The 2012 Dubsy Awards

Every January since this blog was created, we here at Dubsism have given an award for achievements during the previous year in some under-recognized categories in the world of sports. In prior years, the nominations for the awards were done exclusively by an internal committee. This was the first year we allowed nominations from the general public.

Between our committee and our valued readers, we had more quality nominations than we could ever possibly use.  Thank you so much for that. When we received an outstanding nomination that proved to be a winner, we made sure to recognize those who submitted it. However, we did also receive nominations on multiple ballots that proved to be winners. If you see a winner that you nominated, and you weren’t credited, just know that you weren’t the only one who had the same idea.

With that, and after careful consideration, here are the winners of the 2012 Dubsy awards.

The Mickey Klutts Award for Unfortunate Naming

Winner:  Dong Dong, Chinese Olympic Trampolinist

Honorable Mention: Victoria Poon, Olympic Canadian Swimmer

One would expect a year with a Summer Olympic Games to be chock full of hilarious names, and 2012 was no exception. Usually, we tend to leave the Asian names alone, but this one totally obliterated the “Beavis and Butthead Giggle-o-meter”… so much so their was no ignoring it.  Dong is a common name in China, but would you not chuckle at an American named “Dick Dick?”

Now, how do we get Dong and Poon together? Better yet, what if they married. That would be a gold-medal hyphenated name if there ever were one.

Previous Winner: Chicago Bears fullback Tyler Clutts

The Bobby Knight Award for Achievements in Dramatic Public Meltdowns

Winner: Morgan Uceny, USA Track and Field

Honorable Mention:  Tennis player Marcus Baghdatis (nominated by Chris Ross from Painting the Black)

What happened to Uceny was more tragic than dramatic, but there was no denying this poor woman melted down on that track with the whole world watching. Baghdatis’ biggest problem was the the best contact he made with his racket that day was with the court.

Previous Winner: UTEP basketball head coach Tim Floyd

The Bevo and Ralphie Award for Mascot Buffoonery

Winner: Bailey, The Los Angeles Kings’ Mascot (nominated by Chris Humpherys from SportsChump and several others)

Honorable Mention: The West Virginia Mountaineer

These mascot achievements are both about shooting. What can you say about a hockey mascot in full regalia beating an NBA superstar in a shooting contest?  The only thing even close to that is the West Virginia Mountaineer, who used the actual Mountaineer mascot’s musket to bag a black bear. I wonder if they made sure Baylor knew something along the lines of “our mascot just blew a black-powder tunnel through your mascot.”

Previous Winner:  Scorch, mascot for the Boston Blazers

The Budd Dwyer Award for Excellence in Career Suicide

Winner: Former St Louis Rams Defensive coordinator. Gregg Williams (nominated by Patrick Young from Nonsensesituation Room)

Honorable Mention: Former Arkansas Head Coach John L. Smith

In his nomination letter, Mr. Young pretty much nails why Williams is our winner.

It’s one thing to encourage you players to be tough and physical. In some instances it may even be permissible to give thinly veiled instructions to a player to perform an act that has a significant chance of causing serious injury to another player. Such as throwing a fastball at an opposing batter, or cutting a defensive lineman. It’s another thing to blatantly tell your players to punch people in the head and attack their surgically repaired knees. To commit what in a court of law is accessory to, assault, and conspiracy WHILE ON TAPE is so stupid that the name of this award could be renamed in his memory. How he is not in jail is only slightly less surprising that he was only given a one year suspension.

To be honest, there were a lot of Bobby Petrino nominations, and to be even more honest, Petrino was in the running until one thing happened that disqualified him. He got another job. But we didn’t even to leave Fayetteville to find our honorable mention; the guy who took Petrino’s place, and took the Razorbacks from a pre-season darling to a post-season dumpster fire. It only took a single-season for Smith to make himself virtually unemployable.

Previous Winner: Former Washington Nationals Manager Jim Riggleman

The Ed Hochuli Award for the Best Call

Winner: Dan McCarney, head football coach, University of North Texas

Honorable Mention: The Blue Point Brewing Company

In the case of McCarney, how can you not love a guy who after having a stroke says “Nothing wrong with me that a little Grey Goose won’t cure.” And I bet you can some good cocktails  at The Blue Point Brewing Company of Long Island, New York which is driving home a message we were touting as well. The Olympics has many events that might as well be on Cinemax.

