Best of 2020: Top Sports Moments

Today I have my top five sports moments of the year.

Again, I could have gone cliché and picked the obvious choices. I mean, in early March all of the sports shut down. It was a wrap. No March Madness, the NBA season stopped, the MLB never really got started, the NHL stopped, pro soccer was postponed, golf, hell, even NASCAR had to stop for a while. Football, both professionally and at the collegiate level, had months to be prepared, yet they did nothing. They have had multiple postponements and cancellations. It has been a mess. These are the moments I will remember most from 2020, but I like these lists to be about good things, things that made me happy or excited as a sports fan. I don't want it to be all doom and gloom. We do enough of that on the podcast. And I was successfully able to get a top five list of pretty great sports moments of 2020. I will always look back at this year with a wince when it comes to sports, but the five things I picked will help put a smile on my face.

Coming in at number five I have the Chiefs winning the Super Bowl. They have the best QB in the game right now. They made a habit of getting down big in the playoffs last year, and mounting pretty amazing comebacks, and the Super Bowl was no exception. For three plus quarters the game was pretty boring, and it looked like the 49ers were going to win an ugly game. Then Patrick Mahomes and Deangelo Williams and Andy Reid woke up and mounted yet another double digit comeback effort. It was pretty cool to see Mahomes do the things he does regularly on the biggest stage. I loved seeing the 49ers flop, I have never been a fan, and I was stoked for Andy Reid to finally get that ring. I am not a Chiefs fan, but I have a good amount of friends who are, and as always, I was happy for them. The Chiefs are going to be a force to be reckoned with for a while now too. They are a great team, and it started this year with a Super Bowl win.

At number four I have Sarah Fuller being the first woman to kick for a division 1 power five conference football team. She made her debut kicking off against Mizzou. She then kicked an extra point in the very next game. This is a humongous deal. The fact that a woman got into a legitimate D-1 football game is a humongous first step, with many more to come, towards equality in sports. Women are just as good as men, sometimes even better. The fact that Vanderbilt realized this, put her in the game and let her play was awesome. I am in awe of what Fuller was able to do. Add on the fact that it was within such a masculine sport, more props to her. This is so cool. I am all about fair play and playing the person who is the best, no matter the gender or anything else. Fuller was clearly the best person they had to kick for them, so they let her do it and she succeeded. I hope she gets to do it again next season when it will be a little more like a "regular" season. But this was cool and a great step in equality in all D-1 sports.

The top 3 moments are all NBA. Just letting you all know.

At number three I have the new format of the All Star game. Having captains of teams is cool, the "draft" is fun, although it is more for show than anything else, and letting fans vote is still super important. But the addition of making it more competitive towards the end of the game, and giving the money to charity, that is the cherry on top. When this game got down to the final quarter, when it was all ramped up, this was like watching a playoff game. It was, for all intents and purposes, the greatest pickup game of basketball anyone could ever imagine, behind only the Dream Team scrimmages. Players bought in, super stars were fighting and struggling for every point, rebound and assist. Players were locking in defensively. It was so cool to see these guys go so hard in an all star game. Most all star games are a glorified scrimmage, but this was not when they got into the fourth quarter. I loved it, I was on the edge of my seat at the end. And I don't even care that it ended on free throw shots. Hell, if anything, when AD missed the first one, I was more nervous for him. I know there is no all star game this year, for many very good reasons. But when we get back to some kind of normalcy in the sports world, I hope the NBA keeps this new format, which I am sure they will.

At number two I have the NBA bubble. This was a massive, massive success from the NBA, and all the people involved. When they had to shut down the league on March 11th, I had no idea, as with everyone else I imagine, when or if they would come back, and how they would do it. When this bubble idea came up, I was intrigued, but had many questions. The NBA answered them all. Players and staff had daily tests, they couldn't leave their resort hotels, they could only hang out with the people on their teams, when teams got beat they had to leave immediately. Everything they did worked. They had zero positive tests in the three plus months they were there. I know it was a physical and mental strain on the players there, but the NBA proved they could get the season done, and do it without anyone getting COVID. And I bought that there were fans in the stands when I heard the pumped in crowd noise while watching from my home. The ratings may not have been as great as everyone was hoping, but I watched a ton of the games and all of the playoffs and I enjoyed every single second of it. I was so impressed that they pulled it off.

