The strangest sports moments of the 2020s

If you’re like most people, you were probably paying some, but not much attention to COVID-19 in early March of 2020. Then you maybe started to take it more seriously but still weren’t quite sure what to make of it. Then Rudy Gobert touched every microphone and recording device in front of him during a media availability on March 9^th, seemingly mocking the public’s concern. Two days later, he tested positive, the first NBA player to do so. A day after that, the sports world came to a screeching halt. Gobert was vilified far and wide for his attitude, as even some teammates were upset with him. It was the first of many strange situations the virus would create in the sports world.

Sports were more or less shelved for a few months thanks to COVID, with only random events in random countries still taking place. (Hello baseball in South Korea, for example.) When they came back, things were…strange, for lack of a better word. Crowds were minuscule and, in many cases, nonexistent. Cardboard fans were used to create the appearance of fans in attendance. Entire playoffs were staged in “bubble” environments. The whole vibe was equal parts: “the show must go on” and “goodness, this is unusual and kind of grim.” The NFL probably weathered the situation better than any other league, but football still wasn’t the same, either. It was sports, but it wasn’t. It was definitely weird, though.

There’s that COVID again, creating very bizarre schedule quirks. The Ravens and Steelers were supposed to play on Thanksgiving night, 2020. Then, the game was moved to Sunday. Then it was moved again to Tuesday. But wait, that wasn’t the end of it! The game was moved a third time, to Wednesday afternoon at 3:40. The moves were, you guessed it, more or less all related to COVID testing. Six days after it was supposed to happen, the game was finally played. The Ravens were without Lamar Jackson, but they made a very respectable go of it against the 10-0 Steelers, battling right down to the wire before ultimately falling by a 19-14 margin. The Ravens did manage to expose the Steelers as paper tigers, who promptly staggered to a 12-4 finish. So Baltimore had that going for them, at least.

Sick of the COVID-related oddities? Sorry, but I’ve got at least a few more for you. This one was particularly unfortunate for the Denver Broncos. All of their quarterbacks were unavailable because they were in COVID protocol, so Kendall Hinton, a practice-squad wide receiver who had played some quarterback in college at Wake Forest, got the start. He was the first non-quarterback to start under center in an NFL game since the Baltimore Colts’ Tom Matte did so in 1965. Hinton, predictably, did not fare well against the New Orleans Saints. He went just 1-of-9 for 13 yards, and the Broncos got steamrolled, 31-3.

Most major college conferences canceled their postseason basketball tournaments on March 12, 2020. The Big East did not, at least not at first. Creighton and St. John’s were amid a tight, back-and-forth contest, with St. John’s holding a 38-35 halftime lead. Then the Big East opted to join the rest of the sport, and canceled their tournament on the spot, not even bothering to let the two teams finish. It led to a very surreal moment in Madison Square Garden, where the public address announcer had the unenviable task of explaining the situation to a crowd that was already limited to a few hundred people because of ticket restrictions.

Finally, a strange sports story from 2020 that doesn’t involve COVID. Nope, this one involves a good old case of the runs. Ironically, the afflicted party was a quarterback known for his running. In what ended up an instant classic victory over the Browns, Baltimore’s Lamar Jackson quickly scurried off the field and was seen awkwardly running to the team’s locker room. He was gone for a few minutes, then he came back and led the Ravens to a win. America wanted to know: Did Jackson have to poop? He claimed he did not, and that it was a case of cramps. Do you believe him? I don’t.

Numerous oddball attempts were made to give sports fans something to watch in the early days of the pandemic, but NASCAR’s might have been the most successful. Using the iRacing platform, the stock car circuit, with broadcast help from FOX, staged several races from March 22 until May 9, with many of the sport’s biggest names partaking. There were special rules for these races, and while the concept of people watching their favorite drivers play what amounted to a video game might seem strange, it definitely had an audience. Over 900,000 people watched the first race, and 1,339,000 watched the second race.

Most people assumed, quite understandably, that Jake Paul’s foray into boxing in 2020 was a publicity stunt. After all, Paul was a YouTuber, and it seemed strange that he would go all-in on combat sports. But that’s more or less exactly what he did, and he’s laughed all the way to the bank since then. Paul seems to be taking the whole thing very seriously, fighting to a 10-1 record, mostly against past-their-prime MMA fighters, with his only loss coming at the hands of Tyson Fury’s brother, Tommy. Paul is, unsurprisingly, making a ton of money from all of this, so maybe he knew what he was doing all along.

