Best of 2007 - Sports Moments...

Being inspired by ysmarko.com, I've decided to do a little "2007 Year In Review" series on my blog...As I look back on 2007 a lot has happened...A lot of life has come and gone...Over the next few posts, I'm gonna give my picks for some of the top moments in various categories of 2007...Since I've spent all day watching bowl games, the natural place to start is Best of 2007 Sports Moments...Here are my Top Ten Sports Moments of '07:

10. TIE - Tim Tebow becomes first Sophomore to win Heisman trophy & Adrian Peterson breaks NFL single game rushing record. - Both of these accomplishments were huge within their perspective leagues. Tebow combined for a total of 51 TD's to become the first underclassmen to win the Heisman in the history of the award. AP has run ragged over opponents as an NFL rookie, suprising even his biggest fans.

9. Barry Bond's Home Run Record - Love him or hate him, Bonds now owns the Major League Baseball record for most home runs in a carreer. The only question is whether or not their will forever be an asterik by this in the record books.

8. Colorado Rockies' Run - Quickly on to a brighter note in baseball...The Rockies finished the regular season on a 14-1 run to make the playoffs as a Wild Card and went into the World Series on an incredbile 21-1 run. Their late regular season run of 14-1 in the last 15 games tied them with the '83 Phillies and the '65 Dodgers as the only teams to accomplish this feat in National League history. They became the first team in 50 years to have a 20-1 streak and the first team in the National League to do so since the 1936 NY Giants.

7. Notre Dame's Downfall - Even the biggest fans of the Irish (including me), never saw this coming. A down year - definitely. Below .500 - maybe. But 3-9? No way. But that is exactly how the Irish finished, including losses to both Navy and Air Force. They ended the season with 2 wins, over Duke and Stanford, to reach 3-9.

6. College Football - All I can say is WOW! This season of college football has been anything but normal and predictable. Every week anyone could win - literally. Just ask Michigan. In fact, as I sit here and type this, the same unranked Michigan team that lost to a division AA team (more on that later) is beating #12 Florida in the 4th quarter of the Capital One Bowl. The National Championship game lineup itself has caused more debate about college football than it's seen over entire seasons in a long time. Either the gap is closing between the great teams and everyone else, or all of college football is becoming mediocre. While their may not be that one top tier team that stands out above the rest this year, I'll still go with the former.

5. The Mike Vick Dogfighting Scandal - How stupid can a person be? You have all the money in the world, all the fame you could ever want, and are, in every aspect of the word, a Superstar...And you are running a gambling ring for dog fighting, putting it all on the line? Stupidity like that deserves as much time in the slammer as it gets...

4. Division I-AA Appalachian State defeats #5 Michigan - This goes back to the whole crazy season of college football. AA Appalachian State shocked the Wolverines and the College Football World knocking out the #5 ranked Michigan team 34-32 with a late blocked field goal early in the season. It was the first time in NCAA history that a Division I-AA team beat a Division I team that was ranked in the AP poll.

3. Florida owning Ohio State - Can you say "Who's your daddy, Buckeyes?" Florida absolutely owned Ohio State in both the NCAA Football and Basketball championship games. A huge underdog in the BCS Championship game in the first sports action of 2007, Florida gave the Buckeyes an old school beat down, completely destroying them in the National Championship game. Then, just three months later, the Gators basketball team gave the OSU basketball team some more of the same medicine in the Final Four NCAA Championship to win back to back NCAA Basketball titles.

2. The Patriot's Record Breaking Season - Speaking of "being owned," the Patriots have done just that to the entire NFL. They become only the second team in NFL history to go 16-0 and have an undefeated regular season in the NFL. In fact, with only two exceptions, the undefeated season was never even in question. Tom Brady, Randy Moss, and the rest of the Patriots have put up numbers like the NFL has never seen and are quickly on their way to a 19-0 Super Bowl Champion Season.

1. The Mitchell Report - As I watched the Mitchell Report being announced live on ESPN just a few weeks ago, my first thoughts (as a Yankee fan) were "Say it ain't so Roger! Say it ain't so Andy! Say it ain't so!" Well, Andy Pettite is one of several players who have said it is so, and Roger is still holding on to the claim that it isn't so...There has been speculation by the media that the report is flawed and skewed because of George Mitchell's connection to the Red Sox. (I will say that I find it a little suspicous that no Red Sox player was named unless they were now with another team, but hey, I'll also admit that I HATE the Red Sox, so my opinion is a bit biased.) The Mitchell report named big names, but also really didn't give a lot of new info. But this is did do, in my eyes and in the eyes of many sports fans: It showed that this era of baseball is full of cheaters. Don't tell me you didn't know it was the juice. Don't give me the excuse that you had to heal quicker or keep up with everyone else who was using. And don't anyone tell me that it's only about the players. The Mitchell report confirms what all of us knew but didn't want to admit or acknowledge. The owners and gm's knew players were using steroids and HGH, but they didn't care. Why? Becuase it was bringing in the big bucks. The players knew it was wrong and did it any way. Why? Because the better they performed, the longer they played, and the faster they healed, the more money they made. And we, the fans, deep in our hearts knew it was going on...And we paid the outrageous ticket prices and bought $30 caps and $120 jerseys anyway. And an entire era of young kids have to deal with looking up to baseball heroes that are nothing more than cheaters...Shame on all of us. Hopefully, the Mitchell report will move us into a new age of baseball, where kids who play tee ball all summer can have heroes who play the game with their 100% all and nothing more.

So there you have it. My Top Sports Moments of 2007. Feel free to add you own contributions or thoughts as comments and let me know what you think. I know that Justin and Dbrown will chime in for sure...