When sports and reality TV intersect

The sports reality show gold standard. NFL Films and HBO debuted the series in 2001 with a splash by setting the first season in the training camp of the Baltimore Ravens, the reigning Super Bowl champions. With NFL Films running the show, it’s a top-notch production in every regard — from the game footage down to the individual stories of rookies, veterans and camp invitees desperately battling for one of the team’s final roster spots (spoiler: They almost always get cut). It can be difficult convincing teams to give close to unfettered access to “Hard Knocks,” but on the viewers’ end at least, the drama is always worth it.

Athletes have tripped the light fantastic (and not-so-fantastic) on "Dancing With the Stars" since the show’s debut in the summer of 2005. Evander Holyfield was the first sports great up and only made it to the second cut. But NFL Hall of Fame running back Emmitt Smith found a hole in the third season and ran all the way to first place with partner Cheryl Burke. Ten athletes have won the competition over the show’s 24 seasons.

"The Apprentice" introduced its “celebrity” format in 2008, and among the contestants were former heavyweight champ Lennox Lewis, gold medal-winning gymnast Nadia Comaneci, UFC brawler Tito Ortiz and softball pitcher Jennie Finch. Lewis made it 12 weeks before being fired, and to this date he’s probably fared the best of any athlete on this mercifully canceled show.

It’s a show about a dating service that caters to wealthy people. Of course, there are going to be famous professional athletes on it. NFL players like Marcellus Wiley and Jeff Ogden and NBA baller John Salley turned up in earlier seasons of the show, which introduced a celebrity format in its final season before becoming “Million Dollar Matchmaker” in 2015. Ogden, speed skater Allison Baver and UFC fighter Luke Rockhold participated in the celebrity season.

Retired athletes have found their way on to this long-running CBS reality show. Former Indianapolis Colts quarterback Gary Hogeboom (best known for crossing the picket line to play during the 1987 NFLPA strike) made it a respectable 30 days before getting voted out during the 2005 Guatemala season. Dallas Cowboys coach Jimmy Johnson gave it a go in the 2010 Nicaragua season but only lasted a paltry eight days. 2000 National League MVP Jeff Kent, former Atlanta Braves closer John Rocker and NBA player Cliff Robinson are some other athletes who’ve hit the island.

The “Real Housewives of Atlanta” is definitely the most athlete-centric show in the franchise. The series had Shereé Whitfield (ex-wife of former Falcon Bob Whitfield) and DeShawn Snow (NBA point guard Eric Snow’s ex-squeeze) from the start, then brought on NFL quarterback Kordell Stewart’s wife Porsha Williams in Season 5. Further down south on I-95, you had Scottie Pippen’s spouse Larsa and Glen Rice’s ex Cristy Rice on “Real Housewives of Miami,” while out west there was Jeana Keough (then married to, now divorced from retired Oakland A’s pitcher Matt Keough).

Alani “La La” Vazquez launched her career as a VJ on MTV’s “Total Request Live” and soon won the heart of the No. 3 pick in the talent-stacked 2003 NBA Draft, Carmelo Anthony. The Brooklyn-born personality made no secret of her desire to get her Brooklyn beau traded from the Denver Nuggets to New York City, and she got her wish in 2010 when the Knicks gutted their lineup to land Carmelo. “La La’s Full Court Life” began airing on the eve of his first Knicks season in 2011 and aired until 2014. If the show returns, it will have to be called “La La’s No-Court Life,” as the two are now separated and seemingly headed toward divorce.

Weirdo NFL wide receiver Chad Johnson was a natural for television even before he legally changed his name to Chad Ochocinco (after his “85” jersey number) in 2008. During the 2010 season, Johnson and his drama-queen WR teammate Terrell Owens hosted “The T. Ocho Show” on Versus (which is now NBCSN). The talk show format seemed tailor-made for the two extroverts, but it was utterly unwatchable for the one season it aired. Johnson’s football career flamed out soon after.

