The Tampa Tribune from Tampa, Florida • 42

II in review 8-Sports The Tampa Tribune-Times, Sunday, January 1, 1995 -Whacky year started with Tonya-Nancy By DAVID WHITLEY Tribune Staff Writer v- The year was only six days old. Everything seemed in order. Florida State's football team had won a national championship. Texas had been put on probation. Buffalo was preparing to lose a Super Bowl.

It was a simpler, more predictable time. Then out of Detroit came a cry. "Why me?" Shane Stant had struck a blow for Stooges Lib. The Sports year was sent spinning out of control and into the hands of Will Clark of the Texas Rangers takes a lonely walk to the clubhouse after the team's last game before the start of the season-ending strike. Geraldo Rivera.

The fun and games didn't totally disappear, they were just dwarfed by tha hiTorra ac 1 QQA turnot intn nna Thanks to O.J., Jimmy, Associated Press photo Jerry and, uh, crazy ride in a white Ford Bronco Top 10 National Stories Top 10 local Stories Top 10 State Stories Venus, there iuu 01 cnaracters nice uonaia renr, Steve Story, Robert Shapiro, Gary Bettman and a Chinese female swimmer with Schwarzenegger arms and a dorsal fin. What do they have in common? All, except sharkwoman, wear suits was never a dull moment in '94. for a living. No Sport is played in a uniform from Brooks Brothers. Yet what I happened off courts, rinks and diamonds was bigger than what happened on them.

Mainly because by the end of the year, i nothing was happening on them and it was the bewildered fans who were crying "Why us?" The inmates and wardens who run baseball's asylum I I couldn't agree how to divvy up $2 billion a year. The World I Series, which survived the Black Sox, Hitler and an earthquake, i couldn't survive Bud Selig. Given that juicy opening on the sports calendar and riding a 0 O.J. Simpson. Did he or didn't he? The world will never look at a white Ford Bronco the same.

0 Nancy KerriganTonya Harding. Do you remember anything else about the Lillehammer Winter Games? 0 Major League Baseball strike. A game that played through WWI, a stock market crash, Adolf Hitler, Vietnam and an earthquake couldn't survive greed. No World Series for the first time since 1904. 0 Florida State football.

The FSU Seminoles finally win their long-awaited first national championship and are then greeted by the headline "Tainted Title" by Sports Illustrated and allegations of cheating. 0 Dallas CowboysNFL. The Cowboys, win their second straight Super Bowl, so they part with Coach Jimmy Johnson. In a year when the game moves from its traditional spot on CBS to Bart Simpson's Fox Network, it all makes sense. 0 Michael Jordan.

He left the NBA to go off and play minor-league baseball, and a whole nation began to quote Birmingham Barons statistics. 0 New York Rangers. For the first time in 54 years, the Rangers win the Stanley Cup. 0 NHL strike. Riding a growing wave of popularity, the NHL does exactly what it should not.

It goes on strike. 0 George Foreman. OK, so it was probably a fluke. No one cares. Pass the cheesecake.

0 World Cup. It came to America, was judged a success, and even made a profit. 0 Florida State football saga. Seminoles win a title, answer charges of cheating, see roof cave in on Athletic Director Bob Goin. 0 Florida Cators advance to Final Four.

Coach Lon Kruger takes UF where no Gator has gone before, defeating Boston College in the East Regional before falling to Duke. 0 Jennifer Capriati. In March, while her peers were preparing for the French Open, Capriati was arrested for possession of marijuana in a seedy motel room in Coral Gables. Two companions were also arrested for possession of crack cocaine and heroin. 0 Orlando Magic.

The NBA expansion team grew up. With rookie Penny Hardaway joining Shaq, the Magic make the playoffs. Although they fizzled in the postseason, the later addition of Horace Grant brought even more promise. 0 Pete Sampras wins Wimbledon. The Tampa Palms resident was almost flawless in winning his second consecutive Wimbledon title.

0 Miami Hurricanes home streak broken. After 58 straight wins at the Orange Bowl, UM is upset by Washington, 38-20. 0 Florida-FSU tie. Leading by 28 points in the fourth quarter, the Gators give up four TDs and the rivals settle for a 31-31 tie. They will meet in the Sugar Bowl to try and settle this thing.

0 Daytona Speedway deaths. Two drivers suffer fatal crashes during Daytona 500 practice runs Neil Bonnett, 47, and Rodney Orr, 31 0 World Cup. Orlando hosted the world with some early round matches that were all sold out. 0 Miami Dolphins. Will Don Shula retire and be replaced by Jimmy Johnson? It hasn't happened yet but speculation attracted much attention.

0 CulverhouseBucs. Hugh Culverhouse's -death turned the future of Tampa Bay's NFL team into a daily soap opera. 0 Tampa Bay Lightning. The Lighting finally get the OK for construction of an arena in downtown Tampa. Now they only need a season.

0 Yankees to Tampa. Well, at least during the spring. Construction of new spring training facility makes Tampa the Yankees' spring training site beginning in 1996 and home of their Class A team. 0 Jennifer Capriati. She was still Tampa's Jennifer Capriati when arrested in a Coral Gables motel room for pot possession.

Shortly afterward, her family announced plans to move. 0 NCAA basketball to Thunderdome. As a warmup for hosting the 1999 Final Four. St. Petersburg hosted the first round of the NCAA Southeast Regional, featuring Duke and Kentucky.

Very big time. 0 Odessa. With a Russian crew and local donations, the sailing ship competed in the Whitbread around-the-world race. It didn't win. but did finish against huge odds.

