Top Sports Moments of 2024
I'll be honest, I almost decided to forgo a 'Best Sports Moments' piece for the year, as I did in 2023. It's been a pretty rough year for my various sporting interests-- not without exception, of course, but the trajectory of most of my favorites felt bleak enough to prevent my heart from being in it this year. My Tar Heels were prematurely bounced from March Madness, and so far this season's basketball team looks to be every bit as hapless and mediocre as our football team was. My favorite tennis player of all time decided to hang it up, as did my favorite soccer manager ever, fresh off that favorite soccer team's brutal season-ending slump. Big baddies like Real Madrid, Manchester City, and the Kansas City Chiefs won yet again.
Ultimately, though, I realized, what is the point of being a sports fanatic if you can't take the losses with the wins? Even if my own personal wins were few and far between, it's objectively been another remarkable year for sports in general, and that's worth celebrating for now. So, setting aside personal biases and opinions, here is my best stab at the 10 most noteworthy moments the world of sports had to offer this year.
But first, to make a perfect 24 in 2024, here are fourteen noteworthy events that just missed the list (in chronological order):
Michigan finally scales the mountaintop, wins College Football Playoff
In a rematch of the 2020 Super Bowl, the Kansas City Chiefs again outduel the favored San Francisco 49ers in a classic in Vegas to claim a second consecutive Super Bowl title
Shorthanded Liverpool win the Carabao Cup in beloved manager Jürgen Klopp's final season, stunning Chelsea in overtime while fielding a team made nearly half up of youth academy players
North Carolina State goes on stunning March run, from 10th place in the ACC to ACC Tournament champions, to the Final Four as an 11-seed
Zach Edey wins the Wooden Award, becoming just the third male college basketball player in history to win the national player of the year award more than once, and the first since Ralph Sampson in 1983
UConn men repeat as national champions, becoming the first back-to-back champs since Florida in 2007
Real Madrid beat Borussia Dortmund to win a record-extending 15th Champions League title
Boston Celtics finally make good on their potential, break through for just second NBA title in 40 years (and first since 2008)
Florida Panthers defeat Edmonton Oilers in Stanley Cup Finals for first title in franchise history, extending Canada's Stanley Cup trophy drought to 31 years
Spain men break major tournament slump to win Euros, becoming the first nation to win 4 European championships
Argentina continues dominance in world football by winning the Copa America, their third major title in four years
Armand Duplantis breaks world record for pole vaulting en route to Olympic gold
Sifan Hassan, late entry to the Marathon at the Olympics, stuns the world by winning the competition in a wild sprint of the last 200 m to leap from 3rd to 1st
French heroes Antoine Dupont and Léon Marchand win Rugby 7s and Swimming gold medals, inspiring raucous crowds in the host nation
Now, to the Top 10!
10. Epic semifinals end 4-team playoff era
This year marked the arrival of the 12-team playoff college football, an unprecedented wide breadth of involvement in the postseason, and the latest example of modern changes to a sport that for so many years was infamously change-resistant. The new frontier is a welcome (even overdue) development, and a momentous occasion in its own right. Unfortunately though, perhaps owing to the bizarre formatting of the playoff, as I write this, the first 5 games of the new playoff have been a bust. The first round consisted of four blowouts, and while last night's Fiesta Bowl was a more competitive battle at least, it never really looked as if Boise State was going to be able to upset Penn State, who ultimately pulled away for a 17-point win. Thank goodness, then, that we have the memory of the last 4-team college football playoff games at the front end of last year: on New Year's Day 2024, Michigan and Alabama, two of the most historic programs in college football played the first semifinal of the 2023 season in America's most historic stadium. Against the gorgeous backdrop of the San Gabriel mountains, the top-ranked Wolverines bested the Crimson Tide in a Rose Bowl classic, scoring the tying touchdown with mere minutes left, nearly fumbling away the game near their own goal line with seconds remaining, and then making a goal-line stand in overtime to secure victory. It set a bar that the second semifinal was never going to top, but Washington and Texas sure did their best. In the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans, the two teams put on much more of an offensive showcase, matching each other blow for blow in the first half. The 2nd-ranked Huskies, behind Heisman runner-up Michael Penix, finally started to pull away in the 4th quarter until a furious rally by the Longhorns left them down 6 with the ball in Washington's red zone in the last minute, but a 4th down pass breakup in the end zone finally secured UW's berth in the national championship. The two best teams all season would end up vying for the title, as it should be, but not without oodles of the drama, intrigue, twists, pomp and circumstance that make this beloved sport so great.
