2025 was a year of dramatics. The World Series and NBA Finals both went to seven games, while the Masters went to a playoff. Nico Harrison traded Luka Doncic in the middle of the night, Lane Kiffin left Ole Miss for LSU in the most controversial way imaginable, and the Chiefs dynasty officially bit the dust. Along the way, this year delivered incredible performances—from Shohei Ohtani to A’ja Wilson to Joey Chestnut and so many more—that remind us why we love sports.
Before the calendar flips to 2026, The Ringer is looking back at the most iconic sports moments of the past 12 months. Here, in no particular order, are the 52 that stood out.
Rory. Masters. Scenes.
Andrew Gruttadaro: There are rare times when sports feel less like an athletic competition and more like a trip through the seven circles of hell. Either you get trapped down there, or you escape and finally find heaven.
For more than a decade, Rory McIlroy was trapped. Having picked off a U.S. Open, an Open Championship, and multiple PGA Championships by the age of 25, the man from Northern Ireland went into the 2015 season needing only a green jacket to complete the career grand slam, a feat reserved solely for golf’s legends. And then 10 years went by, each spring marked by McIlroy trying to find new ways to answer the question “What would winning the Masters mean to you?”
Hype was in a swell heading into the 2025 Masters: Rory had won the Pebble Beach Pro-Am and the Players Championship, and, having escaped a different kind of hell by abdicating his position as the PGA’s resident anti-LIV spokesperson, his focus seemed sharper. But one does not simply shake the devil off one’s back. An opening-round 4-under disappeared in a matter of two holes as McIlroy doubled the 15th and 17th. Classic Rory. What came next was less typical: a 6-under battle-back round on Friday, followed by a birdie-eagle-birdie start to his third round, perhaps the most sublime stretch of McIlroy’s entire career. By Saturday night, McIlroy was on top of the leaderboard, fittingly set to tee off on Sunday alongside Bryson DeChambeau, the man who’d reduced him to a knee-knocking puddle a year prior at the 2024 US Open.
But one does not simply shake the devil off one’s back. That final round was an emotional roller coaster unlike any I’d ever experienced, in any sport. Immediately, McIlroy gave away his two-stroke lead by double-bogeying the first hole. Classic Rory. He then went on to hit golf shots that Jesus Christ himself could not pull off: a thwack through the trees to save the sixth hole and a filthy, towering draw into the sky on 7. Sitting less than 90 yards from the green on the 13th hole, he was four shots clear of second place—and then he hit the doofiest, duffiest, grossest wedge in the history of the Masters, dumping it into Rae’s Creek and double-bogeying a par 5 that no one ever double-bogeys. Classic Rory. It was over. He choked it away again. Or? Try this one on for size, Jesus Christ: a 209-yard 7-iron to 7 feet, leaving himself an eagle putt on 15, the hole he’d botched three days prior. He missed the putt, obviously. And obviously, after birdieing the 17th to take a one-stroke lead over Justin Rose, he then put his approach on the 72nd hole in the bunker and missed a championship putt for par. One does not simply escape hell—this was going to a playoff.
You’ve probably seen what happened next. Justin Rose put it close; Rory put it closer. Rosie missed his birdie putt; Rory made his. And then the collapse onto his hands and knees. The putter flying over McIlroy’s shoulder into unknown realms. His body trembling as tears flowed and the weight of a decade left his soul. He finally did it. And looking back on it eight months later, it’s clear that he did it the only way he could have: by getting knocked to the ground over and over again, by getting back up each time, until finally, he found heaven.
Tyrese Haliburton Hits the Choke Sign at MSG
Michael Pina: I love unreasonably gripping sporting events that force every viewer to remember every innocuous detail until the day they die. That’s exactly what this was for me: a seemingly impossible, legacy-raising shot by Tyrese Haliburton that wrapped nostalgia, physics, and theater into one buzzer-beating (and dramatically long) 2-pointer that forced overtime in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals.
This sequence was cinema. The setting was fate. The history was almost too convenient. Reggie Miller—Pacers legend and intensely loathed Knicks antagonist—just happened to be on the sideline in Madison Square Garden calling the game for TNT as his former team clawed its way back from an ostensibly insurmountable fourth-quarter deficit. Haliburton’s magic was preceded by an epic comeback that saw Aaron Nesmith transform into a stream of lava during the fourth quarter. It was followed by confusion, hysteria, and—because Haliburton, upon review, didn’t quite get his toe behind the 3-point line—an overtime period in which the Knicks coughed up yet another lead.
I was there, seated on press row until sometime around Nesmith’s third or fourth 3, when I puttered over to the elevator that would take me and a few other reporters down to MSG’s media room so that we could all get ready for press conferences and locker room access. I’ll never forget watching Haliburton scamper up the court with seven seconds left and his team down two. Alongside several other writers, I stared at a TV screen as the actual action unfolded not even 100 yards away. Thanks to the five-second delay, I could almost feel the crowd deflate before my eyes processed the ball going in. So much emotion teetered inside that blip of time.
And then Haliburton wrapped his hands around his own neck. It was comedy. It was excruciating. It was surreal. It was literal déjà vu. It was, for everyone there and millions watching at home, the type of memory that won’t ever leave your brain.
Miguel Rojas Saves the Dodgers, Twice
John Jastremski: The unlikely playoff baseball legend is one of the game’s most storied traditions.
Jim Leyritz for the 1996 Yankees. Travis Ishikawa for the 2014 Giants. Howie Kendrick for the 2019 Nationals. These names may not ring a bell outside their teams’ respective cities, but they will always receive a hero’s welcome. Their legacies were forged by moments of brilliance when it mattered most. They rose to the postseason occasion and then some.
Welcome to the club, Miguel Rojas. Times two!
Rojas entered the playoffs with 57 home runs over a 12-year big league career. That comes over 4,159 plate appearances, meaning that Rojas averages one home run every 73 times he steps to the dish. He is the last player you’d expect to hit a game-tying homer on a team that features Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, and Freddie Freeman.
And yet. In Game 7, with the Dodgers trailing 4-3 and with one out in the top of the ninth, Rojas worked Blue Jays closer Jeff Hoffman into a full count. Hoffman hung one. Rojas deposited it into the left-field stands. Tie ball game, and easily one of the biggest holy shit moments of the past decade.
He wasn't done with his ninth-inning heroics. If you weren't impressed by a World Series–saving homer, how about a World Series–saving defensive play?
Bases loaded, game on the line, runners in motion. Rojas was as cool as a cucumber. He fielded the ground ball hit by Daulton Varsho and fired it home to beat Isiah Kiner-Falefa by a millisecond. The game went to extras, and the Dodgers won 5-4.
The Dodgers were at death’s door. Rojas slammed the door shut. And instead of watching its dynasty crumble north of the border, the richest team that money can buy won 5-4, becoming MLB’s first repeat champion since the late-’90s Yankees.
As a New Yorker who grew up with that Yankees dynasty, I have watched way too much baseball in my life. Game 7 of this World Series was the greatest baseball game I've ever seen. Rojas’s sequence is the greatest inning by a player I’ve ever seen.
He doesn't have to worry about buying a drink in Los Angeles ever again.
Down Goes Kiké, as Andy Pages Saves the Dodgers Again
Craig Gaines: Now that the story is complete, we know that there are four main characters in the play that saved the Dodgers’ season and sent them to their starry extra-innings fate in Game 7 of the 2025 World Series: Yoshinobu Yamamoto, the pitcher; Ernie Clement, the hitter; Enrique Hernandez, the left fielder; and Andy Pages, in center. But until the very last scene of this five-second epic that was one fly ball, there had been only three. Let’s revisit this masterpiece frame by frame for a deeper appreciation of its utterly shocking ending.
The moment the screen cuts away from home plate and flashes to left field, the viewer’s eye first alights on a massive expanse of green. In this millisecond, we don’t know where Clement’s fly ball is, but we do see that Kiké is coming from very shallow left, and we don’t really register Pages at all.
A beat later, the camera has tightened in on left field, and Hernandez is the focal point.
The camera homes in even tighter on Kiké, and now every viewer is laser focused on him. Possibly a basket-catching Willie Mays flickers into view for a moment, but Hernandez, and only Hernandez, inhabits this world.
Despair. Doom. His back is fully to us, and he is in a dead sprint. We are still locked in on Kiké, but in our mind’s eye we are already seeing the bobbled or missed ball, hearing the Rogers Centre crowd erupt in ecstasy.
Wait, who the hell is this popping into view? Pages has been tracking this ball, too? He’s been in the outfield? He’s been in the game? Other players exist??
We are now in the nirvana of the unknown. Hernandez gives way to Pages. Chests tighten and fists clench. Destiny unfolds, ushered into existence by a visual aberration.
The aberration is now the centerpiece! And it caught the damn ball! Can something be dreamlike and travel at warp speed all at once? Yes, and it just happened. I yelled so loud that I was hoarse for a week afterward.
This play was, of course, just one impossibility in a string of impossibilities that formed not only this game but also the entire series. (It came right after Miguel Rojas’s janky thriller of a throw home for the second out in that inning, a play that deserves its own annotated remembrance.) But while the Dodgers homers that bookended this inning created the kinds of majestic images that have been familiar to fans for generations, the Pages catch belongs in a genre all its own.
The Luka Trade Changes Everything
Jomi Adeniran: After an impressive prime-time win against the New York Knicks on February 1, Lakers fans across the world were on cloud nine. L.A. had shown its resolve against a very good Knicks team—without Anthony Davis in the middle, the Lakers had nonetheless played stellar defense and cemented themselves as serious contenders in the West. The night couldn’t get any better.
Or so they thought.
Twelve minutes after midnight on the East Coast, Shams dropped one of the most seismic NBA-transaction tweets of all time. And I’m not going to name any names, but some people didn’t believe it.
Oh, ye of little faith. The tweet was indeed real. Luka Doncic became a Los Angeles Laker, and the collective basketball world lost its mind. L.A. fans freaked out on livestreams. Mavs fans held a fake funeral outside American Airlines Center. Fans of every other NBA team questioned their reality. Even Luka himself entered into a state of shock immediately upon hearing the news.
The mastermind behind the trade—Mavericks general manager Nico Harrison—stressed that it was the right move to make, citing the mantra “defense wins championships” to the media over and over again. Reports came out that folks in Dallas’s front office weren’t happy with Luka’s fitness levels and believed that he would never truly live up to his max salary.
