The Golden Age of Boston Sports

For any fan of Boston area sports under the age of 45, the 'Oughts is the Golden Age.

I have touched on the numbers that we're now seeing from Boston teams before. The Patriots are the impetus for this sports Renaissance in the Hub of the Universe, and reversal of fortune for Eastern New England's professional sports franchises.

It is, for me - an admitted football fan first, and baseball fan second - vindication for a team that, while I was growing up, was sometimes called a distant fourth in popularity in a three sport market.

Before I get into where I'm going with this, I want to note that all this tends to be cyclical. The Red Sox were the most dominant team in baseball 100 years ago, winning five championships from the beginning of 1900 through to 1918. In the 1960's, the Celtics were the most dominant professional sports franchise ever, winning ten of eleven championships starting in the late 1950's and running through 1970.

For New Englanders/Bostonians of a certain generation that 1960's to late 1970's stretch was, at one time the Golden Age. The Celtics dominated until the two Stanley Cups by the Bruins, then there were the 1967 Red Sox. By the time the Sox returned to the World Series in 1975, the other franchises around Boston were falling on hard times. Larry Bird wasn't yet drafted, and the Bruins struggled to advance in the playoffs.

The last time there was an up-tick in the cycle for Boston was in the mid to late 1980's when the Celtics won championships, and the Red Sox, Bruins, and Patriots all made it to the finals in their respective sports. The Sox lost the World Series to the Mets, the Patriots the Super Bowl to the Bears, and the Bruins the Stanley Cup to Edmonton. That was, for my generation, the Golden Age.

Until now.

In 2001, Bill Belichick and Scott Pioli assembled a team of virtual no-names and won the Super Bowl on the arm of a sixth round, second string quarterback, the legs of a retread running back released from a division rival, the leg of an unknown kicker out of NFL Europe, as well as a punishing defense with the only big names on the team - Ty Law and Lawyer Milloy. The others were mostly mid- to low-end free agents, often career back-ups or part-timers or end of the road guys, who weren't tendered offers by their previous teams like Mike Vrabel, Brian Cox, and Otis Smith.

Theo Epstein, just three years later, built a Red Sox team based on the same principles that Pioli and Belichick used - don't worry about the superstars. Get the gritty guys that love the game. Epstein even went as far as trading away fan favorite, and team superstar Nomar Garciaparra at the trading deadline for Orlando Cabrera - a solid, get your uniform dirty sort of guy who, at the time, was not thought of as highly as Garciaparra. The Sox have won two World Series since.

The Patriots have parlayed their success in the big game into the ability to recruit the big names, the superstars like Corey Dillon and Randy Moss, and get them to check their egos at the door.

Now we're watching a Celtics team with a big three that the pundits wondered how they would mesh when the players were put together. The three - Paul Pierce, Ray Allen, and Kevin Garnett - were known as shooters, and the big question was how they would operate - one ball, three shooters, someone was bound to be unhappy. Like with the recent Patriots and Red Sox teams, Allen, Pierce and Garnett all saw an opportunity to be great...if they left the ego at the door.

On the ice, the Bruins are fifth in the Eastern Conference and playing solid hockey. They will make the playoffs, barring a catastrophic collapse.

Yeah.

It's good to be a Boston fan right now. Savor it. These things don't last.

Our illustrious time in sports

My cynical view...

In light of recent events in professional sports, I wanted to make a few observations on this age in the pros. Over the last 25 years athletics have undergone a series of changes due to a number of things - chemistry, media, money, new workout techniques, a greater awareness of the international market have all contributed a golden age in revenue but in all other respects, what has been created is the asterisk age.

In baseball, the writers and San Francisco Giants fans are anxiously waiting for the biggest fraud since the 1919 White Sox to break one of the games most hallowed records. Sure, the man with a reputation amongst teammates for not even eating in restaurants because he wanted to know what everything was that was going into his body, claimed to not know what he was ingesting - but still admitted to juicing. But the baseball writers expect us to celebrate this feat of aided home runs? The man should be banned from the game.

Basketball for years has faced allegations that its referees control playoff games in order to create the best "ratings" match-ups in order to increase television and advertising revenue. Now it comes out that one of their veteran officials has been implicated in a gambling ring, and may have been involved in fixing games.

That's only part of the problem with basketball which continues to have problems with high-profile players like Ron Artest and Allen Iverson who have had recent run-ins with the law.

Speaking of legal, this might have been the worst off-season in the history of the NFL, and certainly the worst since the 2000 which included Ray Lewis' murder trial and the implication of now convict, then Panthers wide out Rae Carruth in the murder of his pregnant girlfriend. In spite of the fact that the arrest rate for NFL players is lower than that of the general public, the NFL has taken some major hits.

Since New Years alone, three players have died - Denver corner Darrent Williams was shot, Bronco running back Damien Nash's heart gave out on him, and Patriots defensive lineman Marquise Hill drowned - three have been suspended for repeated run-ins with the law - Titan Pacman Jones, Bengal Chris Henry, and former Bear Tank Johnson. Add on top of that two Raiders suspended for violating the steroid policy, three Dolphins with legal run-ins of their own, and the coup-de-gras - Michael Vick's federal indictment on dogfighting charges - the NFL might be weathering more trouble than any of the other leagues this year.

That's the big three. But it doesn't stop there...

Golf, on top of the fact that the golfing press and the men's and women's tours continue to promote a young female golf prodigy who has accomplished exactly jack-squat and appears to be digressing, the sport is now facing steroid allegations.

Bicycling's most prestigious event has been marred in recent years by mass doping allegations and what has appeared to be an almost vindictive, witch-hunt like approach to rooting out the cheaters. In its earnestness to catch those who cheat, the governing body of the cycling federation has made horrible mistakes and mismanaged everything from the handling of the samples, to the announcement of the results - often casting their own findings in doubt.

Hockey has mismanaged a sport that was once one of the "big four" along with basketball, baseball, and football, into something that competes in the television ratings with things like the National Spelling Bee Championship, the Nathan' s Hot Dog Eating Contest, and, on a bad day for the following, golf.

And in a way, the smallest problem in professional sports in America lies with soccer. Ideally a sport in a given country would have a homegrown hero. Soccer has had to resort to importing the biggest name in the world - the British born David Beckham. Not quite the scandal that the other sports seem to face, but still a problem.

That's my rant...I'm sure I could have spent more time and talked about things like the disparity between the small and large market teams in baseball, Jason Giambi, Gary Sheffield, the marketing of Kobe Bryant and his illustrious past, any one of a number of other football players, the proliferation of doping issues in track and field, and the decline of tennis in America and god knows what else if I weren't just doing this off the top of my head. But this, I think, is enough to know - We're in no golden age.