliency of this team cause you guys got down 12 real early in the game and then even in that fourth quarter ya’ll got down nine, had a chance to win.” Mulkey did answer the original question, but then felt it necessary to give her opinion that there should be no more COVID testing while doing a press conference on Zoom. 39. Gerrit Cole source: Getty Images To some extent, this spot belongs to all Major League Baseball pitchers who tried defending their use of Spider Tack for grip. However, Yankees ace Gerrit Cole stands out from the crowd of cheating baseball players because he offered the worst defense/misdirection/non-answer we’ve heard yet on the matter. When asked whether or not he ever used Spider Tack, Cole responded: “I don’t quite know how to answer that.” Well, it’s a pretty simple question. Did you or did you not use a substance, specifically Spider Tack, to increase your grip on the baseball, thus providing a greater spin rate? Cole basically says yes, without actually indicting himself. He and other sticky-stuff tricksters try to defend their methods by implying that pitchers have done this for generations, but that still doesn’t make it OK. Of course, this can be said about dozens of pitchers across Major League Baseball, not just Cole. Cole is simply the poster child of the Spider Tack sensation — a position he officially earned with this exchange — and his answer to a very simple yes-or-no question merely offers a peek into the mental gymnastics pitchers likely must experience in order to help themselves justify breaking the rules. If pitchers truly believed it was alright to use a foreign substance to help them pitch, then why did they keep it a secret for so long? If it’s not a bad thing, why not just come clean about the whole situation? Cole and all the other Spider Tack users in baseball clearly knew they were in the wrong and not only continued to use those substances but even handed those secrets down, according to Cole, generation to generation in order to keep the cheating alive. 38. Andrew Wiggins source: Getty Images Andrew Wiggins held his anti-vaccination stance as long as he could leading up to the NBA season. Wiggins even managed to make the NBA Anti-Vax Dream Team, led by head advocate Ted Cruz alongside Kyrie Irving, Bradley Beal, and Jonathan Isaac. By early October, either the pressure or his agent got to him because he ended up taking the vaccine a couple of weeks before the season started. Wiggins doesn’t strike you as someone to take a stance like this all the way in the same fashion as Irving. The thought of losing $9 million this year was likely enough to snap him out of his idiocy and get him to roll up his sleeve for the jab. Those “beliefs” he talked about in September sure took a back seat when the rubber was about to hit the road. Once the time came near for those paychecks getting cut off, here came the needle. It came down to a business decision for Wiggins, and the almighty dollar won the battle over principles. 37. John Stockton source: Getty Images Everybody had a blast in June putting assist puns in headlines about John Stockton’s cameo in an anti-vax video, where he said he’d done a tremendous amount of research about coronavirus or the vaccine or whatever. It’s easy to drown out silly nonsense, but it’s not so easy when Johnny Assists is dishing out knowledge in his collared shirt on what was probably a recorded Zoom call — at least that’s the thought. Can we get a little production value at least? Someone pass the ball out of shot and then throw it to Stockton at the start of his take, so it looks like you passed the ball to him? Maybe punch up that dialog, too. “Hi I’m John Stockton, and I’m here to talk about how you can avoid those turnovers and maximize your misinformation in three easy steps, because this [shoots a jumper] is the only shot I recommend.” 36. U.S. Soccer source: Getty Images The thing for U.S. Soccer, is that even though it didn’t actually pick the fight with the USWNT over equal pay (we know what you’re going to say, but we’re going to get to that part), is that there’s no way to look good. The USWNT is the most successful in the world in the sport, everyone knows the players and their faces by this point. U.S. Soccer on the other hand, is just a faceless organization, and if anyone truly knows the inner workings of it they all think it’s a bumbling collection of paranoid marmots. Which it kind of is. You can’t win in the court of public opinion. And you certainly can’t win by picking fights with them on Twitter, or drawing the USMNT into the debate and putting the responsibility of paying both teams the same money on them. Which is what U.S. Soccer tried to do with their latest proposal, and then got pissy when that was pointed out. The actual case is far more nuanced than most understand, with the structures of the two