You know that old bit about how confused someone who’d been in a coma for five or 10 or 20 years would be upon waking up to see the present day? Yeah, you didn’t have to be in a coma to be shocked at the sudden changes across sports in 2024. Heck, if you took a good nap this year, there’s a decent chance the sports world changed while you were out.
(But if you have been in a coma for the past 30 years, welcome back. The Boston Celtics are still winning titles, and Mike Tyson is still fighting. Sort of.)
Change is inevitable in sports. Players age out and retire — LeBron James excepted, of course. Teams rise to supremacy and then fall from that peak — the Kansas City Chiefs excepted, of course. Rookies debut, franchises move, conferences realign. It’s part of the deal you accept when you become a sports fan. (It’s also why everyone thinks sports were better back when they were younger.)
Still, even by typical “change-is-inevitable” standards, 2024 was a pivotal year, one of those where you can clearly see the “before” and “after” surrounding it. Not even Timothée Chalamet saw this coming.
Two sports above all others defined and embodied change in 2024: college football and the WNBA. One reorganized itself at a fundamental level, the other hit new heights of popularity.
On campuses, at tailgates, on message boards, and on talk-radio phone lines all over the country, the talk of college football in 2024 was college football itself. New conferences for blue-chip programs, the end of decades-old rivalries, a new playoff structure that allowed a dozen new schools to dream national championship dreams. Combine the playoff and realignment with still-new NIL and transfer portal disruptions, and college football is changing at its very DNA.
Over in the WNBA, the arrival of Caitlin Clark energized ticket sales and viewership all over the league, as millions discovered what longtime fans of the W already know. The combination of Clark’s massive impact with established stars like A’ja Wilson and a thrilling, overtime all-or-nothing Finals victory for the New York Liberty made for a compelling WNBA season, opening tip to final horn, and marked the start of a new era for the league.
Paris restores glory to the Olympic Games
Many of Clark’s WNBA colleagues spent their summer vacation maintaining the United States’ dominance in international play, winning Olympic gold in a thrilling, last-second victory over host France. Team USA’s victory marked the final event of a transformative Olympics Games, where the grandeur of Paris restored glory to the severely tarnished Olympic movement.
Not every Olympic moment was gold; the Opening Ceremony left viewers around the world perplexed, and the less said about breaking, the better. But across two weeks in July and August, the world’s greatest athletes — from Simone Biles to Novak Djokovic, Noah Lyles to Katie Ledecky, Steph Curry to Scottie Scheffler — triumphed in the pool, on the track, and even in the river. Plus, the Olympics also gave us perhaps the most magnificent stadium location of all time: the beach volleyball pit in the literal shadow of the Eiffel Tower.
The more things change …
Granted, change wasn’t universal. For all the upheavals in college football and the WNBA, plenty of old-school blue bloods added more trophies to their already massive legacies. UConn maintained its hammerlock on men’s college basketball, just as the eternal Boston Celtics did in the NBA and the inevitable Kansas City Chiefs in the NF.
International stars continued to flood, shape, impact and dominate games stateside. The NBA’s best players, like Nikola Jokic, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Luka Doncic, and its top rookie, Victor Wembanyama are from the other side of the Atlantic. Japan’s Shohei Ohtani seized total control of baseball … and he didn’t even need to pitch to do it. The NHL’s Alex Ovechkin has Wayne Gretzky’s career goals record in his sights, and will return soon from injury to resume his chase.
Freddie Freeman’s World Series grand slam and Jayden Daniels’ Hail Mary weren’t just the plays of the year; they rank among the best plays in the history of sports. There were moments of pure triumph, like South Carolina’s women’s basketball team winning a championship to cap a perfect 38-0 season. There were moments of agony, like Rory McIlroy losing the U.S. Open to Bryson DeChambeau on the final three holes. There were moments of wistfulness, like bidding farewell to Rafael Nadal. And, well, there were moments that drew deeply mixed reactions, like LeBron James taking the court with son Bronny to start the 2024-25 NBA season.
Finding your favorite games and following your favorite teams wasn’t always easy; the fractured world of sports streaming is a story that will only become more important and crucial in the years to come. But sports are always worth the effort.
Well, almost always. There was that whole Jake Paul/Mike Tyson business. Let us never speak of that again.
This year seemed to move at triple speed … and a few years from now, we’ll probably laugh at how quaint sports were way back in 2024.
