It has been over ten years since I published my initial article on my least favorite sportsmen (and sportswomen) on this blog (see original article here). Times change and obviously my opinions on a lot of players, coaches, and announcers change over time. Therefore, it is time for me to update my lists of favorite and least favorite athletes/sportspersons of all-time. First of all, we have come along way in terms of political correctness in the past decade (for better or worse) so I am electing to use the term “sportspersons” instead of sportsmen. A vast majority of people on these lists are men, but there are some females on both lists so that seems like the most appropriate term. Also, I am intentionally using the terms athletes and sportspersons together because some people on these lists are players and some you will see are not. In addition, to several notable athletes, there are coaches, columnists, owners, announcers, and other sports personalities that can’t be considered athletes on here. Those folks may not directly compete in a sport, but they still play a major role in how a game is played or analyzed. One other thing you need to keep in mind with these rankings is that they are purely subjective. I am not trying to objectively evaluate how much an athlete is hated by the general sports population. Instead, I am simply providing my rankings and analysis for the players and sports figures I personally dislike the most.  Moreover, you will see on this list that there is a disproportionate focus on athletes from individual sports. The reason for that is simple: when I watch team sports, I tend to focus on the teams involved and not really build a particular amount of affection (or hatred) towards a particular player. There are exceptions to this rule of course, but with individual sports, I feel that it is a lot easier to build a strong bond with the athletes competing. Without further ado, here is my 2024 list of least favorite sportspersons of all-time in ascending order.

30. Angel Reese– I will start my list with one of the newest villains in the sports world. Reese has personified arrogance and brashness throughout her college career by taunting Caitlin Clark, fighting with teammates, and sparring with the media and fans. Now, just 10 games into her pro career, she is already stirring things up by encouraging her teammates to attack opposing players.

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29. Vijay Singh– One of my favorite humorous golf moments of all-time came when a heckler yelled out to Vijay at the U.S. Open after he hit a bunker shot to within 6 inches, “I think Annika would have put that one in.” It really says something about a sport when one of its stars wants to prevent women from competing against men because he’s worried about getting beat. Vijay was just the ultimate pompous and arrogant golfer.

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28. Rick Dutrow– Bob Baffert may be the bad guy in horse racing right now, but 15 years before Baffert turned into the sport’s biggest heel, we had Dutrow, the obnoxious trainer of Triple Crown contender Big Brown. I could expound more about him, but Pat Forde (who appears on my list of favorite sports figures of all-time) does it better here. After his triple crown saga with Big Brown, he was given a ten year suspension from horse racing for numerous violations he accumulated over time that included both illegally doping and mistreating horses whom he worked with.

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27. Reggie Miller– If this list had been published in 1998, Reggie would be in the top 5 of this list. As time has passed, my hatred of Reggie has subsided but he still makes this list for his obnoxious antics (see photo below), rivalry with and antagonism of Michael Jordan, and biased commentary.

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26. Brett Favre– I never liked the Green Bay Packers, so Favre was always a player who I held a somewhat unfavorable opinion towards. In the latter years of his career and in retirement though his character flaws have particularly shown through. We have been forced to endure his his never ending retirement saga, sexual harassment antics, and his misuse of government funds scandal.

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25. Craig James– He no longer holds a place in college football (thank god), but James represented everything wrong with the sport during his over three decades as both a player for SMU and then later as a commentator for both CBS and ESPN. First of all, while Rece Davis and other college football pundits subtly express their animosity towards Group of Five schools, James outright discriminated against such institutions. Not only did he consistently bash Boise State during their glory years and other small conferences teams on the air, but his AP rankings of them were beyond absurd (http://thebiglead.com/index.php/2011/11/29/craig-james-is-not-a-boise-state-broncos-fan/ ). Pretty ridiculous for a guy who actually played at a Group of Five school himself in SMU. Of course, that brings me right into the second black mark on James’ resume in that he was one of the biggest stars of the scandal-ridden SMU program from the 1980’s that ended up receiving the death penalty for continuously paying players. Those two demerits would probably be enough to get him pretty high on this list, but there’s even more to hate with this guy. Back in 2010, James led the campaign that got the legendary Mike Leach fired at Texas Tech when James used his position at ESPN to overdramatize a story about Leach putting his sissy son in a utility closet. Fortunately for myself and the rest of mankind, James left his perch as a college football analyst to unsuccessfully run for U.S. Senate in 2012, and he has not really been heard from since then. Yahoo’s Pete Thamel wrote a nice piece in 2018 documenting James’ downfall.