teams’ pay methods wildly different, including yearly salaries and different bonuses from organizations outside the purview of U.S. Soccer. It would be hard for the organization to explain all that in a Twitter thread, but that would have been a better course than this. 35. Jonathan Isaac source: Getty Images What makes Jonathan Isaac different from other unvaccinated NBA players? Why is he at 35 and not (spoiler alert!) up higher with the more prominent NBA anti-vax crew? Why isn’t he on the fringes of the list like Bradley Beal? It’s because he’s not as prominent as a Kyrie Irving, but he doesn’t get a pass like Beal due to carryover from his stance, which was to remain standing, in The Bubble. That, and the rumors of him coming to his vaccine philosophy by binging Donald Trump videos and studying black history were false. Fun note: Isaac invited teammates to listen to him deliver a sermon (hard pass) his rookie year and none showed up. That’s sad. 34. Kaycee Sogard credits: Kaycee Sogard It takes a special kind of idiot to move to a new city with a high-profile husband, and then use one’s social media to take shots at said city, all while expecting the new city to embrace one’s family. That’s pretty much the tack Kaycee Sogard, wife of then-Chicago Cub Eric Sogard, decided to do while Derek Chauvin was on trial for the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Here’s a tweet she proudly liked, right out in the open for the whole world to see: credits: Twitter Apparently shocked that Chicagoans recognized her endorsement of the tweet for the racist dog whistle it was, she then became immediately indignant and blamed everyone else for “misunderstanding her,” when the problem was actually that people understood all too well. Predictably, Kaycee is also a blatant anti-vaxxer, which actually saw her fitting in beautifully with Chicago’s North Side team, one of the least-vaccinated teams in baseball. And all the while Kaycee was letting us in on her extremely bad and uninformed views, her husband was hitting a measly .249 with an on-base percentage of .283. Not that there’s ever a time that racism and misinformation is acceptable, but she definitely doesn’t know how to read a room. Both Kaycee and her husband were designated for assignment at the end of July, and good riddance from a city that deserves so much better than racist, anti-vaxxer wives chirping from the family section. 33. Jack Morris source: Getty Images Perhaps it does a Chicagoan’s heart proud to know that a team in Detroit has had a rep for having two of the biggest assholes in baseball history as foundational players. And when you’re talking about being such an asshole to stand out in the world of baseball, you’re talking about a universal type accomplishment. Kirk Gibson stood out as a guy who, every time his name came up, it was almost always followed with, “Boy, that guy was an asshole!” Same goes for Jack Morris, who then backed it up even as a broadcaster by attempting some awful and hateful fake Asian accent when talking about Shohei Ohtani. It was yet another crusty old dude in a sport revealing himself to be that, and one who probably never thought anything like that would be considered out of line. Who would have told Morris such in the past? He’s an asshole through-and-through, but these days we can at least feel a small sense of relief that, eventually, there are consequences. Morris saw his asshole journey through to its completion in the public eye, and this is how it ends more and more often these days. 32. Thomas Bach source: Getty Images International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach makes this year’s list for unapologetically suckling at the teat of the Chinese money machine. When Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai mysteriously disappeared from the public eye after accusing a former Chinese government official of sexual assault, the WTA pulled tournaments out of China in protest of her mistreatment, at a great financial loss. The IOC would hear of no such thing, and instead Bach pulled the fascinating PR stunt of showing a photo of what was apparently a 30-minute video call with Peng Shuai that answered exactly zero questions about what was going on with her. The IOC says she’s fine, and since they’re obviously the beacon of all that is right and good, Bach says we ought to just take them at their word. Of course it’s normal for someone to lose all outside contact after coming forward with an accusation like that! Come on, guys, she just wanted some alone time at home. Not like China’s known for censoring stuff like that or anything. 