The Boston Red Sox are Sports Illustrated's Sportsmen of the Year. "Collectively, the Sox were Sportsmen in the truest sense -- professional, collegial, colorful athletes who were easy to root for," explains SI. My nominees for the FlynnFiles Unsportsman of the Year are Mike Danton of the St. Louis Blues, Boxer James Butler, and MC Artest of the Indiana Pacers. The scale of their offenses differ, but their impact on their collective sports is the same: ten good guys can't undo the negative coverage of one bad guy.

Pat Tillman should have been sportsman of the year.

Red Sox suck.

I disagree with Danton. His case is actually one that is extremely sad. While he did something horrible - plan the murder of someone who controlled and manipulated the young man, essentially stealing the boy from his family at a young age - I do not put what he did anywhere on the same scale as what Artest did. Danton has a mental problem, one caused by the manipulation and deception of his former agent. Artest is just plain crazy. Artest jumps into the stands, albiet provoked by a beer being thrown at him, and beats up a bunch of fans. Danton plans the murder of his former agent, and doesn't actually get a chance to complete it. To be honest, I don't think Danton's actions caused much negative impact to the sport of hockey. At least, in Canada it didn't.

I don't follow ice hockey, so I don't know who Mike Danton is, and have never heard of him. But if he planned a murder, how is that worse than Artest? Artest merely hit someone. Assualt & battery can't be considered worse than murder or attempted murder.

The issue, IMO, comes down to state of mind. To me, Danton suffered from the equivalent of battered wife syndrome (well, to a lesser extent). He was abused mentally by his former agent, led to believe that his parents were against him, severed all ties with his family at the age of 14 or 15 to live with his former agent. Finally, after years of abuse at the hands of this man, Danton plotted to have him murdered to rid him of this poison that continually abused him.

Artest attacked a fan b/c the fan threw beer at him. To me, the two issues pale in comparison. The Danton issue is more then just physical violence (attempted or not). This has more to do with a person's mindset, the emotional and mental control Danton's former agent had over him. Read more here: http://www.cbc.ca/sports/indepth/danton/

I still don't buy it. Danton was a professional athlete, well able to take care of himself physically. Comparing him to a victim of battered wife syndrome wherein a woman's only recourse to her physically abusive husband is justifiable homocide is crazy.

The relationship between a professional athlete and his agent is a contractual one. It is not marriage, and it is easy to dissolve. It requires having the guts to stand up to your agent and tell him it is over. It does not require murder, and no amount of anguish caused by the athlete-agent relationship can reasonably be compared to that of battered wife syndrome.