The 25 Most Unbelievable Hoaxes in Sports History

Has anything in sports ever seemed too good to be true? Has there ever been a story or moment that made you wonder if there wasn't some sort of foul play involved behind it? Have you ever witnessed the effects of a prank or a hoax on your favorite player or team?

Today is April Fool's Day, and while we often associate the day with stupid jokes or harmless tricks, it's also an opportunity to remember those larger-than-life moments in sports, when fiction began to overtake fact. We all, of course, remember the Manti Te'o scandal of last year, when the Notre Dame linebacker was discovered to have been catfished.

And who could forget about infamous moments like the Danny Almonte hoax, when the not-so-Little Leaguer was discovered to be too old for his competition? Instances like this remind of us how crazy sports can get sometimes. They're proof of how real the obsession with fame and fortune truly are in athletics today.

However, they also make for some pretty great stories. So, we decided to collect the best of them all in The 25 Most Unbelievable Hoaxes in Sports History. Even we couldn't have made these ones up.

People involved: Bob Knight
Date: 2/2/1993

Coming in at 6'8", 230 lbs., Ivan Renko carried a lot of weight for someone who didn't actually exist. However, the fictitious product of Bobby Knight's imagination still managed to show up on various recruiting services, each of which claimed to have seen Renko play before, while providing in-depth analysis of his playing style and abilities.

Confused? Well, that's the point. Knight created Renko before the 1992-93 season as a means of embarrassing the so-called recruiting experts, claiming that he had picked Renko up out of Yugoslavia, and was looking forward to having him on the team for the upcoming season.

Remember when Jimmy Kimmel went down to SXSW this year and interviewed people about a bunch of bands that didn't exist? Essentially, Knight pulled the same trick here.

People involved: Galwaygooner
Date: 1/15/2009

Masal Bugduv had been popping up around the Internet before he was finally discovered to be an imaginary character in 2009, but it wasn't until the Times of London ran an article titled, "Football's Top 50 Rising Stars," that people truly began to investigate who Bugduv was. As it turns out, he was nobody. Though the Times ranked Bugduv No. 30 on their list, claimed he played for Olimpia Balti, and was linked to a move to Arsenal in the near future, some quick research revealed their fact-checkers to be woefully inept.

Bugduv doesn't actually exist, and his entire persona was constructed by various users on the Internet, most notably by a man who called himself Galwaygooner. Many people played a part in spreading rumors about Bugduv, but Galwaygooner was the one who first fabricated the tales, apparently basing his name off of the Irish tale, "The Little Black Donkey," a title which translates to m'asal beag dubh in Irish, a phonetic twin for Masal Bugduv.

When the entire hoax was finally revealed, the Times simply switched out Bugduv for another player on their list. Little else was made of the incident besides public fascination with the imaginary player.

People involved: Fuahea Semi
Date: 12/2/2011

Advertising is one thing, but changing your name for a company seems a tad extreme, doesn't it? However, it's exactly what Bruno Banani (born Fuahea Semi) has been doing for years now, as he changed his name some time in 2008 in order to receive advertising money from a German underwear company of the same name. Banani hails from Tonga and is an Olypmic luger who most recently competed in Sochi.

In 2011, the Vancouver Sun found about the story as well as the German newspaper Der Speigel. Both outlets gave a vivid retelling of the story, explaining how Banani changed his name out of desperation for sponsorship dollars, while the actual company did it because they needed a way to put themselves on the map.

Initially, Banani had been insistent that he had never changed his name, and his shared name with the company was merely a coincidence, but after the details eventually came to light, he gave up the act. Nothing about it was illegal, but it certainly was tacky.

People involved: Luc Castaignos
Date: 1/28/2014

Earlier this year, Dutch striker Luc Castaignos, a talented player for FC Twente, was apparently offered to Tottenham Hotspur, ready to take his skills to the EPL. Or was he? After Tottenham did some investigating of their own into the matter, the club found that they had been contacted by a mysterious outside party with no ties to Castaignos, and certainly no right to be offering him up to another team.

Unfortunately, the unidentified salesman was never found. It's only known that he was Croatian.

