#3 | Heartbreak of 2015

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Tanguy Pepiot Shows Us How Not To Lose

“No Tanguy! Nooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!”

I’ve watched the end of the steeple from April’s Pepsi Team Invite somewhere between 47-247 times, and I scream the phrase above literally EVERY DAMN TIME. It doesn’t stop being painful seeing Oregon’s Tanguy Pepiot try to pump up the Hayward Field crowd while he unknowingly is about to get mowed down by Washington’s Meron Simon just inches before the line. 

A little bit of me dies each time I replay it. 



To make matters worse, the Oregon senior’s fail went super viral, highlighted by ESPN’s Michael Wilbon calling him a “dope” on PTI and most excruciatingly, Pepiot holding serve as Sportscenter’s Worst of the Worst play for a remarkable 13 weeks. The blunder was finally laid to rest after the Yankees’ Brett Gardner fell down trying to catch a fly ball, or else it may have required a retirement a la Mark Sanchez’s infamous butt fumble. 

His 3+ month run atop WOTW made for endless insults from the ESPN anchors that were reaaaaallllly harsh and included about 75 different pronunciations of the words “Tanguy” and “Pepiot.” In his final appearance on the countdown, one of the anchors called him a “household name.” Dear lord. 

Imagine you’re Pepiot and you come over to the U.S. from France and get pummeled week after week on the most popular sports show in the country. I assume his takeaway was that Americans have no chill.  

The top YouTube video of Pepiot’s celebra-fail has over 5 million views, which means more people have seen him finish second in the freakin’ Pepsi Invite than have watched Usain Bolt win the 2015 100m World title. 

What a stupid place Earth is.