They had 90 minutes to fill every week, which was great when there was a heavyweight title fight, the Hahnenkamm Downhill or Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier in the studio. But a parade of party games, fraternity initiations and vacation activities tarted up as sports with “expert” commentators and shaky scoring systems got tiresome long before they disappeared from the airwaves.

First, let's genuflect to 1980 and the Miracle on Ice. OK. Now after picking the cinders out of our scarred knees, let's be grateful that since 1998, pros have played in the leading hockey tournament in the world. The U.S. victory against the Soviet Union in Lake Placid was a one-off, a unique moment that should be pressed like a rose in a hardcover novel. But if you actually care about the quality of hockey more than the quality of mythmaking, you should forever embrace the IOC/Gary Bettman-driven inclusion of the NHL's hired help. The best-on-best format has produced a stunning Czech Republic shootout win over Canada in the 1998 semifinal and a Belarus quarterfinal win over Sweden in 2002 that would be touted as the ultimate Miracle on Ice if there were, say, an edition of SI Minsk. Here's hoping the NHL and NHLPA negotiate the league's inclusion for Sochi 2014 and beyond in the next CBA.

It didn't have us at hello or goodbye. For seven (yes, seven) painfully long seasons on HBO, Robert Wuhl presided over a sports agency that made us long for any character from Jerry Maguire. (Sandra Oh was the lone bright spot on the show.) Each week a parade of people from the sports world (Van Earl Wright! Jim Lampley! Bob Arum!) would file into the office of Arliss Michaels and produce the kind of shtick you'd expect from the last season of Three's Company. For a network that birthed The Sopranos, Oz and The Wire, it remains one of the mysteries of modern television that Arli$$ received such a long run. Wuhl's Michaels lacked the wit of Drew Rosenhaus, the killer instinct of Scott Boras or the client list of Tom Condon. Show me the funny? Not on this show.

The Spotshot/Hawkeye gizmo that permitted tennis to adopt the challenge system has been a most welcome technological advance. Rather than John (You Cannot Be Serious) McEnroe and Jimmy (You're a Bum) Connors railing at underpaid umpires, the in-or-out line call debates, which weren't exactly Lincoln-Douglas to begin with, have been short-circuited by a quick glance at a giant screen. The challenge system has struck a blow for civility and continuity, allowing matches to proceed without being hijacked by a tantrum. If McEnroe had played in the era of the challenge, he might be fondly remembered as one of the deftest of champions rather than the most combustible.

There never has been a sartorially challenged team quite like the Vancouver Canucks. According to Wikipedia, the Canucks have had 13 different logo and jersey designs since joining the NHL in 1970. (Of course we checked Wikipedia for the information. You think DKNY charts that stuff?) While we're not fond of the marriage of blue and green, the present iteration is style itself compared to some of the previous abominations. Of all the truly crummy uniforms worn by the Stanley Cup-less team representing one of North America's most visually arresting cities, none was more appalling than the black, yellow and reddish-orange V that ran from the shoulders to the waist. (1978-1985. RIP.) The V was supposed to represent Victory. Or Vancouver. Or maybe Vomit. (That Canucks' diagonal skate jersey that followed was hardly better, but we can't devote a list of 10 items to one unfashionable team, however deserving. Can we?)

Jack Nicklaus's epic 1986 Masters victory would be a YouTube clip for the ages … except that the Golden Bear is wearing plaid pants and a lime green shirt with a condor-wingspan collar. These guys were good -- Nicklaus, Johnny Miller, Tom Watson -- but it's impossible to watch them at their best when they're dressed like K.C. of K.C. and the Sunshine Band. Golfers don't wear uniforms, they wear street clothes. The problem is that the street clothes of the era were designed for the disco.

Tennis owes a debt of gratitude to Jimmy Van Alen, who created the tiebreaker, a scoring change that surely contributed to the sport's boom in the 1970s. Now, we used to enjoy a rousing 13-11 set as much as the next fan, but in the late 1960s when Van Alen came up with his Simplified Scoring System, the world had stopped spinning at 33 1/3 rpm and was already at 45. (If you miss the reference, kids, ask your boomer parents.) Van Alen's invention was a death knell to such signal events as the 5-hour, 12-minute first-rounder at serve-and-volley Wimbledon in 1969 between Pancho Gonzalez and the formidable Charlie Pasarell (the aging Gonzalez won 22-24, 1-6, 16-14, 6-3, 11-9) but a blessing to everyone else, including city-park hackers. Wimbledon's retention of the win-by-two-games rule in the fifth set (third for women's) is a delightful anachronism.

Better known for her nom de figure skating -- The French judge -- Le Gougne famously voted for Russian pairs team Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze over the cleaner-skating Canadian pair Jamie Sale and David Pelletier at the Salt Lake Games in 2002. (Sale's and Pelletier's silver medal was ultimately upgraded to a gold.) The scandal prompted the International Skating Union to reform its judging system, with the new one based on points. Incredibly, Didier Gailhaguet, the president of the French Ice Sports Federation who was suspended along with Le Gougne from all ISU events for a three-year period, was reelected president of his federation in December 2007. Both parties remain symbols of the Cold War-era Olympics when votes were traded in back rooms like baseball cards. We'd say au revoir to both of them.

Sometimes too little is too much. The sport became infinitely more watchable with the advent of full-body racing suits, which kept racers' equipment in the maintenance shed. Now that the high-tech outfits have been outlawed, we're probably heading back to the TV-MA era of swimming.

For years Wimbledon distributed its prize money as if trapped in the Victorian era. The All England Club paid women players less money under the framework that they should be rewarded less because they contested best-of-three-set matches while the men had best-of-five contests. That decision came despite the fact that the women often outdrew the men's matches in terms of television ratings and interest. With Prime Minister Tony Blair and Venus Williams among those publicly calling for equality in prize money, the club finally caved in 2007.