Tiger Woods might a trailblazing celebrity athlete, being a post-racial golfing prodigy without precedent and all-  but this whole mess with him and the endless parade of identical-looking bimbos?  That’s nothing. All Tiger did was cheat, and cheat often. Hell, all those women were legal!  Tiger might have shown a lot of preternatural talent as an athlete; but, as far as sexual deviancy goes, he’s strictly hitting from the red tees.

In the interest of  celebrating the greats,  we’ve collected five of the truly best in athlete sex scandals for this decade*. In selecting the list, rather than focus on the height of celebrity of the athletes, we went for variety. We’re interested in the scandals that made a major impact on society at large. So kick back and relax, but go ahead and get the shower ready.

*We talked about Kobe Bryant last week in our “Top Celebrity FAILS”. So he isn’t on here. Though we forgot to mention that Bryant admitted during interviews with the police that “coming on a girl’s faces is his thing.” So that’s good to know.

1) 2006 Duke Lacrosse Squad Gets Feisty With The Strippers

The Duke Lacrosse Squad: innocent of rape, guilty of being boorish assholes.

In 2006, the (largely white) Duke Lacrosse team had one of those super fun house parties wherein you get drunk and ask strippers to penetrate themselves with broomsticks, then send out mass emails detailing your love of skinning said strippers and wearing their skin while you masturbate. Just boys being boys, we suppose.

After the party, though, things blew up on the national stage: one of the strippers accused three of the lacrosse players of raping her in a bathroom. What the scandal did was expose the hatred many felt towards people who were perceived as being above the law, and generally unlikeable to boot.

The boys were initially presumed guilty until proven innocent. It seemed everyone assumed that this was something the boys were completely capable of. It was later revealed the stripper had made the story up, and the lead prosecutor was fired after the case. While this sex scandal was proven  to be false, it stirred up long standing racial-tensions in Durham especially (where Duke is located) and America in general.

2)  The Minnesota Vikings “Smooth Boat” Scandal

Fred Smoot: Pee Party Aficianado.

But enough with the serious stuff. In 2005 it was revealed the seventeen Minnesota Vikings players- including QB Daunte Culpepper- had participated in an orgy on two house boats that included up to 90 participants. Word got out about the party after some photographs were leaked, the men left behind many, many used condoms and KY jelly, and a woman complained of being urinated on by at least seven men. Now that’s a party!

Fred Smoot, the cornerback who allegedly planned the whole thing, got a misdemeanor charge and lost over $80,000 dollars as a result of a suspension. Charges against Culpepper were dropped. Respect for the deviancy of NFL players grew exponentially.

It’s interesting to note two things about the scandal: one, the Vikings went on to have a great year, apparently undisturbed by the scandal at all. And two, we learned that, even in Minnesota, people still know how to get trashy on the lake.

3) The “Big Homos” of Bulgaria

Insert gay joke here.

In 2005 it was revealed that four members of the Varna Bulgaria soccer club were thrown off the team for having sex with each other in the team’s locker room. While that itself is not exactly groundbreaking, the best part of this scandal can be found in the derogatory language of the report given by the Union of European Football (UEFA). That’s the governing body of European soccer.  And we quote:

“They [the four teammates] are a bunch of big homos... all of this stuff has been going on on the team. They have been caught doing this before, but the coaches thought that it was just drunken horseplay.”

We don’t know what’s stranger: that an official report would use the grown-up term “big homo” (as opposed to little homo?), or that at first they thought it was just something guys do when they’re drunk. If that’s the case, Europeans are far more liberal than we’ve ever given them credit for.

4) The Story of The Three Transvestite Prostitutes and Ronaldo

One of the "women" in question.

Brazilian soccer megastar Ronaldo was the victim of his own scandal in April 2008 when he allegedly got high and picked up three prostitues at the same time and failed to notice that all of them were men. On  “discovering” they were men, he offered them $600 dollars to leave. While he committed no crime (prostitution itself is not illegal in Brazil), the case became public when he claimed that one of the prostitutes stole his personal identification from his car and demanded a large sum of money to get it back. In the end, Ronaldo skated away clean: his engagement was postponed, but eventually put back on (after all, he never consummated!) But it just goes to show what we’ve always believed to be true: nothing good in the history of the world has come from picking up three transvestite hookers at the same time.

5) Roger Clemens and the Underage Country Ingenue

What can we say? The Rocket's a country boy at heart.

Also in April 2008 ( a strong month for sex scandals) it was revealed that Texan baseball firebrand Roger Clemens had carried on a ten-year affair with country star Mindy McCready that didn’t end until 2000. Ho-hum, right? Wrong. If one were to do the quick math, one would discover that meant that Mindy was fifteen at the time of their original meetings, while “The Rocket” was 28. Charges were never filed, as McCready continued to insist that nothing sexual happened until she was of age. Besides, McCready is too busy to worry about that now: after being hospitalized for three consecutive suicide attempts (including one while pregnant) Mindy will be on the new season of Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew.

Besides, we don’t know why she’s being shy. Back on the homestead, fifteen is practically an old maid. Ain’t no shame in that, Mindy!