Our colleague Ava Wallace already paid tribute to some of the best sports moments of 2024, stories of courage and glory, creating memories fans will never forget. The Chiefs winning a second straight Super Bowl. Simone Biles, Rebeca Andrade and Jordan Chiles sharing an Olympic podium for the ages. Noah Lyles sprinting 100 meters into forever. Caitlin Clark helping lead a revolution.
But sports didn’t just give us magnificence in 2024. As usual, moments of splendor were accompanied by, well, less splendid narratives. Teams that chose poorly. Stars who stumbled. Leaders who came up short when the spotlight was on. That whole Jake Paul thing.
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Thus, in what is now an annual tradition, this is our non-comprehensive list of some of the most regrettable moments of the year, which are best left behind in 2024.
1. The Giants letting Saquon Barkley test the market
In March, the New York Giants had a decision to make about running back Saquon Barkley, the face of the franchise since they took him with the No. 2 pick of the 2018 draft. They could either place the franchise tag on him for a second straight season, give him a new contract or let him test the market in search of a better deal. They chose … poorly, and it was all recorded by HBO’s “Hard Knocks” cameras.
With New York unwilling to meet Barkley’s contract demands, the division rival Philadelphia Eagles swooped in and gave him a three-year, $37.75 million deal with $26 million guaranteed, an investment that has paid off handsomely. Barkley leads the NFL in rushing yards and is just 268 from breaking Eric Dickerson’s seemingly untouchable single-season record. His backward leap against the Jacksonville Jaguars on Nov. 3 is almost certainly going to be the NFL’s play of the year, one that blew the minds of his teammates on the sideline.
The Eagles, at 12-3, need just one more win to clinch the NFC East. The Giants, meanwhile, are going to miss the playoffs for the 11th time in the past 13 seasons and are in line to finish with the league’s worst record.
2. Olympic swimming in the Seine
Paris Olympic organizers were determined to hold events involving distance swimming in the Seine even though swimming in the river had been banned for nearly 100 years because – how do we put this delicately? – it was full of poop. France even spent around $1.5 billion in an attempt to – again, trying to be tactful here – make the Seine less poopy.
And swim in the Seine they did, though the triathlons had to be postponed after rainstorms pushed the levels of E. coli bacteria to unsafe levels. Two athletes, from Belgium and Switzerland, who had competed in the men’s and women’s triathlons had to drop out of the mixed relay competition after becoming sick, though it was unclear whether the Seine was to blame. The same could be said for three German open-water swimmers who became ill after swimming in the Seine during the 10,000-meter marathon.
“Vomited 9 times yesterday + diarrhea,” one of the sickened Germans, Leonie Beck, posted on social media, adding: “Water quality in the Seine is approved,” accompanied by a check mark.
3. Arresting Scottie Scheffler
Rain in Louisville was causing a bit of chaos ahead of the PGA Championship’s second round in May. Tragically, a retired police officer working as a security guard died before dawn when he was struck by a shuttle bus near Valhalla Golf Club. But the fact that Scottie Scheffler, the world’s No. 1 male golfer and someone regarded as one of the nicer guys on the PGA Tour, ended up getting his mug shot taken in jail garb over a traffic infraction is pretty crazy.
The charges against Scheffler – second-degree assault of a police officer, a felony, plus third-degree criminal mischief, reckless driving and disregarding signals from officers directing traffic – were dropped fairly quickly, and a city of Louisville investigation into the incident revealed that Detective Bryan Gillis failed to turn on his body camera in violation of department policy. Gillis would only add to the absurdity of the situation by issuing a statement, after prosecutors dropped the charges against Scheffler, saying that his $80 pair of pants were “indeed ruined” during the incident.
4. Tony Romo talking over the Super Bowl’s final play
The CBS analyst’s popularity among NFL fans already had diminished before February’s Super Bowl, and he didn’t exactly win back favor by yakking away before, during and after Mecole Hardman’s touchdown catch that won the game in overtime for the Chiefs. Initially, Romo had a useful point to make about relatively new NFL rules regarding postseason overtime periods, but he failed to recognize the importance of pausing to give announcing partner Jim Nantz room to call a play of such magnitude.
Then, instead of letting the victorious moment breathe, Romo immediately launched into a winding analysis of the play as cameras showed various Chiefs reacting with jubilation. What the moment needed was not Ro-mo so much as a little Ro-less.
