Sports are a thrilling, competitive, and contentious activity. We enjoy talking about all the wonderful events that occur while playing, but a game is simply that—a game. The controversy that accompanies the enthusiasm is frequently more significant than anything that occurs on the pitch. In this article we will take a look at the top five greatest US sports controversies,
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Washington Redskins
Many charges that the term “Redskins” is a disparaging epithet directed at Native Americans have focused on the Washington Redskins. The team’s name has drawn criticism from a number of Native American organizations, who say it is disrespectful. Officials of the team argue that the name “honors where we come from, who we are” and deny that it has any racist connotations. As of right now, the team is sticking with its definition of the phrase and has no intentions of modifying the name. Redskins owner Dan Snyder recently witnessed a Redskins game with the Navajo Nation president in an effort to quell the backlash.
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Jameis Winston’s Sexual Assault Allegations
Jameis Winston, the quarterback for Florida State, was the subject of a sexual assault investigation, according to reports that surfaced towards the end of 2013. Police had already deemed the case open/inactive as a result of the unnamed accuser’s lack of cooperation, but she countered through a lawyer that the lead detective had advised against doing so because Tallahassee is a “big football town” and doing so would cause her life to “be made miserable.”
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State Attorney Willie Meggs declared in a press conference that there was not enough evidence to proceed with prosecution after the case was made publicly traded and the probe was reopened. Winston captured the Heisman Trophy by the seventh-largest margin just over a week later.
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Minnesota Vikings boat party scandal
On October 6, 2005, seventeen Minnesota Vikings football players—including quarterback Daunte Culpepper, Fred Smoot, Mewelde Moore, Pat Williams, Bryant McKinnie, Nate Burleson, Ralph Brown, Jermaine Wiggins, Troy Williamson (who was then starting his rookie season), Travis Taylor, Kevin Williams, Lance Johnstone, Moe Williams, and Willie Offord—were allegedly involved in an alleged sex party on Lake Minneton. Some of the players—but not all—of them engaged in sexual activity in front of the crew members while on board two rented houseboats.
For the occasion, prostitutes from Atlanta and Florida were flown in to engage in sex activities. At least 90 persons were on board each of the two boats, and Smoot later calculated that there were 100 women there. According to an unnamed former Minnesota Vikings player, this incident was not the first of its kind. The affair has also been referred to in the media as the Smoot Boat affair or the Love Boat Scandal after the television show.
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1971 Bundesliga scandal
Der Bundesliga-Skandal is the term used to describe the willful, lucrative manipulation of games during the 1970–1971 German football championship season. Horst-Gregorio Canellas, the president of Kickers Offenbach, delivered an audio tape to DFB officials and a few media at his 50th birthday garden party, which was when the game manipulation was made public.
The German internationals Bernd Patzke and Manfred Manglitz were among the players who were heard on the tape proposing to accept bribes in exchange for helping Offenbach avoid relegation. Hans Kindermann, the DFB’s chief prosecutor, learned that the players and the board of directors of FC Schalke had “sold” (or thrown away) the 1-0 loss over Arminia Bielefeld on April 17, 1971. After that, numerous Schalke players received lengthy suspensions, and some received lifetime bans. The players insisted on their innocence and even took an oath to that effect; however, the oath was later found to be fake. Rivals of Schalke, particularly those from the Ruhr, still at times refer to Schalke as FC Meineid.
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The 1981 underarm bowling dispute included a One Day International cricket match between Australia and New Zealand at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on February 1, 1981. The match was the third of a best-of-five series for the World Series Cup for the 1980–81 season. New Zealand needed a six to tie the game with one ball of the final over yet to be played.
The Australian captain, Greg Chappell, gave his bowler and younger brother Trevor the order to bowl the final ball underarm along the ground to the New Zealand batter, Brian McKechnie, in order to prevent them from accomplishing this. By doing so, Trevor Chappell forced McKechnie to play the ball defensively, resulting in Australia’s victory. Even though it was legal at the time, many people felt that this behavior was completely contrary to the traditional ethos of cricketing fair play. In order to stop it from happening again, the incident’s indignation eventually prompted an official revision to the cricketing world’s international rules.