Years before Dennis Rodman became the United States’ unofficial goodwill ambassador to North Korea, the NBA Hall of Famer hosted “The Rodman World Tour” on MTV. The show featured Rodman interviewing celebrities from his bed, hanging out with rock stars like Henry Rollins and generally behaving like the goofball that he is. It only lasted a season, but you can (and should) find excerpts on YouTube. 

ABC somehow got five seasons out of “The Mole” despite the show never being particularly popular, which means it of course trotted out a “celebrity” version to hopefully goose ratings. The third season of the reality show competition — in which contestants try to complete tasks while being sabotaged by one member of the team, aka “The Mole” — was hosted by former Minnesota Vikings wide receiver Ahmad Rashād but did not feature any celebrity contestants. That changed in the fourth season when producers brought on Dennis Rodman, and “The Worm” won!

Major League Baseball’s greatest artificially inflated slugger was closing in on Hank Aaron’s all-time home run record when ESPN inexplicably decided to air the reality series “Bonds on Bonds.” It was totally free, 100 percent positive PR for Bonds, who was suspected by many to have used illegal performance-enhancing substances to assist him in his chase of history. ESPN was excoriated by critics for airing the series and abruptly yanked it from its schedule after 10 poorly rated episodes.

Deion Sanders has been Prime Time his entire professional sports career, racking up Hall of Fame stats in football, socking triples in baseball and cutting a perfectly awful rap LP with the help of MC Hammer. After retiring in 2005, he went straight to CBS show “The NFL Today” and has maintained a constant presence on television ever since. This includes the very short-lived reality show “Deion & Pilar Sanders: Prime Time Love,” which explored the Sanders’ massively uninteresting domestic life over eight forgettable episodes for Oxygen in 2008.

ABC spiced up its popular reality series by building the show’s fifth season around backup NFL quarterback Jesse Palmer. Palmer wasn’t much on the field, but he was an instant star as “The Bachelor” even though his courtship with contestant Jessica Bowlin turned out to be the romantic equivalent of a two-yard run. Palmer is now one of ESPN’s top college football analysts. “The Bachelor” enlisted semi-professional soccer player Juan Pablo Galavis in 2014 and will gas up its 22nd season in January with race car driver Arie Luyendyk Jr.

Spike’s entertaining “Pros vs. Joes” was an “American Gladiators”-inspired competition that pitted athletic, non-professional “Joes” against professional male and female athletes in their fields of expertise. The series recruited plenty of reality show-friendly athletes like Jennie Finch, Jim McMahon, Dennis Rodman and John Rocker, but they were also able to land some less publicity-hungry greats like Clyde Drexler, Dave Stewart, Grant Fuhr and Shawn Kemp.

This reality show centered on the worldwide travels of Cincinnati Bengals linebacker Dhani Jones was a fun and unusually thoughtful series for the two years it ran on the Travel Channel. In each episode, Jones would visit a country, sample its food/culture and attempt to compete in one of its native sports. These competitions were often of the combat variety, but occasionally Jones would do something unusual like “dragon boat racing” in Singapore or hurling in Ireland.

This heavily hyped reality series from “Survivor” producer Mark Burnett was a serious attempt to rescue the UFC-threatened popularity of professional boxing. Sylvester Stallone and Sugar Ray Leonard were brought on to provide star power as on-camera mentors, and the contestants were legitimate up-and-coming middleweights. It was a slickly produced show, but its first season was tragically overshadowed by the suicide of contestant Najai Turpin. The series succeeded in discovering several future champions (including Sergio Mora), but it couldn’t get the majority of sports fans back into boxing.

Say what you will about Dana White, but the man knows how to market his product. The UFC honcho premiered the first season of “The Ultimate Fighter” on Spike at around the same time NBC was pouring tens of millions of dollars into its boxing show “The Contender” — only he had the foresight to use his series to sell the undercard of a much-anticipated bout between MMA legends Ken Shamrock and Tito Ortiz. The main event lost some sizzle when Ortiz dropped out, but the undercard of “Ultimate Fighter” participants Forrest Griffin and Stephan Bonnar wound up becoming one of the most amazingly dramatic bouts in the sports history. The show is currently in its 26th season.

