16. Bostunned, Bostunning
A trio of postseason moments provided by Beantown teams:
1) Tom Brady’s 4th-down last-gasp heave to Randy Moss, which would have covered 80 yards and secured a Super Bowl win and the NFL’s first 19-0 season, sailed just an inch beyond Moss’s fingertips. Moss, somehow, had gotten behind the Giants’ secondary.
2) The Celtics earned their first NBA title in 22 years with a 39-point rout (131-92) of the Lakers in Game 6, the largest margin of victory in a Finals-clinching game in NBA history.
3) The Red Sox rallied from a 7-0 seventh inning deficit in Game 5 of the ALCS to beat the Rays 8-7. It was the greatest comeback in postseason play since 1929.
17. Gideon’s Fumble
The play that most impacted college football the most this season was not Michael Crabtree’s touchdown catch with 0:01 remaining vs. Texas. It was the preceding play.
With 0:15 remaining and Texas Tech on the Longhorn 28, Red Raider quarterback Graham Harrell tossed a short pass to Edward Britton that bounced off his hands and helicoptered upward. The ball hung in the air, soft and lazy, just waiting for freshman safety Blake Gideon to clutch it and bark, "Oskie!" However, as ABC analyst Kirk Herbstreit noted, the football “went right through his arms."
Gideon is a true freshman, and to earn a starting spot on Will Muschamp's defense at that age is quite a feat. Here’s hoping for Gideon’s sake that there are great days ahead. That whiff, though, changed the course of both the national championship participants and likely the Heisman Trophy winner.
After all, even if Harrell’s pass to Crabtree had fallen incomplete, Tech still could have lined up for a game-winning 45-yard field goal try.
18. Williams’ College(s)
Linebacker Willie Williams of Union College, an N.A.I.A. school in Barboursville, Ky., finished 2008 with 150 tackles, more than any player in the NCAA’s Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS). That Williams, a fifth-year fifth-school senior, has resuscitated his chance for an NFL career is remarkable.
In 2004 Williams was regarded as the nation’s top prep defensive recruit. Then he agreed to keep a recruiting journal for the Miami Herald, which included excerpts such as this: “We’d get to a red light and I would hold on because the bus driver would just take it. I was thinking the bus driver was crazy. Coach (Larry) Coker was like, 'Willie, we've got police escorts.'"
Not since Anne Frank put pen to paper had an adolescent diary caused such a stir. Then it was revealed that Williams had been arrested 11 times as a juvenile. His odyssey took him from the Hurricanes to a juco in Los Angeles to Louisville to Glenville (W. Va.) State and, finally this fall, to Union College.
The 6-3, 245-pound linebacker may have the final laugh. He finished in the top 10 nationally in tackles, sacks and tackles for loss.
19. Candace ...
Candace Parker's year got off to a dubious start. On Jan. 2, the Tennessee women's basketball star was benched for the first half of her homecoming game against DePaul (some 60 friends and family were on hand to see her play in Chicago, not far from her hometown of Naperville, for the first time since high school) for missing curfew.
For the remainder of 2008, the 6-foot-4 forward took advantage of every minute: leading the Lady Vols to a second consecutive national championship despite suffering a dislocated shoulder during the NCAA tourney; becoming the first overall pick in the WNBA draft and scoring 34 points in her professional debut for the Los Angeles Sparks; becoming only the second WNBA player, after Sparks teammate Lisa Leslie, to dunk in a game; winning an Olympic gold medal in Beijing; being named the WNBA’s Rookie of the Year as well as its Most Valuable Player, the league's first player to pull off that double; and, in November, eloping with her fiancée, Sacramento King forward Shelden Williams.
Modesty has never been Parker's forte. But then, any display of modesty by someone as talented as she would only be false.
20. ... and Elena
Elena DelleDonne has a future in women’s basketball every bit as bright as Candace Parker — if she ever returns to the sport. Last year, DelleDonne, then a high school senior in Wilmington, Del., was named the national player of the year by the Naismith, Gatorade and McDonald’s foundation. The 6-5 honor student was being called "the female LeBron."
DelleDonne had led her school, Ursuline Academy, to four Delaware state championships. She had accepted a scholarship to perennial power UConn, who had not won a national championship since 2004.
Then, something snapped. DelleDonne arrived in Storrs in June to take summer classes. Three days later she left campus and announced she was "burned out" on hoops. DelleDonne renounced her basketball scholarship with the Huskies, choosing instead to walk on to the volleyball squad at the University of Delaware.
