In sports, as in all of life, people make mistakes. We see the shortstop stare into his glove after an error, looking for answers. Or there’s the receiver tapping his fingers to his chest after the dropped pass in the international signal for "my bad." These lapses in hand-eye coordination are just one part of the human condition.

Yet sometimes these slip-ups have a more sinister cause. Occasionally in sports we witness mistakes that weren’t accidents, but the by-products of simple greed and jealousy. With an adoring public so eager to place players on the pedestal of fame and fortune, we are forced to cringe and turn away when they plummet unceremoniously back to earth.
Even as we shake our heads and look for answers, we can take solace in the fact that the sporting world knows how to handle its black eyes, on and off the field. For as long as fans have paid admission, there have been athletes who’ve looked past them to the promise of fame, glory and the easy dollar.

On occasion, these exploits can be rather harmless, such as Rosie Ruiz’s infamous 1980 Boston Marathon "win," in which she snuck into the race just a mile before the finish line on her way to a record-smashing time. Other instances, such as the 1919 Black Sox scandal, have brought an entire league to its knees.
Always on the level, Player would like to take you on a sordid journey through the seedy underbelly of American sports. So double-check your tax returns, put away the crib sheets and get those aces out of your sleeve as we reveal the top sports scandals of all time.

10. Salt Lake City Busted for Bribery
For the better part of the 20th century, Salt Lake City did its damnedest to secure a winning bid as a Winter Olympics host city, falling short on five separate occasions. In 1932 they lost out to Lake Placid, New York. In 1972 it was Sapporo, Japan, and four years later it was Innsbruck, Austria’s turn. Still determined, they went for it in 1992 but saw Albertville, France take the prize.
Yet even after seven decades of falling short, the city still held out hope for the 1998 games. Nagano, Japan edged them out with 52 percent of the vote.
After that, the Salt Lake Bid Committee decided it was no more Mr. Nice Guy. Casting aside any hint of an inferiority complex, they went all out in their quest for the 2002 Games. Despite their buttoned-down reputation, the Beehive State started making it rain like Pacman Jones at an exotic dancing convention.
The International Olympic Committee found itself showered with gifts from these focused Utahns. What kind of gifts you ask? Well, for starters there were some free ski vacations. Then Super Bowl tickets found their way into IOC hands. There were also plastic surgery expenses, a crooked real estate deal, considerable scholarships and even some coveted local jobs going to the families of Committee members. Oh yeah, and there was some cash under the table. Bags of it. Really big bags.
So, as luck would have it, Salt Lake City finally got its first Olympic Games. But when Swiss IOC member Marc Hodler broke the news that members of the Committee had taken bribes, heads began to roll. Shortly thereafter, Salt Lake Olympic Committee President Frank Joklik and Vice President Dave Johnson were removed from their positions and ten IOC members either resigned or were given the boot as well.
But with so much already underway and so little time for another city to prepare, Salt Lake City was not stripped of its coveted Games, and the city’s denizens were nothing if not gracious hosts.
Not coincidentally, longtime IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch also received a gift: over $2,000 worth of firearms from the Salt Lake City crew. A man so used to power he demanded to be addressed as "His Excellency," Samaranch said he didn’t want to insult the city by refusing the valuable gift.
By welcoming weapons over the ol’ bag with the dollar sign, it appears His Excellency favored bang over buck.

