Best and Worst Attempts at Gamesmanship

In sports, someone is always looking for an edge—for some weakness to exploit and gain the upper hand. The tactics behind the strategy can be physical, psychological, schematic or something else altogether. Call it gamesmanship.

Gamesmanship is what a player or coach does to go beyond the game plan and get the other team off its game. Sometimes the way it’s done is itself brilliant, but gamesmanship can be a well-tread strategy that an individual has perfected into an art form.

When gamesmanship succeeds, it can be the stuff of legends; when it fails, it can become an epic cautionary tale. Often, there are contrasting examples of gamesmanship that show how it is and isn’t done—these can even be two opposing perspectives of the same moment.

These are the best and worst attempts at gamesmanship.

Worst: Anthony Smith's Black and Gold Guarantee

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The problem with publicly guaranteeing your team is going to win a game is that it might not, despite the show of strength. The biggest problem with former Pittsburgh Steelers safety Anthony Smith’s guarantee—as a road showdown with the 12-0 New England Patriots loomed ahead—is that his team could not win.

Willfully supplying bulletin board material is high-risk gamesmanship (in the best of situations), but when Smith declared to the media, "People keep asking me if we're ready for the Patriots. They should be asking if they're ready for us," it was like the defensive back wanted to get torched by Tom Brady—which he did.

The Patriots destroyed the Steelers 34-13—an outcome that surprised almost no one—with Brady throwing four touchdowns and burning the secondary for 399 yards. Smith endured chants of “Gaur-an-tee” from the crowd and became a modern example of the perils of guaranteeing victory.

Best: Joe Namath Delivers

Associated Press

Hall of Fame quarterback “Broadway” Joe Namath’s guarantee that his underdog New York Jets would beat the vaunted Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III is one of those legendary NFL moments that makes pro football so compelling. However, his display of confidence would have been compelling for far different reasons if the Jets hadn’t beaten the Colts 16-7, but they did.

Namath didn’t walk away from his own words, continuing to play up his team’s chances to the press; at one point, he even had a run-in with Colts defensive end and field-goal kicker Lou Michaels at a night club.

Colts head coach Don Shula has said he felt confident the Colts defense could handle Broadway Joe, so hearing about the young quarterback’s comments leading up to the game surely convinced him that his squad would be more than ready.

But Namath backed up the talk, while the heavily favored Colts committed five turnovers and failed to score until late in the fourth quarter.

Worst: Atlanta Falcons Pump in Crowd Noise

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Every NFL team wants to truly have home-field advantage when a visiting opponent takes the field, but one advantage expressly prohibited by the league is pumping in artificial crowd noise (dome teams especially benefit from such tactics). Though the Indianapolis Colts have never been officially punished for feeding crowd noise into the PA system, they’ve drawn plenty of suspicion. Call it gamesmanship on the edge.

The Atlanta Falcons, however, got caught using artificial crowd noise over the last two seasons, and it cost team president Ralph McKay the chairmanship on the NFL Competition Committee, a fifth-round draft pick in 2016 and a cool $350,000. Getting busted isn’t the worst part—the fact that the team went 6-10 at home over that span of time is.

Best: Seattle Seahawks' 12th Man

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One NFL franchise that has had no trouble creating a loud, raucous environment for visitors is the Seattle Seahawks. CenturyLink Field is considered one of the toughest places to win, and a huge part of it is the sheer volume of the crowd noise. The fans are so loud that during a game in 2005, the New York Giants committed 11 false starts and missed three field goals. An entity in itself, the home crowd earned the designation of The 12s.

And though several other franchises call their home crowd the 12th Man, there’s no doubt the Seahawks have a truly disruptive force in their home-field crowd.

Worst: Reggie Miller Talks Trash to Michael Jordan

Earlier this year on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, retired NBA Hall of Famer Reggie Miller—who lived to torment his opponents with trash talk—told a story (h/t For The Win) about when his Indiana Pacers played Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls during his rookie season in 1987.

A parable of sorts, or at least a good lesson about knowing the difference between gamesmanship and self-destruction, Miller decided to let the Michael Jordan know that he was less than impressed with No. 23’s four first-half-points (after scoring 10 himself).

Jordan dropped 40 on the Pacers in the second half, while Miller scored just two points. As they walked off the court at the end of the game, Jordan turned to Miller and said: "You never talk to Black Jesus like that."

Boom.

