The Year That Was
Listed in: OtherAs both David and Ben have done, I decided to take a look back at my writings for the site over the last year and perhaps try and find the pieces I was most proud of. 2006 was quite an eventful year for me: I graduated college and moved back to my hometown of Seattle. I moved the site from Blogger to our own domain, which was quite an arduous task. Through it all, I found plenty to write about, as you'll see.
The year kicked off with the Seahawks setting a franchise record for wins with 13. After a bye week, they defeated the Washington Redskins in the divisional round of the playoffs for their first postseason win since I was a year old. They followed that up with a rousing win over the Panthers to go to their first Super Bowl in franchise history. Needless to say, I was excited. The build-up to the game saw me ripping Jerome Bettis, musing about life as a Seattle sports fan, and of course previewing the game. Once Super Bowl Sunday rolled around, I did the whole live-blogging thing. Unfortunately, the game didn't go quite as I had hoped, which meant the post-game breakdown was a bit shorter than it would have been had the Seahawks won.
With the football season over, my thoughts turned both to my future and to the impending baseball season. The Mariners' decision to use Carl Everett as their DH may have been frustrating, but at least it spawned a great nickname. The biggest story of the year centered around PEDs, and particularly Barry Bonds. I was often struck by how ignorant most people were of the truth about PEDs, and the rumors that swirled after the whole Jason Grimsley affidavit leak led me to consider a bleak future for fandom. And as a journalism major, I was disturbed at the way Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada were punished for refusing to reveal their sources.
The NBA season wasn't all that exciting, though I got to dust off my annual "Steve Nash Shouldn't Be MVP" piece. I also examined how so many people, myself included, were wrong about Tayshaun Prince's NBA potential.
Of course, the biggest NBA news of the season for me was the sale of the Sonics to a group of Oklahoma City businessmen. While I'm more optimistic now than I was at the time, going to Opening Night with my dad had an ominous feel.
I couldn't work it into the above paragraphs, but perhaps my favorite piece of 2006 was written after Maurice Clarett was arrested (again). His is a cautionary tale that being good at carrying a football doesn't make you good at life.
I have to say that i was much more optimistic, especially sports-wise, heading into 2006 than I am heading into 2007. The Seahawks are, as I said a week or so ago, a quivering pile of suck, and only the fact that the Cowboys are also terrible may save them from a first-round loss. The Sonics are bad and directionless, and the Mariners have gotten very slightly better for 2007 at way too high a cost. The UW football team still sucks, and the basketball team, while talented, is almost comically inexperienced. In short, I'm not counting on 2007 being the year one of my teams wins a championship. But if somehow they do, I bet you my Year 2007 retrospective will be far less of a downer to read.
