The Year In Sports Media

Pro tennis players fill their ample downtime in infinite ways: shopping, modeling, tweeting.... Or, if you're Serena Williams, all of the above. But 24-year-old Andrea Petkovic, a quirky German up-and-comer on the WTA Tour, has a more creative avocation. She initiated her own YouTube channel and created Petkorazzi, a video alter ego who fights crime one week and hosts a Chinese dance-robot show the next. (Don't ask, just watch.) Sometimes filmed in Petkovic's hotel rooms, the skits are alternately noirish, hilarious and just plain weird—equal parts David Lynch and Sprockets from Saturday Night Live. And yet this amateur filmmaking is exacting no price on Petkovic's tennis. She is currently ranked No. 10 and made the quarterfinals of three majors in 2011.

—L. Jon Wertheim

3 Jim Irsay Owns Twitter

When the Colts won Super Bowl XLI, the team's owner dressed up as, in his words, "a combination of Willie Wonka and Elton John" (below), and he led a Quest for the Ring treasure hunt around Indy. Oooh-kay. Irsay, bless his heart, has brought this whimsy to his Twitter feed, @jimirsay, a must-follow for anyone who assumes franchise owners must be stiffs. Irsay references rock lyrics ("ALL ABOARD!!!!!!!!! Ozzy Osbourne, not Newsome."); he teases fans ("I'm in Hattiesburg ... Is it right or left at the Firechief?" he wrote in August, igniting Favre speculation); and he's sometimes just plain cryptic. Whatever it is, he's always reminding followers not to take life—much less sports—too seriously.

—L.J.W.

4 Three Words: Carl. Spackler. Art

The Caddyshack looper went L.A. chic at a fall exhibit of Bill Murray--inspired works.

5 Friday Night Lights Bids Farewell

Lost ended on a head-scratcher, and The Sopranos just sort of faded away—but FNL nailed its exit with an uplifting life-moves-on finale in June. As the high school football drama wound down in its 76th episode, Kyle Chandler's coach Eric Taylor sized up his new charges, an uninspiring Philadelphia bunch, and set into his mantra:

"Clear eyes, full hearts ... "