Top Ten Sports Hoax's of All Time

Ok I admit it - I am fascinated with this whole balloon boy episode. You have to stoop pretty low to get your entire family - including 3 kids under the age of 10 - involved in a prank that can land you in jail. I did a quick Google search and typed in "Balloon Boy" and got 14,800,000 web sites and that included 11,247 related articles at NPR. Ok - so this is 11,248.

But I'm not writing about this whacked out father and how he planned to get his own reality show from this prank. I started thinking about the greatest sport's hoax's of all time and decided to put together my top 10 sports hoaxes in history. Without further ado, here are my top ten sport hoaxes of all time....

#10 - Rankin Smith pretending to be a NFL owner. Can you say Marion Campbell - twice? I'm not sure what type of people he surrounded himself with to make football decisions - but they weren't football people.

#9 - David Duval pretending to be a professional golfer. We all get into a funk, but how does someone that talented fall that far so fast?

#8 - Jon Koncak pretending to be a professional basketball player. Does this need any more explanation?

#7 - Jerry Glanville as a NFL coach. How can someone who traded away Brett Favre ever be considered an NFL coach?

#6 - The 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers as an NFL football team. Yes it was an expansion team but they were paid to play a game.

#5 - The 2008 Detroit Lions. Nuff said.

#4 - Bill Buckner pretending to be a Major League First baseman in the 1986 World Series. Sorry Bill but that one still stings to this day.

#3 - Ryan Leaf pretending to by an NFL quarterback. How Bobby Beathard got duped into that pick will be one of the greatest mysteries of all time.

#2 - Mike Tyson thinking he was a professional boxer. I realize Holyfield and Tyson made up on Oprah this week, but how low do you have to stoop to bite someone's ear off? Unless of course you're in a grade B horror movie.

And the number one sports hoax of all time is.......

#1 - Michael Vick pretending to be a human being. A former #1 draft pick in the NFL and at the time the highest paid player in the league. Spent several seasons for the Falcons shooting the bird at fans, not coming to off season conditioning, bypassing film study and then openly lying to the commissioner about his role in a dog fighting ring. And now after serving jail time is perplexed by the fact that no one is willing to hand him a starting job in the NFL. Get a grip Michael.

Let me know which ones I left off - maybe we can start a Top 100 Sports Hoaxes of all time.

David