ShareThisWith apologies to Charles Dickens, 2011 in sports can be summed up, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."
Most every sport seemingly had its worst aspects equal or trump its best.
The NFL gave us Aaron Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers winning 19 straight, including a Super Bowl. Yet Peyton Manning missed the year with a career-threatening neck injury, the spring and summer was dominated by a lockout, and last week more than a dozen former players began to take the NFL to court claiming the league is negligent when it comes to concussions and the sport unsafe.
There was the return to prominence and over-analyzing of Tim Tebow, as well as the excellence of tennis player Novak Djokovic. In golf, Rory McIlroy choked in the Masters, then conquered in the U.S. Open, but not before we found out who Charl Schwartzel is at Augusta.
Cam Newton had arguably the greatest rookie season in NFL history, and Barry Bonds was at least found guilty of something (but somehow not lying about taking steroids).
All terrific stories -- but now, back to the reality of 2011.
Baseball gave us two pennant races (and collapses) for the ages, and then two months later NL MVP Ryan Braun failed a test for performance-enhancing drugs. Derek Jeter reached 3,000 hits and Mariano Rivera set the all-time saves record, but a father at a Texas Rangers game fell to his death reaching for a ball as his 6-year-old son watched.
The Cardinals won a spectacular World Series only to see Albert Pujols, the second greatest player in franchise history, leave a few weeks later because $220 million isn't enough.
College football was the sport that couldn't get anything right. Jim Tressel was forced out at Ohio State, more violations at Miami, and the Game of the Century turned out to be meaningless.
Thank goodness college football doesn't have a playoff because then it might give us what college basketball did in March -- which was VCU and Butler in the Final Four, and UConn winning 11 straight tournament games on its way to the title. Whatever ...
In the NBA, the superstars took, forcing trades wherever they wanted. Yet the Dallas Mavericks stunned the Dream Team in Miami to win the title.
Instead of realizing what just happened, the league forced a lockout to stop superstars from having this much power. What happens when the lockout is over? The league (which owns the New Orleans Hornets) traded superstar point guard Chris Paul because he wanted out.
Who is running the NBA, Congress?
The Bruins won three Game 7s to give Boston its first Stanley Cup since 1972, yet the NHL is reeling because of concussions. The game's biggest star, Sidney Crosby, only played nine games in 2011 because of one, and head trauma was linked to causing the deaths of three "tough guys" in the offseason.
NASCAR gave us 20-year-old Trevor Bayne winning the Daytona 500 for the Wood Brothers, and Tony Stewart capturing the Sprint Cup in a Chase that will never be topped. But Dan Wheldon's death at Las Vegas (less than six months after winning the Indy 500) took the air right out of racing.
Yani Tseng, Lexi Thompson and the Women's World Cup in soccer made all the right kind of headlines -- only to be overshadowed by the heartbreaking news that 59-year-old Pat Summitt, the legendary basketball coach at Tennessee, is suffering from the beginning stages of Alzheimer's.
You can't have a year in sports without retirements. Tony La Russa went out on top. Brett Favre and Shaq did not. Two all-time champions Lance Armstrong and Phil Jackson called it a day, while the trio of Manny (Ramirez), Ming (Yao) and Moss (Randy) just faded away ... although Manny may be coming back.
The year meant final goodbyes to baseball Hall of Famers Harmon Killebrew and Duke Snider. Golf feels a bit empty without its artist, Seve Ballesteros, and football won't be the same without its rebel, Al Davis. All of American sports was stopped in its tracks when Joe Frazier lost his last fight (with liver cancer).
Randy "Macho Man" Savage joined the stunningly long list of wrestlers who die way too young; he was 58.
But when we look back on 2011, the story that was the biggest and will have the most far-reaching impact, most of us will simply say "Penn State." You throw in AAU, Syracuse/Bernie Fine and Philly sports writer Bill Conlin scandals on the heels of Jerry Sandusky, and we've all heard the phrase "sex abuse" enough in two months to last a lifetime. Yet we all fear, this is only the beginning.
All of this makes it very difficult for us to toast the year that was on the eve of the one to come.
Let's hope 2012 has much less of the worst of times so we can fully enjoy the best.
(David Moulton is a sports radio talk show host and writes for the Naples Daily News in Florida.)
