End-Of-Year Awards -- Day One: Sports

Trying as hard as I can to ignore the fact that there's now a tremendously unstable country that actually has nuclear weapons, here is the first day of my awards. If you don't like them, deal with it! And let me know your choices in the comments.

• Sport of the Year:
• Runners-Up:
• Professional Football -- Dungy and Manning finally win one after an epic comeback against the Pats. The Patriots and Tom Brady torch every record in their quest for perfection. Adrian Peterson breaks onto the scene. Favre is back.
• College Basketball -- Durant and Oden bring their games into March. The power teams advance in the tourney, leading to some very good late games.
• Professional Basketball -- LeBron leads his team to the Finals behind an all-time performance. Duncan and Parker continue their excellence. The Celtics put together three superstars.
• Winner:
• Major-League Baseball -- A great pennant race. The emergence of new stars like Holliday, Fielder, and Sizemore. Popularity as high as ever, with the Mitchell Report a) adding to that and b) actually stealing the headlines during the football season.
• Disappointment of the Year:
• Runners-Up:
• New York Yankees -- The team struggled to the playoffs and then disrespected Joe Torre.
• Dallas Mavericks -- In position to finally win a title, the Mavs got smoked by the eighth-seeded Warriors in the first round.
• New York Mets -- Worst...Collapse...Ever.
  
• Winner:
• The Baseball Playoffs -- After the afore-mentioned great pennant race, losing teams won a total of four (!) games in the postseason, with three of those coming in the ALCS.
• Performance of the Year:
• Runners-Up:
• Alex Rodriguez's April -- .355 BA, 1.297 OPS, 14HR, 34 RBI, late-inning heroics galore.
• Tom Brady's Season -- Through 15 games? 117.2 QB rating, 48 TDs, 8 INTs, 15-0.
• Corey Brewer's NCAA Tournament -- The numbers don't bear out his impact. Every time the Gators needed a play, Brewer was there, on his way to winning Most Outstanding Player of the Tourney.
• Winner:
• LeBron's Game 5 -- James scored 48 in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Finals against Detroit. Watch this for highlights. It's only rivaled by the Reggie Miller-Spike Lee game in terms of things I've watched live.
• Team of the Year:
• Runners-Up:
• Indianapolis Colts -- Manning and Bob Sanders led the always-bridesmaids over the top.
• New England Patriots -- 15-0 at this point. Best regular season record ever.
• Colorado Rockies -- Baseball's Cinderella team.
• Winner:
• University of Florida Athletics -- The Gators won the football championship a few months before winning their second-straight basketball one.
• Game of the Year:
• Runners-Up:
• Tennessee vs. Ohio State, March 22 -- The back-and-forth. The Oden block.
• Padres vs. Rockies, October 1 -- In a pennant race that went 163, San Diego sent Trevor Hoffman to the mound with the lead in extra innings, but Matt Holliday scored the winning run on his controversial slide/bloody chin.
  
• Winner:
• Patriots vs. Ravens, December 3 -- Of course, I'm biased because I was there. But this game was the classic boxing match with Brady sneaking in the last jab to Gaffney to get the decision.
• Athlete of the Year:
• Runners-Up:
• Alex Rodriguez -- Became the first Yankee right-hander to hit 54+ HRs and the fourth overall (Maris, Ruth, Mantle).
• Tom Brady -- I said it before, he's been flat-out sick.
  
• Tiger Woods -- He'll always have a place on this list. Plus, he won the inaugural FedEx Cup.
  
• Winner:
• Peyton Manning -- He led the Colts to the title and got the monkey off his back. Why do I put him over Brady? Take a Marvin Harrison away from Brady and see if he still sets the records and wins as many games.