During Valentine's Day, you can find romance in the strangest of places, including sports. However, when you combine the terms sports and breakups in a search engine, you expect to see something about athletes and their partners (like Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries).
Interestingly, in headlines from the past year, you soon find that there are some bizarre events that have combined breakups and the sports world with hilarious results.
1. The sport of breakups
Valentine's Day this year is buzzing with a book about the sport of breakups. Based on a Tumblr blog, this is an effort to prepare teens for their first breakup. "Why We Broke Up" is written by Daniel Handler a.k.a. Lemony Snicket. Handler is also the author of the children's literature "A Series of Unfortunate Events".
2. Athletes breaking up bad guys
Over the past year, there have been two incidents where breakups and sports are about intercepting crimes. During the day, they are regular athletes, but by night, Los Angeles Lakers name-changer Ron Artest, a.k.a. Metta World Peace, and Baltimore Ravens player Tandon Doss broke up knife-fights in true superhero style.
3. Jose Canseco's post breakup Twitter rant
One incident of love that will stay in people's minds for a while is the public manner in which Jose Canseco dealt with his breakup. When the long-time MLB star parted ways with his girlfriend, all of his Twitter friends got a "TMI" earful of every painful detail.
4. Breaking up and making up the Big 12 Conference
Anything you read about the fiasco surrounding the Big 12 college basketball conference will have you sitting on the edge of your seat. The administrative drama that has occurred since 2010 is difficult to keep up with and always subject to drastic changes.
For instance, the region covered by the conference includes Missouri, Kansas, Texas, and Oklahoma. These states all share borders and it makes sense they would have a competition. However, West Virginia was randomly added to the conference.
In the end, Texas has been accused by fans for causing this "break-up" and make-up cycle. For 2012 -2013, the Big 12 will only have 10 members.
5. Boxing and breakups are the same
If you put this quote in a Valentine's Day card, your lover will definitely classify it as a mixed message. In a Raymond Markarian interview with boxer Mike Ortega in June 2011, Ortega gives us a weird analysis of sports and breakups.
"It's all a fight. I love to do both," he said. "There is no difference to me. I will pursue whatever takes me the furthest. I definitely have a passion and love for boxing. I consider it like a girlfriend; broke up with her for a little bit, but now I am back with her. So I will continue to pursue both sports. And whatever takes me further in the end, I am sticking with it."
6. Sports photography breaks up with flash
When flash websites became available, everyone jumped on the bandwagon until the smartphone began to dominate. Eventually, it became painfully obvious to everyone that it was time to regress to a simpler time or pay the consequences of having smartphone users avoid your website.
Of course, flash websites are great for artists and many sports photographers still use flash. Despite this, in 2011, one sports photographer decided it was time to go forward with modern history and break up with flash websites forever.
You can read about San Francisco Bay Area Sports photographer Brad Mangin and his weird experiences when he switch to a WordPress-based site here.
7. Break up to blame for poor playoffs
Is your team losing a lot of games this year and you do not understand why this is happening? Maybe part of the problem is that they are lonely this Valentine's Day and their breakup is affecting their performance. Believe it or not, many fans will speculate that relationship issues are causing the team to lose. For example, Olivia Munn breaking up with New York Rangers player Brad Richards is considered a bad omen for their NHL season.
8. Russian rugby heals after USSR breakup
After the collapse of the USSR in the early 1990s, professional sports teams were in shambles. For example, the rugby match between the U.S. and the USSR during the Cold War was considered a premiere event. Sadly, this great Russian team took a couple of decades to heal from being discarded after the breakup from the Soviet Union.
However, in the past year, the old USSR team is happy to announce that it has made a comeback and is ready to play its old rivals.
9. Million-dollar Dragon sports break up
They always say love is a gamble, but in the United States, a love of sports gambling is generally illegal. The exceptions are horse racing at racetracks, online gambling, and casinos. States like Nevada and California also offer legal sports betting.
Regardless, Virginia does not have legal gambling for any sporting events. For this reason, the police raided the Dragon family and their illegal shopping center based operation. During the bust, police seized over $1 million in assets.
10. Kentucky breaks up 26-year losing streak
For Kentucky Wildcats football fans, the best breakup of 2011-2012 occurred on Nov. 26, 2011. Despite their best efforts, the Wildcats had lost every game to the University of Tennessee Vols since 1985. However, a ray of sunshine officially broke through the clouds and finally upset a 26-year losing streak that the Wildcats had.
Altogether, these 10 weird sports breakups prove that sometimes spending Valentine's Day alone is not so unlucky.
Maryam Louise started writing about the strange things people do as an Anthropology undergraduate at the University of Louisville in 1995. Since then, she has been a bike courier and long-time fan of service dog training, weird sports, winter sports, sustainable commuting, low-impact fitness, disability sports medicine, physical therapy, the ParaOlympics, sports for low-vision people, yacht racing, US Military athletes, and all aspects of the horse racing industry.
