Looking back at a bizarre sports year, we saw fusses, failures and said goodbye to idols
As 2022 draws to a close, we are reminded that the sports world is still not quite back to normal.
If that was the case, would the great Tom Brady have had the season he did? He retired, retired, announced he was divorcing and by the end of the year had lost more games than he had won. He’s still the most outstanding NFL player of all time, but 2022 has brought nothing but mediocrity and trouble.
Or what about college football and men’s golf, both of which were dominated more by what happened off the field and on the course than on it? In these two sports, letters have become more important than numbers. Maybe you didn’t recognize the letters at the beginning of the year. Now you know them: NIL and LIV.
We had another Olympics, the second in six months, which was quite unusual, and it was held in Beijing in an ice-cold bubble in the midst of a global spike in COVID microns. The International Olympic Committee somehow solved it, greatly helped by the draconian protocols of the Chinese government.
Serena Williams gestures to the crowd at the 2022 US Open.
But things didn’t go exactly to plan when world number one skier Mikaela Shiffrin failed to take home a single medal, while figure skaters from the United States and Japan won medals they never received amid another Russian doping scandal, this one involving 15-year-old skating phenom Kamila Valieva.
It wasn’t played on a pitch or field, but in a prison cell in Russia. Thankfully, Brittney Griner is now back, freed in a prisoner swap earlier this month, but for 10 weeks of the year, the WNBA star and two-time Olympic gold medalist was held captive by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government in the midst of his war with Ukraine.
Ah 2022, what a special sporting year you’ve had. Not as bizarre as 2020 and 2021, but still pretty damn weird.
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This means that some results were correct. Lionel Messi finally won the World Cup at 35 when he led Argentina past France for the ages in the final. Dusty Baker, 73, won his first World Series as a manager when his Houston Astros beat the Philadelphia Phillies. Just weeks earlier, New York Yankee Aaron Judge electrified baseball when he hit his 62nd home run of the season, surpassing Roger Maris’ 61-year-old American League record of 61.
Dusty Baker celebrates on the field after winning the 2022 World Series.
In the NBA, the Golden State Warriors won their fourth NBA title in eight seasons, led by Steph Curry, who was named NBA Finals MVP for the first time. In college hoops, Dawn Staley added to her impressive resume as a player and coach by winning her second NCAA title at South Carolina. Brooklyn Nets guard Kyrie Irving also made news for all the wrong reasons when he sent his sport into controversy after posting a link to an anti-Semitic movie, then doubling down and refusing to apologize.
The NFL has seen its share of good and bad.In his first season in Los Angeles, quarterback Matthew Stafford led the Rams to a Super Bowl victory. Other NFL headlines included Washington owner Dan Snyder’s endless controversies, Deshaun Watson’s horrific return after settling with nearly two dozen women who accused him of sexual harassment and assault, and the ongoing saga of Aaron Rodgers saying even stranger things than last time. year and like Brady lost more than he won.
The departures of some very big names have shown us how much we want to keep our heroes. In August, Serena Williams said in an essay for Vogue that she would be “stepping away from tennis”. She ended up losing in her last venture, the US Open, but not before delivering a rousing first week where the impossible seemed almost possible. Serena had company as she stepped aside; among the most notable to leave the stage were fellow tennis player Roger Federer, Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski and five-time Olympic gold medalist Sue Bird of the WNBA.
This year also marked a memorable anniversary: Title IX, the law that opened the floodgates for women and girls in sports, turned 50. How fitting that it will also be the year that the most famous women’s sports team in the world, the U.S. women’s national soccer team, would finally receive the same pay as the U.S. men’s national team under a new agreement with the U.S. Soccer. Months later, a wide-ranging investigation revealed a culture of sexual abuse and emotional abuse in the women’s game, horrific news that only came to light thanks to the courage of these female athletes to speak out.
That was the core of this year in sports.It was both excessive and enticing, pulling us into important national and international conversations at every turn, whether we liked it or not.Now that it’s almost over, will we miss it? Controversy? Moments? Memories?
Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, it’s time to start over.