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24. Scottie Scheffler– As you may have noticed, the first six people on this list are either out of the sporting world or dead in the case of David Stern, so I feel like it is time to modernize this list a little bit with some more recent athletes. I will start by going with my least favorite individual sports star right now, Scottie Scheffler. I have always had a quiet disdain for boring American golfers that look like they were born at a country club. Past examples of this were: Ben Crenshaw, Fred Couples, Stewart Cink, and Hunter Mahan. Scheffler may be the perfect personification of this theme, especially given his recent disregard for police officers investigating a fatal car accident. As entertaining as that saga was, the whole thing reeked with what I call “white collar golfer privilege”.

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23. Caleb Williams– Another current athlete to make the list who holds the title of the most obnoxious college quarterback since Jameis Winston (see below). First of all, USC and Oklahoma are two of my least favorite teams in the sport, so him starring for those both of those squads is bad enough. However, Williams became even more hateable with his antics both on and off the field which consisted of his controversial fingernail paintings, his prima donna tendencies, and other character issues.

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22. Jameis Winston– Winston was a worse version of Caleb Williams in his college days, as he had the obnoxious antics we saw from last year’s USC quarterback but was also credibly accused of committing multiple serious crimes. His teams also won more, as he lead his team to a national championship in 2013 and then went to the first-ever CFP in 2014.

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21. Pete Sampras– By most accounts, Sampras was different than most of the guys listed so far on this list, as he is upstanding and successful individual that would serve as ideal role models for your children. So why is he on this list you may wonder? Because he was the arch rival to my favorite tennis player growing up. Andre Agassi was my favorite athlete in the early 90’s, so naturally Pete was the enemy. Sampras also annoyingly precipitates the stereotype of the ultra-boring tennis player. He was kind of my tennis version of Scottie Scheffler so to speak– a boring, elitist Californian who became a dominant force in a “country club” sport

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20. Bill Hancock– History may view Hancock in a favorable light, but this is the guy that has held back the development of a true College Football Playoff for the past decade and a half. He was first named Executive Director of the BCS back in 2009 and lobbyied against the formation of a College Football Playoff with his famous “how would that even work” line of thinking that Mike Leach famously ridiculed. When the pressure on the BCS finally became too much to weather, him and his cronies manufactured the horrible four team College Football Invitational format that he also became the executive director of. Leach also rightfully ridiculed this horrible format. Now, ten years later, we will finally see the inaugural College Football Playoff that actually allows for “most everyone” earn a berth based on their merits on the field. Without Hancock, we could have had this format years ago.

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19. Jon Scheyer– Here is a guy that would have just missed the list in 2013, but because he has now taken on a more important, and villainous, role in the sports world over the past couple of years he makes the list. Any current Duke basketball coach is going to make this list, but my disdain for Scheyer grew tenfold this past winter when he overdramatized Filipkowski’s “injury” during Wake Forest’s court storming and tried to have court stormings banished altogether. Nothing says Duke basketball like trying to rid the sport of its most fun and time honored tradition. As one columnist said during the aftermath and fallout of this saga, “this might be the most ‘Duke thing’ that has ever existed since ‘Duke things’ started becoming ‘Duke things’ ”

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18. Isiah Thomas– One of the least likable people in all of sports. Thomas played like a thug and then acted even worse we he single-handedly ran an entire professional basketball league, the CBA, into the ground. There is a reason no one wanted him on the Dream Team, as depicted in “The Last Dance”.

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17. Kyle Filipkowsi– This guy is the most recent addition in the long lineage of hateable Duke white basketball players, which began with Danny Ferry, was perfected by Christian Laettner, and has continued over the past four decades with Bobby Hurley, Steve Wojciechowski, J.J. Reddick, Grayson Allen, and the aforementioend Jon Scheyer. All of those guys could, and probably should be on this list, but I didn’t want to oversaturate this article with Duke hate, so I am going to pick my battles when it comes to Duke basketball and only put a some these guys on there. The truth of the matter is that Filipkowski wouldn’t be on this list except for the previously discussed antics (see Scheyer entry above) he pulled in the Wake/Duke game this past February where he intentionally tripped a Wake Forest student and then played the fake victim card afterwards (see photo below).

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16. Mark McGwire– The steroid era turned me off to baseball so much so that I still don’t really follow it, two decades later. The biggest culprits of that era were of course: Sosa, McGwire, and Bonds, and McGwire is arguably the worse of the three because he parlayed his cheating into perjury on capitol hill.

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15. Mike Kryzewski– I’d probably like Coach K if he coached any other team besides Duke. Just like I might like Kim Jong Il if he wasn’t a crazy dictator. Instead, Kryzewski created the hateable program in sports history, which is why he qualifies for my top 15 least favorite sports figures. Overall, I tend to dislike Duke’s players and fans more than their coaches which is why you will see multiple Dookies ranked higher on this list.

