25 Most Surprising Sporting Occurrences of the Last 25 Years

Before you look to see “Appalachian State 34, Michigan 32” on this list, let me state that I predicted Michigan to win by 10 (41-31) in a game that I believed the Mountaineers to have a tremendous opportunity to win if Michigan came out flat. I didn’t think they would win, but I was by no means totally surprised. I was surprised, but not overwhelmed.

I saw weakness in the Michigan defense and I knew that Appalachian State had a D-1-caliber offense. The only thing that surprised me was how well the Appalachian State defense held up for most of the game.

That said, here are the 25 most surprising sporting occurrences of the last 25 years according to me.

Oh, by the way, I was wearing my Appalachian State shirt during the game at the official Ohio State alumni bar of Houston. A lot of people offered to buy me a drink after the game.25    Texas 30, Baltimore 3
The Rangers hadn’t even scored 30 runs over their previous nine games combined and it seemed like they’d be lucky to score one in this game, as they trailed 3-0 after three. Yet they scored 30 runs over the final six innings, including 16 in the final two. Sure, this isn’t a great event, but it doesn’t need to be. It’s surprising and it’s the last thing I’d ever have expected to see in my life, or at least 25th last thing….

24    Muhammad Ali lights Olympic torch
This event has become a cliché, so I won’t spend time talking about it. But it has to be on the list because, well, just because.

23    Atlanta Hawks resign Jon “Contract” Koncak
By today’s standards, 6 years, $13 million is nothing for a sixth man. By 1989’s standards, it was incomprehensible. Atlanta shelled more than $2 million a year just to keep Koncak from going to Detroit, which according to wikipedia was more than either of the two MJs or Larry Bird. Not according to wikipedia, it was also more than Dominique Wilkins, who just so happened to be the best player on the Hawks. But apparently, the sixth man is more important than the best players in the NBA. Go figure.

22    George Mason
I still don’t know how they did it. I still have no idea how George Mason got into the NCAA tournament over Hofstra. Hofstra had a better record, finished ahead of George Mason in the CAA, made it further in the CAA tournament than Mason, and had a winning record against Mason, yet Mason got an at-large bid into the NCAA tournament and Hofstra was relegated to the NIT. There are always outrages (like Florida State not getting in this year), but none compare to this. Hofstra was more accomplished than Mason in any and every possible category, yet because the Mason AD was on the selection committee, they got into the NCAA tournament. Despicable.

21    Miami 38, 12-0 Chicago 24
The 1985 Bears could be the best team ever, or at least the best defensive team ever. Except on one Monday night in Miami. The Dolphins, protecting their 1972 season, passed right through the Bears’ secondary and handed Mike Ditka his team’s only loss. There would be no rematch, as the Dolphins fell to the Pats in the AFC title game, but that didn’t matter. The ’72 Dolphins drank champagne that night, as they still remain the only team to ever run the table and win the Super Bowl.

20    Al Campanis speaks
The last place you would have expected to hear racially foul gossip from would have been the general manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers, especially after, you know, they helped integrate baseball back when they were in Brooklyn. Yet in the most unconscionable speech in sporting history, Campanis remarked that blacks lacked the capabilities needed to be general managers, coaches, or, due to a lack of buoyancy, swimmers. Whether or not Campanis really believed this has been questioned, but he said it, and it still just doesn’t make sense.

19    Ayrton Senna dies
Senna was undoubtedly one of the five best Formula 1 drivers of all time and many consider him the greatest ever. But on the first day of May in 1994, the three time world champion lost control of his car in the San Marino Grand Prix and crashed. He was killed instantly. His death (along with that of Roland Ratzenberger during qualifying the day before) nearly destroyed the sport. Britain considered banning auto racing. Italian authorities pressed manslaughter charges against Senna’s team. And Formula 1 had sweeping safety changes. Nobody has died during a Formula 1 race weekend since.

18    Villanova vs. Everybody, 1985 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament
Villanova was not the best team in the country. They probably were overrated being the eight seed in their region. But they won six games in a row, five against higher seeded teams, and four by four points or less. The biggest upset was in the title game, where they defeated Georgetown and Patrick Ewing 66-64 in what many call the perfect game, as the Wildcats shot about 80% from the field. But all six wins were equally shocking and ‘Nova will always rank as one of the worst teams to win the championship, but also one of the most deserving.

17    Richard Krajicek def. Pete Sampras, 7-5, 7-6, 6-4
Pete Sampras was the world number one, as well as the three time defending champion of the Championships: Wimbledon. Although we didn’t know it at the time, he would go on to win four more titles. But in a quarterfinal against unheralded Richard Krajicek, Sampras was beat and in straight sets no less. Sampras’s dominance was so recognized that the fact that Krajicek would go on to win Wimbledon that year is a mere footnote. All we remember was that he also beat Pete.

