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, Tuesday, and Wednesday: Uh… I thought the sports doldrums of the summer season were over, but here they come again, in waves of sports wilderness. With European soccer leagues paused during their transfer period and the college and professional football seasons just about to take off, there’s basically nothing on the sports schedule except tennis. The U.S. Open opens in Queens, NY, on Monday and you can spend all day watching them, from 11 a.m. until late in the evening. There are always a few upsets in the early rounds of the tournament and the crowd is second to none.
Thursday: If you’re sick of tennis by Thursday, (and if you really spend all of Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday watching it, you might be), then breathe a sigh of relief, Thursday brings variety to this week’s sports. Iceland probably doesn’t have a chance against the Netherlands in their men’s soccer European Championships qualifying match, but you never know. In the evening, tune into one of the first big college football games to watch Michigan and their new coach, Jim Harbaugh, who once starred as a quarterback there, play against Utah.
Friday: Date night takes on a patriotic tone this week as the U.S. men’s national soccer team plays against Peru. Earlier in the day, the deep and tortured history of conflict between Germany and Poland plays itself out on the soccer field as well.
Saturday: Football, football, football! This is the first truly full day of the college football schedule. There are good games to watch from noon to midnight and beyond, but the one that I’m most interested is Alabama, one of the favorites to win the championship, against Wisconsin, a team that has a punchers chance of beating them. Two playoff teams face off in one of the last games of the NWSL regular season. There’s more tennis and a NASCAR race, as well as some rare international Rugby Union action on NBC Sports Network.
Sunday: The week closes with, (yes), more tennis from the U.S. Open. Pending rain, the Round of 16 should start today, and that’s where you start to see the best play against the best. Other than that, there’s the final round of the week’s golf tournament, another NASCAR race, a decent MLS matchup, and boxing on CBS.
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.