Great Moments in Stupid Sports Question History
Today is Ask a Stupid Question Day. We know. It’s a stupid holiday. But hey, America!
Actually, it was created in the 1980s by teachers to encourage more kids to ask questions in class. (So, it’s legit. Bet you feel bad for talking smack about it. Ha! Who’s stupid now? Huh? Don’t answer that.)
The actual Ask a Stupid Question Day is supposed to be on Sept. 28, but they celebrate it on the final school day of September. Again, that seems kind of stupid. What was wrong with Sept. 28? It was a perfectly good Monday. Why do you hate Mondays, America? Don’t answer that.
Anyway, sports and stupid questions go together like coffee and cream, like white on rice, like cold on ice.
The two weeks of hype leading up to the Super Bowl are fertile ground for stupid questions. It most infamously gave us the twisted tale of the guy who supposedly asked Doug Williams how long he had been a black quarterback (or did it? Here’s the actual story in Snopes).
But sports reporters don’t need a big event like the Super Bowl to drop a stupid bomb. The occasion can be as innocuous as a trip to Green Bay to face the Packers. Actual question once asked of Bucs coach Tony Dungy before such a trip: “Coach, do you like cheese?”
Stupid is as stupid does, right? It's OK, though. Stupid questions will always make great fodder for satirical essays.
Oh, we know it’s not easy coming up with brilliant ways to get athletes and coaches to make brilliant comments. Most questions reporters ask are vanilla and lame. In fact, good, reasonable questions often elicit the worst answers.
So, today, we celebrate the stupid questions in sports. These questions, in particular, made history.
- We begin with one of our personal favorites: the great Allen Iverson .