As always, there were stars and heroes outside the four major North American sports. Lance Armstrong, chief among them, won his seventh straight -- and, he says, last -- Tour de France, though he remains under a cloud of doping accusations, charges he insists are false and motivated by European antipathy toward him. He remains a lavishly admired figure at home.

Tennessee's Pat Summitt became the winningest college basketball coach ever, and Baylor won the women's NCAA Tournament, a surprise that finally brought good basketball news to a campus that two years earlier had been home to one of the most sickening scandals in the history of college sports.

North Carolina survived a dazzling, thrilling Elite Eight round and beat Illinois -- which had been undefeated before losing to Ohio State in its last regular-season game -- for the men's championship. Then the Tar Heels had four players taken in the first 14 picks of the NBA draft. Andrew Bogut of Utah, a slick-passing Australian center, was the top pick in the draft and began his pro career playing well for the Milwaukee Bucks.

In college football, while USC and Texas were No. 1 and No. 2 wire to wire and will play for the national championship in the Rose Bowl, Notre Dame and Penn State made headlines with huge comeback years.

Joe Paterno, the subject of "How do we get Joe to retire?" talk as he coached Penn State to a 26-33 record from 2000 through 2004, opened up the offense at long last and led his Nittany Lions to a 10-1 record and a Big Ten championship, the only loss coming at Michigan.

He was named Associated Press Coach of the Year the day before his 79th birthday. Ranked third in the nation, Penn State will play in a Bowl Championship Series game for the first time in the BCS's 8-year history, meeting Florida State in the Orange Bowl Jan. 3.

In South Bend, former Patriots assistant Charlie Weis took over a program that had had only two winning seasons in the last six and immediately energized it. The Irish went 9-2, losing only a pair of thrillers at home, to Michigan State and, in the game of the year, Southern Cal. Notre Dame will play Ohio State in the Fiesta Bowl Jan. 2.

Speaking of comebacks, a 50-1 shot came from way off the pace to win the Kentucky Derby. Of course. In what other year should the little-known Giacomo roar down the stretch and win, rather than the much-hyped Afleet Alex, with his ready-made, heartwarming back story involving a brave little girl who died of cancer?

Afleet Alex overcame a trip at the start to win the Preakness, then took the Belmont Stakes too. Of course, because 2005 was all about doing the right thing, and who better to win two Triple Crown races than a horse donating a chunk of his winnings to pediatric cancer research?

Danica Patrick became the first woman to lead a lap at the Indianapolis 500, and more importantly returned that race, possibly temporarily, to the A list of American sports events, though NASCAR, whose Nextel Cup was won by former bad boy Tony Stewart, continued to dominate the world of speed.

It's too late for such a figure to return the sad sport of boxing to the front pages. Here's an example of how far the sweet science has fallen: On Dec. 17, a 7-foot Russian won the WBA heavyweight championship on a disputed decision over John Ruiz in Germany.

This whole thing, a freakishly huge Russian winning a questionable decision in a heavyweight title fight, barely made the papers in the U.S. If you can summon the name of the giant who now holds a share of what was, during this not-yet-old writer's lifetime, the most important title in sports, you are in a tiny minority. It's Nikolay Valuev.

And there was more crime and punishment as well. Temple basketball coach John Cheney suspended himself after he ordered a player to commit hard fouls against St. Joe's in response to officials not calling moving screens, and that player broke an opponent's arm, ending his career.

The BALCO case, the eye of the steroid hurricane for most of 2004 and '05, fizzled, with founder Victor Conte and two others copping pleas and getting short jail sentences or probation.

The Minnesota Vikings, off to a terrible start in a season in which they'd been picked by many to win their division, made headlines with a bye-week bacchanal on a pair of Lake Minnetonka charter yachts that was cut short after the crew complained of players and their guests engaging in public sex and aggressive behavior.

Four Vikings players, including quarterback Daunte Culpepper, who was injured in a game shortly after the party, were charged with misdemeanors.

Unfortunately for the thesis of this piece, all of this was followed by the Vikings turning their season around, winning six straight games to launch themselves into the thick of the playoff picture, though they were eliminated from contention Sunday night with their second straight loss.

And the sports story from 2005 that will have the longest-lasting and farthest-reaching consequences for the most people had nothing to do with good or bad, right or wrong, humble or egocentric. It simply was what it was, a business story with no heroes or villains. But it meant the end of an era.

In April, the NFL announced two new television deals: "Monday Night Football," the cultural icon that had brought the NFL to prime time in 1970, was moving from ABC to cable in 2006, to corporate partner ESPN, where one out of five American households wouldn't be able to see it.

NBC would take over the Sunday night game, which the Peacock says will become the big prime-time game of the week. Disney, which owns ABC and ESPN, begs to differ, but there's no denying that that little slice of Americana created by Howard Cosell and Don Meredith was in its last days as the year ended.

A sober, serious year. A nose-to-the-grindstone year. One with no place for Dandy Don serenading us, however appropriate the sentiment would have been, with "Turn out the lights, the party's over."

This story has been corrected since publication.

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