Happy New Year to all of you! To get off-topic for a moment, if you guys didn’t watch the NHL Winter Classic outdoor game between the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Buffalo Sabres today, you missed out. It was a game where the elements added excitement and both teams were close all the way through, only for Pittsburgh to pull out a shootout victory at the last second.

2007 has been a difficult year for our country, with the wars continuing in Iran and Afghanistan, as well as war and terrorism raging in other nations around the world. The political process and politics in general has become more divisive than ever, as have conflicts between religion and atheism in our nation. The economy is weak, and this will most certainly have an effect on the job market in 2008. On a personal note, I have struggled with doubts when I have seen wicked individuals cause pain to others and profit by it, seemingly without consequence. In the sporting world, we’ve seen Michael Vick, Isaiah Thomas, Barry Bonds, and so many others dragged down by rumors, legal troubles, and their own bad behavior.

Why do I say all this? Because in 2007, I’ve become convinced of the power sports can have to allow us to transcend all of our daily problems and come together, at least for a little while. Whether I’m in the break room at my day job watching SportsCenter, or at my local watering hole watching a game, I can sit down and start chatting with whoever is there, and we’re immediately buddies. Race, political views, religion, none of that matters. Just a couple of friends chatting about sports. Sure, the soccer riots overseas and the relatively rare moments of bad fan behavior get more media attention, but far more people are drawn together in friendship that react with violence. And it’s not just fans of the same team. My younger brother is a Cleveland Browns fan (I don’t know what went wrong, we were raised in the same house), but I’ve enjoyed chatting about our respective teams with him this year, and I’ve grown closer to him at the same time. No matter how much you want to root for your team to win, I think most sports fans realize that it’s more fun when the other guys play you close and beat you every once in a while.

As far as on the field goes, sports can show us beautiful examples of how individuals from different backgrounds can come together and work as a team to achieve. There’s teams where the guys don’t necessarily like one another, but they’re working for a common goal, and when that works, what better lesson could there be for all of us? This year we’ve seen the Detroit Lions unite behind Jon Kitna, a veteran quarterback who’s experienced a Christian conversion over the last few years that has not only had an effect on him, but on his teammates as well, who achieved far more than anyone predicted they would at the start of the season. Some of Kitna’s teammates have said they don’t agree with his religious views, but his attitude and leadership has allowed them to get behind him, and helped him to unify a locker room that had been a contentious place before. In Pittsburgh, Steelers backup quarterback Charlie Batch has continued to do his charity work with schools and other local community organizations, and has shown us that he can be as unselfish and giving off the field, as he has been on the field. And these are just two examples, unfortunately athlete bad behavior gets far more press than good behavior, but there’s unsung heroes in every locker room in this country.

Certainly, some critics would tell us that sports are trivial, or worse than that, distract us from more important issues. I would beg to differ. In the world we live in and will have to deal with in the coming year, we need sports.

I don’t have a huge problem with Anthony Smith’s guarantee of a Pittsburgh Steelers victory over the New England Patriots, even with the Steelers loss. After the guarantee, his face was all over SportsCenter. If the Steelers would have won, we’d be calling Smith ‘Nostradamus’. But since they don’t win, the worst case scenario now for Smith is going back to the relative obscurity he dwelled in before the game. However, right now Smith is claiming he was misquoted. Absolutely unbelievable. If you’re gonna say it, then don’t back down, it just makes you look like a punk, and not the punk rocker kind.

In other Anthony-Smith-is-an-idiot news, I know you all saw Tom Brady uncharacteristically jawing at him after the first Patriots touchdown. But what you didn’t see on television was Smith screaming profanities at Brady while both were warming up. Smith admitted this to the media after the game, but I suppose by now he’s probably claiming he was misquoted on that as well. It’s possible that Brady did deserve a penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct for that, but get over it, like that would have made a difference anyway.

Speaking of getting over it, it’s time to face it: like it or not, the New England Patriots are by far the best team in the NFL this year. They’re so good that they’re probably going to be a legendary team spoken about the same way the ’75 Steelers, the ’72 Dolphins, and the ’85 Bears are. Ben Roethlisberger spoke with Tom Brady immediately after the game and was gracious enough to congratulate him on the season he’s having and tell him he’s enjoying watching him play. And Steeler fans, if Big Ben can do it, you should be able to do it as well. I’m not saying you have to be fans of the Patriots (I know I’m not), but without taking anything away from the Steelers, they’re simply not in the same class as the Patriots. Although the Steelers probably could have come up with a more effective game plan and benefited from some more aggressive play calls, I don’t think it would have made a difference in the outcome of the game. I think it might even be possible that the Steelers could have played to the best of their ability and avoided making any obvious mistakes and still lost. The biggest thing that makes this year’s Patriots team better than last years? Tom Brady demanded that ownership get him some better free agent wide receivers during this last off-season. The Rooneys should probably think about that, because the Steelers right now are a good football team that is not that far away from being either a great football team, or a bad football team. I fear that if Ben demanded ownership acquire some Pro Bowl-caliber wide receivers in the upcoming off-season, they’d only do it if the receivers’ salary came out of Ben’s salary.