Category: Sports Forecast

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.

Download a full-size copy here.

Monday: This first leg of the Ireland vs. Bosnia Herzegovina Euro 2016 qualifying playoff (say that ten times fast) ended in a 1-1 tie that you could barely see on television through the pea soup-thick fog. This game will decide which country qualifies for the most prestigious tournament either is likely to qualify for in the near future. The University of Connecticut women’s basketball team doesn’t need to worry about qualifying for things, they usually just win them. They’ll play an early season game against Ohio State. In the evening, the Monday night football game is likely to be a bit lopsided. Skip it, or watch it on an incline.

Tuesday: If you like soccer, today is going to be a fine day to call out of work and post up in front of the television. One of Sweden and Denmark will be celebrating, one will be walking quietly away and hoping no one notices. England hosts France for what is likely to be the most moving and most friendly of soccer games ever. Hard to imagine watching (much less playing in) that game without thinking about the attacks in France last week, some of which were aimed at a stadium where the French soccer team was playing Germany. In the evening, the U.S. Men’s National Team plays their second World Cup Qualifying match. They won their first one easily but this should be a tougher test.

Wednesday: 

Thursday: The Thursday night game in the NFL this week is kind of a dud. Oh sure, the Titans and Jaguars will still get a higher rating than anything short of an unscheduled moon walk but it’s not a promising matchup as far as these things go. Luckily, there are other things to watch — fun college football and basketball games and some tennis.

Friday: Date night! Get your sports viewing out of the way early today, starting with college basketball and brunch! If you don’t have that luxury, there’s more college basketball in the evening, featuring perennial tournament teams: Duke, VCU, Wisconsin, and Georgetown.

Saturday: Even for a fall saturday, this set of games is impressive. College football matches up some of its best teams, like Ohio State and Michigan State, TCU and Oklahoma. Soccer matches up some of its best in the world, with Liverpool and Manchester City playing in the British Premier League and Barcelona and Real Madrid meeting for another edition of El Clasico.

Sunday: Yes, there’s a full slate of NFL games. And on top of that, Major League soccer has the first leg of their semifinals. And, if you needed more excitement, NASCAR’s playoffs culminate with a race in Miami. But, with all that action, the most interesting sporting event of the day is not on TV — it’s a hurling exhibition at Fenway Park. Get your tickets today!

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.

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.

Download a full-size copy here.

Monday: A strange drought in a flood season for sports. The only high-profile or interesting sports I could find on television is the NFL’s Monday Night Football game between the San Diego Chargers and Chicago Bears. Both teams have been wildly disappointing this year but wildly entertaining nonetheless.

Tuesday: If Monday was a drought, Tuesday is a… something worse than a drought. There’s a good hockey game on tonight and a live fight I know nothing about. Watch the hockey or even better, go to an opera or something.

Wednesday: Now we’re getting somewhere! Start your evening with women’s volleyball, shift over to ice hockey, and then make a night cap out of the San Antonio Spurs playing the Portland Trailblazers in an early-season NBA game.

Thursday: Football, American and soccer sweep back in to rescue the sports week. The World Cup is the biggest international event in men’s soccer, but the European Championships are close. We get to watch qualifying matches for both tournaments today! The best is a World Cup qualifying match between Argentina and Brazil, two of the best soccer countries in the world, at 7 p.m. There’s also a rivalry game in the NFL on national television — the New York Jets vs. the Buffalo Bills at 8:30 p.m.

Friday: Date night! If you live on or near a college campus, you might get caught up in the excitement of another men’s college basketball season beginning. Otherwise, you may be interested in watching the U.S. Men’s National Soccer team begin their run to qualify for the 2018 World Cup. No, they’re not as good relative to their competition as the women are, but they’re still worth rooting for.

Saturday: Lots of good rivalries in college football but none are likely to be bigger than the rivalry game between Denmark and Sweden in European Championship qualifying play.

