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!