Previous Winner: The signs of the Dan Patrick Show-inspired  #OccupyGameDay Movement

The Jason Sehorn Award for Being Completely Overrated

Winner: Manti T’eo, Notre Dame Linebacker

Honorable Mention: Manchester City, English Premier League

Here’s a case wehre both the winners are actually pretty good, just not as good as people want you to believe they are. In the case of T’eo, yeah, he’s a pretty good linebacker, but the idea he was Heisman-worthy was close to laughable. He’s not only not the “best player in the country,” he wasn’t even the best defensive player. That honor goes to South Carolina defensive end and flat-out beast Jadaveon Clowney.

Then, there’s Manchester City. If you aren’t familiar with the English Premier League, Man City would be like the Boston Red Sox. Think of a team that spent zillions of dollars on players and still can’t win. Manchester City exploded it’s payroll, and while it is competitive in the English League, they still can’t get out of the Group Stage in the Champions League. Not only did they not advance to the Knock-out Round, by finishing dead last in their group, they don’t even qualify for the Europa League.

Previous Winner: Kim Kardashian

The Clinton-Nixon Award for Cover-Up Futility

Winner: Former Olympian Suzy Favor Hamilton (nominated by Dick Marple, Chairman of the Dubsism Advisory Committee)

Honorable Mention: Lance Armstrong

When you go from Olympian to high-priced hooker, you know there’s got to be a pretty good story behind it.

Citing depression that “goes way back to childhood,” three-time Olympian Suzy Favor Hamilton confirmed Thursday that until recently, she had been working as a high-priced escort based in Las Vegas.

The news of Favor Hamilton’s secret life was broken Thursday by the website the Smoking Gun, which reported that the 44-year-old Wisconsin native has been working for the last year for an escort service that booked her for dates in Las Vegas as well as in Los Angeles, Houston and Chicago.

In an e-mail to the Wisconsin State Journal in Madison, the former standout runner at the University of Wisconsin confirmed that the story was true.

You know it had to take a story about hookers to beat out the epic cover-up failure which is the Lance Armstrong story.

Previous Winner: Former Penn State President Graham Spanier

The Charles O. Finley Award for Achievements in Cheap

Winner: Matt Shaner, Owner, Pittsburgh Power

Honorable Mention: NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman and the NHL owners (multiple nominations)

There’s so many layers of cheap in the Shaner story it requires a Dubsism-style breakdown.

The owner of the Pittsburgh Power fired all 24 members of his team during a pregame meal at an Orlando-area Olive Garden.

Getting fired over all-you-can-eat pasta and breadsticks. Do you think Shaner sprung for the extra sausage with the pasta? Ten bucks says “not a chance.” Here’s why.

With (Arena Football League) AFL players set to strike before the 2012 season opener, owner Matt Shaner reacted first, cutting his entire team hours before kickoff of a game against the Orlando Predators.

“Mid-statement, all the players got up and left,” former Power center Beau Elliott told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. “Every player got up and left while he was still talking. There were 15 to 20 angry, large individuals.”

First of all, nothing good ever came over dinner at an Olive Garden. Do you know the type of people who thing Olive Garden is good food?  Morbidly obese midwesterners who think the entirety of Italian food can bee summed up with a noodle drenched in some sort of tomato-based sludge.  Do you know what sort of people invite somebody to an Olive Garden? The kind of people who think the best way to celebrate an event is to be shitting uncontrollably 3 hours afterward.

The AFL Player’s Association was calling for an increase in the $400 game checks paid to most players on each team. The union demanded a 300 percent increase in the minimum salary. AFL owners countered with a $100 raise.

So, if I’m a guy making a low-end AFL wage, and we are fighting over a few hundred bucks, there’s no way I’m walking out on any free meal, even if it is the gastrointestinal rape Olive Garden calls food…free is free.  Unless I’m not getting the extra meat. Then I’m outta there.

Wait, it gets better.

Shaner told the newspaper that some players split from the union and returned to the team in time for Saturday night’s game. Those who didn’t were stuck in Orlando and forced to return to Pittsburgh on their own.

How shitty is that? Shaner gave these guys a choice; either ditch the union or you can walk the 970 miles back to Pittsburgh. Now, you would think that cutting the entire team would mean the game gets cancelled, right? Guess again.

