Witnessing Greatness: Tiger Woods and Michael Phelps Leading The Way

Being a sports fan has never been so great. The games, matches, and series that captivate us have been paying us back for our years of devotion now more than ever before.

Hype has been created by media and fans consistently since the start of competition, but never has there been a time where the players have lived up to the buzz like they have been now. From epic individual achievements to masterful showings of teams perform perfectly as a collective unit, we truly have been witnessing greatness.

In recent memory, the championships of our national pastimes have kept us glued to our television sets and on the edge of our seats. Granted, there have been many unforgettable games in the history of college and professional athletics, but never have they been strung together so closely on the timeline of elite competition.

We have beheld some amazing performances in recent memory:

An underdog in George Mason, who stunned the entire NCAA when they rode Cinderella's slipper all the way to the Final Four in 2006.

A World Cup in which European powerhouses clashed heads, literally, and captured even the country across the pond, a country who spells futbol, soccer. It seemed as if futbol wasn't sitting all the way in the back seat of the American car this time around.

A jaw-dropping performance where child phenom LeBron James grow up right before our eyes when he silenced the entire state of Michigan with his 48 points in Game Five of the Eastern Conference Finals, and carried the entire state of Ohio on his back, scoring the Cavs' final 25 points on the road.

The classic midwestern showdown of two college football giants, when Michigan fell short of rival Ohio State in the "Big-10 Championship Game". The hype surrounding that game couldn't have fit inside the Big House. The players came to play as the star-studded matchup ended in a 42-39 Buckeye victory.

Back-to-back collegiate basketball titles, which hadn't happened in 15 years, had an entire nation doing the Gator Chomp.

A narrow escape, after a brilliant comeback, some bad free-throw shooting, and the change in the spelling of the word "clutch" to C-H-A-L-M-E-R-S, which crowned Lawrence, KS as the capital of the college basketball world.

A Super Bowl that was only matched by the finale of M.A.S.H. in television ratings, which slowly showed the demise of the never-before defeated Titan that was the 2007 New England Patriots.

We were shown that together, even the weakest David can slay the mightiest Goliath, and that it IS possible to remove yourself from a shadow as big as the one Peyton Manning casts over his brother Eli.

Tiger Woods holding off the gritty, average Joe, Rocco Mediate in the U.S. Open. Woods, a living legend, hobbled down the fairways, while swinging more furiously than ever, displaying that his will to win was stronger than the shooting pain thrusting down his leg. This single-handedly created golf fans across the globe.

A movie-like matchup in the NBA Finals resurrected a rivalry buried in the '80s. And a momentum shifting comeback by the men in green that had Bird, McHale, and Parrish wanting to lace it up again.

A baseball team, not even in the discussion to make the College World Series, took a bite out of the college baseball world when we listened to the constant PING! from the Fresno State Bulldog's bats on their way to their first national title in school history.

A vintage match of finesse and power as Rafael Nadal claimed his first Wimbledon title, not allowing the trophy engraver to copy and paste Roger Federer's name on the cup, as was his usual duty for the past five years.

And lastly, to the present day, where for the next week and a half, we are lucky enough to watch Michael Phelps make world-record times look like times set by your grandmother at a 6:30 AM swim session (not to mention a pretty good ending to the 4x100 relay).

All of the above has been done in the past three years, and though some may think of those events as just another NBA Final or another win for Tiger Woods, the sheer consistency of greatness on the world stage by these respective athletes has made me more proud to be a fan than ever.

The performances by teams and players have made baseball fans out of tennis players, and have drawn the diehard football fans into golf.

We can thank people like LeBron James for his graceful, yet vicious, attacks toward the rim, Kobe Bryant's 81-point walk in the park, Phelp's breeze through the Olympic games, and Tiger's longevity on top, for all these great spectacles.

Tiger and Phelp's ascension and solidification atop their own sports draws us in, as there is nothing more appealing than observing historic dominance.

Phelps could falter down the stretch in Bejing, and Tiger may never return to his old form, and it may be a long time until we see a stretch of accomplishments by teams under the spotlight like in the past few years. But we have to be thankful that we can say that have been witnesses to greatness.