The 2010 Gunny Awards

The Diary was away for a while. It’s been months since my last post. In that time, I moved from Chicago to Los Angeles, taking only what I needed to survive! Or at least what I could fit in my Saturn Ion…

I have completely embraced my addiction, working at Fox Sports West full-time as I’m forced to watch endless hours of sports against my will! Fortunately much of that includes Clippers human highlight reel, Blake Griffin, throwing down SportsCenter-worthy dunks on a nightly basis.

2010 left us with some great comebacks and some even greater let downs. There were moments of excellence and moments of ridiculousness. Those moments are what the Gunny Awards were created for (mainly the latter). With no further ado, I present to you the 2010 Gunny Award Winners:

Disclaimer: Not all Gunny Awards are for positive achievements; most are given away to instill shame in the recipient. Gunny Awards do not physically exist and winners will receive no tangible compensation.

George Constanza Award (Can’t Keep a Steady Job) – Randy Moss

Early in the season, Randy Moss made it clear that his days in New England were numbered. His reasons, however, were not so clear. Something about playing for one of the greatest coaches of all-time and catching passes from one of the greatest quarterbacks of all-time while playing on a team that rarely lost just didn’t settle well with Randy… I’m sure we can all relate.

After he did everything he could to talk his way out of town, the Patriots traded Moss to the struggling Vikings, the team he started his career with. Head coach Brad Childress put up with Moss for four games before cutting him for disrespecting a caterer in what seemed to be an attempt to pin all of the Vikings problems on the new guy. You know a team is in trouble when the head coach is prioritizing the food service over a hall of fame wide receiver.

Moss was then picked up by the Tennessee Titans, another team dealing with a civil war between its coach and quarterback. Wearing his third uniform in one season, the man who was once the most exciting wide receiver ever to play the game posted career low numbers. Moss was once again factored out of the offense on a team that finished 6-10 while he watched the team he started the year with make the playoffs.

Despite the fact that Moss looked closer to 43 than 33, I still think there’s hope for a strong Moss comeback in 2011. Take your Gunny Award and keep your head up Randy. It just hasn’t been your year.

El Colacho Award (Most Dangerous Jump) – Kendry Morales

I guess Kendry Morales’ jump to home plate wasn’t quite as dangerous as El Colacho, a Spanish tradition also known as “baby jumping” where men dressed as the devil jump over babies who lie on mattresses in the street, but the results were devastating for the Angels power hitting first baseman.

Morales went from hero to zero in a single bound, when he celebrated a walk off grand slam by jumping onto home plate, while his teammates surrounded him with congratulatory pats on the back. In what appeared to be no more than a minor fall, Morales landed hard, breaking his leg and ending his season. His celebration instantly turned to screams of agony, and his all-star and MVP hopes have at very least been put off for another year.

You’ve got a long career ahead of you kid. Next time stick with a good old-fashioned high five. Generally no one gets hurt.

John Lennon Award (Bigger than Jesus) – Lebron James

Lebron James never quite said he was bigger than Jesus, although he did refer to himself, Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh as “The Heatles”, which, to many people, is equally blasphemous.

LeBron did everything he could to get on NBA fans nerves in 2010, stalling The Decision only to make a live TV event out of disappointing his hometown fans, guaranteeing over seven NBA titles and promising to participate in the dunk contest and not staying true to his word.

LeBron put icing on the cake (or the donut, in this case), in a Nike commercial released at the start of the 2010-11 season, where he sympathetically yet sarcastically asked “what should I do?” in an attempt to strike back at Dan Gilbert, Charles Barkley and anyone else who has the nerve to not be a LeBron James fan. How dare they?!

What should you do LeBron? Make a decision and stick by it instead of drawing attention to yourself only to go against your word. Stop raising your expectations so high that they can't be reached. General idea: shove that pink donut in your mouth, shut up and play basketball. Stop talking about championships and start winning them. Sorry, but you asked, so I answered… Oh, and keep throwing down those flying tomahawk dunks too… Those are cool…

311 Award (Most Beautiful Disaster) – Minnesota Vikings

The Vikings brought Brett Favre back for what seemed to be one more run at a Super Bowl, but the season collapsed harder than Metrodome’s roof. No matter how badly the Vikings played this year, people couldn’t stop watching them and talking about them. They were like that nasty highway accident with cars turned over and severely injured people being loaded into ambulances, but for some reason you just couldn’t look away.

Beyond everything that went wrong on the field, the off the field drama was even worse. But the Vikings’ reality show was closer to The Real Housewives of Minneapolis than Hard Knocks, as Favre and Childress used the media like children of divorcees, spattering not so subtle complaints that came up short of witty on a weekly basis and constantly spewing out issues they didn’t have the balls to work out face to face.

Everything from Randy Moss’ harsh food criticism to Brett Favre’s penis texts made the Vikings one of the most pathetically entertaining media testicles in recent memory… I mean spectacles! One of the most entertaining media spectacles in recent memory… and for that, they get a Gunny Award!

Pretty, Pretty Princess Award (Unnecessary Tiara) - Julia Mancuso

When Lindsay Vonn won gold in women’s downhill in 2010 Winter Olympics, her American teammate, Julia Mancuso, took silver. There had already been some gossip about Mancuso being jealous and annoyed with Vonn soaking up all of the media attention. This became more evident when Vonn took the podium in her normal attire while Mancuso strolled in like she was the princess of Olympic Village, wearing her favorite shiny silver tiara.

If the girl who won gold shows up crownless (usually the case), how does that make the girl who came in second with the crown on look? Kind of like the old man who never had kids, but refuses to take off his “World’s Greatest Grandpa” shirt. I say no gold medal, no tiara on the podium. In fact, you’re better off keeping the tiaras off the podium regardless of medal status.

