Parity's year

We saw a variety of champions, along with scandals, curses, young phenoms and old favorites

In fact, you had to go to a sport that has a miniscule U.S. fan base -- bicycling -- to find a male superstar American champion. Lance Armstrong won his fifth straight Tour de France. And you had to go to women's sports to find championship consistency on this side of the Atlantic. Diana Taurasi led the UConn Huskies to a second straight national title. Meanwhile, Annika Sorenstam racked up two more major championships and a slew of other LPGA honors. She was so good she even became the first woman to play in a PGA event in 58 years, and even if she didn't make the cut at the Colonial, she certainly did win Ms. Congeniality. Men's golf needed a little sweetness, too, after most of the attention in the sport had been hijacked by a man named Hootie who was bound and determined to keep the Augusta National golf club purely unisex.

But then, much of 2003 was dominated by off-the-field brouhahas. Some of it was tragic. A Baylor basketball player was accused of murdering his teammate. Kobe Bryant, who was supposed to be as fine a husband as he was a player, was charged with rape. A new "designer" drug scandal -- centering on something called THG -- threatened sports from track to football and reminded us again that baseball has the most shameful excuse of a drug program this side of the poppy fields of Afghanistan.

Well, some of the scandals were business-as-usual. College coaches who didn't act their age were caught in varying degrees of embarrassment. And college teams went about jumping conferences strictly in order to make more money. If college coaches wanted to be kids, college presidents wanted to be CFOs. And college student-athletes -- notably Maurice Clarett of Ohio State -- were revealed to be sham students. (Oh, heavens to Betsy, who would believe it?) And one of the scandals was farce: Sammy Sosa used a corked bat.

And if it wasn't a scandal, it was an English national trauma when David Beckham, handsome idol of millions, the most famous athlete in the world, was sold from Manchester United to Real Madrid.

And if it wasn't a scandal, it certainly was a curse, as both the Boston Red Sox and Chicago Cubs somehow managed to blow big leads on their way to the World Series, which neither has won in 85 years. This allowed the Yankees to, per usual, win the American League pennant, and go up against the Marlins -- 75-1 shots at the start of the season -- which were then managed to victory by a septuagenarian wizard named Jack McKeon. Another boost for crafty old guys: Bill Parcells returned to the NFL as coach of the woebegone Cowboys and promptly made men of them.

A gelding named Funny Cide won the Derby and the Preakness, but missed the Triple Crown, losing the Belmont. It was just that kind of year where nobody won big. Suddenly it wasn't even the Williams sisters. Rather, it was just Serena and her sister -- and when Serena wasn't winning, a Belgian named Justine Henin-Hardenne was. Tampa Bay won the Super Bowl when Jon Gruden beat Oakland, his team from the previous year.

But even as 40-somethings like Roger Clemens, Karl Malone, Julie Krone, Mark Messier and Doug Flutie threatened to redefine the middle-aging of sport, along came some remarkable kids . . . with remarkable contracts. LeBron James, the first draft choice of the NBA, is all of 18. Then Major League Soccer signed a 14-year-old, Freddy Adu, to its grandest contract ever. Meanwhile, golfer Michelle Wie is only 14.

Just wait 'til next year.

Sports Illustrated senior contributing writer Frank Deford is a regular contributor to SI.com and appears each Wednesday on National Public Radio's Morning Edition. He is a longtime correspondent for HBO's Real Sports and his new novel, An American Summer (Sourcebooks Trade), is available at bookstores everywhere.