So maybe I was wrong for pooping my pants when I heard about the seventeen-year contract between star player Ilya Kovalchuk and the New Jersey Devils. Yes, SEVENTEEN years! Apparently the NHL was a bit shocked by this as well, though, disallowing the contract when league mathematicians realized that Kovalchuk would be forty-four by the time the contract expired. To put things in perspective, the length of the contract was longer than the duration between the releases of the last of the original Star Wars movies and the first of the new versions. Seventeen years ago Kevin Durant was four years old; artists such as Ice Cube, A Tribe Called Quest, and LL Cool J had top hits; and Brett Favre was considering retirement. Needless to say, a seventeen-year contract in any sport is ridiculous, especially one as brutal as hockey. So in honor of this, for no particular reason, here are a few of my hopes and dreams for the world of sports for the next seventeen years and predictions on whether or not they will come true.1. I'll be thirty-eight in seventeen years and I plan on having kids by then. I hope that my kids never, ever have to go through the traumatizing experience of flipping on their favorite sports channel only to find a WNBA game being broadcast. However, I think WNBA games WOULD make a great addition to Comedy Central's evening lineup.
Prediction: The odds of the WNBA lasting another seventeen years are about equal to the chance Charlie Weis gets only a salad on his next visit to Golden Corral (read: very unlikely). Still, I take no chances and say a prayer for this every night. Speaking of Charlie Weis...
2. ...I hope Notre Dame wins a football national championship in the next seventeen years. We won the year before I was born and then promptly started sucking. Since I've been alive we've had one great coach (Lou Holtz) who was robbed by the pollsters of two national championships in my first four years of life, while the others have been a semi-retard (Bob Davie); a fraud who was coach for about 24 hours (George O'Leary); Ty Willingham, who I'm still convinced was simply an accountant who won the "Notre Dame Coaching Experience" grand prize at his church's annual raffle; and Weis, who ate the team's three best players. But things will take a turn for the better under new coach Brian Kelly, right?
Prediction: Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, Kelly will bring us back to the top. If that makes sense. I really have no doubt that he's the right man for the job though. He has succeeded at every single coaching stop he's made and will now have his hands on more talent than at any other point in his career. If the players buy in to what he says we could be scary good.
3. I hear Jessica Alba is married, but that can't stop me from wishing. I hope that someday, somewhere, somehow her and I end up at the same party and that she is drunk enough to mistake me for that lucky fuckstick of a husband. I'd even consider giving up my dream of a WNBA-free world in order to make this one come true.
Prediction: I doubt it. But I have a backup plan of inventing one of the machines from Inception and creating a dream that consists only of me, mattresses, two thousand horny Jessicas, and Chipotle. I think that would be pretty cool.
4. I hope that Barry Bonds admits to steroid use and/or his head explodes.
Prediction: These events are pretty much mutually exclusive. There's so much ego trying to push its way out of there that I think explosion is fairly plausible. But the only way he admits to using is if the ego subsides (meaning no combustion) or if he does so after the explosion, but at that point he'll almost certainly be incapable of admitting anything. So I'll play it safe and say there's 75% chance that one or the other happens.
5. I hope the U.S.A. wins the World Cup. Maybe it was the drama of our final round-robin game, maybe it was seeing how much the tournament meant even to the African fans who have so much more to worry about than games or maybe it was something else, but I think for the first time Americans really began to get soccer during this summer's World Cup. If this convinces a few more little guys to decide to play the sport, we should be in good shape. The reason almost every other country has a better good-soccer-player to per-capita ratio than the U.S. is because the best athletes in those countries all grow up wanting to play soccer. Here, soccer has to pick up the leftovers from basketball, football, baseball, maybe even hockey.
Prediction: Can you imagine if all of our best athletes decided to play soccer? I'm pretty positive Lebron would be unstoppable on headers, Rajon Rondo would be a brick wall goalie, Darrelle Revis would make an unbelievable outside back, and Jim Thome...well, nevermind that last one. The point is, if we can carry forward the positive public momentum gained from this year's World Cup, and the young people of America realize just what a great, global sport soccer is, more of our great athletes will play the game and I think we'll be in good shape to contend for a title. We've shown that we can play with the big boys these last few years (in 2009's Confederations Cup we beat new World Cup Champion Spain and were leading Brazil 2-0 before a seismic second-half meltdown). Now we just need the talent held by other nations. Come on down, Lebron 2.0.
So there you have it. If my happiness means anything to you I hope you'll help make my dreams come true. Now if you'll excuse me, I think there's a Jessica Alba movie on. Where the hell did I put those plastic forks...
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