Talking earlier today -- on the day I think sports blogs should take a break -- about last night perhaps being the best MLB ASG ever got me thinking about something a buddy said to me a week or so ago and I thought might make for a worthwhile discussion.Are we witnessing the best sports year ever? Is it even possible to quantify such a thing? Probably not, but sports blogs exist to pontificate over often pointless and undefinable concepts. So let's think about it.
The year began with a pedestrian NCAA football National Championship game, with Ohio State getting there once again and yet at the same time somehow weakening everyone's opinion of the Big Ten. More on that another day, though.
In February, we moved on to the Super Bowl, which was quite possibly in the top 2 or 3 ever played and was most certainly the most unexpected upset ever.
Moving on to March, we saw four number 1 seeds reach the Final Four, giving us actually good games, including a championship game that Memphis appeared to have in the bag before Kansas stormed back to topple them in overtime. Even UNC coach Roy Williams wanted Kansas to win.
Was it the best Final Four ever? No, probably not, but it was the best collection of teams to all reach the Final Four in a very long time.
Jumping ahead, we saw what many are already considering the best U.S. Open ever for golf. Tiger, as it turns out, was playing with a busted wheel and still slogged through 91 holes to fend off Rocco Mediate.
Whether it was the best U.S. Open ever is something even I would debate -- hell, Tiger didn't even play particularly well except for a few holes when he absolutely had to. So, best ever? I don't think so. Most fun? Most exciting? Most....compelling? Perhaps.
For those of you who care about tennis -- and fewer and fewer do anymore -- Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal put on what was being widely claimed to be the best Wimbledon final ever. Again, I'm not qualified in any way to comment on such things but I do know these two guys are far and away the two best tennis players in the world and they played a five-setter that went into the tennis equivalent of overtime. So yeah, I'd say that's pretty impressive.
Of course, the NBA is a sport nobody should care about but inexplicably a lot of people do. And in that league's playoffs, we were rigged to get treated to a matchup of the Lakers and Celtics. This was cool for people who promote such events but kind of sucked for those of us with brains who happen to hate both teams intensely.
It's only July and we've seen some cool stuff. If you extend the year back a bit further to last year's playoffs, you could talk about the Rockies amazing run, too, as being part of a truly great time to be watching sports.
And none of this even mentions some of the disasterous things that have happened in sports that have filled many of us with glee, such as Notre Dame's fantastic season.
So is it possible? Are we witnessing a sports year that might be remembered as being really, really amazing? Or does the media just always want me to think what I'm seeing is the best thing I've ever seen?
6 comments:
Considering I really dislike teams from NYC and Boston.....I didn't like the sports year that much. It was more like a sports year that had a lot of cool things happen.
At least it was a much better year then this country as a whole had!
See, the media has gotten to both of you-
There have been other championships as great as what we've seen in '08...and doomsday is not upon us.
It seems to me, speaking in superfluous terminology, positive or negative, might instead point to our shallow depth of knowledge OR our lack of applicable wisdom.
My favorite sports year is 1991, although I vaguely remember 2001 being pretty good too.
The Cubs are 3 months from breaking the 100 year drought, therefore the world is 3 months from ending.
Travis- That's a statement with a broad view that we will probably see come to fruition.
I think that last picture should get an award for best picture of the year...
Post a Comment