This was the scene of one of the most exciting Superbowls ever played, at the very least certainly the most exciting 4th quarter of a championship game that we’ve seen in quite some time. To me, the Superbowl is the worst day of the year, when the sport I most enjoy watching is coming to it’s finality for another year.  Watching college basketball just isn’t the same and waiting for the Masters and the draft in April just takes too long.  I actually start getting depressed right after the Conference championship games are played because I have to wait 2 weeks for the big game. When it does come, it hardly ever lives up to the hype and then I have to wait 6 months for my next diet of Football !! Oh brother !!

 This year however, was different.  This Superbowl actually made me smile for weeks after and when your favorite sport lives up to it’s hype (as it has these last 2 years) then the world (and my family and friends who only watch the big game so they can eat everything in sight and call it  “a party” )  gets to see why the NFL is justifiably King of The Sports Castle.

This was no ordinary game this time, no sireee, a classic from every angle.  This game had comebacks, heroes, more comebacks more heroes and a fantastic finish.  What more could even the most demanding football fan ask for ? Truly a game for the ages !

 As I mentioned from the start, I hate Super Bowl week and right after the game , some mild form of depression certainly sets in, but after this game, it took a lot longer for the winter doldrums to come and I wish to thank the Arizona Cardinals and the Pittsburgh Steelers for that !

For the NHL in 2009 it was a classic case of whether we see the glass as half full or half empty.  The optimists would remind everyone how the year started out so well with the most-succesful-yet Winter Classic, played on New Year’s Day in Chicago, a game that has become almost as much a staple for the American sports viewer as the big college bowl games.  Or they might point to the terrific playoffs culminating in Pittsburgh’s exciting victory led by their young guns Crosby, Malkin and Stahl.  Or maybe it was the emergence of Washington’s Alex Ovechkin as not only the leagues most exciting player but as a globally marketable icon. TV ratings and attendance were also up in most markets in the league.  The “nay-sayers” though, would only have to point to the debacle that was played out this summer in Phoenix to remind everyone how fragile the league’s successes are and this mess falls right into the lap of commissioner Gary Bettman. Now, most of us  are aware of a mother’s love and loyalty to her child. No matter how bad or rebellious a child can be a mother will always defend, protect, and continually bail out her child.

Gary Bettman, in an illustrative way, is mom of the year! His children are all of the U.S. market NHL teams and in his eyes they can do no wrong. They can have poor attendance and he will defend them by recording the attendance figures by what was sold not who was actually at the game . They can lose millions and he will bail them out with the other teams money (their siblings) and on top of all this he still is looking to adopt more needy U.S cities to put a hockey team in. His latest “child” to get into trouble, the Phoenix Coyotes, have no reason to remain in that city. The team makes no money, has poor attendance and can’t even make a success of it with the greatest player to ever play the game as their coach and architect. The poor owner who has lost millions and tried to make it work had an opportunity to gain back some of his loses when a rich Canadian buyer, Jim Balsillie, agreed to buy the team on the understanding that he would move it to Canada, a place where fans love the game, provide the league with home grown talent (can’t see kids playing hockey in Arizona) and where the economy has NOT been compared to the Titanic. Yet to mother Bettman, this was like forcing him to give up his child to adoption, which even a real mother would do if she saw her child suffering from malnutrition.  Gary  Bettman year in and year out ( especially this past year ) continues to ignore just how unstable the NHL has become and how much brighter the future could be if he wasn’t so territorial. This is not to say that the NHL should abandon the game below the 48th Parallel and put teams in remote Canadian outposts like Yellowknife and Thunder Bay.  There are many great hockey markets in the US that have traditionally supported the game.  Just look at last year’s aforementioned Cup final as the Pengiuins from Pittsburgh won it in game 7 over Detroit, two cities that have consistently supported hockey and have great fan bases. When Pittsburgh was in trouble, Bettman rightfully stepped in to provide help for awhile because the game had a history of success in southwestern Pennsylvania, but unless Bettman can find 12 more Crosbys then the same turn around will not happen in Phoneix, Tampa, Miami, Columbus and the many other U.S. NHL cities losing money. Gary also cannot hide all the other teams problems behind one exciting 7 game series as two weeks doesn’t make up for 6 months of half empty seats in non- traditional hockey markets where bowling is more popular that hockey.

