“There are so many good teams that are not getting into this tournament,” Wright said. “In college football, close to 50% of the teams go to bowl games, and they’re rewarded for a great season. In college basketball, only about 18% of the teams go to the NCAA tournament.” And that’s a GOOD THING. The NCAA tournament selects only the cream of the crop. Adding more teams will not introduce teams with a snowball’s chance in hell of actually winning the whole thing. It will just devalue the regular season more. We don’t need college basketball becoming more like bowl games in football where there are more bowl games than anyone could possibly care about – or like the playoffs in the NBA or NHL.

“As great as the NIT is, and everything else, if you don’t go to the NCAA tournament you’re perceived as having a poor season,” Wright added. “You just get on the bubble and you don’t get in and your season is looked at as a failure, your team looks at it as a failure, your alumni do, when really, you had a great season, you just got caught on the bubble.” Then is the problem with the tournament, or with the perception? As I said last week, perhaps we should change the perception before we change the tournament? That’s it, I’m blogging the NIT, CBI, and CIT starting next week. They’re the equivalent of the lesser bowls and I’m going to treat them as such.

Part of the problem is that Wright doesn’t understand the appeal of the tournament. Adding more teams that, in his mind, “deserve” to be in may improve the quality of play, but no one gives a rat’s ass about the quality of play. We care about Cinderella, and they will be less impressive in a 96-team field. Most people don’t watch March Madness because they care about college basketball, they watch because they care about the tournament, and ruining the appeal of the tournament ruins the one reason a lot of people care about college basketball at all. It may be good for kids’ egos (and coaches’ jobs) but it isn’t good for the tournament and it certainly isn’t good for college basketball as a whole. Perhaps a larger issue is that Villanova plays in the FCS for football, so Wright isn’t very intimately familiar with the debates surrounding a playoff in college football. He doesn’t realize that a lot of people already don’t consider the basketball regular season “exciting”, they consider it irrelevant to the tournament, he’s not very familiar with the great college football regular season and how it makes basketball pale in comparison, and he’s not all that familiar with the insight that has become very apparent in that debate: less really is more.

I have to make a confession. Before my schedule and workload went all to hell, I was planning on taking time this year to do my own “bracketology” exercise, just for one year, in part to serve as a demonstration that the college basketball regular season, supposedly incredibly devalued, is in fact more meaningful than ANY other major American sport other than college football. The NFL regular season is tense and exciting all the way to the end as you watch and see who can lock up playoff berths, and everyone thinks college basketball only begins in March, yet each college basketball regular season game is about as meaningful as an NFL game. The math proves it (even if I may have slightly undercounted the number of games). Right now, the NCAA tournament is for elite teams only. But people don’t realize this because a) they only look at the raw number of 65 teams and b) they only pay attention to the big-name, BCS conference teams that are in the field every year, and note that the bubble teams  – who get 11 and 12 seeds – never make the Final Four, which rarely sees a team seeded lower than 9. I would have attempted to show that there is as much at stake in any college basketball game as in the NFL, and even for BCS teams, more than in baseball, the NBA, or the NHL. You just need the right perspective on it.

I had too much to do (and too little in the way of a decent place to work) to engage in my own bracketology exercise, and I’m starting to regret it, because I may never get another chance to do so with a 65-team field, and if the NCAA expands to 96, they may make the meaningless regular season a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Expanding the tournament to 96 teams would not be a complete disaster, at least at first glance. Even if the NCAA were to double the tournament field the importance of each game would be more than in baseball, the NBA, or the NHL, and they would still select a slightly smaller percentage of the teams to the postseason than the NFL. But the proposed 96-team field would already make it less meaningful than not only the NFL, but bowls in college football, something else college basketball is better at right now. And at a time when college basketball has a reputation for a meaningless regular season, the NCAA can’t afford to dilute the regular season any more.

Two things make the NCAA tournament great, and therefore wildly popular. The most obvious is Cinderella, which is why the first round or two is often the most enjoyable. The other, less obvious, thing is that seeds are meaningful, not only for where you will play the first four rounds but who you’ll play, because even the crappiest of conferences gets an auto bid. A 4 or 5 seed has to deal with a potential upset bid; a 1 seed has never lost to a 16, so they can just coast. Keep in mind that a 5 seed is still one of the top 20 teams in the country, good enough to be ranked in the polls, and good enough to make it to the Final Four with some regularity. These are good, prominent teams that still have to keep fighting for protection in regional and subregional site selection, as well as for seeding that could mean the difference between a run to the Elite Eight or Final Four, or a first-round shocker.

Expanding the tournament to 96 teams would hurt both of these so much it could kill the tournament as we know it. Yes, a 96-team field opens the possibility of byes… to the top 8 seeds. You go from being in the top 16 being meaningful with significant differences between them (Arkansas-Pine Bluff, one of the best teams in the SWAC, is 194th out of 347 in the RPI) to being in the top 32 being meaningful with lesser differences between them. There aren’t going to be any more auto bids, so the current no-name underdogs from no-name conferences will go from being seeded 12-16 to 20-24, and go from playing teams seeded 1-5 to teams seeded 9-13 – teams currently on the bubble or even out of the tournament! In the second round (what is now the first) they’d play teams seeded 4-8, but only if they’d already survived one game. 1 and 2 seeds will not be as safe as before, but neither will they be playing Cinderellas as pure – teams that don’t need auto bids to play in the NIT now. (Wait… aren’t those mostly BCS conference teams?) What’s more, because every one of the top 8 seeds would be playing an NIT- or bubble- caliber team, or alternately a weak-conference team good enough to beat an NIT- or bubble- caliber team, the consequences for moving a seed line become a lot less. And while a bubble team like George Mason making the Final Four is rare, it’s still possible – but it’s rare enough I don’t think it would ever happen in an expanded field, rendering all the bubble teams – and thus the bubble discussion – completely irrelevant.

Goliath isn’t as Goliath-like, David isn’t as David-like, and the regular season becomes even less meaningful – and there’s less reason to watch the tournament, or even follow college basketball, at all. So much for the notion that more games = more money.

One of the signs that college basketball’s regular season has become diluted (in the public eye) and the tournament too much the focus of the sport is the parade of coaches coming out in favor of an expanded field, saying that all kids should have the experience of going to the NCAA tournament. Being in the top 18% of teams in the country is every student-athlete’s birthright. Of course, a lot of these coaches are assessed on the standard of “NCAA Tournament or bust” – they are expected to make the tournament, and if they can’t, they lose their jobs, so they’re interested in making it easier for them to keep their jobs than the shockingly high standard they’re held to now. So let’s expand the field so being in the top 96 (really the top 80 or so) is magically just as good as being in the top 64 (really 45 or so) is now. So why isn’t it good enough now?

College basketball doesn’t have a regular season problem, a too-small-tournament problem, or even a too-large-tournament problem. It has a perception problem. We’re better off fixing that before we make changes that could kill the sport. It’s time people realized that making the NIT is far from a disaster – it means you’ve achieved more than members of the baseball, NBA, or NHL postseasons. Turning it from a chance to win a tournament to a chance to play one extra game than the best teams isn’t the best way to go about that, and neither is making the NCAA tournament less of an elite club.

