If you are a sports fan or if you live with a sports fan then your weekly schedule becomes inextricably linked with what sporting events are on at what times during each week. The conflict between missing a sporting event for a poorly committed to social event and missing an appealing social event to watch a game is an important balancing act in any kind of romantic, familial, or business relationship between a sports fan and a non-sports fan. To help facilitate this complicated advanced mathematics, Dear Sports Fan has put together a table showing the most important sporting events of the upcoming week. Print it out, put it on your fridge, and go through it with your scheduling partner.
This does not include MLB baseball games. There are so many of those every day that another approach is needed. That approach is our special Daily MLB Forecast.
Download a full-size copy here.
Monday: The International Champions Cup is just about the most laughable men’s soccer competition out there. It’s a series of glorified friendly games between high-profile international clubs. That said, in this basically empty week of sports, the early morning game between Inter Milan and Real Madrid should at least provide some hints of high quality competitive soccer. All week, ESPN will be showing 30 minute capsules of what’s happening at the 2015 Special Olympics in Los Angeles at 7 p.m.
Tuesday: More Special Olympics and two more International Champions Cup soccer games. Today it’s the champions of the British Premiere League, Chelsea, against the Champions League winning Barcelona. Following that game will be Mexico’s version of the New York Yankees, America vs. Benfica, the dominant team from Portugal.
Wednesday: To friendly men’s soccer and Special Olympics, we add the NWSL’s second game in the ten game package to be carried by Fox. This one, between the Houston Dash and Kansas City FC features Heather O’Reilly, Becky Sauerbrunn, Lauren Holiday, Meghan Klingenberg, and Carli Lloyd.
Thursday: This evening’s sports agenda is perfect for the American Football fan who can’t wait for fall to come and football to begin. It’s the Canadian Football League! The BC Lions and Winnipeg Blue Bombers are both 2-3 for the season so far, but that’s not far off the lead in the Western Conference. Check it out for it’s sometimes subtle and sometimes wacky differences from the NFL.
Friday: Date night! No sports worth noting! Except, of course, the nightly Special Olympics wrap-up.
Saturday: An interesting and varied day of sports lends itself to wild channel surfing. Start with men’s golf, then shift over to women’s soccer. When that’s done, you can catch what should be an enjoyable an NBA exhibition game from South Africa. In the evening, choose between a good MLS matchup and boxing on ESPN.
Sunday: Unless you’re a die-hard golf or NASCAR fan, this is a perfect Sunday to go to your local orchard or public swimming pool or air-conditioned bowling alley.
Caveat — This forecast is optimized for the general sports fan, not a particular sports fan. As such, your mileage may vary. For instance, you or the sports fan in your life is a fan of a particular team, then a regular season MLB baseball game or MLS soccer game may be more important on a particular day than anything on the forecast above. Use the calendar as a way to facilitate conversation about scheduling, not as the last word on when there are sports to watch.