Sports >>

• Best Futbol Player
  Kenny Cooper, FC Dallas
  Kenny Cooper just may save American soccer or at least take it to the next level. At just 23, Cooper has all the skills to develop into a premier-level striker, the one thing the U.S. National Team has always lacked to go from middling to elite status. Unlike Landon Donovan, the current poster... More >>
• Best Local Daily Sports Columnist
  Tim Cowlishaw
  You can only chuckle at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram's Randy Galloway referring to Deion Sanders as "nine toe"—yeah, still—so many times, right? Cowlishaw has developed a definitive, authoritative voice as the lead columnist at The Dallas Morning News. Already with strong backgrounds... More >>
• Best Pro Coach (1 Comment)
  Wade Phillips, Dallas Cowbowys
  Kinda by default, admittedly. Avery Johnson got fired. Ron Washington almost got fired. And the only reason Dave Tippett didn't get fired is because everyone forgot about hockey. Phillips basically generated action from inaction. His laid-back, country-fried persona was just what the Cowboys... More >>
• Best Local Sports TV Anchor
  Mike Doocy
  WFAA-Channel 8's Dale Hansen may have pushed our policy on term limits had his banter with weatherman Pete Delkus not deteriorated from witty to warped. Doocy has the advantage of batting first in the sports wrap-up show game each Sunday night, and more often than not he takes advantage with a... More >>
• Best Local Sports Radio Show (2 Comments)
  Dunham & Miller
  Honorable mention to a strong debut by ESPN Radio's Michael Irvin, who lands news-making interviews with controversial subjects such as Pacman Jones and Josh Howard. Still, we can't reward a show whose co-host is homosexual. (Wink.) Given Greg Williams' departure from The Hardline, the most... More >>
• Best Owner
  Jerry Jones, Dallas Cowboys
  We suppose you instead wanted Tom Hicks? Didn't think so. Sure, the Cowboys' owner is asking for your family's DNA in return for a seat at his new Jonestown coliseum in Arlington, but you can't deny the guy's unyielding desire to win. This offseason alone, he paid about $70 million in guaranteed... More >>
• Best Hire
  Nolan Ryan by the Texas Rangers
  Unless we're totally cross-eyed on this one, SMU football coach June Jones will be accepting this hardware multiple times in the future. But for now, no personnel transaction has positively affected a franchise like the return of Big Tex to Arlington. While it's difficult to accurately quantify... More >>
• Best Promotion
  Grand Prairie AirHogs Give Away a Funeral
  When you're a fledgling independent minor league baseball franchise trying to carve a niche in the metroplex's saturated sports landscape, nothing is off limits. At least that's how the Grand Prairie AirHogs tried to justify tempting karma by giving away a $10,000 funeral—complete with... More >>
• Best Decision
  Rangers Keeping Ron Washington
  By all accounts, the manager was as good as gone in late April. His team had baseball's worst record (9-18). The Bad News Bears displayed better fundamentals. Washington was this close to getting axed. Owner Tom Hicks admitted it was "pretty close." But just as management began constructing a... More >>
• Best Drama (4 Comments)
  Greg Williams versus Mike Rhyner
  Next to Jimmy Johnson vs. Jerry Jones, and Mark Cuban vs. Don Nelson, the divorce of Dallas' most popular sports talk radio duo proved one of the most compelling in recent memory. Williams initiated the destruction with Rhyner—his longtime host on The Ticket's The Hardline—via... More >>
• Best Athlete That Made You Proud to Live in Dallas
  Michael Johnson
  We assume it's easier to part with an Olympic gold medal when you have four more on your mantel, but still, the legendary Dallas sprinter made us all proud when he dashed toward integrity in June. After learning that four of his U.S. 1,600-meter relay teammates had admitted to taking steroids in... More >>
• Best Minor League Franchise
  Frisco Roughriders
  There are teams with wackier names (the Grand Prairie AirHogs) and teams that play in more obscure leagues (the Dallas Diamonds of the Independent Women's Football League), but nobody does small ball like the Frisco RoughRiders. There's a pool in the outfield, a cowboy mascot that rides a black... More >>
• Best Imitation of What We Wished Dallas Was Like
  Arlington
  This just in: Dallas has moved to Arlington. Inexplicably, it left us with only John Wiley Price's "black hole" and half-assed plans for the Trinity River. Thanks a lot. If you're keeping score, the new $1 billion stadium once targeted for Fair Park will now host Cowboys games starting in 2009,... More >>
• Best Athletic Director
  Steve Orsini
  SMU's AD, turns out, could sell green bananas to an astronaut headed for the International Space Station. After all, he's got the Methodists again believing in big-time sports. In his two-year reign, SMU has constructed the $13 million Crum Center basketball practice facility, spent $1 million... More >>
• Best Player We Hated to See Leave
  Devin Harris
