Athlete Relationships That Nearly Ruined Their Careers

This article contains references to domestic violence, sexual harassment, and sexual coercion. 

When a celebrity gets into a relationship, it can often raise their profile and help their career. Take Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck, for example. Sure, they were mega famous before they began dating. But afterward, their fame reached much higher levels. The same thing might happen again since they tied the knot in July 2022.

However, other times a celebrity's relationship can hurt their career. In the case of Whitney Houston, the late singer married New Edition member Bobby Brown in 1992, and he was almost immediately accused of bringing her life and career down. That's mainly because he had a strong bad boy rep, as opposed to Houston's wholesome public persona. This misconception has been strongly challenged since.  

Sometimes it isn't a romantic relationship that puts a black eye on a famous person's career. In the professional relationship between Mike Tyson and boxing promoter Don King, the former undisputed World Heavyweight Boxing Champion accused King of stealing $100 million from him during the time they worked together. Tyson had fallen into major debt around this time. 

Of course, Houston and Tyson isn't the only athlete relationship where a sports star's career was negatively affected by the connection. The following athletes all found their careers floundering thanks to the people they were romantically involved with.

On November 27, 2009, one day after Thanksgiving, reports came from everywhere that Tiger Woods had crashed his SUV outside of his Florida mansion. Was there alcohol involved? Did another vehicle cut the pro golfer off? Or was it something else entirely? There was certainly a lot of mystery surrounding the crash. More questions emerged considering the timing of the story — just two days earlier, the National Enquirer had alleged that Woods was cheating on his then-wife Elin Nordegren with a woman named Rachel Uchitel.

Eventually, the New York Post explained what happened: Nordegren had caught wind of the cheating rumors. Although her husband denied the affair, the jig was up when she contacted Uchitel after finding her number on Woods' unattended phone. Nordegren then chased her ex out of their house with a golf club, he got into his SUV to flee, and that's when the accident occurred. 

But Uchitel wasn't the only woman Woods was cheating with. His then-wife also discovered he was involved with someone called Jaimee Grubbs — reportedly along with several other women. Speaking to the Los Angeles Times about the tabloid fallout from the affair, Uchitel griped, "The whole world made a mockery of me." Meanwhile, Grubbs told KTLA her own side of the story. "I asked him at some point 'When you go somewhere else, do you have another girl?'" she claimed to have asked Woods. "He's like, 'No I'm too busy.'" And yes, busy he was.

If it wasn't the biggest sports scandal in history, it was certainly one of the most bizarre. We're talking about the peculiar events that took place between Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan in 1994. In January of that year, a man named Shane Stant hit Kerrigan slightly above her right kneecap in Detroit after she practiced. Both Harding and Kerrigan were vying for spots on the Olympic team, which they made. That's despite Kerrigan not being able to skate in the U.S. National Championships because of the injury.

Per Cosmopolitan, the FBI later determined that the assault was organized by Harding's former bodyguard Shawn Eckhardt and her ex-husband Jeff Gillooly, who were both arrested. Stant was also booked and all three served prison time. As for Harding, she was accused of being in on the attack and addressed everything at a press conference in Portland, Oregon. "I had no prior knowledge of the planned assault on Nancy Kerrigan. I am responsible, however, for failing to report things I learned about the assault when I returned home from nationals," she explained. 

In March 1994, Harding won herself three years of probation after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit hindering prosecution. She also received a $100,000 fine, 500 hours of community service, and a lifetime ban from the U.S. Figure Skating Association. But more than that, a dark cloud has hovered over Harding's career ever since, one that may never fully brighten.

There can often be a cost involved in dating any high-profile celebrity — something that James Harden learned when he became romantically involved with Khloé Kardashian in June 2015. The couple only dated for eight months, but within that short period, the former Houston Rocket went from having articles written about his impressive hoop play to having pieces written about his personal life. When Harden's NBA performance started slipping, Kardashian got the blame. 

"I didn't like all the attention," Harden told Sports Illustrated. "I feel like it was for no reason. I wasn't getting anything out of it except my name out there and my face out there ... It wasn't me. I don't need pictures of myself when I'm driving my car. Who cares? ... It was unnecessary stuff that I think trickled down to my teammates. I had to eliminate that."

Harden and Khloé reportedly met at a basketball-themed birthday party that Kim Kardashian threw for her then-husband, Kanye West at Staples Center. The way Khloé described it, the two had an open relationship and he messed it up. "I've always said, 'We don't need to be monogamous,'" she explained on "Kocktails With Khloe" (via TMZ). "'You live in Houston, I live in L.A. Let's just see each other when we see each other' ... He sought me out, wanted to be committed, then wasn't committed ... [I] found out he wasn't, and I got the receipts to prove it."

After her 1976 Winter Olympics gold medal win in Innsbruck, Austria, Dorothy Hamill became known as a skater extraordinaire and was even nicknamed "America's Sweetheart." While she became a bankable star, her marriage to now ex-husband Kenneth Forsythe may have led to her eventual financial troubles. In 1996, the figure skating champion filed for bankruptcy after falling into debt to the tune of $1.6 million. 

Per People, one of the former couple's investments was buying the Ice Capades in 1993 after the skate show's popularity began to dwindle. "Under Dr. Forsythe's direction, [skating] business ventures in which Ms. Hamill became involved proved to be financial disasters," read her 1996 bankruptcy petition, according to the outlet. Hamill also issued a statement that read, "I am now confident ... I will be able to satisfactorily resolve my financial difficulties, thereby allowing me to focus on my skating." She had separated from Forsythe a year earlier, a few months after selling the Ice Capades for an undisclosed amount.

In 2018, she spoke to CNBC about her past money woes and explained what she's learned since then. "I thought I knew and trusted some of my peeps ... You live and you learn," she explained. "... The good news is that I finally found people that are trustworthy and I'm a little smarter." Hamill followed up by saying that for much of her life she only focused on training, not her finances — something that obviously hurt her as time went on.

In 2007, Dallas Cowboys quarterback, Tony Romo, was probably thrilled to discover he had a connection with Jessica Simpson. Understandably, he began dating her. But some Dallas Cowboys fans didn't like the relationship at all. A Boston Herald report bearing the insulting headline, "Dumb blonde may be damn blonde for Romo," reported that some fans blamed the singer for Romo's poor performance against the Philadelphia Eagles. Simpson had been spotted in the stands wearing a pink number nine jersey in support of her man. When the quarterback had a bad game against the New York Giants, fans dubbed it the result of a "Jessica Jinx."

But Romo was really slammed for the relationship when he and the star took a trip to a Mexican resort shortly before the Cowboys were going to face the Giants in a conference semifinal. "If only Tony had called me and said, 'Terry, Jessica [Simpson] and I are going to go to Mexico,' I would've told him: 'You crazy? Don't do that! The paparazzi is going to find you, man. You're a star. She's a star. It's just going to happen," said retired and legendary quarterback Terry Bradshaw in an interview with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram (via ESPN). "... I like the heck out of Tony Romo. I just wouldn't have done what he did ... I couldn't allow my mind to go there."

The couple broke up in 2009 — and Cowboys fans everywhere likely breathed a sigh of relief.