IDIOT OF THE YEAR: It's the final countdown (Nos. 10-1)

Here they are: The biggest dummies of 2023. Most of them are starting to take up permanent residence here.

For as long as we can remember, Skip Bayless has been pissing people off. But, in recent years, his terribleness has reached new heights. We could talk about his long history of being a jerk to his coworkers, and how it feels like Shannon Sharpe is going to jump across that debate table on FS1’s Undisputed at any moment to take a swing at Skip. But all that fails in comparison to what he said in response to Damar Hamlin collapsing on the field in January due to cardiac arrest.

Football and America go together like Republicans and voter suppression, as they’re entities that have proven that they can’t live without the other. So when the world watched as Hamlin fought for his life on national television playing a child’s game that this country has committed itself to — despite understanding how violent of a sport it is — you know it’s a pivotal moment when we’ve all been stopped in our tracks by what we’ve seen.

Well, everyone except Skip Bayless.

At a time in which America was just hoping that we hadn’t watched Hamlin die on the field, Bayless was busy tweeting about playoff standings. And while his previous and following tweets were “more compassionate,” it was clear that he had chosen violence in a moment of united humanity.

John Edward Bayless II is an idiot. He’s earned his place on this list.

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times’ Bill Shaikin in November, not only did Betts say that he hopes an MLB team will sign Bauer this offseason, but also “I love him. I think he’s an awesome guy.”

In regards to the violation of MLB’s domestic violence and sexual assault policy for which an independent arbitrator ruled that Bauer deserved a 194-game suspension — the longest in league history for such an offense — “The personal things? I have no control,” Betts said to Shaikin. “I have no say. Obviously, nothing came from it.”

Nothing came from it except for a historic 194-game suspension, which the arbitrator reduced from the 324 games that Commissioner Rob Manfred had originally issued.

Glen Kuiper got himself fired after saying the N-word when discussing the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum on air in May.

“I could not be more sorry and horrified by what I said. I hope you will accept my sincerest apologies,” said the Oakland A’s longtime announcer. It’s kinda like the only word white people can’t say, and Kuiper still found a way to mess it up. And because of it, he lost his job.

“Monday morning, I was informed by an NBC executive that after a 20-year broadcasting career with the Oakland Athletics, my contract was terminated, effective immediately,” Kuiper wrote in a statement. “The termination was due to the unintentional use of an offensive word on the air during the May 5 pregame show.”

And if you were one of those people who think he made a simple mistake and didn’t mean anything by it, well, you fell for it.

“Please know racism is in no way a part of me; it never has been, and it never will be. I appreciate the Negro League Museum president Bob Kendrick and Oakland A’s great Dave Stewart’s public support of me in light of this. I am an honest, caring, kind, honorable, respectful husband, and father who would never utter a disparaging word about anybody. Those who know me best know this about me.

“I wish the Oakland A’s and NBC Sports would have taken into consideration my 20-year career, my solid reputation, integrity, and character, but in this current environment traits like integrity, and character are no longer considered. I will always have a hard time understanding how one mistake in a 20-year broadcasting career is cause for termination but I know something better is in my future.”

When you have to tell us you’re not a racist, you’ve probably been one for a long time.

Phil Jackson had some things to say, and it put him on this list.

“It was trying to cater to an audience or trying to bring a certain audience to the game,” he said about the NBA having Black Lives Matter on the court in the bubble, and how it’s the reason he hasn’t watched the NBA since. “And they didn’t know it was turning other people off. People want to see sports as non-political. Politics stays out of the game; it doesn’t need to be there,” he whined on the Tetragrammaton podcast.

It feels like Jackson wants Black people to be quiet and Black athletes to shut up and dribble, despite the fact that his entire claim to fame as an NBA player and the greatest coach in league history is all due to the talents, and intellect of Black people.

And then some had the audacity to be “shocked” by his words as if he hadn’t been showing us who he was for decades.