Fast-forward to today, and not only is Luka in incredible shape, but the Lakers also offered him a max deal the second they were able to. Luka signed it immediately and has been balling for L.A. all season long. As for Nico, well …
The Mavericks Break Basketball, Again
Howard Beck: If you’re a fan who takes a faith-based approach to basketball—if you believe in the ineffable, righteous wisdom of the basketball gods—then the NBA’s draft lottery last May was an unsettling event.
At stake was the chance to draft a generational talent, Cooper Flagg. At the top of the board were three beleaguered teams—Charlotte, Washington, and Utah—each with a 14 percent chance of winning the top slot. To the extent that any bad team is “deserving” of anything, all seemed worthy of the honor.
And then the ping-pong balls conspired to produce the, er … strangest? wackiest? funniest? … possible outcome: The Dallas Mavericks—the team with the 11th-best odds (1.8 percent), the team that shockingly and foolishly traded away a generational star in February—leaped into the no. 1 slot. And for the second time in three months, the Mavericks broke the internet—and our brains.
To steal a line from Depeche Mode: I think the basketball gods have a sick sense of humor.
A month later, the Mavericks drafted Flagg, prompting a rhetorical victory lap from general manager and team president Nico Harrison, who drew a direct line from his (inexplicable) decision to trade superstar Luka Doncic to his lottery windfall. “Fortune favors the bold,” Harrison said, before adding, in a burst of unearned audacity, “I think the fans can finally start to see the vision.”
For the devout Dallas fan, none of these moments merit a place on an end-of-year highlight list. Landing Flagg was only a modest salve for the loss of their beloved Luka—a wound made more painful by the wild success Doncic is having with the Los Angeles Lakers and the corresponding collapse of the Mavs this season. But collectively, and as sheer spectacle, the Mavs’ bizarro year is irresistible.
On the court, things remain bleak. Flagg shows flashes of brilliance, interspersed with predictable rookie struggles. The Mavs are miserable and possibly headed back to the lottery. But the faithful got at least one moment of satisfaction in November. After months of protests, boos, and booming “Fire Nico” chants, fans at last got their wish when owner Patrick Dumont terminated Harrison.
It was a rare instance of fan empowerment forcing real change. Or perhaps it was a sign of divine intervention—a small dose of justice handed down by the basketball gods.
Saquon Delivers the Helmet Slap Heard Round the World
Diante Lee: What I’ll remember most about Saquon Barkley’s 78-yard run in the NFL’s divisional round (and his historic 2024 campaign writ large) is how inevitable he seemed—often in spite of his opponent’s, and his own team’s, best efforts.
His run against the Rams wasn’t just the necessary score to win the game; it was also emblematic of his entire season. Barkley led the way for an Eagles offense that didn’t know how to generate explosive plays without him, and Los Angeles sold out to stop him after Barkley’s game-warping impact led Philly to victory in their regular-season matchup a couple months prior.
But whether the Rams loaded up the box, blitzed, or slanted to slow him down, it didn’t matter. Barkley wanted to end the game, and that’s exactly what he did—just like he had done against the Commanders, Ravens, and Saints on the way to 20 scores and 2,387 yards from scrimmage on the campaign.
In thick snow, and after more than 400 grueling touches on the season, Barkley was still the fastest, strongest, and most determined athlete on the field—and probably in all of football. As soon as he cut to his left and kicked into top gear, everyone knew he was gone. And he finished off the run with a wind sprint across the end zone—a reminder (or warning) that he had more than enough energy to do it again.
A’ja Wilson Calls Game
Seerat Sohi: A’ja Wilson has four MVPs, three Defensive Player of the Year awards, and three titles; plus, she’s on pace to break the WNBA’s all-time scoring record, held by Diana Taurasi. Her accolades and ability are so clearly a cut above the rest that she robs the “greatest player in the world” discussion of all suspense. She’s chasing only history, and a hallowed portion of it, at that.
All of which contradicts what I’m about to say next: Wilson needed that Finals game-winner.
Wilson, oft compared to Tim Duncan, has always been more practical than stylish. The steady dominance of her signature shot, a dynamite midrange jumper, is better understood in the context of a game (Wilson takes … and makes … another one, we say, throwing our hands up) than a highlight reel.
This is how Wilson put it, in her Time Athlete of the Year profile: “When you think about a lot of GOATs, they have those career-defining shots that solidify you as the best. I didn’t really have one of those. I had championships, yeah. But it was never really like a moment of like, ‘whoooooooo. That’s why she is who she is. She’s exactly who she thinks she is.’”
Wilson, who has always been a staunch advocate for herself—and to be clear, her accolades have earned her the right to be matter-of-fact about her greatness—understands the power of an image. In women’s sports, where talent and notoriety can sometimes have a loose relationship, it’s fair to wonder whether the winter of A’ja, when she hobknobbed with the likes of Jennifer Hudson, Sean Evans, and Jimmy Fallon and graced the cover of Time—would have happened if not for that shot.
The moment, immortalized by photographer Stephen Gosling, is now the first thing you think of when you think about Wilson: the ball at the apex of her perfect shooting form, her frame airy and balanced mid-rotation—a portrait of grace, precision, and expertise—and the faces of the Mercury fans, some terrified and some simply resigned to the inevitability of her game.
Shohei Ohtani Achieves Peak Baseball
Ben Lindbergh: Shohei Ohtani’s regular-season exploits in 2025 earned him his fourth MVP award. But now that he’s left “Los Angeles” for Los Angeles (and regained a fully operational right elbow), Ohtani’s excellence through September is a prelude to spectacular playoff feats. By one measure, Ohtani’s near-perfect play in World Series Game 3—4-for-4, with two doubles and five walks (four of them intentional) and only a caught stealing to mar the beautiful box score—was the greatest offensive performance in postseason history. But it wasn’t the greatest postseason performance, period, because Ohtani himself had recently set the bar too high to be cleared by bat alone. Ten days earlier, in the NLCS Game 4, Ohtani had gone 3-for-3 with three homers and a walk, and he’d pitched six scoreless innings, allowing only two hits and striking out 10, as the Dodgers sealed their sweep of the Brewers.
Ohtani’s NLCS-clinching (and NLCS MVP–clinching) effort was two great games in one, and unlike his nine times on base in World Series Game 3, it didn’t take twice as many innings as a regulation-length contest. It couldn’t, because Milwaukee withered and went quietly in the face of Ohtani’s two-way attack. The stakes of an NLCS-ending game (with a 3-0 series lead) can’t compare to those of the World Series, which produced plenty of non-Ohtani highlights, too. (Yoshinobu Yamamoto deserves his own entry on this list.) But Shohei’s three-homer, 10-strikeout sensation was arguably the greatest individual game of all time. And if we had to stick a single contest in a time capsule to sum up peak Ohtani, NLCS Game 4—not World Series Game 3, or the 2024 50-50 game, or the 2023 World Baseball Classic—would be the one. Unless (or until) he tops that, too.
George Springer Achieves Toronto Immortality
Adam Nayman: As I was scanning my ticket for Neko Case’s sold-out show at Massey Hall in Toronto on October 20, the usher declared that this would be a “no phones” performance. The edict came straight from the headliner, who has long been an advocate of simply raw-dogging concerts; the problem was that the show was up against Game 7 of the ALCS. The prospect of going two and a half hours without so much as a Blue Jays score update seemed unthinkable. I thought of Josh Hartnett in Trap (a movie shot in Toronto, by the way) surreptitiously holding his device at belt level during Lady Raven’s set. No less than the fate of the poor guy trapped in the Butcher’s basement, the outcome of Jays-Mariners was a matter of life and death.
My wife, Tanya, and I have seen Neko in concert many times before, and I’m not sure her voice—that laser-guided precision instrument—has ever sounded better than it did that night. More importantly, she was a good sport about the game, acknowledging the matter of our collective preoccupation and telling a couple of stories about living in Seattle and becoming radicalized against the Mariners by the team’s stadium construction plans. (“Fuck Ken Griffey Jr.” may have been uttered.)
During the break between the end of the set and the encore, I managed to pull up a score on my (screen-dimmed) iPhone: Seattle 3, Toronto 1 in the sixth. Suboptimal. Neko finished up with “Hold On, Hold On” and “At Last” and signed off by shouting “slaughter the fucking Mariners” to thunderous applause. As we walked out onto Shuter Street, the crowd—concert attendees and passers-by—all seemed frozen over their phones for some reason; then screams of joy and jostling as strangers crowded around screens together to watch the instant replay. Three-run home run, George Springer. Jays up 4-3. Hold on, hold on, I thought. We managed to hail a cab and listened to the eighth and ninth innings on the way home. My wife made it inside for the final out. I decided to stay in the cab and hear strike three on the radio. The Jays were in the World Series for the first time since I was 12 years old. At last.
The Lane Kiffin Saga Takes Over College Football
Tyler Parker: No one leaves like Lane Kiffin. That is not to say he is good at it, only that his particular brand of bailing is a kind of sui generis bullshit. Because, to be clear, Kiffin is terrible at leaving. One of the worst of all time, really. This is weird, because he’s done it a lot.
Traditionally, experience leads to growth. If you do something enough times, you’re supposed to get better. But Lane laughs in the face of logic. Kiffin somehow handled his exit from Ole Miss worse than his infamous departure from Tennessee. He is a magnet for messiness and a sucker for the dramatic. He’s drunk off the drama and ever thirsty for more.
It could have been so simple. I’ve loved my time in Oxford, but feel we’ve reached the ceiling of what we can accomplish here. I’m so grateful and proud of what we’ve done together, but I think I have a better chance to win a national title at LSU. Something in that vicinity would’ve been much less grating than the waffling attention drip that Kiffin engaged in during his last few weeks in Mississippi. No move symbolized the worst of modern college football coaching better than the entire Kiffin-to-LSU ordeal, a paean to havoc, hot yoga, and spinelessness.
Kiffin would like people to focus on the way he took Ole Miss football from the basement to the playoff, how he presided over the best six-year run in the history of the program. Those things are true, but why pay attention to them when in the end he revealed that he is what he’s always been: an opportunistic doof who can’t stay out of his own way. He’s a great recruiter, a stellar offensive mind, and a man who refuses to learn from his mistakes. Some of his former Ole Miss players accused him of lying in his farewell statement and, look—we are who we are. Man cannot escape his nature.
