The Sports Fool of the Year Award Goes to …

April Fool’s day is a great time to appreciate some of the fools in our lives, and in our case that means sports fools. We’ve whittled down our list to three of our favorites, and the winner might surprise you.

3. The International Olympic Committee

Ban the Russians. Don’t ban the Russians. Or do a third thing, in which they’re allowed to participate, but not as Russians, as Olympic Athletes From Russia, whatever that means. Guess which option the IOC took?

It was a charade. The Russian Olympic team was banned, but there they were, winning the men’s ice hockey tournament. An athlete wore a shirt proclaiming, “I don’t do doping,” and then her blood test came up positive. People were clamoring to buy OAR merchandise, which was impossible to get your hands on.

The whole thing was dumb, even foolish. I can understand the IOC banning the Russians, there was certainly enough evidence available, and I can understand them not banning the Russians, because they’re certainly corrupt enough, but a weirdo middle ground doesn’t work for me. Neither does the IOC failing to capitalize on the demand for OAR merchandise, which really cuts against their core mission.

2. Mel Kiper/Bill Polian, NFL “Analysts”

With this draft process, there’s two things happening simultaneously that are causing a lot of people to trip over themselves. The hottest quarterback prospect on the block, doesn’t have great passing statistics, while a prospect he’s listed well above on every draft board has slightly better statistics. For who-knows-what reason, you’re supposed to forgive Josh Allen’s stats, and laud him as a top prospect, while wringing your hands about Lamar Jackson’s slightly better stats, which prove that he doesn’t have what it takes.

Mel Kiper tripped over this, offering contradictory opinions about whether completion percentage matters. Whoops!

Mel Kiper has some good takes pic.twitter.com/N8HnsQQhhu

— SportsShitNoOneSays (@SNOSSports) March 29, 2018

Bill Polian had a similar slip up, offering the opinion that Lamar Jackson should play wide receiver in the NFL, because he’s inaccurate and also too short to play quarterback.

I’m tired pic.twitter.com/bRIe9CTz6Z

— Brandon Howard (@bhoward_81) February 19, 2018

This last is a new one, because Lamar Jackson is 6’3. It’s also new, because Bill Polian implored the Browns to take Johnny Manziel (six feet, dripping wet) and thinks Baker Mayfield (also six feet) is a first rounder.

Whatever Kiper and Polian’s objection to Jackson being a first-round pick at QB is, they have yet to honestly reveal it and will catch a lot of flak until they come up with something better than height and completion percentage.

1. Bob McNair, Texans Owner

There’s a few different ways to be a Sports Fool: you can make a disastrous decision, and ruin your career, you can say something stupid and edge towards saying the quiet part loud, like Bill Polian and Mel Kiper, but those all fall into the category of “mistakes.” It takes someone special to walk up to a rake, step on it, and then tell everyone at an NFL media conference that you really should have stepped on it more, now that you think of it. Plus this other one, for good measure.

Which is why Bob McNair has a special place in my heart. His only regret, apparently, is that he didn’t wade into the morass that was the Jerry Richardson investigation sooner, and has taken the firm position that Richardson’s dismissal for sexual harrasment was unfounded.

As @NFL owners gather here in Orlando for league meetings, @HoustonTexans owner Bob McNair actually said this in defending scandal-scarred @Panthers owner Jerry Richardson: “Some of the comments could have been made jokingly. I’m sure he didn’t mean to offend anybody.”

— Jarrett Bell (@JarrettBell) March 25, 2018

That’s a plainly dumb move: Bob McNair’s position is of no substance at this point, and it’s not going to get Jerry Richardson his team back, so offering such a searing hot take is just manufacturing a PR disaster with no upside. An unforced error, except nobody asked Bob McNair to play tennis.

To cap it all off, McNair decided to wade back into the anthem protest debate, just as it was dying down, and just as people were starting to forget that he made the inmates/prison comment back in the day. Remember that?

Texans owner Bob McNair on NFL protests: “We can’t have inmates running the prison”, per @ESPN https://t.co/Bn2WgC5imy pic.twitter.com/IcrEj7q6LN

— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) October 27, 2017

It’s important to Bob McNair that you remember that, as he remarked: “We’re going to deal with [player protests] . . . Our playing field, that’s not the place for political statements. That’s not the place for religious statements. It’s the place for football.”

The football field isn’t the place for political statements, which is why we have to sing the national anthem before a football game. It’s doofy old rich guy politics, different from Tom Brady’s “I’m just a positive person” line only in that Tom Brady can’t control what his teammates do anymore than he can control the football on a reverse. Hey-ohhh.

Bob McNair also writes cheques to Brandon Weeden. For this last reason, more than anything else, Bob McNair is our top Sports Fool of the Year.