2008: A Year In Review N'at

2008 was an interesting year in Pittsburgh sports.

We saw the Penguins make an amazing run to the Stanley Cup Finals, the Steelers reach the playoffs, Pitt basketball win a Big East Title, Pitt Football going 9-3 and making the Sun Bowl, Penn State going 11-1 and missing the National Championship by 1 point, and of course, the Pirates sucked.

Some highlights:

- The first day of 2008 was one of the greatest in Penguins history and NHL history, as we watched the Winter Classic. The outdoor, snowy hockey game featuring the Penguins and the Buffalo Sabres was nothing short of a classic itself, as SId The Kid, "With the game on his stick," would bury a shootout goal to give the Penguins a 2-1 win in cold Buffalo, in front of 70,000+ fans.

- Soon after we saw an AFC Wild Card Game against the Jacksonville Jaguars. After being down by 18 points, the Steelers rallied, taking the lead late in the game. But, due to two missed holding calls by the officials, David Garrard was able to scramble on 4th down to put the Jags in range for a field goal, which they made, winning the game.

- The Pitt Panthers finished their regular season with 9 losses. They entered the Big East tournament as the 7 seed out of 12 teams. Yet, they defeated the 10, 2, 6 and 1 seeds to win the Championship.

- 2008 also so the Steelers enter their regular season facing the hardest schedule known to date in NFL history. Yet, the Steelers went 12-4, while sporting the leagues #1 overall defense. For much of the year they were #1 across the board. They won games against the Ravens (twice), Jaguars, Redskins, Chargers, Patriots and Cowboys, all of whom are playoff teams this season or were playoff teams last season. They enter the playoffs with the #2 seed in the AFC.

- This Pirates season was special, wait, not it wasn't. The things to take away are the stingy Pirates management and the departure of Xavier Nady and Jason Bay. J-Bay went on to much better things, leading the Red Sox into the playoffs with some great play. The only real positive aspect about the season was that the Pirates won the season series against the Yankees, despite the ridiculousness of the Yankees salaries compared to the Pirates.

- The Penguins season continued on of course, leading to the Stanley Cup Finals, where they fell to the Detroit Red Wings in 6 games. Of course no one will forget game 5, with Detroit ready to celebrate, and Petr Sykora's game winning goal in triple overtime, after Max Talbot scored to send it there with less than a minute left in regulation. It was a monumental season, that won't be forgotten any time soon.

- The Penguins also said goodbye to Ryan Malone, Marian Hossa, Gary Roberts, Mark Recchi, Georges Laraque and others, while welcoming Ruslan Fedotenko, Miroslav Satan and others. The start to the new season has been rough, but the play of Evgeni Malkin has been promising, as he is on pace to record 130+ points, which hasn't been done since Mario Lemieux did it.

- Pitt football looked like they were going have another dreadful season when they fell to Bowling Green at Heinz Field in their first game. But the Panthers rallied, with some big wins at South Florida, at Notre Dame, against West Virginia as well as others. They went 9-3 and got invited to play in the Sun Bowl (today).


There were so many other great moments through the year, but I feel as if these were the best. Hopefully 2009 will be a little better. Maybe a Championship somewhere there, or two, but let's not get greedy... Good luck to the Burgh's sports teams in 2009.