The 10 Biggest Sports Stories of 2007

Last week I offered up numbers 11 thru 30; today, my Top 10. And here's my annual disclaimer: it's my list reflecting my opinions. It's totally subjective. Feel free to disagree and feel free to tell me about it. The Top 10:

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10) New Fields for Parity
The NFL has long made a good case for parity, even in this era of a possible Patriots dynasty. Parity has been evident in college basketball for a while now—remember George Mason—as we were quickly reminded this season, with Gardner-Webb whipping Kentucky and Mercer rolling over USC in the opening weeks. But college football—you've got to be kidding. Each season has been same-old same-ld—until this one. It opened with Appalachian State booting Michigan in the Big House and saw 41-point underdog Stanford upend USC and Kentucky upset no. 1 LSU in overtime. Everybody beat Notre Dame, including Navy for the first time in 43 years. Something even more special happened in Tuscaloosa, Ala., where Nick Saban, who bolted his national champion LSU Tigers for the NFL then again bolted to Alabama for $4 million a season, watched his Crimson Tide get whipped by Louisiana-Monroe. Sure, LSU, Ohio State, USC and Oklahoma were familiar contenders, but Connecticut, Kentucky, Kansas, Illinois, South Florida, Hawaii and Missouri were not.

9) A Rush to Judgment
Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong led the charge and, deservedly, paid a big price—disbarment—after all charges were dropped against three Duke lacrosse players accused of raping a stripper at a team party. But many pundits and fans alike had been quick to embrace the tale as both the embodiment of the flaws in our sports culture and an example of ugliness in America's race and class divides. The result was that three college students, guilty at worst of tasteless partying, were put through a year of torment before finally being vindicated. Still, they had to be cheered when, one year after their season was canceled by the scandal, their former teammates went all the way to the NCAA lacrosse finals, just missing out on the fairy-tale ending with a 12-11 loss to Johns Hopkins.

8) Requiem for a Queen
Marion Jones was the queen of the 2000 Sydney Olympics, the golden girl of American track and field (and Nike) as she won three gold and two bronze medals. As drug rumors swirled—first the suspension of her then-husband, shot-putter C. J. Hunter, then the raid on BALCO's drug lab, of which she was a client, then the banning of Tim Montgomery, the father of her son, from the sport—Jones remained steadfast in her denials. But this year her defenses all crumbled. A teary Jones pleaded guilty to lying to federal investigators and admitted she had taken steroids (though she clung to that pathetic defense that she didn't know what she was taking). Jones forfeited all her Olympic medals, and all her results dating back before the Sydney games were stripped from the record books. BALCO records released just last week revealed that Jones had taken an exhaustive regimen of a wide range of performance-enhancing drugs. The IOC showed rare good judgment by not automatically awarding Jones's Olympic medals to the next finisher. The runner-up in the 100 meters in Sydney was Greek sprinter Katerina Thanou, who was suspended for two years after failing to show up for a drug test right before the 2004 Athens Olympics.

7) The George Mitchell Story
Almost two years in the making, the report on drug use in baseball by former Sen. George Mitchell didn't disappoint. No, it wasn't the definitive history of doping in the game. But Mitchell had promised to report what he learned—and that meant naming names. And while his list proved to be rather random, and perhaps just a small fraction of those who cheated, it had plenty of impact. Most prominent among those Mitchell accused of using performance-enhancing drugs was the greatest pitcher of the modern era, Roger Clemens. Though Clemens continues to vehemently deny the Mitchell report's contention that he used steroids or human growth hormone, his storied career may now be viewed as every bit as asterisk-worthy as that of Barry Bonds. They may stand together, pitcher and hitter who defied Father Time, as the ultimate symbol of baseball's disgraced steroids era.

6) Vick-timizing Man's Best Friend
It wasn't enough for Michael Vick to be one of the NFL's most popular and highly paid superstars. The Atlanta Falcons quarterback had to have a side game, dogfighting, in which the inhumanity was incalculable (dogs were bludgeoned, drowned, electrocuted and hanged) but the illegality wasn't. The calculation for Vick was 23 months in federal prison, after an agreement in which he pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge and admitted to having financed the operations of Bad Newz Kennels on his property in Virginia since 2001.