Sports star of the year? Isaac Newton, of course

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 29/12/2016 (2877 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

So, yeah… that happened.

Man, did it ever. But you already know that.

The task before us all today is trying — I didn’t say it was a simple task — to make sense of events over the course of the last 12 months that have prompted headline writers around the globe to celebrate the holiday season by declaring 2016 “the worst year in history.”

Even the normally staid and reserved New York Times asked earlier this week:

“2016: Worst. Year. Ever?”

It wasn’t, of course. As far as that goes, I’d argue AD 55 — the year the Vandals sacked Rome — probably trumps, well… Trump.

But 2016 was a wild one. In the world of sports, too. Up was down — Ryan Lochte: great Olympian, complete doofus; and down was up — hello, Cleveland Cavaliers and Chicago Cubs.

I’d love to tell you there was some over-arching theme that makes sense of it all; if there is one I couldn’t find it during my first full year as this newspaper’s sports columnist.

I got ripped by readers way back in February for timidly suggesting that maybe, just maybe, Jets head coach Paul Maurice is a mere mortal who occasionally makes mistakes.

And then I got ripped again by readers last week when I said I didn’t think Maurice should be fired over the team’s early season struggles.

And so it went in a year in which Newton’s third law was front and centre: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Drafting a bona fide future superstar in Patrik Laine and signing of Mark Scheifele to the richest contract in Winnipeg sports history, all of it evidence that Jets GM Kevin Cheveldayoff’s “draft and develop” plan is finally producing dividends…

And then there was Jacob Trouba’s holdout and the frustratingly inconsistent performance of a lineup that at year’s end continues to lose more often than it wins… raising doubts about that very same “draft and develop” plan, now in its sixth year.

Feel-good underdog championship stories in Cleveland, Chicago and Ottawa that gave hope to long-suffering sports fans everywhere that things really do get better. Even though it might take 108 years, as it did for the Cubs…

And then there was Blue Bombers head coach Mike O’Shea in the West semifinal, who went all-in on a futile 61-yard field-goal attempt rather than give his offence an opportunity to convert on third-and-four as time ticked away along with all drought-ending hope in this city.

A championship season for the Winnipeg Goldeyes and a record-breaking handle increase at Assiniboia Downs…

And then there were the wide swaths of empty seats all season long at Investors Group Field, where attendance has now declined every year since the taxpayer-funded facility opened in 2013.

The heart-warming Rio Olympics performance of local swimmer Chantal Van Landeghem, whose bronze-medal win in the 4 x 100 freestyle relay paid tribute to every swimmer in this town who has ever traded a warm bed for the Pan Am Pool’s frigid waters, pounding out lengths at 6 a.m. on a January morning…

And then there were the revelations that the Winter OIympics in Sochi in 2014 were one gigantic state-sponsored con job by a Russian government that took organized doping to a level that would have made the East Germans blush.

There were sweeping investigations of sexual abuse and pedophilia in the worlds of English soccer and U.S. gymnastics, which by year’s end were threatening to bring both to their knees and send dozens of officials to jail…

And then there was the continued deafening silence in the Graham James affair; 20 years after his first arrest we’re all still expected to believe he acted entirely alone in committing more than 350 assaults on at least five different hockey players he coached.

The deaths of Gordie Howe, Muhammad Ali and Arnold Palmer, sporting icons who led by example and reminded us all about what is right and true and beautiful in sport…

And then there were jabronis such as Lochte, who reminded us via late-night surveillance video from a gas station in Rio of what a nauseating mix petulance and entitlement can brew in young and overpaid athletes.

The NFL finally standing up to the New England Patriots and suspending Tom Brady for four games, ostensibly for fiddling with his footballs but really because everyone had grown tired of the Patriots’ act…

And then there was the NFL continuing to ignore the fact that football is extremely hazardous to the long-term brain health of the people who play it.

More money than ever for the NBA, NFL, NHL and MLB, thanks to multibillion-dollar broadcast deals…

And there were also the first signs that the whole enterprise is just one gigantic bubble ready to pop, with plummeting NFL ratings and dramatic declines in the number of cable subscribers this year bearing a remarkable resemblance to a dead canary.

If you can make sense of all that and find a common thread, well-done.

And no, “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” doesn’t count. Dickens is very tired of you ruining that great line with your chronic misappropriations.

The better question, in any event, isn’t where we’ve been but where we’re going.

This whole sports bubble thing looks to me like a story that’s not going away, not in 2017 and not any time soon. And when it does pop — when the Internet does to sports on television what it’s done to every other industry (um, newspapers) — it is going to bring with it a seismic shift that we can only begin to imagine.

Remember the days when pro athletes used to have part-time jobs in the off-season? If Ken Ploen could do it — and he did, for years — so can Connor Hellebuyck.

And then there’s all the juicy sub-plots to come.

Will the Jets stay the course if they miss the playoffs for what would be the fifth time in six years? And if they do stay the course, how does that play in what has become an increasingly agitated Jets Nation?

Does Laine become the second Finnish rookie to win the Calder in a Jets uniform?

Bombers GM Kyle Walters and O’Shea both head into the new year with shiny new contracts, but — speaking of increasingly agitated fan bases and dwindling attendance — what happens if the Blue and Gold make another hasty playoff exit, or miss the playoffs entirely?

What happens to the Blue Jays without Edwin Encarnacion and, almost certainly, Jose Bautista? That’s a lot of runs to make up.

Can the Toronto Raptors take another step?

Can Brady and the Patriots give the NFL — and the rest of the world — the finger with yet another Super Bowl win?

And finally, if 2016 really was the worst year ever, does that mean there’s nowhere to go but up in 2017?

 

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @PaulWiecek