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.
For detail on the all-popular, all-powerful NFL, which groups most of its games on Sunday afternoons, see our NFL Forecast. You can also get daily updates from our NHL forecast and NBA forecast.
Download a full-size copy here.
Monday: Skip sports today, at least sports on TV. The big Monday Night Football game is a dud. There’s no major soccer on. Go find a high school basketball game or college hockey game to go to, sit up front, and enjoy yourself.
Tuesday: The highlight tonight is a great mid-season NHL double-header. The Wild and Blackhawks are serious rivals who enjoy competing with each other. If you can stay up, watch the ongoing soap opera that is the Pittsburgh Penguins as they travel out west to play the sharks.
Wednesday: Southampton doesn’t have much of a chance against Liverpool, DePaul has even less of a chance against Connecticut, but the New York Islanders, long the forgotten cousin of the New York Rangers, are now playing them with on at least an even keel.
Thursday: If you’re a basketball fan, you’ll probably gravitate toward the very respectable NBA double-header tonight. I’d recommend the NFL game. I’m not a big fan of Thursday night games, but this one is loaded with drama. The Green Bay Packers, long the quality of the NFC North division, are reeling after four losses in their last five games. The Detroit Lions, long the cellar-dwellers of the NFC North division, would like nothing better than to send them into an even deeper spiral.
Friday: Date night! If you live in NY, do a little role play with your partner. Have one of you throw on a Knicks jersey and the other a Nets jersey. Then pretend to meet in a bar by flirtatiously fighting over whose team is the best. Or, realistically, the least bad.
Saturday: Most college football conferences have their championship games today and a bunch of them should be really good games. The British Premier League slate is pretty weak. There’s a rare and compelling college men’s hockey game on NBC Sports Network that’s worth checking out, as are men’s and women’s NCAA basketball games in the afternoon.
Sunday: Add a great day of soccer to a normally excellent day of football and you’ve got an impressive Sunday of sports. The soccer triple-header is worth doing — witness excellence at the women’s college, men’s professional, and women’s international levels!
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.