You may and probably will disagree more than once with this list, but here are my personal awards for the past decade in sports, given out as I see fit. Be sure to point out my biases/omissions and tell me how crazy I am in the comments. Or even better yet, e-mail me your list at mattralph@earthlink.net.

Athlete of the Decade
Michael Phelps. As easy as Phelps made it look, that wheelbarrow full of medals he collected in two Olympics was no easy task. Add in all of the hardware he collected swimming for World Championships and other competitions and Tiger Woods doesn’t look quite as impressive.

Team of the Decade
2001-02 Detroit Red Wings. Steve Yzerman, Chris Chelios, Luc Robataille, Domink Hasek, Brett Hull, Sergei Federov, Nicklas Lidstrom and Brendan Shanahan. Talk about a great collection of talent. I can’t think of a team that even comes close to having that kind of talent all in one place – or in my case a team in hockey over the last decade that had that many players whose names I recognized.

Coach of the Decade
Geno Auriemma. Sure, he gets all the best women’s basketball recruits, but the guy coached UConn to five titles and only 28 losses in the entire decade. That’s not just impressive; it’s unbelievable.

Fans of the Decade
Minnesota Twins. Their frost-bitten hearts break just about every off-season when they lose talent to a team with deeper pockets, yet the Twins fans persist and practically will their team into contention every season. They’re stadium sucks and their homer hankies are kind of annoying, but watching the one-game playoff this fall only confirmed for me how much better their fanbase is than the ones with which I most regularly associate.

Baseball Player of the Decade
Pujols has all the right numbers and even has a ring, but no player for me represents dominance in the decade of the ‘00s quite the way Mariano Rivera does. I’m a Yankee hater so I don’t care too much for Rivera or his cutter by association, but aside from his meltdown against the D-backs in 2001 he’s been as automatic as one can be in the highest pressure job in the game.

Baseball Team of the Decade
The Red Sox and Yankees both had two World Series titles, but you have to give beantown the edge for a number of reasons. 1. Their dramatic comeback to get to the series in 2004 and finally get that Babe Ruth-sized monkey off their back. 2. The Yankees’ World Series wins were bookends to an otherwise unremarkable decade by Bronx standards. 3. The Yankees utterly ruled the ‘90s so it’s time for another team to have a turn. 4. The other Sox also won a World Series so if nothing else it was the decade of teams named after items in your top drawer.

NFL Player of the Decade
Adam Vinatieri. I know. He’s just a kicker. But if Scott Norwood can be considered one of the biggest goats in the history of sports for missing a field goal that would have won a Super Bowl, then Adam Vinatieri has to be taken seriously for making two clutch field goals that won his team the Super Bowl (and countless other crucial field goals). Tom Brady would have zero Super Bowl MVPs if Vinatieri didn’t have ice water pumping through his veins. To top it off, Vinatieri brought his magic to the Colts in 2007, filling all but his thumb on one hand with Super Bowl rings in the decade

NFL Team of the Decade
New England Patriots. No contest. Look at the stats. Do the math. It’s not even close.

NBA Player of the Decade
Steve Nash. Not because he had the best stats or won his team the most games or championships but simply because he’s one player I enjoy watching in a professional sport I really struggle to follow at all anymore. That and he’s Canadian.

NBA Team of the Decade
It’s a toss-up between the two most boring teams to watch ever in a sport I’ve found almost as inviting to watch as NASCAR in a decade with only one NBA finals that didn’t include the Lakers or Spurs and only four finals that even made it past a fifth game.

NCAA Football Player of the Decade
Matt Barkley. If Barack Obama can get a Nobel Peace Prize based on his reputation and expectation, why can’t Barkley be the player of a decade in which he only played one season? So what that he’s led USC to their worst season in years: no one can throw a “perfect” pass that wide receivers have to make a spectacular dive for quite like him. Did I mention he has mastered the art of the pump fake?

NCAA Football Team of the Decade
LSU. If Mount Union had pulled off another title victory in Division III this year I would have been more inclined to pick them, but as it stands I have to go with LSU when considering the entire decade and USC’s dismal start to the ‘00s.

NCAA Basketball Player of the Decade
Tyler Hansbrough. He was an All-American all four seasons in a decade where most of the best players didn’t even stick around for a second tour. He wasn’t the prettiest face – especially with the plastic on – but he was the face of college basketball in the decade because of his hustle, determination and iron will.

NCAA Basketball Team of the Decade
North Carolina. Save for a couple of rough patches, pride was fully restored to Tar Heel nation in a decade they sealed off with a dominant 2008-09 campaign that really has no match in the ‘00s.

Greatest Game of the Decade
2001 World Series, Game 7. I’m no Arizona Diamondbacks fan but I might as well have been because watching them do the impossible – score two runs on Mariano Rivera in the ninth inning to win the World Series –  was the best possible scenario I could have wished for in an amazingly tense and well-played seven game series.

Upset of the Decade
Greece beating Portugal in the 2004 European Championship. Greece was given 100-to-1 odds of winning the tournament so even getting to the final was a major achievement. By stunning Portugal 1-0 in the final they completed a feat much more improbable than the Giants toppling the undefeated Patriots (13.5-point favorites) or Mine That Bird (50-to-1) winning the run for the roses in 2009.

Greatest Sports Moment of the Decade
Lance Armstrong winning his seventh consecutive Tour de France in 2005. It’s hard to even imagine winning a month-long 2,200-mile bike race once, much less seven times – in a row.

Biggest Flop of the Decade
The BCS. Imagine if the NFL season ended and computers, coaches, writers and account executives for advertising firms decided what two teams would play in the Super Bowl, leaving the rest of their favorite teams to play in exhibition games on so-called neutral fields that were more or less home games for warm weather clubs. The only good the BCS has done is given bloggers something to write about every year.

Personal Sports Moment of the Decade
Witnessing Navy beat Notre Dame for the first time in 50 years. I’ve never been a Fighting Irish lover and from attending Army Navy games growing up I developed an affinity for the military service my dad dedicated much of his life to as a reserve chaplain. Being with my dad in the stands in South Bend as the Midshipmen celebrated and the Irish fans wallowed was not only a great sports moment, but a memorable one because I shared it with my dad.