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2023 Fictitious Athlete Hall of Fame - Final Round

Judge Elihu Smails

Judge Elihu Smails
  • TV Show/Movie Appeared: Caddyshack (1980)
  • Actor/Actress: Ted Knight
  • Why you should vote:: Sports villains don’t get much better than this.
  • Why you should not vote:: He lost because of a gopher. A gopher?
  • You have to hand it to Ted Knight who managed to portray Judge Elihu Smails as a character with no redeeming qualities and was easily the most pompous blowhard in sports cinema history. Considering that most people knew Knight as the bungling newscaster, Ted Baxter on the Mary Tyler Moore Show (which itself was one of the best television characters in the 1970’s) the fact that you immediately forgot his Emmy Award winning performances within the first words of Judge Smails.

    Smails was the co-founder of the Bushwood Country Club that the common man (or even other rich men) despised. He was so unlikable that you could not imagine anyone hoping that Smails would win that $20,000 golf match against Al Czervic and Ty Webb. At least we think that even Lex Luthor had a fan somewhere?

    The question here is does the golfer who Sergio Garcia would have passed over in a pairing for Tiger Woods have a place here?