Best: Michael Jordan Talks Trash to Reggie Miller...and Everyone Else

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The worst moment for one person can sometimes be the best moment for another—that’s just the nature of life and, to an even greater extent, sports.

Such is the case of Reggie Miller’s decision to use words to poke at a hornet’s nest called Michael Jordan. Trash talk is only as powerful as the ability of the trash-talker to back it up, and in the case of His Airness, any and all trash talk was underwritten by skills that would prove to be unprecedented on the court.

Jordan didn’t need to talk trash or engage in any other type of gamesmanship, but he did, and it is legendary. There was the blind free throw against the Denver Nuggets, a shrugging of the shoulders at the Portland Trailblazers' Clyde Drexler after draining a big three—the list goes on and on...and it’s spectacular.

Worst: Playing Fart Noises During the Visitors' Batting Practice

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You have to hand it to the Miami Marlins: When you’re fighting for last place in the division and spending the least amount of money, per Spotrac, on people who play baseball, you have to try something to gain the upper hand (if pitching and hitting aren't an option). And when the Washington Nationals came to town in July, that something was blasting fart noises—and later smooth jazz—over the stadium PA system during the visiting team's batting practice.

The stunt was likely revenge for the Nationals' shift from the typical pop and rock music played during their own batting practices at home to soft rock for the visiting club. Unfortunately for the home team, it was definitely annoying, but the Marlins still lost 7-2 and ultimately lost two out of three in the series.

Best: Performing the Haka Before Kickoff

Just before the first kickoff of a match, New Zealand’s national rugby union team, the All Blacks, engage in what is best described as choreographed terror.  Following the lead of the team captain, the All Blacks perform the Haka, which is a traditional dance of New Zealand’s Maori people.

As you can see in the clip above, the Haka isn’t 15 beefy men simultaneously breaking out into “The Running Man." Rather, it's a ritualistic display designed to freak everyone out.

The All Blacks have held the top spot in the Rugby World Cup Power Rankings for a decade. Obviously, great players and not the Haka are why New Zealand’s team has been so dominant. But imagine how intimidating it is to stand across (sometimes holding hands) from the players who comprise the rugby juggernaut as they slap the ground, scream and bug-out their eyes—moments before you’re expected to stop them from scoring.

As Dwight K. Schrute once remarked, “In the end, the greatest snowball isn't a snowball at all. It's fear.”

Best: Bill Belichick Goes on the Record About Freddie Mitchell

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Previously invisible Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver Freddie “Fred Ex” Mitchell followed up a solid 2005 NFC Championship victory against the Atlanta Falcons, which punched the Eagles' ticket to Super Bowl XXXIX against the New England Patriots, by saying this about his hands in the postgame presser: "I just want to thank my hands for being so great."

Well, Fred Ex was a non-factor in the biggest game of his career, as the Eagles fell to the Patriots 24-21. It was obvious his comments—including a few shots at the Patriots secondary in a TV interview—fired up Patriots coach Bill Belichick and motivated the rest of the team, because following the win, Belichick let loose while speaking to Sports Illustrated (via WEEI.com): "All he does is talk. He's terrible, and you can print that. I was happy when he was in the game."

Call it post-victory gamesmanship, because Mitchell’s career never recovered, though it never really was much of anything to begin with.

Worst: Wes Welker Pokes Fun at Rex Ryan

Former New England Patriots wide receiver Wes Welker must have been feeling good about his team’s chances in their 2011 AFC divisional playoff clash with the New York Jets, because there is no other explanation for why he would make such inflammatory remarks before a huge game.

Welker’s comments alluded to rumors about Jets head coach Rex Ryan and his wife strayed extraordinarily off the milquetoast company message, which Belichick’s players seem to so monolithically adhere to.

Not only was he admonished and forced to issue an apology, but it was followed by the exact result head coach Bill Belichick feared—the Jets beat the Patriots and moved on to the AFC Championship. That’s not gamesmanship; it’s nearly sabotage.

Worst: Kansas Jayhawks' 'Crimson Chrome' Uniforms

With the exception of the 2007 college football season when the Kansas Jayhawks went 12-1 under former head coach Mark Mangino and won the Orange Bowl, the Jayhawks have been terrible with intermittent moments of being average. The team hired Charlie Weis in 2011 to turn things around and...it didn’t exactly work out.

