December 26, 2005 | Volume 103, Issue 25

The congressional hearings on steroids in baseball, the bigger-than-sports story of the year, turned into a three-ring circus. And only the clown, Jose Canseco, may have told the truth

An array of influential figures from the sports world passed away in 2005, from subtle contributors to trailblazers to true giants in their fields

JERRY WACHTER 61

A high-wire experiment in sports fiction, written in nine chapters, sequentially, by nine SI authors, wherein a fast-fading pugilist suddenly finds himself in the bout of his life. Read on....

DECEMBER 13, 1993

The NFL The Colts look vulnerable, the Pats formidable • The MVP race • Ten head coach candidates • Dr. Z: Skins alive

Collision Course The Colts are no longer perfect and the Pats are rounding into form--get ready for an intriguing January in the AFC Has there ever been a year when a divisional playoff game...

HOT READ

Cheer up. We don't have to worry about Colts-Seahawks, the matter of who'll play and who'll rest, who'll try to win their varsity letters, etc. It's not even worth handicapping. Instead we're...

'Maine Man Yet again, Pacers captain Jermaine O'Neal is ready, willing and able to clean up the mess left by a Ron Artest meltdown Did Ron Artest do the Pacers a favor by demanding to be traded?...

THE HOT LINE

Bruin Up

1 Texas has a toughness problem. Yes, a strained calf kept forward Brad Buckman out of the Tennessee game and guard Daniel Gibson (right) only played nine minutes because of a concussion, but...

Make or Break

HOT TOPIC

Power Rangers

Boston may have undermined its ability to attract future free agents. The Bruins raised eyebrows when they traded center Dave Scatchard (right) to Phoenix less than four months after signing him...

Freestyle skier Jeret (Speedy) Peterson has overcome personal hardships to become a gold medal favorite in Turin

Shani Davis's bid to become the first U.S. speedskater to qualify for long- and short-track teams at the same Olympics ended last week in Marquette, Mich., when he finished sixth at the U.S....

The toughest teenager to shop for in all of America has to be high school hoops player Steve Ketcham. There's almost nothing on his Christmas list.

Hook 'Em After reading Horns of Plenty (Dec. 5), I understand why I--a lifelong Aggies fan--found myself secretly cheering for the Longhorns as they played at Texas A&M. Texas's Mack Brown is...

To the ancient holiday question of what to get the man who has everything, we can now answer: a subscription to OT, the world's most sumptuous service magazine, in whose glossy pages you can shop...

Despite leading the NFL in evictions, distractions and uncertainty, the storm-blown New Orleans players are hanging together

Need sensible last-minute suggestions for that sports fan on your list? Good luck. What follows is something else entirely

The U.S. bars Cuba, one of the world's best teams, from the World Baseball Classic

Won By Nikolay Valuev, 32, of Russia, the WBA heavyweight title, in a decision over John Ruiz in Berlin last Saturday. At 7 feet and 323 pounds, Valuev (above), Russia's first heavyweight...

90 Years the Florida basketball team went without a triple double before guard Corey Brewer had one against Jacksonville last week.

One of the world's top figure skaters--Japan's Mao Asada--is too young for the Olympics

The two-time NL MVP, 49, is the author of The Scouting Report, a how-to guide to negotiating life as a professional athlete

Prosecutors are rewriting the rules and getting aggressive in their pursuit of drug-using athletes

"Some people like Biggie; some people like Tupac," says Eagles defensive end N.D. Kalu, referring to hip-hop's most infamous feud. "But you can like both of them." And so Kalu joined more than a...

Sometimes in life you meet that special someone who's really on the same wavelength. That's more or less what happened to Kelly Slater (right) of Florida and Kalani Chapman (left) of Hawaii at the...

A translation guide on the British embassy's World Cup website explains how to say "He puked his guts up" in German.

ALAN THOMPSON, Australian national swimming coach, on a training exercise that included a mock terrorist execution of his swimmers:

What to watch and watch for

FANS ARE focused on über-rookies Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin, but there are other NHL freshmen making names for themselves on the ice and in fantasy leagues.

Brandie Beale INDEPENDENCE, MO. > Soccer Beale, a sophomore forward at Nebraska-Omaha, scored with a shot over the goalkeeper 3:03 into overtime to beat Seattle Pacific 2-1 and give the Mavericks...