Sunday: Start your morning with some French Toast and Brazilian Grand Prix action. There’s car racing and golf pretty much all day, plus the normal NFL football, all day too. Sprinkled in are a couple of interesting soccer games. Over in Europe, the once great soccer nation, Hungary, plays against Norway. Closer to home, two men’s college teams will play for the American Athletic Conference championship.

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.

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.

Download a full-size copy here.

Monday: Feast on soccer in the afternoon. You can get a good British professional soccer game on NBC Sports Network or enjoy the international stylings of Mexico and Ecuador’s Under-17 men’s teams in one quarterfinal of that age group’s World Cup. In the evening, the Monday Night Football game pits the undefeated Carolina Panthers against a disappointing Colts team who finally went public with the nature and extent of starting quarterback Andrew Luck’s injuries this weekend. Why tell the world before a game? Maybe just to lower expectations and potentially save the coach’s job.

Tuesday: As I’m writing this, we don’t know if the Mets will win Game Five of the World Series and survive to play another day. If they do, it will be tonight and Kansas City will play in Kansas City with a chance to win the World Series on home field. Other than that, you’ve got a cross-country matchup in the NHL and a cross-continent one in the UEFA Champions League. (Update – the Mets lost, so there will be no baseball this week.)

Wednesday: If the Mets survive Sunday and Tuesday, then the World Series will come to an exciting end in a winner-take all Game Seven tonight. I doubt this will happen, (Update – it will not happen) but if it does, it will be must-watch, must-drop-everything-else-you’re-doing television. More likely, it will be a quiet sports day whose highlights are a UEFA Champions League game between Bayern Munich and Arsenal and a women’s college volleyball game between Missouri and Texas A&M.

Thursday: Have fun watching an NBA double-header or hunker down and stay out of the cold while watching the battle of Ohio in the NFL. Didn’t know Ohio was worth fighting over? It is! Ask the Bengals and Browns.

Friday: Date night! Honestly — nothing much to see here, go out, enjoy yourself. Don’t worry about me, I won’t stay up waiting for you.

Saturday: Even if you’re not a college football fan, you’ve got to admit that LSU vs. Alabama is going to be one heck of a party/football game/television show. In soccer, the most compelling game is not in the British Premier League but in Italy’s Serie A between AC Milan and Atalanta.

Sunday: In addition to the normal coating of football, there’s a thick coat of soccer today. Major League Soccer will play all four of the second legs (the MLS playoffs are organized into two game series) in the quarterfinals. Added to that excitement are two NCAA women’s championship games, both at 3 p.m., one in the Big East, one in the SEC.

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.

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.

Download a full-size copy here.

Monday: Take a rest. Things are about to get super sportsy this week. In fact, if you want to, skip the Monday Night Football game. Nine times out of ten, the Cardinals are going to kill the Ravens.

Tuesday: Here’s where it starts to get real. The NBA season opens with a double-header and the World Series (that’s baseball) gets started with the first game of a best-out-of-seven series between the Kansas City Royals and New York Mets.

Wednesday: The World Series, unlike the NBA or NHL finals, doesn’t always take a day off between games. Game Two comes tonight right on the heels of yesterday’s Game One. Over in soccer universe, the Major League Soccer playoffs get started with two single-elimination knockout games. They’ll be worth watching if you don’t have a stake or interest in the World Series.

Thursday: The World Series wisely takes a night off to make room for the NFL. Nothing in today’s sporting landscape can go up against the NFL and not look bad, at least in terms of ratings. Major League Soccer apparently just doesn’t care, they’re playing two more knockout playoff games.

Friday: Date night! If you’re hanging around in the afternoon, stomach full of butterflies, settle yourself by watching some good horse racing or some even better rugby. Then enjoy Game Three of the World Series on the date!