TCU returns the opening kickoff to their own 40, and gain even more yardage when Alabama gets nailed for encroachment, the second straight year the Golden Bowl starts with the SEC team being nailed for encroachment before the first play from scrimmage. Last time Stafon Johnson got nailed behind the line; this year Joseph Turner gets out-of-bounds after getting just past midfield for the first. Turner picks up another two yards before Andy Dalton floats it out to Jeremy Kerley just past the marker. But the drive stalls: Tucker gets nailed behind the line, a toss to Bart Johnson just gets back to the line of scrimmage, and another pass attempt gets batted down at the line. With the ball at the 41, the Horned Frogs elect to punt, but the punt goes into the end zone.

Trent Richardson gains 16 yards on the pitch to put the Tide right into business. Mark Ingram is not as successful, only gaining one yard on his first carry, but six on his second, but gets overthrown on a third-down pass play, forcing the Tide to punt the ball back, a play that goes from the Tide 43 to the Frog 42. Matthew Tucker gets stopped at the line of scrimmage but Turner gains three, but Dalton scrambles back to the line of scrimmage to force another punt. Richardson gets runs of two and three yards before Greg McIlroy’s first completed pass of the day is to Colin Peek for a good ten yards. Ingram only gains one yard the next play, and when he’s given the ball again it’s nullified by a holding penalty. But that’s nothing compared to when McIlroy hands the ball off to Roy Upchurch only to see him lose the ball, giving TCU the ball on the Tide 43. But Turner gains two, Tucker only gets back to the line, Dalton throws an incompletion, and TCU punts the ball into the end zone again. The defenses are stout with a little over five minutes left in the first quarter.

Ingram gets a couple of two-yard gains, with Alabama saving a fumble on the second, but a screen pass to Marquis Maze doesn’t quite get back to the line, forcing another punt and another TCU short field. Tucker is given the ball on a draw and takes it up five yards, but that’s nothing compared to what happens when the ball is given to Edward Wesley: he immediately breaks past the defense and takes it 55 yards for the touchdown. TCU 7: Florida 0.

Alabama returns the ensuing kickoff to the 23, and Richardson goes nowhere on first down, Ingram only gains six, and Upchurch is stopped after one, forcing another punt. TCU, as on the last drive, gets the ball on their own 40, and gives the ball to Turner for five yards. Wesley gains only three yards this time but it sets up Turner to cross midfield and pick up the first down. Tucker gets stopped at the line to end the quarter.

Wesley gains two to start the quarter before Dalton connects with Kerley to the 27, the furthest downfield either team has run a play. Wesley gets stuffed at the line on first down and takes it for four on second, and Jercell Fort can only get three on third. But Ross Evans comes on and lets a 37-yard field goal attempt sail through the uprights, extending the lead. Alabama returns the ensuing kickoff to the 28, and Ingram immediately picks up 11 yards and the first down. Ingram picks up one the next play, Richardson picks up six on the draw, and Ingram just picks up the first down. Upchurch gets runs of threee and four yards, but on third and three Terry Grant can only gain one, and Alabama is forced to punt again. But they did manage to cross midfield, and their punter is able to pin the Frogs at the 8.

Fort gets a big 12-yard gain to give the Frogs some breathing room, but Turner only gets two, Tucker three, and Dalton overthrows his intended receiver on third down, and the ensuing punt is returned to the Alabama 47. Grant immediately breaks out a 20-yard run to put them at the 33. After Ingram, Richardson, and Grant each inch the ball a few yards closer, it’s 4th and 3 and Leigh Tiffin comes on for a 43-yard field goal attempt. The ball slips inside the upright and Alabama is back within a touchdown. The ensuing kickoff is caught at the 7 and returned to the 37, but Wesley, Fort and Dalton gain two, two, and three respectively, and Alabama gets the ball back at the same spot as before. Ingram gets nailed for a loss of five and a pass to Julio Jones just gets back to the line, but McIlroy throws it to Jones again and he breaks out a 30-yard run to the 28. Ingram takes it another six yards but McIlroy is forced to scramble for a yard on second and has his pass batted down on third, forcing a successful 38-yard field goal to cut the deficit to four.

TCU gets an even shorter kickoff, catching it at the 14, but only take it to the 35. Tucker and Dalton only gain a yard each and Dalton gets nailed for the only sack either side had all day, and once again Alabama gets the ball past their own 40. Ingram once again sees a short gain negated by holding, then sees McIlroy overthrow him on the play that counts. Ingram gets stuffed and McIlroy unsuccessfully lobs it up on third down. Dalton uses up the remaining time with one last hail-mary pass, but the Horned Frogs still head into the break up 10-6, although Alabama seems to have the momentum.

Alabama gets the ball on their own 29 to start the second half and immediately come running out the gate, with Ingram picking up six yards the first play from scrimmage. Two runs by Richardson pick up the first down, followed by a six-yard run of his own and another first down on an encroachment penalty. But while Ingram picks up a yard, Upchurch gets nailed behind midfield to make it 3rd and 12, and McIlroy throws an incompletion to force a punt. TCU is pinned on the 18, but Dalton calls his own number for five yards, followed by a 6-yard pickup by Tucker for the first. But Wesley gets nailed behind the line, Turner only gets back to the line, and Dalton is forced to scramble, forcing another punt. The punt is only returned to the 37 but Ingram immediately picks up 5 yards. Upchurch is stopped just short of the marker, setting up Ingram for another 5-yard run to just past midfield. Maze gets a screen pass that is stopped at the line, and Richardson picks up four before Ingram bursts through for 13 yards, putting the Tide at the 32. He gains another five yards to put them inside the 30, and Grant adds another two. But the toss to Colin Peek loses a yard, which may prove crucial when the Tide try a 43-yard field goal attempt that sails to the left, keeping the deficit at four instead of one.

But Turner and Tucker don’t do much and Dalton throws another incompletion, and the ensuing punt puts the Tide just barely behind midfield. But Grant only picks up two and Ingram one, and another toss to Peek doesn’t do anything, and the ensuing punt gets returned all the way to the 20 – another wasted opportunity. Turner pounds for 11 yards but Wesley, Fort, and Turner can’t combine for another first down before the quarter ends, giving TCU fourth and one. The punt, however, is only taken to the 35.

Ingram and Richardson don’t gain much but it’s enough to create third and two after an encroachment penalty, but Ingram only gets back to the line and Alabama punts again. This time TCU gets it on their own 32. Turner picks up a yard and Fort gets nailed for a loss of three, but Dalton connects with Johnson for 14 yards and the first. Turner and Tucker once again are stuffed and Dalton throws another incompletion, forcing yet another punt – this one only returned to the 26. Ingram gets 2, Upchurch gets 5, and Grant loses 2, and the ensuing punt is taken to the 44. TCU is suddenly winning the field position battle, which is not what Alabama wants exchanging three-and-outs and behind.

