Hilarious In Hindsight / Sports

• Brazilian example: sports manager Vicente Matheus was known for his "brilliant" phrases, among them "I'd like to thank Antarctica for the Brahmas they sent us". Well, in 1999 (2 years after his death) both breweries merged...
• A television ad proclaiming American Football quarterback Eli Manning to be "Unstoppable" became hilarious as he had two of the worst games in NFL history, then became funny in an ironic sort of way when Eli had an uncharacteristically great run in the playoffs.
• A 2008 T-Mobile ad which took several moments from everyday life, replacing the word "goodbye" with the word "hello", featured a Brett Favre press conference, spoofing his then-recent second retirement: "After seventeen seasons, it's time for me to say... hello." By the time the commercial made it to air, Favre had unretired again.
• In an Adidas soccer ad during the 2006 FIFA World Cup, a shot by England midfielder Frank Lampard hit the goal line and was counted as a goal despite arguments from Oliver Kahn (star goaltender for Germany). Four years later, Lampard shoots a similar shot against Germany, but it doesn't count despite evidence showing the contrary.
  • Even funnier is England's 1966 World Cup Final win over West Germany, where Geoff Hurst scored a goal that didn't actually cross the line (though it was due to the match officials not being able to speak the same language - it wouldn't be until 2006 before FIFA had the officials coming from the same country, or at least an ability to communicate in the same language).
• Given Helio Castroneves' indictment for tax evasion, there's something cruelly amusing about his trademark victory celebration of climbing up race track debris fences/prison fences.
• Terrell Owens, after Dallas's early playoff exit, tearfully defended Tony Romo, saying "That's my quarterback". Next season, Owens accused Romo and tight end Jason Witten of conspiring to keep him out of the offense.
• Everybody found Michael Phelps's insanely large diet surprising, to say the least (12,000 calories a day?). Then that photo of him using a bong showed up...
  • Now he's always in Subway commercials advertising a meal that (in the commercial) comes with BAKED chips. It's a lame joke, but someone HAD to have thought that one out.
• During the Week 5 NFL on NBC pregame show during the 1995 season, following a "News and Notes" segment that included a story on efforts to re-introduce instant replay to the NFL (this was midway through the period where replay was dropped thanks to lengthy delays). While the other panelists were making their comments and when it came to NASCAR team owner and former Washington Redskins head coach Joe Gibbs, Gibbs quipped that the interest in reviving instant replay was "...too late for Mike (Ditka) and I". The modern challenge format of instant replay was introduced in 1999, in time for Mike Ditka's final season as New Orleans Saints head coach, while Gibbs got to use it during his four-year return to the Redskins between the 2004 and 2007 seasons.
• During the lead-up to the 1988 World Series opener between the Oakland Athletics and Los Angeles Dodgers; much had been made of Kirk Gibson not being likely to play due to a nagging leg injury. Following the National Anthem performance by 1980s teen pop star Debbie Gibson, NBC pregame host Bob Costas commented that, "The Dodgers have Debbie Gibson. If only they had Kirk Gibson". Late in the game, of course, Kirk Gibson would hit the famous game-winning homer (his only at-bat during the series) while limping his way through the bases.
• The Miami Heat were doomed to this with all of their pre-season theatrics from Lebron's "Decision" to a smoke-machine-included press conference to announce the big three to them predicting they would win "three, four, five, six..." championships. All they had to do to avoid the ridicule was win the first one. Too bad the Dallas Mavericks had other plans.
• NASCAR: In 2008, Clint Bowyer said that "Michael Waltrip is the worst driver in NASCAR, period." Cut to 2012: in his first season driving the #15 5-hour Energy Toyota for Michael Waltrip Racing, Bowyer won three races (Sonoma, Richmond, and Charlotte), made the Chase, and finished second in the final points standings (he had a chance to win the title, but mishaps on-track with Jeff Gordon at the penultimate round in Phoenix did him in).
  • And speaking of Clint and Jeff, as of 2021 they're now together in the Fox broadcast booth for the first half of the NASCAR season. It had started in an iRacing event in 2020, where Clint provided Jeff a simulator rig for the Talladega race (three crashes between them and a blown engine from Clint while leading with the tail-end car of eventual winner Alex Bowman ahead of him relegated them to 33rd and 38th, with Jeff only beating Denny Hamlin whose rig got turned off because his kid got hold of the remote).