Mr. Bettman please do us hockey fans a favor next year, Be a Man, not a mommy and stop babying these teams. Move them to Canadian markets that desperately want the game, where they will fill the seats, they have the money and they maintain the foundation of the sport. For those of you that need an example of the difference between a traditional hockey market and a Sun-belt pretender, check out the World Junior Hockey Championships going on right now in Saskatoon.  The population of Saskatoon is just over 200,000 or about 5% the size of the Phoenix market and yet the arena will be full and rocking for every significant game there.  A tournament mind you involving 18 year old kids!  

The situation in Phoenix is playing out as expected.  By rejecting Balsillie as a prospective owner, the League has doomed the franchise to continue to lose millions of dollars per year by staying in the Phoenix area.  The negative publicity and unseemly haggling has cost the team whatever limited support they had in the region.  All this despite the team having it’s most succesful year in a decade as they find themselves in the hunt for the division lead and are sure to make the playoffs.  They deserve more than to be the “red-haired step-child” of the Phoenix sports scene, begging for crumbs from one of the wealthiest markets in the country.  They deserve to be somewhere that the fans support and appreciate their efforts and if Mr. Bettman wakes up from his dream, he’ll realize that place is in the Great White North.

Attempting to distill the events of 2009 into a short list of the ‘best’ is no small task. To me it came down to two things.

The first one only took a few seconds, to be exact it was 9.58. Usain Bolt finished the job he had started last year when he ran the most memorable 60 yards in history followed by an equally memorable 40 yard jog, and still finished 5 car lengths ahead of his nearest competitor. This year’s domination in August was equally spectacular, save that it was totally expected. We all felt like we knew if he ‘remembered’ that he was supposed to run the full 100m, that this would happen. It doesn’t diminish the accomplishment but it felt slightly anti-climactic.

Which is why I have another ‘Best of the Year’. To me the greatness of Roger Federer’s year was just as historically important as the aforementioned Bolt’s Blast. This was a different kind of year for Federer. For the first time in five years he wasn’t viewed as the best, how would he respond? Quite honestly through the years of his dominance we were never sure how great his competitiveness was, how resilient he was or how much of a fighter he was. It had been years since anyone could beat him when it mattered, other than in the finals at Roland Garros each year. He had spent a record 237 weeks in a row as the #1 ranked player in the world, that’s 4 1/2 yrs! He had been to a record 10 straight Grand Slam finals. By most he was already known as the greatest tennis player of all time. For Federer, 2008 was a difficult year.  He started it off losing in the Australian Open semi’s. He was shortly thereafter diagnosed with mono. While not life threatening mono is debilitating to an elite athlete who relies so heavily on training and practice. That setback no doubt affected him in the French Open where again he met Nadal in the finals at Roland Garros.  In recent years he had been making headway into Nadal’s dominance on clay.  While Roger owned the grass and hardcourts he was merely second best on clay. In the finals though he took a beating from Nadal, and again couldn’t complete his career grandslam. Then on to Wimbledon where it was just assumed that Roger at 75% could beat anyone on grass. Again, this year was different. In the “best match I’ve ever watched”, according to analyst John McEnroe, Roger couldn’t match the brute physicality and will of Nadal. Then he flamed out in the singles in the Olympics as well. It seemed to be the end for Federer atop the tennis world.  He would no longer be ranked #1 and he no longer owned tennis.  Even his seeming return to form in his convincing win at the US Open, while  salvaging an otherwise difficult year did little to quell the doubts that the end was near.

That finally brings us to this year and the obvious questions that went with it.  Was Federer past his prime? Could he still catch Sampras’ record for Grand Slams? How would a guy who made it look so easy for so many years respond?

The year didn’t start well, he lost again in the Australian Open in 5 sets to Nadal. He struggled with lesser opponents as well and as the year continued pulled out of as many tournaments as he entered.  Then in Madrid on the clay his year turned around as he defeated Nadal in the final in straight sets. He then went into the French Open on a high and after struggling early in the tourney, he seemingly willed himself to the final against Soderling where he cemented his legacy completing the career Grand Slam, becoming only the 6th man to do so. From there he went to Wimbledon and shared in another  memorable finals.  Andy Roddick played the match of his life, in fact he dominated Federer on serve, not being broken until the pivotal last game of the match, but Federer refused to lose and finally willed himself to victory. With that he became the all time leader in Grand Slam victories, eclipsing Sampras’ 14. The Swiss master then completed his season by reaching the US Open finals, his 21st Grand Slam final (another record), where he lost in 5 sets to Del Potro. The first Grand Slam final he lost to someone not named Nadal.

