Taking My Licks in '06

I was listening to the NFL Network’s Rich Eisen gush over Tony Romo, today, on 1310AM The Ticket’s Hardline show. I realized that the pain of losing in the waning seconds of that Dallas-Seattle playoff game is still with me. Rich said that his colleague, former Cowboy Deion Sanders, told him that he has played pick-up basketball with Romo and remarked that he is “the most athletic quarterback he’s ever been around.” We’re talking about a guy (Tony) that just barely missed qualifying for the 2005 U.S Open golf tournament. To think that a stellar athlete with that kind of acute hand-eye coordination mishandled a snap for a lay-up field goal and, then, couldn’t make it to the goal line in a dead sprint, 10 yards out. My stomach turns just typing it. Not that I had to, seeing as how it’s burned into my memory, but I watched the video clip on YouTube.com just to remind myself of what could’ve been. All of that to say that the ending to that game was a microcosm of my year in sports fandom of 2006.

Last year, as a fan of sports, was the equivalent of back-alley street-beating, where two guys held my arms while a third repeatedly pummeled me in the gut. It was that bad.

Let me recap.

Punch #1: The Dallas Stars started things off wonderfully. We opened the 2006 Play-offs, in Game 1 versus the Colorado Avalanche, by racing out to a 2-0 lead in the first 15 minutes only to watch it fade away into a 5-2 loss. They never recovered and, despite a Game 4 win, lost in 5; a quiet 1st-round exit. Whack!

Punch #2: My love for soccer blossomed in 2006—a high point. I took on a favorite team (Arsenal FC) in the English Premier League and watched them play solidly all the way into the UEFA Champions League Cup Final. This is the game that pretty-much determines the best club on the planet. If you win this, that means you went through all the other best clubs in the world (or other squads that beat other best clubs in the world). Arsenal played Barcelona, THEE best club in the world. They’ve got two of the best three players playing today (Ronaldinho and Eto’o). Well, as Sturminator loves to say, Arsenal wet the bed. Their goalkeeper got a red card early and the team could not overcome it. They lose 2-1. Wham!

Punch #3: The Mavericks fight hard all the way through the Play-offs. They best their personal giant, the San Antonio Spurs. They meet the Miami Heat in the Finals. Through 2 ½ games, it looks like Dallas is going to sweep and, then, for no real reason other than it was too easy, they start to lose. And they lose again. And they lose again. And, then, the Heat were in their heads and it was over. We lose in 6 games. Boom!

Punch #4: World Cup Final. I had been pulling for France the entire tournament. They started slow in Group stage but came on strong in the knock-out rounds. They beat the Goliath, Brazil. Then, they beat the young punks, Portugal. Everything’s looking good against Italy in the Final. And, then, my hero, one of the greatest players in modern soccer history, Zinedine Zidane head-butts Materrazi in the 110th minute and I could feel wind of the next sports punch headed towards my abdomen. Italy easily beats the French in the shoot-out. Game. Over. Bam!

Punch #5: Texas Rangers whimper out before heat breaks in the Fall. No surprise, here, but it’s really getting old, fellas. Thump! (a minor blow, really…)

Punch #6 The knock-out. Mostly, I covered this one in my opening paragraph. I’m not naive enough to think that the Cowboys were going all the way to the Super Bowl but I had higher hopes with Tony Romo running the offense. Unfortunately, I have to pin most of our plight on the Defense. It just wasn’t there in December and that’s probably the real reason that we collapsed. But, that botched place-kick hold seemed to have destiny written all over it. I’m just sayin’. Ka-boom!!

I was left bloodied and battered, pining for better times in 2007. It can’t be any worse than the last 12 months, can it?