2011: Greatest Sports Year Ever?

In December, I was looking back at the year in sports and realized that it had been quite fascinating. On one hand, off the field incidents and scandals rocked the sports world. Between lockouts in both the NBA and NFL and the Jerry Sandusky scandal, many fans became disillusioned with their favorite leagues and teams. On the other, the on the field dramatics and performances seemed better than in years past. In college sports, we saw a thrilling BCS title game and not one but two Cinderella runs to the Final Four. The Super Bowl came down to the wire, and the NBA Finals was among the most talked about in years. Even non-traditional sports such as the NHL and women's soccer made big headlines. However, to me, and likely to most true sports fans, the real icing on the cake was baseball's amazing year, arguably the greatest in league history (more on that later). Despite all of this, no one in the media or on the web made much note of the year as being great. Was I just imagining things? I needed to find a way to quantify it, so I came up with a crude evaluation. The end results of it were almost shocking. (See after jump.)

What I did was look at the championships for the four major sports: the Super Bowl, the World Series, and the Stanley Cup and NBA Finals. I created a points system, based on final score for the Super Bowl and the number of games for the others. The Super Bowl's used the margin of victory, which range from 1 point to 45 points. The best-of-seven series were given 10 points for each game under the maximum they went, for a range of 0 to 30 points. In the end, I would look at the years with the lowest total. The results are as follows:

Year	Super Bowl	NBA Finals	Stanley Cup	World Series	Total
1967	25	10	10	0	45
1968	19	10	30	0	59
1969	9	0	30	20	59
1970	16	0	30	20	66
1971	3	30	0	0	33
1972	21	20	10	0	51
1973	7	20	10	0	37
1974	17	0	10	20	47
1975	10	30	10	0	50
1976	4	10	30	30	74
1977	18	10	30	10	68
1978	17	0	10	10	37
1979	4	20	20	0	44
1980	12	10	10	10	42
1981	17	10	20	10	57
1982	5	10	30	0	45
1983	10	30	30	20	90
1984	29	0	20	20	69
1985	22	10	20	0	52
1986	36	10	20	0	66
1987	19	10	0	0	29
1988	32	0	30	20	82
1989	4	30	10	30	74
1990	45	20	20	30	95
1991	1	20	10	0	31
1992	13	10	30	10	63
1993	35	10	20	10	75
1994	17	0	0	n/a	17*
1995	23	30	30	10	93
1996	10	10	30	10	60
1997	14	10	30	0	54
1998	7	10	30	30	77
1999	15	20	10	30	75
2000	7	10	10	20	47
2001	27	20	0	0	47
2002	3	30	20	0	53
2003	27	10	0	10	47
2004	3	20	0	30	53
2005	3	0	n/a	30	33*
2006	11	10	0	20	41
2007	12	30	20	30	92
2008	3	10	10	20	43
2009	4	20	0	10	34
2010	14	0	10	20	44
2011	6	10	0	0	16

You are not seeing things; 2011 does rank as the lowest. So, even if this is a rudimentary system,this begs the question: was 2011 one of the greatest if not the greatest among years in sports?