With the USA Swimming sex abuse scandal drawing national headlines recently, I thought it’d be useful to dip a toe into the dirty world of athletics and revisit the ten biggest sex scandals that rocked the world of sport. High-testosterone athletes and willing (or sometimes not willing) women are an explosive combination that almost always leads to trouble.
10. Tiger Woods Sleeps Around
Before 2009, Tiger Woods was one of the most loved and respected men in golf. The biracial duffer had broken down numerous boundaries in the sport, and his squeaky-clean public image netted him millions in endorsement money. That is, until an ill-timed car crash made public that he’d been cheating on his hot wife, Swedish model Elin Nordegren, with dozens of sex partners, including some trashy dames like a waitress from Orlando.
9. Minnesota Vikings Sex Cruise
The 2005 season saw the normally dominant Vikings struggle out of the gate, with a 1-3 record not boding well for the team. So, as a pick-me-up, team members chartered two houseboats on Lake Minnetonka during the Vikings’ bye week, flew in prostitutes from Atlanta and Florida, and had an all-out sex party. We’re talking dildos, public fellatio and much, much more. The cleaning crew reported finding used condoms, sex toys, wipes and more strewn all over the boats, and four players faced legal problems as a result.
8. Max Mosley’s Nazi Orgy
For American racing fans, Max Mosley isn’t a household name. But in Europe, where Formula 1’s the thing, his sex scandal was big news. Mosley was the head of the FIA, the organization that runs Formula One worldwide, and in 2008 his career was brought to a halt when British tabloid the News of the World released a videotape that featured the elderly gentleman cavorting with five prostitutes in a suspiciously Fascist-looking orgy. Mosley’s father was a Hitler sycophant in Britain before World War II, so it looks like the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
7. Brett Favre Dick Pics
One of the funniest sports sex scandals in recent years was the Brett Favre affair, which saw the Jets quarterback bombard sideline reporter Jenn Sterger with an unwelcome barrage of embarrassing voicemails and pictures of his penis. Sterger had already told Brett that she had no interest in his romantic advances, but the spurned athlete continued to send her dong shots anyways, just to make sure. For his embarrassing behavior, Favre was fined $50,000.
6. Kazuhito Tadano’s Gay Porn Past
When the Cleveland Indians signed Japanese pitcher Kazuhito Tadano in 2003, they didn’t know that he brought a little bit of baggage with him. During college, Tadano had appeared in a male-oriented adult movie where he wore a dog leash around his neck and got his junk worked over by an older man’s hands. When the news hit the American media, Tadano said he did it because he needed money and he wasn’t gay, but he still got knocked down to double-A ball and eventually sent back to Japan.
5. Fritz Peterson and Mike Kekich Trade Wives
Sex scandals aren’t a recent invention, and in 1972 a pair of Yankees pitchers shocked the world with a wild announcement. Mike Kekich and Fritz Peterson, both lefties, simultaneously divorced their spouses so they could essentially trade lives with each other – Kekich shacked up with Marilyn Peterson and Peterson got Susanne Kekich. Even weirder, both pitchers had two children. The newspapers had a field day with the bizarre arrangement.
4. Ronaldo Luís Nazário de Lima’s Transvestite Mixup
Brazil is widely recognized as one of the most sexually liberated countries in the world, but even they have limits. When A.C. Milan striker Ronaldo Luís Nazário de Lima – a man so famous in his native Brazil that it’s just “Ronaldo” – took three ladies home from a Rio club one night, he was drunk enough not to notice that they were all transvestite prostitutes. After taking the trio to a pay-by-the-hour hotel, Ronaldo caught sight of their dingers and tried to pay them to leave. They refused, the cops got involved and it was all very embarrassing for him.
3. Marv Albert’s Appetite For Butt
It’s not just athletes that get implicated in these sex scandals – the closest Marv Albert ever got to the court was being a ball boy for the Knicks as a teen. But the Brooklyn-born broadcaster’s voice was inextricably linked to the team, so it was a tremendous shock when, in 1997, a woman accused the toupeed sportscaster of throwing her on a bed, biting her in the glutes multiple times and forcing her to perform oral sex on him. Albert pled guilty to assault and battery and was let go by NBC, only to be rehired less than two years later.
2. Mike Tyson Rape Conviction
We could do a whole list on just sex scandals in boxing – getting rocked in the dome doesn’t do wonders for your critical thinking skills – but no pugilistic cock-up is quite as big as Mike Tyson raping a defenseless 18 year old Black Miss America contestant in his Indianapolis hotel room. Desiree Washington had no way to fight back against the hulking Tyson, and a jury sentenced him to six years behind bars (he got out in three).
1. Jerry Sandusky Fiddles Kids
It’s not easy to become one of the worst people in sports history, but former Penn State football coach Jerry Sandusky pulled it off in 2011 when the truth behind years of rumors came out. Sandusky had been using the Second Mile charitable organization to target vulnerable boys from fatherless homes, take them to the Penn State locker room and molest them, and a whole culture of cover-up had sprung up to protect him at the university. He’s currently spending 30 to 60 years in prison.
Woman holding condom image by Shutterstock
Max Moseley: YouTube/NOTW
Ronaldo Luís Nazário de Lima image by Maxisport/Shutterstock
Jerry Sandusky: ABC screenshot
(Previously published on August 30, 2013.)