Wherever there are people, there will be myths. That’s human nature for you.

Myths and urban legends are a part of daily life. It’s all around us, from stories of the Greek and Roman gods, to stories of wild gunfights in the old west. Many of these stories aren’t true, yet that doesn’t stop people from believing them. Myths hold a special place between fairy tales where people know they aren’t real, and conspiracy theories that could be real but have no credibility. At least if you think humans only have five senses or that gum stays in your stomach for seven years, many people will think you’re right.

Some of these myths, especially in sports, do hold even more interesting positions. They aren’t important enough to be widely discredited and they can be used to make people and teams we don’t like look bad, and people we do like look good. You think that “bloody” sock of Curt Schilling was real? Pfft. Or is that a conspiracy theory?

Either way, several myths persist in the world of sports and I’m taking it upon myself to disprove some of the wilder and more harmful ones. For example, did you know that, actually, no one on earth actually enjoys watching golf?

There are all kinds of conspiracy theories of teams or players throwing games, and of leagues rigging drafts. We’ll try not to focus too much on those or we’ll be here all day, but some of them are worth talking about. Instead, I’d like to focus on the fundamentals of what we believe in the sports world. Do college athletes really get full scholarships? Did the 1919 Chicago Black Sox really throw the World Series? Continue reading our list of the Top 20 Sports Myths That People Actually Believe to find out.

20 20. Athletes Make Good Role Models/Monstrous Villains 

There’s a long held belief that athletes make great role models. That, or they make great villainous figures for us all to boo and hiss. Both of these ideas are passed on to our kids and, more often than not, they listen to us.

Athletes are regular people, and unlike many actors or singers, they aren’t interested in sharing their personal lives and they aren’t interested in being looked up to. It's also guaranteed that at least 99% don’t want to be hated. All we ever know about many athletes is what they do on the field.

A few weeks ago, an angry pearl clutching mother wrote a newspaper in Charlotte in regards to Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton’s dance.

“Because of where we sat,” she wrote, “we had a close up view of your conduct in the fourth quarter. The chest puffs. The pelvic thrusts. The arrogant struts and the ‘in your face’ taunting of both the Titans’ players and fans. […] I refuse to believe you don’t realize you are a role model. You are paid millions of dollars every week to play hard and be a leader.”

As well as being totally false (there were no pelvic thrusts, nor did Newton ever taunt any fans), it goes to show how deluded some people can be. Cam Newton isn’t a role model. You said it yourself, he’s paid millions of dollars to play hard and be a leader. For his team. Not your child.

19 19. Athletes Are Overpaid 

Sticking with the angry mother for a moment, let’s look at that last line again. She specifically brings up how much money Can Newton makes, as if that justifies her complaint. Athletes have long dealt with the “overpaid” stigma hanging over their head. When they make a mistake, they’re told “you make millions of dollars to do one thing and you can’t get it right.”

The reality couldn’t be farther from the truth. Sticking with Cam Newton, he makes $20.76 million on average, per season. In a vacuum, that does admittedly sound like a lot to throw a ball around. But you need to take into consider what he means to the team. He’s a superstar, taking the team to 12-0 right now without anyone on offense to help him. If the Panthers didn’t pay him that much, someone else would have.

Oh, and the Carolina Panthers are worth an estimated $1 to $1.5 billion depending on your source. Even then, that’s 19th overall in the NFL, the most profitable sport in the country. To them, to the whole NFL, $20 million would be the equivalent to you or me buying a new TV. Yeah, it’s a bit pricey, but we can easily afford it and it’s a great investment.

18 18. Babe Ruth Was Fat and Ate Hotdogs During Games 

We don’t actually know a heck of a lot of Babe Ruth. He was pretty damn good, that much is for certain. For some reason, people got it in their heads that Babe Ruth was fat and lazy, and consistently chowed down on hot dogs and drank beer during games.

Babe Ruth wasn’t actually fat at all. In fact, he was one of only a few baseball players at the time who trained year round to play, because many players at the time worked full time jobs during the offseason. Ruth, and his big contract, was able to do things like weight training, which very few athletes did at the time anyway because no one thought it was relevant. That isn’t fat, it’s a combination of muscle and weirdly puffy pants he wore.