The game was still played, with unfilled roster spots being taken by replacement players, some of whom arrived to the arena minutes before kickoff. One backup quarterback switched teams before the game after getting “drafted” during a pregame selection. As a result, the season opener had the feeling of a pick-up game down by the local high school field. The NFL Network broadcast the game live. Announcers reportedly couldn’t identify a number of players.

As far as the National Hockey League is concerned, what else can you say about about a league that has gone through three crippling labor stoppages since 1994?

Previous Winner: The Tampa Bay Rays

The Joe Kapp Award for Being Run Out of Town

Winner: Danny Hope, Former Head Football Coach, Purdue University

Honorable Mention: Reigning National League Cy Young Winner R.A. Dickey

That’s what they were thinking four years ago in West Lafayette when they hired Danny Hope, and he did exactly what any reasonable person would expect. He returned a middle-of-the-Big Ten program to the middle of the Big Ten. The beginning of the Hope era saw him taking over for a Joe Tiller-led squad that could barely manage 4-8, it ends with Hope having Purdue in back-to-back bowl games. Did they make it to the Rose Bowl? Of course not. But lets’ be honest, this is Purdue, a school which has gone to exactly two Rose Bowls in the past 45 years., but has an athletic director who thinks he’s running a top-of-the-BCS shop.

How does one spell mediocrity? A good start is Purdue AD Morgan Burke. Here’s a guy who basically ran a Hall-of-Fame caliber coach in Joe Tiller out of town after he hamstrung his ability to recruit. Tiller was the guy who not only saw that Drew Brees was a top-flight quarterback but built an offense around him.  Go back and look at what Big Ten offenses looked like before Tiller, and what they looked like after. Not to mention, the Tiller-Brees combination made Purdue the only Big Ten member to look respectable against USC in a Rose Bowl in the last fifteen years.

Instead of letting Tiller build Purdue into a football power like it was in the 60’s, Burke made sure Tiller couldn’t get recruits. Then, he did the same crap to Hope. Granted Hope likely wasn’t going to get Purdue to a Rose Bowl, but he was never really given a chance. The problem is that Burke thinks he’s at Stanford or Northwestern; a private school with higher academic standards. The reality is that Purdue, despite the name, is a land-grant school that has to admit anybody with Indiana residency. I’m not saying that you have to sacrifice academics for athletics, but when you use a false pretense to kill off recruiting, perhaps it isn’t the coaches who are the problem at Purdue.

Then there is the matter of R.A. Dickey. In a way, I really can’t blame the Mets; I wouldn’t be in a hurry to pump big money into a 38-year old knuckleballer, but they must understtand  how it looks when a team that has been a cellar-dweller trades away a reigning Cy Young winner.

Previous Winner: Former Boston Red Sox Manager Terry Francona

The Bobby Layne Award for Best Performance While Drunk

Winner: British Olympic Cyclist Bradley Wiggins

Honorable Mention:  Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps

Since you likely aren’t familiar with Wiggins, here’s a rundown from the British newspaper The Independent:

After winning Olympic gold in 2004, Bradley Wiggins went on a bender. He drank. He put on weight. “I’d lived so religiously in the run-up to Athens,” he admitted, “that I just wanted to feel normal again.” Today the cycling superstar is older, wiser and weighed down not by body mass, but by medals. Yet that didn’t prevent him enjoying a drink or six on Wednesday, following his historic time-trial win. “Blind drunk at the minute,” he tweeted, sharing a photo of himself, vodka in hand.

Honesty…not only is it the best policy, its a pretty damn good way to win a Dubsy.

While you are certainly more familiar with Phelps, you may not be so in tune with what he’s been up to since London. Suffice to say since he’s being honorably mentioned here, there’s been some drinking in his life.  God Bless him for it.  From the good people at Deadspin:

Finally, Michael Phelps broke something that wasn’t a world record — HIS ASS — taking a nasty spill while crowd surfing in a Vegas nightclub…

Phelps — who’s STILL in party mode after the London Games — hit up XS nightclub Monday night, and for some reason thought it would be a good idea to crowd surf inside an inflatable raft.

Beautiful. For the record, Phelps is about 6-4, 200 pounds, so, even if he was being egged on, it was probably foolhardy to expect a crowd of drunken concert attendees to pass him and a friend around on a life raft.

Foolhardy? Perhaps, but if we live in a world where you can’t blame wrong decisions on alcohol, then, Sir, I don’t want to be right.

