Over-hyped and disappointing athletes

Two types of players will always be remembered in sports: The guy who turns out to be a superstar and the guy who busted out like no other. We remember the busts just as much as the all-time greats because at some point those guys were very, very relevant. Whether it’s a baseball or basketball player coming out of high school as a prodigy, or a football player being selected in the first few picks of the draft after a remarkable college career, they got hyped up and became household names.

But not every busted player is the same. Some players don’t work out because they got injured, some because they couldn’t mentally handle the pros, some players just don’t work out and are a mystery. But what I’m focusing on are people who didn’t work out but there were clear red flags that showed they were going to be a bust, but such great hype masked those problems, they were ignored, and they still weren’t any good.

So this list won’t have famous busts like Brian Bosworth or Sam Bowie because those guys got injured, or a guy like Ryan Leaf because by all accounts, he should have worked out in the pros, he just couldn’t mentally handle it.

And hype is a weird thing too. Bode Miller was a huge Olympic disappointment but he wasn’t over-hyped. He was worthy of the talk and clearly the best skier around but just didn’t care enough to win. There is also the wrong kind of hype as well. Putting David Beckham on this list because he didn’t score a ton of goals after signing with the LA Galaxy isn’t fair because he was never a scorer, Americans just knew he was a big name and assumed he would be and don’t care how good he actually was running their offense. A local radio station in Baltimore texted out a picture of a Hall of Fame plaque for Matt Wieters the night before he made his Major League debut, setting completely impossible standards for the guy, but he’s one of the best defensive catchers ever.

And I’m only doing 15 semi-recent players. It’s not the most over-hyped and disappointing athletes of all time because I don’t know which baseball prospect had billboards about them in 1912.

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Corey Johns

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You could say Corey was born to become a sports journalist. His father won a national championship coaching college soccer. His mother is a baseball fanatic who hasn't missed seeing an Orioles game since 1983 (literally, sometimes it's annoying). His great uncle was a big-time boxing promoter and his maternal grandfather was once a department head at the Baltimore Sun. Basically, sports and journalism run through his blood. He played just about every little league sports there was when he was a kid and was a multi-sport athlete in high school; even playing in the first-ever high school sanction Rugby game in the country. Eventually he retired from sports as an undefeated Maryland state Rugby champion as a high school senior. Perhaps lack of athletic talent has more to do with the retirement, but he will tell you that it more had to do with a great desire to jump right into media. Upon his graduation from University of Maryland, Baltimore County as a triple communications major, Corey started the So Much Sports network and has continued to grow his websites and continues to work to make them premier sports media outlets.

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