Random Biggest Sports-Related Conspiracy Theories (21 items)

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  (#20) Cal Ripken's Streak Was Saved After His Wife Slept With Kevin Costner

  Everyone loves a good sports sex scandal as much as they love a good sports accomplishment. So it makes sense that Cal Ripken Jr.’s historic consecutive games played streak would be the subject of a sexcapade urban legend. In this case, it’s that in 1997, Ripken found his wife in bed with actor Kevin Costner, and was so distraught (or injured in a fistfight with Costner) that he couldn’t play that day – which would end his streak. So the team cooked up a fake electrical problem with their stadium, resulting in a canceled game, giving Ripken time to cool off.

  Everyone involved has denied the incident ever happened, with Costner threatening to knock the heads off a pair of sports DJs who claimed it was true.
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  (#6) Delonte West Hooked Up With LeBron James's Mom

  One of the strangest rumors to hit pro sports in recent years is that former Cleveland Cavaliers player Delonte West was carrying on affair with LeBron James’s mother – and that when it came to light, it destroyed the team and ended West’s NBA career. The source of the rumor was an email that started going around the day after the Cavs were eliminated from the 2010 NBA playoffs by Boston.

  As with almost all chain emails, its original source is lost to history, with the whistleblower being anyone from a contractor at the Cavs home arena to a relative of James to some guy somebody knew. The fact that it was impossible to attribute also made it impossible to kill, and it went from chain email to national news in a week. Since then James left, and then went back to the Cavs, while West bombed out of the NBA and started playing in China. 
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  (#16) Super Bowl III Was Fixed

  Super Bowl III, in which Joe Namath guaranteed victory for his upstart New York Jets, was a pivotal moment for the NFL. They had just merged with the AFL, but the NFL teams had proven themselves far superior. Another Super Bowl win by an NFL team might have proven the AFL to be inherently inferior, and driven fans away. So did the league arrange for the team it needed to win to, in fact, win?

  That was the opinion of Baltimore Colts player Bubba Smith, who theorized that the league rigged the game to allow the more lucrative AFL team to beat his Colts. While the Jets, who were an 18.5 point underdog, pulled off an unthinkable upset, it was just as likely due to the Colts playing poorly and underestimating the Jets, rather than shenanigans by the NFL.
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  (#21) Elvis Stojko Beat Up Eric Lindros

  Hockey players take pride in their ability to drop the gloves and fight anyone on the ice at any time. So for a star player to be taken in a bar fight would be embarrassing – especially if the winner of the fight was a figure skater. But that’s exactly the rumor that swirled around for years: that star player Eric Lindros got his jock strap handed to him in a bar brawl with Olympic champion Elvis Stojko. As the story goes, Lindros was showing off to his buddies and picking on the smaller figure skater, when Stojko delivered a karate kick that sent Lindros flying.
   
  While Stojko does have a black belt in karate, that’s the only part of the story that’s been proven to be true. Typical of urban legends, the nature of the fight, year it happened, and even where it happened are mobile, changing as the story gets passed around. 
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  (#10) Michael Jordan Was Actually Hungover During The Flu Game

  Game 5 of the 1997 NBA Finals was one of Michael Jordan’s most legendary performances in a career full of them. Fighting a nasty flu bug, Jordan scored 38 points and led the Bulls to a decisive win. But did Jordan actually have the flu? His personal trainer claimed Jordan actually had food poisoning, caused by a dodgy pizza delivered in the middle of the night.

  Meanwhile, NBA commentator and former player Jalen Rose claims Jordan was actually hungover from a night of partying, and that the NBA cooked up the flu story to cover for Jordan. The circumstantial evidence doesn’t point in that direction (indeed, Jordan looks like he's in agony when he's not on the court), and Jordan has never wavered from the fact that was simply battling a bug.
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  (#11) The NFL Ordered The Super Bowl Blackout

  When the lights went out on Super Bowl XLVII, of course conspiracies followed. One says that the NFL caused the blackout in order to increase their ratings, because people who had turned the game off would go back to it to see what was happening. While it’s true that ratings probably would have eroded if the game was a blowout, television networks don’t get people to turn in by having things not happen.

  And while there might have been more airtime to run ads, it didn’t matter, because CBS had already sold all of the ads they were going to sell, and were forced to repeat spots. Which is exactly the opposite of what they wanted to happen.

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