Spanish Football Federation President Luis Rubiales is obviously an idiot. Simply by getting fired back in August because he couldn’t control himself after the women’s national team he oversaw reached its pinnacle is a sign of brain worms. However, his form of idiocy is a symptom of a much larger problem. Sexism flows throughout the Royal Spanish Football Federation. Forward Jenni Hermoso labeled Rubiales’ action as an “impulse-driven, sexist out of place act without any consent.

If there was ever anyone who perfectly fits the description of what it takes to make this list, Mel Tucker is it.

Because back in September, not only did he admit to making “sexual comments” about Brenda Tracy — a rape survivor — while “masturbating” during a “late-night intimate conversation” that lasted 36 minutes, he’s married and is in the process of blowing the 10-year, $95 million extension he signed in 2021, all because he chose to unzip his pants after answering/making a call that night.

Life is all about choices. And at every turn, Mel Tucker made the wrong one.

The narrative following Bronny James’ cardiac arrest during a USC basketball practice in late July was as predictable as it was mind-numbing. Anti-vaxxers came out in full throat, quick to blame the seemingly healthy young adult’s misfortune on the vaccine. It’s easy to find a COVID conspiracy for all of society’s ills, and it’s gotten so lazy that one can readily identify, and then avoid, wading into conversation with Dr. Mantis Stockton.

However, there are performance artists among us who just see things so idiotically, so completely wrong that engaging with them is unavoidable. Out of the most morbid bit of curiosity, you have to look, knowing full well that it will not only leave you speechless, but also severely dumber.

“I don’t believe LeBron or his family took the vaccine,” wrote a silly man with a funny hat on X. “I believe most elite athletes faked taking the vaxx. No way men in prime physical health injected a rushed vaccine into their bodies. I refuse to believe that. That’s my conspiracy. I don’t know what happened to Bronny.”

So, to paraphrase, the silly man doesn’t know what happened to Bronny because he believes elite athletes faked the vaccine. Look at the big galaxy brain on this guy. Not only are anti-vaxxers wrong, but so is everybody else.

If you ignore a crying spoiled brat long enough, they will eventually shut up. So, please, ignore him and stop retweeting him.

His crime? The usual. Saying something dumb, racist, misogynist, or all three back in March.

“Raise your hand if you knew ’Nip’ was an ethnic slur? I did not. Tell me how Mina Kimes’ life was impacted by this? Other than nailing herself to a cross, I don’t see the damage. She will dance to rap music calling black people N-words repeatedly without uttering a complaint.”

“Nailing myself to a cross?” ESPN’s Mina Kimes wrote in a quote tweet. “I made one joke and went back to work…because unlike you, I still talk about sports for a living. Have a great day.”

The response was perfect, as Kimes’ handling of this entire situation has been.

While he may not have been in the program long enough to worship at the altar of Northwestern Coach Pat Fitzgerald, Mike Bajakian has been at Northwestern since 2020. Early in August, after the news broke of hazing in the NU locker room, Bajakian and several other staff members wore shirts that read “Cats against the world,” with Fitzgerald’s playing number between the words.

That means important people in the Northwestern football program have no remorse for what happened. They do not care that young people in their care were harmed by people who are supposed to be their “brothers.” Coaches in that program believe reporting that resulted in the ouster of Fitzgerald is a far greater wrong than former players being sexually abused.

Getting rid of the most visible eyesore of the rot does not fix the problem. When rotten to the core, everything must be disposed of and the structure built anew.

The Daily Northwestern broke the news on July 8 of the rampant hazing going on inside the football program, it came as a complete shock and dominated news coverage during the part of the sports calendar where anything tantalizing that isn’t Major League Baseball is obsessed over.

