Written by: O

Every city or state dreams for the roll that the sports teams in the New England area are on. It does not matter the sport because if it is in New England, they are winning. Just think about the New England sports teams before this decade. The New England Patriots were a losing franchise and had never won a Super Bowl before. The Boston Red Sox were going on 80 years of pure frustration in not winning a World Series. The Boston Celtics were still upset that they did not get a chance to draft Tim Duncan in the lottery. Nothing much was going right in New England, but then came the year 2000.
First, there were the New England Patriots. They got it all started with the incredible 2001 season with the emergence of Tom Brady and the improbable run through the playoffs. After missing the playoffs in 2002, the Patriots then went on one of the greatest two-year runs in the NFL history in 2003 and 2004, winning the Super Bowl in both seasons. What is frightening is that there very easily could be two more Super Bowl championships for the Patriots. An incredible comeback be their biggest rivals this decade, Payton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts, kept them from the Super Bowl following the 2006 season and after going 18-0 in 2007, they lost to Eli Manning and the New York Giants in the Super Bowl. There is no question that the team of the decade in the NFL has been the New England Patriots.

Before 2000, all the Boston Red Sox fans wanted was to beat the vaulted New York Yankees. The Yankees were dominating major league baseball in every way and had even acquired Roger Clemens, one of the best Red Sox pitchers ever. In 2003, the Red Sox lost a fantastic 7-game series to the Yankees in the American League Championship Series off of an Aaron Boone home run in the 11th inning. Instead of falling apart, the Red Sox went right back to the American League Championship Series and faced the Yankees again. The Yankees took what looked to be a insurmountable 3-0 lead in the series, but with incredible performances by David Ortiz and Curt Schilling, the Red Sox became the first baseball team to ever win a series after being down 0-3. Winning the World Series was almost an aftermath as they swept the St. Louis Cardinals to win their first World Series since 1918. Instead of going 84 more seasons, the Red Sox just went 3 more seasons before they won their next World Series, which was another sweep, this time against the Colorado Rockies. As of now, the Red Sox are the team of the decade in baseball.
There is no way that the Boston Celtics are the best basketball team of the decade. In fact, it could be said that this was the worst decade of Celtic basketball until this past season. Before the 2008 season, the season appeared to be another disaster as the Celtics lost out on the NBA lottery, but it was actually a stroke of good luck. They traded their pick and a couple of other players for Ray Allen. Then they traded even more players for Kevin Garnett and suddenly, the Celtics were the team to beat in the 2008 season. They did not disappoint as they won 66 games, a 42-game improvement from the year before, the biggest in the history of the NBA. The Celtics made the NBA finals for the first time in 21 years and happened to face their major nemesis, the Los Angeles Lakers, but they were not going to be denied as the Celtics won their first title in 22 seasons.
The success of New England sports teams has not been limited to their pro teams. The Connecticut Huskie basketball program has been the most successful this decade. The men’s program won the national title in 2004, but they have been the second-best program on campus. The women’s program has won 4 national titles this decade, including 3 in a row from 2002-2004, the second women’s program in NCAA history to do so.
You can say many things, but this decade, when you look for titles, the New England area is the place to look for those titles.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 19th, 2008 at 5:26 am and is filed under Random Buzz. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.