9. Jim Thorpe Gets Stripped
If there was a type of physical competition the chances were pretty good Jim Thorpe could beat you.
Nearly unchallenged in the 1950s in being named the "Greatest Athlete of the First Half of the Century" by the Associated Press, Thorpe was a natural athlete in the highest degree. He became famous as a four-position football player and a track and field standout in nearly every event. But he was also a renowned baseball, basketball, lacrosse and tennis player, as well as a skilled golfer, rower, bowler, pool player and gymnast.
But when it came to transforming himself from man to legend, the road begins and ends at the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm, Sweden. It was there that Thorpe, known for his Native American heritage and modest physical stature, put on a display of physical prowess never before seen on a world stage. Thorpe won the decathlon with a point total that would stand for almost 20 years, and would have been good enough for a silver medal almost four decades later.
In the pentathlon he was not expected to defeat home-grown specimen Hugo Wieslander, but instead, stunned the masses by handling the Swede with a 688-point margin of victory. This earned him international recognition and the enthusiastic praise of both an adoring American public and Sweden’s King Gustav V, who would personally congratulate the Sac-and-Fox Indian, calling him "the greatest athlete in the world."
More than six months after the hoopla surrounding Thorpe’s Herculean performance, it was announced that he was to be stripped of his gold medals, sending shock waves across the sporting world. A newspaper reporter discovered that Thorpe had received payment as a minor league baseball player during the summers of 1909 and 1910, naively using his real name instead of an alias, a tactic used by many would-be amateurs at the time.
The Amateur Athletic Union retroactively rescinded Thorpe’s amateur status, and the International Olympic Committee followed suit. Thorpe begged for his eligibility, stating straightforwardly that at the time he had been "simply an Indian schoolboy [who] did not know all about such things."
Despite his pleas—and a rule stating that all protests must be made within a month of the closing Olympic ceremonies—his gold medals were revoked. Wieslander and Ferdinand Bie, whom Thorpe had defeated in the decathlon, both refused to accept the gold.
But in the end, Thorpe reclaimed his prize. In 1982, almost 30 years after his death, the International Olympic Committee reinstated him and presented his children with duplicate medals. It’s a fitting end for a man many believe to be the greatest athlete who ever lived.

8. Danny Almonte Pulls a Fast One
Plenty of guys—more than many people think—have had the fantasy. The one where they’re dunking on ten-year-olds or skating circles around pee-wees. It’s ludicrous and it’s juvenile, but that’s what sport fantasies are all about.
In 2001 one young man lived out one of these fantasies in one of the greatest sports hoaxes of the modern era.
Danny Almonte was the diesel-armed star of his Bronx baseball team, leading them to the Little League World Series. Speaking almost no English whatsoever, his pitching did all the talking. He played like a man among boys as American families sat slack-jawed in front of their television sets.
In the Mid-Atlantic Regional finals the Dominican-born hurler threw a no-no against the State College, Pennsylvania team. Then, four days later, he threw the first perfect game in a Little League World Series in 44 years, attracting national media attention for two reasons.
First, there were his incredible statistics. Of the 72 batters he would face in the tournament, only ten would avoid striking out. He gave up an average of one hit per start and had only one unearned run on his stat sheet. He also received attention due to his unusual size and skill, the likes of which few 12-year-olds possess. The kid they called "Little Unit" stood 5’8" and threw a 75 mph fastball, the Major League equivalent of 98.
So after bagging a third-place finish in the tournament, a ceremony at Yankee Stadium, and a key to the city from Mayor Rudy Giuliani, rumors that Danny might be older than the league-limit began circulating. But in-depth searches by private investigators, Little League Baseball and Dominican officials found nothing out of the ordinary.
A few weeks later, after a Sports Illustrated investigation and exhaustive research by the head of Dominican public records, it was announced that Danny’s father Felipe had lied about his son’s age, using 1989 instead of his 1987 birth year on all personal records submitted for the tournament. Danny was two full years older than the maximum for the tournament.
His team was promptly stripped of its wins and records. Felipe Almonte had Dominican criminal charges brought against him and was banned for life by Little League. Soon thereafter it was also discovered that Danny had not even been enrolled in an American school, nor resided on American soil, through mid-June of that year. This made him ineligible no matter what his age, and made his cheating father a scumbag on two separate fronts.
Despite being despicably taken advantage of by his own father, Danny would go on to a successful high school pitching career in New York City and at 19 married a 30-year-old hairdresser from a local salon. Too young or too old, it appears the kid never learned to act his own age.

