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We already mentioned McLaren's ridiculous hypocrisy about team orders last year, citing the 2008 German Grand Prix, where then-McLaren driver Heikki Kovalainen was ordered to let Lewis Hamilton pass him. Hamilton won the title that year, and in 2010, told the BBC that there are no team orders at McLaren, and:
"I personally would not want to win the championship other than by winning it fairly."
Hamilton won the 2008 world championship by one point. Arguably, had Heikki not let him past at Hockenheim, he wouldn't have won that race, and that might have cost him the championship. There is, of course, the additional matter of the incident at Singapore; had the results been amended and Alonso disqualified, as he should have been, Massa would be world champion.
I don't generally like these kinds of what ifs, but I like hypocrisy even less. So given that Lewis's championship stands on the Singapore incident and the team order at Hockenheim, we're still waiting for him to relinquish his world championship.
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Another excellent candidate would be Milan Lucic, whom I've previously maligned on this blog. Earlier this fall, he hit Sabres goaltender and reigning Olympic MVP Ryan Miller, who's been out since with a concussion.
Lucic still isn't much of a tough guy. While visiting NESN, Don Cherry called Milan Lucic "a disgrace to the Bruins" for hiding behind the linesmen in a fight:
It's priceless how uncomfortable Mike Milbury is. Last season, Lucic punched Atlanta's Freddy Meyer while he was being restrained by a linesman, keeping up the trend. In addition to being a dirty player in general and having been suspended by the league before, Lucic deliberately hit Miller and only got a two-minute penalty for charging. There's fairly wide consensus that he sohuld have got a five-minute major and a suspension, but NHL disciplinarian Brendan Shanahan dropped the ball and, incredibly, said he believed Lucic's ridiculous lie that he didn't hit Miller on purpose.
As TSN's Dave Hodge said, "in the end, it was easier for Lucic to avoid a suspension than to avoid Miller because he tried to avoid a suspension." Because of his behavior in general and the incredible hypocrisy of claiming he tried to avoid Miller, it would be tempting to give this one to Lucic.
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Neither of them, however, win the award this year. In fact, this year the Brooks Orpik Hypocrisy Award returns to its roots in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And we're going after the cigarette-smoking Next One himself.
Over the past year, no single instance of ridiculous hypocrisy has struck us as more over-the-top and sanctimonious than Mario Lemieux's diatribe against fighting. You can read the whole thing here. He was supposedly so disgusted that the New York Islanders got into fights with his Pittsburgh Penguins that he contemplated leaving hockey. This from the man whose organization employs one of the dirtiest players in the NHL, Matt Cooke, and the guy whose back-breaking antics brought about this very award. Also, his team was tied for second place for most fighting majors in the NHL regular season that year. So apparently, in Super Mario's books, his team gets to fight as much as they like and go headhunting for their opponents' stars, but when others do it, it makes Baby Mario cry. Disgusting.
So the runaway winner this year is Mario Lemieux, of the Pittsburgh Penguins.
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The Brooks Orpik Hypocrisy Award is given by the writers of this blog to the athlete who makes the most preposterously hypocritical comment of the year.
Previous winners:
2010 - Lewis Hamilton, Vodafone McLaren Mercedes, F1
2009 - Brooks Orpik, Pittsburgh Penguins, NHL
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