Saturday: It’s another week of uninspiring college football matchups. There’s only one game with two top twenty five ranked teams playing each other, and that’s Notre Dame vs. Temple. Luckily, the British have us covered. Start your day with a great soccer game between Chelsea and Liverpool at 8:45 a.m. and then switch over to the Rugby World Cup finals (hosted by England this year) between Australia and New Zealand. Seriously — don’t miss the rugby. It’s going to be awesome.

Sunday: There’s soccer and football and baseball on all day. It’s a sports fan’s aspirational Sunday.

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.

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.

Download a full-size copy here.

Monday: The Toronto Blue Jays try desperately to avoid going down 3-0 to the Kansas City Royals in the American League Championship Series (the semifinals of Major League Baseball’s playoffs.) In the NFL, the Philadelphia Eagles and New York Giants try desperately not to lose to their arch-rivals. There’s a lot of desperation going around for a Monday night.

Tuesday: A playoff baseball double-header is nothing to mess with. Watch game four of the ALCS, which could be an elimination game followed by game three of the more lovable and therefore more heart wrenching NLCS between the New York Mets and Chicago Cubs. If you need a fix of soccer before the baseball starts, there’s a full afternoon of UEFA Champions League action. The only game on a channel you probably have is Arsenal vs. Bayern Munich.

Wednesday: Unless the Royals sweep the Blue Jays, we’ll get another juicy MLB playoff double-header today — likely the last of the season. In the evening, the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team continues its victory tour with a friendly game against Brazil. In addition, we’ll be doing a Dear Sports Fan Meetup to watch the Boston Bruins play the Philadelphia Flyers. If you’re in the Boston area, join us!

Thursday: The highlight of the day is a pivotal Game Five in the NLCS between the Mets and Cubs. That should overshadow the Thursday Night Football game between the Seattle Seahawks and San Francisco 49ers but thanks to gambling, fantasy football, and sheer perversity, the NFL game will still be watched by way more people. Help even the scales. Watch baseball.

Friday: Date night! If the ALCS between the Royals and Blue Jays has been settled by now, you’re free to have a non-sports date. If they’re still going, you might find a romantic bar… with a TV to be a good spot for a cozy get-together.

Saturday: It’s an oddly weak slate of college football games. You can tell by the fact that I had room to sneak my alma mater, Rutgers, onto the featured games list, even though they’re likely to be beaten by 50 points. If both MLB playoff series are still going on, they will more than make up for it. This has the potential to be a legendary afternoon and evening of baseball!

Sunday: If you want, you could watch about 15 hours in a row of NFL football today or 15 hours of soccer. It’s an incredibly versatile day. If there’s a Game Seven in the NLCS between the Cubs and the Mets, that would be a bonus of the sort that dwarfs the salary it’s augmenting.

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.

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. Same deal, for the most part, with NFL football games. For those, see our NFL Forecast.

Download a full-size copy here.

Monday: Columbus Day may be of dubious value as a historic holiday but it’s of intense value as a sports holiday. Sit back and enjoy four playoff baseball games, a good European Championship qualifying soccer game, an interesting Monday Night Football game, and a handful of NHL games that couldn’t even break into our calendar.

Tuesday: The Netherlands are a proud soccer country with a long history of top-level competition but they’re struggling just to qualify for next year’s European Championships. They need a win in today’s game against the Czech Republic. Two more MLB playoff games and a modern-classic NHL matchup round out today’s sports.

Wednesday: The WNBA finals come to a conclusion today with a winner-take all fifth game between the Minnesota Lynx and Indiana Fever. That might be enough to steer at least one of your eyes away from playoff baseball or early season hockey.

Thursday: The divisional round of the baseball playoffs will come to an end today, unless all the series are over by now… it’s impossible to know on Monday morning when I’m writing this. If they are still happening, they’ll be happening in an exciting crescendo. The normal Thursday Night NFL game is a good one this week and it’s joined by a north/south California rivalry college football game: UCLA vs. Stanford.

Friday: Date night! The American League Championship Series (semifinals to the World Series) begins today and may sway you from your appointed date. Other than that, although the calendar looks full, I don’t think high school football (even though it’s a historic rivalry in Washington DC!!) or boxing is going to be much of a problem for negotiating some couple’s time.