The Great Bambino was definitely a hard drinker, eater, smoker, and knew his way around a brothel, but there’s no evidence to suggest he ever drank or hammered down dogs during games. Smoke maybe, but that was before anyone knew cigarettes were burning sticks of death.

17 17. American Sports are Isolated 

This is more of a prevailing belief, if a reluctant one, than a myth. Looking at the world’s most popular sports, soccer, rugby, and cricket, makes the average American say “what?”

A recent report found that 28% of MLB players are foreign born, like Miguel Cabrera and Masahiro Tanaka. Basketball is starting to catch on as well. How often do we hear about washed up NBA players going to play ball in Europe or China? Most of us have probably heard that WNBA All-Star Brittney Griner makes way more playing in China than in the US. The US wins most of its Olympic games by at least 20 points, but many forget back in 2004 the US only won Bronze in the Athens Olympics.

And football? Well, that one’s a bit more regional. NFL Europe was a failure, but now that the NFL is playing sellout games in London, as well as expanding to Germany and even Mexico, proves that there is some interest around the world. And don’t forget about the Japanese, who formed the Japanese American Football League in 1934.

American sports might not be threatening the popularity of soccer, but our sports are definitely starting to catch on in the international arena.

16 16. The Infamous Doug Williams “Black Quarterback” Question 

There’s a popular myth that in 1988, Doug Williams, the first black quarterback to take his team to a Super Bowl (and would be the first to win a Super Bowl) was asked an… interesting question by a reporter before the game. “How long have you been a black quarterback?” is the myth, as if Williams used to be some other race and woke up one day with a different skin color.

There have been some legendarily dumb questions asked during Super Bowl media day, such as “what’s your favorite number from 1 to 100?” or “what do you do if you have to go to the bathroom [during a game]?” and my favorite, “This past year was the year of the booty. Which was your favorite booty?”

However, Michael Wilbon of the Washington Post recorded all the questions asked of Doug Williams. Every question was about race, some of which were overtly racist, but the infamous “how long have you been a black quarterback” was not among the list.

In truth, this is a case of a misunderstanding. The question actually was “Doug, obviously you've been a black quarterback your whole life. When did race begin to matter to people?” but Williams misheard him, thinking he asked “how long have you been a black quarterback” and responded to what he thought he heard.

15 15. Bobby Riggs Threw the Battle of the Sexes 

In 1973, Bobby Riggs, a retired star tennis player, was talking about how terrible women’s tennis was and that even in his old age he could beat women’s tennis’s biggest star, Billie Jean King. After a year of back and forth, a game was finally set up between the two and Riggs was the heavy favorite. It came as a shock that Billie Jean King won and her victory set up woman’s sports around the world.

However, people had a hard time believing this, because they believed that woman couldn't do anything other than make sandwiches. Something must have happened and that something is Bobby Riggs threw the match! People point to how Riggs didn’t “hustle” as much as he should have and that he beat another woman named Margaret Court (a future tennis Hall of Famer) just five months earlier.

The thing is, as well as equality for woman, there was a cash prize of $100,000 on the line for whoever won. After all the bragging and the massive cash payout, there’s no way Riggs would intentionally lose, for what? Making a woman he disliked look good?

It’s a shame people distrust the final result, because the idea of men competing against women is a fun idea. Who wouldn’t love to see Ronda Rousey Holly Holm beat the crap out of Floyd Mayweather?

14 14. Gladiators Fought to the Death 

Roman gladiator matches were the sport from around the 3rd century BC to around the year 400 AD. We have a very romantic idea of gladiators, fighting to the death before grand crowds in a time we couldn’t possibly understand, fighting just to stay alive while millions of people laughed and cheered the bloodshed. And also that Russell Crowe movie where’ he’s half naked the whole time.

It’s because of this movie actually that the myth of gladiators fighting to the death persists. In fact, gladiators very rarely ever killed one another. It was more of a wrestling match with swords and armor, where the fights were stopped once someone got too badly beat up. In the event of a long, drawn out fight, the matches were stopped and a draw was declared. Its estimated that only 1 in 5 or even 1 in 10 matches ended with death.

