Best of 2013 Explosion! A recap of Sports Awesomeness

Baconators, 2013 was more amazing than getting your first pair of Air Jordan’s and finding out about the Contra code for 30 lives for the first time, combined. We decided that we’d give you a yearly recap unlike any other by breaking down what went down in the world of sports through our eyes on a month by month basis. Enjoy.

January

We kicked off the New Year by Asking Girls at the Bar Sports Questions and too much of our delight one girl thought that Phil Jackson was related to Michael Jackson. We made Alex Flannagan make a lot of funny faces for the first time and a Bengals fan used some duct tape to turn an expired Chad Johnson jersey into something funny. Manti Te’o made up a fake girlfriend and gave us countless tweets of hilarity, we recast Blue Chips using todays NBA players (who hasn’t wondered who would play Neon Boudeaux?) and also fought NBA players in Mike Tyson’s Punch Out.

February

February is the worst sports month of the year since football ends and March Madness hasn’t started yet but we kept things rolling like the Birdman circa Denver Nuggets. We threw a Rock a Jersey party where someone actually rocked a signed Jimmy Chitwood Hoosiers jersey and the start of our fascination with random athletes launched. It’s not a Bacon Sports party unless there’s bacon. You know who really dug bacon? The girls at our party.

We found a way to make NBA All-Star Weekend better by creating an NBA Jam style 2-on-2 tournament that had seedings and brackets and loved that so much that we created a 32 player, 1-on-1 tournament that would absolutely crush. We debated if 1988 or 2000 was the greatest NBA Slam Dunk Contest ever and even dropped the most interesting Kurt Thomas article ever (and that is not an understatement).

Some yinzer rocked a Gene Lamont Pirates jersey and we gave some business advice to Tiki Barber’s new company by giving them 7 Unforgettable Experiences with athletes that Thuzio needs to offer,

March

March is all about one thing, basketball. UCLA Cheerleaders reminded us why it wouldn’t suck to go to school at UCLA and we wanted to see a Hard Knocks style behind the scene look at the March Madness selection process TV show created. Carmelo Anthony was a beast at Syracuse and after one year was off to the NBA to get drafted after Darko Milicic. How would Syracuse have done had he stayed all four years?

We watched Step Up 2: The Streets for the 100th time and noticed someone rocking a Gilbert Arenas Wizards jersey that was a major fail. Shame on you Hollywood. One Orlando Magic fan creatively salvaged his Dwight Howard jersey by accurately portraying his character and we went old school by telling you which NBA players would be Ecto Cooler and Surge.

Have you ever wondered who is a better announcer: Gus Johnson or Doc Emrick? We did and we debated who was better. NHL 94, the Nerf Turbo, Ken Griffey Jr’s 1989 Upper Deck Rookie Card, “Nothing but Net”, and the Charlotte Hornets Starter Jacket all went into the first ever Retro Hall of Fame, and we relived the best baseball Nintendo games.

Not forgetting that sport that gets little to no major network coverage, we kept hockey fans happy by giving a tribute to Bill Clement and Gary Throne. The best jersey of the month was rocked by Mr T at a Chicago Blackhawks game.

April

What a fantastic sports month filled with lots of beginnings and endings. We launched our first weekly female column where our resident unicorn/sports chick dished about random sports and life absurdity with her Ask a Sports Chick column. We made the beautiful and talented Alex Flannagan make more funny faces and also held the first ever Female Sideline reporter mock draft. Haven’t you always wanted to be able to draft Erin Andrews, Sage Steele or Doris Burke?

The Final Four was set and naturally the first thing we thought about was which Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle best represented each team.

Hoops ended and baseball started. You know what’s awesome about living in Chicago? Cubs opening day. We were there acting a fool and decided to document it all. Our day included hot bartenders, meeting the first person in line to get in the stadium, interviewing a superhero, and meeting a guy who can stick cans to his head (you read that correctly and this is not a joke, you really won’t believe it unless you see it). We also captured a ton of random jerseys and as you can imagine, Cubs fans went hard in the paint.

The dirty but not actually dirty baseball picture of the year happened between the White Sox and Royals and we constructed the greatest baseball and rap infused lineup up ever: the Wu-Tang Clan as a baseball team. Jay-Z decided that he would become a sports agent so we dished about what other rappers would be like as agents. Yep, we are hard like that. YMCMB.

