The Year In Pro Sports: The End Of Disillusionment

Geoffrey Norman suggests giving the Athlete of the Year award to one of Michael Vick’s dogs: “Those dogs played for truly big stakes. If Peyton Manning had blown the Super Bowl, he would have been out a few commercials. The dogs got hanged. Or worse.”

As the Vick and Barry Bonds stories indicate, along with Tom Brady fathering a child out of wedlock, and all of the lesser crimes and misdemeanors of the players who make up the NFL, NBA and MLB, professional athletics in general ended 2007 looking awfully tawdry:

And that, in fact, might be the big sports story of 2007: the end, not of illusions, but of disillusionment. After all, in order to be disillusioned, you need illusions. The kid who pleaded,