By Woodrow Carroll By Woodrow Carroll For more than 40 years, one of the biggest football attractions in Chicago was the All-Star team/National Football League game. The game each Summer pitted a selection of college gridiron greats against the reigning National Football League champion. Starting in 1934, the game was
By Woodrow Carroll Former Montreal Canadiens’ ice hockey star Henri Richard died March 6 at the age of 84. Richard, with ties to all manner of other hockey greatness, had a couple of distinctions of his own. Henri Richard was born February 29, 1936. A February 29 birth, as we
By Woodrow Carroll Jersey Joe Wolcott, real name Arnold Raymond Cream, was boxing’s heavyweight champion in 1951 and 1952. In championship matches, Wolcott fared rather poorly by losing six of his eight championship fights. Yet, thanks to persistence, luck, and timing Wolcott entered boxing Hall of Fame. Jersey Joe? Camden,
By Woodrow Carroll In normal times, the Chicago White Sox would be opening the 2020 Major League Baseball season against the Kansas City Royals Thursday, March 26 at Guaranteed Rate Field in Chicago. Well, these are extraordinary times with the COVID-19 (coronavirus) virus knocking at the door. It remains to
By Woodrow Carroll With COVID-19 (coronavirus) putting sports events in a state of suspended animation, we need to view the sports world from a different perspective. We know that the NCAA men’s basketball tournament would be going full force this week were it not for the virus. So, let us
By Woodrow Carroll Despite a bad loss to end the regular-season, the Northern Illinois University men’s basketball team still finished strong. The team ended 11-7 in Mid-American Conference West Division. Prior to 2019-2020, the last time the Huskies ended on the plus side of .500 in Conference was the 2005-2006
By Woodrow Carroll There are 13 Division I men’s college basketball teams in Illinois. Loyola University Chicago has the most victories and came into the week with 21. Thanks to a 67-66 victory at Bradley Saturday, Loyola improved its overall record to 21-10. The Ramblers closed out Missouri Valley Conference
By Woodrow Carroll When two even teams go all out, it can be an exciting game. That was the case Saturday when the Northern Illinois University men’s basketball team played host to Central Michigan in a key Mid-American Conference (MAC) game. It took an overtime before Northern Illinois, 16-11 and
By Woodrow Carroll Illinois’ oldest high school basketball conference, the Little Ten Conference, held its 101st basketball tournament last week at Somonauk High School. The Indian Creek High School Timberwolves more than upheld the team’s No. 1 tournament seed, and it ended a long-running struggle to win the school’s first
By Woodrow Carroll The Big Ten Conference men’s college basketball race well could be viewed as an athletic director’s dream, even if nightmarish to the coaches involved. Every team in the 14-team Big Ten has suffered at least three defeats. As conferences go, no conference leader in college basketball’s upper
By Woodrow Carroll Years ago, Major League Baseball’s offseason was called the Hot Stove League. The reference was to baseball’s earliest years when talk centered around the prospects of the upcoming season with little real activity prior to Spring training. Today there is no offseason! Each Major League team knows
By Woodrow Carroll Northern Illinois University’s men’s basketball team can end a perplexing trend. Now in his ninth season as men’s basketball head coach at Northern Illinois, Mark Montgomery has yet to see his players finish with a winning record in the Mid-American Conference (MAC). Montgomery has flirted with conference
By Woodrow Carroll The college football season came to an end with the National championship game. LSU defeated Clemson, 42-25. With 40 bowl games in all, some are bound to be good, bad, ugly, and exotic. Perhaps a bit overlooked at times is the sponsorship of the bowl games. The
By Woodrow CarrollTucson, Ariz. The 2019 University of Illinois football season was difficult to understand. On the upside, among the 14 teams in the Big Ten Conference, Illinois and Rutgers each was predicted as the least likely to make it to a bowl game in media preseason forecasts. In a
By Woodrow Carroll At the start of the football season, there was a general consensus that the Chicago Bears of the National Football League (NFL) would be in the playoffs. It was apparent sound thinking, given that the Bears had made the playoffs in 2018 and were viewed on the
By Woodrow CarrollTucson, Ariz. Maybe it’s Tucson, Ariz. premature to give the Mid-American Conference (MAC) a pat on the back for the way the Conference started this season’s bowl games. Still, it was a nice surprise. Two bowl games Friday kicked off the 2019-2020 run of 40 games for the
By Woodrow Carroll My having had the good fortune and good health to cover 41 college football bowl games through last season, it is enjoyable to look back on how it all started for me. It was the 1991 Copper Bowl in Tucson, Ariz. that this writer covered his first
By Woodrow Carroll For a football team that finished 6-6 overall and 4-5 in the Big Ten , the University of Illinois fared pretty well when the bowl assignments were passed out Sunday. The Fighting Illini, who were accorded little chance of winning the six games needed to make it
By Woodrow Carroll First-year Northern Illinois University head football coach Thomas Hammock’s season did not go as planned. A Northern Illinois University product, Hammock saw the defending MAC champion Huskies falter badly at times, especially, when so much was expected. Last week’s 45-17 loss at home to Eastern Michigan ended
By Woodrow Carroll Northern Illinois University’s football team was thrown a lifeline by the Toledo Rockets last week. The lifeline was in the form of a 31-28 road victory over the Rockets that kept Northern Illinois’ slim bowl hopes alive. Home games with Eastern Michigan Tuesday, Nov. 19 and Western