Federer, while not having his best year had his most important year. Completing the career Slam, the Slam record and regaining his #1 ranking. It isn’t as effortless as it was a couple years ago but Federer has shown the grit, guts and heart that only the greatest have. While no longer at the apex of his career and with so many young guns on his heels, Federer has elevated himself from great to the greatest of them all.

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At Sports Ruckus we like alert you to anything we may come across that may enlighten you even further than we already so brilliantly do. The Dec. 28 issue of ESPN the Magazine has an interesting article on the practice of redshirting in college football. It talks of how it originated, why some teams use it and others rarely do. It gives particular insight into the Wake Forest program and the effect redshirting has had on alumi such as Aaron Curry, Alphonso Smith and other present and past NFLers. It also contains explanations as to what greenshirt, blackshirt, grayshirt and the short lived pinkshirt refer to. its a great read and worth your time. The title is ‘To Play Or Not To Play’

Even at a casual glance, any review of this year in sports would have to acknowledge that 2009 was the year of the Comeback.  Some of our favorite athletes bounced back from injury, suspension, retirement or in one case, decades out of the spotlight, to make a memorable impact in their respective sports this year.  Let’s take a few minutes to highlight some of these amazing accomplishments.

“Strike 3! Yer……back?”

One of the really remarkable comeback stories of the year was Alex Rodriguez of the New York Yankees.  A-Rod had to deal with not one, not two, but three setbacks this year and then arguably had his most successful season ever.  The year started badly for him as off-season hip surgery meant that he was going to miss the start of the season.  Some worried that the Yankees third-baseman would not make it back before the All-Star break.  While recuperating, he was hit by the news that someone at the Players Association had leaked the story that A-Rod had been among the 120 baseball players that tested positive for performance enhancing drugs earlier in the decade when he was a member of the Texas Rangers.  An embarrassing, nationally-televised interview followed in which Rodriguez looked so uncomfortable and guilty of something, that it appeared if he was hooked up to a lie-detector, he would have broken the needle.  More bad news followed as rumors linking him to an extra-marital relationship with Madonna led to the break-up of his marriage.  Despite all this, A-Rod came back earlier than expected from injury and though he missed all of training camp and the first month of the season still put up 30 home runs and drove in 100.  More amazing still, the normal playoff-freeze didn’t happen and Rodriguez led the Yankees to their 27th World Series victory by batting .365 in October with 6 dingers and 18 knocked in.

Turning Back the Clock

Golf had its share of comebacks this year including the return that probably saved the lives of countless Network TV bosses and PGA Commissioner Tim Finchem.  Tiger came back from serious knee surgery and promptly won at Bay Hill in just his third start of the season allowing the “brain trust” of golf to breath again.  He went on to win the FedEx Cup and once again assert his dominance in the sport.  But arguably the most intriguing and unexpected comeback in any sport came at The Open Championship in July when a 59 year old Tom Watson, came within an inch of becoming the oldest Major Championship winner in the modern-era of golf.  For 4 days Watson turned back time and stayed at or near the top of the leader board.  Getting to the 18th green and needing only a par for the win, Watson missed the 6 footer breaking the hearts of millions of cheering fans around the world.  One of the great fairy-tale endings was dashed when Watson went on to lose in a playoff to Stewart Cink.  Whatever the final result though, Watson showed that his golf skills have not waned to any great extent after years away from the spotlight of championship competition and the story was one of the year’s most compelling.

Two QBs – Two Comebacks

Two of the more unlikely comebacks of the year came from a sport and a position not known for them.  Generally when football careers end, they do so because of a devastating or debilitating injury and such is the level of competition and extreme physicality of the sport that comebacks are rare indeed.  At 40 years of age, Brett Favre had retired (yet again) after an injury plagued year with the New York Jets and Michael Vick whose outrageous involvement in a dog-fighting ring had justly ended his career and resulted in a Federal prison term, were incredibly both looking at making comebacks to the NFL in early August.  That both eventually did so, Favre with the Vikings and Vick with the Eagles, is a testament only to the lack of competent quarterbacks in the league.  The Vick saga was remarkable for a number of reasons.  The outpouring of vituperation from PETA and animal lovers across the States directed at the former Falcons player was so intense that it seemed unlikely any team would take a chance on a player that brought so much baggage with him.  When Team-Dysfunction, the Raiders, announced that they had no interest in signing him, the outcome seemed assured.  If Al Davis wouldn’t touch the player, who would be crazy enough to do so?  The answer when it came seemed as unlikely as the rest of the story.  Why the Philadelphia Eagles,  with an All-Pro incumbent in Donovan McNabb at quarterback,  a community and public-relations-savvy owner in Jeffrey Lauria and a legitimate chance to reach the Super Bowl, would take such a chance seemed preposterous.  But they did and after serving a four game suspension from the league, Vick made his return in week 3 versus the Chiefs and while his stats have been modest and his playing time limited, the mere fact he has been on the field this year has been remarkable.  Favre’s return has been even more shocking.  In August, he went back and forth with Minnesota so many times that it seemed more like Favre playing a practical joke on the Vikings than anything else.  At any moment it appeared likely that Aston Kutcher would jump out of a Gatorade jug at training camp and tell coach Brad Childress that he was being “punk’d”.  But eventually, just in time for the regular season, Favre put on the purple and white of the Packers fans arch-enemy and has not looked back.  Regaining the form not seen since his MVP seasons of the mid-90’s, number 4 seems determined to lead the Vikings where they have never been before, onto the podium to accept the Vince Lombardi trophy as Super Bowl winners.  If that happens, the Year of the Comeback will be truly complete.

