The Big Dig: following the lead of its massive highway excavation project, Boston unearthed itself from years of athletic misery to win TSN's annual Best Sports City award.

Below the surface and 300 years of fill, beneath yards of organic silt, sand and peat, through a layer of blue clay and a rocky glacial till as dense and deep as Fenway Park's left field wall is high and green, finally resting on the bedrock 120 feet down, Boston has words for you: Big Dig. Deal with it, America, because you're probably paying for it, too.

You're welcome.

Depending upon the spin you get, the most complex and expensive highway project in our nation's history is either the dawn of a beautiful new Boston or a never-ending headache that throbs from Cape Cod to southern New Hampshire.

Planned since 1982, federally funded since 1987, ...