He will probably win a championship at LSU within the next five years. That won’t change his legacy, though. Will Kiffin coach at LSU for the rest of his career? Will he retire as a Tiger? If no is the answer to both questions, do you really think things won’t end disastrously in Death Valley too? This is the worst breaker-upper of all time. When he was asked why he left Ole Miss, he explained it was because he listened to Pete Carroll, the ghost of his father, and God. As Kiffin told ESPN’s Marty Smith before taking off for Baton Rouge, “I talked to God and he told me it’s time to take a new step.”
If you, like me, just rolled your eyes so hard they flew out of your head, welcome to the dark. But, hey, rest easy, Ole Miss. God made him do it.
The Bill Belichick Season From Hell Begins
Joel Anderson: In the hours before Bill Belichick’s first game coaching North Carolina, the jittery excitement in Chapel Hill was palpable. A throng of fans crowded into the bars and restaurants along Franklin Street. Polk Place was covered in a blanket of Carolina blue, and fans tailgated from the bell tower to Kenan Stadium. There was even a pregame concert on campus headlined by country music star—and UNC alum—Chase Rice. And to really set the celebratory mood, UNC hosted a stunning light show featuring LED wristbands.
It was a hero’s welcome for one of the greatest coaches in football history, even a preemptive moment of catharsis for a program hoping that Belichick’s championship pedigree would finally awaken a sleeping powerhouse.
Then there was the kickoff.
The Tar Heels marched 83 yards in seven plays, with Caleb Hood spinning into the end zone to close out a touchdown drive. Michael Jordan and Roy Williams stood and cheered in approval. Belichick’s tabloid-friendly girlfriend, Jordon Hudson, smiled affirmatively.
And that was pretty much it in terms of good times during this first miserable season for Belichick and North Carolina. TCU scored a touchdown on the next possession, part of a run of 41 consecutive points in a 48-14 Horned Frogs win that spoiled Belichick’s debut and set the terms for his massively disappointing 2025 campaign. “We wanted this game to be about us, and it was,” TCU coach Sonny Dykes said. “I think we all felt a little disrespected.”
But afterward, the story remained about Belichick and his major letdown. “Awful,” said ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith. “North Carolina got sold a Bill of goods,” said The Charlotte Observer’s Luke DeCock. “Can TCU win by more points than Belichick’s age gap with his girlfriend?” cracked former NFL quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick.
It was, appropriately enough, the start of a season that quickly turned into a punch line.
Brad Marchand, Lord of the Rats
Katie Baker: He’s pro hockey’s GOAT troll, le pest suprême, the Little Ball of Hate, a for-sure future Hall of Famer. There are a lot of skilled hockey players out there who specialize in having punchable faces, but no one else in the NHL has simultaneously been as needling and productive as 37-year-old Brad Marchand. Ever since he won the Stanley Cup in his first full season with the Boston Bruins in 2011 at age 23, Marchand has socked, licked, smirked, chirped, and (perhaps most annoyingly) scored his way to more than 1,000 career points. And that’s not even including all the big-deal playoff goals he contributed earlier this year when—a few months after being traded from the only place he’d ever played—he helped lead the Florida Panthers to his and their second Stanley Cup.
Marchand tallied 10 goals, 10 assists, and 20 points through 22 games of the 2025 postseason. He scored six goals in the Cup final alone, the most by any player in the final since 1988. (Among them was the Game 2 winner in double overtime.) Long a proud weasel in Boston, Marchand embraced his new role in Florida—and his new franchise’s lore—to reign as an actual Lord of the Rats. And once he won the title and hit the town, you might have sworn the guy was 23 again. There were no misspelled "champians" tattoos this time (that we know of), but there were a lot of “scoreboard!” Instagrams, a (comped) half-a-million-buck tab, and beaucoup beer and Blizzards. It was all enough fun that he signed a contract extension with the Panthers rather than let the party end.
"Man, that guy’s good-looking," Marchand quipped this summer when asked what his younger self would think of him now. In 34 games this season, he’s put up 40 points; he was recently spotted sidling up to an opposing timeout huddle to check out their plays. In this holiday season of The Nutcracker, Marchand is a certified ballbuster. And in his version of the story, it’s good to be the Rat King.
Kawhi Leonard, Lord of the … Trees?
Lex Pryor: We are all piggies, and this is our slop. Do not believe my colleagues. The Miguel Rojas home run was not their favorite sports moment. Neither was Lane Kiffin’s tarmac interview. We are not concluding the year of Carlos Alcaraz’s delts, the year of Jordon Hudson’s field passes, or the year of Paige Bueckers’s hardwood pyrotechnics.
Their screen time proves it. Their search histories crystallize it. The defining sports moment of 2025 was, rather, when the board man got caught. His magnetism had long been renowned, his melodic little chuckle known far and wide (along with his rumored passion for fiber). In September, thanks to Pablo Torre, the public witnessed the saplings in his closet: a no-show job—potentially linked to salary cap circumvention—with the now-bankrupt eco-friendly bank Aspiration.
The gift that kept on giving this sports year was a scandal so knotty, layered, stupid, and garish that it quite literally wouldn’t go away. A maybe-conspiracy that made “Uncle Dennis” a household name, prompted Adam Silver to start delivering press conferences in legalese, and led the erstwhile arborist at the center of it all to opine about “clickbait analysts or journalism.” And unlike any of the other bluster before or after this entry, the top sports story of 2025 appears ready to bleed into 2026.
The Playoff Game That Lasted Forever
Danny Kelly: As a Mariners fan, I’d like to start out just by saying this: Playoff baseball, I owe you an apology. I wasn’t really familiar with your game.
I mean, I understood, at least on an academic level, that the MLB playoffs are awesome. The games are tense and dramatic and nerve-racking and iconic and fun. But the last time I got to watch my team live, at home, in a playoff game, was 2001. That was three years before The Facebook became a thing and four years before they dropped the “The.” Back then, you had to call your friend’s house and ask their parents whether they were home. When you were meeting up with people, you had to, like, go find them at a spot where you said you’d meet them. And the Mariners didn’t even win that game. So, yeah, you could say I’ve been in desperate need of a reintroduction to the majesty of playoff baseball.
I got it in the form of tickets to a barn-burning 15-inning instant classic between the Mariners and Tigers in the deciding Game 5 of the ALDS. I’ll spare you the play-by-play (the Mariners won, 3-2) and instead provide some vibes from the stands. Baseball games aren’t as long as they used to be, but a 15-inning game is still really long. The early adrenaline rush wears off after the first couple of hours, leaving your nerves frayed and head pounding. The stadium cuts off booze after the seventh inning, and when the game heads to extra innings, everyone starts to get a bit cagey. Superstitions intensify. You switch spots with strangers to change up the vibes. You don your rally cap. By the 10th or 11th inning, you’re not just sobering up; you’re actively hungover. You sway nervously, arm in arm with your neighbors. You begin to realize that you’re slowly losing your mind. Inning after inning rolls by; the prospect of victory seems to slip further from your grasp with every stranded runner (and man, there were a lot of stranded runners in this game). By the middle of the 15th inning, you find yourself going absolutely apeshit when the Mariners’ mid-inning entertainment crew unleashes an unprecedented second Salmon Run, giving the previously winless Humpy the Salmon his first victory in 168 tries. Can this be real? Can life get better? You can’t wait to tell everyone about this.
The game-winning hit, a Jorge Polanco walk-off single, comes just a short time later. Ecstasy. Elation. Two decades plus of pent-up resentment leaves your body. T-Mobile Park is a giant party. After hugging everyone around you for 20 minutes, you file out of the stadium. A live band is playing “Smells Like Teen Spirit” on the sidewalk. You head bang in the mosh pit. You realize that baseball is the greatest sport in the world.
The World Series Game That Wouldn’t End
Danny Chau: I just remember my vision getting blurry at 2:30 a.m., around the time when it seemed sensible to suggest the 89-year-old Sandy Koufax take the mound during the 18-inning Game 3 of the 2025 World Series between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Toronto Blue Jays. The weight of my eyelids, the pressure from behind my eyes, it was affecting my ability to process reality. The game was riveting, almost dreamlike. Baseball—baseball!—had me in a double state: in a stupor, and also in that flailing sensation of free fall that turns children into gremlins just before unconsciousness.
Four minutes later, as the fabric of time continued to fray at the seams, the cameras panned to series hero Yoshinobu Yamamoto warming up in the bullpen, roughly 28 hours after pitching a complete game. How the hell is he going to do this when he just pitched 105 times yesterday? Except, it wasn’t yesterday anymore. It was the night before that. Salvador Dalí saw a wheel of Camembert oozing in the sun and thought about clocks; I saw a 5-5 score that remained unchanged for more than nine innings of extra baseball and thought about forever. Is this what people mean when they say that baseball has a timeless quality to it? That under the perfect auspices, a game can effectively last an eternity? Game 3 adopted a sort of dream logic that allowed it to fold on top of itself, literally doubling in size.
I dozed off at 2:48 a.m., just two minutes before Freddie Freeman smacked a fly ball deep into center field to finally win the game for the Dodgers. That’s what my group chat logs and Baseball Reference tell me, anyway. But somewhere between the ninth and 10th innings, the game stopped existing as a Fox broadcast and became a theta brain wave transmission, bridging the conscious world with the unconscious. I never went back to watch that final Freeman home run. The definitiveness in that is boring. What made Game 3 a perfect moment wasn’t the result. It was that disorienting feeling of being stuck, together, in a game that seemed to mystically conspire against finality for as long as physically possible.
Amanda Anisimova Gets Her Revenge
Brian Phillips: Iga Swiatek's win over Amanda Anisimova in the Wimbledon final was one of the most dominant victories I've ever seen in a top-level final in any sport. Playing on what's supposed to be her worst surface, Swiatek atomized Anisimova. The match finished 6-0, 6-0, and you can write your own stats beyond that; odds are they won't be too far off from the truth. (Example: The match took less than an hour; Anisimova won a total of 24 points.) I watched the last few games on my phone in a car parked at a beach in the Hamptons, where I'd gone for a family reunion, and I could feel the waves of Anisimova's misery rolling in from across the Atlantic. All that excitement, all those big wins just to reach this point, and now this? Anisimova, who'd worked her way into the best form of her career after a long break to focus on her mental health, happened to run into Swiatek at a moment when the Polish star was playing impossible, otherworldly tennis; probably no one else on tour would have taken a set that day. But the loss still hurt. Anisimova was graceful in defeat, but she looked 2 inches shorter after the match. She looked humbled, as anyone would.
