He’s still known to have won those seven Tours. Considering that The Tour was unable to name a winner from the also-rans because so many had already been banned for doping, you could almost say he won fair and square. 
He was never as big as most of the others (Nixon, Jackson, etc) and he didn’t fall as far: Jail (Simpson) or facing criminal trials (Cosby). He’s just chilling somewhere. Yes, he fell from grace, but he fell from a 4 to a -2. Not a 8 to a -10 (Simpson) or a 10 to a -7 (Nixon)
Now that I’ve put mathematical precision on this issue, here’s the scores:
Cosby 8 to -5 (but still falling–retrial upcoming)
Jackson 9 to 2 (Untimely death resurrected his image somewhat)
Armstrong 6 to 0
O.J. 8 to -10 (murder x2)
Bonds 6 to 2
Paterno 7 to 1
Weiner 7 to -4
Martha Stewart 5 to 2
Pete Rose 7 to 3
I gotta go with Nixon. From two-term president (even if he did not serve his full second term) to reviled despicable criminal is quite the long fall.
Using your rating scale, there’s no way Nixon went all the way to -7. Within 4 years after Watergate, he was being received by Margaret Thatcher. Within 11 years, he was arbitrating the MLB Umpire’s strike. Nixon was something of a pariah and invoking his image was good for a cheap laugh through the 1980s, but he always retained a certain modicum of respect.
I’ll jump on the Coz wagon as well. My first thought was Nixon but a lot of us reviled and despised him before he resigned and he had his share of supporters afterwards. So I’m going Coz first and Sheen a runner-up.
But in Cosby’s case he basically fell when he was old enough not to have to worry as much. He was how old in like 2014 compared to say a Lance Armstrong or Sheen? Lets say he never works again and ends up with a life sentence; how long are we talking? Yeah, I know - easy enough to say. But put in a situation like that I don’t think I would be as worried at my current age as I would have been say 20-30 years back.
Sheen, really? He’s a footnote at most.
It’s interesting how many people say OJ. And then I think about where they were when they fell. If they were at the (theoretical) high point of the their careers or not. The reason OJ is so interesting to me is because when the killing happened (and I was in high school), I had absolutely no idea who he was (and thus paid no attention to his trial). Though the other kids in my class did know him and follow. So I wouldn’t have thought of him as being the far-faller, but that’s my own bias.
The athletes using performance enhancers count, certainly, but they don’t seem as big to me. Don’t lose as much, in a way, in the realm of public reputation. Most people don’t care that much. I mean, sure, within the sport, it matters, but they don’t tend to judge them lacking as human beings or treat them as someone they’d never associate with for that.
Paterno and Jackson had child molestation in the wings, and that’s a really hard hit. But Paterno was actually supposed to have done it, and Jackson actually moved up from his lowest point (I do recall a time when my school friends all thought him guilty). But they took really big hits career and public opinion wise.
Nixon’s a weird one. He’s a by-word for some of the worst abuses of power in the US (I mean, for presidents). Made the butt of the jokes, etc. But he recovered well, as stated before. And by the '80s to the point people thought pardoning him was the right thing to do, as so on.
Some of the others, I feel like got some scandal sheets at the time, but no lasting impact.
I say Cosby. He is a huge celebrity and has been for over 50 years. From his comedy records, to Fat Albert, to books on parenting, to Jello commercials with kids and especially the Cosby Show, everything he touched turned to gold. He is the biggest celebrity on the list besides Nixon, if you count “celebrity” by “how many people in the world know your name,” and definitely the most beloved. And he wasn’t just a celebrity, he was loved. And not like the Beatles, in spite of their questionable antics, but loved like a father figure who was considered wise and moral and who upheld family values. People looked up to him. Parents wanted their kids to be like him.
And it turns out he was not just harassing women or groping them, but drugging them and raping them while they were unconscious. And not just once or twice but continuously, for decades. It’s hard to even comprehend that, and I don’t think any others in that list compare. If Mr. Rogers turned out to be a serial killer, that’s the level of horrible that would compare. Mel Gibson is an antisemite? Charlie Sheen does coke and hookers? Big whoop.
I originally was going to vote for Cosby, but switched to O.J. It’s far enough in the past that it’s easy to forget how popular and loved he was. You can’t beat going from that to brutal murderer.
Weinstein, no doubt. First of all, he’s been the patient zero for sexual harassment with plenty of high-profile victims. Few people knew Cosby’s victims before the word got out, but names like Selma Hayak, Darryl Hannah, Angelina Jolie, Ashley Judd, and Rose McGowan were well known, which meant sympathized with them (we always feel more sympathy for victims if we feel we know them). His methods were especially disgusting, going so far as hiring people to discredit anyone he harassed. There were a lot of victims.
Second, he’s no entertainer. The public has no fond memories of him (of his movies, yes, but not of him).
Third, the description of what he was doing it both disgusting and completely beyond the pale.
Finally, he’s 65. That doesn’t give him a lot of time to be rehabilitated.
Assuming he goes to jail, he’ll go from being a multimillionaire to living in a cell with a cellmate. That’s a hell of a drop.
Exidor, is that you?
I think that Matt Lauer should have been on that list. He was host of NBC’s Today Show, a respected interviewer, and one of that network’s most popular personalities for a couple of decades. After allegations of sexual abuse came to light, he was immediately fired from his position.
Lucifer jumped, he didn’t fall.
My vote is with the Cos.
Everyone knows all athletes dope and are prone to violence, all politicians are perverts, and all coaches are kiddie diddlers. But until Cosby, we didn’t know that all male comedians are molesters.
I’m going to say ‘other’ and that other is: Jimmy Savile - He was a legendary broadcaster, entertainer and sportsman within his own lifetime - statues and plaques were erected in his honour after his death; then pretty much the whole of his generation of broadcasting and entertainment figures fell to terrible rape and pedophilia revelations, one after another, but Savile was the thread that pulled and unravelled it all.
They tore down the statues, removed the plaques - they even removed his massive, gold-inlaid gravestone, smashed it into pieces and carted it away as garbage - I reckon that’s quite a long fall.
BTW, when the stories about Bill Cosby came out, I was very surprised to hear that one woman’s experience with him was in, I think, 1964. I mean, I could see him doing stuff and getting away with it in recent years, given his fame and wealth. But in 1964, he was unknown. And yet this woman described the same thing (being drugged before being molested) that later women described. In short, he’s been doing this for fifty years.
I have to say OJ because look, he killed people and eventually resorted to robbery and spent time in jail. And people may forget how well regarded he was before that.
Cosby was probably even more highly regarded as a family friendly icon, but his fall has not been as severe as OJ’s.
Cosby. He was America’s Dad. He was the go to example of a wholesome comedian and he was along with George Carlin one of my comedy heroes as a kid. If you told someone from 1988 that he was a serial rapist they wouldn’t even be able to process that information.
ISTM that what it boils down in terms of the two frontrunners is that Cosby started off higher but OJ ended up lower.
A quibble in the context of this thread, but this is incorrect - mayor of NY (& Chicago or LA) is much much bigger than being a congressman.
It’s routine for people who are in congress to run for NYC mayor, but unheard of for incumbent NYC mayors to run for congress.
I voted for Bill Cosby. He was my TV Dad for years and years.
I don’t think Martha Stewart belongs on the list. From what I’ve read, her transgressions were ridiculously minor compared to the punishment she received.
I voted for Simpson. A lot of people nowadays forget how popular he was before 1994.
And he fell a lot farther than most of the people in the poll. He’s one of the only ones who did prison time.