7. Those Cheatin’ Gophers
The St. Paul Pioneer Press created quite a stir in March of 1999 when it first broke a story about allegations of academic dishonesty at the University of Minnesota. But the Golden Gophers were a team familiar with high-profile legal trouble. In 1986 they were involved in a trial that made headlines across the country when three players were charged with sexually assaulting a female student at another university. And although all three were eventually acquitted, a change was clearly needed.
Enter Clem Haskins, a former college and NBA standout brought in from Western Kentucky University. His new job? To clean up the program. And for over a decade he appeared to have done just that.
But under the eternal mantra of "better late than never," office manager Jan Gangelhoff came forward to the Pioneer Press with a startling revelation that shook the former Big 10 power. She admitted to writing, with the help of her sister, over 400 papers for members of the men’s basketball team over six seasons, years that included several NCAA Tournament appearances.
With the university’s pants around its ankles, four of its accused players were abruptly held out of the team’s opening round game of the NCAA tournament, just days after the allegations first surfaced. This all but doomed the team and it fell to Gonzaga as controversy swirled.
Soon a corrupt system of control was revealed, one led by none other than Coach Haskins. During his early years as coach, he had persuaded university officials to alter the rules surrounding academic counseling for his team alone, in what was labeled as an "experiment" to help at-risk student-athletes. This new system allowed Haskins to give his players a grossly dishonest edge to meet academic eligibility requirements without any of the checks and balances of other teams at the school. It would be years until he dropped his categorical denial and admitted his considerable role in the violations.
But after an earnest and sweeping restructuring of its athletic tutoring system, a self-imposed postseason ban and a cut in basketball scholarships, the Gophers received a relatively light punishment. The NCAA placed the school on four years of probation and further reduced their scholarships as well as their number of allowed recruiting visits.
The school was also forced to expunge all wins from their record books during the period of academic dishonesty, a stretch that covered most of the 1990s. Most embarrassing of all, Minnesota had its 1997 NCAA Tournament Final Four banner removed from the rafters of the Williams Arena, known locally as "The Barn."
With a name like that, it should come as no surprise that their former coach was an expert at shoveling you-know-what.

6. Kerrigan vs. Harding
It was a story inspired by a poorly written soap opera.
Nancy Kerrigan, the 24-year-old Olympic medalist, had just exited the ice after a practice skate for the U.S. Olympic trials. After walking over to speak with a reporter, a man ran up to her, struck her in the knee with a metal baton and escaped the building into the crowded sidewalk outside.
The footage of a hysterical Kerrigan holding her knee and sobbing "Why?" was broadcast into homes coast-to-coast, rallying Americans behind the pride of Stoneham, Massachusetts.
The Washington Post reported the story the next day, mentioning fellow Olympic hopeful Tonya Harding briefly at the end, saying that the former American champion had "been the object of threats" in the past as well, but "now employs a bodyguard service."
This service, World Bodyguard, had only one client: Harding. Within days, its owner, Shawn Eckardt, was implicated in the assault and soon admitted to hiring two men to attack Kerrigan. Eckardt’s attorney said his 350-pound client wanted to take responsibility for his role, saying it made him "feel ugly."
Soon thereafter, the man who assaulted Kerrigan and the getaway driver joined Eckardt in custody, with Harding’s slimy ex-husband following days later. But despite openly admitting to knowledge of the attackers’ plot after the assault and a confession from her ex-husband that Harding was deeply involved in the plot, Harding was not denied her spot at the Olympics after threatening a $20 million lawsuit.
This created the ridiculous and unforgettable situation of both Harding and Kerrigan competing for the same gold medal, each trying their best to skate around the metaphorical elephant in the rink.
Kerrigan would fall just short, with 16-year-old Oksana Baiul taking the gold. But she would go on to capture a silver medal, America’s heart and several big endorsement deals.
Harding, on the other hand, fell even shorter. Finishing eighth as an Olympic pariah, she was later fined, put on criminal probation, stripped of her former U.S. title and banned from the U.S. Figure Skating Association for life. She would go on to stints as, among other things, boxer, wrestling manager and singer, and would receive jail time for a failed field sobriety test.
But the shame of Portland, Oregon would make headlines again for a domestic disturbance in which she punched her boyfriend in the face and threw a hubcap at him. But you know what they say: There’s no such thing as bad publicity.