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Virtually every media
outlet takes some time at the end of one year and
the beginning of the next to stop and look around, to
make a few lists about the year that was and a few predictions
about the year that will be. It’s a vanity project
of sorts, but it’s also a great deal of fun. Here
will be no different, except that it’s even more
fun to not bother limiting the screed to just predictions
or just wrap-ups. Instead, what follows will be a little
of both. In no particular order, here are five things
to consider:
- Dan Issel quit...
...and it was, indeed,
a damn shame. This one comes first only because it
needs little or no comment in light of this
column’s previous installment. Suffice
to say that Dan Issel has proven beyond doubt that
he is a good man. Like so many others, that trait
cost him his job.
- The Baltimore Ravens
will not win the Super Bowl again.
With any luck, this prediction
will prove out for many years to come. The Ravens as
presently constituted represent most everything that
is wrong with professional sports in America, and they
show no signs of either recognition or contrition. The
team is devoid of class: they talk too much trash, they
neither lose nor win gracefully, and they insist that
their ignorance is confidence. The Steelers, the Packers,
the Rams—these teams have confidence, but they
do not act as though they are God’s gift to the
gridiron. Coach Brian Billick is no better. Here is
a man who committed an unforgivable act of disrespect
in ditching quarterback Trent Dilfer and still, despite
a wholly mediocre season by hand-picked replacement
Elvis Grbac, insists he made the right move. When they
lose in the early rounds at least one Baltimorean will
have a beer raised to justice.
- Hockey is interesting;
nobody cares.
Right now the NHL is the
closest thing to the old-school America has. Hockey
is as tradition-rich as it gets, and no other sport
boasts such a consistent mix of grit and flash. Still,
it lags far behind the Big Three in both ratings and
coverage. This is vexing. Why, after all, do we watch
sports? While hockey players certainly don’t have
trouble paying the rent they are not, save for a very
small handful of elites, pulling in the kind of ridiculous
money that has led to the popular disdain for pro athletes
as a class. The punishment they take in a given match
would land the average athlete in any other sport on
injured reserve, and they take it in relative anonymity.
Someday we will wake up and be very angry that we hadn’t
been watching all along.
- Baseball is in serious
trouble.
Where to start with this?
Baseball is a glorious and beautiful game, but greed
and mismanagement are threatening to make it a thing
of the past. An overstatement? Not exactly. Fans in
places like Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, Anaheim, and Florida
will approach Opening Day knowing that their
teams will not compete. Economic troubles have gotten
so serious that fans in Montreal and Minnesota may
not have a team at all come April 1. Meanwhile, the
Yankees buy a winning team every winter because they
can, and the players union fights tooth and nail to
keep it that way by refusing to acknowledge the need
for a salary cap. This is just the tip of the iceberg
– there will be more to come on this subject
later.
- Sports will, for another
year, be worth talking about.
This column was conceived
with the idea that sports is a major force in American
culture that deserves serious attention. While some
folks—John Feinstein, Tony Kornheiser, Michael
Wilbon, and Dan Patrick come to mind—do provide
a measure of intelligent analysis, the field is far
from cluttered. Most of the time sports "analysis"
consists of some pundit who played in high school
waxing pseudo-philosophical about what he would do
if he were the coach. Despite this not a week goes
by without some event in sports that has implications
and repercussions for the culture as a whole. Hunter
S. Thompson currently writes a sports column for ESPN.com,
and that alone ought to be enough to make one stop
and wonder. So here, then, is to 2002.
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