20 Sports Figures Who Need Their Own Reality Show

Professional athletes spend enough of their time on television and in the limelight of the public—but sometimes it's just not enough.

We cheer for some athletes because of their moves on the field. But sometimes their off-the-field lives are the most interesting.

The following is a run-down of the 20 sports figures we just can't get enough of on the field or in the gym and would love to see mic'd up and unfiltered on reality television. 

Ndamukong Suh

Show Title: Tangling With the Devil

Notorious for his on-field antics—and by on-fields antics I mean battery and attempted sack-gouging—Ndamukong Suh would make an excellent fit for a rough-and-tumble reality show.

One can picture Suh doing something like a Dancing With the Stars gig, but instead it’s called Tangling With the Devil, and contestants compete to stay alive for a half hour on a stage with Suh, who chases them around while the song “Yakety Sax” plays.

McKayla Maroney

Show Title: Life After London

Considering she has plenty of time until the 2016 Summer Olympics in Brazil and is already open to the idea of being on TV, McKayla Maroney is an ideal candidate for reality television.

She has got the attitude that could land her a prime spot on a dramatic reality program like The Hills, where her inability to be impressed will really click with the cast and viewers.

Cristiano Ronaldo

Show Title: Ridiculously Ronaldo

Cristiano Ronaldo is a ridiculously good soccer player, a ridiculous flopper and ridiculous chick magnet.

Ridiculously Ronaldo would be a reality television show of fast-cars, hot women and presumably a nauseating tag-line like “That’s ridiculously Ronaldo!”

People would love it, and society’s moral fabric would tear just a little bit further.

Bob Knight

Show Title: What Not to F*ing Wear

Like most of his media interviews, Bob Knight’s reality show would require a late night showtime and an ace of a trigger man on the “bleep” button.

What Not to F*ing Wear would feature The General giving life-transforming makeovers to hopelessly out-of-style men and women and providing them with valuable fashion tips such as “Red sweaters are the new black” and “Get your head out of your (bleep).”

Jay Cutler

Show Title: J-Cutty: I Love Chicago

Jay Cutler loves Chicago, and Chicago loves him back—for now.

Cutler’s reality show would follow the Bears quarterback into Chi-Town for a quiet Saturday in the park of solemn and total appreciation from fans.

Camera crews will catch the majestic sight of Cutler enjoying a cigarette by the Bean, along with the quarterback finishing three quarters of an Italian beef sandwich before indigestion forces his back-up quarterback Jason Campbell to take over.

Greg Jennings

Show Title: With the Team On Your Back

As evidenced in his recent Old Spice commercials, Greg Jennings is an excellent motivational speaker.

Which is why the world needs With the Team On Your Back—a show where “Dr. Jennings, Psychiatrist-At-Law,” juggles burning chessboards while helping his troubled patients parse out life’s greatest mysteries.

David Beckham

Show Title: America’s Next Beckham

Now that he’s planning to leave the MLS, David Beckham needs to find someone to fill in for his spot on the Los Angeles Galaxy roster. 

Modeled after the reality show The Apprentice, contestants on America’s Next Beckham will compete in a variety of challenges testing their free kicking and hair-disheveling skills, all while Beckham sits atop a throne shouting “You can never be me!”

Brian Wilson

Show Title: The Machine & I

Brian Wilson is an American treasure and hero, and he throws heat.

He also throws monster 80s parties and hangs out with a guy who interrupts interviews in a gimp suit and goes by “The Machine.” 

America wants to see Wilson and the Machine rage—right now.

Dario Franchitti

Show Title: Dario Drift

Indy Car driver. Three-time Indianapolis 500 Champion. Husband to actress Ashley Judd.

Life could be worse for Dario Franchitti. 

Reality television always has room for a charming guy with a Scottish accent (nope, he's not Italian) and a celebrity wife. It's television gold.

Michael Jordan

Show Title: Breaking Jordan

Who would not want to follow Michael Jordan around for a day? 

Personalized private jets. Conspiracy theories. High stakes golf. Oh, and the fact that he’s Michael Jordan.