People involved: Punch Imlach
Date: 5/28/1974

Sick and tired of the slow drafting process in the NHL, Buffalo Sabres GM Punch Imlach decided to make a bold move in the 11th round of the 1974 NHL Amateur Draft. He drafted Taro Tsujimoto, a player who Imlach had enlisted his PR director Paul Wieland to create.

Hailing from the Tokyo Katanas club in Japan, Tsujimoto was Imlach's way of thumbing his nose at the NHL, and he didn't reveal that Tsujimoto was a imaginary figure until the beginning of the season. By that time, the pick had already been widely circulated among most major media outlets, allowing Imlach to put a pie in the face of the league.

He faced no repercussions as a result of the joke, but it's hard to imagine the league found his prank particularly funny.

People involved: Karl Power
Date: 4/18/2001

In terms of fan-related sports pranks, Karl Power is one of the masters, as the conniving Englishman has managed to sneak his way into a number of photo-ops while dressed as a famous athlete. In the picture above, Power (left) is shown lining up with Manchester United before their Champions League match against Bayern Munich in 2001.

It wasn't the last time Power would successfully wriggle his way into fame either. In 2002, he beat Michael Schumacher to the winner's podium and managed to have his photo snapped at the British Grand Prix. Power has also gotten onto Centre Court at Wimbledon before, when he and a friend volleyed for a few shots before a Tim Henman match.

People involved: Ali Dia
Date: 11/23/1996

A former Senegalese footballer, Ali Dia apparently was willing to do anything to get a shot to play in the English leagues. Even if he had to lie in order to get there.

Here's the story: a friend of Dia's posed as George Weah, a former FIFA World Player of the Year and Liberian national, while speaking on the telephone with Graeme Souness, the manager for Southampton. Over the phone, Dia's friend talked him up, and said Dia had played for Paris Saint-Germain and made 13 appearances for the Senegal national team. Intrigued, Souness signed Dia to a 30-day contract without ever seeing him.

Of course, none of what Dia's friend had said was true. Dia had played low-level soccer in France and Germany, but never made it big in either country. When he appeared in a match for Southampton, he was woefully overmatched.

Shortly after the match, Dia was booted from the club. But hey, at least he lived his dream for a few minutes.

People involved: Kyle Kendrick, Charlie Manuel, Brett Myers
Date: 2/17/2008

How would you feel if you were told that you were being traded or transferred away to a foreign country for your job? If you've ever experienced those emotions before, you'll understand what Kyle Kendrick went through when he was punked in 2008 by his Philadelphia Phillies teammates and managers.

Staged by fellow pitcher Brett Myers, Kendrick was told by former manager Charlie Manuel that he was being traded away to the Yomiuri Giants in Japan. Can you imagine the double-take Kendrick must've done when he heard the news? They even had Kendrick's agent in on the joke, who confirmed the deal to Kendrick when the pitcher called him to double-check the story.

Of course, a few minutes later everyone started cracking up, and told Kendrick it was a joke. Still, it goes down as one of the best clubhouse pranks ever.

People involved: Dennis Rodman
Date: 1996

During the 1990's, Dennis Rodman did whatever he wanted. The star power forward was talented on-the-court, but even more explosive off of it, as his exploits quickly became the stuff of legend.

However, his craziest moment may have come in 1996 when Rodman was out promoting his autobiography, Bad As I Wanna Be. You all know of Rodman's famous picture in a wedding dress, but do you know why he did it?

In an interview about his book, Rodman revealed that he was going to get married to a beautiful and brilliant woman the next day. But no one knew who it was.

A day later, Rodman showed up to a New York bookstore wearing his now-famous wedding dress. The idea? Rodman had decided that he was going to marry himself, and his bride-to-be was revealed to be just another one of his outrageous publicity stunts.

People involved: Dick Enberg, Al McGuire
Date: Late-1970s

Sometimes, when you're a sportscaster like Dick Enberg or the late Al McGuire, you need a way to keep things interesting in the booth. So, of course you make up a fake team called the Wyoming State Porcupines and hype them up to a national audience. Enberg recalled the hoax, saying that he introduced the team in the late '70s during halftime, when NBC was using a new Top 20 graphic to gain viewers' attention.