16    Phillip Fulmer votes Michigan #4
In retribution for Charles Woodson winning the Heisman over Peyton Manning, Phillip Fulmer, the shameless, spineless “coach” of the “University” of Tennessee voted undefeated Michigan #4 in the final coaches poll of the 1997 season, prompting a split national title between the Wolverines and the also unbeaten Cornhuskers of Nebraska. Of course, Nebraska was undefeated solely because of the second-worst call in the history of the college football that enabled it to beat Missouri (for the worst, please see #9). But voting them fourth? That’s just plain silly. Then again, as we found out a few years later, Fulmer is also willing to turn in violations of the University of Alabama in exchange for clemency for his university. No wonder he has reportedly had to use a police escort to get to many SEC road games.

15    Gil Morgan at Pebble Beach, 1992 U.S. Open
On Saturday, Morgan started his round -3, getting him to -12 for the tournament. No player before had ever reached -10 in the U.S. Open. But after a birdie on seven, Morgan collapsed. He would go +9 over the next seven holes to drop into a share of the lead, before going birdie-bogey-birdie to maintain a one shot lead into Sunday. But a Sunday 81 dropped Morgan straight out of the top 10. First 45 holes: -12; last 27 holes: +17. Champion? Tom Kite.

14    Mike Utley walks
It’s one of those moments that cannot make sense. How do you react to seeing an NFL offensive lineman, one of those “big ugly’s,” taking his first steps in more than seven years? I was too young to appreciate the moment when Utley stood up in 1999 at a hotel in Phoenix, but just thinking about it makes me shiver. Playing for Detroit in 1991, Utley shattered the sixth and seventh cervical vertebrae in his spine and was unable to remove his mouthpiece. However, he gave the crowd thumbs up as he was carted off the field. Seven years later, he gave the world a few steps. That’s a strange way to create a full circle, but no less heroic.

13    Kansas State wins 9 games
In 1993, Kansas State accumulated nine wins. Now, this sounds good, but when I also add that they had made one bowl in their history before 1993 (the 1982 Independence Bowl against fellow futile Wisconsin, which led to the NCAA contemplating never adding any more bowl games) and had a .500 record the previous decade against teams from what was then called 1-AA, it sounds somewhat stranger. Kansas State had been so bad for so long that just four years earlier the school contemplating dropping out of the Big VIII and into 1-AA while Sports Illustrated called the program impossible to resurrect. Now does this seem a little more surprising?

12    Rulon Gardner def. Alexander Karelin
If this had happened in 1988, you would be more likely to remember it. Gardner was a good grappler, but Dr. Alexander Karelin was the best ever. He had not lost in 13 years (take that, Esther Vergeer) and had not given up a point in six, including a 5-0 decision over Gardner three years earlier. He had won three Super Heavyweight Greco-Roman Wrestling gold medals in a row. But in the gold medal match of the 2000 Sydney Olympics, Gardner wrestled the match of his life and won 1-0, the first time he finished better than fifth in an international competition.

11    Artis Gilmore left out of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame
Gilmore was statistically the greatest defensive player in NCAA and ABA history. He also had more than 20,000 career points and holds the record for the highest career field goal percentage in NBA history. He could shoot, pass, rebound, block, and steal as well as anyone and was the difference maker on the early 1980s San Antonio Spurs teams that went as far as the Western Conference Finals. Yet Gilmore still has not been paid his due, and that flat out doesn’t make sense.

10    Monica Seles stabbed, wins the Australian Open
More so than any other record, Steffi Graf’s mark of 22 grand slam single titles needs an asterisk. No, not because she cheated or didn’t actually earn them, but because half of them came because her sole rival was stabbed by a fan. Seles had become the best player in the world before she was stabbed in April 1993. While the injury wasn’t too bad, she struggled to regain the emotional confidence to go back out and compete. Finally, nearly three years after her injury, Seles ran through Australia and won her ninth grand slam title, first in three years. I’m not sure if the stabbing or the title is more surprising, so I included both.

9    Colorado gets fifth down
Colorado was down by four in their 1990 Big VIII showdown against Mizzou. They spiked the ball on first down. They couldn’t score on second down. They couldn’t score on third down. They also couldn’t score on fourth down. No worries, they’ll punch it in on fifth down, or at least come close enough that the referee thinks he crosses the goal line as time expires. They came back onto the field 20 minutes later, not to correct the mistake, but to force Colorado to attempt its extra point since if they would miss and it is returned to other way, Colorado and Missouri would tie 33-33. Colorado took a knee. The Buffaloes would, like Nebraska in #16, go on to win a controversial split of the national title. Lesson learned: if you give up a touchdown on the final play to lose by less than three, you can force the other team to attempt the extra point since the game is still not out of reach. In 2005, Michigan scored on the final play to beat Penn State by two. Joe Paterno chose not to force Michigan to attempt the extra point, even though his team could still have won the game. It showed that Paterno had no knowledge of NCAA rules and he should have immediately been fired from his job.