Turner picks up six yards to midfield, but Tucker only gains two and Turner goes nowhere, but the Tide get the ball back at the 21. Richardson gets nailed at the 16, but Ingram’s two-yarder sets up an encroachment penalty that nullifies the loss, setting up a pass to Maze for 14 yards and the first. But after Ingram gains four, Richardson and Upchurch are stalled, and with 4:52 left Alabama punts it back to TCU, who get it at the 33. Wesley gets the ball on two draw plays bracketing an incompletion, the second for 12 yards, but Turner, Fort, and Dalton get nowhere, and Alabama gets one last chance to come back from the 26 with two minutes left.

The drive starts well, as Ingram picks up 14 immediately on a draw play that gets out of bounds. But Richardson loses three yards, and McIlroy can’t find anyone downfield and scrambles out of bounds at the line of scrimmage, setting up third and 13 with 1:43 left on the 37. Incredibly, Nick Saban returns to the run, and even after Grant is stuffed behind the line to set up fourth and 14, calls a draw play to Grant. Alabama gives the ball back with 1:36 left and two timeouts, and they use them for a heroic stop. Dalton takes off himself to gain two – timeout, 1:32 left. Wesley picks up two – timeout, 1:28 left. Fort is stopped at the line, and TCU, caught in “no man’s land”, only runs the clock down to one minute before Dalton takes the ball and is stopped at the 35, not far from where Alabama left off.

This time Saban entrusts McIlroy with the game, and he doesn’t disappoint, hitting Peek at the marker, and spiking the ball to stop the clock with 37 seconds left. McIlroy steps back, quickly throws it to Richardson… out of his reach. 31 seconds. McIlroy is forced out of the pocket and sprints out of bounds for a meaningless yard. 25 seconds, fourth and nine, ball game comes down to this play. McIlroy steps back and stays in the pocket for several seconds. Finally he throws it up to Peek…

…and over his head.

Dalton takes victory formation to seal Alabama’s doom and a stunning victory for college football’s “little guys”. Unsurprisingly for such a run- and defense-heavy game, it’s a running back that takes MVP, and Wesley gets it almost by default for by far the longest play of the game, and only touchdown. He ran the ball 10 more times for 31 more yards, but the play everyone will remember was the one that was key to the game, the only time anyone seemed to figure out the other’s defense.
Final score: TCU 10, Florida 6

So it seems that, for the last month or so, everyone has been doing their “best of the decade” post-mortems. Seems everyone has forgotten all the hoopla and nonsense about how 2000 wasn’t really the start of a new millennium because there wasn’t really a “Year Zero”. If the new millennium really started with 2001, shouldn’t a new decade start with 2011? But I digress. In any case, it seems an appropriate time to take a look at the best games of the past ten years, even if it is a little late (the Packers and Cardinals already produced a nominee for the next decade just on Sunday), and sure enough last month ESPN presented 25 nominees and asked people to vote for their own best games of the decade, a list of nominees I’ve used as the backbone for this list.

It’s easy for me to say this when I wasn’t around for any of the earlier ages, but this past decade may have been one of the biggest golden ages in American sports, if not for the athleticism (or the legitimacy of it) then for the emotional and captivating games and moments. I started out intending to create a list of just the top ten games of the last decade, a list that would surely be limited to the truly transcendent moments, the cream of the crop, the games and events that would stand the test of time. Yet I found that to truly capture everything that happened in the last decade, to truly capture everything that I wanted to capture, I would have to extend the list to twelve. Even with the two extra spots, I had to do a lot of culling to produce the list you see here. (Sports Illustrated ultimately put together a top 20 list.)

Texas Tech upended Texas in 2008 in a thrilling game won on a tremendous catch and run for a touchdown on the effective final play, a game that ultimately kept Texas out of the Big 12 title game and thus the national title game, a game on par with any of the other great games of that thrilling year, but a game that was not even considered for the list. There is nothing from the NBA, which for most of this decade was in its post-MJ nadir. There is nothing from any sport smaller than tennis, which had to put on a heck of a performance to make the list. There is nothing from the NHL or auto racing. There is no Usain Bolt or Lance Armstrong. Only one baseball game made the list; Grady Little’s decision to leave in Pedro leading to Aaron Boone’s extra inning home run in Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS didn’t make the list, and neither did the 18-inning classic between the Braves and Astros in 2005 won by Roger Clemens coming out of the bullpen. Game 7 of the 2001 World Series, when the Arizona Diamondbacks cracked the great Mariano Rivera to win the series, didn’t make the list. Miami versus Ohio State, the first classic BCS title game, didn’t make the list. Super Bowl XXXIV, which ended one yard short of potentially going into overtime, didn’t make the list. Neither did XXXVIII, a showdown between the Patriots and Panthers with a high-scoring, back-and-forth final quarter many at the time considered one of the greatest Super Bowls ever.

No, to make this list you have to have something more. A great game in sports can involve a number of factors, whether it’s a tight, competitive game that’s only decided in the final seconds or a thrilling comeback against insurmountable odds, whether it’s a game between two unstoppable forces where something has to give or an underdog shocking the world and upsetting the favorite. A great game ideally involves high stakes, such as a championship, and its impact is felt for years to come. To make this list requires some combination of all of those; this list is so exclusive that only the cream of the crop can make it. There is not a single regular season game on this list; only one game, because of college football’s wonky postseason, did not give its winner a shot at the championship, and most of these games were for a championship of some kind. The underdog won most of these games, and even when the favorite won, it was one heck of an uphill climb. Many of these games went to overtime; almost all ended within one score. And pretty much every single one left everyone staring at their TVs in disbelief.

(Note: I consulted Wikipedia in the writing of these entries, so take from that what you will.)

Without further ado, I present to you Morgan Wick’s Top 12 Games of the Last Decade.

AFC Championship Game: Patriots @ Colts (2007)
Peyton Manning couldn’t win the big one. He’d already racked up more stats and records than any other quarterback of his era. But he’d never won a title, because he could never get past Tom Brady and the juggernaut known as the New England Patriots, whenever they met in the playoffs. Peyton Manning couldn’t put together that great, game-winning drive, that great comeback, like Montana and Brady could; instead, he was doomed to be put in the same sentence as Tarkenton or Marino, quarterbacks who had great numbers but could never win a ring. Asante Samuel picked him off 35 yards for a touchdown with nine and a half minutes left in the first half, giving the Patriots a 21-3 lead. Peyton Manning was once again going to collapse when the pressure was strongest and lose the big one. Except he set up Adam Vinatieri, star of so many Patriots championships past, to cut the deficit to 21-6 before the half, and led the Colts on two 76-yard touchdown drives during the first 11 minutes of the second half to tie the game. For the rest of the game, whenever the Patriots scored, the Colts answered. New England scored a touchdown; Indy scored a touchdown. New England kicked a field goal; Indy kicked a field goal. Finally New England kicked another field goal to take a 34-31 lead with 3:53 left. Peyton Manning wasn’t going to make the game-winning drive when he needed to. But that’s what he did, moving the ball 80 yards in just 7 plays to give the Colts a touchdown and their first lead of the game. But he left one minute on the clock; plenty of time for Tom Brady. But this time, Tom Terrific would throw an interception and the Colts could finally celebrate a victory over the Patriots when it mattered most. And two weeks later, Peyton Manning would win the one thing his Hall of Fame resume lacked: a Super Bowl ring.