"Here's a new entry," said Enberg then. "Wyoming State. We don't know a lot about the Porcupines, but they haven't lost a game in three years." Since they didn't exist, Enberg technically wasn't lying. He and his booth partner Al McGuire kept up the harmless joke for a few years before gradually letting it die out.

People involved: Richard Pohle
Date: 6/18/1979

What if you had always wanted to play baseball, but felt past your prime? Well, maybe you should do what Richard Pohle did when, at age 36, he schemed to enter the minor leagues as a 21-year-old prospect with a body well beyond his years.

Pohle had tried for years to latch on with a minor league squad, but had always been unsuccessful. So, instead of accepting his fate, Pohle created a new identity: Rocky Perone, an up-and-coming prospect from Australia.

Eventually, the San Diego Padres signed "Perone" to a contract, though he only played one game before getting outed as a fraud. Unfortunately, at the end of the day, Pohle still had to play. And surprise, surprise: he didn't have much talent to back up his roster spot.

People involved: Mazher Mahmood, Sven-Göran Eriksson
Date: 1/15/2006

An investigative reporter for the Sunday Times in London, Mazher Mahmood got one of his best stories yet in 2006 when he went undercover as an oil-rich sheikh seeking to lure Sven-Göran Eriksson away from the English national team in order to manage Aston Villa.

During their recorded conversation, Eriksson appeared to be in favor of the plan, going so far as to say that he was planning to leave the English national team following the 2006 World Cup.

However, when the news broke in January of 2006, Eriksson came out looking unfocused and uncaring about his job as England's head man. On January 23, Eriksson and FA announced he would be leaving his job after the World Cup, saying that they had reached an agreement to do so before the report broke.

Suspicious timing to make such an announcement, though, wouldn't you say?

People involved: Paul Tormanen
Date: 11/12/2005

Paul Tormanen appeared to be an up-and-coming talent on the pro fishing circuit before a 2005 incident of cheating threw him out of the sport for good. During the 2005 Red River Bassmaster Central Open in Louisiana, Tormanen was found to have used tethered fish to win the tournament, meaning he had caught his fish beforehand, then taken them out to the lake and tied them to stumps he could return to later.

However, it wasn't long before officials and opponents caught on to Tormanen's tactics, and Tormanen was eventually found out. Subsequently, he was banned from B.A.S.S. competitions for life, and he received a suspended sentence of six months, along with a fine, 120 hours of community service, and two years of probation.

People involved: Fred Lorz
Date: 8/30/1904

In 1904 during the Summer Olympics in St. Louis, marathoner Frederick Lorz pulled up nine miles into his race due to exhaustion, unable to compete any longer. His manager drove up and grabbed Lorz, driving him 11 miles farther before his car eventually broke down.

Strangely enough, at that point, Lorz decided to finish out the race, well ahead of the competition by then, and finishing in first by a wide margin. Though he was initially treated as the winner, Lorz soon admitted to what had happened, claiming that his victory was a joke.

At first, the Amateur Athletic Union was unsympathetic to Lorz's prank, banning him from competition for life. However, they eventually changed their tune, and Lorz made a spectacular comeback in the sport the following year, winning the 1905 Boston Marathon fair and square.

People involved: Jon Wertheim
Date: 9/2/2002

Continuing its tradition of creating fake player profiles, Sports Illustrated took it to the next level in 2002 when writer Jon Wertheim covered Simonya Popova, a 17-year-old rising tennis star from Uzbekistan. Except, she wasn't. The magazine had used computer-generated images to create a portrait of Popova, while Wertheim's prose handled the rest of the work.

When the story was eventually found to be untrue, Wertheim said, "It was meant in good fun, playful and hopefully creative. It was not meant as some grand hoax."

However, Women's Tennis Association spokesman Chris De Maria was less than amused. "It was misleading and irritating," said De Maria. "There are a lot of great stories out there. We didn't need a fake one."

People involved: Sylvester Carmouche
Date: 1/11/1990

In 1990, on a foggy day in Lousiana, no one could properly see what was happening on the Delta Downs horse racing track. However, jockey Sylvester Carmouche apparently decided to take advantage of the confusion in a way no one else had figured to do.

