Second Place is the first loser, except when the first place guy is a loser too…

With the awarding of the NBA MVP to Kobe Bryant this week, pundits have begun to speculate that perhaps this was something of a lifetime achievement award as opposed to an appraisal of Kobe’s season this year.  It’s a bit of a conspiracy theory, but it makes sense: with an increasing number of young superstars, such as Chris Paul, LeBron James, Greg Oden, Kevin Durant, and others, coupled with the fact that Kobe turns 30 later this year, this may be his best opportunity to get one, and the NBA does not want someone like Kobe, who’s given much to the game of basketball, and given more still to the world of high end jewelry and throwback jerseys, to go through his entire professional career without one.  However, there’s no doubting that Kobe’s statistics justify recognition, and even if this is more a celebration of his career than of this season, what’s wrong with that?

 

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen controversy about an MVP, indeed, there was speculation during the 1990s that Charles Barkley and Karl Malone won the award merely because voters were sick of giving it to Michael Jordan.  Similarly, often times a quarterback, such as Kurt Warner in 2001, wins the award merely because he is the most visible player on the best team.  Thus, I feel it’s important, for the integrity of the awards, to establish the least deserving award winners of the past twenty years.  It is only when we weed out those less qualified that we can see the true value of the real MVPs.  For purposes of this column, I’m going to stick to pro basketball, pro football, Major League baseball, college football, and, to the extent that I’m aware of it, college basketball, as I don’t know much about other sports.  Any suggestions are welcome, and if you’re a hockey fan, please tell me what “[Insert Canadian last name here] Trophy” means when you comment, because it’s usually not apparent.  Also, I think for the sake of my sanity, and so that I have more articles to write in the future, I’m going to exclude all-star team inclusions that shouldn’t have been.

NBA Sixth Man Award, Every year: Is it me, or is kind of an unnecessary award?  I’m not sure if you should be congratulating someone for not being good enough to start, it seems more like taunting to me.  I bet the winner of this award gets a $50 gift certificate to Sizzler.  You remember how teachers used to give out ribbons to kids who did really well on their spelling tests?  Well this would be like giving a ribbon to Dan Quayle.

1991 National League MVP - Terry Pendleton: No, I don’t actually have a problem with this award, Barry Bonds does though.

1992 Naismith Award Winner - Christian Laettner: To be fair, Laettner did, along with Grant Hill and Bobby Hurley, lead his team to the title over the vaunted fab five of Michigan.  However, most people seem to agree that Shaquille O’Neal would have won the award had LSU been a more highly touted team.  Indeed, Laettner’s inclusion on that summer’s Olympic Squad, the first such team with NBA stars, further drove home the point.  However, as history goes, O’Neal went on to be an NBA super star, winning MVPs and four championship rings, recording rap albums with the Fu Schnickens and starring in such box office and critical smashes as “Kazaam” and “Steel“, while Laettner has spent the majority of his career as a role player, both on the court and presumably in cinema as well.

1994 Heisman Trophy winner - Rashaan Salaam: The competition between the Colorado star and Penn State back Ki-Jana Carter was almost as fierce as the rivalry between them in the pros that lasted for all of about 15 minutes of the first preseason game the next year.

1996 Super Bowl XXX MVP - Larry Brown: Who’s Larry Brown, you ask?  He was that cornerback from the Cowboys who picked off two extremely errant Neil O’Donnell throws during Super Bowl XXX, and was rewarded by the Oakland Raiders for being in the right place at the right time with a lucrative contract, that lasted all of about 12 games.  The funny thing is, if he were actually doing what he was supposed to be doing, and wasn’t in blown coverage, we’d still think of Larry Brown as being that guy who coached about 100 different NBA teams.

1996 American League MVP - Juan Gonzalez: We all know the stats, twenty-one year old Alex Rodriguez batted .358 with 36 homers and 54 doubles, and 141 runs and 123 driven in.  However, playing in an obscure Seattle Market blah blah blah… Yeah tell Starbucks that Seattle doesn’t matter.

1997 NFL Co-MVP - Brett Favre: I’d say this was a lifetime achievement award, but Favre had won the award the previous two seasons.  For those who don’t know, the other co-winner was Lions running back and chief alienator Barry Sanders, who rushed for 2,053 yard that season.  I really never have understood the halo effect given to Favre, but it seems like it’s gotten worse.  I know, he’s really tough, and he’s a real team player, but I feel like if either of the two of them was to be labeled tough, it’d have to be the 5′8, 200 lb running back who got nailed every play, not the 6′2″, 225 lb quarterback with the all world offensive line in front of him.

2000 Heisman Trophy winner - Chris Weinke: Weinke, a 28 year old former minor league baseball player, beat out 20 year old Virginia Tech sophomore quarterback Michael Vick for the award.  Naturally, this prompted some controversy, though Weinke had not violated any rules, other than being trounced several weeks later by Oklahoma in the championship game.  Weinke approached the podium very gingerly when his win was announced, and some TV viewers reported hearing muffled barking sounds from behind the stage.

