Jerry Tarkanian, head basketball coach at UNLV, was a character seemingly straight out of Damon Runyon, right down to his “Tark The Shark” nickname. Tark had been chasing college basketball nirvana for a long time. He’d brought favored teams to the Final Four in 1977 and 1987, but come up short. The 1990 UNLV basketball was one that had the horses to go the distance and Tark proved to be an able jockey.
The Detroit Pistons had completed their breakthrough of the Showtime Lakers and the Bird Celtics with a championship in 1989. If Detroit glance in the rearview mirror they could see the Jordan Bulls gaining steam, but the 1990 Detroit Pistons held off all challengers and won a second straight NBA title.
It was Cincinnati’s first time on top since the days of the Big Red Machine. As for Oakland, with three straight pennants and a 1989 World Series title, there was no question what they’d accomplished. But this stunning sweep in the 1990 World Series marked twice in three years that they’d folded up in the Fall Classic as a heavy favorite.
The 1990 college football season started with defending national champion Miami being upset by BYU and its soon-to-be Heisman Trophy winning quarterback Ty Detmer. That should have told us we were headed for a year that would be on the bizarre side. The BYU-Miami game unleashed a year of upsets and upheaval not seen since the seminal year of 1981.
The Calgary Flames were hoisting the Cup, and a run of NHL dynasties that had seen only Montreal, the New York Islanders and Edmonton win the title since 1975 finally ran its course in the 1989 NHL playoffs
The 1989 Michigan basketball team was loaded with talent, from All-American forward Glen Rice to talented sophomore Sean Higgins, to the low post duo of Terry Mills and Loy Vaught to their fine point guard Rumeal Robinson. But after a third-place finish in the Big Ten, they looked ready to go into the books as an underachieving disappointment.
The Detroit Pistons knocked on the NBA championship door in 1987. In 1988, they beat on it. And to borrow a motivational phrase from former Houston Oilers’ football coach Bum Phillips, the 1989 Detroit Pistons were the team that kicked the door in.
The A’s rolled through the playoffs, but the big story of the 1989 World Series was the earthquake that devastated a Bay Area battle with the San Francisco Giants, caused a delay for ten days between games and more importantly, caused massive human suffering.
The Notre Dame-Miami game that ultimately decided college football’s 1989 national championship game wasn’t the epic battle it had been the prior year. It wasn’t as clear-cut that these were the best two teams. The sequel to Catholics vs. Convicts was much like Godfather II—it was pretty good, but it could never measure against the standard set by the original.
Toronto would succumb to the steamroller that was the 1989 Oakland A’s of Tony LaRussa, Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire in the American League Championship Series. But both the Blue Jays and the Orioles gave baseball fans a terrific September stretch run, the most exciting regular season race in the 1989 MLB season.
…It was a most improbable ride to a Final Four. A #6 seed had gone through the bracket playing no one seeded higher than fourth (Kansas State)
The 1988 Edmonton Oilers didn’t dominate the regular season in the manner they had been accustomed to since 1983, a year that marked their first appearance in the Stanley Cup Finals with Wayne Gretzky and was followed up by their first championship a year later. But what the 1988 edition of the Edmonton Oilers did have was an ability to step it up in the playoffs and they added another Cup to their Gretzky-era legac