It would be difficult to put 2022 in sports in context, even though that can likely be said about any calendar year. It’s perhaps best assumed that this year marked some return to normal for the sports world, with full arenas and the end of protocols for fans and athletes. Whether that mythology is true depends on your perspective, but from my own limited sports experience, in January I ran in a national master’s cross country meet in California two weeks after having Covid, and every runner had to take a Covid test on site the day before the race. I ran another national master’s cross country race this month, also in California, and there were no such concerns or protocols. That said, it was also near monsoon conditions and the entire race had to be altered because a massive tree collapsed mere feet from the starting line and miraculously didn’t kill anyone. So from my own incredibly limited experience, the end of this year was more normal than it’s beginning, but still quite turbulent.
Of course, as is always the case, this trajectory was by no means linear. And there was far more to 2022 sports than simply less Covid — or at least less concern thereof. 2022 brought an increased focus on international sport, with a Winter Olympics and a World Cup, both of which raised questions of human rights and what impact they have on the economics of global mega sport, if any at all. Despite all the coverage and outrage over Qatari labor practices leading to the Cup, our memories became quite short once the games began. There’s been similar inconsistency around sport and Russia, although it is a more complex situation. While Russian athletes were allowed at the Winter Games and the US Open, their country’s moniker wasn’t. And when individual Russian athletes were banned from Wimbledon and the World Cup, it was hard to know if that was more political posture than fair practice. More to the point, 2022 reminded us that sport and the political world outside of it are as interwoven as ever.
2022 was also a reminder that time does move on, even if athletes sometimes don’t. Two of the greatest American athletes of all time did call it quits – Tom Brady and Serena Williams – yet only one stuck to their word. The other did hedge her bets lest the spirit move her. Both of them played far beyond even the most optimistic expectations, pushing the boundaries of accepted science. Perhaps 2022 has further revealed a new normal of the longevity of professional athletes, an opportunity increasingly considered by those even in the most demanding of sports, like the NBA, where a 37-year-old LeBron James talks openly about playing with his son who’s still a senior in high school.
2022 could be best known as the beginning of the end of college sports as we’ve known it over the past 150 or so years, with the introduction of Name, Image, and Likeness deals that can bring riches to a growing share of primarily big time college football and men’s basketball players, but also stands to permanently change the balance of power from university to athlete, at least as permanent as anything for an organization that can only list conference affiliations in pencil. As much as 2022 could be about the economic boom in professional sports, where 300-million-dollar contracts are seen as insult, the shift with the amateurs is even more seismic – and should be the lasting fiscal memory of this calendar year.
There’s much, much more that happened inside and particularly outside the sporting lines in 2022. But maybe to best put time in perspective, American women’s basketball star Brittney Griner was detained by Russian authorities on February 17 for possession of marijuana, then on August 4 was convicted to nine years in a Russian jail for such offense. On December 8, she was released and sent back to the US after admittedly a tense and painful prisoner swap with Russia for one of the world’s more notorious international arms dealers. That not-insignificant detail aside, this is perhaps the saga that best sums up 2022 in sports, and maybe in general. A year of significant challenge, unfairness, despair, and in time, imperfect victory. And I suppose given the chaos and heartbreak of the past several years, we’ll take any win we can get.
Of course, we’ll all hope for easier run of it in 2023. And fewer downed trees at the starting line.
Keith Strudler is the director of the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University. You can follow him on twitter at @KeithStrudler
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