IDIOT OF THE YEAR 2021: Tony La Russa, Tommy Tuberville, every NFL referee, and other esteemed dummies

Happy holidays, you filthy animals, and welcome to Deadspin’s annual IDIOT OF THE YEAR extravaganza. Within these hallowed slides are 50 of the year’s least bearable dorks, whose transgressions range from “just kinda silly,” to “dangerously stupid,” to “Trevor Bauer.” The IDIOT OF THE YEAR selections ahead were voted on by an expert team of Deadspin staffers, whose first round of balloting was thrown out after they’d unanimously picked themselves No. 1. With that conflict of interest loophole sewn up, the team tried again. This list is the product of that scrupulous process. The qualities considered include, but are not limited to: Volume/Wrongness Coefficient: Look, nobody cares if you’re wildly off the mark about everything in private. But please don’t shout about it on national television. Established Track Record of Idiocy: Has the candidate enjoyed sustained excellence in the field? Memorableness: There are many stupid things that happen each day, so time is the ultimate arbiter. If you forgot the person behind the idiocy, chances are it was not sufficiently resonant. Is It Trevor Bauer? If it is Trevor Bauer, they are an idiot. What follows is a vaguely depressing cross-section of athletics and culture. We invite you to laugh with us not out of spite, but because it’s the only defense mechanism one might hope to muster against the Lovecraftian nightmare that is sports. Missed our first two installments of this vaunted award series? Here’s our first, from Monday, and yesterday’s. 30. Tony La Russa source: Getty Images Being old and ornery is enough of an excuse for some people to throw caution to the wind and act like complete assholes in their later years. We don’t live by those rules here at Deadspin, so that means no matter the age, anyone carrying on like a premium jackass gets called out. Equality! Having said that, Tony La Russa certainly tried his best to win Asshole of the Year in Major League Baseball. Too bad for La Russa, the league in which he manages had its sights set on the same prize. In May, La Russa publicly blasted his catcher, Yermín Mercedes, after he smashed a home run in a game the White Sox already had locked up against the Twins. La Russa and his old school ways couldn’t allow this, and so he decided to play the “sportsmanship” card afterward to put his player on blast. Hopefully, baseball will be in a much better place once these stuffy old bastards decide to move on and enjoy retirement. At that point, we can only hope no one feels the urge to shove a microphone in their face every time a player with dark skin flips a bat, watches his home run leave the ballpark, or just smiles while enjoying the game. Forget crying; apparently, there’s no fun in baseball either. 29. Klete Keller source: Getty Images It goes without saying that it takes a special kind of stupid to have taken part in the insurrection on January 6. It also doesn’t take a genius to know that the U.S. Olympic movement is built on, like, pretending that everything in the United States is great at all times, and especially our Olympians, who are sold to us, via glossy video packages, every four years. So it goes without saying that wearing an authentic Olympic jacket to the most recent attempt to overthrow democracy was not only incongruous, but also a way to make oneself easily identifiable. We will never know what the thought process was for former Olympic swimmer Klete Keller, the intellectual giant who showed up at the US Capitol on January 6 along with all the other NewsMax-infused brainiacs, but he has now pleaded guilty to a felony charge for his part in the insurrection and is facing 21- 27 months in prison. Keller also admitted to attempting to obstruct justice by subsequently burning the highly distinctive Olympic jacket (along with his phone and memory card), apparently not realizing that it was pretty easy for the feds to narrow the list of Americans who both possess authentic Team USA jackets and who were at the Capitol on the day in question. Good thinkin’, Klete. Congrats on an outstanding 2021, full of good decisions. Best of luck at your sentencing hearing. Go USA! 28. Montreal Canadiens source: Getty Images The Montreal Canadiens managed to get into the Stanley Cup playoffs this year because they got to play in an all-Canadian division that included the Canucks, Flames, and Senators, and even then, with 59 points, the Habs would not have made the postseason had they played in any other division. Still, Montreal made it to the Final before losing to the Lightning, a Cinderella run that should have built up a ton of good will. Should have, because Marc Bergevin immediately squandered it by using the Canadiens’ first-round draft pick on Logan Mailloux, a convicted sex offender who had asked NHL teams not to draft him. The resultant uproar led to Habs ownership issuing what wasn’t really an apology, but more of a “sorry if you were offended” statement. Bergevin was eventually canned, not because of the draft fiasco, nor because of his ties to the scandalized Chicago organization, but because the team he built, which mostly sucked last year and was lucky to be in the playoffs, really and truly sucked this season. That did, at least, allow us to close the year with a laugh, with Jeff Gorton’s attempt at French in his introductory presser. 