So when Anisimova ran into Swiatek again at the very next major, in the quarterfinals of the U.S. Open, the prospect was slightly terrifying. What if history repeated itself? Would Anisimova ever be the same? As it turned out, there was no need to worry. Playing steadily and with poise against the heavily favored Swiatek, the young American put Wimbledon behind her with a 6-4, 6-3 win that called for more fortitude than the score line implies. She gave up breaks early in both sets and could easily have crumbled both times; both times, though, she steadied herself and took control of the match. Not the biggest sports moment of the year, but a great win for anyone who's ever taken a hard L and was determined to come back fighting.
Carlos Alcaraz vs. Jannik Sinner Becomes the Next Great Rivalry
Anthony Dabbundo: Two players have completely dominated the last two years of men’s tennis, to the point that the singles grand slam events have often seemed like foregone conclusions. If you’re a casual tennis fan, you can basically set a reminder on your phone to tune in on the second Sunday of every tournament. In all likelihood, Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner will be there—as they were for the final at Roland Garros this past June.
Tennis’s two new-era megastars had met 11 times prior, but the French Open final was their biggest head-to-head contest up to that point. It delivered—five hours and 29 minutes of captivating, episodic drama. Alcaraz’s comfort on clay and his superior long-match endurance were viewed as advantages beforehand, but Sinner outperformed the Spaniard all the way up until late in the fourth set, when he found himself with triple match point on Alcaraz’s serve. Alcaraz took advantage of uncharacteristic Sinner errors under pressure and saved all three match points to bring the set to 4-5. He then broke Sinner’s serve in the ensuing game, saved his best tennis for the fourth- and fifth-set tiebreakers, and completed the historic remontada. In the highest-pressure moments, Sinner's machinelike ground strokes ultimately came up just short against Alcaraz's genius shotmaking and athleticism.
It was an honor to be along for the ride for the finest five-plus hours (so far) of Alcaraz’s trailblazing career—and the leveling up of a great new tennis rivalry.
The Arrival of Indiana As a College Football Power
Matt Dollinger: There’s imposter syndrome, and then there’s being an IU football fan. Watching the Hoosiers go from college football’s biggest loser to the coolest kid in class is about as jarring as watching your goldfish turn into a lobster. Last season’s College Football Playoff appearance was sweet, but a thrashing from Notre Dame made IU fans (rightfully) wonder whether it was all a fluke.
IU started this season 5-0 and put up the most points against a top-10 team in Big Ten history, but it still didn’t feel real until that October afternoon in Eugene. Oregon had not lost at home in years, and head coach Dan Lanning was basically foaming at the mouth (and eyes?) for a chance to humble the Hoosiers. Alas, history would not repeat in a big game, and the Hoosiers would prevail, marking maybe the biggest breakthrough win of the Curt Cignetti era. It was the first time Indiana had beaten a top-five team since 1967, and they snapped the longest home win streak in the nation. It validated everything Cignetti had said since coming aboard. Indiana finally belonged.
The First 7:44 of NBA Finals Game 7
Isaac Levy-Rubinett: Haliburton’s injury will probably go down as my least favorite sports moment of 2025—but man, the seven minutes and 44 seconds that preceded it were flat-out incredible. For a time, Game 7 delivered everything you could possibly ask for: a Cinderella against an emerging juggernaut, two star point guards duking it out with unique and enthralling styles, an electric crowd bearing down on the proceedings like storm clouds, and the visiting Pacers landing some early haymakers to put the Thunder on their heels. Haliburton hit three moon-ball 3s, barking his shit at a nervous OKC crowd. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander slithered through whatever slivers of space Andrew Nembhard and Aaron Nesmith afforded him. From the jump, this game seemed destined to become an all-time classic. Ironically, tragically, it became one for the wrong reason.
Haliburton’s injury is one of the great “what-ifs” in NBA history, and its ripple effects will play out for several more seasons. But the one thing we know for sure about the alternate reality in which Haliburton’s Achilles makes it through that game intact is that the basketball would have fucking ripped. For proof, we’ll always have the first 7:44.
Cam Skattebo Runs Eternal
Jordan Ritter Conn: Let’s be honest: The first year of the 12-team College Football Playoff last season kinda sucked. The first round was full of blowouts; many later-round games were not much better, and by the time Ohio State raised that massive piece of Dr Pepper–sponsored hardware, the whole thing seemed like it had been dragging on for months.
But at least there was this: Square in the middle of the tournament, on New Year’s Day, a belligerent sphere of a young man turned briefly into a god. In the second half of the Peach Bowl, played between Arizona State and Texas, Cam Skattebo hoisted the Sun Devils onto his back and carried them on a rampage through the Texas defense. Here was Skattebo, bouncing off defenders and barreling down the field, casually tossing a fourth-down touchdown pass to bring the Devils back into a game that had nearly slipped away, and giving us the closest thing college football has ever had to a March Madness–style folk hero.
The Sun Devils lost, 39-31, after two overtimes. But decades from now, everything about the Longhorns’ performance will be long forgotten. The memory of Skattebo’s heroics will remain.
Cam Skattebo and Jaxson Dart Develop a Bromance
Danny Heifetz: As a child, Cam Skattebo would put on his older brother’s football pads and run into telephone poles. And in Week 6 of the NFL season, during the New York Giants’ 34-17 win over the Eagles on Thursday Night Football, Skattebo’s story turned to legend when he scored three touchdowns, tallied 110 scrimmage yards, and won over countless hearts and minds. For a brief moment in time, Skattebo and fellow Giants rookie Jaxson Dart—two born-and-bred-and-brain-rotten Gen Z weirdos—were the most fun part of the NFL season.
Skattebo, who can best be described as undersocialized, is famous for three things:
Skattebo’s bond with Dart, New York’s new franchise QB, is akin to what you see in those videos of unlikely animal friendships, like when a duck and a horse meet and then spend 16 years together on a farm thinking they are brothers. Aww, that is so cute—they greet each other with boops!
The Giants and Jets have the two worst records in the NFL over the last decade. Dart and Skattebo were human lighter fluid on the dying embers of my Giants fandom. Admittedly, the good vibes didn’t last long. The Giants collapsed in Denver one week after their win over the Eagles. Skattebo shredded his leg shortly after. (Now, instead of smashing defenders, he shows his mangled shoulders on streams.) Dart has been evaluated for a concussion in half the games he has played (perhaps Skattebo's rushing style is contagious). New York’s triumphant moment was fleeting, but I decided something after that win vs. the Eagles: I will run through a telephone pole for these guys.
Derik Queen Becomes a March Madness Hero
Steven Ruiz: With his team trailing by one and just seconds away from elimination, Queen told his coach, “Give me the motherfucking ball.” Then he went and did this.
Imagine being that cool as a freshman in college. I’ve been a Maryland basketball fan all my life and I’ve never seen a player as cool as Queen. Whenever the Terps needed a bucket, they could just give it to him at the top of the key, clear everyone out, and let him hoop. He could hit dribble pull-ups off a crossover, Euro-steps through the lane, and, as Colorado State found out, one-legged fadeaways off the glass. The debate over whether Queen traveled (he didn’t) overshadowed just how sick this play was. That’s a 6-foot-10, 246-pound big man driving left, stopping on a dime after two long strides, and kissing it off the glass while rotating in air … all with a defender close enough to smell his breath. Just pure, ethical hoops.
It was a fitting end to one of the best college basketball games of the year. Colorado State was the better team for most of the night and appeared to have won the game when Jalen Lake sank a 3 to put the Rams up a point.
Lake’s bucket would have been the fifth game-winner against Maryland in a two-month span. And you’ll notice that Queen was the defender closing out on Lake’s shot. That just adds to the lore of Queen’s subsequent game-winner and his demand for the ball in the huddle. The freshman said, Enough of this shit. I’m not going out like that. Then he backed it up.
Duke Suffers a Mega-Meltdown in the Final Four
J. Kyle Mann: It’d be easy to look back at this game and think “Duke blew it” is the entire summary, that all the Blue Devils had to do was reach for the crown with some confidence and they would have been kings. (In fairness, they did reach for the crown—they just did so over J’Wan Roberts’s back.) But that framing would imply that Houston was gifted something, and that’s the antithesis of head coach Kelvin Sampson’s brand. No moment, no game, no season will conclude with him or anyone affiliated with him having missed an opportunity to give maximum effort. If a team is exhibiting symptoms of “playing poorly,” Houston tends to be the underlying disease. The Cougars want to create moments of indecision or panic that lead to opportunity.
If anyone knew this going in, it was Duke head coach Jon Scheyer. I’d imagine he harped on this to his gang of gnarly newbies leading up to that Final Four weekend in San Antonio, telling them about how last year’s squad had barely squeaked by an utterly depleted Coog squad in a regional semifinal. And yet, they clawed. They churned.
To give you an idea of how this matchup was viewed ahead of time, I had one Final Four coach tell me, “Look, everybody would prefer to avoid the Monstars if they can.” He of course meant Duke, whose starting lineup featured a sizable backcourt and a frontcourt with three jumbo-sized NBA lottery picks. This group didn’t steal anyone’s talent, à la the plot of the first Space Jam movie, but down the home stretch of the season they did steal most of the available joy. They’d won 15 in a row, and they were as exacting and procedural as they were punishingly large. Their utter dismissal of a talented Alabama team in the East regional final had shifted the conversation to “Who can stop them?”
That question remained unanswered through much of this game—up until the under-eight media timeout, with Duke up by 11 and seeming to have an answer for every Houston rally. From there, it became a series of errors by Duke and a slew of opportunistic responses by Houston. When Maliq Brown (my guy) whipped a short-roll dime to a wide-open Cooper Flagg and he cashed a corner 3 to put Duke up by nine, it seemed like they’d finally boarded up the house and staved off the ravenous, bloodthirsty horde. In a game where points had been hard to come by, surely the Coogs couldn’t close that deficit in two minutes, right? But if anyone ever writes a book titled Adventures in Inbounding, this game will get a whole chapter—Sion James (who looked completely out of it after taking a pair of hard whacks to the head) nearly threw one turnover, then followed that up with a backbreaking, alligator-armed pass that was deflected and stolen, setting up a shot that led to a follow jam by Joseph Tugler. A broken-play layup and a side-step 3 by Emanuel Sharp, a handful of loose-ball fouls on the glass that all went Houston’s way, and somehow, the Coogs pulled ahead with 20 seconds to go.