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14. Rafael Nadal– While may stance on Nadal has softened some, I have really disliked this guy from the moment he burst out on the scene at the 2004 French Open. The capri pants he used to wear were absolutely ridiculous, and it certainly didn’t help matters that he was the only one of the Big 3 (Nadal, Federer, Djokovic) that my all-time favorite tennis player, Andy Murray, could never beat.

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13. Urban Meyer– It is hard to find some to like about Urban Meyer because he really has run the full gammut on unlikable behavior. He’s faked retirement on multiple occasions just to move on to others jobs. He has had a domestic abuse non-disclosure scandal. He has engaged in creepy behavior with college girls. He has even abused players. You put it all together, and he’s just a very unlikable guy that probably should be higher on this list than he is.

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12. Barry Bonds– Bonds is the face of baseball’s steroid era and just an extremely unlikeable guy, which is why he ranks as my least favorite baseball player of all-time.

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11. Bobby Petrino– Go ahead and call this the Arkansas section of the list as numbers 10 and 11 are both current (and former Hogs coaches). The least of this guy’s crimes is coaching several teams who I don’t particular like (Louisville, Texas A & M, and Arkansas). The more egregious crime is of course his constant betrayal of every program and athletic director he’s ever worked for, not to mention his own family with the motorcycle debacle. The fact that Arkansas has hired this guy back on their football staff after the scandal he had there is one of the most absurd developments in a sport that prides itself on absurdity.

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10. John Calipari– Where do I even start with Coach Cal? I have had a up and down relationship with this guy for decades now. I hated him when he coached UMass. I despised him when he coached Memphis. Then, I had to at least try to like him when he became the coach of my beloved Kentucky Wildcats. However, ever year at Kentucky he frustrated me more and more by underachieving in March. Now, I can go back to hating him since he has taken over as head coach of one my least favorite programs, the Arkansas Razorbacks. He’s just a sleezy/scummy dude, bottom line.

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9. Joe Lunardi (aka Joey Brackets)– Imagine if you worked a regular job, say a bank teller for instance, and you did your job better than someone else on a regular basis, but because of some insider connections, that other person became a world renowned authority on that same job that you do better than him or her. That is how myself and most other bracketologists feel about Joe Lunardi who does something that a lot of hardcore basketball fans do just because we love the game. However, ESPN refuses to acknowledge than anyone else on the planet is capable of putting together a mock NCAA tournament bracket other than their beloved Joey Brackets. Therefore, every basketball season, Lunardi gets to come on ESPN on a daily basis with his smug attitude, and tell everyone exactly how the NCAA tournament bracket looks at that point in time, even though he has no idea how the selection committee views a particular team at a particular time. You will never hear about how accurate Joey’s bracket was after Selection Sunday because they don’t really want you to know that he’s actually not very good at his job. Don’t believe me? Check out how he has compared to other bracketologists over the years. Thankfully, the beloved coach of my Wake Forest Demon Deacons, Steve Forbes, went after him this past season in an amusing postgame press conference.

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8. O.J. Simpson– He is the only dead guy on this list, and while, there is an old adage that says “you should not speak ill of the dead”, he killed two people himself, which I think nullifies this rule. Obviously, as a career prosecutor, I do not think highly of people who get wrongfully acquitted of first degree murder.

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7. J.J. Redick– Redick is the fourth Duke basketball player/coach on this list and there is still one more to come. The fact that 1/5 of my list consists of people affiliated with the Duke basketball program is a tell-tale sign of just how much hatred I have towards Duke. JJ is quite simply one the easiest basketball players to hate in the modern era. He is the epitome of all that is wrong with Duke basketball: arrogant, thuggish, and elitist.

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6. Lance Armstrong– One of the world’s biggest frauds. This outspoken atheist is so arrogant that he attributes his survival of cancer to his toughness and work ethic. In fact, he’s basically used his cancer as a way to feed his ego and make money. The only reason people even knows that he’s a cancer survivor is that he used performance enhancing drugs to win the Tour de France seven times. Sometimes a story is just too good to be true and Lance Armstrong’s triumphant return to cycling is a great example of that. And the fact that so many people fell for that facade for years, is what makes Armstrong so hateable.

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5. Cam Newton– I will preface this entry by saying that my hatred from Scam has decreased over the years. In fact, he was ranked as high as # 2 in my original 2013 version of this list and now is barely in the top 5. The reasons my impression of him has increased from “horrible” to just “really bad” are are multi-faceted. First of all, Cam ended up playing played his entire NFL career on two of my favorite pro teams (the Panthers and Patriots). Also, my disdain for Auburn football has dwindled due to their relative lack of success, their hiring of Hugh Freeze (who I actually really like), and the several close friendships I have made with diehard Auburn fans (shout out to Jay, Ward, Hollywood, Marc, Fuller, etc.). However, The 2009 college football season was one of my most heartbreaking times as a sports fan, and Scam is the major reason why. That year setup perfect for me with South Carolina, my second favorite football team, set to become the Cinderella champion of the SEC, and Boise State and/or TCU set to become the first Group of Five team ever to play in a BCS title game. Unfortunately, a thuggish preacher’s son came out of nowhere to put an end to all my hopes and dreams. Scam, as he has been appropriately dubbed, cheated on tests, stole a computer, lied to police, lied to the NCAA, and then used his dad as part of a pay for play scheme at least two different schools. Somehow, Scam was deemed eligible by the NCAA and allowed to lead Auburn to asterisk-ridden SEC and national championships. There was just a lot to hate here.

