Cracked Columnists

7 Athletes Who Had More Crazy Than Talent

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Something about professional sports brings out all the dog-fighting, child-eating, ear-biting lunatics. But is it really fair to mock a man for eating a human ear when that man also gave you your favorite childhood Nintendo game? Of course not. That's why I'm counting down only the athletes who had more crazy than they had talent.

#7.
Ron Artest - Basketball
When Ron Artest was a rookie with the Chicago Bulls, he applied for a job at Circuit City to get the employee discount. If you know anything about economics and professional basketball salaries, this is a lot like dismembering only dwarf prostitutes for the plastic bag savings. It's like one of those dwarf prostitutes escaping without swallowing to save money on sperm bank fees. If Ron Artest was an economist, he would immediately quit to lower his business card expenses.

After he joined the Indiana Pacers, Ron started a side job promoting a girl group whose only hit was a Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam cover. He nagged his coach for a month off to pursue this and got suspended for two games. Economically speaking, this the same as taking $200,000 out of the bank to raise money-eating beetles. And then investing $800,000 in a money-eating beetle race pay-per-view spectacular featuring just Cult Jam.

Ron is known for coming to practice in a bathrobe, picking a fight with Pat Riley and breaking a TV camera at Madison Square Garden. But he became a maniac legend during the incredible Pacers-Pistons brawl of 2004. In the final seconds of the game, Detroit's Ben Wallace went up for a shot. Ron Artest, with a 15 point lead, punched him in the back of the head. It was such a pointless gesture of violence that elsewhere, Hitler's corpse shot its arm up for a high five. Ben Wallace understandably turned around and shoved him. Then, in a womanly display of dislogic, Ron Artest ran away to seductively recline on the scorer's table. I guess he was trying to end the argument by skipping straight to the make-up sex.

While chaos erupted, Ron stole a broadcast headset, presumably to warn fans that generic lithium doesn't work as well as name-brand lithium. A fan throws a Diet Coke on him, wordlessly offering him a low calorie way to fuck himself. Ron bursts into action. He might flee when a 240-pound basketball center shoves him, but he will fuck up a normal-sized Diet Coke drinker! Or at least he would have if he didn't charge into the stands and attack the wrong guy.

The stadium united together to pull Ron Artest back to the court while random fluids showered on and around him. One brave idiot in a Pistons jersey strutted up to Ron and got punched out before he could even decide on a threatening pose. To that guy's credit, there's no way he could have known that Ron Artest would do something so predictable after doing so much crazy.

#6.
Rae Carruth - Football
In his first season as a pro football player, Rae Carruth looked like he would be a star wide receiver for the Carolina Panthers. Then he broke his foot. Then he sprained his ankle. Then he noticed that $3500 of monthly child support was more than he could afford. Then one of the girls he was seeing told him she was pregnant. Rae Carruth is so fertile that every time he jerks off into a sock it squeezes out a pair of cowboy boots.

Rae Carruth was never known for his intellect. He thinks condoms are for making Hennessy popsicles in the freezer. The only reason Rae Carruth graduated third grade is because his ex wife was teaching the class. He started sleeping with Asian women because none of the kids he had could show him how to use chop sticks. So when Cherica Adams told Rae she was pregnant with his baby, he dealt with it in the smartest way he knew how: an easily solvable murder.

In 1999, Rae invited Cherica to a movie and they left in separate cars. Three men pulled up next to her and opened fire. Carruth blocked her escape with his own car, and after Cherica survived the attack, she wrote it all down. Rae and the three men were arrested, and Rae defended himself by saying it was all a botched drug deal, not a murder to avoid paying child support. In response, the judge said exactly what I would have said, only sarcastically. "OK, then you're free to go, Rae, but you have to come back if she dies." It was the classic Hope-The-Judge-Is-Retarded legal gambit.

Cherica did tragically die, so Rae dealt with it the smartest way he knew how: fleeing. But when you only have one good leg and a brain that thinks holding your breath is birth control, you're not going to get far. He was probably apprehended when he stopped to read a speed limit sign. Even if he made it to ground, you can Mapquest Rae Carruth and it will print out a trail of single mothers.

Rae was given 18 to 24 years in prison, or as many of his 5-year-olds explained to him: 157,784 to 210,379 Sesame Streets. These days, Rae Carruth is so busy with family visitations that he's barely had time to get the men on his cell block pregnant.

#5.
Dennis Rodman - Basketball

Dennis Rodman is such an inhuman creature that he has to sit next to Carrot Top to convince adventurers that he's not a hobgoblin. He has so many piercings that metal detectors think he's kidding when he tries to take his dick through them. His colorful hairstyles have inspired thousands of gay children to become landscapers. All that being said, he was really good at basketball. Dennis Rodman could pull a rebound through a garden hose with his mouth.

One day, someone handed Dennis Rodman a script for a movie called Simon Sez starring him and Dane Cook. He took one look at it ...

... and said, "Yes." Simon Sez is the first thing many writers, producers, actors and crew members will think of when Satan asks them if they know why they're here. Please enjoy this battle scene featuring Dennis Rodman as a fucking idiot and Dane Cook as a ... sigh ... velociraptor.

#4.
Mike Danton - Hockey
Mike Danton, born Mike Jefferson, played hockey for the St. Louis Blues until 2004, when he tried to hire a police dispatcher to kill his agent. He probably couldn't have masterminded his own capture any better if he broke into a police station to film himself having sex with a rape kit. After his arrest, it became clear that everything in Mike Danton's life was insane.

The agent he tried to have killed, David Frost, seemed to be running some kind of nude boy hockey cult. He was charged with multiple counts of bizarre sex crimes and allegedly made Mike's younger brother dance naked on a table for hours, which is the kind of activity that really displays the inadequacy of the word "allegedly." It gets weirder. Here's a skin-crawling transcript from a conversation Mike had with his agent while he was in prison:

Danton: Listen, I gotta go now.

Frost: Do you love me?

Danton (whispering): Yeah.

Frost: Say it.

Danton: I love you.

Frost: Do you?

Danton: Yeah.

Frost: OK.

Ugh. Those two have phone sex like captive pandas. Come on, Mike. You were passionate enough about your boyfriend that you hired a hitman to kill him and now he has to nag you for sweet talk? You dead fish, I bet you hold so still during sex that David Frost's ass has pressure ulcers.

As more details emerged, we learned that David Frost convinced Mike to change his last name and cut off contact with his parents. It's a decision every Canadian boy has to go through: stay at home or run off with the hockey agent who made your brother dance naked on a table. Later, Mike confessed that he never wanted his molesty agent dead -- he was actually trying to assassinate his own father. Watching Mike and David make up stories is like watching a cat try to bury its shit on a wood floor. No one except Mike and David will ever know the whole story. All we know is that there was a lot of deceit, intrigue and naked children. Even if one of them were to tell his story to a priest, that priest would just demand to know how they found his secret unpublished novel.