But the NBA did do one thing better than the bubble, coming in as my top sports moment of 2020, was the NBA players strike. Jacob Blake, an unarmed black man, was shot by a white police officer even though he did nothing wrong at all. This happens all too often in our society, and it needs to stop. To all those "All Lives Matter" dummies out there, all lives cannot matter until Black Lives Matter. That is what we all have been saying for so long now. The Blake shooting was the straw that broke the camel's back for the NBA players, especially the players for the Bucks. Blake is from Milwaukee, and plenty of Bucks players have been very vocal about police brutality and police officers aggressiveness towards African Americans. They decided, as a team, without telling any media members, that they were going to not play in their playoff game that night. This set it off. The Magic quickly followed suit. Then the Thunder and Rockets protested their game that night. Then the entire NBA decided they were protesting. The NHL followed suit. Some NASCAR drivers did the same. MLB players and teams decided they were going to join the protests. This made the whole world stop and look, but it was the NBA, and more importantly, the Milwaukee Bucks that started this movement. We are sick and tired of all the BS and brutality and actions of people in power. It is intensified when professional athletes, especially super stars, let everyone else know this. The fact that, along with the entire Bucks team, LeBron James and Anthony Davis, Kawhi Leonard and Paul George, Jamaal Murray, Donovan Mitchell and so many, many more old and young stars stood up for what they believed in, and did this protest was truly amazing. I love the NBA. I always have, and I always will. Seeing this, seeing all these teams and players band together and fight for what they believe in, this moved me in a way that sports never has before. I was so proud to be a fan of the NBA when they protested. It made me so happy and so glad and showed me that these guys are people too, and they are sick and tired of all the nonsense. I don't know that any other sports moment will live up to this one in my lifetime. I am very happy I got to see this as it happened, and I am forever grateful to everyone who used their platform to make this protest happen. This was a truly amazing, once in a lifetime moment.

That's it for sports. Come back tomorrow for my top 5 podcasts/podcast episodes of the year.

Ty

Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast.

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His Name is Jacob Blake

Another black man was shot, multiple times, by white police officers in Kenosha, Wisconsin a few days ago. His name is Jacob Blake, and as I write this, he is in a hospital on life support. Blake was simply walking into his car when the white officers opened fire on him. They shot him in the back seven times. This is madness.

This has to stop. The police need to be defunded. The police need most of their power stripped away from them. The powers that be need to stop normalizing this, and this needs to be addressed. This is a serious problem in our country. There is systemic racism that is being hyper perpetuated by white police officers. The "government" has shown zero progress in making changes, in showing sympathy and trying to understand why this is happening more and more lately. The "government" and the "president" are racists, fascists and they don't care about people that aren't directly involved with them. It's disturbing that this continues to happen and that there is no end in sight. We need to make changes. We need people that actually care and we need people that will do their best to end this.

I also saw a story that some NBA players are contemplating a boycott to the start of the playoffs until something, anything, happens to the white police officers that are constantly gunning down unarmed and innocent black people. They, along with a good portion of the rest of the country, want these murderers, these monsters to be reprimanded and dealt with like the horrible people they are. I agree with the players who are thinking about doing this. They are seeing this all too often, they are young black men, mostly, that have children. They look at other people who have been brutally murdered, George Floyd, Tamir Rice, Philando Castille, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and now possibly Jacob Blake, and they are thinking, enough is enough. They are also trying to send a real message. I have talked about how well the NBA restart has gone, and how it is amazing that the players are using their media availability to talk about systemic racism and what they think needs to change. Chris Paul, after OKC had a great comeback win, was doing his on court after the game interview, and all he talked about was Blake and trying to implore people to go out and vote. That is amazing. Paul George, LeBron James and many others have talked endlessly about Breonna Taylor. Donovan Mitchell hopped on Twitter and gave an impassioned tweet about all the awfulness. And last night after the Clippers win, Doc Rivers gave one of the most moving speeches I have ever heard from anyone anywhere ever in my life. It was incredible. But still, black people are being killed for no reason by white police officers. This is still happening. And when I read some of the comments under the article about a possible boycott, it made me sick to my stomach how awful and rude and ignorant and mean and stupid and spiteful and hateful random idiots on the internet can get. It is truly a disgusting place, the comment section on any website. This stuff that was being written by some of the biggest monsters in the world, who hide behind screen names by the way, is truly horrifying.

Enough is enough. Changes need to happen. And if a boycott to an NBA playoff game, or series, is the catalyst, I say great. We need to wake up and stop the systemic racism in this country. We need better people in positions of power and we need to heal as a country and stop killing innocent black people. This is too much, and I fear it will only get worse. BLACK LIVES MATTER. 

Ed note: Since this was written, the NBA has announced that all games are being postponed on Wednesday.

Ty

Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast.

Come and support Ty and the podcast on Patreon.

Follow Ty on instagram and twitter.

SeedSing is funded by a group of awesome people. Join them by donating to SeedSing.