South Side Rule: The 2005 Chicago White Sox, Bears & Illinois Basketball

In a previous edition of TheSportsNotebook’s tribute to which city had the best year in sports, we paid homage to Chicago in 1993. It’s the Windy City that again gets the nod for 2005, but with a different cast of characters.

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The White Sox were a bit player in ’93 as a division winner, and they upgrade to star of the ’05 performance. Chicago’s South Side baseball team won their first World Series since 1917 and eradicated the “Black Sox Curse”, the eight players who were thrown out of baseball after fixing the 1919 World Series for gamblers.
While 1993’s year was carried by Michael Jordan’s Bulls, who won a championship and Lou Holtz’s Notre Dame football team, who deserved one, it’s a different set of pro and college team that step up in ’05.
The Illinois basketball team came within a basket of an undefeated regular season and within one win of a national title. And the Chicago Bears played a sound supporting role in winning the NFC North.
We have to limit our celebration of Chicago sports a little bit while the only fans who can truly embrace all of this are South Siders (the good people of the North were still suffering with the Cubs), it was a great year to be in Chitown and for fans on the South Side of Chicago, 2005 was the most special of sports years.
Read more about the 2005 Illinois basketball team
Read more about the 2005 Chicago White Sox
Read more about the 2005 Chicago Bears