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 included, but were 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 best defense mechanism one might hope to muster against the Lovecraftian nightmare that is sports.