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4. Lebron James– My disdain for him grows daily as more and more people of a younger generation compare him to Michael Jordan. This guy had to create super teams in three different cities to win all of his titles and he still has two less than MJ. He whines and cries to officials even though he gets all of the calls. And his arrogant commentary is well documented. The generational rivalry between Jordan and James fans has become very real, and I am one of the world’s biggest Jordan supporters in the world (see upcoming article of my favorite athletes of all-time).

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3. Kirk Herbstreit– I have now reached my unholy trinity of sports hatred and it starts with a guy that a majority of the sporting public really likes. With that being said, I absolutely hate Herbstreit. I hate the team he played for. I hate how he has campaigned for decades against the inclusion of Group of Five teams in the College Football Playoff. I hate how single-handedly orchestrated a campaign to keep the ACC out of the playoff this past year. Everything this guy stands for is terrible, and unfortunately, because he is so charming in his presentation, a lot of people follow his lead. This guy represents everything that is wrong with college football: Big college elitism, the exclusion of non-traditional powers, and using his power to influence the college football playoff field. Fortunately, with the 12 team playoff on the way, he won’t have quite the effect on the field he has had before, but he will still be using his perch with ESPN to lobby for all of the wrong teams come this December.

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2. Dabo Swinney– While several athletes/sportsmen on this least favorite athlete list have slide down this list because they have either become less hateable or have fallen out of the public eye, Dabo has soared up this list faster and higher than anyone. In fact, he is without a doubt my least favorite sportsperson that in the current sporting landscape. I grew up hating Clemson football more than any other team team in sports besides Duke basketball (see # 1 entry below), so naturally, any coach that leads the Tigers to multiple national title will be on this list. However, everything about this guy is terrible. He is smug, condescending, sleazy, and fake. The way he antagonized the University of South Carolina after they Gamecocks dominated his squad way back in 2011 was appalling. His constant college football televangelism is dreadful. Heck, this guy even attacks his own fans. When your arch rival becomes one of the most dominant forces in the sport, it is quite painful. But when they do it with dirty recruiting, a smug sense of entitlement, and holier than thou approach like Dabo has, it has made Clemson’s recent success that much more unbearable. With that being said, I am hopeful that Dabo’s continued stubbornness to avoid the transfer portal will continue to cause this program to decline from the upper echelon of the sport.

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1. Christian Laettner– While Dabo has just recently risen to the # 2 spot on this, the # 1 spot has been cemented in stone for the past 22 years and 2 months. That is because on March 28, 1992, Christian Laettner ruined my childhood by first stepping on Kentucky’s Aminu Timberlake’s chest in the NCAA Tournament East Regional Final, and then stomping on the hearts of Kentucky’s fans everywhere by beating the Cats on the most famous last second shot in the history of the sport. Laettner, in fact, became so hateable throughout his college basketball made a full length documentary that chronicled all of the arrogance and elitism that defined his career and which came to embody Duke basketball as a whole, largely due to Laettner. I was 6.5 years old when I saw Laettner hit the shot and it is one of my most vivid childhood memories. In fact, that shot, that game, that moment changed my life in so many ways. First of all, it automatically established Duke basketball as my least favorite sports team of all-time. More importantly, however, it lit the fire behind my intense and sometimes unhealthy passion for sports. I realized, through the ups and downs of that game, how much the outcome of a sporting event can affect a person, a family, and a community’s happiness and well-being. We had friends who went into deep bouts of depression. And believe it or not, my dad, to this day, will not watch a close game involving a team he likes on TV because of how this one ended. That game was the ultimate clash of good vs. evil and on March 28, 1992, evil stepped on a defenseless player’s chest without getting ejected, hit all 20 shots he took from the field, and then hit a spectacular buzzer beater to put an end to the careers of Kentucky’s most popular senior class of all-time. I recently read Gene Wojechowski’s excellent book The Last Great Game: Duke vs. Kentucky and the 2.1 Seconds that Changed Basketball, and one of the most interesting tidbits in it is that Laettner wore # 32 in tribute to the athlete he grew up idolizing. And who was that athlete you might ask? A football player by the name of O.J. Simpson. That really does explain a lot…