Saturday: Two classic college football rivalries: Michigan vs. Michigan State and Florida vs. LSU highlight today’s college football games. In baseball, the National League Championship series will begin and the AL one will move to its second game. In soccer, the British Premier League returns to action after a few weeks off for international soccer.

Sunday: The NFL eclipses everything else on most Sundays during the fall. That’s true today, especially at night when the New England Patriots try to exact Deflategate related revenge on the Indianapolis Colts. Wedged into the sports schedule are some other compelling events: women’s college soccer, MLS soccer, a NASCAR race, the second game of the NLCS, and the second weekend of the NWHL’s existence!

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.

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. Same deal, for the most part, with NFL football games. For those, see our NFL Forecast.

Download a full-size copy here.

Monday: We’ll all be able to take a breath during the day and recover from this past weekend’s sports excesses. In the evening, the NFL returns with a compelling game between the Detroit Lions and Seattle Seahawks. Both teams seem to be tumbling backwards this year and it’s always interesting to see who can stop their fall and start climbing again and how they do it.

Tuesday: Major League Baseball’s playoffs get started today with a one-game wildcard game in the American League. A lot of people are opposed to the existence of these games. It seems cruel to end a team’s playoff run, after a 162 game regular season, with a single defeat. It sure pumps up the drama though, there’s no denying that. At the same time, the WNBA finals get serious with game two between the Minnesota Lynx and Indiana Fever.

Wednesday: It’s hockey season again! Let me repeat: it’s hockey season again! I love hockey. If you want to know why, and why many people love hockey, read my post on the topic. The first nationally televised game of the season is the defending champion Chicago Blackhawks playing against the New York Rangers, who lost in the semifinals last year. It should be a good game but more importantly, it signals the return of hockey! All that said, I can’t really recommend watching it over the MLB’s National League wildcard game which starts at the same time.

Thursday: The European Championships are considered by some people to be an equal or even a superior tournament to the World Cup. How could it be better? Because of the geographic distribution of teams in the World Cup, some feel that the European only field is actually deeper with more skilled teams than the World Cup whose Asian, African, and North American representatives rarely make it past the first knockout round. The next European Championships will be in the summer of 2016 but its qualifying tournament has already begun. Watch Ireland try to upset Germany today. Later on, switch over to the first games of baseball’s divisional series. Or, if you prefer America’s new past-time to its old or future ones, watch a divisional NFL game between the Colts and Texans.

Friday: Date night!

Saturday: Of all the college football on this Saturday, my favorite game to watch will be Navy vs Notre Dame. Navy is such a joy to watch. They play football using a mostly antiquated but still surprisingly effective offensive system called the triple option. This involves running the ball on nearly every play. To make up for the loss of surprise over whether they’ll run or pass, they set up two or three different players who look like they’re going to carry the ball. If the defense guesses wrong, they’ll pay for it. At night, there’s one of the biggest non-World Cup men’s international soccer games in memory. The United States and Mexico play in a one-game playoff to decide who qualifies for the next Confederations Cup. This international tournament is important because its held in the spot of the next World Cup (Russia) the year before the World Cup. It provides an opportunity for something close to a dress rehearsal and is perceived as providing a big advantage for the teams that qualify. This only adds fuel to the always simmering fire of the U.S. vs. Mexico men’s soccer rivalry.

Sunday: The NFL eclipses everything else on most Sundays during the fall. That’s true this Sunday but there are a few other events to keep your eye on. If you’re a golf fan at all, you should check in on the final round of the Presidents Cup. The baseball playoffs, with one game on in the evening, offer a reasonable alternative to football. European championships qualifying soccer and Game Three of the WNBA finals are also strong contenders.

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.

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. Same deal, for the most part, with NFL football games. For those, see our NFL Forecast.

Download a full-size copy here.