The Blue Hens finished 19-16 and advanced to the first round of the NCAAs. DelleDonne was fourth on the team in kills. UConn, meanwhile, is 10-0 and ranked No. 1 in the nation.
21. Facebook Follies
Caitlin Davis. Buck Burnette. Chris Cooley. If you post it, it will come back to haunt you.
Davis was a New England Patriots cheerleader, still in high school, when she decided to post a photo on her Facebook page in which she and some friends had scrawled profane images on a passed-out friend. As I said, Davis was a Pats cheerleader.
Burnette was the back-up center for the Texas Longhorns. A day or so after Barack Obama won the presidential election, Burnette inconceivably posted a message that read "all the hunters gather up, we have a #$%&er in the whitehouse."
Burnette's posting was 17 kinds of wrong -- he was quickly booted off the team.
At least Cooley's miscue was an innocent mistake. The Redskins tight end posted a photo of himself blogging without pants (There but for the grace of God go I). Cooley lost a little face, but not his job.
Still, the lesson is the same, people: the internet, like venereal disease, is forever.
22. Lubbock Landslides
During a three-day stretch in late November, Texas Tech and the state of Oklahoma put up scores that were beyond ridiculous. On Nov. 20, the Red Raiders men's basketball team beat Div. II East Central Oklahoma 167-115. The 167 points were a school record, though no Tech hoopster scored more than 20 points. Ten Red Raiders scored in double figures, while teammate Tyree Graham will always recall that he shot 0-5 and finished with a bagel in the historic rout.
Two nights later on the gridiron in Norman, Okla., No. 5 Oklahoma destroyed the No. 2 ranked Tech football squad 65-21.
23. Body Guards
On 30 Rock, Tracy Jordan has Dot Com and Grizz to shadow him around. On November 25th Stephen Curry had a pair of Loyola Greyhounds. The Davidson guard, the nation's leading scorer and owner of the prettiest shooting stroke since Ray Allen, was held scoreless as Loyola coach Jimmy Patsos had two of his players double-team him the entire evening.
Davidson won by 30. And Loyola’s leading scorer, Brett Harvey, who exhausted most of his energy as half of the Greyhounds’ tag-team on Curry, also finished without a point.
Afterward, Patsos made an attempt at pathos: "I'm a history major. They're going to remember that we held him scoreless or we lost by 30?"
Both.
24. Honor-bound
J.P. Hayes could have kept quiet and no one would have been the wiser. In November, the PGA Tour journeyman, 43, was in Kingswood, Texas, playing in a qualifying tournament for 2009 (Hayes finished 176th in earnings in 2008, and everyone outside the top 150 must qualify via a Q-school tourney).
Playing the par-3 12th hole, Hayes realized that a ball that he’d used on his tee shot was not the same model as the one with which he’d begun the round. He informed an official of his mistake and was assessed a two-stroke penalty.
That, however, was only the beginning of Hayes' tale of integrity. That night in his hotel room, the Appleton, Wis., native realized that the prototype ball -- which he had used only for that hole -- that Titleist had sent him was likely not on the USGA's approved list.
Nobody would have known. The two-stroke penalty was already history, and some might say that was punitive enough. To turn himself in now, Hayes risked disqualification and his 2009 PGA Tour card.
Hayes placed the call. And was disqualified. As a veteran, he’ll still be able to play in a dozen or so PGA events next year, but he cost himself at least twice as many paydays.
"Everybody out here (on the PGA Tour) would have done the same thing." Hayes said.
Maybe. In an age of "If you ain't cheatin', you ain't tryin'", how incredible is it to see someone who was not even trying to cheat hold himself to such a standard?
25. Most Aptly Named Team
The distinguishing features of a comet, as observed by us terrestrial folk: A comet appears from out of nowhere, shines brightly for a finite period of time in the night sky, and then disappears.
Eleven years ago the Houston Comets appeared on the horizon, one of the eight original teams in the WNBA. No franchise drew more attention, from winning the first four league championships to its trio of initials-redundant superstars -- Cynthia Cooper, Sheryl Swoopes and Tina Thompson -- to the death of point guard Kim Perrot from cancer.
A few weeks ago the franchise folded -- even though the WNBA, which continues to bleed cash, soldiers onward. In popular lore, comets have long been harbingers of doom.
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