Still dazed and confused after his June 8 loss to Lennox Lewis, former heavyweight champion -- and one-time resident of the federal penal system -- Mike Tyson thought that maybe it was time to fade away into "Bolivian" (we figure that's some combination of oblivion and Bolivia). We'll pony up the airfare if Iron Mike will just go there -- wherever "there" is -- forever. But why stop with the Sweet Science's undisputed menace to society? We asked a batch of SI writers to sound off on who they wish would join Tyson in Bolivian. Read their thoughts, then click here to see a photo gallery of the folks you picked to get lost.

Dispatching Richard Williams to Bolivia would hardly constitute a Napoleonic banishment. After all, Williams already owns a seat on the South American stock exchange, the air rights over La Paz and untold acres of lucrative alpaca farms in the Andes. At least that’s what he’s likely to tell us. Williams pere deserves credit for the way in which his daughters, Venus and Serena, have come to dominate tennis, all the while remaining so self-possessed. But that hardly absolves Richard of his manifold sins: the pathological lying -- say, whatever happened to that bid to buy Rockefeller Center, anyway? -- the race-baiting, the denigrating of other players on the WTA Tour and, above all, the alleged domestic violence against his estranged wife Oracene. As his antics, once amusing, have worn threadbare, it’s become readily apparent that Williams is less a genius than just another in the long line of offensive tennis dads. So too is it clear that his daughters have succeeded as much in spite of him as because of him.
-- Jon Wertheim

10 to Toss SI's Jeff Pearlman weighs in with a Top 10 list of not-so-lovable sports figures to forget 1 George Steinbrenner With Mark Cuban around, no need for arrogant, know-it-all, old-money blowhard. 2 Mark Cuban With George Steinbrenner around, no need for arrogant, know-it-all, new-money blowhard. 3 The Baha Men I wake up, I hear Who Let The Dogs Out? I fall asleep, I hear Who Let The Dogs Out? Kill them. Or me. Please. 4 Don King Here's my secret fantasy No. 1: Me, Don King, a muzzle, a cattle prod and my head shaver. 5 Patrick Ewing 11-time All-Star, 11-time jerk. Even in your heyday, you were never nice to us (fans, media, etc.). It's payback time. 6 Evander Holyfield Amazing. Jesus tells most people to help the poor, love their enemies and go to church a couple times a month. He seems to have told Evander to father a small army of children by several women, buy a ridiculous mansion, pay Don King and fight until he drools like my grandpa. 7 Bill Parcells Here's my secret fantasy No. 2: "And now, the coach of yoooouuuuuuurrrrr Iowa Barnstormers ..." 8 Mia Hamm Checklist: Personality: Nope. Affability: Nope. Post '98 Accomplishments: Nope. Nomar: Yup. 9 Barry Bonds Don't believe everything you see. 10 Shawn Bradley Granted, it's always a pleasure to watch mediocre NBA journeymen slam over the Mavericks’ beanpole center. But does Bradley contribute to the game in any way that a cardboard cutout of Abe Lincoln couldn't?

Bolivia is lovely this time of year, just the sort of sylvan spot where NHL commissioner Gary Bettman and NHL Players Association executive director Bob Goodenow can sit down, share a pot of locally grown cocoa -- no Starbucks here -- and get down to talking about a new collective bargaining agreement. The current one doesn't expire until Sept. 15, 2004, but it is never too early to start negotiating, especially considering there is not one person in hockey who is optimistic that a work stoppage can be averted. Have fun, guys. We’ll be sending you down on a one-way ticket; if you reach an agreement, we will be happy to fly you back -- business class.
-- Michael Farber

Let’s ship out those idiotic corporate chieftains who, contractually, must be interviewed at the end of golf tournament broadcasts by suck-up TV talking heads. Steve Melnyk actually said a couple weeks ago, "Here are two men who need no introduction. Phillip Wise, marketing director of ..." These guys totally need an introduction, which is why we shouldn't ever have to hear from them.
-- Jack McCallum

