Fake It 'Til You Make It: The Anatomy of a Sports Phony

How did athlete superstars like Dwight Howard, Tim Tebow, and Lance Armstrong become the phoniest figures in sports today? One guy pulled a LeBron (except it spanned over several months instead of a 90-minute special), another is product of ESPN's hype machine, and the latter finally got exposed for allegedly using PEDs, right? Well yeah, but it's not so simple. In sports, years of affection and senseless admiration from a stadium full of drunken strangers has proven to distort reality, both for athletes and ourselves. We create demigods who, often times, don't live up to the exaggerated roles we help them create.

That’s not to say that athletes are bad people. But as individuals who devote their lives to catching a pass, biking a hill, or dunking a basketball, we shouldn’t be all that shocked to learn that many of them are flawed human beings. Find out how Howard, Tebow, Armstrong, and others became the phoniest athletes in sports today in The Anatomy of a Sports Phony.

Written by Sean Evans (@seanseaevans)

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How many times have you heard Brett Favre described as "a kid out there" while gunslinging touchdowns and spiking footballs? Constantly. Or, at least, until he faked retirement several times and started mass texting pictures of his dick. The combination of John Madden's retirement and Favre's acting like a pervy narcissist brought that analogy to an end real quick.

But there's something about grown men making millions of dollars to play a game, that causes us to attribute some sort of child-like innocence to their character and it's always a disaster.

Take for example Dwight Howard who was the NBA's beloved class clown before he spent the last year jerking around the Magic franchise. In reality Howard's epitomic of the selfish, out of touch superstar. If Howard wanted out of Orlando on his own terms he could have just played another year, collected $19M and left. That's it. He wasn’t leading all that tortured an existence. Actually, his situation was pretty awesome in Orlando. Not sure why he’s been so moody in 2012.

What LeBron did in Cleveland was humiliating, but you can expect that from thoughtless, millionaire twenty-somethings. What Howard did in Orlando was sabotage, like a kid that pushes the Jenga tower down in frustration, there's nothing playful about the Lakers new center.

Lance Armstrong seems like a good man with honorable intentions. He’s raised a truckload of money for cancer research and inspired hoards of weekend warriors in yellow bracelets. But of winning seven Tour de France, beating cancer, and a lawsuit with the USADA—the legal battles seems like the easiest fight. We're surprised that a man who repeatedly conquered the Alps and chemotherapy decided to finally quit in the relative comfort of an air conditioned courtroom. But, then again, those hill climbs are a lot easier when you have more testosterone in your system than a saltwater crocodile during mating season.

Nobody’s been chased harder over the last few weeks than Armstrong who, like Barry Bonds or Roger Clemens, had to protect against politicians and attorneys who approach doping in sports like big game hunters shooting for trophies. That's not to say that Armstrong is blameless.

The celebrated cyclist is a man whose stature was exaggerated by public admiration and who, perhaps to a fault, reveled in the spotlight. With a soundboard of soulless, inspirational platitudes a heroic symbol was made of a person who, apparently, just wasn’t all that superhuman. It makes no sense for a man who's famous for doctoring an already famous quote, "Pain is temporary. Quitting lasts forever" to give up now, unless he's guilty. And it makes no sense for us to apologize for him.

Sometimes the institutional framework of an institution turns the whole sport into a farce. And nobody knows how to fake it better than the NCAA.

After UConn’s blowout loss to Oklahoma in the ’11 Fiesta Bowl, coach Randy Edsall was so incensed by UConn running back Jordan Todman’s decision to declare for the NFL that he forced him to explain to the dejected Huskies “why he wouldn’t be returning to the team.” Less than 24 hours after the condescending display of machismo, Edsall had accepted the head coaching gig at the University of Maryland, no face-to-face apology needed.

After the rather unceremonious break up with UConn, Edsall promptly cratered the Maryland program, turning in a 2-10 inaugural season. But, perhaps most egregiously, he bullied quarterback Danny O’Brien in a way that made him look like a vomitus human being and illustrated the NCAA’s insincere lip service towards the “student athlete."

When Maryland's quarterback—who was benched by Edsall—made it clear that he wanted to transfer to Vanderbilt, Edsall agreed to release him from his scholarship, albeit conditionally. Maryland said that O’Brien would be unable to transfer to an ACC school or a team on the Maryland schedule for the ’12 and ’13. Oh, and Edsall had one more condition. O’Brien would be unable to transfer to Vanderbilt. Why? Well, because, ummm—fuck him. Only after the fallout would Edsall eventually grant O'Brien a full release.

