Athletes Who Got Greedy, Then Got Kicked Off The Team

Correction 08/03/22: A previous version of this article stated that Diego Maradona failed a drug test due to epinephrine. He failed the test due to ephedrine, not epinephrine.

Professional athletes are often characters. Blame too much money too soon, the fame, status, or attention lavished upon them, but there is no denying that many of them tend to get greedy – despite often making megamillions. Sometimes, the greed is not financial but manifests itself in the desire to win at all costs, have just one more mistress, attend just one more exclusive party, or try a drug that can culminate in a tragic addiction. And of course, all of this can cause an athlete's career to end or at least hit a bump.

Greedy athletes come in every single sport and manifest in different ways. Endurance athletes at the Olympics, for instance, are driven to win the gold. Often they are willing to dope and even occasionally sabotage opponents. Big-money sports including football, baseball, and soccer, have had their share of financial, sex, and drug scandals that have gotten athletes kicked off their teams and in some cases destroyed careers. Here are some athletes whose greed got them kicked off the team.

Lance Armstrong was an inspiration to many Americans. His seven Tour de France wins were all the more impressive given that he achieved them (per ESPN) after recovering from testicular cancer. But it turned out to be a con. Armstrong's desire for titles and glory had led him to cheat his way to his victories through blood doping.

Armstrong's conduct was quite damning once it came to light in 2011. Per the Bleacher Report, he bribed officials to cover up positive doping tests, encouraged teammates to cheat, and threatened whistleblowers with lawsuits – all while presenting himself as a paragon of perseverance. Per Newsweek, his fame also allowed him to amass a $125 million fortune. Given this, it seems that Armstrong's cheating was not motivated by a commitment to sport, but by a win-at-all-costs mentality in pursuit of fame and the money that he later brought in through sponsors and his image.

Armstrong's behavior, despite being hidden for over a decade, eventually came back to bite him. After fellow disgraced cyclist Floyd Landis turned against him and exposed the doping program, Armstrong, per Business Insider, was banned for life and stripped of all seven Tour de France titles. Every single one of his sponsors dropped him (the equivalent of getting "kicked off the team" for solo athletes). It was an incredible fall from grace for a man that had seemingly triumphed cleanly in the face of so much adversity.

Per the Daily Beast, American figure skater Tonya Harding worked her way to fame from a broken home that constantly flirted with insolvency. As the big leagues and a possible spot at the 1994 Winter Olympics beckoned, she let her ambition and desire for fame and fortune get the better of her.

According to the Bleacher Report, Harding and fellow skater Nancy Kerrigan were both favorites to represent the United States in the 1994 Winter Olympics in Norway. Kerrigan already had a bronze from the '92 Winter Olympics and was undoubtedly the favorite to medal for the United States in Norway. Harding was the national champion and naturally wanted to go one better by winning Olympic gold and the fame and fortune such a triumph would inevitably bring. So Harding and her first husband hired one Shane Stant for $6,500 to sabotage Kerrigan.

Stant ambushed Kerrigan and whacked her in the knee with a heavy rod, bruising her and throwing her Olympic participation into serious doubt. Despite the problems, she refused to cast blame and ended up winning silver at the '94 games. Harding did not medal at all, and to make things worse, it soon became clear that she was an accomplice in the crime and was charged with obstruction of justice. She avoided prison, unlike her co-conspirators, but the scandal ended her career. She was banned for life and stripped of her 1994 U.S. skating champion title, per the Washington Post. After attempting a boxing career, she eventually married and currently lives with her second husband and son.

Controversial but talented Detroit Lions wide receiver Titus Young could have made it in the NFL. But as the Bleacher Report notes, Detroit had a limit with the kind of bad behavior it was willing to put up with. Young got himself into trouble for punching his teammates. But his selfishness was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back.

According to the NFL, Young was quite a selfish athlete. When he disagreed with his coaches or things did not go his way, he would take out his frustration on the team. In a game against the Green Bay Packers, he aired his disagreements with the staff by lining up in the wrong position. Later, he was disciplined for "insubordination," presumably for not listening to the coaching staff. His tweets suggest that his main hang-up was not getting enough of the ball.

Young had forgotten that there is no "I" in "team." After his insubordination during the Packers game, Young took to Twitter complaining that if his teammates weren't going to give him the ball, he wasn't going to play. He had already followed through with that threat against Green Bay, so Detroit took him seriously. Realizing that Young's on-field greed was becoming a liability, the Lions released him from his contract. As noted in the Bleacher Report, he did poorly away from football, landing himself in legal problems and an eventual stint in prison for assault and battery, even throwing away a second chance from the St. Louis Rams to get his career back on track.

According to the IOC, Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson was the hero of the 1988 games in Seoul when he notched a then-world record of 9.79 in the 100m dash. As CNN reported, Johnson's victory and world record were unexpected. A day later, it became clear why. He tested positive for banned steroids and was immediately stripped of his gold medal. It turned out that it was not a one-off case either. His trainer Charlie Francis admitted to an IOC commission that Johnson had been doping since 1981, just as his career was getting started. He had gotten away with it because IOC doping controls were still in their infancy.

