The Year So Far: Best/Worst of Sports
Before we dive into the highlights and lowlights of 2023 so far, allow us to begin with a disclaimer: we here at The Couch understand that over half a year has passed by now, and mid-August might be a strange time to do a status check on the pulse of the year. But between the happiness of summer dayz, big vacations, and big life changes, we got a little behind. So sue us! It may just about be the end of #hotgirlsummer, but it's not quite #thotumn, so I think a mid-year check in is still in order.
Besides, in case you haven't heard, actors and writers are now all striking, Boo. It may be a while yet before we get new television and movies-- and if that's what it takes, so be it! Pay them what they deserve!! All this to say, maybe this series can fill the little void between now and whenever these disputes are settled and the fall sports schedule really swings into full gear.
We had a few years of COVID influencing just about everything about sports-- the fans, the teams themselves, the dates that seasons and tournaments were played, etc. But if 2022 felt like old times in America, 2023 has been the year that globally, sports have gone back to the familiar. With major events from Melbourne to Phoenix, from Houston to Augusta, from Denver to Istanbul, from London to Auckland, from Budapest to New York... stadiums were packed. Games were played. Broadcasters were onsite, to either the delight or dismay of the television viewer, depending on the broadcaster. Life was good. Let us never take that for granted again!
You may notice I said "back to the familiar." Not to "normal." Because in many ways, the sporting events we've gotten to witness in these last 9 months or so have anything but normal. Let's sort through some highs and lows of the madness from athletics in 2023:
Best of the Year
Women's sports at the forefront
Full disclosure: I had started writing this piece earlier in the week, and work and other life obligations delayed it, but I was already planning to select this topic as the highlight. That said, Coco Gauff's barnstorming of the US Open, culminating in the 19-year old's first-ever Grand Slam title yesterday, could not have been timed better. Perhaps Gauff's win shouldn't be lumped into the greater story of 'woman's triumph'; tennis is, after all, an individual sport, and it's not exactly a surprise that the always-raucous New York crowd would be especially celebratory for an exciting young American's victory. Still, the groundswell of support, excitement and good will towards Coco, in the stands and across social media, seems to have perfectly punctuated the year in women's sports so far. So long have female athletes and their supporters had to hear the cries of derision about how "nobody watches women's sports," how those athletes aren't elite and among the most talented in their craft. Even before Coco's singular dominance, there were plenty of examples from 2023 that have helped silence those howls once and for all.
Over the course of the early months, the nation at large began to large what fans in the know had been aware of for well over a year now: Caitlin Clark is must-watch television. The Iowa sophomore guard is an unreal scorer, the closest thing to Steph Curry we've seen at the college level, and her remarkable season helped propel Iowa to the Final Four, where they stunned defending champions (and winners of 42 consecutive games) South Carolina. This set the stage for a thrilling National Championship, where Angel Reese and underdogs LSU made sure they were the main headline, executing a near-perfect game to bring home their first title in program history. As a lifelong college basketball fan, I can testify the quality felt like so many of the Men's Final Fours I've loved over the years, and numbers suggest I'm not alone in that sentiment: the Final Four shattered viewing records, with the approximate audience 6.5 million marking an 87% increase in viewership from the year prior.
Several months later, the 2023 edition of the FIFA Women's World Cup kicked off down under. The success and high quality of the American team over the last decade or so had contributed to this tournament's rapid popularity in America, but there can be no denying: this installment of the WWC had by far the greatest global impact. In the biggest, most exciting, most competitive tournament yet, many nations involved broke the previous television records for women's soccer. Spain and England, the two teams contesting the World Cup Final, both saw their final match break domestic viewership records. Co-hosts Australia's semifinal match against England set a new record for the most-watched sporting event in Australian history. What's more, it's estimated there was a global audience of over 2 billion for this tournament, nearly double that of the 2019 tournament (which, it should be noted, was played at much more optimal television times for the major markets in the Americas and Europe). Not even the most disappointing tournament in US Women's National Team history or wild kickoff times were enough to stall momentum stateside; FOX's numbers actually went up from the 2019 edition, which had been record-setting already. And, while I recognize this is anecdotal, believe me when I tell you that having traveled to New Zealand and Australia for the latter stages of the World Cup, the energy surrounding the tournament was different. The stadiums and the FIFA Fan Zones were packed, and not just from citizens of the countries involved. Jerseys of many different nations could be seen all around Auckland and Sydney, and if the painted murals, the lit-up Sydney Opera House, the festivities all around the Olympic Park all weren't enough to tip you off, the packed house in the 83,500-seat Stadium Australia helped drive it home: this wasn't some second-rate soccer tournament that needed a qualifier. This was a World Cup Final. Some friends I traveled with had gone to the 2019 Final in Lyon, and testified firsthand that the leap in buzz and fanfare in even just 4 years was noteworthy.
