What Season Is It?

We have entered that wacky wonderful time of the year when we try to figure out what we want to watch in the sports world. Many of you think baseball season finishes when the first pro football game starts but the fall classic, the World Series, starts this week and a lot of people are interested in watching the St. Louis Cardinals and Boston Red Sox meet. Two storied franchises that have real fans. Hope you are fans of the color red because it will be prevalent in each home ballpark.

Hockey has started its season and is close to 20 games in. The NHL will be taking a few weeks off when the Olympics has its run in February, I believe. So they need to get games in early to accommodate that venue. Hockey will end with the Stanley Cup championship in early June. It will be a long season for the boys on ice.

The NBA is in the preseason portion of its schedule. The pros usually get started after the World Series is over. Another long season and what seems to be an even longer playoff portion to the season. The key to watching an NBA game is to know that the game gets good in the last three or four minutes. It takes a long time to finish games up with all of the time outs taken late in the game. The pro game is not my favorite sport to watch, but that is my personal opinion and I’m sure it will continue for a while.

College basketball will get underway with games in November. It should be another exciting year with a lot of surprises and new faces especially at Kentucky. The Wildcats have a tendency to recruit the best talent available and that Coach Calipari probably will only be coaching these kids for one year and they will be off to the NBA. He has had his share of success but only one National Championship to show for it and the forfeiture of games for violations unbecoming of a college program. Oh well, those kinds of transgressions seem to follow certain coaches.

We’ll hopefully get excited about our local college teams and hope the replacement parts for the graduated seniors or those that left early for the NBA have breakout seasons. It is fun when your favorite team is competitive, and we latch on to that one player that catches our attention and makes us true blue fans again.

EWU is playing very well right now and have a huge game this Saturday in Missoula. With five wins and two losses the Eagles need to continue their winning ways in order to return to the playoffs. The league is tough and winning on the road is difficult, but I hope they can continue to be successful. Nothing is more fun than watching the Eagles play on the red turf.

WSU and UW have stumbled lately against some pretty good teams. If a bowl berth is in their future they will need to beat some good teams in the weeks to come. Otherwise they will once again be watching on their TVs at home.

It won’t be easy but it can be done. It would be nice if the Cougars could play a home game about two in the afternoon. Driving home at midnight after a 7:30 a.m. start can’t be a lot of fun for those season ticket holders that live more than an hour away from Pullman.

The LRS Broncos are having the type of football season we all thought they would. The bad news is that the starters are only getting about two quarters of playing time. The good news is the backups are getting some valuable experience. Some more good news is that the starters should be fresh for the playoffs when they start in three weeks.

There are a lot of seasons going on right now and we can be a fan of each one and definitely appreciate the hard work it takes to play for championships or bowl games or cups. This time of the year is special and I hope you appreciate it as much as I do.