And then Duke, with one last chance to redeem themselves, went to Flagg in isolation on the left side of the floor and took a shot that I’ve specifically pointed out as not my favorite, and just like that, the Monstars were gone. For the rest of my life, I will never forget the moment of “Oh shit, this is actually real” that swept over the arena, the city, the country, the internet at the end of this game. I frantically grabbed the back of Tate Frazier’s arm and stood up in that “hands on knees” position. I just couldn’t believe it was happening. I still can’t believe it happened. Kelvin Sampson could, and Kelvin Sampson does, and Kelvin Sampson will continue to.
The Eagles Win the Super Bowl
Sheil Kapadia: What I remember most about the Eagles' Super Bowl win over the Chiefs is the locker-room celebration. Cigar smoke, beers spraying everywhere, Kendrick Lamar on the speakers. I have watched just about every game the Eagles have played over the last 35 years—first as a fan and then in a professional capacity. This was the best team I had ever seen. And it wasn’t particularly close.
The football-viewing population is smarter about the sport than it’s ever been. There's all-22 film and analytics that are far more meaningful than yards per game. It's amazing how many fans can recognize different coverages and route concepts. Yet the 2024 Eagles were a reminder that football is still very often about which team has the best players. The group that can win one-on-one matchups over and over and over again.Philly fans were ecstatic at halftime when the Eagles were up 24-0, and that lasted into the fourth quarter when the score was 40-6 and a Patrick Mahomes miracle comeback was no longer a concern. But ecstatic is not their natural state. Anger feels much more natural. Talk to any Eagles fan for five minutes about this game, and you'll hear how annoyed they are that the final score (40-22) was misleadingly close thanks to some garbage-time points by the Chiefs. Add everything up, and it really might have been the perfect Eagles win.
The Chiefs’ Dynasty Officially Dies
Riley McAtee: Finally, an NFL season for the haters! If you found yourself sick of the Chiefs over these last few years—exhausted by the endless prime-time games, the State Farm ads, the podcasts, the broadcast glazing, and the black voodoo magic—2025 was the year that brought sweet relief in the form of some very overdue schadenfreude. Following an absolutely delightful blowout loss to the Eagles in Super Bowl LIX, the Chiefs started this season 0-2, and have only skidded from there. They’re now 6-9, and eliminated from the postseason.
Perhaps I wouldn’t be such a hater if the Chiefs were still fun to watch, but they’ve quietly turned into one of the least entertaining teams in the league. The fatigue started to set in sometime around 2022, when Kansas City lost Tyreek Hill and the team’s high-flying offenses gave way to a never-ending string of rock fights. Yet after Super Bowl victories in February 2023 and ’24, most media members went along with the idea that the Chiefs were the NFL’s Golden State Warriors and Mahomes was the new GOAT in the making. Their 11-0 record in one-score games in 2024 was just further proof of their invincibility … until they finally stopped getting away with it. This year, the Chiefs are 1-6 in one-score games. The magic has run out.
The tipping point came in a Week 14 loss to the Texans on Sunday Night Football. At 6-6, Kansas City needed a win to stay in the thick of playoff contention. Down a touchdown in the fourth quarter, just moments after Cris Collinsworth got done rambling about how you can never count out Mahomes (even though the team had scored just one touchdown and one field goal that night, both on very short fields) and NBC finished airing a Mahomes highlight package (I guess they had to go back to the archives to find highlights, since he had none in this game), it happened. Mahomes to Travis Kelce. Kelce to … Houston linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair.
That drop essentially ended that game, the Chiefs’ season, and this iteration of their dynasty. A real bundlerooski! And this wasn’t even Kelce’s first dropped pass turned game-losing interception this season. So much for hands worth pledging allegiance to.
Is it bad that my favorite sports moment is someone else’s downfall? Maybe. (To be clear, I did not celebrate Mahomes’s injury, just the Chiefs’ struggles that preceded it.) But I also didn’t choose this. It was the league and its broadcast partners that decided the Chiefs should play in eight prime-time windows in 2025, including on Thanksgiving and Christmas. If I had to watch all this mediocre football, I had to find some way to enjoy it. I’m glad Kansas City could deliver.
Lando Norris Drives Into F1 History
Cory McConnell: You'd be forgiven for feeling that Norris's F1 Drivers Championship moment was a bit anticlimactic. In the final race, he finished more than 16 seconds behind Abu Dhabi GP winner and defending champion Max Verstappen. Norris spent some of his first moments as world champion from the third-place podium stand, listening to the Dutch national anthem, like a classic sports meme come to life. The weekend before, Norris had finished 23 seconds behind Verstappen in Qatar, coming in fourth. When the dust had settled on the season, a vocal portion of F1 fans anointed Verstappen the unofficial, more deserving champion.
Except that's not how this works. The driver with the most points at the end wins—deserves to win—the title. Lando's championship this year was emblematic of his career: He turned in consistent, first-class performances and got the most out of a lightning-quick McLaren car. He navigated the battle with teammate Oscar Piastri with poise and resiliency, especially after it appeared that Piastri might run away with the championship early on. Sure, Norris didn't win the most races this year. He did not finish as the fastest driver on the grid, and for stretches of the season was not the fastest driver on his own team. And sure, maybe Verstappen was a couple Kimi Antonelli mistakes away from his fifth consecutive title. But every year is full of what-ifs, and they're all eventually forgotten in the margins of history. Norris kept his head down, put in the performances, collected the points, and is deserving of the title of World Champion.
Torpedo Bat Mania Consumes MLB’s Opening Week
Ben Glicksman: The first week of each baseball season is a time for hope. It is a time to dream about what could be, what might happen, what sequence of events could break right and forever change the fortunes of the team, players, and fans involved.
In 2025, it was also a time to debate bats. Bulbous, hilariously shaped bats.
On March 29, the Yankees beat the Brewers 20-9 during a game in which New York hit nine home runs. Several of those homers came from players who were using a new type of bat designed to increase how often batters make contact with the barrel. The result was an immediate fascination with what this might mean for the sport—and, naturally, a lot of arguments about a piece of equipment that looks like the grown-up equivalent of an inflatable toddler toy that says “WHAM!” on the sweet spot.
Was this the future? Was it cheating? Was baseball dying all over again? Anyone and everyone weighed in, with opinions ranging from apoplectic to conspiratorial. “I think it’s terrible. We’ll see what the data says. I’ve never seen anything like it before,” Milwaukee closer Trevor Megill told the New York Post. “It might be bush [league]. It might not be. But it’s the Yankees, so they’ll let it slide.”
For one thing, it was not just the Yankees. For another, the bowling pin–shaped bats did not fundamentally alter the season. They did not transform bad hitters into great ones; they did not significantly improve the statistics of most players using them; they were hardly a story by June, and weren’t a discussion point whatsoever come October.
But we’ll always have the week that torpedo-bat mania took over the world. We’ll always have that moment when Anthony Volpe seemed like he might be a hitting god.
Shedeur Sanders Slides, and Mel Kiper Loses His Mind
Lindsay Jones: Do you remember who went first in the 2025 NFL draft? Do you need a minute to think on it? The most memorable part of this draft wasn’t who went no. 1. No, the name we all remember from that late-April weekend is Shedeur Sanders. His slide out of the first round all the way to the fifth became one of the most memorable stories in recent draft history. Sanders was always a divisive prospect: He was a good college quarterback but not a great one, he didn’t have the elite physical traits we typically find in first-round picks, and he was a football nepo baby who had been coached only by his Hall of Fame father, Deion. He had a signature touchdown celebration in which he mimicked flashing a fancy watch, and he opted not to work out at the combine. His personality was scrutinized (and criticized) throughout the draft process, and he entered the draft with far more fame than actual football accolades. Once he started falling down the draft board, passed over by QB-needy teams like the Giants, Saints, and Steelers, there was no other draft story that mattered. There was clearly a Grand Canyon–sized gap between the draft-industrial complex’s opinion of Sanders and what all 32 NFL teams actually thought of him, and it made Mel Kiper nearly lose his goddamn mind. QB after QB came off the board—Cam Ward and Jaxson Dart in the first round; Tyler Shough in the second; Jalen Milroe and Dillon Gabriel in the third—before our national nightmare finally ended when the Browns selected Sanders with pick no. 144 (notably, after they had already drafted Gabriel). Of course, draft weekend would not be the end of the Sanders discourse this year, but as his first season in the NFL comes to a close, he has at last become the Browns starter. Is he a good one? Who knows! But he is good for content.
Micah Parsons Gets Traded to the Packers
Nora Princiotti: Jerry Jones has a habit of doing a bit of contract negotiation with players on the side. This is completely against league rules, yet Jones does it all the time and brags openly about it because, you know, that’s how they did it on the frontier or something. Anyway, Jones did as much with his team’s best defensive player, Micah Parsons, reportedly bringing up possible terms for an extension on Parsons’s soon-to-expire contract during a one-on-one conversation last spring, shaking hands, and deciding that those conversations were the same as a finalized deal. But when Parsons very publicly told Jones to go call his agent if he wanted to talk numbers in the summer, and ultimately requested a trade, the Cowboys’ Annual Contract Hootenanny took a new twist.
Historically, contract standoffs between Jones and his team’s star players, from Ezekiel Elliott to Dak Prescott to CeeDee Lamb, have ended with Jones handing over a big check and those players staying in Dallas. And for a while, it seemed inevitable that the Parsons situation would end the same way. But whether it was because Parsons’s financial demands grew higher, or Jones caught on to the fact that he was getting a reputation for being all bark and no bite in negotiations, or because the public back-and-forth turned him spiteful, Jones made the shocking decision to let Parsons go play for an NFC rival shortly before the start of the season.
In the long run, who knows who will come out on top of the Parsons blockbuster? Parsons’s fantastic first season in Green Bay ended prematurely with a torn ACL, and it will be years until it’s clear what value Dallas collects from the first-round picks in 2026 and 2027 that headlined their haul. It’s a shame that Parsons’s injury stopped him from finishing a game-changing season for the Packers defense (12.5 sacks and 80 pressures in 14 games), but this still goes down as the splashiest and pettiest trade of the year. The cherry on top? The poison pill in the trade that all but ensures the Packers will never trade Parsons to the Eagles.