Let’s be clear: This is a major scandal where an unknown amount of people were hazed and/or subjected to negative activities outside the norm in college football. And one of the “good guys” in the sport, Pat Fitzgerald, a Northwestern alumnus with more than a quarter-century of Wildcats affiliation as a player, assistant coach, and most recently 17 years as the program’s head coach, was given a pink slip faster than a two-dollar hooker. Or a Lamborghini, whatever fits your mojo better. Fitzgerald was fired with cause, meaning Northwestern didn’t owe him his buyout, which is believed to be more than $40 million dollars. Fitzgerald’s representatives have said they’d sue to recoup that amount. Fitzgerald and other Northwestern dignitaries have also been named as defendants in lawsuits in the program’s hazing scandal.

Turns out Fitzgerald wasn’t the only Northwestern coach being reviewed by the school’s legal and human resources departments, as Jim Foster was removed as the Wildcats’ head baseball coach on July 13 for allegations of bullying and a toxic team environment. ESPN reported Foster would’ve been fired earlier if it wasn’t for a shift from Northwestern’s legal and human resources team to focus on Fitzgerald. So what was the school’s excuse for the previous several weeks? Safe to say things are going smoothly in Evanston, Illinois.

A DUI arrest in June finally led to Bob Huggins being ousted from his post atop West Virginia men’s basketball. The Mountaineers’ brass docked the 69-year-old Huggins’ pay, suspended him, and changed some terms of his contract for the anti-gay language, but didn’t completely remove him. And Huggins left at least partly on his own terms because of his most recent arrest.

The alleged incident occurred when Huggins’ car was in the middle of the road with a door open and a shredded tire. After asking Huggins to get his car off the road, his sobriety came into play. According to a police report, Huggins blew a 0.21 on a breathalyzer, more than twice Pennsylvania’s legal limit. Huggins stepped down from his post the day after his June 16 arrest, with several key players entering the transfer portal after his exit. Huggins’ daughter, Jacque, then claimed part of the police report was fabricated with beer cans all over the car because her dad loves to recycle. This wasn’t even Huggins’ first arrest for a DUI as a D-I head basketball coach, as it happened 18 years ago when he was at the helm of Cincinnati. In what city was the radio spot conducted when Huggins said homophobic language? Cincinnati.

This time around, the West Virginia basketball coach jumped on a radio show in May and called Xavier fans the F-word that went out of circulation once empathetic human beings dropped casual homophobia from their vocabulary. And Ol’ Bobby said it not once, but twice when talking about the “Catholic f — s” from Xavier, The back-and-forth featured a tasteless transgender joke from Bill Cunningham, and the hosts of the show, who tried to stifle laughter — either at Huggins’ comment or his lack of decorum — throughout the Huggy Bear story hour.

And if you’re wondering how quickly Huggins got fired for this, he didn’t. Instead, the 69-year-old walking scandal received a $1 million reduction in salary (he now makes $3.15 million as opposed to $4.15 million), and has to go to sensitivity training. Lord help the counselor trying to teach old bigots new societal norms.

Not content to have spread misinformation about the COVID vaccine, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the therapeutic effects of the sounds of dolphin sex, and “the softening” of society, Rodgers, a man who took courses in “American Studies” at Cal Berkeley, where he did not graduate with a degree in anything relating to science or medicine (and in fact, did not graduate at all), liked a tweet on X in November extolling the evil effects of sunscreen.

The OG Idiot of the Month was spouting nonsense on The Pat McAfee Show before it was sponsored by ESPN, and his recent run of interviews is just as unhinged as pre-Achilles tear Rodgers. In October, almost on cue — as if prompted by an inner voice telling him to “Dance, monkey, dance!” — A-Rodg looks into the camera mischievously and calls Travis Kelce “Mr. Pfizer.”.

After going on a darkness retreat earlier this year, Aaron Rodgers emerged from his fortress of solitude hell-bent on making his way to New York, and becoming the NFL’s spokesman on psychedelic drugs. Rodgers got his wish and was shipped to New York. In June, he was a part of a panel at a conference in Denver on psychedelics. The conference was hosted by a psychedelic advocacy group, and Rodgers participated, giving his testimonial on how these drugs have impacted his life.