9. Olympic Sprint Stunners
The United States Olympic Team had a Games to remember in Paris, no doubt. And-- spoiler alert! --more space will be devoted to that fact in this piece. But it could have been even better: in two of the premier events of Track and Field, sprinters Noah Lyles and Sha'Carri Richardson, both gold medalists already were expected to also bring home Gold in the Men's 200m and Women's 100m, respectively. Instead, both were narrowly beaten out and finished with the Silver-- not a bad result, by any means, nor by itself all too stunning, given that the competition involved the best sprinters in the world. What was stunning, though, was who won those, and the nation from which they came. The 200m was won by Letsile Tebogo from Botswana, whose best 200m result prior was a Bronze in the 2023 World Championships, while the title of "World's Fastest Woman" went to Julian Alfred of St. Lucia. Both Tebogo and Alfred were their respective nation's first Olympic gold medalists in history. The small African country had three medals total over the years, but had never topped the podium, whereas Alfred's tiny island nation had never received an Olympic medal at all. it was a tremendous underdog story, made greater by the overwhelming national pride that swelled in the borders of Botswana and on the shores of St. Lucia. Unsurprisingly, Tebogo and Alfred were given heroes welcomes upon return to their countries, and also used their new platform to declare their love for their roots and call for more support and investment in the infrastructure of athletics at home. Figures and stories like theirs remind us of the true spirit of the Olympic games.
8. Klopp bids farewell
As a tried and true Liverpool fan, I could write a research paper on how much Jürgen Klopp meant to me, to the club I love, and to the city of Liverpool in general. And you know what? I still might! But I promise I and other LFC fans were not the only ones affected by this event. Klopp's stunning announcement in late January, that he would retire at the end of the season (two year before the end of his contract) sent shockwaves through the football world. The legendary German manager was a singular figure in the sport; he had led only three clubs across his 23 years of coaching: Mainz and Borussia Dortmund in Germany, and for the last decade, Liverpool in England. Over his tenure, he earned a reputation for being one of the best managers in the world, yes, with a track record of restoring passionate and once-proud but slightly befallen clubs back to a level of greatness- Mainz, his boyhood club, was in Germany's third tier when he took over, and at the time he left, was in the better half of the top-tier Bundesliga. Borussia Dortmund was mired in mediocrity when he arrived, and under his reign, reached the Champions League final, won multiple German Cup trophies, and became the only team in a decade to beat out Bayern Munich for the Bundesliga title (and did it twice!). He came to Liverpool on the heels of the club's worst stretch in Premier League history, and almost immediately turned them around, restoring them to the upper echelon of the sport, winning the Champions League, multiple domestic trophies, their first ever Club World Cup trophy and most significantly, their ever-elusive Premier League title, at long last. But he was much more than a brilliant football manager; he was a larger-than-life personality, one who exuded love for his players, kinship with the fans and community, dripped humorous charisma in interviews and press conferences. He was a voice for positive change, unafraid to make clear his political views and take strong stances in favor of social justice, in a time where public figures increasingly balked at doing just that. It's a rare thing for a professional coach to be known for his warm hugs as Jürgen was, but he was, as popular football podcaster Roger Bennett loved to describe him, a "Teutonic Care Bear." At the time of his announcement, Liverpool against all odds (they were in the midst of a rebuild after an awfully disappointing prior season) were in contention for four different major trophies. In the end, they would not get Klopp's fairy tale ending, slipping down the stretch in the Premier League, FA Cup, and Europa League, but the "best ever 3rd place finish" (in terms of points) in the Premier League, and a thrilling upset victory in the Carabao Cup provided one last reminder of how nobody in the world could get more belief and desire out of their players the way Klopp could. There's a reason he owns the rare distinction of leaving every club he managed on his terms, with emotional farewell ceremonies, rather than being sacked or asked to step aside, and on a personal note, even though it debatably cost me my job, I will be eternally grateful that I got to witness his last farwell in person.
