Sports today is filled with good news and bad news and occasionally punctuated with items in between. Sports is eternally in transition from one season to the next and form quality of teams either improving or falling on difficult times:
• The National Basketball Association (NBA) and the National Hockey League (NHL) are in their final days this season with conference championships to be decided.
• Perhaps Chicago White Sox and Chicago Cubs fans may begin to shuffle their feet and think of other items to take their focus. The Sox, through Monday this week, were underwhelmng with a record of 28-32 and six games behind Minnesota. Hope Springs Eternal. The Cubs were 23-37 and 3-7 in the most recent 10 games. Patience is a Virtue.
• The sports world is wide and available to a wide-range of fans. The Wimbledon tennis in the United Kingdom will begin Monday, June 27, and always offers great anticipation for two weeks. The U.S. Open in men’s golf will be June 16-19. Summer crescendo. The Bears soon will put on the pads for practice, then rest for preseason workouts to begin in July.
• College football will begin Saturday, Aug. 27 for both Northwestern University and the University of Illinois and be among the earliest birds. Northwestern will play Nebraska in Dublin, Ireland in an 11:30 a.m. Central Daylight game, which is a very late afternoon game in Ireland. Illinois will play a much more ordinary game the same day, 3 p.m., as host to the University of Wyoming. Eastern Illinois will play at Northern Illinois University at 7 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 1. College football playoffs, as interesting as they have been, would be improved with an eight-school quarterfinal round.
• State high schools sports were brought to school-year conclusions with Saturday’s boys baseball and girls softball Class 4A, largest-school classes, tournament championship games. See page 8. Fall high school sports practice and dates of first games follow: Each sport will begin practice August 8 to provide uniformity, in football, boys and girls cross country, girls and boys golf, girls tennis, boys soccer, girls swimming, and girls volleyball. First date for competition: Football, Friday, Aug. 26; boys and girls golf, August 11; girls tennis, August 18; boys soccer, girls and boys cross country, girls swimming, girls volleyball, August 22.