For New England sports fans, this week marks the one-year anniversary of the greatest sports moment in recent memory: the New England Patriots’ stunning 20-17 Super Bowl victory over the St. Louis Rams. Much has been written about that night — February 3, 2002 — and we won’t rehash it here, since outside of this six-state region, the Patriots’ championship is looked upon as a footnote in NFL history. Sure, the game provided one of the most exciting finishes in Super Bowl history, and was truly exciting from beginning to end, but with the team’s lackluster 9-7 season just completed, it now appears that the Patriots were, indeed, a one-year wonder.

But the night it happened — when the 14-point underdog Patriots took a 17-3 fourth-quarter lead, only to relinquish it in the final six minutes before Adam Vinatieri’s 48-yard field goal won it at the gun — it was a cathartic moment for New England fans, and provided the region’s first professional championship in nearly 16 years.

New England had been in two Super Bowls prior to last year’s, and entered them both as double-digit underdogs. The 1986 shellacking at the hands of the Chicago Bears came as no particular surprise, since the Bears were seen as nearly unbeatable all season long. Eleven years later, the Patriots were again a surprise AFC champion, but as 14-point underdogs lost to a rejuvenated Green Bay Packers franchise, 35-21, in Bill Parcells’s last game at their helm.

There was no reason to expect that the team’s fortunes would turn out any differently against the St. Louis juggernaut last February, but the New England victory provided a shot in the arm for underdog rooters everywhere. Around here, the victory was so sweet and unexpected that it triggered an outpouring of unbridled joy, and provided a sports moment never to be forgotten.

One year later, the memory of it still brings a warm feeling to Patriots fans everywhere.

Aside from February 3, there are other days in the sports calendar that Boston fans remember fondly, or not so fondly. For instance:

• February 22: for those old enough to remember, the US Olympic hockey team’s victory over the former Soviet Union in the opening medal-round game of the 1980 Winter Olympics provided one of the most cherished memories in all of sports. The US team, made up largely of college-age kids, many from this region, was given absolutely no chance against the USSR team, whose roster was made up of professionals who played the sport year-round. Team USA, which had lost an exhibition to the Russians two weeks prior, 10-3, at Madison Square Garden, stunned the world’s best hockey team, 4-3, on that Friday night in Lake Placid, paving the way for the improbable gold-medal victory over Finland two days later. Whether you were a hockey fan or not, this Upset of the Century restored a lot of our country’s patriotism when it was in short supply after the taking of American hostages in Iran and the USSR’s invasion of Afghanistan.

• April 7: for Boston College fans, this date in 2001 marked the school’s most memorable non-football moment. When freshman Krys Kolanos scored at 4:43 of sudden-death overtime in the NCAA ice-hockey championship game, it marked BC’s first national championship since 1949. BC had reached the Frozen Four in the three seasons leading up to this one, but had come up short each time, with the most painful loss coming in OT in the 1998 title game at the FleetCenter against Michigan. It seemed that another sad chapter would be written when North Dakota erased a 2-0 BC lead in the final four minutes of regulation, but Kolanos’s electrifying goal in overtime lifted the Jerry York–led Eagles to the Division I national championship.

• May 10: on Mother’s Day in 1970, Bobby Orr scored the winning goal just 40 seconds into overtime to secure the Boston Bruins’ first Stanley Cup in 29 years. The team had not even qualified for the playoffs in the six-team NHL between 1960 and 1967, but its drafting of Orr in 1966 paid immediate dividends. The team began to improve significantly over the subsequent years, culminating with the 4-0 sweep of the Blues in the Cup Finals in 1970. For a town that loves its hockey like no other, the Bruins’ championship was a watershed moment for the team’s long-suffering fans. Two years later, Boston won the franchise’s fifth Cup — on May 11 in New York — but little did Bruins fans know that it would be the last hockey title for a long, long time. In fact, the championship drought continues to this day, despite five more trips to the Cup Finals.

• June 8: easy to forget, since it was the anniversary of the Celtics’ last championship, in 1986. It was the Green’s third banner of the ’80s, and came courtesy of what many feel was the greatest basketball team ever. Larry Bird, Robert Parish, and Kevin McHale provided the foundation of this team’s success, but the addition of Bill Walton proved key, as the Celts lost only one game on the Boston Garden parquet all season long. Again, no one would have anticipated that it would be the last pro hoops title that the league’s marquee franchise would attain to date.