MCBB National Championship Game: Kansas v. Memphis (2008)
9, 5, 16, 9, 7, 17. In chronological order, those are the last six victory margins in the NCAA Men’s Basketball National Championship Game, which in recent years has not lived up to its status as the culmination of the national month-long phenomenon known as March Madness, instead perennially ending the tournament with an anticlimactic blowout. Only three games this decade had victory margins lower than nine points, two of them being Syracuse’s three-point win over Kansas in 2003 when they were led by Carmelo Anthony, and North Carolina’s 5-point win over Illinois in 2005 that was only close for a few brief periods at the beginning and end of the game. But that 7-point game, delivered by Kansas and Memphis in 2008, was every bit the culmination that the tournament deserves. Kansas would only get that 7-point victory margin in overtime; they were down by nine with 2:12 to play and worked furiously to eliminate that deficit, helped by Memphis’ free-throw shooting woes. Even with all of that, it still took one clutch three-point shot from Mario Chalmers in the final seconds to send the game into overtime. Kansas would dominate the extra session, giving Bill Self his first championship, but Memphis proved once and for all it was worthy of the big boys despite coming from otherwise-weak Conference USA. The game has become rather colored since – you won’t find it in NCAA record books because the game was vacated as a result of NCAA violations at Memphis – but for one year, the tournament had a championship game worthy of the tournament itself.

Super Bowl XLIII: Steelers v. Cardinals (2009)
Super Bowl XLIII didn’t start out much differently from many other Super Bowls. The Steelers took a 10-0 lead a minute into the second quarter, but the Cardinals responded with a touchdown of their own, and late in the first half Kurt Warner, enjoying an unusual career resurgence, drove the Cardinals down to tie or take the lead before the half. And then unsung Steeler linebacker James Harrison picked him off at the goal line and managed to run all 100 yards down the field and 18 seconds off the clock, turning what could have been a tie game or Cardinal lead to a 17-7 Steeler lead, despite Larry Fitzgerald coming close to bringing him down at the one. (Contrary to popular belief, had Fitzgerald been successful the half would not have ended with Harrison’s interception failing to result in points; a look at the video shows the clock only hits zero as Harrison crosses the goal line, and Harrison could still have been brought down at the one with one second left.) That set the tone for what became one of the wildest Super Bowls in history, as Pittsburgh extended the lead to 20-7 by the end of the third period, only to see Warner move the ball 87 yards on only eight plays in less than four minutes, culminating in a pass to Fitzgerald to move within six. Then Pittsburgh was pinned on the one and Ben Roethlisberger appeared to complete a 20-yard pass to Santonio Holmes, only to see it nullified on a flag in the end zone that gave the Cardinals a safety, cutting the lead to four. Then on just the second play of the ensuing drive, Warner completed it to Fitzgerald who sprinted past the defense for a 63-yard touchdown that gave the Cardinals the lead. Then Roethlisberger drove the Steelers 78 yards (really 88 yards because of a holding penalty) in eight plays and two minutes, culminating in Santonio Holmes tapping his toes in the end zone to retake the lead. Then Warner took over hoping his great receivers could give him some late heroics of his own, but had the ball forced out as he attempted to pass, in a play Cardinals fans still think should have been ruled an incompletion, as Roethlisberger was finally able to take a knee to give the Steelers their second championship in four years.

ALCS: Yankees @ Red Sox Game 4 (2004)
The Yankees won the first three games of the series, and by big margins. No team in the history of baseball had ever come back from a 3-0 deficit. Now it was Game 4, and while the Yankees weren’t dominating the Red Sox, only leading 4-3, they had the Hammer of God, Mariano Rivera, the greatest closer of all time, on the mound. No one hits Mariano Rivera; no one scores off of Mariano Rivera; Mariano Rivera does not blow saves, certainly not in the postseason. With just three more outs, the Red Sox were going to be swept out of the ALCS in ignominious fashion, worse than the heartbreak of the year before, and the fabled Curse of the Bambino would continue for one more year as the Red Sox’ World Series futility would have one more chapter written. Then Rivera walked Kevin Millar, and Dave Roberts, in as a pinch-runner, incredibly took off for second, just barely beating the tag. Bill Mueller singled in Roberts, and the game went into extra innings, where David Ortiz would hit a walk-off home run in the twelfth to keep the series alive. The Red Sox were still down 3-1 in the series, still a tall order, but the Yankees were already demoralized, and another Rivera blown save and Ortiz extra-inning heroics sent the series back to New York but with the outcome seemingly a foregone conclusion. Curt Schilling threw seven innings of one-run ball in the “Bloody Sock game” and some controversial calls prevented the Yankees from mounting a long enough rally to win, and Game 7 would prove a blowout. Boston went on to sweep the Cardinals right out of the World Series, a shockingly sudden end to the Curse, and Boston fans still wouldn’t be sure the tables wouldn’t be turned on them until that final out. And for one year, the pendulum in the greatest rivalry in baseball swung to Fenway Park.

Super Bowl XXXVI: Rams v. Patriots (2002)
Members of the Rams declared before the game that it would mark the birth of a dynasty, after winning Super Bowl XXXIV two years before. They were right; they just didn’t play for that dynasty. No one expected the Patriots to win Super Bowl XXXVI against the Rams, considered the most dominant team in football with one of the greatest offenses of all time, known as the “Greatest Show On Turf” with multiple future Hall of Famers or potential Hall of Famers from Kurt Warner to Marshall Faulk to Torry Holt. The Patriots were relying on an unproven rookie quarterback and only escaped their wild card game against the Raiders in the controversial “tuck rule” game. But the New England Patriots were perhaps the perfect team for America to root for in the first Super Bowl since 9/11, especially after the pregame introductions. The Rams had each member of the starting lineup introduced individually, as was then the custom; the Patriots declared their intention to be introduced as a team, as a single unit without egos. The following year would be the final year anyone would be introduced individually. The Patriots stymied the Greatest Show On Turf, only allowing a field goal in the first half and Ty Law returning an interception 47 yards for a touchdown, helping the Patriots take a 14-3 halftime and 17-3 end-of-third-quarter lead. The Rams wouldn’t score any touchdowns until the fourth quarter, scoring two to tie the game with 1:30 left, leaving John Madden to suggest the Patriots play for overtime. Instead, Tom Brady drove the Patriots 53 yards to allow Adam Vinatieri to kick the game-winning field goal on the last play of the game, winning Super Bowl MVP. The Patriots would win two more championships in the next three years; the Rams were never the same, going 0-2 in the divisional round since, and winning the division and posting a winning record once in the succeeding years (in 2003), culminating in a 1-15 record in 2009 that made them the laughingstock of the league. Super Bowl XXXVI was a classic at the time, but rarely has one game shifted the fortunes of two franchises so much.