Major college football coaches are consistently the highest paid state employees, allowed more freedom than players in groveling from team-to-team, and can leave town on a whim. When a player wishes to transfer (in this case for reasons that would benefit the player’s education) he’s jerked around. In other word’s Edsall can do whatever he wants and O’Brien can do whatever Edsall wants. It's the player-coach relationship that the NCAA is built on.

There are a lot of people who hate Tim Tebow. Some hate his insufferable preaching, which isn't totally fair considering Derrick Rose and Josh Hamilton get a pass for similar Bible beating. Others hate him because of "Tebow Mania," for which Tebow is no more to blame than Jeremy Lin for "Linsanity." But intense overexposure brings hoards of otherwise uninterested people into the debate. And when it's a quarterback who can't throw, he's going to be exposed as a fraud.

ESPN began the wall-to-wall coverage of the quarterback nine months ago and it's played like a Joan Osborne song on repeat ever since. Nobody really needs to debate whether or not Tebow is a good quarterback because any average fan who has seen him throw can answer that question. But that still doesn't stop Merril Hoge and Skip Bayless from tirelessly barking over the legitimacy of "Tebow Magic" on ESPN in the middle of May.

We're incensed by the baffling overexposure of people who don't deserve it. So, to little fault of his own, Tim Tebow is a divisive and passionately disliked person by some. He's the Kim Kardashian or Octomom of sports. The discussion that should be placed on someone talented is, instead, intensely focused on Mark Sanchez's fucking backup.

Nobody gets sports more backwards than Hollywood. The Blind Side reduced Michael Oher to a me-block simpleton who, according to the film, didn't know how a clothing store worked. As misguided a narrative about white, upper-class generosity as that movie was, it's nothing compared to the delusion of Moneyball.

Billy Beane is the general manager of the Oakland A's who, despite only winning one playoff series, had a book published about what a genius he is, and a movie based on the book where he was played by Brad Pitt. We should all be so lucky.

In reality, Beane was fortunate enough to draft three Cy Young-caliber pitchers who left town at their first opportunity and a MVP shortstop who was 'roiding out of his mind during Oakland's storied 2002 season. Then, he was incredibly lucky to have writer Michael Lewis oversell his talents in Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game. Then, in a casting decision as baffling as Sage Stallone in Rocky V, Beane was played by Hollywood heartthrob Brad Pitt.

Meanwhile, Andrew Friedman, general manager of the Tampa Bay Rays, wins more consistently, in a harder division, with the same debilitating cap space and horrendous stadium. But no, you won't see Brad Pitt playing Friedman.

David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez juiced their way through a couple World Series titles together, snapping Boston's long standing championship drought. As is the case with cheating in sports, their suspensions were reactionary, as Ortiz was disciplined more than four years after his positive test. But, you know, Boston still has their ring! Go Sauks!

Barry Bonds is MLB's much need goat of the "Steroid Era" and Bud Selig is lucky to have him. Bonds shattered a record that will eventually be broken. Not sure if you got a chance to watch the Little League World Series, but 12-year-old kids are six-feet tall now and jacked-up on a case of Red Bull when they hit the field. Bonds' home run record will be toast in the next 30 years. Meanwhile guys like Ortiz, Ramirez, Andy Pettite, and Gary Sheffield have won forever lasting championships with a fraction of the backlash.

It's true that women in sports are objectified and taken less seriously than their male complements. Not, that we'd know anything about that. But when you're Danica Patrick and your ripping your clothes off in spread ads and Go Daddy commercials, you may want to take the Susan B. Anthony-like bass out of your voice.

In between bikini spreads, Danica Patrick loses NASCAR races. Before one of those events, Patrick reprimanded the media by saying that "sexy" has a negative connotation to women, "You don't say those kinds of things to frame it like that for a guy."

Predictably, her quote was met with a tidal wave of backlash from mostly physically repelling sports writers. And Patrick, who was right in what she said, looked like a totally clueless hypocrite.

The legendary personas of sports icons are usually rooted in some fiction. Folklore is as celebrated an athletic tradition as crowd chants and tailgating. But, as was proven last fall, protecting a legacy can be downright reckless. Joe Paterno's embellished character, bronze statue, and “Joe Pa” nickname became an almost chilling homage to what went on at Penn State.

If even half the Freeh Report is true, Joe Paterno lied about his knowledge of Jerry Sandusky's '98 investigation and, through his own idleness, aided in Penn State's gross irresponsibility. Paterno worked tirelessly to protect his program, the University's directorial leaders covered up the scandal, all the while, a defensive coordinator molested kids repeatedly in the locker room showers.