Rich gannon MVP

Northern California generally lives in the shadow of its more glamorous in-state brethren to the south. It’s that NoCal doesn’t have a beautiful landscape and they’ve had their share of sports success—from the Oakland A’s dynasty of 1972-74, the San Francisco 49ers dynasty built by Bill Walsh, the A’s Bash Brothers of Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco that won three straight pennants from 1988-90, the Oakland Raiders of John Madden that became America’s first Bad Boy team in the 1970s right up to the San Francisco Giants winning the World Series last year. But sometimes even championships don’t trump the glamour of Hollywood. And when you come up just short it’s even more aggravating. Coming up just short was the story of NoCal in 2002. The Oakland A’s enjoyed a season that inspired the movie Moneyball, but lost in the playoffs. The Oakland Raiders rolled to 11 wins and won the AFC title, but lost the Super Bowl. And no loss was more aggravating—or unjust—than that suffered by the Sacramento Kings who lost the Western Conference Finals to the Los Angeles Lakers. While SoCal got titles from the Lakers and the Angels, NoCal came up agonizingly short. It’s that latter story that gets told here in TheSportsNotebook for 2002…