7. South Carolina women cap perfect season
Women's basketball took center stage in America in 2024, for a variety of reasons, and in a variety of ways. One major reason for this was the hype surrounding star Caitlin Clark, who led Iowa to a second consecutive national championship appearance in April. There would be no fairy tale ending for Clark's college career, though, as the Hawkeyes once again fell in the natty, this time to the very team they had vanquished in the Final Four the year prior: South Carolina. Somewhat underrepresented in the national buzz about Iowa, though, was the amazing season the Gamecocks and legendary coach Dawn Staley had put together. The previous season had seen her squad lose their first game all year, heartbreakingly, in that Final Four matchup with the Hawkeyes, and then lose over half their roster to graduation and/or the WNBA Draft. So what did they do? Reloaded with some returning key players, including star center Kamilla Cardoso, plus a couple grad transfers and one of the best recruiting classes in America, and proceeded to complete another perfect regular season, leaving 6 ranked teams in their wake. They came oh-so-close to flinching in the SEC Tournament, but Cardoso kept them alive with a buzzer beater vs. Tennessee in the semifinals and the Gamecocks went on to edge reigning national champs LSU in the tournament final. Once again the #1 overall seed in March Madness, South Carolina was hardly tested-- apart from a surprisingly competitive Sweet 16 clash with Indiana -- until that Final. And while the more causal viewers might have expected Iowa's coronation to be inevitable, it was South Carolina who wrote the triumphant end to their story, getting revenge over the Hawkeyes and capping their perfect season with a 3rd national title, and launching this team and Dawn Staley into immortal status.
6. A golden year for American golfers
Golf is a global game; one of the most widely-played sports in the world, in fact. So it stands to reason that, while the United States might historically boast more elite golfers than any one nation in the world, it's not often that they win the "America vs. the field" debates. After all, 'Team Europe' have won 8 of the 11 Ryder Cups in the 21st century. But in 2024, American golf took front, right and center stage in the men's game, as Americans completed a sweep of the four Majors for the first time in 42 years. Scottie Scheffler kicked things off with a win at the Masters, Xander Schauffle added to the haul with wins at The Open and the PGA Championships, and Bryson DeChambeau capped off the sweep by claiming the U.S. Open. As if the year couldn't get any more magical for Americans, Scheffler earned the USA's second consecutive Olympic Gold in Paris, shooting a course record -9 on the final day to claim to win by one stroke, and giving the United States an unprecedented "golden slam."
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5. United States women dominate Olympics closing weekend
A few spots up, I talked about how upsets in two Olympic races meant Americans ended up with at least two fewer gold medals than they anticipated. However, it's worth acknowledging that the United States still ended up dominating the medal table, tying with China on 40 Golds, but demolishing the field with 120+ total medals. That said, heading into the final weekend of the Games, it was poised to be a photo finish in the theoretical "gold medal race"...enter American women. In the final two days of competition in Paris, women representing the United States alone brought home a whopping six Golds-- for comparison, the entirety of Team China won one in that same span --to earn USA a share of the spoils. And while all the medals count the same, these were some mega-watt, major events the American queens brought home. Track star Gabby Thomas led two different relay teams to Gold, the 4x400 and the 4x100. The women's basketball team held off hosts France in a thriller to earn an unprecedented 8th consecutive gold medal (to give you an idea of how long they have dominated the sport, the last nation other than the U.S. to win the Women's Basketball Gold was the Soviet Union). And, one year removed from their most disappointing major tournament ever, the Untied States women's soccer team, under brand-new manager Emma Hayes, completed their redemption tour with a 1-0 win over Brazil to earn their first Olympic gold since 2012. In a tremendous year for women's sports, few stars shone brighter than our Olympians.