This year the AP named Nascar driver Jimmie Johnson as athlete of the year. Runner-up was Roger Federer, and third place went to Usain Bolt. Others receiving mutiple votes were:

Lance Armstrong, Tiger, Kobe Bryant & Michael Phelps.

It raises the question again are race car drivers, golfers and the like real athletes? To be completely accurate the word athlete according to Merriam Webster means ‘one who is trained or skilled in exercises, sports or games requiring physical strength, agility or stamina.’ So it’s a pretty loose, open-ended category. By that definition a jockey is an athlete or a bowler, a fantasy football player, ok maybe not.

My issue is that we are comparing apples and oranges.  To compare a race car driver to a basketball player or sprinter is ridiculous. Just because you do athletic things doesn’t make you an elite athlete. I’m not denying that guys like Jimnie Johnson or Tiger Woods are athletes, I’m just saying they aren’t in the same league as Usain Bolt. If you include everyone who does something athletic you would have to include the World Twister Champ or the World Logrolling Champ.

To be quite honest I’m not a fan of any of these cross-sports lists, its impossible to quantify greatness let alone compare it.  I guess that’s the appeal to many, the debate that follows. The thing is, if you are going to do a list like that, at least break it into tiers.

For instance:

1st tier- Sports that require elite athleticism. ie. Football, Basketball, Hockey, Swimming, Cycling, Tennis, Track etc

2nd tier-Sports that require great skill but don’t require a person to be athletically gifted. In fact these guys rely far more on mental toughness and superior focus than they do on athleticism. This in no way diminishes their skill or prowess, it’s just different. ie. Golf, Bowling, Snooker, Darts.

3rd tier – Sports where the athlete is only a portion of the equation or accomplishment.  ie. horse racing, race car driver. Again, I’m not taking anything away from these guys but any sport that requires almost complete reliance on a vehicle, makes it impossible to judge athleticism. There is no way of knowing how another driver or racer would do with the same horse or car/crew. How many championships would Johnson have if he raced for another team? There is no way to know and thus to name someone like that as athlete of the year is ridiculous.

Too, the fact that a driver won the award is either a testament to the mainstream popularity of Nascar or indicative of how boring the year in sports was.

Finally, if we insist on combining all sports and judging the whole, then give that to the ‘Sportsman of the Year’ and leave the Athlete of the Year’ to the real athletes.

Necessary Roughness

No radio personality is more full of himself than this ESPN radio host.  The self-proclaimed man of common sense is a true lightening rod which can make listening entertaining, but he takes it to an all new ridiculous level. I understand that my view may not be the popular one, as his show and involvement with ESPN has grown greatly since he was hired. In fact, I have a few friends who even enjoy him, although I have thrown the red flag and am waiting for a booth review on their friendship and have requested the results from their last Wonderlic. Seriously though, its time for this guy to run the gauntlet! Every day he tells us just how brilliant he is and he regales us with his myopic takes on sports while mocking and ridiculing anyone who may disagree.  In an industry of windbags, yours truly included, this guy is on whole different level. What earns him the ‘Windbag of the Year’ award is his wonderfully insightful comments on Tony Romo from September. He called Romo out for being a bum, and then made this genius statement, ‘Trent Edward is a better QB than Romo, he is a top 10 QB, he has to be, he went to Stanford.’ Wow! That is MENSA level analysis, it’s a wonder he doesn’t work in an NFL teams front office. The long and short of it is, if you don’t already have an opinion and would like one, listen to Cowherd. If you have an opinion but perhaps you don’t have enough anger or frustration in your life, Cowherd’s your man.

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