• June 19: just nine days after that NBA title was claimed, the "rich get richer" Celtics drafted Maryland forward Len Bias with the second pick in the NBA draft. On Tuesday, June 19, though, Bias was found dead in his dorm room of an apparent cocaine overdose, an event that shocked the basketball community and forever changed the fortunes of the Celtics franchise. Unfortunately, another death in the Celtics family just seven years later would again shatter the fabric of the organization (see July 27, below).

• July 5: the death of Ted Williams last summer was a devastating blow to Red Sox fans everywhere, as the passing of the Splendid Splinter marked the end of an era. The memory of the Greatest Hitter That Ever Lived was soon tarnished when his son and daughter elected to have his remains cryogenically frozen in an Arizona medical facility, but the controversy associated with that decision cannot erase the loss of a true New England sports legend.

• July 27: in 1993, while shooting baskets in preparation for the 1993-’94 Celtics season, 27-year-old forward Reggie Lewis collapsed at Brandeis University and died that night of heart failure. Lewis had nearly fainted during a playoff game at Boston Garden the previous April, but he had been given the go-ahead by his doctors to continue his workouts. His death was a demoralizing shock to a Celtics franchise still reeling from the death of Len Bias in 1986. Again, the actions of those Lewis left behind — in this case, his widow, Donna, who dragged out lawsuits for years in an effort to blame the doctors who treated him — somewhat stained his memory, but the still-unexplained death of this charitable and outgoing young athlete remains a sad anniversary in Boston sports history.

• August 18: this date in 1967 marked one of the saddest chapters in Boston baseball history: the beaning of Tony Conigliaro. The Jack Hamilton fastball that struck Tony C’s left cheek took the 22-year-old phenom out of the line-up until the 1969 season, when he actually won baseball’s Comeback of the Year award. Nonetheless, his vision and talent were never the same. Incapacitated by a heart attack in 1982, Tony C died on February 24, 1990.

• September 11: it’s not what you think. This 9/11 is actually the anniversary of the Red Sox’ last World Series title, in 1918. Pitcher Carl Mays tossed a three-hitter in a 2-1 Game Six victory over the Chicago Cubs at Fenway Park to clinch the franchise’s fifth championship. No one, and I mean no one, could have ever imagined that this organization — whose players that year earned $1100 for their winner’s share — would not win another one until, well, God knows when. Curses!

• October 21 and 22: two dates because the memorable game in question started on Tuesday, October 21, 1975, but did not finish until well after midnight on October 22. The game, of course, was Game Six of the 1975 World Series, won by the Sox on catcher Carlton Fisk’s 11th-inning home run off the left-field foul pole. Voted by many as the greatest World Series game ever played, this game unfortunately just postponed the inevitable for Boston fans, as their team two nights later lost its third World Series Game Seven since 1918. Of course, things could, and did, get worse....

• October 25 and 26: another mind-numbing Red Sox Game Six moment, this time in 1986. Mets 6, Red Sox 5 (10 innings). I think we’ve addressed this one long enough, so let’s move on.

• November 20: finally, more good news, this one again courtesy of the Boston College athletics department. For anyone who saw it, BC’s 41-39 last-second victory at Notre Dame was arguably the single-most-exciting college-football game ever played. The Irish had beaten number-one-ranked Florida State a week earlier to take over the top spot in the national rankings, but in spite of a valiant late-game rally, Notre Dame saw BC QB Glenn Foley march the Eagles down the field to the Irish’s 24-yard-line, where David Gordon kicked a 41-yard field goal and catapulted BC to its biggest football victory ever.

Lord knows I’ve probably omitted some supposedly unforgettable anniversaries. But the memory that helps most of New England put aside some of the more painful aforementioned sports moments is the one whose one-year milestone is celebrated on Monday, around 9:55 p.m.

"Seven seconds left; Ken Walter takes the snap, it’s down. The kick is up ... it’s on the way ... and ... it’s ... GOOD! It’s good! Adam Vinatieri has kicked a 48-yard field goal! And the game’s all over! And the Patriots ... are Super Bowl champions! The Patriots ... are Super Bowl champions!"

Sporting Eye runs Mondays and Fridays at BostonPhoenix.com. Christopher Young can be reached at cyoung[a]phx.com