Previous Winner: Former U.S. Ski Team Member Robert “Sandy” Vietze

The Artis Gilmore Award for Achievements in Hair Boldness

Winner: New England Patriots Defensive Back Tiquan Underwood

Honorable Mention: The Indianapolis Colts Cheerleaders who shaved their heads (multiple nominations)

There’s nothing quite like the feeling one must have when you take the time to show such dedication to your team as to commit this sort of hair boldness, only to be released by the team less than 24 hours before the kick-off of the Super Bowl.  Despite that, there’s something to be said about the artistry it takes to combine logo-shaving and a “Kid N’ Play” level “Eraserhead” flat-top.

It’s not too often you see hot chicks willing to shave their heads, but lets be honest, a) hair grows back, b) this is why God made wigs, and c) you’d still be all over that, shaved head or not.

Previous Winner: Minnesota Timberwolves forward Michael Beasly

The Kyle Orton Award for Achievements in Partying

Winner: James Harden of the Houston Rockets for paying that escort $20,000 for her “companionship” (nominated by Ryan Meehan from East End Philadelphia)

Honorable Mention: U.S. Women’s soccer gold medalist Alex Morgan

You can buy a l;ot of stuff with $80 million. just ask James Harden. Harden seems to be blowing his new Rockets money by getting his rocket blown at $20,000 a pop. If your curious as to what Harden hardens for, her name is Jenna Shea (you probably shouldn’t open that link at work or anywhere else that will get you in trouble), and she apparently is some sort of video vixen/model/but NOT a hooker (wink, nudge).

Halloween is a great time for partying, and what could be better than one Olympian making fun of another?

Previous Winner: Dallas Mavericks forward Dirk Nowitzki

The Vasily Alexseyev Award for Plus-Sized Achievment

Winner: ESPN Sideline Reporter Holly Rowe

Honorable Mentions: Miguel Cabrera and Pablo Sandoval

By watching this video, it is clear Holly Rowe missed her calling. The way she throws those elbows, she should have been a power forward or an NHL enforcer.  This isn’t the first time Rowe has gone “hands-on” to n protecting her employer’s interests on the sidelines; we all know ESPN uses its financial muscle to shut out other media outlets from the best post-game interviews, and when needed, Rowe will toss in a little muscle of her own. Just ask the Deadspin guys:

This is the postgame of the 2003 Motor City Bowl in Detroit, in which Bowling Green beat Northwestern 28-24. That’s BGSU quarterback Josh Harris answering questions before Holly “sorryguysthisislive” Rowe butts in. At least she apologizes, sort of.

Plus, she does sideline reports about pickles.

With Cabrera and Sandoval, the magic number seems to be three. Cabrera won baseball’s Triple Crown, we all remember Sandoval’s three home runs  in Game One of the World Series, they both play third base, and they both easily go 3XL in the shirt size.

Previous Winner: New England Patriots Defensive Tackle Vince Wilfork

The Vinko Bogotaj Award For Epic Failure

Winner:  Los Angeles Kings Forward Dustin Penner

Honorable Mention: The Green Bay Packers

At first, when I read the Penner Story, I simply didn’t believe it. Hockey players are some of the toughest athletes on the planet.  These are guys who have the noses stitched back on, then pick up a stick and go right back to the ice. That’s why when you read a story about one getting injured, you don’t expect it to be over breakfast.

Things an NHL player should do when his weight and conditioning are constant points of contention and ridicule: Hit the exercise bike, hire a personal trainer, impose some dietary restrictions.

Things an NHL player shouldn’t do when his weight and conditioning are constant points of contention and ridicule: Suffer an injury while eating a stack of “delicious pancakes.”

Oh, Dustin Penner. From Rich Hammond of LA Kings Insider comes the story of the Los Angeles Kings forward who missed a game and is questionable…because of Aunt Jemima’s Revenge:

“I woke up fine, sat down to eat and it locked right up. It never happened to me before. I couldn’t stand up. I was probably at the third stage of evolution. So my wife helped me get dressed, and then I drove to the rink here, to hope they could do some magic and get it opened up. Kinger [trainer Chris Kingsley] just looked at me and said, ‘Go home.’ So I got some treatment and went home..

“Apparently it’s one of those mysterious things, where you can throw it out (from) sneezing. I just leaned over to dip into some delicious pancakes that my wife made. It’s just like it [the pain] wraps around you and squeezes. … So it was disappointing. Hopefully it’s just an isolated incident, and not something that’s going to become chronic.”

