Elon Musk is doing his best impression of some of sports' most epic flameouts

Sure the Los Angeles Lakers are dysfunctional now, but remember when Jeanie Buss’ brother Jim was running the franchise? The aging team went 41-25 during the 2011-12 lockout season and won a round in the playoffs.

Mike Brown was the Lakers’ head coach during that abbreviated season, and was fired when the Lakers started the next season 1-4. It was Jim’s decision to hire and fire Brown, and it can be argued that the Lakers still haven’t recovered from his stewardship. They became a perennial lottery team, not making the playoffs from 2014-2019. Jeanie relieved her brother of his duties in 2017.

He took over the New York Knicks — and the Rangers and Madison Square Garden — in full in 2001. The Knicks have largely been an embarrassment ever since. The Knicks won a playoff round during the 2001 NBA postseason, and the next season finished 30-52. They wouldn’t win another series until 2013.

Young people laugh about the Knickerbockers now, but even though the franchise hasn’t won a title since 1973, they used to be competitive. After 1966, the Knicks’ worst playoff drought was three years, and that coincided with Bernard King’s injury. The Knicks have been so bad since the turn of the millennium, they’ve had a six-year playoff drought, followed by a seven-year one. No sports brand has taken a larger hit than the Knicks, and the whole world puts the blame at Dolan’s feet.

You would think it would be impossible to be an embarrassment as the head coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars, but Meyer found a way.

The team wasn’t even supposed to be good. They just had the No. 1 overall draft pick in the spring. Meyer had all of the leeway to mold the franchise into his image, and he was such a disaster that he didn’t even make it through one season.

He hired an allegedly racist strength coach, was seen at his bar in Ohio after his players flew back home, and allegedly kicked a player. Meyer alienated himself from the entire organization with a breathtaking combination of arrogance and incompetence. On a team that wasn’t expected to win, Meyer was fired nine days before Christmas.

He became NCAA president in 2010, and has become one of the least respected figures in sports.

The next year, Yahoo! released a report about potential NCAA violations in the Miami Hurricane football program. By 2011 sensibilities, the revelations made some college football fans, and media, squeamish about a program that many already had judged as unworthy of its previous 20-year run of dominance.

One problem. The person who spilled the beans had been sent to federal prison for his involvement in a nearly $1 billion Ponzi scheme. To try to strengthen its case against Miami, the NCAA, after Nevin Shapiro was convicted, paid his attorney to try and get more information to nail the school. This required the NCAA to investigate its own investigators.

Once the dust settled, the ‘Canes became the good guys in the eyes of the public by the time the NCAA levied a minimal punishment. The legitimacy of the organization and “amateurism” never recovered (Texas A&M committing to leave the Big 12 for the SEC in 2011 also didn’t help).

There was a time when the Detroit Lions weren’t an embarrassment of an NFL franchise. In the 1990s they consistently made the playoffs. During the 1991 season, they actually played in an NFC Championship Game.

Even when Barry Sanders retired in 1999, the Lions were able to put up a respectable 8-8 record and even qualified for the postseason. The following year Detroit finished 9-7 — then Matt Millen took over.

From there the Lions immediately turned into the franchise that they are now. He replaced head coach Gary Moeller — who once held the Michigan job — with Marty Mornhinweg. The Lions went 2-14 in 2001, and 3-13 in 2002. Mornhinweg was then fired and never was an NFL head coach again. By 2003, Millen was yelling homophobic slurs at former players. He was fired three games into the Lions’ infamous 0-16 season.

This is the man that was going to change Michigan football. No longer were they going to be the three yards and cloud of dust Wolverines. Rich Rod was going to turn Michigan into his West Virginia teams of the mid-2000s, with a high-octane zone read scheme.

Maybe he didn’t get enough time to overhaul a program that was run for 40 years by Bo Schembechler and his disciples. But going 3-9 in his first season — Michigan’s worst record since 1965 — was far more embarrassing to fans and alumni than losing to Appalachian State the year before, and put him on the hot seat quickly. In Rich Rod’s second season the Wolverines finished 1-7 in conference play. He was fired after going 7-6 in 2009.

The man who was going to bring the NFL-AFL and NBA-ABA merger to European soccer. A “Super League” of the wealthiest and most recognizable European soccer clubs. The Super League quickly turned into an international incident.

Soccer fans were furious. FIFA and UEFA threatened to ban players from competing in their events. The Prime Ministers of Italy, France, and England both came out strongly against the idea. Within 48 hours of the announcement of the 12-team league, the six teams from England backed away.

Pérez is still trying to hold on, but he quickly became one of the most hated sports figures on the planet. He tried to turn the world’s game into a money printer and was attacked like he was an alien ship at the end of Independence Day.