Per the CBC, Johnson lost everything. Diadora pulled their multimillion dollar sponsorship, and the IOC banned him for life from athletics, a decision he decried as unfair. His coach, although admitting to abetting doping, agreed that Johnson had been set up. He had never taken the particular steroid he tested positive for, suggesting that the ban was a cover-up to protect other offenders that escaped punishment. Regardless, the decision stood and Johnson eventually settled into a job as a youth soccer coach and Serie A advisor in Italy.

Johnson's motivation was likely fame and fortune (aka greed from a win-at-all-costs mentality). According to Australia's SBS News, Johnson would by no means be the last, as doping has become endemic in endurance sports driven by greed and desire for success with less effort.

Diego Armando Maradona is considered the greatest soccer player in history, even more than Brazilian Pele. In a single game, he scored the famous "hand of God" goal (by punching it into the net) and then dribbled past 7 English players (including the goalkeeper) to score the "goal of the century." But his love of nightlife ended a brilliant career on the lowest note possible.

According to the documentary "What killed Maradona" (via Daily Mail), the Argentine prodigy indulged in Spanish nightlife after signing for FC Barcelona in 1982. Soon, he began using (and abusing) cocaine, taking the habit to Italy's SSC Napoli in 1985. Per ArchySport, Maradona soon fell in with organized crime, attending exclusive mafia parties and mixing with Naples' underground elite. Naturally, this did not reflect well on Napoli, Maradona, or the Camorra, which preferred to keep its criminal operations in the dark – even though they were huge Napoli fans. Thus, Maradona became a liability – despite his enormous talent.

According to the New York Times, Maradona's lifestyle and resulting addiction culminated in a failed 1991 drug test that earned him a 15-month ban from the sport. The Italian Football Federation fined him $70,000, while Napoli sued him and then released him from his contract. Per the Bleacher Report, Maradona wandered around a handful of clubs in Spain and Argentina, but he never hit his old highs from his Napoli days. His international career ended at the 1994 World Cup in the United States, when he failed a drug test for the banned substance ephedrine (via AS). In 1997, he retired definitively (via Britannica).

In 2010, golfer Tiger Woods had everything many Americans could only dream of. Per Forbes, he was worth $600 million, had a Swedish supermodel wife named Elin Nordegren, and was known as America's top golfer. Yet, this wasn't enough for him. According to Fox News, Woods engaged in a series of affairs, most famously with New York nightclub manager Rachel Uchitel. Per Uchitel herself, the affair was more than just sex. They would often discuss their lives, Wood's childhood, and numerous other life matters that suggested she really loved him (and vice versa). But since Woods was a married father, it was obviously still wrong.

Woods faced a major backlash once the affairs surfaced. First, Nordegren divorced him, taking $100 million in payments (about one-sixth of his 2010 net worth). Second, per the Bleacher Report, all his sponsors but two dropped him. Astonishingly, however, it cost him "only" $34 million, a drop in the bucket for him. As the Bleacher Report noted, however, his reputation was in tatters. Although a bump in the road, Woods' career recovered, despite nearly losing his leg in a car crash in 2021 (per ESPN).Thus, the price for his greed was not financial, but the loss of his family.

In 1985, the Christian Science Monitor reported that Tulane had taken the extraordinary step of completely shuttering its basketball program. So what had provoked this decision? Several top players had been implicated in a point-shaving scandal involving money, drugs, and frat bros. Per Crescent City Sports, Tulane student Gary Kranz, who provided forward Clyde Eads cocaine, recruited him for a point-shaving scheme so that Kranz and his frat brother David Rotheberg could cash in from bets placed on Tulane games. After collecting several thousand in cash, however, a particularly suspicious game against the Louisville Cardinals signaled to fans that something was amiss.

By the end of the season, despite point-shaving rumors, it seemed that the crooked players had gotten away with their scheme. But they didn't count on Tulane fan and lawyer Ned Kohnke's investigation. Kohnke discovered – contrary to his expectations – that the rumors had substance. The New Orleans DA became involved and arrested the guilty players. A subsequent investigation revealed the involvement of the coaching staff.

The story shocked the sporting world. Tulane player John "Hot Rod" Williams, who was fancied to reach the NBA after graduation, went on trial. According to the New York Times, a jury acquitted him, but his teammates lost their places on Tulane basketball as the program was shut down. Kranz, the head of the scheme, received three months in prison and $45,000 in fines.

The 1904 Olympic Games took place in St. Louis, Missouri, coinciding with the World's Fair. The games were strange – to put it lightly. Per Runner's World, the games were meant to highlight American supremacy alongside the country's achievements at the World's Fair. The marathon was perhaps among the most bizarre incidents of the games. Per Runner's World, it was held in 90-degree heat and was a bit of a eugenics experiment in itself. James Sullivan, the organizer of much of the games and World's Fair, wanted to test athletes ability to run a 24.85-mile course in the blazing summer heat with only a single water break. Let that sink in for a moment. But the athletes wanted the gold to make their training worth something, and so the race went ahead.

The race was a fiasco. Fred Lorz, one of the favorites, disappeared at mile 10. Cuban Felix Carvajal fell asleep in an orchard. WIlliam Garcia collapsed before mile 20 and nearly died.

Lorz still wanted to win, so he hitched a car ride and ran the final four miles to victory. But just as he was receiving his gold, a spectator revealed his cheating. Lorz dismissed the scheme as a joke, but received a life ban from the sport for his antics. Incredibly, Hicks won the race nearly 30 minutes later after drinking a mixture of eggs and strychnine sulfate (a rat poison) – twice.