The usual suspects are sitting there, just waiting to be bashed.

The pathetic mismanagement of the Chicago Bears’ coaching search by their front office. Bob Bowlsby’s continued blundering over the Tom Davis issue. The Hawkeyes falling flat on their faces three games in succession. The boring, idiotic farce that is Super Bowl media day.

But I just can’t bring myself to bash them today. I feel like writing a positive, upbeat column that focuses on the good in sports.

With that in mind, I present my first annual “JSA” awards. What are these for?

They are, to quote Mister Burns, for “outstanding achievement in the field of excellence.” These awards are a retrospective on 1998. To be honest, there were a lot of bad things that happened in the sports realm during 1998.

The USA hockey team’s inexcusable lack of effort and embarrassing behavior at the Nagano Olympics. The destruction of the Florida Marlins. The NBA lockout.

The unveiling of the Bowl Championship Series, whose acronym has one too many letters. The terrible NFL coverage by CBS- TV.

But they were outweighed by the many positive events that happened this year. Who can forget the historic home run race? Or Kerry Wood’s 20-K masterpiece? How about MJ going out, as one sportswriter put it, “in an eye-aching blaze of glory”? So without further ado, here are the awards:

Most emotional post-championship celebration: The Detroit Red Wings presenting their second Stanley Cup to partially paralyzed defenseman Vladimir Constantinov.

That was very emotional in a positive sense. But can you imagine how those in Real Quiet’s camp felt after he faded down the stretch at the Belmont? He still won two triple crown events, so he receives:

The “Close, but no Cigar” Award: To Real Quiet, the horse who won the Derby and the Preakness but faded down the stretch in the Belmont to just miss winning the Triple Crown.

Real Quiet was close to winning it all. Kerry Wood was close to pitching a no-hitter in just his fifth major league star, giving him:

The “Best Debut” Award: Hands down to Kerry Wood, who fanned 20 Astros in a remarkable display of power pitching.

Another Cub with lots of power is their right fielder. After a start to the season which showed great plate discipline but not great power, he picked it up. In fact, he picked it up so much, he receives this special JSA Award:

The “Hotter than Hot” Award: To Sammy Sosa, who burst into the home run race with 10 home runs in 9 games at the end of May and continued his streak by hitting 20 taters in June.

Everybody knows about the 65 by Sammy and the 70 by Mac, both very impressive records. But here is the:

Most impressive record nobody’s heard of: It’s a tie between Pete Sampras winning his 12th grand slam event, which tied Roy Emerson’s record, and his finishing No. 1 for the sixth straight year.

Sampras has dominated his sport for a long time, and another athlete who has dominated his sport is No. 23 on the Chicago Bulls. He receives the award for:

Most amazing sequence: Michael Jordan hitting a tough driving layup to cut the Utah Jazz lead to one, stealing the ball from Karl Malone, faking Bryon Russell out of his shorts with a crossover and draining a 20-foot jumper to win the NBA championship for the sixth time in eight years. And all this in the final minute of his NBA career.

Jordan, we all know, has been the champ many times. To honor those who haven’t had such great sustained success, we present:

The “I finally won it” Award: A tie between Jana Novotna, for winning Wimbledon after several horrific collapses, and Prairie View A&M for winning their first football game in God only knows how long.

And finally, we present an award, which, though it is technically a 1999 award, is richly deserved:

The “most gratuitous use of boldface” Award: Presented to this columnist, for his stunning use of the big B in two consecutive columns.

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Jayadev Athreya is a senior in Math from Ames.