The Knuckles: A Knuckleheaded Year in Review
2014 was an incredible year for knuckleheads across the globe, but sports seemed to shine an extra bright light on those who would be contenders for our weekly presentation of The Knuckles. From the serious to the not-so-serious, barely a week — or even in some cases, a couple of days — would go by without somebody crawling out of the woodwork to potentially earn themselves a spot on the podium.
It wasn’t easy to narrow all of the contenders down into one list, but we think we’ve been able to identify the biggest winners of the year. So without further ado, here are the 12 biggest knuckleheads of 2014.
12. Lamarr Houston/Stephen Tulloch – Guys like Tulloch and Houston represent why The Knuckles were invented in the first place. Both of them – each a linebacker for an NFC North team (Tulloch, the Detroit Lions and Houston the Chicago Bears) – were lost for the season because they blew out their knees celebrating a sack. Houston gets extra knucklehead points for suffering his injury after sacking Pats’ backup Jimmy Garoppolo with his team down by 25 points in the fourth quarter, but both he and Tulloch deserve your jeers and mockery. Injuries aren’t usually funny but these two each are hilarious.
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11. The Lions – A late entry into the Year in Knuckles, the Lions seemed to finally be moving in the right direction under the (very, very) quiet leadership of former Colts’ coach Jim Caldwell. But in the past two weeks, they remembered who they are with two of their most important players – one on offense, one on defense – suspended for critical games due to being undisciplined idiots on the field. Ndamukong Suh wound up getting his suspension overturned on appeal (despite using one of the worst excuses known to man as part of his case) but whether you agree with that or not, the bottom line is that if he hadn’t so carefully cultivated the reputation of being a total knucklehead over the course of his career, his act against the Packers probably would have gone unnoticed. And one of the losingest teams in NFL history wouldn’t have had to sweat trying to figure out how it could win just its second playoff game in over 50 years without him.
Oh and also, Tulloch plays for the Lions. Who would have thunk it?
10. Carmelo Anthony – The Knicks have disintegrated since bouncing the Celtics from the playoffs in 2013, the last hurrah in Boston for Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett and Doc Rivers. Even bringing in Phil Jackson to remake a majorly broken culture has failed to this point, as the team’s 5-29 record will attest.
Phil will skate though, as will his hand-picked, first-year coach Derek Fisher (for now). Instead, all the blame will be laid at the feet of Carmelo, a superstar by statistics only, who turned down less money to play for teams significantly closer to a potential title to remain in New York so he can enhance his brand and captain a ship that’s not only sinking, it’s sunk.
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9. Luis Suarez – Suarez made history back in June when he earned the first ever Knuckles Trifecta by virtue of his biting incident at the World Cup. The star striker from Uruguay decided to attach his teeth to the shoulder of Italian defender Giorgio Chiellini late in a must-win, knockout round game. It wasn’t the first time Suarez has been caught biting an opponent on the field during the game, it was the third. And after the bite, he flung his head back and threw himself to the ground in an effort to convince everyone that his victim’s shoulder magically jumped out of its socket and smashed him right in the teeth.
Suarez somehow avoided a card for his insane behavior in that game, which Uruguay went on to win. But he did wind up getting booted from the tournament, earning a nine-game international suspension and a four-month vacation from playing anywhere in the world. He was transferred from the English Premier League’s Liverpool to another world power, Barcelona, in July for the bargain price of 75 million pounds and scored his first goal in La Liga earlier in the month.
Ho-hum. Don’t feel bad for Suarez. Feel bad for his opponents. He will bite again.
8. The Jets – The NFL’s most consistently entertaining clown show, starring a clueless owner, a self-absorbed buffoon of a head coach and — for the past three seasons — a GM who was obviously in way over his head.
As is the case most years, the Jets produced several reasons to point and laugh at them in 2014. But the most poetic, most microcosmic of them all came a couple weeks ago when coach Rex Ryan beat his chest and declared “we’re the team that always gives Brady his biggest challenge, whether he admits it or not.’’
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It goes without saying that rookie Calvin Pryor called the Jets “the best 3-12 team in the history of the NFL’’ around the same time. That’s what makes the Jets such a joke, such a hopeless collection of knuckleheads. Starting with Rex, they are so much more interested in blowing their own horns than anything else. They are incapable of humility. Ryan is a great defensive coordinator but contrary to what his adoring public thinks, he’s a horrendous head coach because he can’t fathom that there’s more to a team than just himself and his defense. And while it will be nice for the Pats to not have to deal with his scheming on that side of the ball anymore now that he’s been 86’d, it’s already kind of sad to not have his imbecilic behavior to laugh at hysterically. At least the organization will continue to bring the laughs.
