Top sports stories of 2022: Amazon and the NFL, Djokovic and COVID, Lionel Messi and the World Cup

Sports serve as a diversion from the actual world while simultaneously reflecting it.

Sports were a new battleground in the cultural wars unfolding in America and around the globe in 2022. Sports provided us great delight, but they also taught us new strategies for waging old wars. Here is a look at the sporting events that impacted 2022 and the way we will think about and talk about sports moving forward.

When the Chiefs and Chargers squared off in Week 2 of the season, the game didn't seem all that different from the one we've all spent our lives watching. Everything seemed normal at the time—Al Michaels was delivering the analysis, Patrick Mahomes was launching touchdown passes—except for the channel that the game was broadcast on.

Amazon became the first streaming service to secure a weekly NFL game on an exclusive basis. You can't watch Thursday night games if you don't have an Amazon Prime membership. Since years have passed since broadcast TV's heyday, cable's hegemony is also coming to an end. Sunday Ticket's future on Google's YouTube, like that of most sports and most entertainment, has recently been announced as being permanent.

The entertainment industry will be dispersed between many streaming providers.

No sport experienced as much change in 2022 as college football, from all perspectives. Teams jumped conferences in a frenetic, tradition-upsetting land grab that resulted in Southwest mainstays Oklahoma and Texas moving to the Southeastern Conference from the Southwest and USC and UCLA moving to the typically midwestern Big Ten from the West Coast.

Millions of dollars were channelled through name, image, and likeness monies into the pockets of players, allowing them for the first time to legally partake in the profits of the multibillion-dollar enterprise they had helped to build. Every year, players looking for greener pastures and universities looking to fill roster gaps flooded the transfer portal, turning it into a fantasy football draught.

The No. 1 tennis player in the world, Novak Djokovic, has a strong anti-COVID vaccine attitude. After being expelled from Australia due to his lack of vaccination, he has become an odd but potent symbol for those who oppose the vaccine. With 21 Grand Slams in his career, Djokovic entered the year tied with Rafael Nadal for the most Grand Slams among men. However, due to the Australian and U.S. Opens' vaccination requirements, he was unable to compete in those tournaments.

As of the end of 2022, Djokovic is now one Grand Slam behind Nadal after saying that his drive for physical control was so great that he was ready to forfeit the possibility to make history. The Australian authorities relented and allowed Djokovic to enter the country next month after initially barring him for three years for the 2023 Open.

No sports story in 2022 better reflected the polarised state of the country than the tale of Brittney Griner, the WNBA player detained in Russia in February for possessing minute amounts of cannabis oil. Griner was clearly being held as a political hostage by a country embroiled in an unpleasant war, as evidenced by his arrest, incarceration, and eventual nine-year prison sentence, and that is exactly how the narrative turned out.

Griner was traded for Viktor Bout, a Russian arms dealer who was detained in the United States, in a controversial exchange that sparked both relief and indignation. Why, if at all, did Griner and numerous other WNBA players feel the need to travel to potentially hostile countries to compete? Was it

Behind it, light emerged. Aaron Judge, the massive Yankees first baseman, brought back the excitement of watching every night as he smashed pitch after pitch into space.

He finished his season with 62 home runs, breaking the American League record held by fellow Yankee Roger Maris. It was the greatest contract-year performance in sports history, and it restored America's interest in its old national pastime.

Imagine Christian McCaffrey, Tyreek Hill, Russell Wilson, and the rest of the NFL's star quarterbacks leaving the league to play exclusively in a YouTube-based rival football league. That would be LIV Golf. In essence, that's what happened in golf this year, as several of the top names in the game, including Masters champions like Phil Mickelson and Dustin Johnson,
Cam Smith, the reigning British Open winner, left the PGA Tour to play on the fledgling LIV Golf Tour.

Marquee players were seduced by the prospect of incredible wealth—in some cases, nine-figure signing bonuses—and willfully chose to ignore the fact that the money came from the Saudi government's practically endless Public Investment Fund. This was the first significant infiltration of Saudi money into American sports, a practise that many criticise as "sportswashing" because of Saudi Arabia's violations of human rights, but it won't be the last.

Retirements: Several superstars even continued to perform after this year's retirements.

Mike Krzyzewski, head coach of Duke, put an end to a career that was notable for its longevity, triumphs, and constantly evolving approach. Olympic and WNBA champion Sue Bird completed one of the most illustrious

In the 2021–22 season, she competed for Penn's women's team in the pool. When she won the 500-yard freestyle competition in March 2022, she became the first openly transgender athlete to claim an NCAA Division I championship in any sport.

She continued to be a convenient weapon in ongoing discussions about the rights of transgender athletes, discussions that were frequently oversimplified or exaggerated. Thomas had planned to compete in the 2024 Olympic Swimming Trials, but FINA, the world swimming governing body, barred the majority of transgender athletes from participating in international competition in June.

Kamila Valieva's tragic Olympic skating performance Nothing better than Kamila Valieva, a 15-year-old Russian figure skater who is expected to win gold at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, demonstrated the enormous discrepancy between Olympic aspirations and Olympic realities. once the test results came back

After an earlier incident raised the possibility that Valieva had been abusing a prohibited substance, she came to represent Russia's well-earned and well-deserved reputation for cheating on the international stage.

The world was appalled by the deplorable scene when Valieva crumbled A five-week World Cup run built on one of the most depressing foundations in sports history was topped off by the greatest games in the history of sports. Both Kylian Mbappé of France and Lionel Messi of Argentina won their respective countries' respective World Cups, but they did it in Qatar, a country whose endemic corruption practically forced migrant workers into slavery in order to host the World Cup. The perfect example of the paradox of being a sports fan in 2022 was the transcendent delight of the game on the field, which came at the expense of great human misery beyond it.

The Los Angeles Rams respond to the subject of whether it's desirable to put everything on the line for just one season in order to win a Super Bowl in 2022;

Real or claimed, inventive cheating has invaded every sport, from poker to chess to fishing. Among other audacious actions, Kyrie Irving sponsored an anti-Semitic movie and was consequently suspended. The media, Green Bay supporters, and even his own receivers are still baffled by Aaron Rodgers. The University of Colorado is being transformed into Deion Sanders' vision. The Phoenix Suns will be sold by Robert Sarver for an all-time high price of $4 billion. Ime Udoka received a full season-long suspension from the Boston Celtics as a result of an inappropriate relationship with a subordinate; Daniel Snyder and the Washington Commanders continue to battle through ferocious waves of scandal.

Creative cheating, whether actual or suspected, has taken over every sport, from poker to chess to fishing; Kyrie Irving was suspended for, among other audacious actions, endorsing an anti-Semitic movie. The media, Green Bay supporters, and Aaron Rodgers' own receivers are all still baffled by him. The University of Colorado is being altered by Deion Sanders to fit his vision. For an all-time high price of $4 billion, Robert Sarver has agreed to sell the Phoenix Suns. Ime Udoka was suspended for the entire season by the Boston Celtics due to an inappropriate contact with a subordinate; Daniel Snyder and the Washington Commanders are still fighting against ferocious controversy waves.