After winning four games in two seasons, the Jayhawks finally found a silver bullet for the school’s woes on the football field: brand-new uniforms for the 2014 season. Dubbed “Crimson Chrome,” the new unis didn’t just fail to energize the team (Weis was fired after just four games)—they also were hard to look at.

Best: Tennessee Volunteers' 2009 Halloween Jersey

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Former Tennessee Volunteers head coach (and serial sports villain) Lane Kiffin’s surprise debut of black jerseys for the team’s annual Halloween scrum with the visiting SEC East rival South Carolina Gamecocks may have been the highlight of his single-season cameo. The Gamecocks (6-2) entered the game ranked No. 21 by the AP and were favored against the unranked and struggling Volunteers (3-4).

But when the home team ran onto the field like so many orange and black cannonballs—the first time they had worn black since 1922—the crowd went nuts and instantly made the Volunteers seem meaner, faster and hungrier. The Gamecocks turned the ball over four times and were pasted 31-13 on national television.

On that night, something about those black and orange jerseys seemed to change the fortunes of the Volunteers and suck the life out of the Gamecocks.

Worst: Johnny Manziel's Hype in the NFL

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Johnny Manziel, like so many gifted athletes before him, seemed capable of supernatural quarterback play at the collegiate level. The confidence and edgy swagger he exuded—along with a few brush-ins with the NCAA—seemed to make his ability to almost single-handedly push his Texas A&M Aggies to improbable victories that much more special.

But like so many gifted athletes before him, the NFL has been a different story…at least after one season with the Cleveland Browns.

Before his first regular-season start against the Cincinnati Bengals late in the 2014 season, Johnny Football was mostly the same brash signal-caller, flashing his "money sign" (as well as a middle finger) in preseason games and showing no outward show of doubt in his ability to get the job done on Sunday. But after a dreadful performance in a 33-0 blowout at the hands of the Bengals, followed by a stint in rehab, it’s obvious the old magic isn’t working.

Best: Andrew Luck Thanks Defenders for Hitting Him

Ever since the Indianapolis Colts drafted quarterback Andrew Luck No. 1 overall in 2012, he has been every bit as good as his collegiate career portended. The NFL has rarely seemed too big and fast for the young star, and in his first three seasons under center, Luck has thrown for more yards than any other quarterback over the same span, according to Ashley Fox of ESPN.com. And he hasn’t just racked up impressive stats—he’s led the Colts to the postseason each of his three years in the NFL.

Beyond the size, arm and all the intangibles, Luck has also managed to freak out defenders trying to knock him out of the game by thanking them after getting planted in the turf. According to the Wall Street Journal's Kevin Clark (h/t Matthew Glenesk of the Indianapolis Star), pass-rushers such as Washington’s Ryan Kerrigan and the Eagles’ Connor Barwin have said it’s unsettling to hear and unprecedented.

Strike it up as another component of Luck’s game.

Worst: UFC Fighter Bethe Correia Goes There

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With a showdown against the seemingly unbeatable Ronda Rousey looming ahead in July, UFC Fighter Bethe Correia didn’t seem too concerned; in fact, she felt good enough about her chances to go there in comments about her opponent. In an interview with Portuguese-language website Combate (h/t MMA Junkie), the Brazilian challenger said that once Rousey realizes that winning is “not everything...I hope she doesn’t commit suicide [laughs].”

Maybe Correia didn’t intentionally bring up the specter of suicide when talking about a person whose father took his own life, but she did. Rousey was not too happy. And when you almost certainly won’t win before ticking off Ronda Rousey, you’re just shaving seconds off the amount of time the fight is going to last after you make that mistake.

Best: Chad Johnson Sends 'Gifts' to His Opponents Before Big Games

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Retired NFL wide receiver Chad Johnson has a habit—or maybe novel strategy—of sending gifts to his antagonists. Included in the list of those to receive an unexpected gift from the eccentric Johnson? The Baltimore Ravens secondary, including linebackers Ray Lewis and Terrell Suggs.

Ahead of a pivotal AFC North clash in 2009, when the wideout was a member of the Cincinnati Bengals, Johnson sent the Raven defensive backs gift packages and deodorant with the not-too-subtle insinuation that they "don't sweat."

At worst, it’s a goofy stunt that is not truly mean-spirited; at best, it throws off the Ravens defense just enough to gain an edge. It must have worked, because the Bengals prevailed 17-7.