People in Sports Revered in Death or Retirement Wo Were Jerks

Matt Martin is one of the nicest people in sports (except if you piss him off on the ice), so it's not a surprise he found a nice girl.

 

I read somewhere that Payne Stewart was a racist.

 

Dale Jr. Is the total opposite of his dad. He seems to be a good guy and he interacts with the media and fans. Also he is not afraid to speak his mind on social issues either, which I highly admire.

 

My wife is a big time cycling fan. She always told me he was a jerk. And a fake. And a cheat. (You should hear some of the stories concerning his charity.)

So, I was never surprised...

 

I used to race cars in the SCCA. Payton, who raced after he retired from football, was a real jerk on the race track. (Paul Newman on the other hand, was an absolute gentleman on the track.)

 

I've met Boomer a number of times at charity events. Unless you were one of the people cutting big checks (and I certainly was not) he was a standoffish jerk. However, he knew how to play the game schmoozing with Wall Street types about as well as any athlete that I've seen. On the other hand, the times that I met Carton, he was a super nice guy.

 

Danica Patrick.

She treated her fans -- including young girls -- like crap.

 

Back when I was at Kodak. a co-worker once worked on a program where Kodak was experimenting with 3-D photography on sports cards. He was involved in a specialized photo shoot as Kodak was trying to kick off this product. The sports stars Kodak lined up for this were A-Rod, Frank Thomas, and Mia Hamm.

What my co-worker related to me surprised me. He said A-Rod and Thomas were fantastic to work with. Mia Hamm was a prick.

 

According to the autobiographies of both Marv Albert and Bob Costas, Howard Cosell was a bitter, bitter angry old man and impossible to deal with in his later years -- more so than usual... (Though, Cosell did suffer from a lot of health issues in his later years, including Parkinson's).

 

I feel like confirming someone as an asshole is like sourcing a story. You need two or more instances of assholish behavior from other people or personal experience to verify you didn’t just happen to run into them five minutes after they learned their dog died or something.