Roy Williams-Inspired: Who's the biggest phony in sports?

phil mickelson

A good friend of mine calls college football games all over the South & has always claimed that dear old Grandpaw Bobby Bowden has the most foul mouth amongst any of the coaches he's ever run across on the field.A college football coach who curses may not be that big of a deal, but Ol'Bobby is not the preacher man he proclaims himself to be. Not even close.

Lance Armstrong is the only answer here

Lance Armstrong is a very good one IMO. But I don't blame him for using, the entire sport was. It's just the way he vehemently denied steroid use that made him a bad guy.

A-Rod is another good one

I don't know. When Bowden and Paterno were going back and forth for the win title, Paterno was viewed as the "old school, old fashioned football the way it was meant to be" guy while Bowden was the crooked old man. I know a lot of people who believed that was the case.

What particularly about Peyton Manning?

I had some older acquaintances who went Ole Miss and met him when he was visiting Eli. Said he was just a giant awkward goober.

Urban Meyer

Jim Tressel

Usually it's the guys ESPN promotes in a great way and with constant guest appearances...

Michelson is probably the poster-child between the gap of "aww shucks, wonderful smiling guy" to reality.

And Curt Schilling - and all that post-Sox love..."he did everything for his team and played through a bloody ankle for his teammates." ESPN completely rewrote this Pro-Schilling team guy because he was coming on as an analyst.

“He’s somebody who’s always positioning himself in terms of what’s best for Curt Schilling,” says ESPN’s Pedro Gomez, who described Schilling as “the consummate table for one.” (Speaking of which, Schilling also has a reputation for sneaking into the clubhouse late in games to get a head start on the buffet.)

So avid is Schilling’s longing for the spotlight that some of his peers raise doubts about his now legendary turn in the 2004 postseason, when he pitched on an ankle tendon that had been sutured in place. During Game 6, cameras cut repeatedly to the bright red stain on Schilling’s sock. It was blood, right? “The Diamondbacks people think he definitely doctored that sock,” says the sportswriter. The ex-teammate laughs: “All around baseball, people questioned that. It was funny how the stain didn’t spread.”