MCBB Washington Regional Final: George Mason v. Connecticut (2006)
The heart of the NCAA tournament is Cinderella, the underdog that upends the big name school despite not having nearly the name value or prestige. But it’s the big name schools, not the underdogs, that make the Final Four year after year, schools like Florida and UCLA and North Carolina and Duke. It’s not a bunch of kids from a no-name suburban commuter school. In fact, George Mason was a pretty good team that year, as evidenced by the fact they entered the tournament as an at-large despite losing one of their best players, Tony Skinn, to a suspension for the first game. In fact, when they knocked off Michigan State despite being without Skinn, I distinctly remember thinking, “If they could win a game over the 6 seed without Skinn, imagine what they could do with him.” Indeed, the Patriots went on to knock out North Carolina in the second round. But they lucked into another underdog mid-major, Wichita State, in the Sweet 16; surely the winner of that game would serve as little more than the whipping boy for the winner of the battle of Huskies between UConn and Washington. Except it didn’t happen that way. Mason proved once and for all they could play with the big boys, sticking with Connecticut every stage of the game, never giving up even when down substantially. Mason gave up a late lead that allowed the Huskies to hit a buzzer-beater to send the game to overtime, but in the extra session it was Mason that looked like the big name school and Connecticut that looked like the scrappy mid-major that was just happy to be there. Florida blew out Mason in the Final Four, but for one night, a bunch of no-names from a sleepy commuter school in suburban Washington played perhaps the defining game of March Madness.

Wimbledon Men’s Singles Final: Federer v. Nadal (2008)
Roger Federer was the dominant tennis player of the decade, so dominant no one else could challenge him – outside of clay. Rafael Nadal was already one of the greatest clay court players of all time, and had reached the Wimbledon final the year before, but just as Federer couldn’t crack Nadal on clay, so Nadal couldn’t crack Federer on grass. But in 2008, on the most storied court in tennis, Nadal took the first two sets before rain intervened. Federer rallied to take the third set in a tiebreak and rallied from 5-2 down with Nadal serving in the fourth set tiebreak to force a fifth, which was interrupted by another rain delay. Neither man could crack the other’s serve until 7-7, when Nadal picked up a break and went on to win the match only games before it would have been suspended by darkness. Some of the greatest players in the history of the game called it the greatest match they’d ever seen, but it was more important than that. It marked a passing of the torch, signifying that Nadal was now the most dominant player in the game, taking the World No. 1 ranking by the end of the year. Federer would have the more successful 2009 when Nadal was taken out of Roland Garros and Wimbledon by injury, completing the career slam and passing Pete Sampras, but people will always remember the classic Federer and Nadal put on on Centre Court in 2008.

Fiesta Bowl: Boise State v. Oklahoma (2007)
Boise State’s win over Oklahoma in the 2007 Fiesta Bowl has always been a bit overrated. It’s hardly an upset – both major polls had Boise not far behind Oklahoma, and the computers thought highly enough of the Broncos to actually pull them ahead of the Sooners in the BCS standings. Oklahoma was not a world-beater team; they lucked into the Big 12 Title Game when Texas choked down the stretch. But c’mon. It’s Oklahoma – Oklahoma! Oklahoma doesn’t lose to directional schools with weird-colored fields like Boise State! Boise – all the non-BCS schools – were considered unworthy of respect until proven otherwise. Since both teams were mediocre by BCS standards, the Fiesta Bowl was not even all that well-played. But it was certainly one of the wildest games of the decade. Boise would lead much of the game before Oklahoma rallied to tie, then Jared Zabransky surrendered an interception return for a touchdown to give OU the lead. Then Boise pulled out all the stops to come away with the win, starting with the famous hook-and-lateral to force overtime. Oklahoma scored on the first possession, and Boise responded with a relatively normal halfback pass, putting them an extra point away from forcing a second overtime… wait, Chris Peterson is going all-in with a two-point conversion? He’s making it do-or-die for Boise? Zabransky faked the throw while handing off to Ian Johnson – the Statue of Liberty? – and Boise had knocked off one of college football’s most storied programs and Johnson delivered one of the most unforgettable proposals of all time. But more than the excitement of the game itself, the 2007 Fiesta Bowl deserves importance for how it changed college football, doing more than any other single game to make a playoff inevitable by showing that the college football have-nots deserved a seat at the table – and perhaps more importantly, Boise’s trick plays earned the lower-tier schools a reputation for unconventional, entertaining play that turned them into money-makers as well, showing that the have-nots were worth giving a seat at the table to.

Beijing 2008 Olympic Games: 100m Butterfly Final (2008)
Even underdog-friendly America cheers on the favorites sometimes, usually because they’re American, but often, as in the next two entries, because they do something to show how great they are, in a way they can’t when they destroy everyone else. In 2008, Michael Phelps took aim at Mark Spitz’s record of seven Olympic gold medals, in a quest that captivated the nation for the first week of the Games. No one knew he would achieve the feat in quite the dramatic fashion he did. Several races from Phelps’ eight could have been selected to represent his quest in this spot, from Jason Lezak’s hard charge in the 4×100 freestyle to Phelps playing a crucial role in getting his own eighth medal in the 4×100 medley. But the race ESPN picked to represent Phelps’ chase was the one that tied the record. For much of the Games, Phelps’ foil was Ian Crocker, who held the world record in the event, but Serbian Milorad Cavic had shown in the past signs that he could best Phelps in the 100m butterfly, often getting derailed before he could take on Phelps when it counted. Cavic beat Phelps when they competed together in the heats, and swam a faster time in the semifinals. That gave Cavic so much confidence he declared it would be better for swimming for Phelps to fall, giving Phelps plenty of bulletin-board material entering the race. Nonetheless Cavic had the lead at the turn, and Phelps had to mount a heroic comeback to cut the lead down, only to be caught mid-stroke as the wall beckoned, still behind Cavic. With one last, powerful stroke, Phelps powered into the wall as Cavic glided in… and the scoreboard gave him the win, one one-hundredth of a second ahead of Cavic. So unbelievable was the result even Phelps himself, and his mother, had trouble believing it until they saw the scoreboard. The Serbs immediately filed a protest, but it was quickly denied, and less than 24 hours later photos confirmed that Phelps was at the wall as Cavic was just about to touch it. By the slimmest of margins, Phelps’ quest for eight gold medals stayed alive. Crocker would be beaten for the bronze by Australia’s Andrew Lauterstein. By one one-hundredth of a second.