8    Kentucky 62, LSU 27
Usually, a 68-37 lead in the second half of a college basketball game is safe, and by usually I mean 15,999 out of 16,000 times (I’d say even more safe, but I didn’t feel like typing a bunch of zeros). Just don’t tell Rick Pitino and his ’93-’94 Kentucky Wildcats. Over the final 15:34 of the game, Kentucky outscored LSU 62-27, including 9-0 in the final minute and a half, to win 99-95 and pull perhaps the greatest comeback in the history of basketball.

7    Girl dies at NHL game
Even if the NHL overreacted and even if some of the protective measures should have been in place before, this silenced the sports world for a week. It was one thing when Hank Gathers collapsed during the second half of Loyola-Marymount’s West Coast Conference semifinal in 1990 and died, but this brought sports to a new level. We never expected to be in danger when we went to a game. Yet suddenly, it became a possibility.

6    Earthquake in the World Series
The 1989 World Series was supposed to be a Bay Area brawl that nobody outside of California would care about. Instead, an earthquake rattled game 3. ABC lost signal during the pre-game coverage, but there would be no game. Instead, the destruction became the focus. Roads collapsed upon other roads, the Bay Bridge broke, and most importantly, 62 people died. Baseball took a back seat for ten days as recovery efforts began. The Bay Bridge reopened in early November and hadn’t closed since until August 31 of this year, not that you cared.

5    James “Buster” Douglas TKO Mike Tyson
Sure, Mike Tyson was out of shape, but still, this is James “Buster” Douglas we are talking about. On one fluke night in 1990, Douglas caught an unprepared Tyson and wore him down, winning at least five of the first nine rounds and as many as seven. Then in the tenth, just two rounds after Tyson knocked him down, Douglas hit a right uppercut followed by a left-right-left. Tyson fell and James “Buster” Douglas, at 42-1 odds, was the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world. He would lose his first title defense.

4    Buffalo 41, Houston 38 (OT)
The halftime score showed Houston leading the 1992/1993 AFC Wild Card game 28-3 and the team management already booking hotel rooms for their AFC Divisional Playoff game. Tack on a quick touchdown to start the third quarter and it was 35-3. But Buffalo scored 35 unanswered puts to take the lead, leaving Houston shocked. Warren Moon led his team to a field goal to force overtime, but that would be all they would force. Buffalo got the ball first in the extra session and drove for a field goal. They would go on to lose the Super Bowl for the third consecutive year. Oh, and if you Google the cities Houston and Buffalo together, this game is the first result.

3    Jean Van de Velde triple-bogeys the 72nd hole
As bad as Gil Morgan’s collapse was in the 1992 U.S. Open, no golfing moment will overshadow Van de Velde standing in the Barry Burn on the 72nd hole of the Open Championship, contemplating whether or not to attempt his fourth shot out of it. He entered the hole with a three shot lead and left immortalized. However, he was immortalized for blowing the chance of a lifetime, hitting a driver, attacking the green on a tough shot, getting a few unlucky bounces, and standing in the Burn. After the playoff, he was runner-up, but few remember that Paul Lawrie won the championship.

2    Jean Van de Velde leading the 1999 Open Championship
As shocking as Van de Velde’s collapse was, the fact that he was leading was even more surprising. Van de Velde hadn’t won on the European Tour in half a dozen years and only got into the tournament through open qualifying that Monday. Carnoustie played devilishly difficult. In fact, outright first round leader Rod Pampling shot in the 80s on Friday and missed the cut. Yet there was Van de Velde, carrying a five shot lead into Sunday and seemingly mastering the course. Nobody else could even compete with it. Even more stunning than his collapse was that it was he whom was in the position to collapse.

1    Oregon State 21, Washington 20
Oregon State came in 2-4 during their 1985 campaign; Washington came in as the favorite to represent the PAC-10 in the Rose Bowl. The Beavers had been shutout their last two games, which was preceded by a 23-6 home loss to 1-AA Grambling State that wasn’t an upset at all. Additionally, their starting quarterback was out for the season and their best wide receiver, who was leading the PAC-10 in receiving yards, was out. Vegas put the line at -38, and some felt that it was being generous. Huskies’ coach Don James even stated that he was happy that he’d be able to get his backup quarterback some playing time. Anyway, with 1:29 left in the game, Washington was up 20-14. They punted from their own end zone, it got block, Oregon State recovered, touchdown. The extra point was good. Biggest upset ever. At least Appalachian State came into the Big House as the two-time defending national champs and the heavy favorite to make it three in a row.