Hockey was still in season and naturally we covered the greatest mullets that players rocked. Sticking with fashion we opened up our closets and showed you the most unique sports t-shirts that you need to add to your collection.

May

We celebrated the birth of George Brett by showing what is the greatest candid sports video ever where he talks about how he crapped his pants while in Las Vegas. We lost one of the most influential cultural icons of our youth. Someone who showed us how to wear our clothes backwards. This was our tribute to Kris Kross.

Some hockey fans felt the need to Jump Jump like the Daddy Mac over the glass during hockey games. They promptly got destroyed. It’s safe to say that these nut jobs weren’t in Chicago and didn’t listen to the Star Spangled Badass belt out the greatest rendition of the National Anthem anywhere in the land. We awarded an MVP of the Mighty Ducks Trilogy in one of the most thorough breakdowns you’ll ever see and we got Red Wings fans in a Chicago bar to give us impressions of Chewbacca and show us how they did the robot.

We didn’t know that the Pittsburgh Pirates had a magical season in store since they were so putrid for 20 years. Here’s the players that made them so awful for two decades. Speaking of awful, how about the crazy chick at the Miami Heat/Chicago Bulls playoff game that flicked everyone off on national TV? And don’t forget about how bad athletes have been dressing. It’s like they are straight out of a 90’s sitcom.

June

It was a Milton Bradley-like crazy month for us as the Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup in dramatic fashion. Before Game 1 of the Cup Final we had a Craigslist ad staring a made up character who had a persona of Ric Flair, Bud Fox, and Zack Morris that cage dove with sharks go viral which lead to an actual giveaway where we gave away 2 tickets to Game 1. Here’s the video submissions that were sent in to try and win the tickets including the winning one. We were in Wrigleyville to capture the reaction of fans when both goals went in, when the Blackhawks raised the cup, and the absolute insanity that went down on the streets. It was crazier than a gorilla on acid. After that we played man on the street at the Blackhawks Cup parade and took in all the wonderfulness that comes with winning the cup.

The team from Bayside High was not immune from a steroid scandal and the NBA Finals took place so we decided to fuse them together with characters from Mortal Kombat. Who hasn’t thought about the similarities between Tony Parker and Liu Kang?

July

Hoopster season is now in full swing. We kick off summertime Chi with the Hoopster Manifesto, everything that you need to know about hoopsters and rocking random jerseys. With Lollapalooza a month away we dropped the 5 types of hoopsters you’ll see at Lolla.

At this point in the year the Pittsburgh Pirates were 20 games over .500 and in first place. That was a great time to look back at the Pirates pitching fails from the 20 years. Speaking of fails, this Brett Favre Cubs jersey absolutely blew our mind. Bronson Arroyo was on the Pirates once, but it was his time in Cincinnati that led to a phenomenon known as “Bronsoning”.

College football was right around the corner so we payed homage to the greatest college football mind in all of the land: Phil Steele. Uncle Jesse, Uncle Joey, and Danny Tanner also got some dap as we compared the men of Full House to pro athletes. Have Mercy.

August

One of the worst trends of the year was girls wearing high wasted jean shorts. We called for an end to this plague that made women look grosser than gross. This trend was especially prevalent at Lollapalooza where there were just as many HWJS’s as there were hoopsters rocking jerseys. Luckily hoopsters went hard in the paint and did not disappoint with the jerseys they rocked. Here are all 115 jerseys that we captured at Lolla.

Another trend that we called for an end to was girls taking pictures with duck lips. One person who has had a lot of lips on his…uh…Derek Jeter. Here’s his roster of girlfriends that were probably fortunate enough to get a gift basket. For those of us who don’t slay like Jeets we’ve probably had to resort to taking care of business ourselves. Back in the day, before Al Gore invented the Internet, men had to take care of business to scrambled porn (which was usually on Channel 99). This made us think about how scrambled porn and the NFL Preseason are similar.

Speaking of getting down, we jammed forever with the team from Hang Time, showed you 9 ways to sneak booze into a game, and called you an idiot in some lyrical magic if you don’t root for Tiger Woods. Fantasy football draft guy was back in our lives and we gave some dap to the greatest sports video game ever: Super Tecmo Bowl.