As the race began, Carmouche pulled up on his horse and idled in the mist, waiting for his opponents to come back around. After they did so, Carmouche whipped his horse to the finish line and won the race.

However, his victory was only temporary. Race officials immediately investigated complaints against the result, and quickly determined Carmouche's actions. He was banned from racing in Louisiana for 10 years because of his stunt.

People involved: Brad Stephenson
Date: 1/21/2011

A professional athlete creating a fake girlfriend is one of those things that needs to be recognized as universally pathetic. But, for whatever reason, people decide to do it. In 2011, Blake Griffin was assigned USC student Jasmine Shein as a make-believe boo, a product of Brad Stephenson's imagination, the creator of playerseason.com.

After the rumors circulated that Griffin was dating the young Trojan lady, subsequent research quickly revealed she didn't exist at all, debunking yet another false claim of companionship in the sporting world.

People involved: Boris Onishchenko
Date: 1976

During the 1976 Montreal Summer Olympics, on the grandest scale of the sports world, Boris Onishchenko was ready to leave his mark. While he eventually succeeded, it certainly wasn't in the way the Soviet fencer had hoped.

During the pentathlon event, Onishchenko was the fencer responsible for bringing the Soviet team up from their fourth-place standing leading up to the event. In the early goings, he appeared to be doing just that. However, a protest from the British team captain eventually exposed Onishchenko as a cheat, as officials discovered that his epee had been electrically modified to allow Onishchenko to score points at will.

Essentially, it allowed the Soviet fencer to register false touchs against his opponents. He would go on to finish the competition with a regular epee, and still won by a large margin, but Onishchenko was eventually disqualified from the competition, and shamed by opponents and countrymen alike.

People involved: Kevin Hart
Date: 2/5/2008

Everyone wants to play their dream sport at a D-I level, but how far are you willing to go to make it happen? Would you be willing to completely fabricate your recruitment like Nevada product Kevin Hart?

In 2008, the high school offensive lineman staged a press conference during which he chose between Oregon and Cal, two high-profile programs he claimed to have been recruited by. However, after a bit of research was done, reporters found that Hart hadn't been recruited at all. In fact, he was a two-star prospect according to most recruiting sites.

When his lie was exposed, Hart tried to claim he had been scammed by a bogus recruiter, but eventually owned up to the fact that he had fabricated the entire scheme. "I wanted to play D-I ball more than anything." said Hart in an official statement to the media. "When I realized that wasn't going to happen, I made up what I wanted to be reality."

Hart eventually went on to play junior college ball before transferring to Missouri Western, a D-II program. So close to his dream, yet so far.

People involved: Danny Almonte, Felipe Almonte
Date: 8/31/2001

In 2001, a young New York pitcher by the name of Danny Almonte took the Little League baseball world by storm, as the rising fireballer led his Bronx teammates to a third-place finish in the Little League World Series, largely on the strength of his considerable talent.

Almonte lit up the competition during the LLWS, throwing 75 MPH fastballs, notching 62 Ks, and even throwing the first perfect game in the tournament since 1957. All, presumably, as 12-year-old.

However, suspicions about Almonte's age eventually accompanied his newfound fame, and Sports Illustrated eventually tracked down the civil records in Almonte's birth place in the Dominican Republic and found his birth certificate. What did it reveal? Almonte was actually 14, two years older than the age limit for Little League ball.

As a result, his team's wins were stripped, and his father, Felipe, was charged with falsifying a birth certificate.

People involved: George Plimpton
Date: 4/1/1985

On April Fool's Day in 1985, Sports Illustrated decided to have some fun with the holiday by taking a look at a baseball phenom by the name of Sidd Finch. They claimed he could throw a fastball 168 MPH. They said he was a yogi, and an orphan. Who exactly was Finch?

The writer of the story, George Plimpton, said Finch was a rookie pitcher in the New York Mets farm system, and after the article was released, excited Mets fans were clamoring for more information on the upcoming phenom. However, there was just one problem. Finch didn't actually exist at all. Plimpton and Sports Illustrated had made Finch up as an elaborate prank, even printing a follow-up article on April 8 to announce his retirement.

