Sports events that have been ruined or forgotten about

For several years, Lance Armstrong was the most inspirational story in sports. His victory over cancer, after being near death, coupled with his almost unthinkable dominance in the Tour de France made the Tour a must-watch event for many Americans year after year. Armstrong's popularity helped give rise to the Livestrong movement, and it was hard to go anywhere without seeing most everyone wearing yellow wristbands. His seven consecutive titles from 1999 to 2005 were a record in the sport, but after he was accused of doping by numerous outlets and fellow competitors, most notably former teammate Floyd Landis as well as the United States Anti-Doping Agency, Armstrong finally gave in and admitted to doping in a 2013 interview with Oprah Winfrey. His titles were stripped, he lost millions in sponsorship dollars, and interest in the Tour de France stateside has been non-existent since.

You'd have a hard time convincing anyone under 50 years old that there once was a time when the heavyweight championship of the world was an extremely big deal and not a sideshow. But as recently as the 1970s, the division was dominated by a legion of extremely talented athletes, from Muhammad Ali to George Foreman to Joe Frazier, with a stable of granite-chinned, iron-fisted challengers surrounding them. Title fights were blockbusters, and the Frazier-Ali rivalry, both in and outside the ring, transcended not only boxing, but American professional sports as well. Unfortunately, the sport started to suffer after Mike Tyson burned out, and the simultaneous title reigns of the Klitschko brothers, who refused to fight each other, killed the division, and with it, much of the mainstream interest in the sport.

The sport of kings still gets the public's sporting juices flowing three times a year for the Triple Crown races. But there was a time when horse racing was much, much bigger than just the Kentucky Derby, Preakness Stakes and Belmont Stakes, as well as the Breeder's Cup. A half-century ago, horse racing, boxing and baseball were arguably the three biggest sports in the country. Thanks to problems with cheating, or the lack of centralized control over the sport, one that sees star horses retired for breeding purposes shortly after the Triple Crown ends, the sport in general commands less and less attention outside of about six total minutes, spread over three spring Saturdays.

The Olympics are still a star-maker in the United States, with the best athletes cashing in big time after the games end. In 1992, Reebok's "Dan and Dave" ad campaign, starring decathletes Dan O'Brien and Dave Johnson, turned the two Olympic hopefuls into stars in the U.S. The ads drummed up legitimate interest in an Olympic showdown between the two in Barcelona. There was only one problem: O'Brien missed the pole vault during the Olympic trials in New Orleans and failed to qualify for the team. Whoops. While Johnson went on to win bronze in Barcelona, and O'Brien recovered to win gold four years later in Atlanta, the moment had passed, and you probably haven't thought about the decathlon since.

Another sport that had some legitimate mainstream pull, especially in the United States, but fell victim to, you guessed it, doping issues. Usain Bolt brought sprinting back to the forefront by being clean, and much, much faster than anyone else, but before he arrived on the scene, things were very bad. There was Ben Johnson's tainted Olympic record in 1988, Marion Jones' entire saga, and all of it happening in a sport that had seen its credibility publicly weakened for years. Track and field used to be a reliable attention-grabber for American audiences, but scandal, and the dynamic of Bolt being so dominant that he completely overshadowed elite American runners, relegated it to also-ran status.

These days, when athletes are loath to participate in things like the Home Run Derby or the Slam Dunk Contest, it might seem absurd to imagine a made-for-television event where some of the world's most famous athletes competed in events that had nothing to do with their sport of choice. However, it happened, it was called Superstars, and it was pretty popular. The program ran on either ABC or NBC from 1973-1994, with a hiatus from 1995-1997, and it was picked up yet again by ABC from 1998-2002. After one year on CBS, in 2003, the program was done more or less for good, though a brief revival was attempted in 2009. There was no scandal that brought down Superstars; it just faded away, these days seeming very much like a relic from a simpler time.

Is poker a sport? It's on ESPN, so that's good enough for me. Still, when was the last time you thought about a particular poker player by name? Maybe it was Phil Hellmuth? Maybe Phil Ivey? Either way, it's a far cry from what happened in 2003 when the Main Event at the World Series of Poker was shown on ESPN and exploded in popularity after amateur player Chris Moneymaker came out of nowhere to win. For several years it was all the rage, with tournaments running late into the night in college dorms and poker pros becoming household names. Then a gradual decline happened, fueled by questions of legality in terms of playing for real money on websites, as well as some cheating scandals, where players were found to have worked together in the world of online poker. The money is still big, and poker is still on TV, but it isn't what it used to be.

Start painting the mental picture. It's late Saturday night, perhaps early Sunday morning. You either can't sleep or just woke up. You flip on the TV, find ESPN, and there it is, in all its glory: Timbersports. Whether it was lumberjacks balancing on logs, or chopping wood faster than you thought was humanly possible or just grabbing a chainsaw and going crazy, STIHL's Timbersports series was a staple of "random hours" television. Now, whether it's due to the sheer number of distractions available or the fact that the luster just wore off, the quirky novelty of Timbersports is gone, and with it, just about any meaningful attention that the event garnered.

Take the concept of Superstars, swap in celebrities instead of highly trained professional athletes, and you have Battle of the Network Stars. The show ran once every six months or so, from the mid-1970s until the late 1980s, and was a success, with the formula remaining the same, and fans tuning in for the novelty of seeing some of their favorite actors and actresses very much out of their element, competing in events like swimming, tug-of-war, obstacle course and more, but also very highly competitive as well. Though a reboot was attempted in 2017 and lasted throughout the year, it didn't have the charm of its predecessor.

