Well, the most obvious answer (arguably?) would be OJ Simpson. Looking for highly regarded athletes, not one hit wonders or mediocre jocks who fell through the cracks anyway.
Other nominees:
Lenny Dykstra— former near .400 baseball hitter now a former jailbird with no teeth reduced to fighting boxing matches with Youtube stars
Denny McClain—30 win pitcher in late 60s, ended up in jail
Pete Rose, for I think obvious reasons.
What other sports besides football and baseball? Diego Maradona despite coaching Argentina? WWE champion Chris Benoit?
Gotta be some boxers in the mix. Mike Tyson? Hasn’t he been rehabilitated by now? Connor MacGregor reached that status yet?
I don’t follow baseball (or, really, any sports), but over the years I’ve had roommates that did so I’d pick a little up here and there.
I feel like back when I was finishing college (around 01-02), I remember hearing a lot about Sammy Sosa and Mark McGuire battling it out for the most home runs (ever?). Right around the same time there was talk of drugs/PEDs and I haven’t heard much about either since then.
I think it has to be a world name for it to count so OJ wasn’t really widely known as anything other than an actor outside of the USA before his arrest and trial.
Mike Tyson? well he wasn’t really though of as an inspirational character before his rape conviction, was his behaviour there really so surprising?
Maradona was a great player and a massive world-wide name but to fall from grace you have to have a earned a degree of it in the first place and he was always a stumpy little cheat.
Lance Armstrong fits the bill, widely feted, widely admired, ground breaking achievements that were an inspiration to many. Then it turns out that it was all a charade and he cheated his way to the top and fucked everyone over on the way. He has to be the top choice. He is now synonymous with “Drug Cheat”.
For those more cricketly-minded there is the sad tale of Hansie Cronje. Superb player, great captain, clean as a whistle. Right up until the point he was caught in a match-fixing scandal. That was a huge shock and his death in a plane crash shortly after cemented the tragedy.
Just to nitpick, when did Lenny get near .400? His career high was .325.
Lenny was a hell of a player who had a disastrous fall but I’d have to agree your other pick of Pete Rose is really hard to top. Rose now is largely a sad story to such an extent that it’s hard to recall how iconic a figure he once was. Rose was THE example held up to kids of how to play baseball. He was the embodiment of grit. He personally changed the way rookies were treated. The guy’s nickname included the word “hustle.” Rose was not only a legendary player but held up as all that was right about being a baseball player. He threw it all away.
This. Everyone else mentioned, no matter what else they did, they still have their achievements. Even O.J. was once a very good athlete. Armstrong doesn’t even have that.
Thinking of examples, does Jim Brown count? I’m not sure how great his “fall” was, but he is considered one of the best football players of all time (if not the best). He left football because he wanted to be an actor, and his acting career was interfering with his football. As an actor he was considered “serviceable” at best, and didn’t have much success, likely banking off his athletic fame to get parts.
But what I consider his “fall” is his repeated problems with the law, all of a violent nature, which include…
Arrested for assault and battery against an 18-year-old he allegedly fathered a child with (though he denied paternity). He was acquitted of the charges.
Assault with intent to commit murder, he wasn’t charged because the victim refused to cooperate with prosecution. He was also fined for striking a deputy sheriff during the investigation.
Assault and battery from a road rage incident, though he was again acquitted.
Charged with raping a 33-year-old woman, though charges were dropped.
Spent one day in jail and had two years of probation after beating and choking his golfing partner.
Arrested for assaulting his girlfriend, though she refused to press charges.
Arrested and charged with making terrorist threats against his wife, and later found guilty of vandalizing her car after he smashed it with a shovel. Sentenced to probation, counseling, community service, and a fine. He ignored the terms of the sentence so was then sentenced to 6 months in jail, but served half of it.
Most of his charges were dropped or he was acquitted, true, but OJ was the original example in the OP and don’t forget that he was also acquitted. Brown being considered possibly the best football player ever, then having such a tumultuous life following football, that’s really a shame.
Well, there is the argument that many of Armstrong’s competitors were probably using PEDs at the same time, so he may well still have been a great athlete if everyone were clean (especially if he had some genuine TUEs for his post-cancer treatment). Plus, he didn’t straight up murder someone (yes, I know OJ was acquitted, but does anyone really think he didn’t do it?). So I’d put OJ ‘ahead’ of Lance here.
However, as already mentioned, OJ wasn’t known worldwide for his sporting accomplishments like Lance was, and had Lance been clean he was higher up the ranking of all-time greats in his sport. So if we’re giving equal weighting to “Biggest athlete”, I’d still give it to Lance on balance. Pete Rose is certainly in contention on the same basis, as are Jim Brown and Tiger Woods. My pick is the latter, I think - undisputed top-2 all-time in his sport, a sport with more global reach than gridiron, baseball, or cycling, squeaky clean image, millions of dollars in sponsorships, and loses it all in a matter of weeks involving serial infidelity, drug use, and crime (the DUI). Yes, he is fairly well rehabilitated by now, but in terms of “Biggest athlete, biggest fall from grace” I’d say he’s the one. Maybe I’m weighting the first part too highly, plus recency bias, so I’m not going to say that’s the final answer, just making a case.
No probably. The standard procedure when a Tour winner is found to be doping is to advance the 2nd place finisher to winner. So many of the 2nd, 3rd, 4th placers had already been banned for doping when Armstrong was dethroned that the Tour simply never named replacement winners.
And since the top riders were doping, then their teammates(who ride in support) had to be doping to keep up and perform their domestique duties.
Is Pete Rose really that more well known than OJ internationally based on their sporting achievements? I’m not saying Pete shouldn’t be mentioned, but OJ was a Heisman trophy winner, NFL Hall of Famer, and arguably one of the top 10 greatest NFL running backs of all time.
Woods’ fall from grace, image-wise, also coincided with his body starting to break down on him. It probably would have been one thing if he’d been able to still play golf at his previous level while trying to work through his personal life, but he was also simultaneously dealing with chronic injuries, making his play inconsistent, and leading to extended periods when he played little, if at all.