5. High schools continuing to hire Conner Stalions
Conner Stalions, the man in the middle of the NCAA’s investigation into sign-stealing at the University of Michigan, does not seem like someone who should be guiding the youth of America. But two Michigan high schools this year seemingly disagreed with that statement.
In early September, reports surfaced that Stalions had been elevated to acting coach at Detroit Mumford High after serving as volunteer defensive coordinator since the spring (William McMichael, the team’s full-time coach, suffered a mild stroke). Mumford, historically one of the worst high school football programs in the state, lost its first game with Stalions at the helm, 60-0. It lost its next game, 71-0, and the two after that by a combined 50-0.
But Stalions wasn’t done. After Mumford finished its 1-8 season, Belleville High hired Stalions to run its offense during its state playoff run. Led by quarterback Bryce Underwood, the top-ranked football recruit in the country who recently switched his commitment from LSU to (yep) Michigan, the Tigers went 10-2 and advanced to a Michigan region final.
“Connor … he’s been a great tool for us in enhancing how we attack opposing defenses,” Belleville co-head coach DeJuan Rogers told CBS Detroit.
6. Denying Jordan Chiles a bronze medal
The final of the women’s gymnastics floor routine event at the Paris Olympics ended in controversy after U.S. coaches got the judges to increase a score for Jordan Chiles that pushed her past Romania’s Ana Barbosu for the bronze medal. That, however, was just the beginning of a saga that saw Romanian officials successfully appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which agreed with their assertion that Team USA lodged its request for an inquiry process into Chiles’s routine four seconds too late.
Weeks later and with Chiles having appealed the CAS ruling to Switzerland’s Federal Supreme Court, video evidence emerged that indicated the Americans did, in fact, make their request within their allotted time (up to one minute after a given athlete’s score is shown on the scoreboard). The Supreme Court request on behalf of Chiles also noted that CAS gave Team USA very little notice of the Romanians’ appeal and thus did not allow the Americans sufficient time to collect evidence before a terse ruling from the CAS that it declined to reconsider.
The 23-year-old gymnast said last month she still has the bronze medal she received in Paris despite the International Olympic Committee’s demand that she return it.
7. Not picking Caitlin Clark for Team USA
The U.S. women’s basketball team took home its eighth straight gold medal at the Paris Olympics, winning all but one game by at least 13 points, but the decision to leave Caitlin Clark off the roster despite her talent and overwhelming popularity still was strange.
“Obviously, we know the success that Caitlin had in college, and she’s had a tremendous start to the WNBA season so far,” Jennifer Rizzotti, the USA Basketball women’s national team committee chair, said after the snub. “But essentially it was the committee’s job to pick the 12 based on our selection criteria, and as much as you want to maybe make conversation around how we should have considered TV viewership or jersey sales or popularity, that wasn’t the purview of the committee to have those discussions. The selection criteria were very clear.” Instead, USA Basketball wanted to give U.S. Coach Cheryl Reeve “the opportunity to have the best roster available, not necessarily always the 12 best players,” Rizzotti said.
Clark was a near-unanimous selection as the WNBA’s rookie of the year, receiving 66 of 67 votes. She averaged 19.2 points, 5.7 rebounds and 8.4 assists for the Indiana Fever, leading the WNBA in assists while setting rookie records for points and three-pointers.
8. The Diamondbacks signing Jordan Montgomery to a huge contract
Don’t believe us? Just listen to the guy who had to pay for Montgomery’s one-year, $25 million deal, which made him one of the 10 best-paid starters in baseball last season.
“Let me say it the best way I can say it: If anyone wants to blame anyone for Jordan Montgomery being a Diamondback, you’re talking to the guy that should be blamed because I brought it to their attention,” owner Ken Kendrick said after the season. “I pushed for it. They agreed to it. It wasn’t in our game plan when he was signed right at the end of spring training, and looking back in hindsight, [it was] a horrible decision to have invested that money in a guy that performed as poorly as he did. It’s our biggest mistake this season from a talent standpoint, and I’m the perpetrator of that.”
Montgomery finished the 2024 season at 8-7 with a 6.23 ERA.
9. The 76ers signing Joel Embiid and Paul George to huger contracts
By retaining Embiid ...
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