• In the 1995 post-season of the Premier League, Manchester United sold three of their starting players - Paul Ince, Mark Hughes & Andrei Kanchelskis - and proceeded to replace them with three of their youth team; Paul Scholes, David Beckham & Nicky Butt, also bringing Gary & Phil Neville into the squad aswell. In their first game of the 95/96 season, United lost 3-1 to Aston Villa, prompting Match of The Day pundit Alan Hansen to declare "You don't win anything with kids." Come the end of the season, United won the English Premier League & the FA Cup.
• In 1993, the England football team were looking for a new manager. One candidate was approached by the FA, but turned the job down, telling them "You've Got to be joking. Even the Pope would have second thoughts." The Candidate in question, Roy Hodgson, would become England's manager in 2012.
• The Complete Book of the World Rally Championship called Tommi Makinen's four Championship wins "a feat unlikely to be surpassed for some time". The book was published mid-way through the 2004 season. Sebastien Loeb went on to win the Championship that year, starting his run of nine consecutive Championship wins.
• The Oakland Raiders who found themselves on the other end of the famous Tuck Rule Game would eventually sign defensive lineman Justin Tuck.
• In 2013 Forbes magazine named Virginia men's basketball coach Tony Bennett one of the most overpaid coaches in college basketball. Two years later, Virginia has earned its first ACC tournament championship since 1976, back-to-back 30-win seasons for the first time ever, and in 2015 Bennett was voted by his peers the best defensive coach in college basketball.
• In 1982, Atlanta Braves pitcher Pascual Pérez, then a newly-licensed driver, missed an August 19 start because he circled the I-285 beltway, known locally as "The Perimeter", thrice while looking for Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, which was located inside The Perimeter near the intersection of I-75/I-85 and I-20. 35 years later, the Braves moved into a new ballpark, located just off The Perimeter, where it intersects the north side of I-75.
• The Chicago Bears' final game before the end of the 1987 NFL player's strike would see Sean Payton playing significant time at quarterback. The Bears' opponent that week? The New Orleans Saints, which Payton has been the head coach for since 2006.
• There is a Social Psychology textbook written in 2008 which contains the following line: "More than anything else, the celebrity power of Tiger Woods is based on his athletic performance, his youthful charm, and his winning smile." A perfectly reasonable statement at the time of writing. Now? Yeah...
• In a Black Comedy sort of way, in 2012, Rafael Nadal stated that, unless there were any twists, Argentine tennis player (and friend of his) Juan Mónaco should reach the Top 10. However, he couldn't do so because there was a twist... on his ankle.
• A 2007 Formula One commercial depicted McLaren drivers Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso in a tight competition to get first in anything they tried. In the end, as they raced to enter a sauna room first, they discover they were beaten by a Finnish driver that once raced for McLaren (Mika Häkkinen). In the 2007 Formula One season proper, Hamilton and Alonso were locked in a very tight competition to get first place in the Drivers' Championship, but they ended up being beaten by a Finnish driver that once raced for McLaren (Kimi Räikkonen), making the commercial extremely accurate by accident.
• Before the 2020 UEFA Champions League quarterfinal match between Bayern Munich and Barcelona, Arturo Vidal (who played for Barcelona and had been at Bayern before) claimed that, while Bayern were always favourites, they then had to face "the best team in the world". How did the match end? Bayern Munich beat Barcelona 8-2, and the internet hasn't forgotten Vidal's claims before the match.
• In Week 3 of the 1992 NFL season, Green Bay Packers' star quarterback Don Majkowski fell to injury in the first quarter, and the backup quarterback, a second-year player with a spotty track record, had to come in in his place. As said backup quarterback came onto the field, commentator Jim Lampley explained to TV viewers that the Packers had made a valuable trade to get him and commented, seeming a little skeptical, that "they are hopeful he can succeed in the NFL". Who was this backup? Just some guy named Brett Favre.
• In the 1983 NFL offseason, Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Terry Bradshaw needed elbow surgery, so he checked in under an assumed name. The alias he used? "Tom Brady".
• In 2008 NY Giants wide receiver Plaxico Burris tried using the alias "Harris Smith" when checking himself into the hospital after accidentally shooting himself in the leg with an illegal handgun, in an attempt to avoid prosecution (it didn't work, he spent the entire 2009 and 2010 seasons in prison on gun charges before returning in 2011). Not to be confused with Harrison Smith, a two-time all-pro strong safety currently playing for the Minnesota Vikings.
• During the Christmas 1983 newscast from Pittsburgh ABC affiliate WTAE, at one time during the sports segment previewing the playoff game pitting the hometown Steelers against the eventual Super Bowl XVIII champion Los Angeles Raiders^note their second year after moving from Oakland included a remark saying the Raiders should have moved to Vegas because of how much they liked to gamble on defense. In 2020, the Raiders (after returning to Oakland in 1995) did move to Las Vegas.