US Open (Golf): Final Round and Playoff (2008)
Before he was known for having a bevy of girlfriends, Tiger Woods was known for being a pretty good golfer. No golfer in the past decade was anywhere near as consistently dominant as Tiger, who ran down Jack Nicklaus’ record with determination. In recent years injuries have hobbled Woods, and after the 2008 Masters Woods had arthroscopic surgery on his knee. Woods was determined not to miss a major, and in his zeal to come back suffered a stress fracture in his tibia. No one outside of Woods’ inner circle knew of the injury as he played in the US Open anyway. But they could see it in the way he hobbled down the course all weekend, going so far as to use his club as a crutch. Still, it’s Tiger Woods. Come on. Tiger was second after two rounds, but continued to struggle and fell behind. But he dazzled the crowd with a chip-in for birdie on 17 and two eagles down the stretch to pick up a one-stroke lead entering the final day, but if ever Tiger was ripe for his streak of majors won when he leads after three rounds to be broken, now was the time. And of all people, it was a 40-year-old journeyman qualifier named Rocco Mediate who seized the opportunity, taking a one-shot lead to the clubhouse as Woods and his playing partner Lee Westwood came to the eighteenth hole. Westwood missed his 15-foot birdie putt to force a playoff, and Woods had one from twelve. Would it go in? It’s Tiger Woods. Come on. Mediate gave Woods everything he had in the eighteen-hole playoff the next day, but he fell behind three strokes after the tenth. Then Tiger started to struggle and Mediate started to come back, taking a one-shot lead after the fifteenth that held entering the final hole. Still, it’s Tiger Woods. Come on. As on the previous day, Woods birdied 18 while Mediate parred, forcing a nineteenth hole, which Woods parred and Mediate bogied. But Mediate would not be forgotten as the man who brought out the best from a hobbled Tiger. Later that week, Woods announced he was ending his season – his injury was too serious – and people realized just how much he had to overcome to win perhaps his greatest major of all.

Rose Bowl: Texas v. USC (2006)
Give this to the BCS: when it works, it works spectacularly. When there are exactly two undefeated teams and both come from BCS conferences, it creates a singular event that, even if both teams escape the playoff unscathed, a playoff might take some of the momentum out of. One game between the two dominant programs in college football, two teams that would simply be wasting time playing anyone else, two teams that went wire-to-wire as the obvious best teams in college football, two teams that, as Wikipedia puts it (and it shouldn’t), would be runaway champions if they weren’t playing in the same year as each other. But they were, and something had to give, and it was natural that that something would be Texas, going up against a USC team with NFL talent all over the field, playing virtually at home, and coming off two straight national championships, to the extent that ESPN ran a series comparing USC not to Texas, but to all the great teams in college football history. As it turned out, it would be ESPN’s “Dewey Defeats Truman” moment, because Vince Young was all Texas needed.

Reggie Bush cast doubt on his Heisman victory with a botched lateral and two controversial plays, including a Young lateral for a touchdown, were not reviewed because of malfunctioning replay equipment, but the real fun ensued late. USC took a 38-26 lead with 6:42 left to play, but Young led the Longhorns on a brisk drive in which he accounted for every yard. USC got a first down but at third down at midfield, saw LenDale White fumble the ball and recovered it two yards short of a first down. For a team in the lead, fourth and two is a punting situation. But Vince Young was as scary as Peyton Manning would be nearly four years later, and the Trojans were a lot further down the field than the Patriots. They handed the ball to White, he came a yard short, and Young accounted for every yard on the ensuing drive, dashing to the end zone on fourth-and-5 from the 9. The Longhorns took a one-point lead, and fittingly, it was Young dashing to the end zone again on the ensuing two-point conversion. There wasn’t enough time for the Trojans to score, and Texas, not USC, were considered the best team in football. USC hasn’t played for a national championship since, but the real long-term impact came in the NFL Draft. After the second Trojan title, Matt Leinart forewent an almost surefire number 1 selection in the NFL Draft to win another. Bush turned into the top Trojan, picked second by the Saints. The Tennessee Titans, with former USC offensive coordinator Norm Chow as OC, picked third, needing a quarterback, and chose Young over Leinart. Leinart fell to 10th before being picked by Arizona. That Pasadena night made all the difference.

Super Bowl XLII: Patriots v. Giants (2008)
Every year, thousands of Americans file into a football stadium, and half of all the TVs in America are turned on, to watch the greatest spectacle in American sports, if not all of sports. After hours and hours of pregame speculation and festivities, the national anthem is sung, the coin is tossed, and the game – no ordinary football game – begins under the bright lights. The most creative commercials of the year air in-between the action, and some of the biggest acts in music perform the biggest, most spectacular concert of the year at halftime. Eventually, the game is over, fireworks explode and confetti falls, and a massive tricked-out stage is brought out to present the trophy. It is the biggest, brightest, longest, and most incredible show of the year, the occasion for a virtual national holiday.

And yet, what happened at Super Bowl XLII in Tempe, Arizona in 2008 managed to transcend all of that. If the NFL had the status of the Arena League, this game would still rank highly on this list. If it happened in high school, the participants and highlights would be all over ESPN, and people would be clamoring for the movie rights.

Maybe Douglas Adams was right. Maybe 42 really is the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything. Or at least, the number of the greatest Super Bowl of all time.

This wasn’t just a great game; this was a sports movie brought to real life. This kind of story just doesn’t happen in the big money world of professional sports, let alone the NFL. If you pitched this script, it wouldn’t be rejected for being too unbelievable; it would be rejected for being too derivative and corny. The Patriots were the perfect villains. Not only did they never lose a game, everyone was certain all year that they cheated to do so, thanks to Eric Mangini reporting Bill Belichick taping signals the first week of the year in what came to be known as the SpyGate scandal. The Giants, meanwhile, had a put-upon quarterback who would never be as good as his brother, were dogged by the Patriots all year (Patriots-Giants wasn’t just the last game of the playoffs, but the last game of the preseason and regular season as well, and the Giants put up a good effort in the regular-season finale that wasn’t good enough, saving that one great victory for when it mattered most and people were most skeptical), and just barely got into the playoffs as a wild card, and through pluck and spunk, defeated bigger, stronger, more favored teams three times on the road to get to the championship game against a true Goliath, already exceeding all expectations. There were some people who thought the Giants could come away with a win, but the Patriots looked like the best team of all time. How could a wild card team hope to knock off the mighty, undefeated Patriots?

The teams took up the entire opening quarter with their opening drives, resulting in the Patriots taking a 7-3 lead, a score that didn’t change in the next two quarters. But Eli Manning caught fire in the final period. He blistered the Patriot defense for 80 yards in 7 plays to put the Giants in the end zone. Giants 10: Patriots 7. But the Giants were playing Tom Brady, and after an exchange of three-and-outs, he drove the Patriots down the field to retake a 14-10 lead with under three minutes to play. The Giants get the ball on their own 17. They get a couple big gains and a short one on 4th and 1. They move five more yards to their own 44. Manning throws the ball and Asante Samuel drops a potential interception. It would have all but ended the game. Instead the Giants still have the ball on 3rd and 5. Manning drops back to pass but the pocket closes in on him. The Patriots defenders surround him for a certain sack… except it isn’t. Manning improbably escapes out of the grasp of the defenders. At this point, if Manning had just made a pitch-and-catch to a wide-open receiver on the sideline right at the marker, or even if he had taken off for the marker himself, or even if he had just thrown an incompletion (stopping the clock and not losing any yardage), or even if the Giants went on to lose, it would still rank among the greatest plays in NFL history.