27. NFL Referees source: Shutterstock Where would society be without NFL referees for everyone to collectively gang up on? We haven’t seen a collective group of people this universally hated since before Nickelback became an ironically cool band to listen to. The stripes’ idiocy soared to new heights in 2021 though with the implementation of the taunting rule. The most iconic moment of this new edict came in Week 9, when the Bears took on the Steelers. After a huge sack in a pivotal moment of the game, Chicago linebacker Cassius Marsh “motioned” toward the Steelers’ bench. That’s it. That was enough for referee Tony Corrente to toss his yellow laundry. Corrente tried to defend the call with this limp comment: “Keep in mind that taunting is a point of emphasis this year. I saw [Marsh] run toward the bench area of the Pittsburgh Steelers and posture in such a way that I felt he was taunting them.” To respond in referee language: After further review, that’s some bullshit. All Marsh did was take a few steps toward the Pittsburgh bench and glare at them from about 20 yards away. He didn’t even strike a pose. He literally just stood there and bounced slightly like he was in a Bella Poarch TikTok video. Of course, that’s just one of the bad calls the league’s officiating corps has made this year. They also called Raiders tight end Darren Waller for taunting after he spiked the ball near in the Chargers’ general vicinity. And it’s not just touchy taunting penalties! Referees allowed the Ravens to kick a game-winning 66-yard field goal against the Lions in Week 3 against the Baltimore Ravens after missing an obvious delay of game penalty. They robbed Dak Prescott of a rushing touchdown in his team’s game against the Eagles in Week 3. Then, they robbed the Cowboys QB of another rushing touchdown in Week 6 against New England. Prescott fumbled the ball on the very next play in that New England game, by the way. We’ve only scratched the tip of the ref-tomfoolery iceberg, and yet we haven’t even begun to get into the roughing the passer penalties yet. Yeah, it’s been a horrid season for NFL officiating. 26. Meyers Leonard source: Getty Images Meyers Leonard allowed his stupidity and ignorance to get him bounced from the NBA after using an antisemitic slur during a live Twitch stream back in March. The Miami Heat then traded Leonard to the OKC Thunder, where he was almost immediately cut. At this point, the only thing that might save Leonard’s NBA career is that he’s 7 feet tall. He isn’t a good enough player to warrant a team taking a chance on him too soon following his explosively bigoted comment. It doesn’t matter if it was said out of ignorance or not. Most of us don’t believe his claim of ignorance about the word he used. When people are comfortable and no cameras or microphones are around, that’s when you find out how folks really feel about the world and other people in it. This dum dum was live streaming, so he knew mics and cameras were hot, yet he still got so worked up playing a video game that he went the slur route (sure, who hasn’t hurled some spicy language at Call of Duty, but Jesus Christ, Meyers). If he’s that charged up over a game of Warzone, he may need a new hobby. 25. Kelly Loeffler source: Getty Images All-time idiot Kelly Loeffler couldn’t match her 2020 IDIOT OF THE YEAR performance, where she clocked in at No. 2, (“ Somehow worse than Trump,” the headline read!) but she still managed to make the 2021 list. No longer a U.S. senator nor owner of the Atlanta Dream, Loeffler, 51, has floated the possibility of running again in Georgia, where she is 0-1 in elections. She has started a new organization, Greater Georgia, as a counter to Fair Fight, which seeks to ensure voter rights. What is it when you’re on the opposite side of voting rights? Well, it’s idiotic, for starters. 24. Jason Whitlock Whitlock began writing regularly for conservative outlet The Blaze on June 8. Here are some of his column headlines: Simone Biles and the celebration of quitting are latest signs America has been hacked America’s toxic femininity pandemic provides China huge advantage in the Mold War NBA star Kyrie Irving is Muhammad Ali, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has abandoned his religious convictions Kanye West’s ‘Thanksgiving prayer’ illustrates the dangers of marrying a feminist It would stand to reason that leaving Clay Travis is a sign that a person is turning toward intelligence. Instead, it appears that Whitlock just wanted more creative freedom to twist everything wrong with America into his twisted sense of right. 23. United States Olympic Committee credits: USOC The year is 2021. A world-class athlete is banned from the Olympic Games for substance use. The drug in question? Reefer. Sha’Carri Richardson was robbed of her opportunity to show her stuff on the grandest of stages, and it is the fault of the bureaucrats at the United States Olympic Committee and their archaic rules. Sure, anabolic steroids and HGH are not in line with principles of honest competition, but marijuana? Keep smoking those jazz cigarettes and you’re liable to leap from a window in a fit of paranoia. That Loud is now legal for recreational use in many states, with studies painting a pretty clear picture of its relative safety, but these doofs still saw fit to go by the book and steal one from Sha’Carri. For shame, you nerds. 22. Tommy Tuberville source: Getty Images Only in America can being a semi-recognizable Power 5 college football pledging his allegiance to a silver-spooned reality show host, who got himself fired from said reality show for bigoted statements, facilitate your election to a federal government post. It worked out for Tuberville, who is now a member of the United States Senate. The reward for the rest of us is a man who voted to destabilize America by voting against certifying the presidential election, tried to squeeze anti-trans legislation into a bill designed to protect Americans, and was unfamiliar with the three branches of government — ya know, the first thing a child learns about the government after the words “president” and “vice president.” There might be bigger idiots in this world than Tommy Tuberville, but it might not feel better calling anyone else an idiot than him. For the three seconds it takes to say “Tommy Tuberville is an idiot,” it’s a massage for your whole insides. Like sitting next to a fire on a cold winter’s night with a significant other, it just feels right. Let’s all say it together, 1… 2… 3… Tommy Tuberville is an idiot. 21. Rachel Luba It can’t be anyone’s life goal to be Erika Nardini — or worse yet a knockoff Nardini — but that’s what Rachel Luba appears to be aiming for. As an agent specializing in the worst of the worst, Luba’s only name clients as an agent are Trevor Bauer and Yasiel Puig, who are accused of being monstrous sex criminals. So does she seek these creatures out? Is it just coincidence? Does she think it’s just being in the middle of the fire and all part of the job? Maybe monsters just flock together. Relatedus sports betting sitesbrand new sportsbooksall sports betting appslive betting gameslive streaming sportsbookscash out bonus bets