  As much as we respect Jason Kidd, man, we really miss the former Mavericks point guard of the future. Don't you? He was young. Had impeccable character. He was a one-man fast break. Sure he didn't hyper-develop like Deron Williams or Chris Paul, but you get the feeling all Harris needs to become... More >>
• Best Place to Tee Off
  TopGolf Dallas
  We all know that golf is less a sport than a Zen exercise in patience, but who's got time for that? At TopGolf Dallas, you don't have to endure a four-hour, 18-hole marathon in order to get your duffer's competitive juices flowing. TopGolf is a huge complex that at first glance looks like... More >>
• Best Sweat
  CrossFight
  After a year of boot camp workouts elsewhere, we thought we were ready for this. Then the CrossFight class started. Running, crawling, kicking, punching, push-ups, sit-ups, jump-rope, weights. It's a killer 90 minutes that tests every muscle in the body and produces more sweat than a group hug... More >>
• Best Public Golf Course
  Cowboys Golf Club
  It pales in comparison to Jerry Jones' new $1 billion stadium in Arlington, but for a mere $184.95 you can hack it around one of Texas' premier tracks. If you don't mind the constant stream of thunderous airplanes that use Cowboys' 18th fairway to line up a runway, you can almost convince... More >>
• Best Intimidating Answer to a Legitimate Question
  Marion Barber
  The highest-paid running back in Dallas Cowboys' franchise history received a seven-year, $45 million contract in the spring despite starting just one game and never producing a 1,000-yard season. How's that, you ask? Because Marion Barber is a badass, forged out of muscle, menace and downright... More >>
• Best Sports Venue
  QuikTrip Park
  Before JerryWorld opens its doors and grabs this title for the next decade, Quik-Trip Park in Grand Prairie stands as the best place to catch a ballgame. Sure, it's minor league baseball, but this team is good (the AirHogs made it to the championship series this season), and the fan experience... More >>
• Best Local Olympic Athlete
  Nastia Liukin
  We wanted to crown Duncanville boxer Luis Yanez. No, really. If you only knew. But it's hard to argue with the five medals— one gold, three silvers and a bronze—that the 18-year-old gymnast won in Beijing in August. Plus, the bouncy blonde from Parker, who trains at the same World... More >>
• Best Horse Trainer
  Steve Asmussen
  Questions about doping aside, there's no taking away from what Steve Asmussen's done in the last year. He's gone from the guy who takes the leading trainer crown every year at Lone Star Park to the guy who's training the best horse in the world. That horse would be Curlin, and earlier this year,... More >>
• Best Golfer
  Anthony Kim
  Justin Leonard may have the best résumé of any pro golfer living in Dallas (two majors and 11 PGA victories), but nobody in the area has had the year Anthony Kim has had. In May, Kim won his first PGA Tour tournament, the Wachovia Championship, with the lowest score (-16) in the... More >>
• Best Ranger
  Josh Hamilton
  Though his arrival cost the Rangers a National League Cy Young candidate in Edinson Volquez, Hamilton's impact and future have overshadowed even the return of Nolan Ryan. The slugger has overcome his well-chronicled drug demons—hope you're taking notes, Pacman Jones and Josh... More >>
• Best Cowboy
  Jason Witten
  It's OK. Your heroes can still be Cowboys. Best buddy Tony Romo has more famous girlfriends, and Terrell Owens has more shiny endorsements, but no player was more important to the Cowboys last season than Witten. Already with a spot reserved in the Ring of Honor as the franchise's all-time best... More >>
• Best Sports Moment
  Stars Eliminate Sharks in Four-Overtime Classic
  In another year in which most of our teams cock-teased us with regular-season foreplay and playoff impotence, the Stars finally gave us reason to explode. On a Sunday night in early May, the Stars advanced to the NHL Western Conference Finals with a classic 2-1 victory over the San Jose Sharks... More >>
• Best Maverick
  Dirk Nowitzki
  Last year he didn't push his team to the NBA Finals as in 2006 or win Most Valuable Player as in 2007, but the giant German is now and will be into the foreseeable future the heart and soul of the Mavs. Plus, anyone who bit his lip under Avery Johnson's reign deserves some sort of plaque, right?... More >>
• Best Star
  Brenden Morrow
  Once upon a time he sheepishly accepted the team's "C" from longtime icon Mike Modano. But this spring he unceremoniously shoved ol' Mo' to the third line and clearly ascended to one of our best two-way athletes. In Dallas' spirited three-series playoff run, captain Morrow was like the legendary... More >>
• SPORTS: Space Cowboys
  Assume that one day humans overcome physics' celestial speed limit and head to the stars. What shape will commercial space travel take? If predicting the future were as simple as extrapolating from the present, we could make a few educated guesses: Checking a bag will cost you $1.7 million;... More >>