Hot Read

BALTIMORE (Map, News) - Lying never works.

Just ask Ravens’ cornerback Derrick Martin, who reportedly told his team he wasn’t cited for drug abuse at a Cleveland Airport. Unfortunately for Martin, there are only so many Derrick Martins born on the same day who work in Owings Mills.

With Martin all but assured of being waiver-wire fodder this week, we decided to take a look back at some of the best all-time sports fibbers.

Funny enough, we discovered that many of them come from college ranks, where most in-home visits from slimy coaches require recruits and their families to take a shower after they leave.

But after reading this list of our Top 5 Sports Lies, you might be in line for a little Scrub-n-Bubbles yourself.

1. Pete Rose: Hey, give the hit king credit, he kept the act going for 15 years. I mean, I bet him $50 bucks he couldn’t do it, but he sure proved me wrong.

You’d think after an independent report is commissioned to prove your guilt and you even sign a paper admitting you bet on baseball, you wouldn’t have an out. But not Rose.

Deny, deny, deny.

But when he found out he could make money off of it — besides betting on baseball and overcharging for autographs — he wrote a book admitting his guilt and launched a huge media campaign to promote it.

What is the going rate for a signed baseball by the biggest idiot in sports history going for these days?

2. Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti: Speaking on the condition of anonymity with a local paper last season, Bisciotti said the job of coach Brian Billick was safe and he had 100 percent confidence in him.

I’d hate to see the guys whose backs he doesn’t have.

Hours before kickoff of the Ravens final game last season, Bisciotti changed his mind and decided to can Billick, putting everyone at One Winning Field Goal Drive in the holiday spirit when the winningest coach in franchise history and his staff was let go on New Year’s Eve.

The best part of the debacle was when a local paper was called to the carpet on the story it ran earlier on Billick’s job security, it outed Bisciotti as its source and threw him under the bus.

What goes around comes around.

3. Michael Vick: Everyone’s favorite animal pugilist insisted he wasn’t involved in illegal dog fighting and Scooby and Snoopy where his close friends.

Too bad they found all those bodies of dead dogs on his property and informants came forward to federal investigators implicating Vick in financing fights.

Here’s hoping a few more players follow the lead of Giants linebacker Antonio Pierce: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiCOVo2SAJg

4. George O’Leary: The college football coach and former Georgia Tech main man was set to take the same position at Notre Dame, when it was learned his résumé was, um, less than accurate.

O’Leary lied on his resume about earning a master’s degree from New York University — where he never graduated from. He also claimed to have earned three varsity letters playing football at the University of New Hampshire. Only if he counts playing Madden on PlayStation.

The current Central Florida coach wrote off the discrepancies to ‘resume padding’ that had never been edited out.

We chalk it up to what we call “lying.”

5. Kelvin Sampson: The former Indiana and Oklahoma men’s basketball coach could have been a spokesperson for AT&T with all of the minutes he logged making illegal calls to recruits.

But that’s not the only lie he told.

After getting caught making more than 500 illegal calls at Oklahoma and was facing NCAA sanctions, Indiana still elected to hire him. But in Bloomington, Ind., Sampson continued to bend the rules and denied having knowledge about being in on three-way calls with assistants and recruits.

Must have been some kind of crazy dial tone.

Can you hear me now? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49ziyv8Gzdo

WHAT WE LIKED: The NBA’s new approach to handling officiating problems: hiring a general. Per the Associated Press:

“Ronald L. Johnson, a two-star general who recently retired from active duty as deputy commanding general of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, will be responsible for all aspects of the NBA's officiating program, including recruiting, training and development, scheduling, data management and analysis, and work rules enforcement.”

Our only question is who will officiate games next year after he fires all the officials employed by the NBA for gross incompetence?

WHAT WE DON’T LIKE: George Sherrill’s breaking ball. It breaks, all right — right over the left field fence. It also is great at breaking the hearts of Orioles fans everywhere. Al least he’s consistent — two games, two, two-strike counts with two outs and two blown saves. Hey George, stick to a fastball because all of your breaking pitches are broken.

STAR OF THE DAY

KATIE HOFF

If the native of Towson needed to prove any more, she did it again on Tuesday night, coming from third place for a dominating win in the 800-meter  individual medley at the U.S. Olympic Swimming Trials and qualifying for her second event next month in Beijing.

DONKEY OF THE DAY

MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL PLAYERS UNION

The union filed a grievance against the Astros for releasing pitcher Shawn Chacon days after he got involved in a very public, very physical altercation with the team’s general manager Ed Wade. Last time I checked, if we choke-slammed our bosses, we would be in jail, not claiming wrongful termination.

— Compiled by Baltimore Examiner sports staff

Advertisement