Looking back at a strange sports year, we saw controversies, letdowns and said goodbye to heroes

As 2022 comes to a close, we are reminded that the sports world still is not entirely back to normal.

If it were, would the great Tom Brady have had the season he has had? He retired, unretired, announced he was getting a divorce and lost more games than he won by year’s end. He’s still the greatest NFL player ever, but 2022 brought nothing but mediocrity and trouble.

Or how about college football and men’s golf, both of which were dominated more by what was happening off the field and course than on it? In those two sports, letters became more important than numbers. You might not have recognized the letters when the year began. You know them now: NIL and LIV. 

We had another Olympics, the second in six months, which was unusual enough, held in Beijing in an ice-cold bubble in the midst of the global COVID omicron surge. Somehow, the International Olympic Committee pulled it off, helped considerably by the Chinese government’s draconian protocols.

But things didn’t go exactly as planned when the greatest skier in the world, Mikaela Shiffrin, couldn’t take home even one medal, while figure skaters from the United States and Japan won medals they never received during yet another Russian doping scandal, this one involving 15-year-old skating phenom Kamila Valieva. 

The biggest sports story of the year was equally unexpected. It played out not on a court or field, but in a jail cell in Russia. Thankfully, Brittney Griner is back now, freed in a prisoner exchange earlier this month, but for all but 10 weeks out of the year, the WNBA star and two-time Olympic gold medalist was held captive by the government of Russian president Vladimir Putin in the midst of his war with Ukraine.

Oh 2022, what a strange sports year you were. Not as bizarre as 2020 and 2021, but still pretty darn peculiar.

SPORTS STORY OF 2022: Brittney Griner biggest sports story of the year: 'She's really special'

That said, some results were just right. Lionel Messi finally won the World Cup at 35, leading Argentina over France in a final for the ages. Dusty Baker, 73, won his first World Series as a manager when his Houston Astros defeated the Philadelphia Phillies. Just a few weeks earlier, New York Yankee Aaron Judge electrified baseball when he hit his 62nd home run of the season, breaking Roger Maris’ 61-year-old American League record of 61.

In the NBA, the Golden State Warriors won their fourth NBA title in eight seasons, led by Steph Curry, who was named NBA Finals MVP for the first time. In college hoops, Dawn Staley added to her remarkable resume as a player and coach by winning her second NCAA title at South Carolina. Brooklyn Nets guard Kyrie Irving made news, too, for all the wrong reasons, dragging his sport into controversy after posting a link to an antisemitic film, then doubling down and refusing to apologize.

The NFL saw its share of good and bad. In his first season in Los Angeles, quarterback Matthew Stafford took the Rams to a Super Bowl victory. Other NFL headlines included the unending controversies of Washington owner Dan Snyder, the dreadful return of Deshaun Watson after settlements with nearly two dozen women who accused him of sexual harassment and sexual assault and the continuing saga of Aaron Rodgers, who said even stranger things than last year and, like Brady, lost more than he won.

The retirements of some very big names showed us just how much we want to hold onto our heroes. In August, Serena Williams said in a Vogue essay that she would be “evolving away from tennis.” She eventually lost in her final event, the U.S. Open, but not before making a stirring first-week run that made the impossible almost seem possible. Serena had company as she stepped aside; among the most notable to leave the stage were fellow tennis legend Roger Federer, Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski and five-time Olympic gold medalist Sue Bird of the WNBA.

The year also saw a memorable anniversary: Title IX, the law that opened the floodgates for women and girls to play sports, turned 50. How fitting that this would also be the year that the most famous women’s sports team in the world, the U.S. women’s national soccer team, would finally earn equal pay with the U.S. men’s national team under terms of a new agreement with U.S. Soccer. A few months later, a sweeping investigation revealed a culture of sexual misconduct and emotional abuse in the women’s game, terrible news that came to light only because of the courage of those female athletes to speak out.

That was the essence of this year in sports. It was both infuriating and enticing, drawing us into important national and international conversations at every turn, whether we liked it or not. Now that it’s almost over, will we miss it? The controversies? The moments? The memories?

Perhaps. Perhaps not. Either way, it’s time to start anew.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Tom Brady, Brittney Griner, Serena Williams: 2022 year in sports