Brees led the Saints, long considered among the worst teams in U.S. professional football, to a come-from-behind victory in the National Football League’s Super Bowl championship game. The triumphant season boosted the spirits of the city ravaged by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

“What was most unique about this team was, very quickly, we realized we were playing for more than just football. We were playing for the region and the city,” Saints’ head coach Sean Payton told the crowd at the Espys.

Earlier, Brees collected his trophy onstage and thanked his family, his offensive line and the “Who Dat Nation,” as the team’s die-hard fans have been nicknamed.

The night’s other big winner was Olympic skier Lindsey Vonn, who took home awards for best female athlete and best female Olympian for fighting off a leg injury to win the gold medal in the downhill race at the 2010 Vancouver Games.

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NEW YORK – He was baseball’s bombastic Boss. He rebuilt the New York Yankees dynasty with sky-high payrolls and accepted nothing less than World Series championships. He fired managers. Rehired them. And fired them again.

He butted heads with commissioners and fellow owners, insulted his players and dominated tabloid headlines — even upstaging the All-Star game on the day of his death.

George Michael Steinbrenner III, who both inspired and terrorized the Yankees in more than three decades as owner, died Tuesday of a heart attack at age 80.

“He was and always will be as much of a New York Yankee as Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford and all of the other Yankee legends,” baseball commissioner Bud Selig said.

Once reviled by fans for his overbearing and tempestuous nature, Steinbrenner mellowed in his final decade and became beloved by employees and rivals alike for his success.

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As the 2010 World Cup trots to its Sunday climax, fans of the sport we call soccer and the rest of the globe calls football were reveling in the excitement the event has stoked in North America. TV ratings, through Wednesday’s semifinal matches, are up 36% over the 2006 games. Two weeks ago, the Saturday afternoon U.S.-Ghana game pulled 14.9 million viewers, the third highest U.S. audience for any men’s Cup match ever, and the largest for a game not shown in prime time.

This seeming surge has buoyed soccer’s most ardent admirers among the sportswriting and chattering classes. They get steamed when fans of football, baseball and basketball mock soccer’s severe scoring shortage, its amateur officiating, the whiny theatricality of prima-donna players feigning injury at the slightest contact. They believe that, this time, the World Cup has put an end to decades of American ignorance of the beautiful game. Surely now we will join the rest of the world and support soccer as a major professional sport. (See pictures from the 2010 World Cup.)

Naaah. In mass fandom, Americans‘ interest in soccer is a quadrennial anomaly, like the Olympics, the Presidential election and Leap Year superstore sales. We pay attention briefly, and then for four years we don’t. Consider NBC’s ratings for this February’s Winter Olympics. They were 14% higher than in 2006, but that won’t increase the long-term profile of bobsled or curling – or, among professional team sports, ice hockey, which spiked during the Olympics, then sagged to the usual levels soon after the NHL resumed play. In the past month, sports fans acceded to the 24-hour hype machine at ESPN (which, along with Univision, paid $435 million for TV rights) and watched a few games. Maybe they got involved, and resolved to follow the sport. This too shall pass, when the final games ends; and World Cup fever will again abate into soccer ague. (See pictures from the Vancouver Winter Olympics.)

Even in our brief hot spells, not many of us watch soccer, at least compared to the rest of the world. We think of American footbal’s annual Super Bowl as the highest-rated TV show. But the most widely watched show in TV history was the 2006 World Cup final between Italy and France, which lured anywhere from 400 million to 700 million. Even on the low end, that would mean that the game was seen by one in every 15 humans on the planet – and plenty of them have no access to a television set. The best the U.S. could do, for the U.S.-Ghana match, was one in 20 Americans. And, on Thursday, more of us watched another sporting event where nothing happened: ESPN’s broadcast of the LeBron James “decision.” As for the all-time top U.S. audience for any soccer game, that rating was earned by a women’s match: the 1999 U.S.-China final. In the 11 years since, women’s soccer hasn’t exactly challenged the popularity of the NFL.

In the great soccer debate, I’m on both sides. As a fan of “American” sports, I confess that I don’t get soccer. The spectacle of alpha males running around, falling down, pretending to be hurt and, all in all, achieving very little – um, when I was in school, that was called recess. Sure, it’s great exercise for the athletes, and it doesn’t require so much scrutiny from the fans that they can’t concentrate on getting drunk and planning their post-game riots. But there’s something bizarrely atavistic about a sport species that refuses to acknowledge that homo sapiens have hands. Using only feet to advance a ball puts soccer in a primitive level of development, like football before the forward pass.

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CLEVELAND – The elimination ceremony boiled down to a single sentence, uttered by the most coveted bachelor of them all.

And it ended, as such endings always do, with tears — and the self-righteous fury that inevitably follows being rejected live on national television. Millions of Americans glued to their television screens watched in anticipation and curiosity as LeBron James handed that coveted final rose to the Miami Heat, eliminating his remaining suitors in one cruel instant.

In Cleveland, grown men cried into their beers. And for crestfallen viewers in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, the moment of truth stung like a personal betrayal.

But isn’t this what America asked for? We wanted the show, the spectacle, the slow build-up to the big reveal. We love watching contestants get mercilessly booted into oblivion in front of the cameras — but we certainly don’t want to be the rejects ourselves, thank you very much.

And that’s exactly what happened Thursday night. The morning after, people are wondering: How did a decision by one basketball player jump clean out of the realm of basketball and become an American cultural moment that will be talked about for years to come?

That’s called masterful marketing. James played coy for weeks, dragging out his decision as the frenzied speculation went into overdrive. Rather than leave his home turf, he invited teams from various cities to come visit him instead. Meanwhile, hope and anxiety built like a balloon about to pop.

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CLEVELAND – The elimination ceremony boiled down to a single sentence, uttered by the most coveted bachelor of them all.

And it ended, as such endings always do, with tears — and the self-righteous fury that inevitably follows being rejected live on national television. Like a bunch of jilted contestants, Americans glued to their television screens watched, crestfallen, as LeBron James handed that coveted final rose to the Miami Heat, eliminating his remaining suitors in one cruel instant.

In Cleveland, grown men cried into their beers. And from New York to Chicago and beyond, fanning across millions of riveted ESPN viewers, the moment of truth stung like a personal betrayal.

But isn’t this what America asked for? We wanted the show, the spectacle, the slow build-up to the big reveal. We love watching contestants get mercilessly booted into oblivion in front of the cameras — but we certainly don’t want to be the rejects ourselves, thank you very much.

And that’s exactly what happened Thursday night. The morning after, people are wondering: How did a decision by one basketball player jump clean out of the realm of basketball and become an American cultural moment that will be talked about for years to come?

That’s called masterful marketing, says Gerry Patnode, who leads the school of business at York College in York, Penn. James played coy for weeks, dragging out his decision as the frenzied speculation went into overdrive. Rather than leave his home turf, he invited teams from various cities to come visit him instead. Meanwhile, hope and anxiety built like a balloon about to pop.

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