4. A new era in tennis
2022 held the mammoth departures of Roger Federer and Serena Williams, perhaps the greatest men’s and women’s tennis players ever to play the game. But the sheer tonnage of farewells in 2024 is hard to fathom: Grand Slam champions Andy Murray, Angelique Kerber, Juan Martin del Potro, Dominic Thiem, and Garbine Muguraza all retired from the sport over the course of this year. Then, in late October, came the biggest announcement of them all: Rafael Nadal, one of the all-time greatest and indisputably the greatest clay court player ever, would also be hanging it up for good. The scenes for Nadal's goodbye were reminiscent of those for Federer's two years prior, and it makes sense given his similar status in the sport. But where Federer's farewell marked the end for the all-time great figure himself, Nadal's seemed to carry an added significance, especially on the heels of Andy Murray's retirement: the end of the greatest era in tennis we have ever witnessed. It won't officially be over until Novak Djokovic hangs it up for good, of course; the great Serb still is one of the best current players after all these years, and was able to win gold at the Summer Olympics this year. But it's clear that even the Iron Man himself has only a couple years left at this level, and more significantly, while a new, younger crop of players started to win more and more majors over him and Nadal over the last 5 years or so, 2024 marked the first time in 22 years that none of the "Big 3" of Federer, Nadal and Djokovic took home one of the Grand Slams. And perhaps most poignantly, the year's Grand Slams didn't go to just any old player, but rather were split evenly between the two biggest stars of the 'next generation': Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaráz. Sinner started and ended the year on top, with dominant wins in just about every hardcourt tournament he played in, most significantly the Australian Open and US Open. In the middle of the year, it was all about Alcaráz, who took home Grand Slams #s 3 and 4 in the French Open and Wimbledon, dealing Djokovic his worst-ever defeat at Wimbledon in the Final of the latter. It feels like for about a decade now, tennisheads have debated what the future of tennis will look like in a 'post-Big 3 world.' In the year 2024, we got our answer. The next chapter is here.
3. The return of the G.O.A.T.
Cynics may scream "American bias!!!" but for my two cents, THE story of an Olympic Games chock full of them was the Simone Biles Redemption Tour. You may counter that Biles had no reason to have to "redeem herself," and I would agree with that. But there's no question the events of Tokyo 2020 left many a gymnastics fan spiralling, and general Team America normies angry: in the middle of the Team Finals, she dropped out of the competition, citing mental health reasons, and the shellshocked U.S. were stunningly pipped for the gold by Russia. Biles would later elaborate and explain that not only had her grandmother passed while she was in Tokyo, but she was suffering from a condition some gymnasts and figure skaters suffer from known as "the twisties," and also pulled out of the All-Around, vault, uneven bars, and floor finals. She would return for the balance beam final, earning Bronze, and had the vocal support of her teammates, coaches, and numerous former and current athletes, but that didn't stop many an American from protesting that she had copped out, let her team and by extension her country down, and sullied her historic career. Biles heard it all, and answered those cries as only she could: coming back 3 years later for a third consecutive Olympic Games (most gymnasts, certainly in programs as deep as the American one, don't get selected for more than one Olympics), and once again mowing down the competition. Led by Biles, the American team routed the competition for the Team Gold. Then, Simone became just the third female gymanst in history to win a 2nd All-Around Gold, and added to her haul with another Gold in vault, and a Silver in floor exercise. In what was likely her last Olympics appearance, she walks away as the most decorated gymnast in history with 11 total medals, 6 of them gold, and her last Olympic gold ever came by performing a move on the vault named the "Biles" because she originated it and remains the only one capable of performing it. I think it's safe to consider the G.O.A.T. debate well and truly over.
2. Perfection for Bayer Leverkusen
The story of Bayer Leverkusen's '23-'24 season is such that, if you're a soccer fan, you were well aware and riveted already, but if you have only a passing interest (or none at all) in the sport, probably missed altogether. Bayer Leverkusen has long been a decent club with a history of being one of the better German clubs, but have never been a name that transcends the sport the way German peers Bayern Munich are, or Real Madrid, Barcelona, Manchester United, Liverpool, Milan, etc. Other than a Champions League runner-up and a handful of 2nd place Bundesliga seasons, their only accolades to speak of in their entire history are a Europa League (Europe's second-biggest competition, the NIT to the Champions League's NCAA Tournament) title in 1988, and a DFB-Pokal (Germany's domestic cup competition) title in 1993. This past season was their first full one under manager Xabi Alonso; the legendary midfielder had taken the reins midway through a turbulent season in November 2022, and helped spark a notable uptick in form. I'm not sure anybody could have expected how far thast upward trajectory would take them, though. In a league so routinely dominated by Bayern Munich that I was a junior in high school the last time a different team won the Bundesliga (Klopp's Dortmund), Leverkusen rattled off a 28-match unbeaten streak to start the season and claimed their first-ever league trophy in record time, securing the championship the 2nd weekend of April. That wasn't all, though: even after winning the trophy, the team successfully completed an unbeaten league season with 4 more wins and 2 draws, and also entered May unbeaten in their other two competitions, the DFB-Pokal and the Europa League. They would ride that unbeaten streak to the final of both competitions, seeking to become the first team ever to finish a season unconquered in all competitions they play. Unfortunately, they would come up just short, dropping their first and only loss in the Europa League Final to Italian underdogs Atalanta, but they would redeem themselves just a few days later by beating FC Kaisersalutern in the DFP-Pokal final to complete the "domestic double" and an unbeaten German season. It's rare enough to see a team complete a flawless league season, but rarer still to see them untarnished in every competition they play, and the fact that the side that came the closest to an unprecedented "perfect treble" was not one of the mammoths of the game, but rather Bayer Leverkusen, is truly stunning. For the soccer uninformed, there's truly no American equivalent, but the closest thing I can say is imagine, like, the Oklahoma City Thunder finishing 82-0, reaching but losing the NBA Cup Final, but then winning the NBA Finals without losing a single game in the playoffs.
