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: This week is dominated by football. College football bowl games, like today’s between Western Kentucky and South Florida, abound. The NFL, which dominates the schedule all fall, tries to sneak in even a few more games at the end of the season. Meanwhile, other sports like soccer, back off a bit. Today’s soccer game between Arsenal and Manchester City is one of the last major televised soccer games until after Christmas.
Tuesday: Before the NHL starts its three day holiday break, catch a very good double-header on NBC Sports Network. The early game features one of the top teams in the league, the Montreal Canadiens. The second game is a fierce rivalry game between the Los Angeles Kings and their in-state rivals, the San Jose Sharks.
Wednesday: With all the college football bowl games on the calendar, it’s hard to know which ones to make time for. If you have to choose, I would choose today’s two games. The games between Boise State and Northern Illinois and Georgia Southern and Bowling Green are the best of college football. These programs aren’t so big to be completely corrupted by the sport’s hypocrisy and they’re all so used to winning that the games should be very competitive.
Thursday: For all of the NFL football fans out there who also celebrate Christmas, it’s a small but much appreciated blessing that the game tonight is meaningless. There’s really no need to watch the Raiders play the Chargers but if you’re just hanging out at home, eagerly anticipating tomorrow’s Chinese food, you could spend three hours in worse ways.
Friday: Merry Christmas to all who celebrate. The NBA long-ago decided that they wanted to be the Dos Equis of Christmas — you don’t have to watch sports on Christmas, but if you do, you watch the NBA. This year there’s a quintuple header, starting at 12 p.m. ET and ending around 1:30 a.m. ET. The highlight will be a re-match of last year’s finals between the Cleveland Cavaliers and Golden State Warriors. That’s enough to make the Christmas celebrators jealous!
Saturday: Boxing Day brings a minor return to normalcy — there’s British soccer in the morning and early afternoon, there’s a great college basketball game, and an excellent NHL hockey game in the evening. The NFL game between Washington and Philadelphia is a vital one for both teams.
Sunday: Well now. I guess none of the other sports want to mess with the NFL today. There’s basically no competition to the 1,000 pound gorilla sports league. Check out our NFL forecast for more information about which games to watch.
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.