by Baiden McCallum, North Toronto Collegiate Institute (02WIL)
Michael Vick, Tiger Woods, Lebron James. These are some of the people Chad Ochocinco keeps company with – at least on the list of America’s most hated athletes.
The Q Scores Co., which conducts popularity polls, has Chad Ochocinco, star wide receiver for the Cincinnati Bengals of the NFL, ranked as the fourth most disliked figure in all of sports today, behind the likes of Michael Vick, Tiger Woods and Terrell Owens, and in front of Kobe Bryant and Lebron James.
Most of the six names on the list deserve to be there, but does the fourth really belong?
It’s understandable that Michael Vick, a felon who was imprisoned for funding a dog-fighting operation, is there. Also deserving their spots are Tiger Woods, the face of his sport and one of the many faces of sporting-goods company Nike, who cheated on his wife with what seemed to be two floozies for every day of the week; Kobe Bryant, a notoriously arrogant person in his youth, who feuded with Shaquille O’Neal publically and also supposedly raped a woman about a decade ago; Lebron James, the reigning NBA MVP, who paraded his arrogance with his nationally televised heart-stomping of Cleveland, infamously dubbed “The Decision”.
The only other person in the top six who doesn’t seem to belong is Terrell Owens. Granted, Owens is a diva and a seemingly clinical narcissist who had constant fights and feuds within his organizations, prompting him to be shipped from team to team. This behaviour is scarcely worthy of being one of the top five hated athletes, but it’s understandable why he would be disliked by many. Ochocinco on the other hand has been with the Cincinnati Bengals his entire career and, while somewhat of a diva himself, still is an upstanding guy to everyone, everywhere he goes.
