The year in sports was a wild one in 2016. Curses were broken, kings were crowned and stars were born.
The U.S. loves watching a car crash, so it makes sense that football, a sport largely loved for its human car crashes, claims a top spot among the country’s favorite forms of entertainment–shhh, don’t tell Meryl Streep.
The NFL playoffs are here and America’s Golden Boy and America’s Team have dominated the headlines most of the year. Tom Brady came back to light up the league after serving his four-game suspension for playing with deflated balls. In Dallas, the Cowboys and star rookies Dak Prescott and Ezekiel Elliott burst onto the scene in a major way when Tony Romo went down with a broken back to lead Dallas to its best record in 10 years.
This is being written before the Cowboys and Packers play, so if Dallas wins, I told you so, and if they lose, it’s another conspiracy by Roger Goodell to keep the Cowboys from glory.
In college football, the University of Alabama, a perennial powerhouse who had won four of the last seven national championships, gave up 21 points in the fourth quarter in this year’s College Playoff National Championship to lose a rematch against the Clemson Tigers. I love to see a favorite lose, except when it’s the Cowboys, Duke basketball or the Spurs.
On the diamond, the Chicago Cubs won the World Series in dramatic fashion for the first time in 109 years, breaking the “Curse of the Billy Goat” and bringing the Commissioner’s Trophy to the north side of the Windy City. Now, Steve Bartman and all billy goats can finally come out of hiding and feel safe again.
In the National Basketball Association, the Warriors blew a 3-1 lead in the NBA finals last summer. Never, ever forget that, for as long as you live. Ever. LeBron James is the King again, James Harden and Russell Westbrook are putting up video game statistics on a nightly basis, Kawhi Leonard is an evolving robot showing human emotion (be scared), and the Warriors are still the Warriors only with Kevin Durant, so everybody is rooting against them that much more.
We also saw the death of two of the world’s greatest fighters in 2016, Muhammad Ali and Ronda Rousey. The way Rousey blocked Amanda Nunes’ punches with her face was not the soundest strategy; she’s been a pioneer for women’s mixed martial arts and will go down in the history books and I hope she never steps in the cage again. Here’s to hoping we get the fight everybody wants to see, Chris Brown versus Soulja Boy.
2017 can’t get any crazier, can it? What’s that you say? Donald Trump is the president of the United States? Wow–maybe it will be the year of the Cleveland Browns–too far? Sorry.