A charming thing about the NHL is the league’s emergency goaltender rule, which essentially stipulates that there be non-professional goalies in attendance at every game to function as emergency goalies for either team, if said team’s goalies are all injured. David Ayres was one such player, and on February 22^nd , he got a chance at the unthinkable. The Hurricanes’ James Reimer and Petr Mrazek both got hurt while Carolina was holding a 3-1 lead on the road against Toronto. Ayres, a building operator for the Maple Leafs’ AHL affiliate, was pressed into action with 8:41 remaining in the second period. He allowed goals on the first two shots he faced, but then stopped the next eight, and Carolina won the game 6-3. Ayres was named the game’s first star, naturally.

COVID derailed the NBA, NHL, and college basketball while all three sports were in the midst of their seasons. It stopped MLB cold in spring training. Only the NFL was spared a disruption of its game schedule. Of course, the NFL Draft has been a major event in and of itself for years, something that was just as true in 2020. Having the usual blowout draft was of course not possible. What to do, then? Why, have Roger Goodell announce the picks from his man cave, of course. It was weird, it was surreal, and somehow, it all ended up working out, and managed to make the commissioner seem like a somewhat normal guy, albeit a guy with a man cave that 99.9% of the population can only dream of.

Bert Smith was officiating an Elite Eight clash between Gonzaga and USC from Lucas Oil Field House when he abruptly collapsed and hit his head off the court. He was quickly attended to and regained consciousness before being wheeled off on a stretcher. It turned out that the fall and subsequent hospitalization might have saved his life. After initially returning to his hotel, he went back to the hospital to be checked for a concussion, where several tests revealed a blood clot in his lung. Smith was placed on blood thinners and discharged two days later. What started as an extremely scary incident ended as one that might well have saved Smith’s life.

Stage 1 of the 2021 Tour de France saw nearly the entire peloton go down in a heap. What was the cause of such a destructive crash? A woman with a homemade cardboard sign, who apparently wasn’t aware of the fact that literally dozens of cyclists were bearing down on her, of course. The sign was a combination of French and German and said “Allez Opi-Omi,” which means “Go grandpa-grandma!” The woman was eventually fined but faced no jail time. Hopefully grandpa and grandma got the message.

Brown’s spectacular, bizarre career came to a fitting end as the Bucs battled the Jets in Week 17 of the 2021 season. Brown, who had been inactive for several weeks before returning the prior week for a 10-catch, 101-yard performance against Carolina, argued with head coach Bruce Arians on the sideline before eventually taking his jersey and pads off and jogging/skipping off the field while playing to the crowd. Arians said he told Brown to go into the game and Brown refused, and Brown later claimed that the Bucs were covering up a severe ankle injury of his, which he said would require surgery. Brown, of course, never played another down of professional football.

Fantasy football can get intense, particularly if you’re playing for a healthy sum of money. Even if you aren’t, disputes over rules and conduct can get nasty. And so it was that Tommy Pham, then with the Reds, approached Joc Pederson, then with the Giants, and slapped him during batting practice before the teams were set to do battle. Pederson claimed that Pham accused him of cheating by stashing players on his bench, but said that the league’s rules vindicated his tactics. What’s most amusing about the whole altercation, at least to me, is that the two had never spoken in person before the altercation. Can’t imagine they’ve spoken a whole lot since.

2022’s Winter Classic, contested at Target Field between the Minnesota Wild and the St. Louis Blues, was so cold that the NHL’s operations crew was forced to warm up the ice. Thing is, the optimum temperature for ice is evidently 22 to 24 degrees; if it gets any colder, it can chip easily and get very uneven, jeopardizing the playing surface. The warming was necessary because the temperature at puck drop was -8 degrees, with wind chills sitting around -20 degrees. Not that it wasn’t already obvious, but the game, won 6-4 by the Blues, was the coldest in NHL history.

