The Surreal Life 2: Weird World of Sports.

Tomorrow morning I'm headed out the do' and down to Panama City, where the grass is green and the girls are pretty (take me hoooow-wooooam, yeah yeah), and I won't be back until Monday -- but I leave you with another meme to mull over while I'm sitting on the beach getting pissed up and sunburned.

Earlier this week my "Surreal Life" question -- to wit, if you were on VH-1's "The Surreal Life," which 6-7 B-list celebrities would you want in the house with you? -- resulted in some excellent responses. (Dawgnoxious's choice of Gary Busey, in particular, was inspired.) So now I'm asking a similar question, just altering the answer pool a little: If ESPN decided to add to its Sportstainment! offerings an all-sports version of "The Surreal Life," and you somehow managed to get on it, which six athletes would you want in the house with you?

This is perhaps a little trickier than the first question. First of all, controversial and/or criminal misbehavior seems to be less rampant among female athletes than among males, so I'm relaxing the three-men-and-three-women restriction from the first question (but try to include some females anyway, because come on, it's just more fun that way.) Second, a "B-list athlete" is a little tougher to define than a B-list actor. Brett Favre obviously doesn't qualify; Ryan Leaf obviously does; Ron Artest . . . hmmmm, he's probably fifty-fifty. But let's just say we're looking for outrageous, washed-up, controversial and/or scandal-plagued figures who might actually appear on such a show. What that means, among other things, is that despite my dream to have all-world party animal Mike Price and profanity prodigy Bobby Knight in my house, their current positions as UTEP football coach and Texas Tech hoops coach, respectively, would probably preclude them from participating in such an endeavor.

But there are still plenty of folks out there who I'm sure would be available, so here are my six (with a wild-card seventh for the Florence Henderson whip-these-schmucks-into-shape role):


Nicole Bobek
Obviously, after the Tonya Harding/Nancy Kerrigan knee-whacking brouhaha, nobody had any more illusions about figure skaters being innocent, delicate little flowers. But Bobek, who was notorious for preferring drinking to practicing and burned through 11 coaches during her skating career, makes Harding look like a big sissy. Harding, after all, hired someone else to beat up Nancy Kerrigan; when Bobek decided she wanted to take some money from a friend's house, she took the initiative to break in herself, incurring a home-invasion charge to which she later pled guilty. A naughty, naughty girl, in other words (and way better-looking than Tonya Harding).


John Daly (center)
Sure, "Happy Gilmore" was funny for, among other things, the Bob Barker ass-kicking scene and the "You eat pieces of shit for breakfast?" line, but one of the funniest things about it was the fact that there was already a real-life hellraising white-trash drunk tearing up the world of pro golf and few people realized it at the time. Daly was, for a time at least, an all-world binge drinker who harassed British Airways flight attendants, trashed hotel rooms, and went in and out of rehab so frequently that the Betty Ford Clinic had to install a revolving door; he claims to have gotten his drinking under control, but he admits that he also has a gambling problem, having lost as much as $60 million over the course of his golf career. This last revelation was made in his recent autobiography, a book titled My Life in and out of the Rough: The Truth Behind All That Bullshit You Think You Know About Me. Yeah, this guy should be fun.


Bill Goldberg
How could I not have fun with this guy? He's a professional wrestler and a former Georgia football player, so I imagine we'd have plenty to talk about. Look, he's even copying my favorite facial expression.


Anna Kournikova
Because she's . . . uh . . . a terrific tennis player. OK, so she turned out to be a much better model than tennis player, but so's Gisele Bundchen, and I don't see anyone riding her ass over that.


John Riggins
RIGGGGOOOOOO! Between his party-animal rep and the sheer novelty of being a white running back in the NFL, he's got more than enough novelty value to make the cut. My only worry is that between him and Daly there'd never be any booze for the rest of us.


Ricky Williams
Because someone's got to provide the drugs.

And #7, the whip-cracker, the disciplinarian:


Al "Just Win, Baby" Davis
The legendary Oakland Raiders owner is the closest thing to a Mafia don to have ever attended an NFL owners' meeting. My only worry is that Davis would decide he was tired of our house, move us to a different house, get bored with the second house, then move us back into the first, but other than that, I think he'd do a good job snapping everyone in line. I wouldn't mess with him.

If any of those seven are unavailable or unable to fulfill their duties, the next four on the shortlist, in order: historic NFL draft bust Ryan Leaf, model/female football player Brigid Mullen (link via The M Zone -- thanks, guys), ex-Phillies fatass/current "Best Damn Sports Show Period" co-host John Kruk, and current Carolina Panthers/ex-XFL star Rod "He Hate Me" Smart.

So there's mine. Who are yours? Post them on your own blog or in the comments below. In the meantime, I'm gone. Happy Memorial Day weekend.