Now that the Celtics have won the NBA title I can say something I don't think I've ever been able to say before: The last championship in each of the four major sports was won by a team I hate. Sure, I've watched teams I hate win championships before, but I've always had other sports with champions I liked to cheer me up. No longer is that the case. Over the last eight months there's been a clean sweep of championships won by teams I make a point never to root for.

I knew it was going to happen once the Lakers and Celtics clinched their respective conference titles, as I despise both teams. I had a feeling back in December that David Stern was going to orchestrate a Lakers-Celtics NBA Finals, so I can't say I didn't see it coming. I didn't watch one second of the phony Finals, but I had to hear about the results of each game due to a co-worker who was rooting hard for the Celtics and couldn't stop talking about them. I tried to explain to him that most of the Boston fans you come into contact with on the internet are insufferable jerks who think the world revolves around them, but he cared more about seeing Kevin Garnett get a ring than the sickening idea that those loudmouthed New Englanders (and the bandwagoners they've picked up over the last six years) get to experience the height of success yet again.

At least one good thing came out of this NBA season: I finally got the courage to accept that the NBA was a sham and to stop holding onto it because of the love I had for it in my younger days. David Stern, you can engineer all the Lakers-Celtics Finals you want. I'm not wasting anymore time watching this façade o####enuine competition until you're out as commissioner. Any league where two teams have won half its titles has something wrong with it.

Then there was the NHL. This was my first year following hockey closely, and I think I've found the sport that will replace the NBA in my heart. Hockey has players that are passionate about the game and generally focused on the team first, which is more than I can say for basketball. The only downside to this season was that the Stanley Cup was won by the Detroit Red Wings, a huge rival of my Chicago Blackhawks. Despite the fact that I'm an all-Chicago fan, I don't really mind the Lions, Tigers or Pistons that much. It seems that the Blackhawks-Red Wings rivalry is taken most seriously of all the Chicago-Detroit feuds though, so the Red Wings are on my "always root against" list. Admittedly, I haven't developed a real hatred for them yet, as I'm still new to hockey fandom, but they're about as close as you can get in my situation.

How about that Super Bowl? I heard about the outcome, but like the NBA Finals I didn't watch a nanosecond of it (except to see that play everyone was talking about on YouTube after the fact). I hate both the Giants and the Patriots, so I decided to spare myself the agony of watching one of them win it all.

What? The Boston hater didn't want to see the undefeated Patriots lose and all the smiles wiped off the faces of the arrogant Beantowners? Sorry, but not if it had to be at the hands of the Giants. Not only do they represent New York and have plenty of obnoxious fans of their own, but their quarterback is Eli Manning. The guy whined his way out of playing for the Chargers and has now been rewarded for it. When someone like Eli Manning wins a Super Bowl after four years in the league it only perpetuates the idea that big market teams with lots of historical success are somehow more important and worth playing for than teams that haven't yet reached that level. It makes me sick. John Elway had to pay penance for doing the same thing with three Super Bowl losses and the question of if he'd ever win the big game for over a decade. Eli got off with only a few years of doubt from the New York media and some criticism from his former tailback.

Then, of course, we have the most important sporting event of them all: the World Series. I threw all my support behind three different teams over the course of the Playoffs, but the one that ended up holding the trophy was the Red Sox, the team the evil city loves most. I could try to recapture my feelings about it here, but I think my post from after the Series ended says it better than I could right now.

If we end up with a Cardinals-Red Sox World Series or some such abomination 2008 will officially be the worst year in the history of sports. Of course, I'll probably still watch the World Series even if it features two teams I hate just because I love the game of baseball so much. After the way the past year has gone though, a team I can be happy for winning the World Series would do a lot to keep me from sinking into sports depression.

There's something exhilarating about discovering a new sport. Right now I'm learning about the game of hockey, and I see it as a sort of journey that will hopefully end with me understanding and appreciating it like I never did before. With baseball season over, few NBA games I'm interested in being televised and the NFL having been reduced to something I casually check the scores for, it's the most exciting thing happening in my life as a sports fan. I don't fully love the game of hockey yet, but I think I'm on my way.

It's hard for me to connect to any sport without a sense of its history, so right now I'm in the process of learning the history of the NHL. In the past I'd looked up old rosters and Stanley Cup Final results, but that obviously still left plenty of gaps in my knowledge. I'm now looking up full playoff results in order to get a sense of which teams were good when. I've learned about some of the rivalries, and I'm starting to get a sense of who the greatest players and coaches were. There are several expansions and franchise shifts I still need to commit to memory, but that'll likely come with time. Right now most of my knowledge doesn't go back farther than the 80's, but I'm working on it.

I've also learned a lot of the rules and terminology of the game. I now understand what a "power play" is, what the Plus/Minus stat signifies, what the "C" and "A" on the jerseys mean, and other details like that. Again, I still have several gaps in my knowledge, but little things make a difference in understanding the bigger picture.

I find it hard to enjoy a competition when I don't have a preference for who wins, so it was necessary for me to decide which teams I like and dislike. Because of my fierce loyalty to Chicago, my favorite team is the Blackhawks. They may have just lost two in a row, but I'm sticking with them. I've decided that I hate the Detroit Red Wings (due to their being the top dog in the Blackhawks' division), the Montréal Canadiens (24 Stanley Cup titles makes you hockey's answer to the Yankees) and the Boston Bruins (because they're from the evil city). Even though the Washington Capitals stink, their games are broadcast locally, so I guess I sort of pull for them. I don't actively root for any team that's won the Stanley Cup in recent times, and I root against any New York team by default, unless they happen to be playing one of the teams I actively hate.

I've also downloaded a Super Nintendo emulator for my computer and a rom of the game NHL '94. It's supposed to be the best hockey game of all time, so I figured it was worth a try since I like classic video games. I'm still not very good at it (that whole "scoring goals" thing is a bit tricky for me), but I'm sure I'll get better with some practice. I've definitely gotten better at "Shootout" mode since I first started playing it. Faking out the goalie isn't nearly as tough as it used to be. Perhaps I should buy the actual game rather than playing an emulated version on the computer.

I may be a relative outsider to the world of hockey right now, but hopefully someday I'll be able to analyze the game, have an extensive knowledge of its history, and even participate in intelligent discussion about it. For now, I'm enjoying this time when it's all still fresh information to me. There's so much to look forward to.