The 10 Biggest Sports Stories of 2011
This year offered the best World Series game ever along with one of the most troubling scandals in college sports history. A look back at the best of years and the worst of years.
Last year, I predicted that NFL and NBA labor strife would be the top sports story of 2011. Not to throw a #humblebrag at you, but it stinks that I was right. Luckily, there were a plethora of feel-good moments to balance out all the lockouts, lawsuits, litigation and scandals.
How scintillating a sports year was 2011? Among the stories that didn’t make the top 10 were Novak Djokovic’s remarkable tennis season, in which he won three majors on his way to a 70-5 year and a dominant hold on the No. 1 ranking, and Rory McIlroy’s eight-shot win at the U.S. Open that brought to mind Tiger Woods at his best.
Here are the top 10 sports stories of 2011:
THE PENN STATE SCANDAL
It would be nice if this article were titled “The BEST Sports Stories of 2011,” because then we wouldn’t have to recap Jerry Sandusky’s alleged monstrosities against children. The former defensive coordinator and longtime Joe Paterno acolyte was charged with 40 counts of child abuse in November, and that was only the beginning. Since then, we saw a curt firing of the legendary Paterno, a housecleaning of the top positions at the university, a student riot, a bizarre phone interview with Sandusky and Bob Costas, filing of civil charges against Sandusky and the state by yet another alleged victim, and the horrific prospect of a similar situation at Syracuse, which just fired longtime assistant coach and Jim Boeheim protégé Bernie Fine after allegations of Fine’s sexual abuse of young boys surfaced. Oh, and Paterno has lung cancer. Bad times all around.
NBA LOCKOUT
My “bold prediction” last year was that an NBA lockout would eat up most, if not all of the season. I was half right—David Stern and the players partied like it was 1999 and gibbered for what seemed like the entire summer over basketball-related income and a hard salary cap without actually getting anything done. Only when the players disclaimed their union and filed federal antitrust litigation did the league have the financial incentive to work out a deal. Now there will be a 66-game season starting on Christmas Day, and while strike-shortened campaigns usually lead to sub-par quality of play, the astonishing amount of young talent in the league makes the NBA must-see TV.
NFL LOCKOUT
Sure, the NBA work stoppage actually affected regular-season games … but basketball is nowhere the American institution that football is. No sport even comes close to matching football these days in terms of cultural and financial significance, so the prospect of a lost NFL season sent shockwaves through the U.S. sports world. In the end, the players and owners reached the same conclusion I did in December: The league’s just too lucrative for labor or management to risk derailing the gravy train with a protracted work stoppage. The league got much of what it wanted, the players avoided an 18-game season, and fans have been treated to fall Sundays of nonstop gridiron action.
ST. LOUIS WINS THE GREATEST BASEBALL GAME EVER
That’s not a misprint—the Cardinals’ fairy-tale, improbable, zany dream of a 10-9 win over the Texas Rangers in Game 6 of the World Series was the best display of our national pastime ever. Down 3-2 in the series, the Cards were down to their last strike and a got a miraculous season-saving hit—in two consecutive innings. After displaying their best Lazarus impersonation twice in 30 minutes, St. Louis finished off the shell-shocked Rangers on a walk-off 11th-inning home run by David Freese. The Cardinals took Game 7 to capture their second World Series in six years, but 100 years from now all people will remember is the wonder that was Game 6.
AARON RODGERS AND THE PACKERS’ PERFECT (SO FAR) 2011 > ----- [this one is now outdated since they lost on Sunday]
Forget being 12-0 this season—the Packers haven’t lost a game since last Dec. 19, when they fell 31-27 to the Patriots and remained one game out of a playoff berth. Since then, they’ve won 17 in a row, including three straight road playoff games and a 31-25 win over Pittsburgh in Super Bowl XLV. Leading the way is Rodgers, who won the Super Bowl MVP in February and has followed it up with a historically good 2011 season—33 touchdowns, four interceptions, a 71.8 percent completion percentage, and a QB rating of 127.7 (to put that in perspective, the record for a full season is 121.1 by Peyton Manning in 2004). A virtual shoo-in for the MVP this year, Rodgers can achieve legendary status if he guides Green Bay to the Holy Grail: a 19-0 championship season.
