In 1999 I wrote a piece for the first installment of When Falls the Coliseum titled the All-Coliseum Team. It was a list of the 2oth Century’s most intriguing sports figures – an alternative to the standard Best of tallies published and broadcast by sports magazines and shows at the time. It seems just like yesterday I wrote about Jim Thorpe (versatility), Buster Douglas (improbability), and Cal Ripken (durability) as being All-Coliseum warriors who represented the unconventional excellence our magazine seems to promote. Now ten years have come and gone just like that, and we have a new All-Coliseum compilation. But this time it is more than just sports.

After Christmas, you will likely see a hundred different shows on the best and worst of this decade – a decade on which I would like to pin the moniker First Decade 2K, or FD2K. According to Time Magazine and our own Ms. DeGregorio it was the worst decade in modern history. I cannot argue that it was great. Movies and TV regressed exponentially in FD2K, and the music was terrible. American patriotism was refreshing after the 2001 attacks, but it lasted only until the first signs of trouble in Iraq. After that America and the rest of the world grew in anti-American sentiment, and there became a deep political and cultural divide that is still alarming today. Just read our blogs.

However, there were a few things that flourished in this decade – enough to make me think it was an important decade, if not an altogether enjoyable one. What do I mean? I’ll let the All-Coliseum Awards speak for themselves.

Since the All-Coliseum Awards were first a sports notion, I’ll start with that. Many would argue that Michael Phelps, Tiger Woods, or even Lance Armstrong were the athletes of FD2K, based on achievement alone. But we at WFTC are not fooled by their numbers. There was no one who dominated, and in fact changed their sport, more than competitive eater Takeru Kobayashi. Before the 140lb native of Japan arrived stateside, eating contests were for fat guys, and the record at Nathan’s 4th of July Hot Dog Eating Contest was 25 hot dogs. But Kobayashi changed all that in 2001 when he hammered home 50 hot dogs in 10 minutes. After that he went on to win 5 more hot dog championships, and set dozens of other bizarre competitive eating records.

 

The All-Coliseum Award for team of the decade no doubt goes to the Boston Red Sox. The Lakers had more titles and the Yankees had more millionaires, but the Sox broke a century long curse, and orchestrated the greatest comeback in playoff history in the process. I can still see them jumping up and down at an empty Yankee stadium on Mickey Mantle’s birthday. All-Coliseum poetry.

 

Staying in the world of entertainment, it is safe to say reality TV dominated FD2K. Americans got hooked on shows like the Bachelor, Survivor, and American Idol. But reality TV did nothing for American culture other than put actors out of work. The real star for FD2K was animation. South Park appropriately mocked the foolishness of any supercilious attitude or movement in America culture, while obliterating the line of decency that Beavis and Butt-Head once crossed a decade earlier. And the unrelenting shtick of Family Guy made Seinfeld anecdotes seem drawn out and obvious.

Many tout Lord of the Rings and the Departed as masterpieces of FD2K. Not in the Coliseum. Lord of the Rings is fantasy, and we at the Coliseum keep it real. And the Departed might be the most overrated movie of all time (second to the English Patient). Cliché cop movie through and through. Now as tempting as it is to nominate Gladiator for an All-Coliseum Award, it would be disingenuous, because the best movie of FD2K was Training Day. No one has had a more eventful first day on the job than Ethan Hawke since Lyndon Johnson. That card scene in the barrio? I think I’ve been there. Training Day was real.

On a somewhat more serious note, the historical event of the decade was obviously the September 11th attacks on the U.S. And there were plenty of tragedies left to go around. The tsunami of 2004, Hurricane Katrina, and the Virginia Tech shootings were all epic. But the All-Coliseum Event is more about what went right, instead of what went wrong. And what went right was the capturing of Saddam Hussein. It might have been costly, but the only thing funnier than watching him defend himself in court, was watching him punk down his executioners. And remember this about Iraq and Saddam Hussein – if you are going to make a mistake, take someone down in the process. Good or bad, Sadam Hussein was here at the beginning of the decade and gone at the end. That’s something.

 

Which brings us to our last award, The All-Coliseum American Public Figure. Now, we all know Obama is a prince and savior, but he is relatively late to the scene in FD2K. Osama Bin Laden became a household name in America this decade, but spent the latter part of FD2K in a cave sending American Idol-like audition tapes to Al-Jazeera. No, the man who dominated the decade, for good or bad was W. He brought prosperity in the first half of the decade and recession in the second half. He was everyone’s hero on Sep 12th 2001, and everyone’s clown by the time he left office.  However, never has a leader of a democratic state been swayed less by what his constituents thought of him. And never has a politician had more ninja-like reflexes under duress. Isn’t that what we here at the Coliseum are all about?

So there you have it. The All-Coliseum Awards for FD2K. And one last thing about this decade…Every 20 years or so since WWII, America has theorized, popularized, and prognosticated a new method of our ultimate destruction. In the 50’s and 60’s it was an alien attack. In the 70’s and 80’s it was a nuclear war with the Soviets. In the 90’s it was an Ebola pandemic, as suggested by such movies as Outbreak and 12 Monkeys. But FD2K was special. This decade had three overhyped fates for mankind — terrorist attack, global warming, and asteroid strike. With 2010 just days away, and this 2012 nonsense gaining steam, maybe the next decade might just be the last, and we truly see “when falls the coliseum.”

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