Get updated with a list of 2001’s top 10 sports stories

  Scott Schultz Scott guarantees a victory
by forfeit in tonight’s playoff game and wants to read your top 10
lists. E-mail him at [email protected].

Ah, the top 10 list! Savior of slacker sports columnists across
America. Readers love top 10 lists. It is a unique American
institution. There are certain facts that nobody questions: Eunuch
pop quintet *NSYNC is the worst band in the history of recorded
music (or at least in the CD era), George W. Bush and his brother
Jeb tampered with the presidential election and everybody loves top
10 lists.

My theory is people like to count to 10 because it reminds them
of their first, and in the cases of many English students like
myself, last successful math conquest. So here is your list, and
feel free to count along because I love you and I’m here to
please you. The following is what I consider to be the 10 most
notable sports stories of the first half of 2001, in no particular
order.

1. The NCAA championships won by the UCLA women’s
gymnastics and women’s water polo teams. In a year when it
seems that every women’s team at UCLA is bringing home a
Pac-10 or NCAA title, no championships were more exciting than
these two. The gymnastics team had to finish the meet by hitting
four straight beam routines with the national championship at
stake. The water polo team had to figure out a way to defeat
undefeated Stanford, which had delivered the Bruins their only four
losses in their four previous meetings.

Not only did both UCLA teams come through victorious, they both
won their championships on the runner-ups’ respective
campuses.

2. Minnesota Viking Pro-Bowl running back Robert Smith retires.
He is only 28 years old, healthy and was guaranteed to make a
fortune in the free-agent market after accumulating more than 1,800
yards of total offense last year. But Smith figured he had enough
money to live comfortably, and he wanted to ensure that he would
not be hobbled by injury in his later years.

Anyone who read the recent Sports Illustrated cover story
discussing the debilitating physical ailments that many former NFL
players endure would agree that Smith made the correct decision.
He’s going to attend medical school and hopes to begin a
second career in medicine.

When you consider that the NFL has been suffering public
relations humiliations as players are routinely accused and
convicted of an assortment of felonies, including domestic assault,
rape and murder, it’s surprising that the league hasn’t
applauded Smith’s decision. What’s depressing is that
the sports media, which will run countless stories on people like
Rae Carruth and Mark Chmura for months on end, won’t write
about Smith’s noble action again, except for perhaps a
halftime segment during the playoffs.

3. A-Rod gets 10-year, $252 million contract. A-Rod is an
awesome player and he probably is the best position player in
baseball. But guaranteeing any player $25 million dollars a year
for 10 years is irresponsible. Now other teams will be forced to
pay similarly gargantuan contracts for stars (and those who
consider themselves to be stars), ultimately costing the fans, who
will have to pay increased ticket prices and higher cable
bills.

What’s laughable is Texas Rangers owner Tom Hicks spent a
quarter-of-a-billion dollars on one player, while spending nothing
on pitching. The result is a pitching staff with an embarrassing
6.28 ERA. The Rangers are in last place, 17 games behind the
division-leading Seattle Mariners, A-Rod’s former team.

4. Rick Pitino becomes the new head coach at Louisville.
Arguably the best college men’s basketball coach of our
generation, he quit the Boston Celtics in January, leaving behind
$22 million in guaranteed money. He eventually signed with
Louisville, and his contract includes bonuses that can earn him
more money than what he would have earned had he stayed in
Boston.

Along the way, he caused more rifts between college coaches and
their athletic directors than the notorious summer league coach
Myron Piggie.

Some people would argue that the controversy surrounding UCLA
Athletic Director Pete Dalis’ infatuation with the
possibility of replacing beleaguered Head Coach Steve Lavin with
Pitino served to jumpstart the stagnant Bruins and carry them to
the Sweet Sixteen, saving the coach’s job again.

5. Jason Kapono and Dan Gadzuric announce they’ll return
to UCLA next season. This is so great for our program. We’re
going to have upperclassmen on our team. I hate the way college
basketball has come to resemble junior college basketball, where
teams are completely replaced every two years.

With Kapono and Gadzuric remaining in school, UCLA can
re-establish its basketball reputation as a team of
student-athletes, rather than a one- or two-year stopover for NBA
lottery picks to peddle their talents to the pro teams. Regardless
of how the team does next season I admire Kapono and
Gadzuric’s decision to stay.

6. I completed my first double-perimeter run around the campus
without stopping. That’s right, Big Scott completed the
Double-P! I said that this list was what I considered the 10 most
notable sports stories, and this is one of them to me. The double
perimeter is 8.4 miles, which is 8.2 miles more then I could run in
April.

7. Wang Zhi-Zhi becomes the first basketball player from China
to play in the NBA. Zhi-Zhi is over seven feet tall, and experts
predict he’s going to be a star for the Dallas Mavericks.
Shanghai’s Yao Ming is the guaranteed first pick in next
year’s NBA draft. Ming is 7-foot-6 and people have compared
his game to that of the legendary Bill Walton. If Ming and Zhi-Zhi
are as good as predicted and there are other players of their
caliber in China ready to join the league, then the NBA will open
up a huge new market that other sports couldn’t even dream of
reaching. And I’ll take a minor in Mandarin.

8. Jennifer Capriati wins the Australian Open. Capriati had been
the poster girl for not allowing teenagers to play professional
sports. She went from Olympic champion to teen rebel on the skids,
reaching a low point when her mugshot from a shoplifting arrest was
repeatedly shown nationwide by ghoulish media outlets.

Then she returned to WTA competition hoping to rekindle her
once-promising career. After two years of hard work and renewed
focus, she won her first Grand Slam title Down Under. Nothing beats
a great comeback story.

9. Journeyman Hasim Rahman becomes the new WBC/IBF Heavyweight
Champ. Lennox Lewis was filming a cameo in a Brad Pitt/Julia
Roberts movie while his hand-picked tomato can opponent Rahman
trained in South Africa where the fight was held. On the day of the
fight, Lewis was overweight and listless. Rahman flattened him.

Suddenly, former champion and convicted rapist Mike Tyson sees
his golden opportunity to win back his old belt without ever having
to beat Lewis. Too bad Rahman just signed a contract with
Tyson’s arch-nemesis Don King.

10. The Daily Bruin intramural softball team makes the C-league
playoffs. Who’d have predicted after losing our first game
15-1 in a contest stopped by the mercy rule we’d be in the
playoffs with a 2-2 record? What were the reasons for our
miraculous comeback performance? Grit, perseverance and perfect
attendance. We won two games by forfeit, when our opponents
couldn’t field a team.