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7. ESPN – There are some things to like about the Worldwide Leader. They produce many terrific documentaries. Their live game coverage is mostly excellent. A number of the writers/analysts/hosts they employ are among the tops in the business. Their investigative journalism branch – Outside the Lines – had a tremendous year, with its coverage of the NFL a real standout.
But 2014 proved to be a year many of their worst flaws were on display, too. From their absurdly arbitrary Twitter timeouts and in-house suspensions to the inexplicable ongoing presence of bottom of the barrel types like Skip Bayless and Stephen A. Smith to the general sensationalistic nature of their flagship program SportsCenter, it’s become a pretty easy decision to seek alternatives in order to get one’s regular sports fix.
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6. Tony Dungy – Everyone’s favorite holier-than-thou NFL coach turned TV talking head made headlines over the summer when he said that he “wouldn’t have taken’’ Missouri linebacker and SEC Defensive Player of the Year Michael Sam in last spring’s draft because “it’s not going to be totally smooth. Things will happen.’’ Dungy later explained in a statement he was specifically talking about wanting to avoid the disctraction that would come with the drafting of Sam, and the comments were not directed towards his sexual orientation.
Dungy famously mentored Michael Vick when he was released from federal prison on dogfighting charges some years ago. He wrote the foreword to a book called “Advancing the Ball: Reformation and the Quest for Equal Coaching Opportunity in the NFL.’’ He emphatically proclaimed on national television that he would welcome Ray Rice on his team. But not Michael Sam, the first openly gay football player to be drafted in history.
Dungy is a raging hypocrite. He is also a massive knucklehead.
5. The Washington Pro Football Team – The nickname. The coach and quarterback. The reprehensible owner. The woeful on-field performance. It’s all Knuckles all the time in D.C. when it comes to the football team, which makes teams like the Raiders and even, at times, the Jets, look like highly functional operations.
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4. Donald Sterling – This was the story that rocked the NBA and threatened the existence of an entire franchise. Sterling, now formerly the owner of the L.A. Clippers, was recorded by an employee/girlfriend unleashing a torrent of racist remarks and the tapes were published by TMZ. Four days later, the notoriously bigoted, cheap, embarrassing Sterling was subsequently banned from the NBA and forced to sell the team.
Because he’s a horrible human being, Sterling tried to hold on to the Clippers despite an almost universal tidal wave of support for the league to oust him. Sponsors fled, players pondered boycotting games, and even the President weighed in publicly in regard to Sterling’s despicable behavior. But the issue of his expulsion from the league and the sale of the team remained held up in court for months for no reason beyond the fact that Sterling is a morally repugnant, unrepentant person who seemed only to enjoy making people’s lives miserable (including a $2 billion price tag for the Clippers) with every day he prolonged the sale of the team.
This past year was full of very ugly incidents at all levels of multiple sports and leagues, and Sterling piloted one of the ugliest. Calling him a knucklehead is something of an insult to knuckleheads everywhere.
3. Florida State – The adventures of quarterback Jameis Winston and his smirking, enabling coach Jimbo Fisher and the school that employs them both (yep, FSU more or less employs Winston) are well known by now and there’s not too much new to add. The Seminoles won 29 games in a row (before getting humiliated by Oregon in New Year’s Day’s national semifinal at the Rose Bowl) and as impressive a feat as that is, it’s impossible to look at it – or the program as a whole – without wondering what the true cost of winning is down there. Let’s ask the Tallahassee police if they have any thoughts on the topic.
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2. Adrian Peterson – Ugh. Peterson beat his four-year old with a switch and it goes without saying that his behavior is/was horrifying. Without even being able to begin contemplating his defense that he was simply disciplining his child the same way he was disciplined by his own parents, it’s still pretty difficult to look at this entire ordeal and not be made to feel ill.
1. Ray Rice and the NFL – The National Football League and its commissioner pretty much outdo everyone else on this list. Roger Goodell, the empty suit tasked with doing the bidding of the league’s owners, proved time and again to be an incompetent, dishonest automaton. Goodell can do whatever he wants, whenever he wants to, and keep his job , as long as the league continues to rake in higher and higher TV ratings and more and more cash. This is a person who actually managed to make abusers like Rice and Peterson appear slightly sympathetic through his cluelessness. His continued employment is a testament to the idea that you can oversee a multi-billion dollar conglomerate while simultaneously being completely overmatched by it.
As for Rice, it’s absolutely incredible that his behavior that night in Atlantic City wound up more or less relegated to sidebar status thanks to the unbelievable ineptitude of Goodell and the responses all along by the Ravens. He will probably never play pro football again, and if that’s the worst fate to befall him, he’s a pretty lucky guy.
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