Alex Caruso Locks Up Nikola Jokic
Rob Mahoney: Most Thunder opponents this year—and every Thunder opponent in the 2025 playoffs—suffered a death by a thousand swipes. No dribble is safe. No pass is uncontested. Everything is a scrap in OKC—and nobody scraps like Alex Caruso. So much so that when the Thunder’s season was on the line against the best player in the world, Caruso was the natural choice to defend him. So what if he came up only to Nikola Jokic’s shoulder? Caruso fought for every inch and angle, even as he gave up nearly a hundred pounds in the matchup. There’s no stopping an alpha-and-omega creator like Jokic. But Caruso managed something few defenders ever have: He met Jokic at the peak of his powers and threw him off his game.
Sometimes, that looked like Caruso having a full-on wrestling match with one of Jokic’s legs as they battled for position. At others, it was grabbing and holding until the millisecond when he might get whistled for a foul. (And, sometimes, a little bit more.) He swiped at everything, turning every touch into a series of constant adjustments. Caruso was up in Jokic’s space anytime he even thought about attempting a move, and pulled back whenever Jokic seemed to anticipate the contact. It was a master class in disruption with the highest possible stakes.
This is what the Thunder do, and they do it better than just about every team in basketball history: They get under your skin. And they live there, zapping every decision with momentary doubt—and then feeding off the hesitation that comes from it. Caruso is a 6-foot-5 guard who casts a 7-foot shadow. And he’s surrounded by active, ferocious defenders, slowly circling until panic wins out over best-drawn sets. If even Jokic isn’t immune, who could be?
Jordon Hudson Locks Down Bill Belichick
Billy Gil: No one captured the sports world’s attention in 2025 quite like Jordon Hudson. Starting with her CBS Sunday Morning star turn, the PR guru was constantly in the spotlight, from adult cheerleading competitions to the college football sideline. She was anywhere and everywhere … but was she allowed to be? It was something many wanted to find out.
Lesser beings would have folded under the pressure, or caved at the sudden fame. But Jordon is built differently. Will she call you personally to dispute claims made against her? Absolutely. Is she willing to threaten legal action? Of course.
During a chance meeting on an airplane, one of the greatest coaches in sports history found not only love, but a star. Not many people would sign up for all that Jordon has been through in the name of love, but she doesn’t sit back and let the narrative get out of control when adversity hits. She reverts to her roots and grabs the story by the horns in a style that cannot be replicated by Adobe Photoshop. For that reason I’d like to nominate Jordon Hudson for The Ringer’s Sportsperson of the Year.
Paige Bueckers Ends UConn’s Championship Drought
Kiera Givens: For a while, Paige Bueckers’s UConn career was giving cursed. Every time it looked like the stars would align, something went sideways. Torn meniscus, torn ACL, multiple rehabs, and a whole lot of what-ifs. Her decorated college career had played out during what was an uncharacteristically long national title drought for her school—the Huskies hadn’t won it all since 2016. Bueckers’s talent was never in question, but the ending was.
Until 2025—her fifth season with the Huskies and her final chance to cement herself among UConn's greatest. On the biggest stage, against Dawn Staley’s South Carolina powerhouse, Paige finally flipped the script. UConn didn’t just squeak by. Led by Bueckers, Sarah Strong, and Azzi Fudd, the Huskies ran South Carolina out of the building, 82–59. It was decisive, cathartic, and very UConn. Paige dropped 17, controlled the game, and looked completely unbothered the entire time, like someone who knew how her story would end.
The image that sticks isn't a 3-pointer or a final stat line. It's Paige walking straight into coach Geno Auriemma’s arms for a long, teary embrace. The Huskies’ championship drought? Over. Balance restored to the women's college basketball universe.
Tottenham End a Drought of Their Own
Aric Jenkins: For so long, existing as a Tottenham Hotspur supporter has been an endless carousel of pain, humiliation, and trophy jokes. “Lads, it’s Tottenham.” “That’s so Spursy.” “They’ve bottled it again.” But on May 21, Tottenham got the last laugh. After floundering through their worst-ever Premier League campaign, finishing 17th, Spurs defeated Manchester United 1-0 in the Europa League final to end their infamous 17-year trophy drought. Most iconically, they did so after beleaguered head coach Ange Postecoglou proclaimed in the early stages of the season, following a loss to archrival Arsenal, that “I always win things in my second year.” In fulfilling the once-unthinkable prophecy, Postecoglou ensured that legendary Tottenham captain Son Heung-min ended the final game of his 10-year Spurs career with a trophy, leading to a deluge of tears from Son himself and countless others who watched.
John Cena Gets His Last Dance
Eduardo Ocampo: Cena’s retirement had been a year in the making. His farewell tour consisted of 36 dates. It was filled with emotional highs (the crowd’s pop at his pitch-black heel walkout, reverting back to the original entrance that fans have come to love at SummerSlam) and questionable lows (what is Travis Scott doing here?). All of it culminated in a Saturday Night's Main Event match against Gunther: the monster heel versus the babyface who’s preached hustle, loyalty, and respect. It’s a story we had seen from Cena time and time again. Most times, Cena won. Sometimes, he lost. One thing remained constant: He never tapped, he never gave up.
But throughout this yearlong celebration of his career, Cena remained adamant that his time was up. Future stars like Oba Femi, Je’Von Evans, Sol Ruca, and Carmelo Hayes were waiting in the wings. The world of wrestling would move on without him, jorts and all, inside the squared circle. That meant that Cena, in the final moments of his final match, with a slight smile on his face, accepted his fate and tapped out.
The loud boos and looks of disbelief inside Capital One Arena tell you what many fans thought of the decision. For many, the fact that their wrestling hero did the one thing he swore he’d never do was the latest in a string of underwhelming miscalculations by WWE creative over the past year. But for Cena, a company man for better or worse, going out this way may have been exactly what he wanted.
Eliud Kipchoge Runs His Last Marathon
Neil Francisco: On the morning of October 12, 2019, I woke up incredibly early to watch the most decorated marathoner in history run 26.2 miles in under two hours. This incredible feat meant a great deal to me, because the next day, I would finish the Chicago Marathon (much slower than two hours). Eliud Kipchoge taught me the mantra “No human is limited,” which I kept near and dear in my heart while I finished the New York City Marathon three weeks after that.
This year, Kipchoge entered the New York City Marathon professional field for the first time in his illustrious career. The two-time gold medalist had shattered the marathon world record by over a minute in 2018, and then beat his own record four years later. His official time had been bested only by the late Kelvin Kiptum in 2023.
Fast-forward to a couple of days before the 2025 NYC Marathon, when Kipchoge announced that this major would be his last dance, bringing to an end a career full of incredible moments both on the track and on the road. His legacy, though, extends far beyond his performances in competitions. Nike introduced its controversial carbon-plated shoes, which were made popular by Kipchoge’s sub-two-hour marathon attempts and can now be found on thousands of runners’ feet during every race. More importantly, Kipchoge’s humility and generosity provided inspiration for everyday runners like myself to embrace tough challenges with resilience and strength. While he didn’t win this year (he came in 17th), he did achieve something that many runners strive for: He earned his Six-Star Medal and became a real marathoner.
The Raiders’ One Moment of Hope
Logan Murdock: When Geno Smith converted a fourth-and-1 to defeat the hated Patriots in Week 1 of the NFL season, my optimism for the Raiders’ season could have been measured in decibels. My blood was pumping; my eyes welled up. I thought back to a cold winter night at Network Associates Coliseum in Oakland in 2003, when I and 60,000 of my closest friends cheered on a Raiders team that would go on to make the Super Bowl. Google searches for the 2026 AFC title game dates may have been made.
The season quickly revealed to me and the rest of Raider Nation that the pipe dream would be postponed for at least another year. The Raiders lost their next four games and currently sport a nine-game losing streak. I’m tired, man. A couple of weeks ago, during a Chiefs game, I was texting my homie Kelly, a Raiders fan since he was a young’un, and I posed the question: “Which team in the NFL do you hate the most?” Without hesitation, he said, “Bruh, what, the Raiders.”
I couldn’t even disagree. The only thing we have at this point is a cool color scheme. Fire everyone, and call me when you’re serious. I’ll be around.
The Drake Maye Moment of Superstardom
Alan Siegel: Patriots fans haven’t deserved sympathy since, oh, the early ’90s. So I can understand why Maye’s ascendance would annoy the hell out of anyone who’s not from New England. But for a Masshole like me, he’s been incredibly fun to watch this fall. It’s hard to pinpoint one moment that sums up his season—the playoffs haven’t happened yet. But my favorite highlight-reel play the second-year quarterback made in 2025 came during a Week 5 win over the Bills. Maye took the snap from under center, scrambled to his right, and threw a high-arcing, 32-yard bomb to Stefon Diggs.
It was a sign of things to come. It’s hard to know whether the Pats will make a deep postseason run, but Maye seems like a superstar. And that means that their fans will be insufferable for, oh, the next decade or so. Too bad.
Cam Schlittler, Holy Schlitt
Stefan Anderson: Aaron Boone’s walkoff. The bloody sock. Don Zimmer vs. Pedro Martínez. Yankees–Red Sox has provided us with everything one needs in a sports rivalry, but with a 2025 wild-card series hanging in the balance, this storied contest added one more layer to its history.
Rookie Yankees pitcher Cam Schlittler heard all the questions—would the Red Sox continue to own the Yankees? Would Aaron Judge ever get over the playoff hump?—and silenced them in a win-or-go-home Game 3. In his first playoff start, Schlittler made history, mowing down 12 Red Sox batters in eight innings of shutout ball. Every high four-seamer from the Walpole, Massachusetts, native sent the Sox batters into a frenzy, powering the Yankees to their first postseason series win over their archrivals in 20 years.
Schlittler’s performance earned him a spot in pinstriped lore—and the way he trolled his hometown after the start earned him a permanent place in Yankees fans' hearts.
Cal Raleigh, Folk Hero
Amaar Burton: I have never in my sports-watching life believed that a pro athlete was “robbed” of an award. Every year, in every sport, for every award, there are two or three or four candidates who deserve it. So long as one of them wins, nobody was “robbed.” They just lost.
But in 2025, Cal Raleigh’s historic season for my hometown Seattle Mariners forced me to reconsider my stance. Because Raleigh absolutely should have won American League MVP.