PANTHERS WIDE RECEIVER

WHO'S HOT

BUCS COACH Jon Gruden learned football from his father, Jim, a longtime NFL scout, and likes to bring in guys with NFL genes. As Gruden told The Tampa Tribune, "there are no surprises for them.......

[This article contains a table -- Please see hardcopy of magazine or PDF.]

WITH Al Harrington Hawks Forward

So many winners and losers, saints and sinners over the past 12 months that it's impossible to recall them all. The year's highlights ripped by in a blur, but the best of those moments reveal the...

LANCE Armstrong

To see more SPORTS ILLUSTRATED photo galleries go to SI.com/photos.

First baseman Paul Konerko experienced a once-in-a-lifetime October, leading the White Sox to their first title in 88 years

REMEMBER BARRY BONDS? You'll see plenty of him next spring, when the most polarizing player in baseball returns from injury and exile to suit up for Team USA and to knock Babe Ruth from the record...

The Colts take on the personality of Tony Dungy, their poised and pioneering coach. That means no wasted breath

NFL DEFENSES are going to have to make a huge adjustment. Assuming that Vince Young of Texas comes out for the draft as a junior, a mobile quarterback will be taken among the top picks for the...

Every team had a crack at lockdown defender Bruce Bowen; the Spurs signed him. That's why they're the champs

THE ROMANCE between the NBA and its millions of international fans plays out largely unnoticed on these shores, both because we are too busy lodging complaints about pro hoops--So many tattoos! No...

A spate of Did you see that? moments during an NCAA tournament weekend had cellphones ringing across the land

DUKE'S MIKE KRZYZEWSKI and Connecticut's Jim Calhoun are the two most decorated coaches of their generation, Hall of Famers with five national titles and more than 1,400 victories between them....

Displaying a newfound camaraderie, an inspired U.S. team gave Captain Jack a memorable Presidents Cup victory

MICHELLE WIE will not be golf's most successful teenager in 2006. That will be Paula Creamer, the recently crowned LPGA Rookie of the Year, who has already emerged as the second-best player in...

Fans may have come to the U.S. Open hoping to see homegrown talent, but a pair of European stars opened their eyes

TENNIS'S AVERSION to change is almost pathological. While other sports have readily introduced three-point lines and two-point conversions, tennis has implemented, count it, one innovation over...

After deferring his retirement, U.S. shot putter Adam Nelson finally struck gold at the world championships

LET'S BE CLEAR: U.S. skier Bode Miller, 28, is a borderline savant on skis. He is the reigning World Cup overall champion and is uniquely talented across all the events. "He's a genius, maybe the...

Look no further than the Harvard-Yale triple-overtime thriller for proof that the NCAA has gotten at least one thing right

THE ROSE BOWL matchup will be no reprise of the 55-19 beating that Southern Cal put on Oklahoma in last season's Orange Bowl. Texas quarterback Vince Young will gash the Trojans' defense with the...

Two dozen games crammed into 13 days? No problem. SI picks the winners and offers a viewer's guide to which matchups are worth watching

SI.COM GO TO SI.COM DAILY FOR SCORES, STATS AND BREAKING NEWS

In Lance Armstrong's seventh and final triumph in the Tour de France, the race was all but over as soon as he started

PICKING BRAZIL to win next summer's World Cup is about as provocative as a Saturday Evening Post cover, and so you'll have a hard time finding any takers (SI included) to bet against the five-time...

For 12 long months, Steve Rushin rummaged the depths of sports to unearth these nuggets of surreal news from 2005

Goodyear paid Detroit Pistons guard Rip Hamilton an undisclosed sum to braid his hair in the tread pattern of the company's Assurance TripleTred tire.

A 63-year-old New Jersey man was arrested and charged with drunken driving after erratically operating the Zamboni in a public skating session at a Morristown, N.J., arena.

Eric James Torpy, sentenced to 30 years in prison for robbery and shooting with intent to kill, asked an Oklahoma County District judge to increase his jail time to 33 years--in honor of his...

With an upset of No. 1 Nebraska, Washington's true believers went from also-rans to national champs