On April 15, they eventually announced Finch to be a fake. But if anyone had taken a hard look at the first article they may have seen that Finch was too good to be true all along. The subhead for the original piece read "He's a pitcher, part yogi and part recluse. Impressively liberated from our opulent life-style, Sidd's deciding about yoga - and his future in baseball."

Take the first letter of each word and what do you get? "Happy April Fool's Day-ah(a) fib." As if Mets fans weren't tortured enough.

People involved: Rosie Ruiz
Date: 4/21/1980

When it comes to cheaters, Rosie Ruiz is iconic, as the former New Yorker once famously crashed the Boston Marathon in 1980 by exiting the race, and then re-entering down the course to cross the finish line in first. However, it wasn't merely a prank on Ruiz's part. She was truly out to trick people into believing she had won.

After taking the red tape, though, many were immediately suspicious of Ruiz, who didn't appear to be physically exhausted from the race, and struggled to recall specific details about the marathon.

Eventually, Ruiz was outed by two Harvard students who recalled seeing her come out of the crowd about a half mile down from the finish line. After an investigation by Boston athletic officials, they declared the intial runner-up Jacqueline Garreau to be the winner, and disqualified Ruiz.

People involved: Spanish paralympians
Date: 12/14/2000

In terms of hoaxes, it doesn't get much worse than the Spanish paralympic basketball team of 2000. Competing in Sydney, the squad ran away with the competition, defeating Russia in the final to take home the gold.

Unfortunately, this isn't where the story ends. What should've been a heartwarming tale turned out to be a shameless quest for greed, as it turned out that at least 10 members of the Spanish paralympic basketball team suffered from no sort of mental handicap.

Last year, the former head of the Spanish Federation for Mentally Handicapped Sports was finally found guilty of fraud 13 years after the actual incident. Though the team had already given back their medals long ago, the guilty former director was ordered to pay nearly €150,000 in fees.

People involved: Manti Te'o, Ronaiah Tuiasosopo
Date: 1/16/2013

By now, we're all familiar with the specifics of Manti Te'o's fake girlfriend, Lennay Kekua. Indeed, the catfishing tale has become something of a legend in college football, even after just a year or so since it happened.

After numerous media outlets reported the death of Te'o's grandmother and girlfriend on September 11, 2012, Te'o's insistence to play through tragedy became part of the college football season's annual folklore. Apparently, his girlfriend, Lennay Kekua, had died after a car accident and a bout with leukemia. She was a student at Stanford.

After the season ended, though, all of Te'o's story was found to be false. Deadspin broke the story, detailing all the falsehoods of his tale, and essentially outing Te'o as either victim or a perpetrator of this ruse.

Eventually, public opinion sided with Te'o, as he vehemently maintained his innocence throughout the scandal, saying he had been tricked by Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, a family friend who had posed as Lennay Kekua over the phone and online with Te'o.

Tuiasosopo admitted that he had fallen in love with Te'o and was using the Kekua identity as a means to get closer to him. Neither man was charged with any crime in the proceedings, but we imagine that Te'o has kept his distance from Tuiasosopo since.

People involved: Donald Crowhurst
Date: 7/10/1969

It was July of 1969 when Donald Crowhurst met his tragic end after his own sailing stunt had been taken too far. Competing in the Sunday Times' Golden Globe Race, Crowhurst was set to sail around the world in attempt to win a cash prize that would save his failing business.

However, Crowhurst had little experience as a sailor, and found himself in deep trouble early on in the race. Instead of continuing on, he decided to secretly abandon the race, meanwhile reporting false positions in order to make his competition think he was in the lead. Crowhurst stopped in South America for a period of time, waiting for his opponents to come back around. At that point, he would re-enter the race.

When his competition re-appeared months later, Crowhurst attempted to overtake them in order to win the competition. However, his actions prompted another sailor to push his boat too hard, forcing him to abandon ship.

Now, with victory looking certain, Crowhurst realized that he would be found out when he returned home. Fearing public shame and weighed down by guilt, many speculate that Crowhurst jumped overboard around July 1, 1969, thus taking his own life. When his ship was found on July 10, no one was onboard, and there appeared to be no signs of any major accident.