DIRK WINS HIS FIRST TITLE AT THE BIG THREE’S EXPENSE
The term schadenfreude may come from Dirk Nowitzki’s home country of Germany, but it was obviously destined for his NBA Finals opponent. While Nowitzki’s Mavericks were a team of veterans looking for their first championship, the Miami Heat had been the Antichrist of the NBA since LeBron James’s televised, staggeringly stupid announcement that he would be “taking his talents to South Beach” to form a real-life version of the Mon-Stars with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh. With four minutes left in Game 2, it looked like the Mon-Stars would triumph, with Miami up 1-0 in the series and 15 points ahead in the game. But led by Nowitzki, Dallas roared back, took the game 95-93 and kept chugging all the way to a 4-2 series win. Never have so many Americans been so happy to see a German’s dream come true.
THE BRUINS GET A LONG-AWAITED STANLEY CUP
After the recent of dominance of the Red Sox, Patriots, and Celtics, it was almost inevitable that Boston’s hockey team would get in on the championship action. The Bruins, who hadn’t hoisted the Cup since the height of the Bobby Orr era in 1972, rode the hot glove and stick of goalie Tim Thomas to the Stanley Cup Finals, where they faced the Vancouver Canucks, who led the NHL with 117 regular-season points. The teams split the first six games, each squad winning three times on its home ice. But Boston broke the mold in the deciding game, dismantling the Canucks on the road 4-0 to set off wild celebrations in Boston and ugly riots in Vancouver. Boston got to complete the "quadrifecta"—winning MLB, NFL, NBA, and NHL titles—in a seven-year span, and the rest of us got this indelible image.
THE U.S. WOMEN COME OH-SO-CLOSE AT THE WORLD CUPWhat if the 1980 U.S. men’s hockey team had lost the gold-medal game to Finland after its improbable upset of the USSR in the semifinals? It would have looked an awful lot like the 2011 Women’s World Cup, where the U.S. squad was on both sides of an Instant Classic in an eight-day span. In the quarterfinals, the U.S. faced archrival Brazil and its superstar, Marta. After a controversial penalty kick equalizer in the second half and a Marta goal in extra time, Brazil led 2-1 with the clock winding down. But an improbable header by star Abby Wambach (off a spectacular cross by Megan Rapinoe) tied the game, and the U.S. won in a shootout after goalie Hope Solo made a key save. A week later, the heavily favored U.S. faced Japan in the final. Twice, the Americans were ahead with less than 10 minutes remaining. Twice, the Japan tied the game – once in the second half of regulation and again in the second half of extra time. The U.S. went ice cold in the shootout, making just one of four tries, and Japan won a thrilling final.
VCU CRASHES THE FINAL FOUR
It may have happened way back in March, but the shock of No. 11 seed Virginia Commonwealth’s beatdown of No. 1 seed and pre-March Madness favorite Kansas in the Elite Eight still hasn’t faded, at least not for me. VCU was so much of an afterthought heading into the NCAA tournament that it was put in the inaugural “First Four” play-in round, the tournament’s latest wrinkle after it expanded from 65 to 68 teams. But in a stunning repeat of fellow Colonial Athletic Association member George Mason’s Final Four run in 2006, VCU bulldozed its way through the Southwest Region, capping it off with a 71-61 thrashing of the Jayhawks, who had been ranked No. 1 in the country for much of the season. The Rams fell to Butler in the Final Four and perennial power Connecticut won the title thanks mainly to tournament MVP Kemba Walker, but VCU’s moment in the sun outshone everything else.
JOHNSON’S REIGN ENDS WITH BEST NASCAR RACE EVER
The most dominant athlete of the past half-decade was arguably Jimmie Johnson, who won five NASCAR points titles in a row and was in the mix for a sixth this year. But a sizzling late-season performance by bad boy Tony Stewart and eerie consistency from Carl Edwards set the stage for a showdown at the season-ending Ford 400 in Homestead, Fla. The finish was a classic beyond the dreams of even the most optimistic racing fan: a two-man, winner-take-all duel between Edwards and Stewart over the final 20 laps. Stewart held off a late charge by Edwards to capture the race, the points title, and the admiration of NASCAR diehards across the country.
\