Instead, he threw it 32 yards down the field to a well-covered David Tyree. Who? David Tyree, a backup receiver known more for his special teams skills who never had more than 19 catches in a single season, who had only four catches for 35 yards this season, who had caught the touchdown earlier in the quarter but who was the intended receiver on the near-interception the previous play. As in all good sports movies, none of the adversity mattered when it mattered most, because Tyree somehow overshadowed the escape Manning had made seconds earlier, pinning the ball against his helmet as he went to the ground. The only way it could have been better would be if Tyree somehow escaped his defender, stayed on his feet, and sprinted down the field for a touchdown (or if Gus Johnson or at least Al Michaels were calling it instead of Joe Buck). Because Tyree pinned the ball against the side of the helmet facing away from the live game camera, Manning’s escape was actually more noticeable and thus easier to appreciate watching live on TV (I wasn’t even sure the pass was complete until I heard and saw confirmation), but Tyree’s catch would be what everyone would remember, perhaps because it’s easier to capture in a single photograph. It would turn out to be his last catch as a Giant. Four plays later, Manning found Plaxico Burress in the end zone and the Giants re-took the lead. But if there’s one thing Tom Brady is known for, it’s Super Bowl-winning drives, even if he only has 35 seconds to do it. He throws an incompletion and gets sacked, then tries a couple deep throws to Randy Moss downfield; surely one of them is for the game-winning touchdown, it’s Tom Brady, after all. But they both fall incomplete and the Giants stun the nation.

The Giants have not won any other playoff games since the Super Bowl-losing 2000 team. But in retrospect, it was the last night of the Patriots dynasty. Brady was injured in the first game of the next season and missed all year, and while his return presaged a division title in 2009, Belichick seemed to lose his magic touch as team chemistry seemed to disintegrate during mid-season struggles, and the Patriots were unceremoniously dumped at home by the Ravens in the playoffs, the first home playoff game lost in the Belichick era. As with other “great” Super Bowls this past decade, the action did not pick up until the final quarter, but Super Bowl XLII still stands as the undisputed greatest game of the past decade, because while sometimes it’s great to see two unstoppable forces squaring off or a great athlete or team prove it when he or it needs to, people always come back to sports for the scrappy underdog who can show them what dreams are made of.

In the past, the main defense of this practice was that even if they had no chance of getting the job, perhaps they could make an impression that would lead to them getting some job in the future, that would get them into the “good ol’ boys network”. I’m going to say right now that Leslie Frazier is going to be named a head coach in the NFL a year from now, and I’d bet better-than-even odds that he would not have if he weren’t interviewed for the Seahawks job. I mean, every hardcore football fan in America has heard of Frazier now; how many heard of him before he became a symbol of everything “wrong” with the Rooney Rule?

If a team has someone in mind for their head coaching vacancy, why not let them hire that person? I mean, if, as I’ve heard people suggest, the practice constitutes something Roger Goodell needs to do something about, what do you do about it? Do you force teams to hire black head coaches when they don’t want to? Do you force the Seahawks to hire Leslie Frazier instead of Pete Carroll? If not, how do you determine when to lay down the law and when not to? Even when it’s time to lay down the law, how do you do so? How do you close loopholes without getting ridiculous? How do you avoid “reverse racism”? It just seems impossible and unnecessary to enforce the spirit of the law on top of the letter.

Funny how none of the previous instances have resulted in as much outrage as now…

Still, when I heard the news this morning I was willing to consider any number of unfortunate but understandable reasons. Perhaps they had a new GM in mind who didn’t like Mora, or they decided they needed a complete purge and Mora got caught up in that.

But if they fired Jim Mora to hire Pete Carroll, as is being heavily rumored? To go after yet another coach that was great in college but which is far from a guarantee of NFL success – one that has ALREADY proven he couldn’t hang it in the NFL? Carroll, I hope, isn’t deciding one rebuilding year at USC is a sign he’s completely over the hill in college and needs to bolt back to the NFL where he couldn’t hang it.

If the Seahawks are letting themselves toss out a coach that doesn’t deserve it because they’re stupid enough to be blinded by a coach’s credentials in college while ignoring his NFL chops (and before you tell me he has an NFL-style offense and grooms NFL players, keep in mind the struggles of Matt Leinart and Reggie Bush in the NFL), then either whoever made this move as a condition to become GM will be completely unable to turn the Hawks around, or Mike Holmgren was a better GM than we thought to lead the Hawks to the Super Bowl despite Paul Allen’s ownership.

And I’m not even normally a Hawks or Trojans partisan.

The panel has selected a list of 15 finalists from the modern era, defined as playing all or part of their careers within the last 25 years. A player must have spent 5 years out of the league before they can be considered for induction into the Hall of Fame. Players that last played in the 2004 season will be eligible for induction in 2010.

During Super Bowl Weekend, the panel will meet and narrow down the list of modern-era finalists down to five. Those five will be considered alongside two senior candidates, selected by a nine-member subpanel of the larger panel last August, for a total of seven. From this list, at least four and no more than seven people will be selected for induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

My prediction for the Pro Football Hall of Fame Class of 2010 is:

Jerry Rice
Emmitt Smith
Shannon Sharpe
John Randle
Russ Grimm

Hall of Fame Game: 49ers v. Cowboys

Cincinnati had the ball to start the game, and Tony Pike had a 15-yard completion to Mardy Gilyard on second down, followed by an Isaiah Pead run to midfield for six yards, but he was stopped behind the line on second down and the Bearcats were forced to punt. TCU went three-and-out with a fumble and Cincinnati looked to have the early momentum. But they went three-and-out as well, and on the Frogs’ next play from scrimmage Joseph Turner pounded ahead for an 18-yard gain, putting TCU across midfield after a face mask penalty. TCU couldn’t do anything and was forced to punt, but Cincinnati didn’t get very far either despite an 11-yard Pead run and an 8-yard run by Jacob Ramsey that both went for first downs. TCU went three-and-out again, but Pike was picked on the very next play, and TCU had the momentum for good. Andy Dalton made a long completion to Jeremy Kerley, and Matt Tucker pounded ahead for a six-yard touchdown to take the early lead. The teams traded three-and-outs across the quarter break.

Cincinnati managed to pick up a first down but a big sack of Pike helped force a punt despite crossing midfield. A Dalton pass to Evan Frosch and 7-yard Tucker run crossed midfield, but the drive stalled and TCU punted the ball back. But after the defense forces yet another three-and-out, the ensuing punt is returned almost to midfield, and a completion to Bart Johnson for 23 yards pretty much puts the Horned Frogs in field goal range, allowing them to take a 10-point lead. The Bearcats then engage in their most productive drive of the half: after a second down sack pinned the Bearcats behind their own 20, Pike makes a 27-yard completion to Gilyard and follows that up with a 15-yard Pead run and a 17-yard completion to Ben Guidugli that puts them inside the 30. But a Ramsey 8-yard run is negated by an illegal motion penalty the following play, and Pike is sacked out of field goal range on third down, forcing a turnover on downs. Dalton makes a long completion to Logan Brock but can’t do anything with it, but while Guidugli makes a long completion there isn’t enough time to do anything with it. Cincinnati enters the break down 10-0 and unable to so much as attempt a field goal, and pundits note that TCU is winning the game because their defense is outplaying the Bearcat defense.