31. Mark Davis source: Getty Images Mark Davis probably could have made this list on his kids-movie-villain haircut alone, but he and the Raiders made it easier on us this year with a truly ill-informed graphic following the indictment of Derek Chauvin, the police officer who murdered George Floyd. The graphic read in unmistakable bold print “I Can Breathe,” which appeared to have been based off of Floyd’s last words captured on video, “I can’t breathe.” While the Raiders were attempting to show their support for the guilty verdict, their statement read as incredibly tone-deaf — and got even worse when Davis stood by it after public criticism and kept it up as the Raiders account’s pinned tweet. “I Can Breathe” was also used as an unofficial NYPD slogan after the killing of Eric Garner in 2014. Yikes. 30. Tony La Russa source: Getty Images Being old and ornery is enough of an excuse for some people to throw caution to the wind and act like complete assholes in their later years. We don’t live by those rules here at Deadspin, so that means no matter the age, anyone carrying on like a premium jackass gets called out. Equality! Having said that, Tony La Russa certainly tried his best to win Asshole of the Year in Major League Baseball. Too bad for La Russa, the league in which he manages had its sights set on the same prize. In May, La Russa publicly blasted his catcher, Yermín Mercedes, after he smashed a home run in a game the White Sox already had locked up against the Twins. La Russa and his old school ways couldn’t allow this, and so he decided to play the “sportsmanship” card afterward to put his player on blast. Hopefully, baseball will be in a much better place once these stuffy old bastards decide to move on and enjoy retirement. At that point, we can only hope no one feels the urge to shove a microphone in their face every time a player with dark skin flips a bat, watches his home run leave the ballpark, or just smiles while enjoying the game. Forget crying; apparently, there’s no fun in baseball either. 29. Klete Keller source: Getty Images It goes without saying that it takes a special kind of stupid to have taken part in the insurrection on January 6. It also doesn’t take a genius to know that the U.S. Olympic movement is built on, like, pretending that everything in the United States is great at all times, and especially our Olympians, who are sold to us, via glossy video packages, every four years. So it goes without saying that wearing an authentic Olympic jacket to the most recent attempt to overthrow democracy was not only incongruous, but also a way to make oneself easily identifiable. We will never know what the thought process was for former Olympic swimmer Klete Keller, the intellectual giant who showed up at the US Capitol on January 6 along with all the other NewsMax-infused brainiacs, but he has now pleaded guilty to a felony charge for his part in the insurrection and is facing 21- 27 months in prison. Keller also admitted to attempting to obstruct justice buy subsequently burning the highly distinctive Olympic jacket (along with his phone and memory card), apparently not realizing that it was pretty easy for the feds to narrow the list of Americans who both possess authentic Team USA jackets and who were at the Capitol on the day in question. Good thinkin’, Klete. Congrats on an outstanding 2021, full of good decisions. Best of luck at your sentencing hearing. Go USA! 28. Montreal Canadiens source: Getty Images The Montreal Canadiens managed to get into the Stanley Cup playoffs this year because they got to play in an all-Canadian division that included the Canucks, Flames, and Senators, and even then, with 59 points, the Habs would not have made the postseason had they played in any other division. Still, Montreal made it to the Final before losing to the Lightning, a Cinderella run that should have built up a ton of good will. Should have, because Marc Bergevin immediately squandered it by using the Canadiens’ first-round draft pick on Logan Mailloux, a convicted sex offender who had asked NHL teams not to draft him. The resultant uproar led to Habs ownership issuing what wasn’t really an apology, but more of a “sorry if you were offended” statement. Bergevin was eventually canned, not because of the draft fiasco, nor because of his ties to the scandalized Chicago organization, but because the team he built, which mostly sucked last year and was lucky to be in the playoffs, really and truly sucked this season. That did, at least, allow us to close the year with a laugh, with Jeff Gorton’s attempt at French in his introductory presser. 