The Year 2008 in a Blog Post

Can you believe the year 2008 is almost over? Another year passes by and I still feel like it was just yesterday that it was 2003 when the only care in the world I had was if I was going to finish that research paper by deadline. But here we are on the final day of 2008, and there's no better time for The Wheelhouse 2008 Recap! I'm going to do a quick rundown of the top five sports stories in 2008 that held my interest the most. We'll start with ol' numero uno...

1. Super Bowl XLII - Easily the number one story of 2008, at least for me, was the Giants stunning win over the Patriots in SB XLII. This game had it all. Undefeated team, upstart six seed from the NFC, stars like Tom Brady and Eli Manning. We wrote a lot about the game on this blog leading up to the game about how everyone wrote off the Giants and how the media had already handed the "greatest team ever" title to the Patriots. Well as the saying goes, that's why they play the game. Eli Manning's scramble through about five New England defenders to launch it in the general direction of David Tyree and Tyree's unbelievable catch on the Giants game-winning drive will go down in Super Bowl history as one of the greatest catches ever. If you watched this game and hated the Patriots, you were going absolutely ballistic when the Giants pulled this game out. I remember telling my friends that I was more excited at the end of that game than I would have been if the Steelers had won it all. That probably wasn't true, but it proved how thrilling of a finish it really was.

2. Michael Phelps Mania - No one can really explain how it happened, but in mid-August 2008, the country fell into Michael Phelps mania. Phelps dominated the swimming competition at the Beijing Olympics, rolling to an Olympic-record eight gold medals while shattering world records in the process. Suddenly everyone was into swimming, terms like individual medley, butterfly, freestyle, world record were being thrown around by people who I don't think ever watched a swimming meet in their life. Phelps captivated millions during his amazing run at Beijing and easily was the story of the Olympics...if not the entire year. Out of his eight gold medals, none was more exciting than his seventh in the 100m butterfly as he rallied to win the gold by 0.01 second over Serbia's Milorad Cavic. The replays were analyzed over and over, but clearly showed Phelps touch the wall just before Cavic. I don't know if we'll ever see someone dominate like Phelps again at the Olympics, but I'll always remember where I was during Phelps mania in August '08.

3. Penguins Stanley Cup Run - While this subject gets buried in mainstream sports media, if you were a fan of hockey or the Penguins this run to the Cup Finals was a memorable one. Even though the Pens came up short in the finals, losing to the Red Wings in six games...it was an exciting Stanley Cup finals that did its best to save hockey and excite newer fans to the game. This had been building in Pittsburgh since the strike ended and a salary cap was in place in the NHL. The Pens got the number one pick in 2005 and drafted the phenom Sidney Crosby. They also had drafted Evgeni Malkin in 2004 and goalie Marc-Andre Fleury in 2003. Everyone was waiting for the team to finally click and put it all together and they exploded toward the end of the 2007-2008 season and rolled through the Eastern Conference in exciting fashion. Everyone in Pittsburgh had Cup fever for the first time since the early '90s. I had the opportunity to attend Game 2 of the Cup Finals in Detroit and while the Pens forgot to show up to the game, I don't regret it for a minute. While the first two games ended up being one sided, the Pens got their act together and made the next four games all close games, including their thrilling 4-3 victory in three OTs in Detroit for Game 5. The series posted the best ratings since the NHL had returned from strike in 2004 and was pretty much a 100 percent increase from the previous finals.

4. The Brett Favre Saga - Not all these stories can be things that were good for the sport. The will he or won't he question for Brett Favre continued on even after his "official" retirement in March of 2008. After sitting around for four months, the Favre rumors started hitting in July that he contacted the Packers about the possibility of coming back. And what followed for the next month was something I don't think the sport has ever seen. ESPN basically camped out in Green Bay and Louisiana for weeks and in the process, we heard about secret meetings, phone calls, text messages between Favre and coach Mike McCarthy and GM Ted Thompson and then the owner flying down to Louisiana to talk him back into retirement and on and on and on. And then there was the press conference that sealed the deal and the Packers finally stating that they met with Brett and that they were moving on in another direction with Aaron Rodgers. Thompson sat there looking like a deer in highlights while all McCarthy could do was say the word "mindset" more times than Allen Iverson said practice in his famous clip. This whole farce finally ended with Favre being traded to the Jets and that was that. Packers moved on with Rodgers and the Jets got their man in Favre. And as we now know, both teams aren't going anywhere but home for the playoffs. Just for the record, this was not a story I enjoyed hearing about, instead it was incredibly annoying and come July I didn't really care who Favre played for, but the story was a memorable one. Get ready for the Favre question to come up again in 2009...I can't wait.

5. Tom Brady's Injury - Unless you are a Patriots fan or a female, you were cheering Tom Brady's injury in week one of the 2008 NFL season. You purchased your Bernard Pollard shirt and secretly or publicly stated that Brady deserved it. Even if he did or not, you loved every moment of it and you were waiting for the collapse of Bill Belichick this season. While the latter didn't happen, the Pats still went 11-5 with a high school quarterback, but missed the playoffs anyway. How far the mighty has fallen. Just 12 months ago, the Patriots were undefeated and cruising to their fourth Super Bowl title...then came fate with the Giants in the Super Bowl and then the devastating injury to Brady. It was about time things fell apart for once for the video-taping cheaters.

