As we look back on 2006, one question: Where did all the good teams go?
What an ordinary bunch of pseudo-winners. Never mind even a wannabe dynasty. Oh, what I would give for another bully of a team, a juggernaut, a steamroller. Where are the monsters of yesteryear?
We wanted parity. We got mediocrity. Now we?re at a point where not only is everybody equal, they?re all equally bad, equally boring. The Super Bowl champs, the Steelers, didn?t even make the playoffs. Would any sane person out there imagine that any of the other major champions of this year past ? the Hurricanes, Heat or Cardinals ? will win again, either?
But nowadays, the team with the best regular-season record rarely goes through the playoffs. Wild cards run wild. Oh, excuse me: The Cardinals won their division and then the World Series, even though they barely played above .500. They weren?t even a wild card. They were a joker.
The whole National League is bereft of an outstandingteam. Ditto the National Conference of the NFL. The entire Atlantic Division of the NBA is so rotten that no team is even close to .500.
Not to be under-done by our domestic ordinaries, our American national teams put up a clean sweep: Losers in championship world competition in ice hockey, baseball, soccer, basketball, golf and tennis. Is this the way it was when the Roman Empire started collapsing?
Of course, what other teams around the globe were special? In the World Cup, it was all anybody could do just to score a goal. It was such a downer for fans that even the prostitutes in Germany couldn?t attract much business. Really. Brazil was supposed to win, but it bombed. Nobody thought Italy would, but the Azzurri proved to be the St. Louis Cardinals of soccer. All the more amazing that perhaps the most famous professional club team in the world, Juventus of Turin, was caught in a scandal and bumped down to the minors ? like the Yankees being dumped into the Texas League. And speaking of that ? gee, whatever happened to the Yankees?
But there is an incredible irony to this, too. At this time when there are no outstanding teams about, we have the treat of being able to watch two individual athletes who may not only be the best ever in their sports, but who may well be as dominant at what they do now as anybody who ever played any game. Roger Federer and Tiger Woods are simply extraordinary.
The year 2006 belonged more to Federer because Woods suffered that rare slump after his father died. But by the end of the year, they both were so in control that they make nonsense of the rankings. The gap in ranking points between Federer and the No. 2 player, Rafael Nadal, is greater than the gap between Nadal and the man ranked No. 64. Woods is further ahead of the No. 2 in golf, Jim Furyk, than Furyk is ahead of every other player in the world.
There is such incredible majesty to these two athletes. They absolutelybestride the world of sports. It is not beyond the realm of the impossible that both could win their Grand Slams this year.
Federer and Woods make teams seem insignificant. We have probably never before had such a supreme pair at the top of their games, at the top of history, winning in tandem. Enjoy it. Revel in their brilliance. It is as if Mozart and Beethoven or Michelangelo and Rembrandt were operating in their prime at the exact same time.
Federer and Woods are diamonds, so absolutely brilliant that, by comparison, all the teams in sport in 2007 are zircons.
Frank Deford?s column also appears as commentary Wednesdays on National Public Radio?s Morning Edition. Deford is a Baltimore native and an award-winning author who has written 14 books. He can be reached at [email protected].