27. NFL Referees source: Shutterstock Where would society be without NFL referees for everyone to collectively gang up on? We haven’t seen a collective group of people this universally hated since before Nickelback became an ironically cool band to listen to. The stripes’ idiocy soared to new heights in 2021 though with the implementation of the taunting rule. The most iconic moment of this new edict came in Week 9, when the Bears took on the Steelers. After a huge sack in a pivotal moment of the game, Chicago linebacker Cassius Marsh “motioned” toward the Steelers’ bench. That’s it. That was enough for referee Tony Corrente to toss his yellow laundry. Corrente tried to defend the call with this limp comment: “Keep in mind that taunting is a point of emphasis this year. I saw [Marsh] run toward the bench area of the Pittsburgh Steelers and posture in such a way that I felt he was taunting them.” To respond in referee language: After further review, that’s some bullshit. All Marsh did was take a few steps toward the Pittsburgh bench and glare at them from about 20 yards away. He didn’t even strike a pose. He literally just stood there and bounced slightly like he was in a Bella Poarch TikTok video. Of course, that’s just one of the bad calls the league’s officiating corps has made this year. They also called Raiders tight end Darren Waller for taunting after he spiked the ball near in the Chargers’ general vicinity. And it’s not just touchy taunting penalties! Referees allowed the Ravens to kick a game-winning 66-yard field goal against the Lions in Week 3 against the Baltimore Ravens after missing an obvious delay of game penalty. They robbed Dak Prescott of a rushing touchdown in his team’s game against the Eagles in Week 3. Then, they robbed the Cowboys QB of another rushing touchdown in Week 6 against New England. Prescott fumbled the ball on the very next play in that New England game, by the way. We’ve only scratched the tip of the ref-tomfoolery iceberg, and yet we haven’t even begun to get into the roughing the passer penalties yet. Yeah, it’s been a horrid season for NFL officiating. 26. Meyers Leonard source: Getty Images Meyers Leonard allowed his stupidity and ignorance to get him bounced from the NBA after using an antisemitic slur during a live Twitch stream back in March. The Miami Heat then traded Leonard to the OKC Thunder, where he was almost immediately cut. At this point, the only thing that might save Leonard’s NBA career is that he’s 7 feet tall. He isn’t a good enough player to warrant a team taking a chance on him too soon following his explosively bigoted comment. It doesn’t matter if it was said out of ignorance or not. Most of us don’t believe his claim of ignorance about the word he used. When people are comfortable and no cameras or microphones are around, that’s when you find out how folks really feel about the world and other people in it. This dum dum was live streaming, so he knew mics and cameras were hot, yet he still got so worked up playing a video game that he went the slur route (sure, who hasn’t hurled some spicy language at Call of Duty, but Jesus Christ, Meyers). If he’s that charged up over a game of Warzone, he may need a new hobby. 25. Kelly Loeffler source: Getty Images All-time idiot Kelly Loeffler couldn’t match her 2020 IDIOT OF THE YEAR performance, where she clocked in at No. 2, (“ Somehow worse than Trump,” the headline read!) but she still managed to make the 2021 list. No longer a U.S. senator nor owner of the Atlanta Dream, Loeffler, 51, has floated the possibility of running again in Georgia, where she is 0-1 in elections. She has started a new organization, Greater Georgia, as a counter to Fair Fight, which seeks to ensure voter rights. What is it when you’re on the opposite side of voting rights? Well, it’s idiotic, for starters. 24. Jason Whitlock Whitlock began writing regularly for conservative outlet The Blaze on June 8. Here are some of his column headlines: Simone Biles and the celebration of quitting are latest signs America has been hacked America’s toxic femininity pandemic provides China huge advantage in the Mold War NBA star Kyrie Irving is Muhammad Ali, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has abandoned his religious convictions Kanye West’s ‘Thanksgiving prayer’ illustrates the dangers of marrying a feminist It would stand to reason that leaving Clay Travis is a sign that a person is turning toward intelligence. Instead, it appears that Whitlock just wanted more creative freedom to twist everything wrong with America into his twisted sense of right. 23. United States Olympic Committee credits: USOC The year is 2021. A world-class athlete is banned from the Olympic Games for substance use. The drug in question? Reefer. Sha’Carri Richardson was robbed of her opportunity to show her stuff on the grandest of stages, and it is the fault of the bureaucrats at the United States Olympic Committee and their archaic rules. Sure, anabolic steroids and HGH are not in line with principles of honest competition, but marijuana? Keep smoking those jazz cigarettes and you’re liable to leap from a window in a fit of paranoia. That Loud is now legal for recreational use in many states, with studies painting a pretty clear picture of its relative safety, but these doofs still saw fit to go by the book and steal one from Sha’Carri. For shame, you nerds. 