Or else he’ll have to switch to waffles…Of course, did redeem himself by helping the Kings win the Stanley Cup

When you are selling stock certificates at $250, you might want to run them through Spell-Check.

Some Green Bay Packers fans who spent $250 on a single share of team stock didn’t get the certificate in time for Christmas. Others did. It’s a toss-up as to who should be more disappointed.

At least one of the 250,000 shares of Packers stock that have been sold since early December features a glaring typo on the stock certificate. Arvind, of Winnipeg, sent in a picture of his shareholder certificate to SI’s Jimmy Traina. It reads “Green Boy Packers,” which sounds more like a hipster rap duo from Milwaukee rather than one of the most storied franchises in NFL history.

No, “Green Boy Packers” sound like something way worse…like an environmentalist pedophile.

“I just received my Packers certificate,” Arvind wrote to Traina via email. “[It’s] kind of annoying, kind of hilarious. I wonder if the certificate is worth something now?”

Skeptical as I usually am of possible hoaxes like this, Arvind’s certificate looks fairly legit. “Green Boy” is written at every reference to the Green Bay Packers, while the seal at the bottom correctly lists the location of the team as “Green Bay, Wis.” The spacing and fonts look correct for all misspelled words.  It’s either one heck of a Photoshop or a ridiculous chain-reaction typo.

Or it is like that rare stamp with the upside-down airplane.

Arvind wasn’t the only Packers fan to be dissatisfied with the stock deal. The team’s website promised that certificates would reach buyers in time for Christmas, but a glitch on the first day of sales kept hundreds of copies from going out to buyers.

The Packers have made $60 million so far from the stock sale.

Joke all you want, $60 million is the kind of green we’d all like to be packing.

Previous Winner: The NBA Owners and the Player’s Union

The Joe Theismann Award For Gruesome Injuries

This is a new award which is named after the former Redskins quarterback who in the years before he was hawking prostrate drugs was getting extra corners in his leg on Monday Night Football.  Sports is now, and has always been filled with injuries that make us all throw up in our mouths a little bit, so why not recognize the great ones.

Winner: Tennessee Titans wide receiver Marc Mariani

Let’s be honest, kids, there a reason why the word “Thiesmann” is synonymous with snapping your leg mid-calf.

We won’t be doing an “honorable mention” in this category; looking at one of these is enough stomach-turning for one blog.

The Gene Mauch Lifetime Achievement Award

Winner: Rick Majerus

This award is given annually to somebody who has been around forever, but never won anything as a head coach or player. Sadly, this is the first time we’ve given the award posthumously.

I’m sure we here at Dubsism share a similar sentiment for Majerus with many with many other bloggers and journalists; he was one our favorites. Majerus was a quote machine; a MAjerus press conference could be everything a Bobby Knight presser was in terms of sheer entertainment value, minus the profanity and mean spirit. Make no mistake, Majerus had a sharp tongue which could incise with the best of them, but he tended to be a bit more jovial while he was cutting your heart out.  That’s why we loved him.

The journey through life that made Majerus the man we came to know began in 1966, when he graduated from Majerus graduated from Marquette University High School in 1966 and then attended Marquette University, where he tried out as a walk-on in the 1967 season.  He did not play for Marquette, but stayed on as a student assistant. He graduated in 1970 with a degree in history. He began coaching eighth-graders at St. Sebastian Grade School in Milwaukee, then coached freshmen boys at his high school alma mater.

He then became an assistant coach with Marquette for 12 years under mentor Al McGuire (Marquette’s 1977 NCAA Championship would be his first brush with winning) and under Hank Raymonds until Majerus took over as head coach in 1983. After three years as head coach at Marquette, and a 56-35 record, he became an assistant coach with the NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks for the 1986–87 season. He returned to the college ranks at Ball State during the 1987–88 and 1988–89 seasons, finishing with a record of 43–17.

The collegiate/amateur ranks would bring Majerus’ next two close calls with winning.  He was an assistant coach under Don Nelson for the U.S. national team in the 1994 FIBA World Championship, a team that won that tournament.  Majerus would then lead the University of Utah to the Final Four in 1998, eventually losing to Kentucky in the National Championship Game.

In 2007, Majerus accepted the head coaching position at Saint Louis University; his contract was for six years, however, it was announced in August of 2012 that Majerus would not coach the 2012–13 season due to health issues.

Majerus passed away last month at the age of 64.

Previous Winner: Former Utah Jazz head coach Jerry Sloan