September

We started the month off on a very strange note as the Mets Milf Hunter was on the prowl, we found out what shows up on Google images when you search “Rollerblade Jorts” (hint: Brett Favre appears), and gave you the 5 worst songs that you hear at a stadium. We wined, dined, and 69’ed Seabass’ character from Dumb and Dumber and Browns fans lost their shit when Trent Richardson got traded. Little did they know that he may have been the problem, not the solution. Had the Browns just taken our advice they would have just blown into a Nintendo Cartridge and all of life’s problems would have been solved. Speaking of Nintendo, we gave you the Top 5 underrated sports video games.

October

There was a lot of fake stuff this month. We gave you the top 5 quarterbacks to ever play fake football on the big screen, a guide on how buy a jersey and not get fooled by a knockoff, and what a dating profile would look like for Ryan Lochte, Tim Tebow, and Kris Humpries. We also helped you figure out what the hell the Macho Man Randy Savage was saying in his WWF promo.

We were at College Gameday in Northwestern where we captured all the signs and nerdiness that went down, came up with a 90’s boy band comprised of nothing but NFL QB’s, and shared the 10 sportcasters that we’d want to send us to prison. Nothing like thinking about Marv Albert sentencing you to 5-10 years in the clink. YES!

Charlies Conway and Johnny Moxon fought for the Joey Potter Cup, the Saved by the Bell showed us some end zone dances, and Rod Belding threw his name in to consideration for the Texas Longhorns head coach position.

We love girls who are awesome and like sports and launched our Searching for the Unicorn concept. Our first ever unicorn was Danielle Berman, a Randall Cunningham jersey rocking sports junkie from Philly that has a great story about John Kruk wanting to get him some.

Athletes were front and center, as if they need more attention, with the Top 5 athletes in commercials and Top 5 Halloween costumes.

Last but not least, I almost died running the DC Marathon (really) but thankfully didn’t so I was able to document what went down.

November

This was the biggest month in the history of our company as we were planning for a 1000 person Bacon, Sports & Beer Celebration that was going to be more amazing than a breakdancing unicorn. The tag line was the hat trick of awesomeness and it most certainly didn’t disappoint. 20 different breweries serving craft beer tastings, 29 different restaurants serving delicious bacon inspired creations, 4 pop-a-shot hoops, a long drive golf simulator, baseball card wallpaper, TV’s with games on, lots of random jerseys, an action photo booth, and a killer DJ pumping out old school 90’s rap. BOOMSHAKALAKA! Here’s a video recap of all the amazingness that went down, the top 100 pictures from the Action Photo Booth, and a video mashup of Girl Talk plus people getting down at the Action Photo Booth. Go big or go home.

With bacon on our minds we told you which athletes would like to replace gatorade with bacon and who our favorite athletes are from north of the border (we call them Canadian Bacon). We also helped you understand what the hell the Ultimate Warrior was spewing in his promo video as well as some WWF wrestlers that thought they could sing.

December

On the heels of a successful event we were flying high like the Rockers or Flying Brian Pillman. We had so much fun playing all those games at the Celebration that we dished about the best sports arcade games from our youth (think bubble hockey, not NBA Jam) and gave 10 things to help sports fans not look foolish while rocking a jersey.

We go hard in the paint in everything that we do and taking a cab ride is no exception. You ever see someone freestyle rap in a cab to some Kayne? How about to some Cashin’ Out? That’s how we do.

We froze our butts off and our beer froze at the Bears Monday Night Football game where they smoked the Cowboys, a Lions fan went on an epic rant following their Week 16 collapse which resulted in them being eliminated from the playoffs, and Rod Tidwell gave us 5 nuggets of wisdom.

Beer league hockey players got some dap, our second Unicorn of the Week was crowned, and we saw two of the best/worst jerseys ever, both from Cleveland Browns fans. Say hello to a Trent Richardson 2014 First jersey and a Lebron Browns jersey. Oh my!

To cap the year off we handed out the Worst, Worster, and Worstest Fantasy Football Awards as well as a 2013 Sports Awards for the best, worst, and everything in between.

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To all of you who interact with us on Twitter or Facebook, dig random jerseys, sports nostalgia, random athletes, read our articles or attended the Bacon, Sports & Beer Celebration we thank you. 2013 was an unbelievable year and 2014 is going to be even more amazing than hoverboards from Back to the Future II.

Later Gators.