Off-field scandals involving athletes’ wives have often been juicy fodder for gossip columnists, so, after her 2009 divorce from Shaquille O'Neal, Shaunie O’Neal decided to serve up the drama on her own terms. “Basketball Wives” debuted in 2010, but it didn’t become must-watch trash until the producers invited first-ballot Reality Show Hall of Famer Tami Roman (you’ve known and loved her work since 1992’s “The Real World: Los Angeles”) to join the group. The show is currently in its sixth season and has spawned spin-offs like “Basketball Wives: L.A.” and the multi-sport matriarchy of “Baller Wives.”

ESPN’s “Dream Job” was a fascinating glimpse into the hiring practices of the Worldwide Leader and, in the end, a damning indictment of the network’s fear of unpredictability. The series rounded up 12 aspiring “SportsCenter” anchors and had them compete in challenges judged by ESPN’s VP of Talent Al Jaffe, “Cold Pizza” co-host Kit Hoover, veteran sportswriter Tony Kornheiser and, for some reason, Washington Redskins linebacker LaVar Arrington. Poor Arrington seemed utterly baffled as to why he’d been asked to judge, which provided the show with most of its unintentional entertainment value. He was not asked back for the athlete-free Season 2.

The rugged outdoorsman Bear Grylls had become a household name thanks to his survivalist exploits on “Man vs. Wild.” When a contract dispute with the Discovery Channel in 2012 forced him to leave the show that had made him a star, he hooked up with NBC for the celeb-friendly “Running Wild with Bear Grylls.” Over the first three seasons, Grylls has invited a number of athletes, including Shaq, Marshawn Lynch, Lindsey Vonn and, most memorably, Deion Sanders (who conquers his fear of snakes by eating one).

Professional angler Bill Dance has been taping his fishing show since 1968. Along the way, he’s hooked some of the surliest bass, catfish and bluegill that have ever patrolled the lakes and rivers of the southern United States. Dance knows what his fans want, so he hasn’t changed up the formula much over the last 49 years, but a few southern fried fellas have had the honor to fish with the legend. One of those lucky ducks is Shreveport, La.’s own Terry Bradshaw. Hopefully, Peyton Manning will hop in a boat with Dance (a lifelong Vols fan) one of these days.

British tabloids coined the term “WAG” to refer to “wives and girlfriends” of star footballers, and it eventually found its way over the Atlantic to the U.S. “WAGs” is crafted from the same off-field mold as “Basketball Wives,” and it’s done remarkably well for E! (inspiring the currently airing spin-off, “WAGs Miami”). The third season begins this week, and we’ll get to catch up with the significant others of stars like Antonio Gates, Tito Ortiz and former NHL All-Star Sheldon Souray.

Kim and Khloe Kardashian have a long, checkered history when it comes to dating and, briefly, marrying athletes, and their awful reality series, “Keeping Up with the Kardashians,” has captured most of these romantic catastrophes. Kim dated Reggie Bush for a hot second before making a reality TV event out of her nuptials to NBA role player Kris Humphries (the marriage lasted 72 days). Khloe’s rocky marriage to Lamar Odom finally ended last year, at which point she began dating Tristan Thompson (who has yet to appear on the show).

You generally wouldn’t expect to find athletes on Nicole Curtis’s home renovation show “Rehab Addict,” but the restoration guru teamed with LeBron James in 2014 to help rescue the crumbling home of a sixth grader in the basketball superstar’s Wheels for Education mentoring program. If you’ve ever wanted to see ‘Bron tear down walls or operate a backhoe, the fifth season of “Rehab Addict” is your “Citizen Kane.”

A great professional athlete attempting to best other great professional athletes in their own sports sounds like a fun idea, no? Steve Nash thought so, as did Shaquille O’Neal, who allegedly purloined the pitch and sold it to ABC. (Nash said his idea was slightly different, but he got an executive producer credit all the same.) “Shaq Vs.” enlisted top-flight talent like Albert Pujols, Misty May-Treanor, Kerri Walsh, Michael Phelps and Dale Earnhardt Jr., but it was canceled after two low-rated seasons.