22. Tommy Tuberville source: Getty Images Only in America can being a semi-recognizable Power 5 college football pledging his allegiance to a silver-spooned reality show host, who got himself fired from said reality show for bigoted statements, facilitate your election to a federal government post. It worked out for Tuberville, who is now a member of the United States Senate. The reward for the rest of us is a man who voted to destabilize America by voting against certifying the presidential election, tried to squeeze anti-trans legislation into a bill designed to protect Americans, and was unfamiliar with the three branches of government — ya know, the first thing a child learns about the government after the words “president” and “vice president.” There might be bigger idiots in this world than Tommy Tuberville, but it might not feel better calling anyone else an idiot than him. For the three seconds it takes to say “Tommy Tuberville is an idiot,” it’s a massage for your whole insides. Like sitting next to a fire on a cold winter’s night with a significant other, it just feels right. Let’s all say it together, 1… 2… 3… Tommy Tuberville is an idiot. 21. Rachel Luba credits: ESPN It can’t be anyone’s life goal to be Erika Nardini — or worse yet a knockoff Nardini — but that’s what Rachel Luba appears to be aiming for. As an agent specializing in the worst of the worst, Luba’s only name clients as an agent are Trevor Bauer and Yasiel Puig, who are accused of being monstrous sex criminals. So does she seek these creatures out? Is it just coincidence? Does she think it’s just being in the middle of the fire and all part of the job? Maybe monsters just flock together. 20. Kirk Cousins source: Getty Images We heard a lot of terrible takes when it comes to COVID and vaccinations in 2021, and many of those came from professional athletes. So to stand out even amongst all the terrible athlete hot COVID takes is a real achievement that deserves recognition. So today we salute Kirk Cousins, he of the “if I die, I die” COVID stance, truly, one of the dumbest things said in the COVID era, especially from a guy who travels to different cities every week and yells over the top of people for a living. After first suggesting he could just surround himself in plexiglass (the way George Costanza dreamed of draping himself in velvet), and telling the world he planned on taking a “survival of the fittest” approach, Cousins has been mum on his vaccine status, because even if he is vaccinated, some kind of dumb-ass code among white Evangelicals prevents them from admitting it. Cousins’ stance is even stupider given that Vikings’ offensive lineman Dakota Dozier, who is vaccinated, wound up in the hospital after contracting COVID. Given Cousins’ stance, it’s become a favorite pastime this season to watch him saying it and spraying it everywhere in the huddle and the sidelines. It’s a ride every time Cousins opens his mouth to opine on anything other than football, but for a guy who proudly talks about being a Christian every chance he gets to completely disregard the well-being of those around him… well, that’s IDIOT OF THE YEAR territory. 19. Major League Baseball credits: MLB Did MLB do anything right this year? Not really. They had scandals galore from past and present and even created new ones that came and went quicker than Jarred Kelenic in his first stint with the Mariners. The fact that no one is talking about MLB secretly using two different styles of balls to promote specific narratives based on the game being played is just a testament to how poorly MLB was run in 2021. That story doesn’t even turn heads. Athletics center fielder Ramón Laureano uses PEDs? No one cares. A letter allegedly containing evidence of the New York Yankees using high-speed cameras to steal opposing signs during the Astros scandal remaining unopened just to keep blame pointed at one singular team? That draws no attention. Major League Baseball also had an opportunity to market itself immensely to American and other foreign audiences with the emergence of Shohei Ohtani. Did they use his incredible, never-before-seen season to expand the sport’s marketability? No. Geez. Major League Baseball was so bad this year, the organization must’ve been run by an absolute imbecile. Perhaps (spoiler alert!) we’ll get to him a little later. 