The only instances in which a gladiator was killed was by accident, or if they began losing too much and he was no longer worth keeping around.

You see, gladiators were very expensive to train, feed, equip, and house, and no one wanted waste thousands of denarius on people who were just going to die after one or two matches, then have to spend all that money again on the next man up.

13 13. MLB Commissioner Bud Selig Knew About Steroid Use 

The MLB was rocked by a player strike in 1994 that resulted in no playoffs being held in 1994, including no World Series. The strike was over in April 1995, but baseball’s popularity was destroyed by the lack of games and the ugliness of the fighting between the MLB and the Player’s Association. There were fewer watchers than ever and revenue was plummeting.

But then, in 1998, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa lit up the league, obliterating the previous home run record in a single year and racing each other for who would have the record. It went down as the greatest home run chase in the history of baseball because it was so exciting to watch.

The only slight problem was that they were both juicing with tenacity of a “detoxing” Hollywood wannabe. The claim is that Selig found out about their steroid use from drug tests and decided to not only not punish them, but to let them keep taking steroids. The reason? Because they were bringing back so many fans, thus digging the MLB out of its massive money and PR hole it found itself in.

12 12. Football Pads and Helmets do More Harm than Good 

This ridiculous myth has been getting a lot of traction lately with the number of concussions happening in the NFL. Mike Ditka was one of the first to suggest that football should be played without helmets, reasoning that without big massive slabs of plastic and padding on players heads will force them to be more careful and it would eliminate helmet to helmet hits.

Others have followed suit, including Hines Ward and even Dr. John York, chairman of the NFL Health and Safety Committee.

It’s hard to argue with a medical doctor unless his name is Carson, but the idea that helmets should be done away with is absurd. It’s true that the current helmets don’t do much for staving off a concussion, but they do help in other regards.

What really needs to be done is a combination of a redesign and the continued legislation on helmet to helmet hits. Some scientists have suggested that a softer helmet, one capable of absorbing blows, would be an ideal solution, much preferable to not protecting oneself at all.

11 11. Most Baseball Players Still Use Steroids 

Steroid use in baseball is a big problem, bigger than in any other sport. If you read entry #13, you have a good understanding of that. Steroid use was rampant in the sport in the US from the late 80s to the early 2000s. This period is called “the Steroid Era” and the fact that a whole era was named after it should point to how big a problem it is. Former Commissioner Bud Selig might not have been letting players dope, but he certainly wasn’t doing enough to combat it.

The Steroid Era is over, but a lot of players are still caught taking PEDs, such as Ryan Braun, Alex Rodriguez, Nelson Cruz, and Miguel Tejada, all huge stars in the game. This has created the perception that once again everyone in baseball is doping. People also point to the increased size of players and the sheer number of home-runs being hit these days.

The truth, there’s no evidence to suggest that doping is anywhere near as bad as it was even as recently as a decade ago. The fines and suspensions are too big now, especially with the risk of not getting into the Hall of Fame because of it. More home-runs are being scored because athletes in general in the modern day are better. They have better, more specialized training, and the rules have been shifted to increase scoring, because let’s face it, watching a guy throw a baseball back and forth without anyone hitting it is really boring.

10 10. The Story of Rudy 

Rudy Ruettiger, better known as simply Rudy in the film starring Sean Astin, is an inspiration to many in the sports world. He overcame his small size and dyslexia to play football at the prestigious Notre Dame. The only problem: his accomplishments are greatly over-embellished by the film and Rudy himself.

For starters, the only thing that kept Rudy from playing football was his small size. Rudy only played briefly in his senior season, three plays in all, and only recorded a sack late in the game. The sack didn’t even matter, as ND was winning 24-3, and it was the final play of the game.

What perpetuates the myth of Rudy so much is the film and its inaccuracies. As well as saying Rudy only played one play (which is wrong), it also shows the head coach of Notre Dame to be a villain. In the film, head coach Dan Devine refuses to put Rudy in the game because he’s dumb or something, and is only talked into it by the other coaches and players who love Rudy so much. In reality, it was Devine’s plan all along to play Rudy.

9 9. The 2012 NBA Draft was Rigged 

You can point to any draft in any sport and find plenty of people who believe it was a set up. In no other league are these conspiracy theorists louder than in the NBA, due to its ridiculous system for deciding the order in which teams select their picks.