As with Timbersports, the World's Strongest Man competition was a bizarre, niche piece of sports entertainment that developed quite the cult following. Ask some people between the ages of 25-40 whether or not they got sucked into watching the competition at least once, and if they answer no they're lying. The events were not only unusual, they were strangely compelling and dramatic. No one could watch the Atlas Stones or the truck pull without getting the adrenaline rush that comes from viewing athletes performing at their best, no matter how strange the circumstances.

The phrase "oddly compelling" applies nicely to Slamball. An offshoot of actual basketball, featuring one less player per side, as well as trampolines, and with a heavy emphasis on dunking, Slamball appeared on Spike TV in the early 2000s and was newsworthy, if not smashingly popular. Slamball lasted for two seasons on Spike, came back in 2008 and then again in 2013, then launched in China in 2015. While the initial novelty factor brought in viewers in the U.S., the game proved too gimmicky to last, though it indisputably created a new style of highlight, and it got people talking, even if only for a few years. 

The concept was wonderful. Pros vs. Joes gave normal people the opportunity to back up their tough talk by beating professional athletes in the sport that made them famous. There were big talkers who got humbled and surprisingly athletic amateurs who gave the pros all they could handle, and occasionally won. Luminaries like Jerry Rice, Eric Dickerson, Dave Winfield and others were among the athletes who appeared on the show. While Pros vs. Joes was a fun watch, its star faded after five years, only running from 2006 until 2010. 

In its heyday, beach volleyball at the very least seemed like a big deal. On the men's side, Karch Kiraly, Sinjin Smith and Randy Stoklos were all well-known names, and Kerri Walsh and Misty May-Treanor were an almost unfathomably dominant duo on the women's side. The sport enjoyed considerable crossover popularity with mainstream audiences, with its fast pace and outdoor setting major drawing cards. Beach volleyball became an official Olympic sport in 1996 at the Atlanta games, and that distinction served to grow its popularity. However, with the biggest names aging out and less American dominance, beach volleyball now seems to jump into the public consciousness only during the Olympics.

One of the side benefits to Tiger Woods' late-'90s rise is that it made anything golf-related a hot property. Tiger's impact wasn't just on the PGA Tour. People everywhere couldn't get enough golf. His rise coincided with a major leap forward in golf club technology, and out of all that came an increase in popularity for the long drive contest. Sure, the golf swings bordered on ridiculous, and the men swinging the clubs were almost always on the edge of losing control, but the spectacle was very entertaining and, more importantly, made for great television. Long drive competitions still happen today, and the "sport" had a standard-bearer, Canadian Jamie Sadlowski. But Sadlowski left the circuit to attempt a career on the PGA Tour. You'll still catch a competition on television from time to time, but it isn't what it used to be.

ESPN lived up to its moniker as "The Worldwide Leader in Sports" by making billiards feel like a big deal. The sport, thanks to innovative camera angles, plus a healthy dose of trick-shot themed shows and a legitimate attempt to bring out the personalities of the competitors, was a reliable staple on ESPN for years. One of the things it fell victim to is ESPN's tendency to fill programming with debate shows or reruns, where in the past the network would have shown something off the beaten path. I was a loyal viewer of the trick shot shows and would watch actual championship matches — many of them featuring Jeanette Lee, who achieved some mainstream recognition — with great interest. But in the last 10 years or so, I can't tell you the last time I sat to watch billiards, let alone saw it while flipping through the channels.

For many sports outside of the "Big Four," the Olympics are a great opportunity for them to gain some legitimate traction with the public. Softball saw a major rise in popularity thanks to two thing: its inclusion in the Summer Olympics starting in 1996 and the United States' dominance in the sport. Star pitchers like Jennie Finch and Cat Osterman were household names, as were stars like Jessica Mendoza and Lisa Fernandez. The U.S. took home gold in 1996, 2000 and 2004, before being upset by Japan in the gold-medal game in 2008. The sport was dropped from the 2012 and 2016 Olympics, and while it will return in 2020, there is no guarantee it will stay. If it doesn't, expect another major drop in attention from the masses.

Distance running boomed starting in the 1970s, with Nike's revolutionary shoe technology and runners like Steve Prefontaine capturing the public's imagination. Things first took off when American Frank Shorter won the marathon at the 1972 Summer Olympics. Some 25 million Americans took up running or jogging in the 1970s, and even President Jimmy Carter got in on the act. However, Prefontaine's untimely death and a lack of international success for American runners after Shorter caused interest in the sport itself to decline, even as people continued to run for their own benefit. 

For most sports fans, bowling is something fun to do when there's nothing else to do, and it's a reliable piece of Sunday afternoon sports programming for those who dislike the NFL. Otherwise, it is something of an afterthought. It wasn't always this way. The sport exploded in popularity in the 1960s and was a very big deal on television, often outdrawing both college football and basketball in the 1970s and early 1980s. Eventually, the sport started to decline in the viewership department, and ABC decided not to renew its contract with the PBA for a variety of reasons. Bowling hung on, occasionally appearing on Fox Sports Net, and still, as mentioned previously, is an autumn staple on ESPN while the broadcast networks show NFL football. But it's safe to say that the sport will never again have boom times like it did 40-50 years ago.