18. NCAA credits: NCAA The NCAA went up against the Supreme Court this summer and lost spectacularly. You know how idiotic you have to be to get that group to agree, 9-0, that your business model is illegal? The answer is really idiotic. The highest court in the land found the NCAA to be in violation of national antitrust laws stemming from its aggressive insistence that the “amateur” sports model prohibit student athletes from receiving any educational benefits outside of their athletic scholarships. That little amateurism charade wasn’t going to work forever, and the Court pointed out that the America’s most annoying organization is bringing in ridiculous amounts of money each year — which kind of makes the whole mission statement thing look like a way to hoard that wealth for the higher-ups rather than distributing benefits to the actual athletes. Well, despite complainers left and right (many of whom are making millions a year themselves), this year has proved a pivotal turning point in athlete compensation and athletes’ autonomy within the system. The NCAA is losing its tyrannical grip and desperately trying to make up for it by punishing schools who cooperate with their investigations. One can only hope Mark Emmert and company are knocked down a few pegs after this year. 17. Cal McNair source: Getty Images The Houston Texans owner didn’t have as friendly of a crowd as he thought he did at a charity golf event in May, when he referred to COVID as the “China virus,” a term popularized by Donald Trump in the final months of his presidency. God, the NFL’s been such a hot mess this year that ol’ Cal here got off easy on this one, especially since the news broke months after the comments had actually been made. The complete ignorance of the comment is made more insensitive by the steep increase in hate crimes against Asians and Asian-Americans in the United States over the past year and a half. At least he was, hopefully, embarrassed — one witness said that he and his wife seemed to be the only two people in the room who found his comment funny, while the rest of the group was appalled and actually gasped aloud. Maybe he’s just trying to outdo his racist father, the late former Texans owner Bob McNair, who told a room full of NFL owners that “we can’t have the inmates running the prison” during the height of the kneeling protests. Classic McNair family stuff here. 16. Atlanta Braves credits: Atlanta Braves The World Series Champs make our top 20 for their insanely stubborn insistence on keeping the organization’s racist mascot alive. They’re not being asked to reinvent the wheel here, as several teams have already pivoted away from their own cartoonish Native American mascots, including the Cleveland Guardians and the Washington Football Team, but not only does Atlanta firmly stand by its mascot in the face of actual living Native Americans telling them it’s not okay — they also encourage the “Tomahawk Chop” from their fans, who had the opportunity to perform said offensive gesture this fall on a national stage. As we pointed out in October, change likely won’t come until sponsors threaten to pull their funding, which hasn’t happened yet. For a more in-depth look at why the name is so problematic, you can read our article on the Chop and the Atlanta baseball team here. 15. Enes Kanter source: Getty Images Look, we’re not saying that the artist formerly known as Enes Kanter is definitely CIA, but it sure is interesting that the seldom-used Boston Celtics center likes to speak out against governments that the U.S. is engaged in propaganda campaigns against, like China and Venezuela. Strangely, the former Turkish citizen is silent on human rights abuses in Palestine, and has never uttered a word about the U.S. arming Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen. Nothing on the U.S. killing Muslims in the war on terror? Which included, regularly, U.S. forces bombing Chinese Uighyurs. Bet they were thankful for all that freedom. Equally strange are these bedfellows: liberals now joining the chorus of MAGAs mouthing, “What about China?” to LeBron James. That Mike Pompeo-Donald Trump foreign policy sure goes down better after voting blue, huh? The dumbest part of all this is Kanter invited James and Nike president Phil Knight to see the “slave labor camps” in Xinjiang, which is… checks notes… the biggest tourist attraction in the world. So you think an authoritarian regime is going to let you saunter in with one of the most famous people on the planet to see all human rights abuses going on? And no one in Western media even called bullshit on this. But we will. Idiot. 14. Bob Baffert source: Getty Images Racehorse trainer Bob Baffert unwittingly became one of the funniest idiots of the year when he blamed none other than “cancel culture” when it was discovered that his Derby-winning horse (RIP Medina Spirit) had tested positive for a banned substance. Did agents of cancel culture dope up that horse, Bob? In a sport that’s filled to the brim with unbearable and filthy rich people, Baffert somehow takes the cake on this one. One excuse he made claimed that a groomer had taken cough syrup and peed in the horse’s stall, and the horse had proceeded to drink it. This was far from Baffert’s first offense of the sport, nor was it his first time using some half-baked excuse, which was why Churchill Downs temporarily banned him (again, not “cancel culture,” whatever he meant by that. That you can’t get away with illegal doping anymore? Yeah, okay). The cherry on top was when Baffert’s attorney went on CNN and said that he was, direct quote, “the Michael Jordan of horse racing.” Just incredible stuff there. 