Sure, maybe it's kind of cheating to pick something as broad as "women's athletics" as the highlight. After all, this consists of many, many different sports and sporting events; women's sports is not a monolith. But in truth, recognizing that and examining each sport on its own merit? That's probably the next step in recognizing their quality. The first step was recognizing the quality of women's sports in general, and that's been satisfied in ample supply.
Honorable Mentions: The best pair of College Football Playoff semifinals ever; a Super Bowl for the ages; Barcelona rally to win a wild Women's Champions League Final; perhaps the maddest March ever sees a 16-seed upset a 1-seed, and all Top 2 seeds out by the Elite Eight; wild card play-ins Miami Heat stun the Eastern Conference with a run to the NBA Finals; Nikola Jokic and the Denver Nuggets win their first trophy in franchise history; Wyndham Clark gets his first-ever PGA win at the U.S. Open; Marketa Andrusova completes a stunning Wimbledon run with a surprise title; Carlos Alcaraz defeats Novak Djokovic in the WImbledon Final in one of the all-time great matches; Noah Lyles kicks butt at the World Athletics Championships and appropriately calls out American sports leagues' liberal use of "world champions"
Worst of the Year
Sportswashing takes over soccer
Truthfully, the greatest sport in the world has not given the everyday fan a whole lot to cheer about this year. There was the noteworthy exception of the Women's World Cup discussed above, of course, but even that gave way to some ugly revelations about abuse amidst many of the federations involved, most prominently within that of world champions Spain. I actually thought about selecting Spain's fiasco for the lowlight here, but I decided I don't want to couple the celebration of women with more in-depth breakdowns of the same old misogyny that has stunted it.
So instead, I turn to the other grave issue facing the beautiful game: sportswashing. If you are not familiar with this term, it was coined several years ago to describe the use of a sport, often a major sporting event, by a government or corporation to promote or burnish their reputation, especially amidst controversy, scandal, or bad press. I'll give you a few hypothetical examples: say the nation of Qatar, eager to package itself as a destination to the Western world despite skepticism about its human rights record, buys off FIFA committee members in order to win hosting rights to a World Cup. Then as pressure and controversy intensifies in the leadup to that tournament, due to countless reports of slave labor and rigid-tight laws against LGBTQ+ people, pays off broadcasters including FOX to only speak positively of the host nation. Or, say the United Arab Emirates' royal family wants to make inroads in the West in order to win favor amidst their growing regional conflicts (and Western skepticism about their human rights record), and said royal family purchases the Premier League club Manchester City and funnels jaw-dropping amounts of money into it in order to win every trophy imaginable. Or consider this: a Saudi investment fund set up by the government pours billions upon billions into purchasing their own Premier League team, as well as into buying many of the best players from that team's European rivals to boost the legitimacy of their domestic league, all in order to distract from the outcry over its nation's fraught relationship with many world powers, and its record of, oh I don't know, killing journalists, women, and queer folk. Do any of these examples sound familiar? They do? Huh, how about that.
Not to sound like a boomer complaining about the transfer portal in college sports, but I genuinely fear for the game I have loved. Yes, wild influxes of cash into football have been happening for some time now. Yes, just about every major league have owners from, say, America or England, that seem to get away with rule-bending and unmitigated spending sprees. But this regime-centered drive to essentially dominate the world's game is very obviously a different beast altogether, and none of the governing bodies in football have shown they have the integrity or capability to contain it.
Dishonorable Mentions: Goliath annihilates David in the College Football National Championship; an all-time Super Bowl ends with a dubious "holding" flag; preseason #1 and America's Team North Carolina misses the NCAA tournament; the Final Four is a total dud; Rafael Nadal is forced to withdraw from a year of tournaments due to injury; everything about Spain's football federation's handling of their world champion women's team; the NCAA continues their incompetence in denying transfer waivers for players like Tez Walker; NBA players' and fanboys' reaction to Noah Lyles' comment
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