The controversy comes in who won the #1 overall pick: the New Orleans Hornets, soon to become the Pelicans. “The Hornets,” you shout, “surely the NBA would give it to the Lakers or the Knicks.” Nope, it was given to the Hornets, clearly, because of the team’s new owner, Tom Benson.

The rumor goes that the NBA, who actually owned and operating the Hornets in 2011, were having trouble selling the team. In comes New Orleans Saints owner Tom Benson, who agreed to buy the Hornets on the condition that the team gets the #1 overall pick, so the rumor goes. The Hornets would use the pick on Anthony Davis, which they did, who was considered the next LeBron James.

8 8. Jimmy Hoffa is Buried Under Giants Stadium 

Jimmy Hoffa, a labor union leader now better known as an enigma, vanished off the face of the earth in July 1975. Given that he was 62 at the time, it’s a safe bet to say that he’s dead now. Oh, and also due to the fact that he was last seen alive meeting with mobsters.

Since his disappearance, Jimmy Hoffa’s body has become the real life love child of Carmen Sandiego and Waldo. One of the proposed places Hoffa could be buried was beneath Giants Stadium. Why Giants Stadium? Because why not? No one will ever find him and it’s fun to wildly claim we know where the body of a deceased loving father and husband was buried by murderous gangsters!

This myth has been so widespread that the popular Discovery show Mythbusters checked it out. They scanned below ground using subterranean radar and found no trace of human remains.

7 7. The Madden/Sports Illustrated Cover Curse 

We’ve all heard the stories by now. Sports Illustrated and the videogame Madden Football both regularly put athletes on their covers. The myth goes that there’s a curse on both of these outlets and that whatever an athlete is on them will have a bad year, or a bad game, or their team will lose a lot, or they’ll get injured.

The Sports Illustrated curse has died down a bit over the years, but its origins begin way back in the first issue in 1954, when Braves star Eddie Mathews broke his hand shortly after becoming the first cover athlete.

The Madden curse is much more known and seems a lot more believable. Going as far back as the game released, whoever had the misfortune of going on the cover has suffered mightily. In 2005, Donovan McNabb made the cover. The previous year he made the Pro Bowl and took the team to the Super Bowl. The year he was on the cover, he missed seven games due to injury, had his famous spat with Terrell Owens, and never reached the same level. There’s a long list of athletes going back over a decade, you should check this one out yourself if you haven’t heard of it before.

6 6. The 1936 Olympics Were a Disaster for Nazi Germany 

Hitler was bad, the worst person to ever walk the face of the earth in fact. I just want to make my (and The Sportster's) position perfectly clear for this one.

The 1936 Olympics were held in Berlin, just three years before the start of World War II. The ’36 Olympics are famous for Jesse Owens, an African American dominating the Olympics. The myth goes that Hitler, noted racist and horrid piece of excrement, was so angry that a black man dominated the Olympics that he refused to shake his hand and got so angry with the Olympic Committee he refused to participate in the rest of the games in any capacity. There’s also a prevailing belief that the German people booed Owens and there were several death threats against him.

It’s just that… none of it’s true. Hitler didn’t shake Owens hand, but not because he was black. The Olympic Committee told Hitler, just like the leader of any host nation, to be neutral, to shake the hands of every winner or none at all, not just Germans. This angered Hitler, so he chose to shake no one’s hand. The crowd didn’t boo either, in fact, Owen’s biographer, William Baker, says that Owens got the biggest ovation of his career when he won gold.

5 5. A Soccer Game Started a War 

“The Football War” as it’s been dubbed, was a war between El Salvador and Honduras that lasted four days in July 1969. It got the moniker because it allegedly started after an intense 1970 World Cup qualifier between the two countries. Honduras won the game 1-0, but El Salvadorian fans insist the game was rigged, which it very well could have been given FIFA’s corruption scandals.

This myth has been perpetuated by writers and journalists for decades, yes, including myself. However, the war was not started over a soccer game.