Aside from generating mistrust, animosity and weighty legal fees across the league, has Al Davis done anything good for the NFL lately? In the last 20 years he has perpetrated civic blackmail up and down the state of California, stabbed his fellow owners in the back and clogged the courts with lawsuits. In one of his more recent forays into court, Davis sued Oakland’s Network Associates Coliseum for failing to fill the house for every home game as promised, a situation that is in part his own doing. When Davis originally spurned Oakland for Los Angeles in 1982 -- something he may yet do again -- a lot of diehard Raiders fans joined the 49ers’ faithful. Before the citizens of the East Bay empty the public coffers just to get their hearts broken again, Just-win-baby Al needs to just go away.
-- Kelli Anderson

“When you leave all the doors unlocked and the windows open in the summer, some of the wrong people will get in the house.” That’s what George Raveling, then the basketball coach at USC, said in 1991 about the NCAA’s summer recruiting period. After years spent criticizing that process as a member of the National Association of Basketball Coaches board of directors, Raveling is now director of grass-roots hoops at Nike, where his primary job is to make sure the doors stay unlocked and the windows remain open. Nike’s battle with Adidas for the hearts and soles of today’s top teenagers is indeed a pox upon college basketball’s house, and while his doppelganger at Adidas, Sonny Vaccaro, is equally culpable, at least Vaccaro is honest about his desire to beat the Swoosh. Raveling, however, still insists he just wants to help the sport and the poor young men who play it, even after it was revealed that he sent money to the mother of schoolboy star Amare Stoudemire while she was in jail in hopes of luring her son to Nike’s All-America camp. Raveling is also the genius who doled out a six-figure budget to Myron Piggie to run an AAU team in Kansas City, despite the fact that Piggie was a convicted crack dealer and gun felon. If they have an opening at the Ministry of Hypocrisy down there in Bolivia, then Raveling should be considered the leading candidate to fill it.
-- Seth Davis

Tom Benson, boogie on down: Before your New Orleans Saints win another game -- hell, before any of your dealerships sell another minivan -- I’m shipping you off to the Bolivian jungle, where you can try your penny-pinching, no-people-skills, two-faced act on some beasts who don’t have to call you boss. What in the name of voodoo are you thinking? After years of delusional devotion to Mike Ditka and Bill Kuharich, you luck into GM Randy Mueller and coach Jim Haslett, whose fresh leadership propels the ’00 Saints to the NFC West title and a playoff victory over the Rams. But instead of extending their cut-rate contracts, you wait a year. Then, after a disappointing 7-9 season, you make a bigger fool of yourself than you did during those Superdome sideline dance sessions. On May 9, after the bulk of offseason decisions had been made, you fire Mueller for, well, nobody knows why. This is the same guy you used to invite on boating outings and loan your private jet, and he has no idea what went down. Now, as you continue to lowball Haslett and demand a publicly financed new stadium, you are the biggest buffoon in a league full of them. So load up that plane, stop in Tampa to pick up Malcolm Glazer and his three sons, make room for 49ers owner Denise DeBartolo York and her power-drunk husband, John, and have a nice trip. My high school soccer coach, former Bolivian national teamer Jorge (Pici) Castro, and his merciless training regimen will be waiting for you down there.
-- Michael Silver

The best thing to be said for outgoing NCAA president Cedric Dempsey, I just did -- he's outgoing (and by that I don't mean he's a gregarious gladhander, though he may be). Dempsey extinguished morale in the NCAA's executive offices by ramming through an unpopular move from Overland Park, Kan. to Indianapolis in July 1999, causing a huge proportion of the organization's staff to quit. He presided over three high-profile embarrassments during his eight-year tenure: a loss in a court case involving payments to restricted-earnings coaches, a case that the NCAA by rights should have won; an oafish effort to purge college basketball of foreign players in the name of a spurious "amateurism"; and the promulgation of mixed messages on gambling (the NCAA deplored it even as several of its corporate partners promoted it). Finally, he did nothing to broker a truce in the Title IX wars that have non-revenue men's sports taking aim at women's sports while football gets fatter and sassier. He has been the emptiest of empty suits. But none of this should come as a surprise: Dempsey previously served as athletic director at Arizona, where the men's revenue sports had shameful graduation rates during his reign. That should have tipped us off that, as part of the problem, he wasn't likely to be part of any solution.
--Alexander Wolff

 

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