By Drew Magary
GQ.com

Any magazine can do a year-end list of influential people who have accomplished far more than most of us ever will. But only GQ possesses the iron testicles to count down the twenty-five least significant men and women of 2012 -- a collection of people so uninspiring that we should round them all up and stick them on an iceberg. Please note that these folks are ranked in no particular order, because all zeros are created equal.

Here are the sports representatives:

Least Influential People Of 2012 Slideshow

 

Dwight Howard

Congratulations, Dwight! You're a Laker now. And all you had to do to become one was spend months making vague demands of the Orlando Magic and then backtracking on those demands until every American hated your guts and wanted to see you fail. "I'll stay in Orlando if you fire my coach! Or maybe I won't. Or maybe you could fire the coach and then build a statue of me made out of frozen butter. NO WAIT TRADE ME TO BROOKLYN NO WAIT DON'T TRADE ME THERE BECAUSE I THOUGHT BROOKLYN WAS MORE CONVENIENT TO MANHATTAN THAN IT ACTUALLY IS." In a just world, Dwight Howard will hurt his knee and doctors will take seventeen months to make a proper diagnosis.

 

Ryan Lochte

The individual-medley-of-douchiness world record was shattered this year by Lochte, the U.S. swimmer who managed to increase the Ashton Kutcher-ness of the London Games by 80 percent. Lochte would have been far more influential if he'd come in dead last. That way, American fathers could have turned to their sons and said, "You see? This is what happens to you when you buy American-flag mouth grills and act like a dipshit." There will always be a place on this list for the man who invented the catchphrase Jeah!

 

Gregg Williams

he disgraced former NFL defensive coordinator -- the man who pioneered the New Orleans Saints' bounty program -- is the rare person stupid enough to deserve being scapegoated. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell needed a proper villain to make sure that fans thought the violence inherent in football was actually the work of a few rogue actors, and Williams played the role perfectly by putting his bounty system into PowerPoint and ordering his charges to "kill the head" of opposing players. What a moron. Also, no grown man would ever be inspired by the following actual Gregg Williams motivational slogans: "Respect/Fear!!!" "This isn't even shooing the chicken." "Bus your trays back to the cafeteria!"

 

Jerry Sandusky's Lawyer

Let us take a stroll through the razor-sharp legal mind of Joe Amendola: "I know! I'll have my client go on national TV prior to his trial to be grilled by Bob Costas so we can all witness him declare, ‘I enjoy young people,' after searching blankly for the proper response to the question ‘Are you sexually attracted to young boys?' as if Costas just asked him where he put his car keys. How can this possibly go wrong?"

 

Lance Armstrong

Every year brings new and incontrovertible evidence that Lance Armstrong is the polar opposite of the inspiring legend he was once made out to be. It's like peeling back the layers of an onion that's nestled inside an asshole. Just this year, Armstrong dropped his fight against the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency in the most dickish and self-delusional way possible ("There comes a point in every man's life when he has to say, ‘Enough is enough' "), then got fired by Nike and his own Livestrong charity. Also, Outside magazine found that Livestrong "donates almost nothing to scientific research." I put nothing past him anymore. By 2014, I expect him to be charged with supplying elephant growth hormone to Roger Clemens and orchestrating the civil war in Syria.

 

Bobby Valentine

The Boston Red Sox jettisoned manager Terry Francona -- who only won two World Series for his famously cursed franchise -- in favor of Valentine, a man whose greatest accomplishment in baseball remains wearing a fake-mustache disguise to sneak back into the dugout after getting ejected from a game. Bobby V immediately obliterated the Sox, somehow dividing the clubhouse even further less than a year after the Sox had bickered their way to one of sports history's all-time great collapses. He called his own third baseman a head case, allegedly got caught napping on the job, and capped off the year by calling his team "the weakest roster we've ever had in September in the history of baseball." Bobby, in your incapable hands, any roster is the weakest roster in baseball.

 

James Dolan

I don't understand what possesses the James Dolans and Donald Sterlings and Dan Snyders of the world to exhaust every way to get everyone to hate their guts. Is that rewarding? Is the Knicks owner even human? Does he have some kind of "stubborn #$%^" gene that the rest of us lack? Maybe Dolan will invite us to his secret daily lunch with Isiah Thomas and clue us in.

 

Hulk Hogan

When I was a kid, I wanted to be just like Hulk Hogan. Funny how getting caught banging his best friend's wife on tape and then finding out that his best friend was allegedly the one taping it has now diminished my admiration.

previous next

For the complete list of
The Least Influential People
Of 2012,
go to
the full slideshow on
GQ.com.

More From GQ:
-- GQ's Sexiest Women Of 2012
-- A GQ Tailgating Guide
-- The GQ Guide To Suits

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter to read them first!