2001 Super Bowl XXXV MVP -  Trent Dilfer: Wait a second, Dilfer didn’t win the MVP, he only got the free trip to Disneyland because the actual MVP killed someone at the previous year’s Super Bowl.  I bet Ray Lewis took that trip to Disneyland anyway, and I bet the Magic Kingdom had extra knights on duty when he did.

2002 Super Bowl XXXVI MVP - Tom Brady: 145 yards passing and one touchdown.  That sounds more like the line of Rex Grossman than of a Super Bowl MVP.  Does anyone else think Brady would get less attention if he looked more like Randy Johnson?  I do.

2002 American League Cy Young Award - Barry Zito: Yes, he went 23-5 with a 2.75 ERA for an A’s team that almost certainly would not have made the playoffs without his efforts, and there wasn’t any serious competition.  But there has to be some provision in the baseball world to remove awards from players who have done things so atrocious after winning the award, that the very integrity of award would be questioned by that person being in possession of it, or being associated with it.  Gold Medals have been stripped for steroid use, OJ’s Heisman has been permanently taken off display at USC, and Zito’s abomination of a current contract should outweigh anything he did before 2007.

2002 NFL MVP - Rich Gannon: Don’t get me wrong, I like Rich Gannon.  My uncle played football with him in college, and he was a solid pro for many years.  But I’m not sure I like the idea of a guy who threw a bunch of five yard outs and screen passes being considered in the same eschelon as Barry Sanders or Emmitt Smith or Peyton Manning, especially for a journeyman quarterback who didn’t start until late in his career.  Unlike Barry Bonds, however, Gannon can thank Jon Gruden and not his personal trainer for his later career improvement.  It’s kind of a shame they didn’t hold the MVP voting after his five interception performance in that year’s super bowl.

2003 World Series MVP - Josh Beckett: Wait a second, wasn’t the World Series that year the Yankees beating the Red Sox on a Game 7 extra inning home run by Aaron Boone? 

2003 Heisman Trophy Winner - Jason White: I’m pretty sure my brother mentions this one any time he talks about college football at all, but this is a good reason for not allowing votes to come in early: in the Big 12 Championship game against Kansas State as well as in the National Championship game against LSU, really the first time other than the Texas game White had played solid defensive competition, he got manhandled and his team lost both games.  It also demonstrated the bias to give the award to quarterbacks over other players, as standout Pitt receiver Larry Fitzgerald was beaten out by White.  However, according to wikipedia, White now operates an OU/OSU memorobelia store in Norman, while Fitzgerald just signed a multi-million dollar contract extension, making him one of the league’s highest paid players, so I’m sure he’s doing ok too.

2005 National League Cy Young Award - Chris Carpenter: Not that Carpenter didn’t have a fine season, he went 21-5 with a 2.83 ERA.  However, long time baseball trophy darling Roger Clemens, now at the age of 43, bested that with a mind-blowing 1.87 ERA, though he finished with only 13 wins, in part because of poor run support.  It’s worth noting too that despite his ERA (the lowest in the national league in over a decade), he typically pitched only six innings per game or so while at home, so as to make sure he didn’t miss the end of any high school dances in the Houston Area.

2006 American League MVP - Justin Morneau: Twenty years from now, some kid is going to be learning about baseball, perhaps through reading the baseball encyclopedia, and have no idea who Justin Morneau is?  Maybe the AL just had a down year in 2006, and maybe I’m biased if I think Derek Jeter should have won that year, but Derek Jeter is Tom Brady’s equivalent and baseball, and was probably worthy of a gimme that year, for his contributions to baseball and to the world of advertising.

2007 Heisman Trophy Winner - Tim Tebow: I can’t say I have any empirical proof for this, but I’m pretty sure that Tim Tebow is going to inherit Brett Favre’s halo effect when he goes pro in a year.  That’ll make the 2008 NFL season the dark ages of pro football, without someone to laud for throwing the ball into double coverage or playing through a busted fingernail.  If I were Darren McFadden, I would have been beside myself for not winning this award, especially after the LSU game.  Then again, Darren’s got enough kids to console him that he probably didn’t get too upset.  You know all the voters flocked to Tebow’s 26 TD throws and 20 TD runs, which I’ll concede is impressive, but you know things are bad when ESPN folks are trying to make the case for Tebow and you see reassuring stats like “5 TD runs of more than 5 yards”.

2008 Naismith Award Winner - Tyler Hansbrough: Remember how Rush Limbaugh so eloquently articulated that the reason Donovan McNabb was so lauded by football pundits was that they wanted a black quarterback to succeed?  Well it works both ways, and I’m pretty sure everyone wants Tyler Hansbrough, AKA Psycho T, to succeed on the hardcourt.  I can’t imagine what Hansbrough was doing at talent-laden North Carolina that was more impressive than Derrick Rose leading upstart Memphis to the Finals, or than Michael Beasley singlehandedly willing Kansas State into the tournament, but the sportswriters can’t seem to get enough of him.  Well, all the same, oafish white basketball players usually fade into obscurity once they started riding the bench in the NBA, but we have another year ahead of us of listening to wily sports announcers tell us all about this guy.