To mark this special occasion, Teddy and I have decided to personally select our best and worst sports memories from this decade. After all, that's essentially what sports are to the most passionate of fans: a collection of memories, some sweet, some not so much.
For the first installment of the series, I'll get the bad news out of the way first and showcase my five most painful sports memories of the decade.
The Honorable Mention
The Steve Kragthorpe Era of Louisville football, the four Eagles NFC Championship Game losses, the 2008 ALCS, Kentucky achieving respectability in football, WVU-U of L football 2005, 2006 Gator Bowl, John Wall committing to Kentucky, Lady GaGa
No. 5: The Sonics Leaving Seattle
Having grown up in the 90's, I got to experience some great NBA action. A lot of people were obviously Bulls fans at the time, and as much as I loved the legendary 1-2 combo of Jordan and Pippen, I had my own dynamic duo of Shawn "The Reign Man" Kemp and Gary "The Glove" Payton, thus indoctrinating me as a Seattle Supersonics fan. Never mind the fact that I was born and raised thousands of miles from the Emerald City, I didn't like the "local" team of Louisville, the Pacers, largely due to my general hatred of all things Indiana. Oh, and Reggie Miller's ears, they always bothered me.
Regardless, the Sonics were my team and although they really only had one great, Ray Allen-led season after the departure of Kemp and Payton, I stuck with them, creating something of a connection between myself and that team.
However, all of that was undone in 2008 when it was officially announced after months and months of speculation and legal proceedings that the Sonics were leaving Seattle for Oklahoma City. My Seattle Sonics, almost overnight, morphed into the Oklahoma City Thunder. With him, Clay Bennett took an important part of Seattle sports history along with a roster complete with young stars Kevin Durant, Jeff Green, and Russell Westbrook.
I haven't had an NBA team for the past couple of years and probably will hold out until some team moves or gets started in Seattle and the Sonics can rise again.
No. 4: The Aaron Boone Walk-Off Home Run
I probably don't need to go into too much detail on this one just because it has been written about and discussed ad naseum as is.
Red Sox leading Game Seven of the 2003 ALCS, 5-2, against the Yankees going into the bottom of the eighth inning in New York. Grady Little leaves Pedro Martinez in the game too long, Yankees come back to tie it. Game goes extras into the eleventh inning and the rest is history.
Boone hit a floating Tim Wakefield knuckleball like it was placed on a tee and I was forced off to bed. It remains as one of the worst nights of my life, but I guess the pain was healed when the Sox won it all the next year. As a side note, this is what pisses me off most about these bandwagon Sox fans- you didn't even have to be a fan for all that long to experience the sort of emotional heartbreak that had become part of Red Sox lore. One freaking year, that's why those people disgust me so much.
No. 3: The Eagles Losing the Super Bowl
I've been an Eagles fan since I started following the NFL extensively around 1999, largely because my grandfather was drafted by them in the 1942 draft and my man-love for Donovan McNabb.
While the Eagles have experienced a ton of success this decade, many of their efforts came up short, particularly in the NFC Championship Game, a game they've lost in four of their five appearances.
The Birds' lone Super Bowl appearance came in 2005 when they faced off against a stellar Patriots team that had upgraded in the offseason by adding Corey Dillon (believe it or not in 2009, but Corey Dillon was actually really good back then). The Eagles hung tough for most of the game, buoyed by three TD passes from McNabb, along with quite possibly the best performance I've ever seen in a Super Bowl from Terrell Owens who got over 100 receiving yards while pretty much playing with a broken ankle. If there was ever a year that a player from a losing team should've won SB MVP, this was it.
However, Brian Westbrook decided to not show up for the game, McNabb threw three picks (granted one of them was on what was essentially a Hail Mary drive in the very end), and Andy Reid thought it would be a great idea when his team's down 24-14 in the fourth quarter to have an eight minute drive. I guess there must be really good food in Jacksonville or something.
What all of that ended up amounting to was a 24-21 loss, and to this day, the Eagles still have yet to capture a Super Bowl and that was the closest they've ever been to doing it, making it that much harder to deal with. Not to mention what happened in the aftermath of this game, with the whole TO saga and McNabb unfairly being blamed by many for the loss, with the 2005-2006 season being the tragic casualty of it all.
No. 2: Louisville Basketball Losing in 2009 Elite Eight
There is a clear break for me when it comes to sorting my top five. The Sonics thing sucked, but it happened over a long period of time, allowing me to cope with the inevitability of it for months and months. The Red Sox and Eagles losses both undoubtedly sucked, but I don't live in Boston or Philly so I guess the connection wasn't as strong.
That leaves us with the top two which I'll just label as "F****** Brutal" because that's exactly what they were. It was like being water-boarded by Dick Cheney.
Naturally I'll start with number two here. The 2008-2009 season seemed like some sort of ultimate culmination for Louisville basketball. Rick Pitino had led the team to a Final Four before, but this was his eighth year with the program and he had gone through something of a natural process: he rebuilt the program, led them back to the tournament, back to the Final Four in '05, the program took an inevitable step back when they lost all of their key guys and moved to a tougher conference, and then he led two young teams to the brink of the Final Four. Now he had his National Championship contender.
The team started the year off ranked in the top five of the preseason polls, got off to a slow start, but hit their stride when Big East play began, losing only once to a BE opponent. They won the regular season, I spent almost all of my money to go to New York to watch them win the Big East Tournament, and they entered the tournament as the hottest team in the country and were the No. 1 seed overall.
Being so far away from home for the first time in a place where people would belittle me for where I came from, this was my bragging point, my sense of identity and swagger was with this team. I'd walk around campus wearing my Louisville stuff passing all these kids with UConn and Syracuse shirts and just cracking a smirk because you know what- my team was better, I knew it and they knew it.