As for me, 2008 was just another year to add to the madness. I had the good fortune of making it out to Chicago a couple times for a White Sox-Pirates game and also a Cubs-Pirates game at Wrigley Field. Like I stated above, I went to Game 2 of the Stanley Cup Finals in Dtown. I also went to Central Michigan's primetime game as they hosted Ball State (random, yes I know). I was in attendance to watch Ohio State roll Sparty and Michigan State in East Lansing. And I made my second trip to the Sky Dome...er Rogers Centre for a Blue Jays-Red Sox game in September. Also, 2008 will be remembered as the year Todd and I launched this site after years of talking about it. Overall, not a bad year at all.

What does 2009 have in store? We'll find out shortly. I hope everyone has a safe and Happy New Year!

So This is Christmas!

Everyone here at The Wheelhouse would like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas! Have a fun and safe time in your travels to visit family and friends today. And remember it's better to give than to receive...or at least that's what they say. I'm giving our readers one of my favorite Christmas clips that's posted on youtube...it's the classic Charlie Brown Christmas special performed by the cast of Scrubs. It's worth a watch even if you've seen it a million times. Have a great Christmas!

JoePa is Going to Die on the Football Field

Hey, I love Joe Paterno. He's one of the greatest football coaches in college football history, if not the best considering he's the winningest coach in Division I-A history with 383 victories and his longevity at Penn State is a remarkable achievement. He's been involved in Penn State football even as an assistant since 1950. Think about that for a minute. That's 58 years he's been at State College yelling at college kids trying to turn these players into a solid college football team. Of course, I don't think he's actually coached a game for the Nittany Lions in about 10 years while posing more as a figure head for the university lately. Everybody knows defensive coordinator Tom Bradley has really been coaching the team the past decade, but everyone ignores that fact because it's JoePa. But I've also said in jest that JoePa is going to die on the football field...and with the news that came out today, it might just happen.

Penn State and JoePa agreed to another three years of coaching. That makes him the coach of the program through 2011. JoePa turns 82 this Sunday. 82 years of age! He has to be the oldest coach in the history of college football and if he isn't, he probably will be in 2011. We are talking about a coach that made more headlines in the news about whether or not he would be on the sideline or in the coaches box this year then actually coaching decisions.

I don't think Penn State will ever tell JoePa no, and I don't think JoePa will ever say he doesn't want to coach. And since we have these two things happenings, he is going to die on the football field...during a game sometime in the future. It'll be one of the biggest stories to cover in years. ESPN will be there for weeks after and Lee Corso will be crying like a baby. It'll be a tragic and incredibly sad day in Happy Valley as well as everywhere around the country, but I think he would be happy with it all because I don't think there's any other place JoePa would want to be when his time is up then on a football field doing what he loved.

Buffalo, Don't Play Football in Toronto

It's time to discuss this whole Buffalo Bills playing football games in the SkyDome (Rogers Centre) in Toronto and what do do with the roof. If you aren't fully aware of the situation, here's a quick update. Last offseason the Bills decided to strike a deal with the city of Toronto and the Rogers Centre to play a certain number of games in Toronto over the next couple of years. The idea behind this is that Buffalo is attempting to lure people from Canada's largest city to extend their fan base and gain some extra revenue as well. I always thought the Bills had a great and passionate following already in Buffalo, but whatever...they want more. They played a preseason game against the Steelers in the summer and last week was their first regular season game in the SkyDome, and it was against Miami.

The problem arose when the Bills thought that the retractable roof would be open in an obvious cold, snowy weather game against a team from sunny Florida. Not too mention a Dolphins team that has struggled heavily over the years in Orchard Park. The roof ended up staying closed and the Dolphins rolled to a 16-3 win in the climate-controlled atmosphere. While the Rogers Centre people agreed that it would be great to open it, they said they just couldn't and listed two main reasons. One being that the SkyDome does not have the proper drainage system on the field because when it rains for baseball games, they close the roof. Makes sense. The second reason was that the roof is "locked" into place once the Blue Jays season ends. Now, you can say both parties are to blame for not discussing this roof scenario from day one when this contract was agreed to, but I think the blame falls on the Bills. Blame Canada? Nope, not this time. If you have a problem with the roof, don't play the games in another venue, period.

They took a marquee home game against a division rival in Miami and took it out of Orchard Park and into a dome in a foreign city and did not think to even mention if they could have the roof open for these games. Memo to Buffalo, don't play games in another city two hours away. Yeah you want extra revenue, but at the same time, you risk alienating your own fans for taking home games away from them.

Guess what Toronto is getting out of this deal? They want to showcase their city as a future NFL team home. The Bills front office are playing a very dangerous game with this Toronto deal because Toronto obviously wants a team in the future. There are two ways I see this playing out. One is that Toronto does get an NFL franchise in the future and being only two hours away from Buffalo, the Bills are going to lose fans, lose revenue, lose sponsorships, lose merchandise sales and have to compete right in their own market for coverage. The second thing that could happen is that Bills owner Ralph Wilson, who is 90, dies in a couple years, the team goes up for sale on an open market and some executive in Toronto buys them, moves them to Canada and just like that Buffalo is out of a NFL franchise.

The Bills need to rethink this deal for next year. Stick to playing games in your own city and country...not two hours away so a different city can show off how into football they are. If I were a Bills fan up in Buffalo, I would be very uneasy about this current arrangement. Instead of spending time moving games to Toronto, they need to start figuring out how they can hold onto the team and keep them where they belong in Buffalo once Wilson passes on.