Behavior like this might be the reason many men can’t embrace women’s sports, but for me it’s the reason I enjoy them so much… That and hot snow bunnies like Lindsay Vonn and Julia Mancuso. No hard feelings Julia, you can hop on my chairlift any time!

Rick Vaughn Award (Coolest Eccentric Relief Pitcher) – Brian Wilson

The entire San Francisco Giants team could have won the Major League Award. Everyone outside of northern California was asking “who are these f’ing guys” every time Aubrey Huff or Cody Ross got a big hit, pushing the Giants through the playoffs and eventually dominating the Rangers in the World Series.

But no one in the Giants entire cast of characters drew more attention and fascination than mohawk-rocking, pitch black bearded, too weird for baseball relief pitcher, Brian Wilson.

When the Giants beat the Phillies to advance to the World Series, Wilson had a message for his fans in San Francisco: “I hope you guys are going absolutely ballistic, because we’re gonna get on a flight tomorrow, and we’re gonna join you… Fact!”

Wilson sported a pair of bright orange spikes in the 2010 MLB All-Star Game that he continued to wear throughout the season, until the National League hit him with a $1,000 fine for non-conforming shoes. When asked about the incident in an interview with Jim Rome, Wilson claimed he was fined for “having too much awesome on [his] feet.” Well Brian, now you have too much awesome on your trophy case, here’s your Gunny Award!

Hermes International Award (Greatest Tie) – USA Men’s Soccer

For many Americans, the interest in soccer faded away after the last pizza party their nine and under team was awarded whether they won or lost (because in American soccer, everybody wins). Well apparently that isn’t the case in the World Cup.

When the USA Men’s Soccer team tied England in their first game of the of the group stage, it was celebrated as if they were champions. Of course many of us know so little about soccer that we thought tying England was the criteria to winning the World Cup. Stephen Colbert put it best when he said, “we kicked their asses, one-one!”

Regardless, they did get Americans more excited about soccer than they’ve ever been. And maybe, just maybe, in another four years, we’ll get excited about it again.

R. Kelly Award (Freakiest Internet Video Leak) – Rex Ryan

Congratulations to Rex Ryan, the first ever two-time Gunny Award Winner! (The crowd goes wild). Although last year Ryan was fortunate enough to take home a rare positive Gunny Award (Bruce Campbell Award: Tough Guy Quote of the Year), this year he isn’t so lucky. It turns out Rex and his wife are into some weird stuff… and not so much in sexually nasty way, just in a strange, awkward way.

In December, videos leaked all over the Internet featuring Not-So-Sexy Rexy approaching his wife who’s sitting in a car on the side of the road with her feet hanging out the window. Rex goes into a role-play of sorts and pretends to be a stranger who’s taken an interest in her pretty feet… It goes on like this… There are several others, all the same concept. The scripts are a bit contrived and the actors aren’t extremely convincing, but other than that, not bad!

Rex isn’t in the videos, but it’s clearly his wife and his voice. How it got on the Internet is unclear. A celebrity’s personal video leaking on the web?! How could he possibly have seen that coming?!

Tyler Durden Award (Bloodiest Face) - Brock Lesnar

Leading into the UFC Heavyweight Championship on October 23, the entire MMA community thought fake wrestler turned real fighter, Brock Lesnar, was too massive, powerful and terrifying for Cain Velasquez to beat. When Velasquez knocked out Lesnar in the first round, it was like David vs. Goliath. Although I’m pretty sure David vs. Goliath was a close fight… this was more like David pounding away at Goliath’s bloody face with fists and elbows while Goliath defenselessly stumbled around the octagon.

Well Brock, it turns out some of those skills you picked up in the WWF don’t translate to real athletic competition after all. Maybe you should go back to spitting at cameramen and flipping birds at your audience. You were better at that…

Mel Gibson Award (Nazi Behavior) – Michael Jordan

Over the years, Michael Jordan’s Hanes ads have gone from bad to worse. Typically they’ve shown a washed up movie star desperately attempting to befriend Jordan and show him their underwear, while he behaves in classic Jordan fashion, sticking his nose in the air and making it clear he’s too good for them (which, to his defense, he really is).

Well apparently Hanes lost Kevin Bacon to his hilarious Direct TV commercials where he poses as a loser obsessed with none other than Kevin Bacon, recording all of his programs to DVR. And apparently they lost Charlie Sheen to (insert hooker joke here) and (insert drug/alcohol joke here). So now they just have some douche bag we’ve never seen before, who is probably working for underwear, sucking up to Jordan while sitting next to him in, what appears to be, the coach section of a commercial airplane (riiight…). And that was all well and good until Jordan appeared in one of his signature Hanes advertisements with an obvious Adolf Hitler mustache.

Now I’m not accusing Jordan of being a Nazi, but I don’t see how he and his PR staff, as well as the entire production crew and the douche bag we’ve never seen before, didn’t notice that the most famous athlete of all-time was wearing facial hair that hasn’t been kosher in over 70 years. Edward Norton in American History X wouldn’t have the balls to rock that stache. Take a note from Brian Wilson: when it comes to facial hair, go all or nothing. It’s safer that way. No room for interpretation…

That’s All Folks

That concludes the 2010 Gunny Awards. I’d like to apologize to Inez Sainz for leaving her out. I’m sure we can find an award for her next year if she can stay relevant for that long. I’d also like to thank Charlie Sheen for being such a trooper.

Thanks for coming out sports fans! Don’t forget to follow the new and improved Diary of a Sports Addict (coming soon in 3D). Have a good night everybody!