Most Meaningless Sports Triumphs

Congratulations to Danica Patrick!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! She bested a field of 17 to win the Firestone IndyCar 300.  It was her 50th start, and her first win. Wait…only 17 people race in these races? Wait, she has raced 50 times against fields of 20, and she’s only won once.  With those kinds of odds, shouldn’t she have won should have won three or four times by now? Just to be clear, this is not Billy Jean King beating Bobby Riggs.  This isn’t even Chyna beating Jeff Jarrett in a “Good Houskeeping Match” to win the Intercontinental championship.

This is a pretty meaningless victory, considering it wasn’t at Indy, it was the fourth race of the season and taking into account that she only faced 16 other racers.  Let’s take a look at some other underwhelming / meaningless victories in recent sports memories:

Yokozuna defeats Bret Hart for the WWE Championship at Wrestlemania IX: After Yokozuna won the title from Bret Hart, Hulk Hogan came down to the ring to check on Hart’s condition.  Hart’s eyes were badly damaged from a powdery substance thrown at him by Mr. Fuji. Mr. Fuji challenged Hogan and attempted to throw that same powder in Hogan’s eyes. Hogan ducked, knocked down Yokozuna, gave him a little leg drop action, pin, World Championship.  Yokozuna was given about 90 seconds to savor his championship before Hogan took the belt back

Every WNBA Game Ever – What could be more meaningless or irrelevant than a WNBA game?

Bernardini’s Victory at the 2007 Preakness – Maybe 1 in 10 sports fans could tell you who won the 2007 Preakness.  Barbaro’s injury was the overwhelming storyline in what became a historic day for sappy overreactions to the injuries of a glorified farm animal.  Best. Headline. Ever. I think I laughed for a solid five minutes when I read that.

Mike Tyson’s Victories Early in His Career – Tyson faced a revolving door of bad white heavyweights early in his career.  He was beating the hell out of tall, hairy chested  men with seemingly no athletic ability like it was going out of style.  Look at some of his early victories (at the bottom): Conroy Nelson? Donnie Long? John Alderson?  That list reads like the roster at your local electrician’s union hall. I think Donnie Long installed a ceiling fan at my house last week.  Here is video evidence of the beatings:

Paul Lawrie Wins the 1999 British Open – Congrats Paul, you snatched victory from the hands of an overzealous Frenchman and his idiot caddy. Only a Van De Velde triple bogey saved you from completely anonymity and irrelevance.

Baltimore Ravens 2000 Superbowl Championship – Kerry Collins vs. Trent Dilfer. If there is a less compelling storyline in the history of football, I never want to see it.  You had one team that was simply happy to be there (The Giants) against a team that was happy with a possession that ended with a punt, because it meant that Trent Dilfer didn’t find a way to turn the ball over.  Of course winning the SuperBowl isn’t irrelevant or meaningless, but this was probably the most underwhelming game/performance in SuperBowl history.

Spurs 2002-2003 NBA Championship – Here is another example of an underwhelming championship performance.  The Spurs actually let this team take two games in a seven game series.  The Nets’ fifth leading scorer was Lucious Harris. Any team that features Rodney Rogers and Jason Collins as contributors is not an even reasonably good basketball team.  I am not sure this team would have made the playoffs in the NBA this season.  How many games would this team have won this year? My guess is around 44, good for the 6th seed in an awful Eastern conference. The Spurs should have lost the NBA championship just for making everyone watch six games of basketball between these two teams.

Kerri Strugg’s Vault in the 1996 Olympics – Most people have no clue that Kerri’s vault did not win the gold for the United States Gymnastics team.  In fact, Kerr bear’s vault was completely irrelevant in terms of an American victory.  The US had already secured the gold when Kerri, with her heavily taped ankle and manish ginger hair cut, stuck the landing on her vault.  If she would have attempted the vault, hit the trampoline, got too much air, landed in the crowd, and injured a handicapped boy, the US still would have won the gold.  Actually, she qualified for the individual all-around competition, but was unable to compete because of her broken ankle.  How’s that for taking one for the team? I would like to congratulate Kerri on a victory to which she actually did contribute.  Kerri, you win the award for least meaningful, yet most ballyhooed,  athletic performance in the history of time.

Here are a couple more pics of Rudy:

The Angry T

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