By Woodrow Carroll Former heavyweight boxing champion Leon Spinks died last week. Few boxing insiders considered Spinks a ring great. What Spinks did have going for him was fortuitous timing and the ability to make news often for the wrong reason. To say that Spinks was an unknown when he...
By Woodrow Carroll Super Bowl LV will kick off at 5:30 p.m. Sunday in Tampa, Fla., with the hometown Tampa Bay Buccaneers playing last year’s champion, the Kansas City Chiefs. It will be the first time a Super Bowl team will play in its home stadium. Given we have 54...
By Woodrow Carroll The recent passing of baseball legend Hank Aaron certainly stirred the memory. As a youngster who grew up a fan of the Chicago White Sox and Milwaukee Braves, it was Hank Aaron, along with Warren Spahn and Eddie Mathews, who largely imprinted the Milwaukee Braves on my...
By Woodrow Carroll Weeb Ewbank! First, he preceded Vince Lombardi. Then he followed Lombardi. Could be a Greek oracle narrative. But, there is truth to the statement. With the National Football League (NFL) Super Bowl LV on the horizon (Sunday, Feb. 7 in Tampa), we take a look at the...
By Woodrow Carroll Cody Parkey is alive and kicking. Parkey, the former Chicago Bears’ kicker best remembered for his double-doink missed field goal in the National Football League (NFL) playoffs two years ago against the Philadelphia Eagles. He will play with the Cleveland Browns at the Kansas City Chiefs in...
By Woodrow Carroll With the most uneven college football season in history coming to an end at 7 p.m. Monday, when Alabama will square off against Ohio State in the college football playoff championship game, we might offer thanks to Georgia and Ball State. Only Alabama, 12-0, and Ohio State,...
By Woodrow Carroll Because of COVID-19 pandemic, at least 19 college football bowl games have been canceled, moved, or reworked. In the case of the Rose Bowl, the operative word is moved. The ugly virus has forced the Rose Bowl to move from Pasadena, Calif. to Arlington, Texas. Opponents Alabama...
By Woodrow Carroll Prior to an examination of the University of Illinois’ hiring of Bret Bielema as head football coach, here is a brief look back at events in the football program the last 40 years. Lovie Smith’s tenure as head football coach at the University of Illinois was terminated...
By Woodrow Carroll Lovie Smith’s five-year run as Illinois’ head football coach came to an end after a particularly ugly 28-10 loss at Northwestern Saturday. To many, the hiring of Smith, who guided the Chicago Bears football fortunes from 2004-2012 and an appearance in Super Bowl XLI, the 2006 season,...
By Woodrow Carroll Northern Illinois, University of Illinois, and Northwestern, each has one regular-season football game remaining which will be played Saturday. Notre Dame, 10-0 overall and ranked No. 2 in the country in both major polls, had its final game of the regular season canceled by the Atlantic Coast...
By Woodrow Carroll It was bound to happen with COVID-19 laying waste to the sports scene. But, it was still painful when it did happen! Early there was a sense of optimism that Illinois, Northwestern, and Northern Illinois would play all of their scheduled top-level Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) football...
By Woodrow Carroll All of a sudden The Ohio State-at-University of Illinois Big Ten Conference football game at 11 a.m. Saturday generates a modicum of interest, however, only a couple of weeks back, the game was viewed by most observers a walkover victory for Ohio State. After dropping three straight...
By Woodrow Carroll For the second consecutive season, Illinois’ kicker, James McCourt, a 6-1 and 215-pound senior, came through at the most opportune time for the Fighting Illini. Saturday at Rutgers, McCourt’s 47-yard field goal with :03 remaining in regulation gave Illinois a 23-20 victory, its first of the season,...
By Woodrow Carroll Both football teams at Northern Illinois University and the University of Illinois have worked themselves into bad positions without victories through last weekend. Northern Illinois, 0-1, following a defeat at the hands of the visiting University of Buffalo, 49-30, in a season and home-opener in DeKalb, was...
By Woodrow Carroll The visiting Purdue University football team played Illinois in Champaign Saturday, which figured to be interesting with the unsettling and hovering nature of COVID-19 hovering. The nasty virus played its unfriendly and unsettling part. The game, the Illini home opener, proved to be better than expected. Illinois...
By Woodrow Carroll The Big Ten Conference made this season’s football debut Friday evening in Madison, Wis. with the University of Illinois at Wisconsin. The season opener was not pretty for Illinois. Wisconsin had things pretty much under control from start in a 45-7 victory. Illinois will seek to get...
By Woodrow Carroll Earlier this year there was considerable concern for Major League Baseball’s (MLB) getting off the ground this season. It was in jeopardy with the COVID-19 scare making life miserable. The MLB played this season, albeit in truncated form. For those of us used to a 162-game season,...
By Woodrow Carroll The Mid-American Conference (MAC) was the first conference among the 10 FBS (Football Bowl Subdivision) conferences to postpone football prior to this season because of COVID-19. The MAC will be the last to get back into the fray. Unless things change dramatically, it will be a bare-bones...
By Woodrow Carroll Postseason Major League Baseball (MLB): October 5, 2004, the Minnesota Twins defeated the New York Yankees, 2-0, in an American League Division Series game. It was the opening playoff game of the postseason for both clubs. It was the last time the Twins won a postseason game....
By Woodrow Carroll The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) football team Saturday defeated Louisiana-Monroe, 31-6. Only those close to the UTEP Miners football program paid attention, however, the UTEP program merits a close look. We are aware of college football’s shaky and uncertain future with a nasty virus...