TCU gets the ball to start the second half and makes the most of it, the highlights being a long completion to Kerley and Dalton dancing inside the pylon for eight yards, ultimately setting up a field goal that gives TCU a 13-point lead that seems twice that size. Things seem to go well for Cincinnati at first as well, with a 25-yard completion to DJ Woods, but another pass to Armon Binns results in what replay confirms as a fumble, giving TCU the ball right back. TCU can’t do much more than a pass to Johnson across midfield, and punts the ball into the end zone, starting another productive Bearcat drive, starting with another long completion to Gilyard, 17 yards on third and 12. Jamar Howard gets involved for the next first down, and Gilyard makes a nine-yard completion for another first down, but once again the Horned Frogs lock down inside the 40 and force Cincinnati to go for it on fourth down, this time getting a sack that gives TCU great field position to start the final period. By the end of the day, Pike is sacked nine times by eight different players and, combined with four rushing attempts, loses a total of a whopping 62 yards on the ground by himself. Turner would be named the MVP for his 17 rushes for 81 yards and a touchdown, emblematic of TCU’s overall rushing success, but the defense is the real star of the day.

TCU misses the field goal created by the turnover, but Pike throws his second interception, Ross Evans quickly redeems himself, and TCU, as though they weren’t in command already, puts the game away for the remainder of the final period, scoring a touchdown after Cincinnati punts on their next drive only to see it returned inside the 30, and scoring another touchdown, Turner’s, later on. Cincinnati is unable to score all day, or even attempt a field goal, and notice is served to Alabama and Texas that they do not have the de facto national championship game.
Final score: TCU 30, Cincinnati 0

Preview of the Golden Bowl coming either if and when I simulate a bowl only affected by the Golden Bowl Tournament, or when posting my final rankings.

• Jets: Win OR BAL, DEN, HOU, MIA, and JAX loss.
• Ravens: Win and you’re in, lose and you’re out.
• Broncos: Win and PIT and (NYJ or BAL) loss OR Win and (NYJ or BAL) loss and HOU win OR PIT and any three of NYJ, BAL, HOU, or JAX loss.
• Texans: Win and any two of NYJ, BAL, or DEN loss.
• Steelers: Win and HOU and (NYJ or BAL) loss OR Win and NYJ, DEN, and BAL loss.
• Dolphins: Win and NYJ, BAL, HOU, and JAX loss.
• Jaguars: Win and any three of NYJ, BAL, HOU, or PIT loss.

• The year in sports is a massive disappointment. Not really. I predicted a Dolphins-Vikings Super Bowl, and we did get one team that wasn’t exactly a “name” team, and the Steelers kinda sorta pulled the same trick they did three years before, though not quite as surprising. But who would have guessed that the Vikings would have actually been a name team by the end of the year? Or that we’d get a Super Bowl that people were hailing as the best ever one year after Patriots-Giants? The national championship game in college basketball did go back to being a laugher, but while North Carolina didn’t go undefeated, far from losing in the Final Four, they won the whole thing. Neither the Cavs nor Spurs made the NBA Finals, and LeBron to the Knicks is still a very real possibility, but the new hot idea is teaming LeBron and Dwayne Wade somewhere. The Stanley Cup Finals turned out to be Red Wings-Pens again, and America tuned in as much as they ever do for hockey, but if it’s Red Wings-Pens a third time I think we will start to tune out. Philadelphia made the World Series again, and the Red Sox lost in the first round, but far from not making the ALCS, the Yankees won the whole thing.
• Tiger Woods did indeed fail to win a major, though he didn’t miss much time, but no one could have predicted what happened to him by year’s end. Jimmie Johnson did indeed win another Sprint Cup in a laugher – NASCAR really needs to review the Chase idea to see if there’s something about the structure of the Chase that Jimmie is exploiting. But far from not making a major final, Roger Federer made every major final, and won twice. There were five undefeated college football teams at season’s end, not three after Week 4, but I picked two of them – but I sure as hell didn’t pick what happened to USC this season, and while it was a down year for mid-majors in general, we got two BCS busters and the closest any mid-major team has yet gotten to making the national championship game. The Arena League, who I may have had in mind when I predicted one league would completely cancel a season, folded entirely, but MLS seems strong as ever, and the IRL isn’t cutting back at all, even adding a title sponsor. But NASCAR may well pass it backwards anyway… and the UFC certainly attracted a lot of attention for UFC 100. These are stories to watch for the next decade.
• We don’t know what’s happening with the Olympics or NHL contracts, but we do know they won’t be in Chicago. Rio won’t be all bad for American television, but still.
• “The Saints challenge for the NFC South” indeed! “The Lions are at least respectable”… not so much, though I will say right now that the Browns or Raiders will make the playoffs in the 2010 season. Brett Favre did retire, but then he unretired again, but the Jets hold their own playoff destiny in their own hands. Matt Cassel joined the Chiefs and Super Bowl contenders they are not, but it’s still too early to say he (and thus, Tom Brady) was entirely a creation of Bill Belichick. (Wasn’t he injury-rattled this year?) The Pats are back in the AFC East driver’s seat, the Cowboys are in the playoffs, have shook off the December blues, and could take the division, and Vince Young is officially Tennessee’s quarterback of the future.
• I actually made three different predictions for the year in politics. Sadly, the first one seems to be the closest to coming to pass. Troops aren’t even entirely out of Iraq yet, though we have stopped paying attention to it. Most of Obama’s stimulus plans are gimmicky (Cash for Clunkers, anyone?) and don’t provide enough PR boost. The politics of the last eight years don’t change and in fact get worse, because they involve cultural factors bigger than any politician, and can only be changed by the people taking part in it – us. (In retrospect, Obamamania is a symptom of a persistent problem the Left has these days, of assuming that if we just elect enough right-thinking politicians, everything will be hunky-dory. It blinds the Left to politics’ limitations and to other avenues to change, which led the Right to beat them at what used to be their own game this year with the tea parties and town halls, as well as the reasons why electing the right politicians can be so hard.) The Left still loves Obama, though some people don’t find him leftist enough, and the tea partiers don’t find many in their own party rightist enough, which scares me in terms of what the politics of the next decade will be like. I don’t normally make New Year’s resolutions per se, but mine is to try to do something to change the state of politics in this country before it’s too late. Interestingly, the tea partiers and people like Glenn Beck make Ron Paul’s views more mainstream, while the GOP base still defends what Bush did as president, so my “fascist-anarchist” GOP prediction isn’t far off.
• The Internet’s metamorphosis this year basically amounts to the rise of Twitter; it doesn’t seem to be benefiting from the recession as much as I thought, though the rest of my prediction may yet come to pass this year.
• Because of that, webcomics haven’t exploded yet, though we may yet see a new golden age in this coming decade. Sandsday won’t be part of it though, and I still intend to revisit my State of Webcomics Address.
• The people who read my webcomics criticism, including what amounts to semi-big names in webcomics, like it, but there aren’t enough of them. I didn’t really do much to attract new audiences to politics other than the Sandsday global warming series. I’m effectively repeating this point for the coming year.