I thought Cal had sewn up MVP on September 24, when the M’s hosted the Rockies in game no. 158 of 162. Cal hit his 59th home run of the season in the first inning, a picturesque blast destined for a mural in the city. “Watch it fly!” instructed M’s announcer Aaron Goldsmith, like an unprofessionally loud birdwatching guide. In the eighth, Cal smoked his 60th, this one more assault than artwork. As he rumbled home, Goldsmith crowned him: “Your MVP moment, Cal Raleigh!”
Sure seemed like it. On that night, Cal secured the MLB lead in home runs (60) and the AL lead in RBIs (125). He finished with the MLB single-season records for most homers by a catcher, most homers by a switch-hitter, most homers by a Mariner, and most homers by someone whose nickname is a tribute to the size of their ass. (Of course the city that brought you “Baby Got Back” would be home to a slugger called “Big Dumper.”) On that night, the Mariners also clinched the AL West title.
It was enough for Cal to be voted Player of the Year by the MLB Players Association, The Sporting News, and Baseball Digest (not just for the AL, but for all of baseball). But it wasn’t enough to win MVP, which went to Yankees slugger Aaron Judge. Whether true robbery or simple misdemeanor, the MVP snub stung—although not as much as the M’s coming up one game short of this year’s World Series. But before the October heartbreak, there was that September night in Seattle when it felt like Cal Raleigh and the Mariners were on top of the world.
Bend It Like Declan
Kellen Becoats: Trying to score from a free kick is a wildly frustrating affair. Hundreds of thousands of shots from varying distances are blasted toward goal each season. It is the activity that every amateur player replicates when they find themselves with just a ball and a goal and the names of legends flashing through their mind as they take a couple steps back and check their angles. Beckham, Messi, Carlos, Ward-Prowse (iykyk), and so many more have written themselves into the history books with free kicks. And last season, during a Champions League quarterfinal against Real Madrid, Declan Rice was about to add his name to that list.
When Rice approached the ball, there wasn’t much fanfare among the Emirates crowd. Rice was quite a distance from goal, had never scored on a free kick (and had scored only 10 goals before moving to Arsenal), and was up against one of the best goalkeepers in the world. None of that mattered to Dec, who curled a banger around the Madrid wall to put Arsenal up 1-0 and send the previously anxious home crowd into hysterics.
Then, about 10 minutes later, Arsenal were awarded another free kick in an even better position than the first, and Rice stepped up to the ball once again. Every person watching must have been thinking the same thing: “He won’t do it again, will he?” He did. You’re going to want multiple angles of this. Look at Arsenal captain Martin Odegaard’s reaction as he watches the ball hit the upper 90. Hands on head, pure disbelief and unbridled joy distilled into a picture-perfect moment. The Gunners ended up losing to eventual champion PSG in the next round, but the fan base will never forget those two magical goals under the lights in April.
Chelsea Wins the Club WC
Isaiah Blakely: I hadn’t known what to expect from the 2025 Club World Cup. I was excited to see Chelsea, my favorite team, play a competitive match in person, but I just didn’t know how seriously to take this tournament. In Chelsea’s first game, I watched from a half-empty Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta as they rolled to a sleepy 2-0 win over LAFC. I was happy to see them play, but definitely wasn’t sold on the Club World Cup experience.
Then something changed. I watched Chelsea’s next match during dinner with some friends, peeking at my phone to keep up with a Club World Cup fixture that nobody around me was even aware of. After a lengthy lightning delay, Chelsea entered extra time, where Christopher Nkunku scored a gritty goal in the 108th minute to give Chelsea the win and a ticket to the semifinal. The team's celebration, and my own excitement—which I took pains to hide because I didn’t want to make too much of a scene—made me realize right then that I did care about this tournament.
The semifinal was in New York, and I decided to fly out to watch. It was an awesome atmosphere against Fluminense—and, more importantly, Chelsea got the win. A few days later, Chelsea won the tournament in dominant fashion over European champions Paris Saint-Germain. It was an incredible moment for a club and group of young players who have been maligned for both valid and invalid reasons in recent years. To have that moment in the sun felt very special. Haters can call the trophy and the tournament whatever they want, but they’ll never sing “Champions of the World.”
Terence “Bud” Crawford Becomes the Greatest Fighter of His Generation
Raheem Palmer: A wise man once said, “Only those who attempt the absurd can achieve the impossible.” For many fans, analysts, insiders, and fighters in and around boxing, the notion that Crawford could move up not one but two weight classes and defeat Saúl "Canelo" Álvarez at super middleweight to become the first man in the four-belt era to become undisputed in three different weight classes was frankly absurd.
Crawford’s boxing prowess was never a question. In what was supposed to be a 50-50 fight, his destruction of Errol Spence Jr. by ninth-round TKO in 2023 was one of the most one-sided beatdowns of an elite fighter in the history of the sport. Still, anyone who follows boxing knows weight classes exist for a reason. Winning a fight against Alvarez—who was 11-0 in the super middleweight division and has been boxing’s biggest star over the past 10 years—seemed simply a bridge too far. It was so inconceivable that Alvarez initially dismissed the fight altogether given the weight disparity. “I have everything to lose and nothing to gain,” he said, “because if I win, they’ll say, ‘Oh, he was too small!’” Fortunately, money talks. With Alvarez receiving a purse of over $100 million, the Canelo-Crawford fight was on.
From the opening bell, Crawford proved size doesn’t matter. Rather, it’s skills that pay the bills. Outlanding Alvarez 115-99 in total punches, Crawford outboxed Canelo all night, consistently beating him to punch while landing counters seemingly at will. He kept Alvarez off balance with his movement, forcing him to constantly reset while outworking him with his jab. While many believed Alvarez would overwhelm Crawford with his power, at the start of the ninth round, Crawford showed he was willing to be aggressive and exchange power punches with Alvarez, landing sharp and crisp combinations to show he was in charge.
Despite scorecards that told us this fight was close (116-112, 115-113, 115-113), Crawford was downright dominant, delivering a master class that left Canelo confused and defeated before he even left the ring. The memes and GIFs from this fight were laughably one-sided in favor of Crawford. At one point in the 11th round, Crawford landed a jab that forced Alvarez to completely reset and walk away from the exchange in frustration. That’s when we all knew that not only would Terence Crawford become the first man in the four-belt era to become undisputed in three different weight classes, but he’d also solidify himself as the greatest fighter of his era.
The Knicks Stun the Celtics, Twice in a Row
Daniel Chin: In Game 1 of the 2025 Eastern Conference semifinals, the New York Knicks pulled off a thrilling comeback win in overtime against the Boston Celtics. Playing on the road against the defending champs, the Knicks were down by as many as 20 in the third quarter before storming back to push the series opener to OT. With the Celtics down three with three seconds left and a chance to extend the game, Jaylen Brown caught an inbound pass from Derrick White, and Mikal Bridges swarmed Brown before he even had the chance to react. Bridges cleanly ripped the ball out of Brown’s hands and launched it to the opposite end of the court to punctuate the emphatic series-opening win.
The Knicks found themselves in a similar predicament in Game 2, once again down by 20 points in the third quarter against the heavy favorites. But led by the steadying presence of Jalen Brunson, New York fought back. After Brunson knocked down a free throw to give the Knicks the lead with just under 13 seconds left in regulation, the Celtics put the ball in Jayson Tatum’s hands. Tatum quickly got a favorable matchup against Mitchell Robinson, but the 7-foot Knicks center stuck with him, forcing Tatum into the paint to be met by OG Anunoby. As Tatum tried escaping to the corner, Bridges stepped in to deflect Tatum’s pass and catch the ball before throwing it right back to where he’d left it at the end of Game 1.
The dramatic finish was a stunning bit of déjà vu that paved the way for the Knicks to eventually claim the series in six games and give the franchise its first taste of the conference finals since 2000. The fact that both of the crucial opening victories were stolen by Bridges, whom the Knicks acquired by sending five first-round picks to the Brooklyn Nets in the offseason and whose play was scrutinized all season as a result, only made the outcome that much sweeter for Knicks fans (and a vindicated Leon Rose). Let’s just forget about what happened against the Indiana Pacers in the next series.
Pete Alonso Leaves New York
Dan Comer: Let me start by sharing that I’m a diehard Atlanta sports fan, and—spoiler alert—Atlanta did NOT have a good sports year. The Braves sputtered to their worst record in eight seasons, the Falcons Falcon’d in every conceivable way on and off the field, and the Hawks—well, the jury’s still out on the Hawks, but they’ve betrayed fan trust enough times for everyone to take this Jalen Johnson coming-out party with one massive grain of salt.
This is to say that I don’t have many positive on-field sports memories to choose from this year. Even in the brightest of moments—such as Ronald Acuña Jr.’s first-pitch home run in his return from injury, Michael Penix Jr.’s win over Josh Allen and the Bills, and Johnson’s first-half triple-double against the Nuggets—I knew I was watching something fleeting and, ultimately, unfulfilling.
But you know what’s almost as fun as rooting for my team to succeed, and doesn’t come with an enjoyment expiration date? Being a hater. A self-righteous, vengeful, petty, happy-as-a-clam hater. When I learned that New York Mets all-time home run leader Pete Alonso—who was one of the 10 best hitters in baseball this past season—was signing with the Baltimore Orioles in free agency, a tingle hit my spine and a wry smirk engulfed my upper lip. Within minutes, a text came in from a Mets fan buddy of mine that read something to the effect of “Say it ain’t so, this is the worst day of my life.” I replied with, “Sucks to suck, I couldn’t be happier.” And honestly, I couldn’t have been. It was far and away the best day of my year in sports.
So that’s love (and hate) and baseball, I guess. Here’s to hoping I’ll have something lasting to root for in 2026. But even if my teams disappoint, I have faith that the Mets (or Phillies, or Saints, or Bucs) will give me something to smile about.
LeBron’s Streak Ends in the Most LeBron Way Imaginable
Kai Grady: Death, taxes, and LeBron James scoring 10-plus points.
At least, that was the case until earlier this month, when James sacrificed his double-digit scoring streak for a Rui Hachimura game-winner (the first of his career, by the way) against the Toronto Raptors. LeBron’s historic streak stretched across 1,297 games, 18 years, and 37 MCU films. He has more appearances in the NBA Finals than games in which he scored less than 10 points.
Let’s take a step back and set the scene. Tie ballgame at 120, 17 seconds to go, and a pair of Raptors are doubling Austin Reaves (the game’s leading scorer with 44) on the right wing. Reaves hits Bron with a lead pass as he dives toward the basket. James has struggled all night, but has eight points with the ball in his hands and a chance to do something really special.
