Top 5 Worst Athlete Memoirs Of All-Time
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He’s never thrown a touchdown in the NFL. Hasn’t started a game. Never even thrown for a yard.
Yet, Tim Tebow leads the league in jersey sales.
The two-time NCAA college football national champ and Heisman Trophy winner may be a rookie, and he may be 23, but he’s plenty accomplished.
But enough to write a memoir?
Yes, says HarperCollins, which announced on Monday that Timmy’s book, tabbed as “Through My Eyes”, hits bookstores in April.
In sports, it’s never too early to write a jockography. And it’s never too late to add another version.
It’s a field full of literary atrocities. How will Tebow’s book stack up? If it’s anything like Tony Dungy’s “Quiet Strength” — which was also published by HarperCollins — it’ll be just fine.
On the other hand, here’s hoping it won’t be like these …
Neon Tommy presents our top 5 worst jockographies of all-time:
Bad As I Wanna Be, by Dennis Rodman
And bad it was.
The cover alone could ruin a book aisle: Rodman, naked, on a motorcycle, with a ball covering his crotch.
The highlight of the book was the dirt on Madonna (hint: she doesn’t get him to go to church). Otherwise, the random bolds, italics, font changes and varying text sizes that horrifically graffiti the graphs further ensure this memoir stands out in the worst way.
One year later, as if the book wasn’t enough, Hollywood produced the movie monstrosity “Bad As I Wanna Be: The Dennis Rodman Story”; which boasts a 2.9 out of 5 on Rotten Tomatoes.
Even better, his ex-wife wrote a response to Rodman’s autobiography: “Worse Than He Says He Was.”
Ocho Cinco: What Football and Life Have Thrown My Way, by Chad Ochocinco
“The best f---in’ receiver there’s ever been.”
NBA? “F--- yeah, I could play easy.”
“I should be in a Broadway show. I’m that good.”
Ocho Cinco – Renaissance man. And horrible author.
He flips us off twice on the front cover, but it’s OK because his middle fingers (which alone contain more talent than the sum of us could ever fathom) are concealed by bubbles, which creatively read “Ocho” and “Cinco.”
The book’s enough to make a ghostwriter hope to join the dead.
And if it’s not enough hubris for one afternoon (that’s all it’ll take to read), make sure to check out “Catch This! Going Deep With the NFL's Sharpest Weapon" by Terrell Owens.
Ah, if only they could team up on the same squad some day…
Hollywood Hulk Hogan, by Hulk Hogan
Before his recent tell-all book, which included revelations that the Hulk once had thoughts of suicide, Hogan wrote “Hollywood Hulk Hogan.”
“Find out what makes me cry like a baby, what makes my blood boil, what I think of Jesus Christ and what scares the living hell out of me. Then tell me you know the man called Hollywood Hulk Hogan,” he writes on the back.
What we’d like to know is how much of the 352 pages he wrote.
And how much did the WWE censor?
For the real scoop, read “My Life Outside the Ring.”
This one tells nothing, Brother.
A View From Above, by Wilt Chamberlain
Courtesy of our fearless sports editor, the Big Dipper’s seminal work on the art of “how to womanize” automatically puts him on our list.
This is the one where he purports to sleep with approximately 20,000 women. He astutely pointed out in the masterpiece: “At my age, that equals out to having sex with 1.2 women a day, every day since I was fifteen years old.”
A shameless ploy to sell books. The boasting later became something he lamented.
The 1991 autobiography was his second, a follow-up to “Wilt: Just Like Any Other 7-foot Black Millionaire Who Lives Next Door.”
Just Give Me The Damn Ball, by Keyshawn Johnson
He doesn’t get a free pass because he’s a former Trojan.
“I shoot from the hip. A lot of people live in a fictitious world; I speak reality,” he said.
Keyshawn ripped everyone in this book.
Forget that he had only been in the league one year (1997). There was no one off limits; from the coach to the offensive coordinator to the quarterback.
The Jets couldn’t win a game because they weren’t throwing the ball to him, and instead to the franchise’s second-leading receptions leader, “a short, little white guy,” Johnson wrote. It immediately solidified him as a loudmouth prima dona.
But, hey, we still love him.
Honorable mention:
I'd Trade Him Again - Peter Pocklington (on letting go of Wayne Gretzky)
If I did it – OJ
Landing on My Feet: A Diary of Dreams - Kerri Strug
I Ain’t Got Time to Bleed – Jesse Ventura
A Kind of Grace: The Autobiography of the World’s Greatest Female Athlete – Jackie Joyner-Kersee
My Life on the Edge: Living Dreams and Slaying Dragons – Bill Romanowski
The Truth Behind All that Bullsh*t You Think You Know About Me – John Daly
Loose Balls: Easy Money, Hard Fouls, Cheap Laughs, and True Love in the NBA – Jayson Williams
Cruisin’ with the Tooz – John Matuszak
To reach writer Dan Watson, click here.
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