Few things in life stir up as much drama and emotion as professional sports. The passion felt by sports fans often puts leagues, teams and athletes themselves under a microscope and results in attention for all the wrong reasons. 2025 was certainly not immune to its share of sports crises, and as is often the case, many of them could have been handled better publicly.

We’ve examined scores of sports crises over the years and have discussed how well, or not, they were managed from a communications standpoint. What follows is a look back at what we feel are the sports crises from this past year that most piqued the interest of fans, along with some thoughts on how those involved could have better handled the public-facing fallout.

No potential NFL Draft selection in recent memory kept fans in more suspense than Shedeur Sanders. Sanders, the son of “Prime Time” Deion Sanders, was a quarterback coming out of the University of Colorado when he was part of the NFL Draft class this past April. Many analysts thought Sanders might actually be taken in the first round, but he chose not to participate in on-field drills at the scouting combine and there were also reports that he did not interview well. Whatever the reason, Sanders was not selected until the fifth round, by the Cleveland Browns, and was the sixth quarterback and 144th player taken overall.

Our Take: Sanders said all the right things publicly at the time, talking about how it would motivate him and add “fuel to the fire.” That quickly changed, though, when Sanders oddly decided to silently pantomime his answers to questions from the media about another Browns quarterback being named the starter. The move was seen as........

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