Like every other No. 1 seed has ever done, the Cards beat Morehead State, then survived a scare against an upstart Siena team, before absolutely demolishing a talented Arizona squad 103-64 in a game that honestly wasn't even that close. The team was looking like they were playing with a sense of purpose and I was getting that feeling that they could very well overcome most of their shortcomings and win the whole damn thing.
And then came Michigan State. The Spartans were everything that Louisville was not- they were a slower, half court team, and they forced their will upon the game. It was a lower scoring contest and even early on, Louisville couldn't get any momentum. It was somehow close at halftime, but Michigan State ran away with it in the second half.
Kalin Lucas and Goran Suton went wild, Travis Walton shut down Terrence Williams to a mere two points, and quite frankly Rick Pitino got completely out-coached by Tom Izzo. And I mean completely.
The team had a it's share of flaws, most notably free throw shooting, and I didn't expect them to win it all, but a Final Four was at least what I was hoping for. I just didn't want the ride to end, and in a way it didn't end in a traditional sense: it came to a crashing halt, and it's something I still haven't recovered from.
No. 1: Louisville Football Loses to Rutgers on Last-Second Field Goal in '06
It may seem hard to believe after Steve Kragthorpe's Reign of Error these past few years, but Louisville football used to be good. And by good, I mean really, really good.
In the same way that Louisville basketball had something of a progression under Pitino, Louisville football went through it's own rise in the same period of time. Difference being, though, was that Pitino had a rebuilding effort, taking over a program with multiple national titles that had just drifted off course; Louisville football had a meteoric rise from a 1-10 1997 team.
John L. Smith took over the program in 1998, along with the opening of a new stadium, and proceeded to take the Cardinals to what seemed like an unprecedented run of four straight bowl games.
Smith bolted for Michigan State after the 2002 GMAC Bowl and little-known offensive coordinator Bobby Petrino was brought in to continue Smith's work. Only thing is he did a lot better. The Cardinal football program continued to go to bowls under Petrino, coming within a second half meltdown at No. 2 Miami of going undefeated in 2004 and then commemorated their move to the Big East in 2005 by going to the Gator Bowl.
The Louisville teams featured future NFL stars with guys like Elvis Dumervil and Kerry Rhodes, but what truly made these teams special was the fact that the best of the teams were led by guys who were born and raised in The Ville. People knew them and remembered them from high school, guys like Brian Brohm, Michael Bush, and to a lesser extent Mario Urrutia.
The 2006 team started off with high expectations, beginning the season ranked in the top 15, but things seemed doomed when Bush suffered a season ending broken leg in the third quarter of the season opener against Kentucky, a game where Bush had already run for about 200 yards and three touchdowns in the first half alone.
Louisville continued to surge forward, however. Brohm and Bush's fill-in, Kolby Smith carried a high octane offense that throttled Miami in a September home game, but the matchup that had been circled since the beginning of the year was a game against West Virginia. In early November with both teams undefeated, WVU ranked at No. 3, U of L at No. 5, the game was essentially the Big East championship and Louisville came out swinging and ended up winning 44-34.
It was the biggest win in the history of the program and the situation that the Cards were thrust into was something truly spectacular: with the win over the Mountaineers, Louisville rose to No. 3 in the BCS, behind Ohio State and Michigan, two teams that would meet at the end of the season, meaning one of them would have to lose which essentially amounted to this: all Louisville had to do was win their final few games and they'd be playing for the National Championship and it had this town energized like I've never seen it...ever.
What many considered to be the final hurdle to this end was a road game against Rutgers the week after the WVU win. The team continued to play on a roll, with Petrino's offense working pitch-perfectly to the tune of a 25-7 halftime lead.
Then it all fell apart. Literally everything did. Louisville's offensive line began to get overwhelmed by the Scarlet Knights defense, giving Brohm virtually no time to throw and giving the running backs no lanes to run through. The offensive production fell with it's line, and never will I forget the image of U of L QB coach Jeff Brohm chewing out his brother on the sideline.
While the offense sputtered, the defense fell apart giving way to an endless series of Ray Rice rushes and Mike Teel passes.
As the game went on it all seemed to be falling apart, with the dream of Louisville crashing the BCS Championship Game withering away with each failed offensive possession and each Scarlet Knights first down. You could literally feel it slipping away.
With the game tied at 25 with under a minute remaining, Rutgers drove into field goal range, presenting Jeremy Ito with an opportunity to win the game. Ito actually missed the first field goal attempt, but he was given a second chance because of an offsides penalty against William Gay. Ito cashed in on his shot at redemption and even though there were still something like 20 seconds left in the game, I knew it was over.
Ito pointing at the camera like a little punk didn't make things any easier, but after a few desperate plays by Louisville, the game was lost and the dream officially died. The "what ifs?" ran through my head afterwards. What if Michael Bush didn't break his leg? They would have easily won that game. Things were not made any easier when Ohio State reverted to form and rolled over in the BCS Championship. The game that cost Louisville a shot at the National Championship turned into a game that literally cost them the National Championship.
After an Orange Bowl win that felt something like a consolation prize, Petrino left to coach the Atlanta Falcons, Steve Kragthorpe was brought in and now the program is back to the mediocrity that it had squandered in for so long.
I couldn't fall asleep after that game, just staying in my bed, flat on my back, staring at my ceiling until my alarm clock for school went off.
And if you really need another reason as to why it sucked so badly, all of this transpired on my birthday.
If that's not the most heart-breaking sports moment of the decade for me, I truly don't know what could be.
Expect Teddy to put out his Top Five Worst of the Decade here in the next day or so. We'll each follow with a Top Five Best of the Decade before the year ends.
0 comments:
Post a Comment