Few athletes are more shrouded in more greatness and mystery than His Airness.

Chances are most of America would suffer through endless commercial breaks just for the chance to watch Jordan wait around at the DMV.

Metta World Peace

Show Title: Cake Boss?

Stay with me on this one, because I know Metta World Peace doesn’t seem like the culinary type.

But the Player-Formally-Known-As-Ron-Artest is highly unpredictable, and most of the time no one knows what he’s going to do.

He might talk about baby teeth and God to reporters, or he might punch a fan in the face.

That’s where Cake Boss? comes in, with emphasis on the question mark. In Cake Boss?, Metta World Peace shows viewers how to bake delicious pastries at home and explains his unique world views to the studio audience. 

Each episode the audience feels a strange and ominous tension build as they sit and wonder, “This is going to turn ugly, but I don't know when.”

Jonathan Vilma

Show Title: Jon the Bounty Hunter

With Dog the Bounty Hunter cancelled, a huge vacuum has opened in the television market for middle-aged crazy people who enjoy hunting down their fellow man and hurting them for money.

Round up the enforcers and get Gregg Williams in the Denali, Vilma. It’s time for you and the free market to fill this void.

Usain Bolt

Show Title: Lightning Bolt

The ridiculous poses, the adopting of a cheetah and living in a “frat house” with his buds back in Jamaica on Hope Road near Bob Marley’s old home—Usain Bolt’s life was meant to be filmed.

Mario Balotelli

Show Title: Why Always Me?

When you’re evacuating your house after letting fireworks off in your bathroom and having alleged run-ins with the mafia, it’s time to pursue your real lot in life and get on television.

Mario needs to stop trying to convince the media he’s not crazy and start attempting to monetize the fact.

Rob Gronkowski

Show Title: Keeping Up With the Gronks

The Gronk knows three things in this life, and they are football, females and Gronk-ing out. 

Now, I don’t know exactly know what Gronk-ing could all entail, but I do know that if you put Rob Gronkowski on camera with the four other Gronkowski brothers, it will happen.

And it will be glorious.

Jon Gruden

Show Title: Shut Up and Listen

Between his coaching experience and his show Jon Gruden’s Quarterback Camp, Gruden is a tough talent judge, which is a must-have for about half the reality television shows out there these days. 

It’s time for Gruden to recruit the nation’s best singers and dancers and make those pansies sweat like he did Blaine Gabbert.

Tiger Woods

Show Title: Just Got in Town, Sup Girl?

It’s pretty obvious Tiger Woods would make a perfect candidate for the TV show The Bachelor.

Lord knows, he has the pool of participants from which to draft.

Except Tiger’s The Bachelor would be called Just Got in Town, Sup Girl? and at the end of every season no one gets clingy and he erases all their numbers.

Hope Solo

Show Title: The Biggest Fatty-Fat-Fat

While Hope Solo might be too intense for Dancing With the Stars, I believe she would be the perfect person to scream-guilt America into burning a few pounds of cheesy tots off its collective gut.

If anyone could get this country in shape enough to water their front lawn in the nude like she did (please, no one do this), it would be Solo.

Paul Bissonnette

Show Title: The Great BizNasty

Controversial tweets. Partying in Vegas. Hot dime wearing shirts with his face on them.

Paul Bissonnette might have been too hot for Twitter to handle, but the Phoenix Coyote’s young homeless person-loving enforcer was practically born for cable television greatness.

Any pro athlete who can love those less fortunate than him and still crank off tweets about his father’s body looking like a “bag of milk” deserves a show more than anyone on Jersey Shore. 

Tim Tebow

Show Title: The Sexorcist

Whether you like him or not, right now Tim Tebow is more or less a $3 million human space-heater on the New York Jets sideline. 

So what to do if you’re Tebow’s agent?

You tell your client it’s time to combine his love of God with those drop-dead baby blue eyes and start filming The Sexorcist—a reality show where a shirtless Tim Tebow comes to the home of people possessed by the devil and seduces the Beast from them with a series of steamy sermons and vulnerable press interviews. 

I can already see it now.

The Sexorcist: All faith. No shirts.