I’m going to go out on a limb here, and you can think me crazy for this, but if you’re going to give your quarterback a $230.5 million extension, with $160 million guaranteed, you should probably re-think your decision-making process if you have to also include a clause requiring said quarterback to do “independent study” for at least four hours per week, lest he void some of the guaranteed money. Naturally, the contract details leaked out, and fans and commentators lambasted the Cardinals (and Murray), and the clause was swiftly removed. Kind of makes you wonder why they bothered with it in the first place, doesn’t it?

When you think about it, there is something poetic and beautiful about a Bill Belichick-coached team making a blunder so colossal, so unimaginable, so downright hilarious that it costs them the game and has people talking for days afterward about how ridiculous it was. The Raiders had just tied the game with 30 seconds to go, and the Patriots appeared content to run a few plays and get to overtime. Rhamondre Stevenson took a handoff and got a surprising chunk of yardage, and he must have felt like he could make a spectacular play, because he lateraled the ball to Jakobi Meyers, who tried to lateral it again – with disastrous results.

Therapeutic vomiting? Ayahuasca retreats? Darkness retreats? Various other actions and statements? Pick your poison with Rodgers, who has revealed himself as one of the strangest and most attention-hungry athletes of the 2020s.  

Watch this Hail Mary attempt by the Cowboys, and if you can give me a plausible explanation of what Dallas was going for, or what they thought would happen, I will be impressed. Otherwise, if you’re a Dallas hater, just watch it and laugh.

Hey, Nikola Jokic! You just won the NBA Championship and are the unquestioned best player in the league, not to mention a man rapidly climbing the list of all-time greats! What do you have to say about all that?

It probably takes plenty of discipline and talent to become the greatest field hockey player in the history of a school like North Carolina. Matson was absolutely that when her Tar Heels career ended. It also probably takes a lot of discipline and talent to coach a championship-caliber field hockey team at a school like North Carolina. Matson did that as well immediately after graduating. She took over as the Tar Heels’ coach on January 31, 2023, succeeding Karen Shelton, who was on the job for 42 years, and, at 23 years old, immediately won the program’s 11^th national championship and 26^th ACC championship, both of which are all-time records. Pretty good, I would say.

How it started: A little public flirting from a famous athlete to an ultra-famous singer. How it’s going: Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift are an unstoppable power couple, and Swift’s presence at Chiefs games, up to and including the Super Bowl, which she flew from Japan to attend, helped the league’s ratings, and exposed it to a whole new group of consumers – Swifties. Swift’s rabid fans embraced the relationship, and while NFL fans groused about it on occasion, the whole situation, while definitely a little surreal at times, has been remarkably…normal and enjoyable?

College football is both gloriously insane and gloriously dumb, and those are features, not bugs. The story of Michigan coach Connor Stalions, who was accused of purchasing tickets to games of future Michigan opponents, and sending people to those games to record signs digitally, is both very insane and very dumb. (In-person scouting has been illegal since 1994, by the way.) The sign-stealing scandal rocked college football, and Stalions resigned in November. By far the strangest part of the whole saga was a set of pictures of a man who looked very similar to Stalions dressed in Central Michigan gear on the Chippewas sideline during a September game against Michigan State. Almost a year later, no one has definitively said if the mystery man was Stalions, but it sure looks like him!

Generally speaking, if you’re playing in the NCAA Tournament, you take some things for granted. Like the baskets being 10 feet off the ground, for example. Or the three-point lines to be uniform, and the correct distance from the basket. The 2024 Women’s NCAA Tournament did not bat 1.000 on their three-point lines in 2024. The Portland regional featured a line that was 9 inches short of regulation. I’m not sure what’s crazier – the fact that this actually got screwed up, or the fact that it took until the fifth game was played on that court before everyone realized it.

Tom Kim and Scottie Scheffler were locked in a tense duel on the 18 ^th hole of the Traveler’s Championship. Kim needed a birdie and a Scheffler par to send the tournament to a playoff, and he had just stuck an approach shot 10 feet away. As Scheffler was lining up his putt, a group of climate protestors got onto the green and dumped powder all over it. Scheffler eventually missed his putt, Kim made his, and then Tour officials decided to recut a new hole for the playoff away from where the damage occurred. The playoff went much more to script, with world number one Scheffler taking home the title.