Manti Te'o. (Getty Images)The
stunning revelation that Manti Te'o's "girlfriend" doesn't exist and
never did has the sports world reeling. But it's by no means the first
time appearance clashed hard against reality in the world of sports.
Check out our list of the most famous hoaxes in sports history, and add
your own below.
10. Sidd Finch. The gold standard for all sports
hoaxes since, Finch was entirely the creation of Sports Illustrated
writer George Plimpton for an April Fool's Day issue. (Read it here, and note what the first letters of the sub-headline spell.) Finch, a supposed New York Mets
recruit with the ability to sling the ball 168 mph. As Finch never even
came close to existing, nobody got hurt in this scam but Mets fans, and
we're all cool with that. Alas, because of Finch we have to endure
"breaking" news stories every April Fool's Day, with increasingly
diminishing returns.
9. Taro Tsujimoto. A fake "player" drafted by the Buffalo Sabres
in the 1974 NHL draft, Tsujimoto was the creation of Sabres GM Punch
Imlach. At the time, scouting for the NHL didn't reach much beyond the
U.S. and Canada, so the idea that a previously-unknown player from the
"Tokyo Katanas" (another creation) could surface wasn't wholly
irrational. Imlach admitted to the goof, but not before Tsujimoto's name
made it into many draft publications.
8. Kevin Hart. It's
the dream of every high school athlete to have a big college signing
day ... even if you have to create it yourself. The self-inflicted
victim of a hoax gone wrong, Hart, an unheralded Nevada high school
football player, held a "press conference" in 2008 where he announced
he'd be choosing between scholarships offered by Cal and Oregon. Problem
was, neither school had offered any such thing, and Hart was left with
nothing but embarrassment as his hoax blew up in his face.
7. Danny Almonte. The "12-year-old" pitched an
unbelievable 2001 Little League World Series: 72 batters faced, 62
strikeouts, three hits, one unearned run. Turns out it wasn't
believable: Almonte was two years older than every player around him.
6. Rosie Ruiz. One of the most famous on-field scams
in history, Ruiz "won" the Boston Marathon in 1980 with a course record
that happened to be the third-fastest female marathon time in history.
Problem was, nobody could remember seeing her at any point during the
race. Turns out she cut off huge chunks of the course and jumped in with
a half-mile to go. (See also: Sylvester Carmouche, a jockey who pulled
the same maneuver during a horse race thanks to blinding fog.)
5. 2000 Spanish Paralympian Basketball Team.
Athletes in the Intellectually Disabled division of the Paralympic Games
must be shown to have an IQ of no higher than 70. The Spanish team,
which won the gold medal, was not sufficiently tested. An undercover
journalist later found that 10 of the 12 players were not
developmentally disabled, and the team had to return the gold medals.
4. Manti Te'o's "girlfriend." This one's still
developing, but whether or not Te'o himself was in on the scam, this
much is obvious: the "girlfriend" whose brave life and tragic passing
"inspired" Te'o turned out to be nothing more than a well-crafted fairy
tale.
3. Steroids in baseball. It's impossible to sort out
what's real and what's false from baseball's steroid era, extending
from roughly 1995-2005. What's certain is that both acknowledged and
suspected users, from Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds to Mark McGwire and
Mike Piazza, will be judged harshly for their roles in a wide-ranging
arms race to boost performance beyond all historical levels.
2. Tiger Woods.
It all started with a text. Woods' then-wife Elin intercepted a text
from one of Woods' (many, as it turned out) mistresses on Thanksgiving
2009, and soon afterward Woods' entire carefully-concealed scam of women
around the world blew apart. He's finally starting to play decently
again, but his reputation will never be the same.
1. Lance Armstrong. Has acknowledged using
performance-enhancing drugs over the course of his decorated,
world-famous career. Edges out Tiger by dint of the fact that
Armstrong's hoax actually affected and enhanced his performance. The
centerpiece of a decade-plus fraud, Armstrong now stands as the most
disgraced athlete in American history.
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