Was this an extraordinarily bad year for women in sports, or what?
Television has its Emmys. Music has its Grammys. We have our Dummies. In a tradition begun all the way back in 2006, The Times again bestows dishonor upon the worst of the worst in sports for the year.
The nominees are limited in 2007 to those who were mean to women. It is hardly an exclusive list.
Don Imus or Isiah Thomas for No. 1?
How about Dubliner magazine?
Matt Leinart?
You can't really go wrong.
NO. 1 ISIAH THOMAS
At least Imus apologized. A former New York Knicks executive, Anucha Browne Sanders, won her sexual harassment suit against the team's coach and Madison Square Garden. Thomas and MSG officials deny any wrongdoing but settled with her for $11.5 million, just shy of the $11.6 million that the jury had awarded her in punitive damages.
Startling was a Thomas deposition in which he said it was OK for black men to use a certain derogatory term regarding black women, but not for white men. "A white male calling a black female, that is wrong with me," he said. "I'm not taking that. I'm not accepting that. That's a problem for me." Just one of many for the beleaguered Knicks coach.
NO. 2 DON IMUS
He was right. Not when he used an insulting term (different from the one Thomas referred to) to describe the Rutgers women's basketball team. He was right when he later referred to himself as an idiot. He subsequently apologized, but it still cost him his job after sponsors began to pull their money from his syndicated radio show.
NO. 3 DUBLINER MAGAZINE
With the Ryder Cup approaching, the Irish magazine ran nude photos of a blond woman and identified her as Tiger Woods' wife, Elin Nordegren. It wasn't her. Accompanying the photos was this passage: "Most American golfers are married to women who cannot keep their clothes on in public. Is it too much to ask that they leave them at home for the Ryder Cup?" Some good came of it. Nordegren sued for libel, winning a judgment for about $250,000. She donated it to cancer charities.
NO. 4 MATT LEINART
Backstage at the ESPYs, the former USC quarterback talked to reporters about the joys of fatherhood. "It's different," he said. "You're forced to do all those little things. I love doing it, and I love being with him. I change diapers all the time. You never would think you had so much enjoyment, like kissing someone's toes and feet -- the little things. Like, that's my little guy."
