Jim Litke AP columnist

2007 was a lousy year in sports unless you were a fan of the pro teams from Boston, the semipro ones from the University of Florida or the real-student athletes from Appalachian State.

It wasn’t so much about breaking records, even as Barry Bonds took down the most venerated mark of them all while thousands of flashbulbs popped in AT&T Park and baseball fans everywhere winced.

It was about breaking the rules and even the law. Just about every accomplishment worth celebrating was shoved off the back page soon enough by something scandalous.

It started with Mark McGwire shut out of the Hall of Fame and ended with the Mitchell Report that put an exclamation point on the confusing, conflicted era owned by Bonds, McGwire, Roger Clemens and a host of disgraced players.

“Look,” Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling wrote on his blog after the report was released, “if you ordered HGH or steroids, in your name, and there is documentation to prove that you did, please do us all a favor and admit you made a mistake and move on. This is a pretty damn forgiving country.”

If all you want to remember about 2007 is a headline — and nobody would blame you — here it is: Gotcha!

That tabloid standard would have been perfect on Aug. 16, after disgraced NBA ref Tim Donaghy pleaded guilty to gambling charges. And it would have worked just as well on Aug. 28, after Michael Vick pleaded guilty to running a dogfighting ring and killing some of the losers ... or on Sept. 10, after the New England Patriots got caught spying on the Jets defensive coaches in the NFL season opener ... or Sept. 21, after Floyd Landis was formally stripped of his yellow jersey and 2006 Tour de France victory ... or Dec. 13, after Marion Jones was formally stripped of her five Olympic medals.

There was so much cheatin’, lyin’ an’ denyin’ goin’ on before the Daytona 500 in mid-February that even NASCAR czar Brian France felt compelled to put his foot down, smacking five teams with the toughest penalties the sport has seen just days ahead of the race.

“A cat-and-mouse game is one thing,” said NASCAR president Mike Helton, sounding the alarm for beleaguered sports bosses everywhere. “But when you throw a big rat in there, it’s a whole new ballgame.”

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Yet who would have guessed then the NASCAR guys were getting off easy. Formula 1 officials caught team McLaren using leaked secret data from its main rival, Ferrari, and levied a $100 million fine. Now that’s racin’.

And speaking of running off with other people’s cash, has anybody heard from David Beckham lately?

Pick almost any day on the calendar — Sept. 17, O.J. Simpson arrested on kidnapping and assault charges; June 17, Durham, N.C., District Attorney Mike Nifong disbarred over the Duke lacrosse case — and somebody was caught doing something bad, apologizing or rationalizing (or in radio personality Don Imus’ case, all three).

The year started and ended with tragedy, and sometimes the innocent paid the price.

Just two hours into the new year, 24-year-old Broncos cornerback Darrent Williams was killed in a drive-by shooting not far from a Denver nightclub where he quarreled with friends. Last month, Washington safety Sean Taylor was gunned down in the bedroom of his home in Miami. His loss was keenly felt by family and friends who remembered a young man they believed had turned his life around. Fellow players remembered Taylor as a formidable foe, according him the unprecedented posthumous honor of a slot on the league’s All-Pro team.

At the other end of the spectrum, 88-year-old Grambling football coach Eddie Robinson, his legacy already secured, lost his nearly decade-long battle with Alzheimer’s disease in April. Four months later, 49ers coach Bill Walsh died at age 75, his influence and wisdom celebrated by disciples who gathered at a memorial service from every corner of the NFL and college football.

It wasn’t a great year for animals, either. The sickening revelations that led to Vick’s indictment, plea and 23-month sentence in a federal prison shocked even those fans used to seeing the league’s stars and stand-ins alike turn up on police blotters. In late January, a much quieter but equally sad story came to a bitter end when struggling 2006 Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro was euthanized.

“Grief,” said Gretchen Jackson, Barbaro’s co-owner, “is the price we all pay for love.”

Even so, fans found a few things worth loving.

Appalachian State won one for the little guys and set the tone for the wildest college football season in a long time by toppling mighty Michigan on the opening weekend, then beating Delaware, someone its own size, to win an unprecedented third straight Division 1-AA championship.

Anybody who believed that faith and hard work could be more than their own reward had reason to smile when long-suffering Colts coach Tony Dungy and quarterback Peyton Manning finally wrapped their hands around a Super Bowl trophy that for so long seemed their due.

British runner and anti-drug crusader Paula Radcliffe won the New York City marathon just nine months after giving birth. Golfer Cristie Kerr won the U.S. Open after going 0 for 41 in previous majors and Justine Henin added two more tennis majors to her resume — a third straight French Open and a second U.S. Open title.

Men’s tennis, meanwhile, belonged again to Swiss machine Roger Federer. He won his fifth straight Wimbledon title and his fourth straight U.S. Open.

Proving the kids can play, Sidney Crosby won the NHL’s Hart Trophy as most valuable player at the tender age of 19 and Morgan Pressel won the Kraft Nabisco to become LPGA’s youngest major champion at the even more tender age of 18. And the feel-good story of the year was authored by South Plaquemines High, a school district cobbled together from a coastal parish largely wiped out by Katrina. Two years after that storm, the appropriately named Hurricanes won Louisiana’s Class 1A football championship.

Tiger Woods lost some sleep due to the birth of a daughter, and some uncharacteristic hiccups down the stretch cost him the Masters and U.S. Open, where he failed to catch unknowns Zach Johnson and Angel Cabrera, respectively. But that was about all Woods lost.

He clawed his way back to the top in time for the PGA Championship, the season’s final major and Woods’ 13th, won seven times in all and was so much better than everyone else — again — that when the pro tour announced the starting date for its drug-testing plan, one official noted with flawless logic that Woods was the only golfer worth testing.

“If he’s clean,” George O’Grady said, “what does it matter what the rest of them are on?”

Losing to Woods became profitable a while back. Now it’s beginning to seem honorable, too.

“Finishing second,” Brett Wetterich said after losing by two strokes at Doral and becoming the 50th runner-up to Tiger on the PGA Tour, “is not a bad thing.”

Fans in Boston and Gainesville, Fla., wouldn’t know.