What We Talk About When We Talk About Ralph Sampson by Chuck Klosterman

Author:Chuck Klosterman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2004-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

1. He also was blessed with good genes: His six-foot-eleven-inch son, Ralph III, is already having a nice career at the University of Minnesota.

2. This quote, along with most that appear in this piece, originally ran in Sports Illustrated, the most consistent chronicler of athletes who disappoint us.

3. Before the 1998 NFL draft, it was common to get into arguments over who was going to be a better pro quarterback—Peyton Manning or Ryan Leaf. The latter ended his career with fourteen touchdowns and thirty-six interceptions.

4. Despite being among the five or ten most famous female tennis players of all time, this ultra-rich Russian sex cat never won a major singles tournament.

5. A cocaine casualty drafted third overall by the Golden State Warriors in 1986, the six-eleven Washburn averaged 3.1 points and 2.4 rebounds in the NBA.

6. Drafted first overall by the New York Yankees at nineteen and signed for (a then outrageous) $1.55 million, Taylor injured his pitching arm in a street brawl and never made it to the major league level.

7. Twenty years later, Mandarich gave another interview to SI where he apologized for all of his 1989 lies. It should be noted he was also promoting a book at the time.

8. Technically speaking, Bowie was a far greater bust than Sampson—he was injured for his entire career and is primarily remembered for being drafted one spot ahead of Michael Jordan in 1984. But people don’t hat e Bowie. He never seemed invincible to anyone.

9. In case you’re curious, the three players selected first overall following Sampson’s freshman, sophomore, and junior years were Joe Barry Carroll from Purdue, Mark Aguirre from DePaul, and James Worthy from North Carolina. It’s possible that the seven-one Carroll would still have gone before Sampson in 1980, but Sampson was already viewed as having greater upside. Aguirre and Worthy were both smaller players and would have been less desirable commodities (although the Lakers would have faced an intriguing decision had Sampson applied to the draft in 1982—they already had Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on the roster).

10. Virginia still won both of these games. This is somewhat remarkable. The first game was against Hakeem Olajuwon (and Benny Anders!) and the rest of the Houston Cougars, a squad that would eventually play in that year’s national championship. Sampson did not play a single minute in the win against Houston. Rick Carlisle must have had an awesome night.

11. When Appalachian State beat Michigan in football early in 2007, many in the media (and even more in the blogosphere) argued that this was the biggest upset ever. In reality, it’s not even close. App State was the defending 1-AA national champion, playing a Wolverine team that would go on to lose again the following week. Virginia was the best team in the country in 1983 and Chaminade was an NAIA school that had a basketball program for only the previous seven years.

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