13. Matt Nagy source: Getty Images There’s probably no one on this list who is more willing to admit he’s an idiot, while doing nothing to change it and taking no responsibility for it, than Matt Nagy. We’ve spent the whole season illustrating all the things he can’t or won’t do despite his status as a supposed offensive genius. He doesn’t protect his rookie QB, he doesn’t make things easy, doesn’t stick with what’s working, doesn’t have a plan, doesn’t see what would be his salvation, and so on forever. The thing with Nagy is, he’ll tell you that. Every postgame presser is filled with, “Yeah, we gotta look at that.” Or, “That’s on me, I have to be better about that.” Or, “That was my call.” So he doesn’t run from his idiocy. He acknowledges it, which I guess puts him a half-notch above Urban Meyer, who bus tossed so many people on his way out that all Jacksonville public transportation vehicles come with a cow-catcher. And yet nothing ever changed in Chicago. All the same mistakes kept getting made. Which makes it sad, mostly. Nagy can see the problems, and he knows it’s his fault. And yet he can’t see that there’s another way. He thinks he has to keep running into the same wall. He can’t walk around it. He can’t go over it, even though that’s what everyone else does. He must not think he’s worthy of another plan, another method. It’s tragic, in a way. 12. Cole Beasley source: Getty Images Oh, Cole Beasley. Where do we start with this colossus of idiocy? Was it how he deactivated his social media after being called out by pretty much everyone for his insane COVID hot takes? No! We congratulate Cole Beasley for deleting Twitter. Hopefully more who share his thoughts on the virus, and on vaccines, follow his lead. But he finds himself here, in our top 50, for the mountain of nonsense he posted up until October. Like this: “I may die of covid, but I’d rather be actually living.” Profound! Or this: “I’m not going to take meds for a leg that isn’t broken.” Cool! That’s… not really relevant here, but good for you? Or this! “I’d rather take my chances with Covid and build up my immunity that way. Eat better. Drink water. Exercise and do what I think is necessary to be a healthy individual.” Water is not — well, fuck it. Never mind. You do you, man. Just don’t catch COVID and get yourself knocked out of a pivotal late-season game. Oh, too late. 11. Ron DeSantis source: Getty Images Ron DeSantis is a turd. The foulest of turds. Ron DeSantis is the type of foul turd that a person with no appreciation for your hospitality would leave in your toilet, not flush, not spray, leave the door open, and refuse to wash their hands after. He is as foul of a turd as there is floating in the toilet bowl of American leadership. His new Stop W.O.K.E act is: a legislative proposal that will give businesses, employees, children and families tools to fight back against woke indoctrination. That is a literal sentence on the website of a public servant of the state of Florida. His No. 1 goal at this point appears to be, outside of getting re-elected, is to pull out every stop in his quest to make the state less welcoming for racial minorities, women, and members of the LGBTQ community. DeSantis has even found a way for his foul stench to creep into sports. He signed one bill over the summer to promote “intellectual diversity” in college education. Students and faculty will be surveyed to make sure there is a “diversity” of opinions on Florida campuses and if a student feels that a professor is not allowing them to freely express their opinion, they can record the class with no penalty. DeSantis also passed a law forcing athletes in secondary and post-secondary public education to compete against the members of their sex, not their gender identity. For him, in the middle of a pandemic, gun violence epidemic, inflation, and rising hate crime rates, making sure that ignorant and offensive viewpoints can be shouted or taught in a college classroom with no judgement or reprimand, and an athlete at a school is not allowed to participate in athletics in a way that makes them most comfortable. So when you’re in Florida and everyone once in a while that nasty swampy stench hits you in the nose, it’s not just the swap you’re smelling. It’s a turd in Tallahassee flushing his stench into every inch of the state he governs. Relatedonline betting sitebrand new online betting sitelegal online sports betting appssports book live bettingwatch live sportssports betting apps with cash out