Wait, you wrote this in the present tense. But is that actually true anymore? The Super Bowl has been a great game what, seven or eight out of the last ten?
Sir, the correct terminology is “Fraud Five”.
Yeah, but it’s still rarely as good as the conference round. The SB games are great now, but there’s no connection between the teams, no rivalries.
Tuck rule!! The AFC championship game in 2001 (pats vs raiders) was far more memorable than the Super Bowl that followed, even though that was a good game too, where Vinateri kicked a game winner to upset Kurt Warner and the Rams.
The Tuck Rule game may have been memorable, but it wasn’t all that good. Besides, that Rams/Pats Superbowl was huge - a no-name team with essentially a rookie quarterback upsetting an unstoppable machine that everyone thought would squish them. The line was Rams -14, the second biggest spread of all Superbowls.
[Disclaimer: Except for the French Open, these happened a while ago. I know I’m off on a lot of details. Can’t be bothered to look them up. No apologies asked or offered.]
1998? World Cup: The one hosted by Japan and Korea. Oh, what a lovely, wonderful, fun time it was. Oh, how delightful and marvelous. Oh, how colorful and lively the Japanese and Korean crowds were. Oh, what a spectacle. Oh, what wonderful memories to last a lifetime. Marred just a tiny little bit, perhaps, by the most brazen corruption I have ever seen in a sporting event outside the Olympics, Korea having no fewer than three completely clean goals against it disallowed and getting fraudulent wins over TWO teams, Italy and Spain. Made especially egregious by the fact that the sportscasters just flat-out refused to address this.
Anyway. Brazil vs. Korea in the semis. At this point, one side was guaranteed to go away unhappy, either the beauty and joy and light and marvel etc. etc. crowd who needed a Korea triumph for the perfect storybook ending, or the minority who wanted to see Korea absolutely pulverized in this and the 3rd place match and expose for all how utterly bogus their run was. I mean, this is Brazil, for crying out loud, it has to be one or the other, right?
So of course, Brazil plays the most timid, tepid game imaginable (probably understandable, but still hard to watch) and barely squeaks by with a 1-0 win. Korea gets Turkey in the 3rd place match, a sloppy mess which sees Korea edged again, 3-2. Brazil faces Germany in the final, and look, I respect everything Deutchland has had to endure to get to where it is today, but there’s a reason they finish 2nd or 3rd so many times. This time would be no exception, as the overmatched Germans (I saw the whole thing; it was almost sad) got blanked 2-0.
So to recap: Japan goes out with a whimper. Korea, after receiving more gifts than a British prince on his birthday, takes home NOTHING. But they were in contention in their last two games, giving the impression that they could’ve won in all and Turkey and Brazil just got lucky. Brazil has the only two teams that had any realistic prayer of beating them robbed blind, beaten, tortured, and ejected with a catapult and still just barely wins it all. The Brazilian fans (rightfully) see this as their most unimpressive, undeserved championship ever and nothing to celebrate. Everyone goes home unhappy!
2013 French Open, men’s: The much-anticipated match between Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic definitely lived up to the hype, by far the most exciting, riveting, unpredictable match of the tournament, perhaps the whole year. But due to the vagaries of past performance, they were the #1 and #3 seeds…meaning that this match happened in the semifinal. (The fans were screaming about this. I was stunned, frankly.) In all, it was a much better match than Nadal’s easy win over David Ferrer in the final.
Houston Rockets, 1995 playoffs: For the first three rounds, the Rockets were the NBA’s answer to the Rally Monkey Angels (man, was that a weird year for baseball or what? 
), the team against which everyone could run up a huge lead but no one, no one, could EVER put the nail in the coffin. The Utah Jazz took them to a game 5, which they lost by 4. The Phoenix Suns, with their best squad ever, roared to a 3-1 lead and then flippin’ rolled over and died, choking away 3 games in astoundingly gut-wrenching fashion. The San Antonio Spurs looked like they were about to win game 1, lost on an amazing buzzer-beater, then gamely scratched and clawed their way back before bowing out in 6. Sending the Rockets to a final against the high flying Orlando Magic (beneficiaries of the most jaw-dropping stretch of draft luck in the history of the NBA…we’re talking $50 million super jackpot territory here), the only team ever to eliminate a Michael Jordan- and Scottie Pippen-led Bulls squad from the playoffs, a feat akin to lifting a heavier boulder than God.
Which turned into a one-sided curbstomp that made Nadal-Ferrer look like a nail-biter. Not once in 192 minutes did the Magic look like they had a snowball’s chance in Kilauea Crater of winning this. Inexperienced and overmatched in every position (this was when Shaq was still a one-dimensional board-crasher who couldn’t make 60% free throws with a gun to his head), they blew chance after chance and pretty much just gave up on the Rockets’ home court.
Chicago Bulls’ 6th and final championship (forgot the year): The 7-game series against Indiana in the conference championship was one of the most epic I’ve ever seen. It was a coin flip from beginning to end, literally undecided until the very last minute of the very last game. Chicago would prevail, then go on to dance all over the Utah Jazz in the final, capped off by an absolute shellacking in game 6 (and if it weren’t for Utah’s astounding run of luck in game 5, it wouldn’t have been even that close).
It seems like Kirk Gibson’s pinch-hit walk-off home run clinched the 1988 World Series for the Dodgers, but it occurred in Game 1. (Quite an at-bat, actually, and the most famous fist pump(s) ever.) Los Angeles still had to win 3 more games against the heavily favoured A’s, but few people remember those.
Well, along those lines, Carlton Fisk’s walkoff homer in the 1975 World Series is one of the most famous moments in baseball history… but that was only game 6, and the Reds BEAT the Red Sox in game 7, to win the World Series.
For that matter, Don Larsen’s no-hitter in the 1956 World Series was important (it got the Yankees back to 3-3 with the Dodgers), but Johnny Kucks won game 7, to ice the championship.
I’m not a Rockets or Magic fan, but when I think back on their 95 title season, the only thing I clearly remember is Orlando’s Nick Anderson missing four straight free throws that would have iced Game 1 of the Finals, leading to the Magic getting swept.
A few more:
– The Catch: Montana to Dwight Clark, 49ers vs. Cowboys in '81, happened in the NFC Championship game, and overshadows the 49ers Superbowl victory over the Bengals.
– Reggie Miller’s 25 pt. 4th quarter vs. the Knicks happened in a Game 5. The Knicks went on to win the next two games and won that series.
– The famous Bill Buckner play happened in Game 6 of the World Series. Boston also blew a lead in Game 7 as the Mets won the title.
Exactly what I thought of when I saw the thread title. The WS was almost an afterthought after that ALCS comeback.
In the 1984 NFC Championship, San Francisco, down 21-0 at the start of the fourth quarter, came back to tie Washington 21-21. Washington won 24-21 with a last minute field goal. Two weeks later, Washington got crushed in the Super Bowl.
Larsen pitched his perfect game in game 5. It gave the Yankees a 3-2 lead in the Series.
Not the AFC Championship game. That was NE 24 Pit 17.