No one is here to hear to read about geo-political conflicts of the late 70s, but it essentially boiled down to Salvadorians pouring into neighboring Honduras seeking a better life by the hundreds of thousands. Much of the land was owned by American fruit companies which pressured the Honduran government into forcing out the Salvadorans who were taking land.

After years of rising tension, the July 1979 World Cup qualifier match between the two countries erupted in violence, with fans storming the field and people dying to irrational mobs. This prompted El Salvador to take military action against Honduras, as they used the bloody brawl as an excuse to invade.

4 4. The Chicago Cubs Billy Goat Curse 

Just as this list could be filled with supposedly rigged drafts, it could also be full of “curses” placed on terrible teams. The most famous curse involves the Chicago Cubs.

The story goes that the team was cursed after the owner of the Billy Goat Tavern, Billy Sianis, was kicked out of the 1945 World Series held at Wrigley Field. The reason why he got kicked out? He brought his pet goat with him and its smell was bothering other fans. The Cubs ended up losing the 1945 World Series and haven’t played in one since, and haven’t won one since 1908.

The story is true to some degree. There was definitely a man who brought his goat to the game, but some reports vary on whether or not he was allowed in. The curse itself is also up for dispute. Some claim Sianis simply said “Them Cubs, they ain’t gonna win no more,” while others claim he actually sent a telegraph to the Cubs owner reading:

“You are going to lose this World Series... You are never going to win a World Series again because you insulted my goat.”

3 3. Ali’s Phantom Punch 

The first fight between Sonny Liston and Muhammad Ali launched Ali into fame. Back then, he was still known as Cassius Clay. It was the rematch between Liston and Ali that had the world calling fowl.

Midway through the first round of the rematch, held on May 25th 1965, Ali threw a standard punch, hitting Liston in the face. Liston went down, was knocked out, and Ali won yet again. However, even back then, something seemed off to the those in the stands and everyone watching at home. The punch thrown by Ali didn’t connect, it didn’t even come close.

Ali thought Liston was faking, standing over him and yelling “get up and fight, sucker!” The referee of the match didn’t count Liston down, as he was also confused as to what happened. After several seconds, the time keeper rushed into the ring and said that Liston was down for more than ten counts, but by then Liston was up and the two started fighting again. Fans started booing, yelling “fix,” but the match was over nonetheless.

Many claim that Liston owned mobsters money and not wanting to be buried under Giants Stadium, he bet against himself and took a dive.

2 2. Michael Jordan’s Year Long Suspension 

What? You didn’t know Jordan got suspended for a year?

It's become popular belief that Jordan got a yearlong suspension from NBA commissioner David Stern in 1993 for his gambling problem. Jordan was only 30 years old at the time and just won three championships in a row. But his gambling problems, including betting on NBA teams and his own team, forced Stern to ban him for a year.

However, Jordan’s name was too big. Stern was afraid of forever ruining Jordan’s reputation, much like Pete Rose, and end up bringing down the NBA as well. So, Stern allowed Jordan to pretend to take an early retirement, let him save face by pretending to pursue a career in baseball and come back a year later to dominate the sport.

When Jordan did come back, he won three more championships in a row.

1 1. College Athletes Are Always Given Full Scholarships 

The biggest myth in sports is the one brought out whenever there’s talk of paying college athletes. “They already get paid full scholarships,” is the usual line parroted by people who never bothered to do any research of their own.

In reality, there’s a lot of moving parts to college scholarships. The first thing is that the chances of getting a scholarship is super rare. Yes, all the big names get one, but while those big name athletes get all the headlines, the majority of college athletes have to pay their own way. On average, only 2% of high school students get a scholarship and, even then, it’s generally for about $11,000.

Then there are the so called “head-count sports,” the sports where athletes are given a full ride scholarship or none at all. These sports include football, men’s and women’s basketball, gymnastics, volleyball, and tennis. Notice baseball, golf, and soccer aren’t on that list? The athletes in these “head-count” sports get a 100% full ride or not a single penny.

Then there are injuries. If a student athlete is injured the school isn’t required to pay for the medical care. At the University of Maine for example, the athlete is responsible for the first $10,000 in deductibles and co-payments. Not to mention the athlete is on the hook if the injury persists after they graduate.

This myth that a majority of student athletes are already getting paid is patently false when you look at the numbers.