1. Caitlin Clarkmania hits the WNBA
You thought a passing mention of her team's loss in the college national championship was going to be the extent of Caitlin Clark discussion in this piece? Ha! Get real.
It's not often that you get to witness a single player completely revolutionize a sport, but that is exactly what Clark has done in the last two years. Her star trajectory began well before her sophomore year at Iowa, but that was when most of America became familiar with the high-volume shooter with what can only be described as Steph Curry range. Her junior year saw her progress from social media star to bona fide star though, sweeping the national player of the year awards and leading Iowa to the national championship. They fell short in that championship, but the showdown with LSU shattered viewership records for women's college basketball. Clark returned for her senior year with the hopes of securing an elusive title for her hometown Hawkeyes, and as we know from earlier, again came up one game short, but effectively ran back the same feats from 2023: a national championship appearance, a player of the year awards sweep, and a new record for viewership in the national championship.
This year, though, her story didn't stop with the national title- unlike the NBA, the WNBA season begins in May, and the Draft is held a month before. So, a mere week after playing for a college national championship, Clark was the # 1 WNBA Draft pick, and her professional journey began. There was hardly a doubt that her 'must-watch television' appeal was going to translate to the pros, and sure enough, all of a sudden her new team Indiana Fever was selling out tickets for every game, as were the hosts of all their road opponents; teams across America moved their scheduled games against the Fever from the normal home venues to the local NBA arena instead, and those arenas continued to sell out. ESPN and other broadcasters aired Fever games on broadcast television routinely. Despite the unprecedented hype, many an outspoken skeptic, including a large number of current and former WNBA players, asserted that Clark would not replicate her success at the pro level, arguing that the step up in competition was fierce, the game far more physical, and she would have no luck shooting at will the way she did in college. And you know what? For the first couple months or so, they seemed to be right. Caitlin struggled to get a foothold and struggled in her first many appearances, putting up uncharacteristically high turnover numbers and uncharacteristically low shooting percentages. But a couple months into the season, a tide started to turn, and you could tell a switch had flipped for her. All of a sudden, she was back scoring in the 30s. All of a sudden, the Fever (a historically bad franchise) were winning a lot more games than they were used to. All of a sudden, Clark was routinely notching double-doubles, becoming the first rookie to ever record a triple-double, tying the single-game record for 3-pointers, breaking the single-game assist record, and setting new rookie season records for points, assists, and 3-pointers made. All of a sudden, she was being named to the All-Star game, winning Rookie of the Year, and becoming the first rookie ever to be named to the 1st Team All-WNBA. So yeah, safe to say the mark has been made, I think.
Unfortunately, because we can't have anything nice, her meteoric rise and the rocketed WNBA viewership has rendered her somewhat of a 'white savior' figure and brought about a number of disrespectful trolls in online discourse and even media spaces. I'll let the Day 1 WNBA fans speak to whether the increased attention and market value for the game is worth the influx of obnoxious and often downright problematic discourse, but regardless of how you would answer that question, one thing's for certain: women's basketball in America has undergone a paradigm shift with this generation of young players, and there's one woman in particular who is to thank for that.
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