Sometimes you just need a hug in life, and because every day is a day these days, today is National Hug Day. With that, we thought it would be nice to embrace the day and wrap our arms around the sweet caress of some of the best, and worst, hugs in sports.
There is no better (read: worse) hugger in sports than NFL commissioner Roger Googell. Goodell and his image experts decided some years ago that it would be fun to have the commissioner give monstrous bro hugs to all the players on stage at the NFL Draft. It was calculated, as at the time the current players were in an ongoing fight with the league. If Goodell could openly embrace the rookies, he could humanize himself and have a connection to the new players before they get the opportunity to wise up and turn on him. And thus, this became a phenomenon.
What’s interesting, though, is the hug to lead this post—the embrace with Tom Brady—came at last year’s Super Bowl MVP presentation, after the DeflateGate story blew up. Look at that hug and tell me it doesn’t scream “everything will be alright, Tom.”
That’s the embrace of two old friends making sure the cameras know that everything is fine between them. That isn’t the hug of a man who is about to spend an entire off-season in court trying to prove the other is a cheater.
Never trust a hug. Even on National Hug Day.
And, for what it’s worth, the Goodell-Brady embrace is not the most awkward hug between a Patriot and someone who wants the Patriots to go away that we could find.
http://gty.im/156843554
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Note: no hugs between the two in Getty from this season. That’s a shame. And STILL, that’s not the most awkward NFL hug from the last few years. Not even close.
This will never not be funny.
We go from football, to futbol. If we are talking about the most awkward hugs, we would be remiss if we didn’t include Mourinho.
http://gty.im/490066768
Wait, wrong Mourinho. We meant this one.
http://gty.im/457892858
Oh, yeah, that is terribly awkward. You can almost see the talk bubble “I will steal your job” coming out of Jose Mourinho’s head. And yet, that embrace is not nearly as awkward as this.
There are not a lot of hugs between Jose Mourinho and Pep Guardiola to be found, but this is, ahem, a special one. Not only are the two coaching greats—and two potential replacements for Manchester United’s Louis Van Gaal—embracing in such a strange way in this 2011 photo that they’re both simultaneously repulsed by their exchange and unable to escape it, but that’s clearly disgraced UEFA head Michel Platini getting ready to join in.
And speaking of Platini…
http://gty.im/475164040
That’s less a hug and more a “we did it, we fooled them all” bro-shake, but it transitions to this, a much older photo of Blatter and Platini embracing, before they were on top of the football world together. And under it.
http://gty.im/482196120
Devious. And yet nowhere near as devious as this, perhaps the most fiendish hug in the history of sports.
http://gty.im/466827107
There are a lot of images of Blatter hugging people. A lot. He was probably perfecting the art of lining their pockets.
http://gty.im/475765744
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http://gty.im/51504013
Onto baseball. In looking for the search term “Alex Rodriguez hug” I came across this.
Yeah, that’ll do.
Fun fact: There is just one image of Adam Silver hugging in our Getty Images search of “Adam Silver NBA hug.” It’s this, embracing Andrew Wiggins at the NBA Draft in 2014.
But the internet doesn’t disappoint.
I really hope Bobby Portis licked the commissioner shoulder that day. You would. You totally would.
It’s worth noting there are no—zero—images of Gary Bettman hugging anyone in Getty. And yet, the internet gave us this.
Wait, no. That’s clearly a Kiss.
With that, we leave you on National Hug Day with one last Hug: COME ON IN AND GET YOURSELF A SQUEEZE.
http://gty.im/503183782