Everyone on the court, in the arena, and watching at home knows what’s at stake. The game’s hanging in the balance, but so is this unparalleled feat of individual consistency. It’s like something out of a sports movie—not only can the four-time MVP keep this almost impossible streak alive, but he can also hit the game-winning shot in the process.
Yet he does neither. Instead, he zips a pass to Hachimura for a corner 3 as time expires. (A play that Hachimura said James called in the huddle minutes before!) This moment is a great encapsulation of what makes Bron such a unique superstar. There just aren’t that many players who would so effortlessly set aside a personal accolade of that magnitude to make the right play.
The streak may be over, but LeBronto is forever.
Jayden Daniels Slays the Lions
Christopher Sutton: Fans of the Washington Commanders went into the 2023-24 NFL season with tempered expectations, as their team set out to begin a new chapter in its complicated history. What actually ensued was a season rife with Tolkien-esque deus ex machina moments that made even the most jaded supporters remember why they loved watching football on Sundays. Week after week, Daniels’s sorcery lifted his team out of mediocrity.
When the playoffs began, most experts gave the Commanders a mere puncher’s chance. After barely surviving a grueling NFC wild-card game against a rugged Baker Mayfield–led Bucs team, it was fair to wonder what Daniels and Co. had left in the tank for their divisional-round matchup against the rested, favored, and seemingly destined Detroit Lions. Sure enough, Daniels effectively silenced the raucous and thirsty Ford Field faithful with a 45-31 beatdown that was as decisive and surprising as any Commanders win in years.
Daniels graduated from talented upstart to NFL superstar that day. But the Eagles had different ideas for the Commanders the following week, stomping them into oblivion en route to a Super Bowl championship and effectively burying the Commanders’ mojo in an undisclosed location that Daniels and Co. are still searching for. Since that Lions win, 2025 hasn’t been kind to Washington, and Daniels’s untimely and controversial injury history has many Commanders fans suffering from RGIII flashbacks. One can only hope that this anxiety is only temporary and that Daniels will be back to wielding his powers—and that his team will return to must-watch status—soon, and for many years to come.
Joey Chestnut Goes from Banned to Hanging Another Banner
Ben Cruz: 2025 will forever be remembered as the year of the 17th championship. On April 20, at WrestleMania 41 in Las Vegas, John Cena became WWE’s undisputed GOAT by defeating Cody Rhodes (with Travis Scott’s help) to become a 17-time world champion. But the bigger and arguably more important 17th championship win would happen less than three months later, on July 4 in Coney Island, Brooklyn. After a one-year ban, Joey Chestnut triumphantly returned to the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest and earned his 17th title, reclaiming his throne as the one true glizzy king.
You’re probably asking yourself, “Wait, Joey Chestnut was banned by Nathan’s and Major League Eating in 2024?” You’re goddamn right he was. And yes, Major League Eating is a 100 percent real governing body.
Let’s go back in time a bit, shall we? In 2024, Chestnut inked a sponsorship deal with Impossible Foods—you know, the plant-based rival to MLE and Nathan’s that we all pretend tastes like meat even though it tastes nothing like meat. That pissed off the latter duo to the point that they disallowed competitive eating’s biggest star to participate in their biggest event of the year. An MLE event organizer rationalized the ban by saying, "It would be like Michael Jordan saying to Nike, 'I'm going to represent Adidas, too.’”
One year later, the dust from all the MJ analogies and hot dog innuendos had cleared, and the man known as “Jaws” returned to the Coney Island stage to fend off 14 of his hungriest competitors in a battle for the Mustard Belt. What happened next, over the course of the 10-minute eating period of the 2025 Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest, was equal parts disgusting, impressive, and disgusting once again.
At the halfway point of the contest, Chestnut was throwing down glizzies at a blistering pace of 9.17 dogs per minute. He did so by somehow shoveling two dogs at a time down his gullet, employing a method involving cups of water, soggy buns, determination, and what I can only assume was the chewing method of Hailee Steinfeld’s character in “Sinners” when she bit Michael B. Jordan’s character.
Seventy (and a half) hot dogs later, Joey Chestnut was back on top of the competitive eating world, a full 24 dogs ahead of second place.
The world of sports is chock full of comeback stories. Michael Jordan in 1996. Tiger Woods in 2019. Tom Brady in 2022. Grandpa Philip Rivers earlier this month. But no one has risen back to certified king of the mountain faster (literally—it took 10 minutes) than the no. 1–ranked eater in the world.
Whether your battleground is a field, court, or stage full of ultra-processed foods, Chestnut’s comeback serves as a reminder of two very important things: One, true greatness can never be banned, and two, history is written by the weiners.
The W Announces Its Return to Detroit
Donnie Beacham: As the WNBA has experienced a renaissance in recent years, the best sports city in America has had to watch from the bench. I’m talking about my hometown of Detroit, whose beloved Shock racked up three WNBA championships in the aughts during their time as the sister team of the “Goin’ to Work” Pistons, who themselves racked up Eastern Conference championships but won the NBA title just once during that time.
Players like Swin Cash, Cheryl Ford, and Deanna Nolan won over the hearts of Detroiters, while legendary Bad Boys Rick Mahorn and Bill Laimbeer held coaching and front office roles with the team. The Shock even had their own version of “Malice at the Palace.” The synergy between the Shock and the Pistons was amazing, which made the Shock's roundabout relocation from "the D" to "the Big D" all the more painful.
I shouldn’t speak for the city as a whole, but I gladly will anyway. Detroit suffered from a major case of FOMO as we watched the likes of A’ja Wilson, Napheesa Collier, Caitlin Clark, and Angel Reese bring the WNBA back into the social consciousness in a way that rivaled and even surpassed the halcyon days of the ’90s. I vividly remember watching the Lisa Leslie cameos on Martin and Sister, Sister (two shows that also happened to take place in the best sports city in America).
But the cure to the FOMO is on the way, as the league announced earlier this year that Detroit would be one of three cities to receive new WNBA teams, alongside Cleveland and Philadelphia. We’ll have to wait a few more years to cheer on this new iteration of the team, but the 2029 season can’t come soon enough. The current Pistons have brought excitement for basketball back to the city, making this the perfect time to welcome back a dearly missed franchise.
Naomi Turns Heel and Has an Iconic Year
Brian Waters: Naomi has been through it all—and 2025 was by far the most eventful year of her wrestling career. She began the year as a tag-team champion, but it was later revealed that she was gifted that title after she'd taken out her friend Jade Cargill in a backstage attack. That set the stage for an epic rivalry throughout the spring, including a WrestleMania match that was fueled by pure hatred, with no need for a title on the line or a gimmicky stipulation attached. After losing to Jade twice, Naomi—who had a new persona and warned everyone to proceed with caution—became Ms. Money in the Bank, allowing her to challenge for any championship at any moment.
During the main event of WWE Evolution, an all-women’s PLE, Naomi cashed in her Money in the Bank briefcase and defeated Rhea Ripley and Iyo Sky to become the brand-new WWE women’s world champion. Naomi would then go on to the second-biggest show of the year, SummerSlam, and after a special entrance that included her dad playing guitar, she successfully retained her world title. Two weeks later, she announced that she was pregnant and vacated the championship. Filled with emotion, Naomi jumped back into character and put the locker room on notice, saying that after her baby is born, she will be back to regain her world title. In a roller-coaster year, Naomi lost a friendship and the women’s tag title, had an epic feud for WrestleMania, won the Money in the Bank briefcase, won her third world championship, and sealed it all by announcing her pregnancy live on Raw on Netflix. Iconic.
The Chair Company Embraces NBA Prop Comedy
Keith Fujimoto: Mars and Mike. Shawn Kemp’s Reign Man. Any of the Slam-a-da-Month pages from an issue of Slam Magazine. Now THOSE would be fitting wall decor for a high school hooper. But for the spot near his bed, Seth Trosper, from HBO’s The Chair Company, instead chose a bland-ass, overexposed, photocopied-at–Office Depot Getty Image of Donovan Mitchell lazily passing the ball.
No wonder the kid let his hoops dreams die to pursue stop-motion animation. It’s the type of poster the acquaintance your mom forces you to invite to your 13th birthday party gifts you by hand in a plastic bag. It’s the kind of poster that nobody at a Five Below would dare add to their cart. It’s that thing on eBay that the seller is pleading for you to “Buy Now” for $0.01 and free shipping. Yet a blossoming Dublin Jerome High School basketball star decided that it was the one piece of basketball memorabilia he needed to complete his bedroom.
If only Ron had let Mike come into Seth’s birthday party … Mike would’ve done what any good friend would do: He would’ve snatched that flimsy piece of cardboard off the wall like Mitchell Robinson snagging an offensive rebound against Mitchell and the Cavs in the playoffs. This is Seth realizing in real time that Spida is a fraud who should've never been on his wall in the first place.
The Orioles Walk Off the Champs on Cal Ripken Night
Colby Payne: I was in attendance for many frustrating Orioles losses this year: a walloping by the Reds in April, then a blowout by the Yankees a few weeks later. As the O’s season slipped away, I stopped looking forward to trips to Camden Yards. It took a little convincing from my family to attend a game against the world champion Dodgers—and even then, I expected the worst.
The game fell on the 30th anniversary of Cal Ripken’s 2,131st game. Camden Yards was packed with fans, baseball legends, media personalities, and even Caitlin Clark. Before the first pitch, Ripken was honored in a ceremony. He spoke and was then driven around the field, waving to fans as the crowd soaked in the moment.
Most of the night followed a depressingly familiar script. The energy in the stadium was reserved for Ripken tributes that appeared on the scoreboard between innings. On the field, the O’s looked hapless. By the time the game reached the bottom of the ninth, Dodgers ace Yoshinobu Yamamoto was pitching a no-hitter. I remember trying to at least feel grateful to have celebrated a franchise legend and witnessed a rare baseball feat, even if it came from the opposing team.
That was when Jackson Holliday came to the plate and blasted a home run over the head of Andy Pages to break up the no-no and make the score 3-1. Then the Orioles loaded the bases, and the tension in the stadium rose with each base runner. A bases-loaded walk made it 3-2, and moments later, Emmanuel Rivera blooped a single into center field to win the game.
The team rushed the field, fireworks exploded overhead, Ripken was in the house, and suddenly Camden Yards was filled with belief again—hopeful that better things were coming, even if deep down we knew it would have to be next season.