• Sailing Scuttlebutt’s first fake story on April Fools' Day 1999 was America’s Cup skipper Russell Coutts quitting Team New Zealand, and another story involved a fictional new “World Sailing League”. Slightly more than a year later, Coutts DID quit the team, to join the Swiss Alinghi Challenge, and in 2007, he proposed a new competition called… the World Sailing League.
• In the NHL, Matt Duchene, then the star center for the Colorado Avalanche, demanded a trade after a, frankly, horrendous season for the Avs, because he, quote, 'wanted to play for playoff teams'. Cut to five years later: Duchene spent two years with the Senators, who had two of their worst seasons ever, got traded to Columbus, who only made it to round 2 (which, to be fair, was an achievement for them), then signed in Nashville, who just never could get past the first round. And Colorado? Perennial playoff contenders since the Duchene trade, and, oh yeah, won the 2022 Stanley Cup. (And to add insult to injury for Duchene, the Avs swept the Predators in the first round, and Cale Makar, the player gotten as a result of that horrendous season, was voted playoffs MVP.)
  • Related to this, no one (especially his producer, known Avalanche fan Drew Livingstone) will ever let hockey vlogger Steve "Dangle" Glynn forget that he initially thought this trade (which saw Colorado give up Duchene for relative unknowns and draft picks) was the worst trade ever and that Avalanche GM Joe Sakic should have been fired for it. For context, one of those unknowns was Sam Girard, who scored a key goal in the Cup run, one of the draft picks became Bowen Byram, who played the most time on the ice, and (while not directly related to this trade, more a knock-on effect) having Byram meant Sakic was able to trade for Nazem Kadri, who scored very critical goals, including the one that put Colorado one game away from winning the cup. To be fair, Steve himself has admitted he was wrong about it, and in a later video analyzing the trade calls it Sakic's masterpiece.
    Steve: (immediately after the Avs win the Cup) My mentions are brutal because of that Sakic tweet.
• After being the first pick of the 1993 NHL draft, Alexandre Daigle is quoted as "I'm glad I got drafted first, because no one remembers number two". Daigle was never the promised superstar, being out of the league by the age of 25, while the second pick, Chris Pronger, entered the Hall of Fame with a Stanley Cup, two Olympic golds and an MVP award.
• Related to the above, a Bleacher Report list on NHL draft busts, when discussing Daigle being surpassed by Pronger, fellow Hall of Famer Paul Kariya and Montreal Canadiens captain Saku Koivu, "Imagine this year’s consensus top prospect Nail Yakupov being upstaged in his career by Alex Galchenyuk, Ryan Murray and Matt Dumba." Well, Yakupov flamed out after six seasons and returned to Russia, while one decade later the other three were still reliable players, with Murray being among the 2022 Stanley Cup winning Avs.
  • Really, Edmonton as a whole qualifies: they got the number one draft pick four times in six years (2010, 2011, 2012, and 2015), yet they've never won the Cup with them. Meanwhile, all the number two draft picks for those years have won Cups (2010's Tyler Seguin won with the Bruins in 2011, 2011's Gabe Landeskog and the aforementioned Ryan Murray with the Avs in 2022, and 2015's Jack Eichel won with the Golden Knights in 2023).
• In 2000, the England national football team played Ukraine in a friendly. The programme cover featured Gareth Southgate and Andriy Shevchenko. The two met in the quarterfinals of Euro 2020^note played in 2021 after being postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, with the two cover stars - who both played the full duration of the game - now managing their respective national side.
• During the 2022/23 Premier League season, Southampton went through three managers. One of them was Nathan Jones, who was manager of Luton Town at the time. At the end of the season, Southampton would be relegated to the Championship - with Luton Town being one of the three teams that replaced them.
• In February 2023, Green Bay Packers podcaster Andy Herman made a joking tweet saying, "Just went to an advanced script reading of the #Packers 2023 season and let me just tell you… wow. *Spoilers* Week 13 is going to blow your f’n mind." In Week 13 of the subsequent season, the Packers got a stunning upset win over the reigning Super Bowl Champion Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday Night Football. (Keep in mind here that the schedule isn't released until May, so even guessing that the Week 13 game would be significant was a total shot in the dark — for all anyone knew at that point, Week 13 could have ended up being the team's bye — to say nothing of the result.)
• In 2009, then-New York Giants player Antonio Pierce lambasted then-Oakland Raiders’ performance that season, specifically saying the Giants’ game against them that year felt less like a pro game and more like a scrimmage. Come 2023, he ends up coaching the Raiders.

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