Sports hype and reality

As has been well publicized by now, Danica Patrick won the pole position for the Daytona 500 stock car race next week. This was “historic” because she became the first female driver in NASCAR to do so. There has always been the suspicion that because she is the lightest driver on the circuit, she has a “measurable” advantage over her male competitors in how fast her car runs, although driver skill and good fortune probably plays a greater role in who wins a race. There has been some grumbling about all the notoriety she has garnered; in fact if you ask someone who is not a race car fan to name a driver, Patrick is likely a name that will come up, given all the television commercials she has done. Many sports commentators have pointed out the hype-to-accomplishment ratio is extraordinarily high in her case; her one victory occurred in what was for all practical purposes an exhibition race in Japan, with Patrick the better of a mediocre field. The fact that it is rarely mentioned as a serious accomplishment indicates how insignificant the race actually was. 

But if Patrick is overhyped, she is hardly the only, or even the worst example; we don’t even have to mention Anna Kournikova’s name (oops, I just did). I always felt that one of the most overhyped athletes was Joe Namath. In fact, his career was rather similar to that of Lynn Dickey, for whom Namath was an idol. Both had strong arms and could throw the ball anywhere on the field. When they were on the field and healthy, the game could be quite entertaining—although not always for positive reasons. Both had one great statistical season; for Namath, it was the season he became the first quarterback to throw for 4,000 passing yards, and for Dickey it was in 1983 when he led the NFL in yardage and touchdown passes. He also led the league in interceptions; like Namath, he was an interception machine, but that was all part of the “entertainment” when you had a strong-armed guy at a time when coaches hadn’t yet learned how to tame the wide-open game.

Both Namath and Dickey were injury-prone throughout their careers, and both ended-up with what by today’s standards would be considered at best mediocre statistics. Yet Namath is still a name people instantly recognize (even if they don’t know what he did for a living) and Dickey is only remembered by Packer fans who actually saw him play. That is because Namath had one great accomplishment: His Jets won Super Bowl III, and it legitimized the upstart AFL as a credible competitor to the old NFL. And it did not hurt that it was for a team in the biggest media market in the country, if not the world. But that’s it. Without that Super Bowl, Namath would be just another historical footnote.

There are examples of sports overhype that don’t even have the fig leaf of one notable accomplishment in the professional ranks. One of those who were stripped naked and left with their hands over their privates was Brian Bosworth. Bosworth was a two-time All-American linebacker for the Oklahoma Sooners during the 1980s. He was also well-known for his publicity stunts, like his weird hairdo and his criticisms of NCAA rules. Bosworth tested positive for anabolic steroid use in 1986, but what got him thrown off the team for his senior season was wearing a T-shirt with the logo "National Communists Against Athletes." In 1988 Bosworth admitted to extensive steroid use, but the knowledge of this did not prevent covers on sports magazines and inclusions on lists of the greatest college athletes of all time—or having the supreme arrogance of announcing what teams he would refuse to play for if they drafted him.

One of the teams not on this list was the Seattle Seahawks, who drafted him in 1987; the Seahawks signed Bosworth to at the time the richest rookie contract ever—10 years and $11 million. Given the massive rock star hype surrounding him, nothing less than instant stardom was expected from him. The problem wasn’t that Bosworth was awful with the Seahawks (except in that infamous Monday Night Football game against Oakland, when Bo Jackson ran for 221 yards and three touchdowns), but that he was the product of steroid use. Without them, he was a fraction of the player that the hype machine made him out to be. He lasted but three years in the NFL, but found new life as a Z-movie actor in a couple of action flicks. 

Another infamous example of hype not matching reality was Tony Mandarich, an offensive lineman out of Michigan State, and was the second pick in the 1989 draft. Mandarich was even more muscular than Bosworth, and was dubbed “The Incredible Bulk.” He was the subject of a front page story in Sports Illustrated, which anointed him the greatest offensive lineman in memory. At over 300 pounds, he ran a 40-yard dash faster than some wide receivers, and his other measurables had people believing he was the greatest athlete anyone had ever seen. Like Bosworth, he was his own PR machine—even challenging then heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson to a fight. And also like Bosworth, he was a head case, refusing to report to Green Bay after the team drafted him, calling the town a “village.” When he finally did show up, he wasn’t fit to play save on special teams for a year. He lasted all of three years with the Packers before being cut; it was only years afterward that he admitted that like Bosworth, he was largely the product of steroid use.

But in my mind, the “greatest” example of hype in overdrive that was not justified by performance was golfer Michelle Wie. Like Tiger Woods, she started playing golf before she entered Kindergarten; unlike Woods, those who predicted she was destined for greatness were proven badly wrong. Wie was usually physically more imposing than most of her female competitors, and this physical difference enabled her to compete competitively at a young age with adults. She won a few amateur tournaments by the time she was 11, and even qualified to play in an LPGA in Hawaii, and at the age of 13 she became the youngest player to make the cut at an LPGA event. By then the hype machine was in full swing; 60 Minutes would spotlight her not once, but twice in three years. Nike gave her a multi-million dollar endorsement contract. She was paid millions more for just showing up at international tournaments. She was the center of attention at every golf tournament she appeared in—especially the more obscure PGA events that she was given an exemption to play in. She not only claimed that the LPGA wasn’t good enough for her, she even boasted that by the time she was 20 she could beat Woods.

I’m not going to rehash the way Wie subsequently made herself the laughingstock of the golf world—you can read about that in my post “Catching up with Michelle Wie” from last May, except to add that she played in 23 LPGA events in 2012 and made the cut only 13 times with just one top-ten finish; it still appears that she made more money in endorsements from Nike in one year than she has in legitimate tour winnings in her entire career. I would also say I was surprised that the media did not report that she was better at making four-letter expletives than birdies on the course during the 2012 HSBC championship, which “shocked” some family-friendly observers; perhaps after finishing 32-shots behind the leader in a tournament she actually made the cut in last year, this is her way of staying “relevant.” One thing that is not "funny" about the Wie story is that it is an example of how mediocrity can translate into a net worth of over $10 million.