The administration at Notre Dame considered gold-plating rookie coach Charlie Weis for making the Irish relevant again. Instead, they doubled Weis' five-year contract just a few months into his tenure. Had Penn State offered the same deal to suddenly rejuvenated Joe Paterno, who'd bet against the 79-year-old coach signing? And those weren't college football's only "old-school" programs waking up echoes.

The dynasty Pete Carroll built at Southern California cruised to another national championship at the start of 2005, through another undefeated regular season by the end, and into position to pull off a three-peat against Texas at the Rose Bowl to kick off 2006. The Trojans even made room in the backfield for Reggie Bush to shoehorn in his Heisman Trophy, next to the one quarterback Matt Leinart won the previous season.

"This is a program that's flying," Carroll said — and that was last January.

Repeating was still possible for Larry Brown and the Detroit Pistons when they arrived in San Antonio for the NBA Finals. Instead, it was the Spurs and Tim Duncan, America's most reluctant superstar, who walked off with the hardware. Duncan played so meekly in stretches that on the eve of Game 7, the NBA's promotional tag line for the series, "Where Legends Are Born," began to sound like a dare.

A very workmanlike 25 points, 11 rebounds, three assists and two blocks later, Duncan had his third Finals MVP and joined some legendary company — Jordan, Magic Johnson and Shaquille O'Neal.

"Some people talked about Tim like a dog," said former Spurs great David Robinson, who partnered Duncan through two San Antonio titles. "The way that man has performed over the years, I don't understand that."

The NHL resurfaced, too, after sacrificing a season to greed. Judging by attendance figures, fans weren't the least bit bitter. There was plenty to like after some rules changes — especially shootouts — opened up the game and rookies Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin launched what could become a decade-long Bird-Magic rivalry on ice.

(Good luck finding any of it, though, since the NHL moved most of its regular-season games to new TV partner OLN.)

Even more difficult was finding someone in tennis who could beat Roger Federer. The precision Swiss instrument went 81-4 on the season, successfully defended his Wimbledon and U.S. Open titles and held onto the sport's top ranking.

"You're going to win a lot of tournaments," David Nalbandian told Federer after denying him a third consecutive Tennis Masters Cup triumph, "so let me keep this one."

Keeping his place as the best quote in sport was no problem for Mike Tyson.

"You're smart too late and old too soon," Tyson said after his latest comeback effort was cut short in June by a pug named Kevin McBride. "I just got caught up in that suction cup. I feel like Rip Van Winkle right now."