365 days gone by: A look back at Seattle's year in sports

Top six local sports stories for 2006

1 | Seahawks play in Super Bowl for first time

2 | Oklahoma group buys Sonics, Storm for $350 million

3 | Seattle's Apolo Anton Ohno takes gold at Olympics

4 | Chief Sealth High stripped of girls basketball titles

5 | Mariners trade Moyer, finish in last place again

6 | Roy, Morrison lead UW, Zags into NCAA tourney

Six to blame for Seahawks' three-game losing streak

• Injuries

• Steve Hutchinson

• Steve Hutchinson's agent

• Jerramy Stevens

• Bad weather at Qwest Field

• Texas A&M

Six most likely future homes for the Sonics and Storm

• Bellevue. Drive time from Ballard on game nights: Two hours.

• Renton. They'd still rather have Longacres.

• Oklahoma City. Oklahomans are fine with the Storm, but are having second thoughts about taking the Sonics.

• Enid. Fallback Oklahoma option.

• Centralia. If plans for $80 million rodeo arena don't work out, they'll settle for Sonics and Storm.

• Granite Falls. City officials eager to prove they're a "major-league city."

Six duos we loved to watch in 2006

• Storm stars Lauren Jackson and Betty Lennox

• Mariners outfielders Ichiro and Raul Ibanez

• Sonics scorers Ray Allen and Rashard Lewis

• UW volleyball All-Americans Courtney Thompson and Christal Morrison

• Seahawks Matt Hasselbeck and Shaun Alexander (the January versions)

• UW basketball seniors Brandon Roy and Will Conroy

Say, didn't you pitch for the Mariners in 2006?

There are a lot of former Mariners pitchers out there. Jamie Moyer is in Philadelphia. Gil Meche is $55 million richer, proving you can never underestimate the stupidity of baseball owners. Joel Pineiro is looking for work. Eddie Guardado hopes he'll be able to pitch again. Rafael Soriano and Emiliano Fruto were traded, to Atlanta and Washington. But the best former Mariners pitcher story belongs to Bobby Livingston.

Livingston, a Mariner as recently as Dec. 12, belonged to four teams in three days. First, he was claimed on waivers by Tampa Bay, then traded to Philadelphia for cash. But Major League Baseball nixed that deal, claiming the Phillies and Devil Rays circumvented the waiver process with a prearranged trade. Livingston was then assigned to Cincinnati on a waiver claim. As far as anyone knows, he's still with the Reds.

Best "Cops" moment of 2006

No one locally matched the Detroit Lions assistant coach who drove through a Wendy's naked, but one UW football player gave it the old college try.

Michael Houston, a sophomore running back for the Huskies who was redshirting after transferring from Texas, was suspended from the team after being arrested on suspicion of auto theft. But not just any auto theft.

According to a report from the King County Sheriff's office, Houston, two other men and a woman were picked up by an Orange Cab at Déjà Vu, a strip club on Bothell Way Northeast. (They must have already been done studying for the night.)

After the cab drove them to a nearby McDonald's, the woman spit on a window. When the cab driver stepped outside to call 911, Houston jumped from the back seat to the front of the cab and drove away.

Seattle Police found the cab parked on Lake City Way Northeast and saw Houston exiting the cab. Houston was caught (so much for his breakaway speed), arrested and booked into King County Jail.

Honorable mention goes to Tank Johnson in the former Huskies division (gun charges), Shawn Kemp in the former Sonics division (marijuana charges) and Koren Robinson in the former Seahawks category (drunken-driving, fleeing police charges).

Orange Cab shenanigans aside, six reasons to feel good about the future of UW football

• Coach Tyrone Willingham seems to be running a tight ship.

• There was that Apple Cup victory over the Cougars.

• Jake Locker, quarterback of the future.

• OK, we've only got three.

Best Seattle-area Olympian not named Apolo Ohno

• Kelly Stephens, USA hockey team. Stephens and the U.S. team won a bronze medal in the Turin Olympics. Stephens, a 2001 graduate of Shorewood High School, was a college star at Minnesota, co-captain of a team that won back-to-back NCAA titles.

While you were busy watching the Huskies, some other college athletes had great years at Seattle Pacific

• Chris Randolph, a senior decathlete, won his second consecutive NCAA Division II title.

• Senior Tony Binetti (Enumclaw High School) was a basketball All-American and conference player of the year for 2005-06 season.

• The Falcons volleyball team, led by third-team All-American setter Jenna Von Moos (Stanwood HS), was 24-3 this fall, winning all 16 of its conference matches.

• Freshman Jessica Pixler (Eastlake HS) won her first four cross-country races this fall, despite concentrating primarily on soccer. She was 10th in the NCAA cross-country race, first among freshmen.

• SPU alumni category: Goalkeeper Marcus Hahnemann helped Reading FC win the Championship (second tier) in England. The club is currently ninth in the 20-team Premier League.

And at Seattle University

• Chris Coley became Seattle U.'s first Division II national champion swimmer, winning the 100 butterfly in school-record time. He set another school record in the 200 butterfly, finishing third and is Seattle U.'s first two-time All-American.

• Junior midfielder Ashley Porter (Inglemoor HS) became the first Seattle U. women's soccer first-team All-American in 12 years.

• The men's and women's soccer teams each won conference titles. The men, led by first-year coach Brad Agoos and conference player of the year Jason Cascio, advanced to the Division II Elite Eight.

• The softball team, led by sophomores Jane Purdy (.418, 11 HR, 58 RBI) and Erin Martin (23-12, 1.92 ERA), advanced to the NCAA tournament.

• The men's basketball team received its first national ranking in Division II, and the women's basketball team had its first winning season in 12 years.

Didn't you used to be ...

• Vladimir Radmanovic

• Rick Neuheisel

• Bob Weiss

• Joe Jurevicius

• Carl Everett

• The hydros

Bill Reader