0 Tampa Spartans national champs. The Spartans claim NCAA Division II soccer championship with an overtime victory. 0 Rocky Thompson shoots 61. Senior PGA Tour pro Rocky Thompson shoots tour-record 61 on final day of GTE Suncoast Classic at TPC of Tampa Bay to defeat Ray Floyd by a shot. 0 Brandon wins.

The Brandon Senior Little League team captures the World Series. 0 Party with care. Major league baseball players Dave Stewart and Todd Stottlemyre are arrested, but later judged not guilty, after run-in with Tampa police officers at Ybor City nightspot. I T' a -V hot surge of popularity, the lords of hockey decided it was an ideal time to make their game disappear. Salary caps were the rage.

Thinking caps were scarce. There was one famous kneecap. Stant barely missed it when he swung a blackjack at Nancy Kerrigan, which immediately qualified her to earn $1 million a year being snooty to Mickey Mouse. Sports suddenly became fit for the supermarket checkout lane. Did Tonya mastermind the hit? Would she be kicked off the U.S.

Olympic team? Exactly what is a Gillooly? The soap opera was the best thing to happen to the Winter Olympics since thermal underwear. America was in Hard Copy Heaven and CBS basked in a Winter Wonderland of ratings. "You people are boiling the same potato every day," a Norwegian journalist said. We ate it up. Little did anyone suspect there would be a bigger potato to boil.

O.J. You know the story. Let's move on before the trial actually starts and Judge Lance Ito sequesters our attention. Even the traditional sports fare came with screwy twists. The Cowboys won their second straight Super Bowl.

In a normal year that would call for a parade. In 1994 it called for a coaching change. Jimmy Jerry Johnson Jones couldn't get their egos untangled and the keys to the Dallas Dynasty were handed to Barry Switzer, who had last been spotted filing serial numbers off his star tailback's Uzi at Oklahoma. In 1994, you never said never. Unless you were Johnson, who said he may never coach again.

He said it on Fox's NFL pregame show. Over on CBS there was an infomercial for spray-on hair. Only in 1994. College football's champion had its own soap opera, this one sponsored by Foot Locker. Then the school's Heisman Trophy winner goes undrafted and ends the year sitting on the New York Knicks bench.

Baseball's young sultans pounded pitchers worse than Shoemaker-Levy 9 smashed Jupiter, yet the biggest story was a 31-year-old rookie named Jordan who packed Southern League parks all summer with his flailing .202 average. America's sports summer belonged to hockey and soccer, games once only popular in countries that were frozen or run by dictators. The World Cup was a colorful curiosity. The games were marred by the murder of Andres Escobar, who made the fatal mistake of deflecting the ball into his own net against the U.S, a capital offense in Colombia. The New York Rangers won the Stanley Cup, which in 1994 was grounds for the team and coach to get into a nasty contract dispute that ended with the coach in St.

Louis. By then, the Cup was well into its tour of every talk show, senior prom and bus-station diner in North America. Had it made it as far as Miami, the Cup could have visited the seedy hotel room where former child-star Jennifer Capriati was busted for possession of marijuana. The final act in her fall from grace made tennis take a long, hard look in the mirror. After finally detecting a faint image, the game decided it could no longer allow a bunch of pig-tailed 14-year-old bashers in.

Unless, of course, they were really, really good. Oh Veeee-nus. As for the men, local adoptee Pete Sampras was the second coming of Rod Laver until a bum ankle helped waylay him at the U.S. Open. But then, what would 1994 have been without a ufc.

f-f -i VT' I Jj -V v. 1 ft tJ Associated Press photo While George Foreman became a champion again, Michael Jordan had mixed results in his new career. 3 1 STEPHEN M. DOWELLTribune photo Florida's run to the Final Four could be a sign of the times. TT1 I 1.

i Charlie Ward and Florida State were sky-high after their Orange Bowl victory clinched the national championship, and before being subject to allegations. Associated Press photo Associated Press photo paparazzi-powered dose of Andre Agassi and Brooke Shields? The bizarreness reached a critical mass on a November night when George Foreman, wearing the same trunks he got rope-a-doped in 20 years earlier in Zaire, turned out Michael Moorer's lights with a short right hand to the chin. A 45-year-old heavyweight champ. In 1994, you could never even think never. Sadly, not everything was so unpredictable.

Neil Bonnett and Rodney Orr died three days apart at Daytona International Speedway. Brazil was thrown into mourning and Formula One racing into chaos when Ayrton Senna crashed into a wall at the San Marino Grand Prix. Among the other faces who are now gone but not soon forgotten: Jake Gaither, Vitas Gerulaitis and Joseph "Mule" Sprinz, a catcher for Cleveland and St. Louis in the 1930s who once fractured his jaw and broke four teeth trying to catch a baseball tossed from a blimp. Hugh Culverhouse never dropped a dime, much less a baseball from a blimp.

But his death left Tampa Bay scrambling like the sky was falling. At least the Bucs sale took everyone's mind off the Bucs. Normally that would be a welcome development. The Bucs ignored the distractions and actually started looking like a football team late in the season. There even was a Christmas Eve sellout.

Now 1994's Bronco ride is over. What a long, strange trip it was. Asrwe crest the hill fito 1995, the scary part is there may be no end in sight. i Californians lined the freeways and streets of L.A. to catch a glimpse of O.J.

Simpson during the infamous Ford Bronco police chase. Jennifer Capriati, who a hiatus from tennis, ran afoul with the law. Tribune file photo.