On my sports bucket list: The Lions winning the Super Bowl, the Guardians capturing the World Series, and more
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Here are a few items on my Sports Bucket List by sport:
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Football
▪ A 2,000-yard receiver in the NFL — This feels inevitable with the proliferation of passing, the tilting of the rules to favor offense, and the expansion of the regular season to 17 games. The record for the most receiving yards in a season belongs to Hall of Famer Calvin Johnson of the Detroit Lions with 1,964 in a 16-game campaign in 2012. Cooper Kupp put up 1,947 yards for the Los Angeles Rams in a 17-game season in 2021. Ja'Marr Chase or Justin Jefferson, former teammates in college at Louisiana State University, appear destined to make this mark a reality.
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▪ The Detroit Lions playing in a Super Bowl — It felt like last year was going to be the year. Dan Campbell's crew went 15-2 to earn home-field advantage throughout the NFC playoffs. But in quintessential Lions fashion, they were upset in the Divisional Round by rookie sensation Jayden Daniels and the Washington Commanders. Every other NFL team still in existence from the inaugural NFL season of the Lions in 1930 — then known as the Portsmouth Spartans — has reached a Super Bowl. The Lions haven't played for an NFL championship since Dwight D. Eisenhower was roaming the White House.
Baseball
▪ The Cleveland Guardians winning a World Series — With an emphasis on launch angle, exit velocity, and lift that makes it sound like we're discussing aerospace engineering, not hitting, you can forget about another .400 hitter joining Teddy Ballgame. Just as chimerical a figure is the 30-game-winning pitcher. That's an impossibility with the devaluing of starters and the current conventional wisdom that it's akin to putting an open flame near a can of gasoline to let most starters face a lineup a third or fourth time. Denny McLain (31-6 in 1968 with 28 complete games) is in no danger.
So, the Guardians (nee Indians) winning a World Series is the most realistic of my baseball desires. By any sobriquet, Cleveland, which lost in the American League Championship Series last season, boasts the longest championship drought in major North American team sports, having last won a World Series in 1948, defeating the Boston Braves. This doesn't look like the year. Baseball Reference gives the Guardians just a 0.1 percent chance of winning the World Series.
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Cleveland came tantalizingly close to winning a World Series in 2016 but lost to the Cubs in Game 7.
Getty Images North America
Basketball
▪
An undefeated season in Division 1 men's college basketball — I was tempted to say the return of the mid-range game for the Celtics. But I wanted to be more realistic. The Spirit of 1976 also commemorates the last time a Division 1 men's college basketball team went undefeated, as Bobby Knight's Indiana Hoosiers played unblemished basketball. The roster instability and fluidity ushered in by the elixir of the transfer portal and name, image, and likeness (NIL) payments, added to the one-and-done trend, raises the degree of difficulty of this achievement to Burj Khalifa heights.
Hockey
▪
The Toronto Maple Leafs winning the Stanley Cup — You'll know we're living in a computer simulation if the Leafs cart the Cup around the ice. Another purported front office savior, Brendan Shanahan, failed to scale hockey's hard-luck Mount Everest. He was fired in May, following Toronto squandering a 2-0 series lead in the Eastern Conference finals and losing the series in seven games to Brad Marchand and the repeat Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers.
The Leafs last lifted Lord Stanley's cherished chalice in 1967, the final season of the Original Six NHL. The Leafs breaking through would equal the frozen version of the Red Sox and Cubs ending their title droughts/yearly CIA black site-worthy torture of their fanbases.
Soccer
▪ The US men's soccer team winning the World Cup — The 2026 World Cup, which America is hosting along with its North American neighbors, could be a Yankee Doodle disappointment. Some progress was made under coach Mauricio Pochettino with the team's recent showing at the Gold Cup, reaching the final before losing to rival Mexico. But it still feels like the US is rushing to turn R&D dreams into a viable product ready for launch next summer.
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The last time the US men hosted the World Cup was 1994. The American Dream was that the next time the US hosted it would be in position to claim it. It would take a Mike Eruzione-esque miracle for the US to win the World Cup.
The men lag behind their female counterparts, perennial quadrennial contenders and four-time Women's World Cup winners.
Event
▪ The French Open — The British Open, The Masters, Wimbledon, and the Kentucky Derby are all worthy. But I landed on the French Open. There's something romantic and beguiling about the red clay of Roland Garros in Paris, a crimson crucible that both humbles and canonizes players. Clay masters Rafael Nadal (14 men's singles titles) and Chris Evert (seven women's singles titles) carved their legends in that clay. Now, another Spaniard, Carlos Alcaraz, is following in Rafa's ruddy footsteps.
Carlos Alcaraz celebrates winning the men's singles title at the 2025 French Open.
Adam Pretty/Getty
Edifice
▪ The Rose Bowl — No matter how many teams make the College Football Playoff, the Rose Bowl always will resonate as the doyen of the college football postseason because of its iconic eponymous venue and its setting. It's college football's Amalfi Coast and Mecca rolled into one. The oldest operating bowl game, dating to 1916, is merely a CFP quarterfinal this season. But The Granddaddy of Them All bows to no bowl. Pasadena, Calif., on New Year's Day is pure Americana and college football heaven.
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Christopher L. Gasper is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at
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