Monday: Football rules the day. Spend the morning talking about the weekend’s NFL action. Spend the afternoon enjoying a mid-table British Premier League soccer match between Everton and West Brom. Spend the evening watching an excellent NFL football game, the last of the weekend, between the Green Bay Packers and Kansas City Chiefs.

Tuesday: The UEFA Champions League match between Barcelona and Beyer Leverkusen will be the first Barcelona has played since losing its star player, its heart and soul, Lionel Messi. This may actually make it a more interesting game to watch, both because it should give Beyer Leverkusen a better chance of winning, but also because it gives us a chance to see how Barcelona plays without Messi. In the evening, its game three of the Eastern Conference finals between the WNBA’s New York Liberty and Indiana Fever. Since the WNBA plays best two out of three game series in their playoffs, this is a single elimination game with a finals berth on the line.

Wednesday: The Italian soccer team Juventus is having a funny year. Runners up in last year’s Champions League, you would expect that they are one of the top teams in the world. This doesn’t seem to be true. They’re way down in the Italian Serie A standings. A win against the Spanish side, Sevilla, may give them some confidence to take back to domestic league play. As the weather gets colder, baseball fans start thinking about the playoffs. Today’s featured game, between the St. Louis Cardinals and Pittsburgh Pirates, could easily be a preview of an upcoming playoff matchup.

Thursday: The NFL has made a strong bid to own Thursday nights, and this week’s game between the rival Baltimore Ravens and Pittsburgh Steelers should be a physical, intriguing game. The Ravens are without a win so far this year and the Steelers will be without their quarterback, Ben Roethlisberger, because of a knee injury. Nonetheless, the biggest game of the night is in the NWSL. It’s the championship game on Fox Sports 1 between FC Kansas City and Seattle Reign FC. This is a rematch of last year’s title game, which Kansas City won 2-1. It will feature a slew of players we saw in the World Cup, including Americans Becky Sauerbrunn, Amy Rodriguez, Heather O’Reilly, and Lauren Holiday, as well as Australian international, Katrina Gorry on Kansas City and USA goalie Hope Solo and midfielder Megan Rapinoe on Seattle. My guess is that Seattle wins this one. They’ve looked near-unbeatable for most of the season.

Friday: Date night! Relive your college days with a college volleyball rivalry between Duke and UNC on ESPN U at 6 p.m. ET and then get all prepped up for an Ivy League soccer game between Princeton and Columbia at 7 p.m.

Saturday: There’s a slew of good college football games between top 25 ranked teams, the biggest of which may be a newly vulnerable-looking Alabama vs. Georgia. We also have a somewhat parallel game in British soccer between up-and-coming Southampton, and a similarly vulnerable former champion, Chelsea. The most exciting match of the day isn’t in either form of football, it’s in Rubgy where England plays Australia in the Rugby World Cup. If you’re in the Boston area, come watch it with the Dear Sports Fan Viewing Party Meetup group and me!!

Sunday: An American football game invades London to start today’s sporting schedule. For perhaps (?) the first time, the NFL has sent a divisional game to England. The Miami Dolphins and New York Jets are both coming off disappointing losses and will both be determined to win in London before taking the next week off. In British British football, Arsenal vs. Manchester City is about as big of a game as you could get. Combine these two events with the first game of the WNBA finals, the AAA 400 in NASCAR, and a West Coast MLS showdown between Los Angeles and Seattle, and we’ve got another excellent and full Sunday of sports.

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.

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. Same deal, for the most part, with NFL football games. For those, see our NFL Forecast.

Download a full-size copy here.

Monday: Got a case of the Mondays? I can’t help you. At least not until Monday night, when there’s a reasonably interesting brain vs. brawn NFL matchup with the Jets playing the part of brawn and the Colts, brain. They’ve both got both, of course, but… every game needs a plot.

Tuesday: It’s international day — starting with German soccer, shifting to an international cycling championships, and ending with a great MLB baseball game between the New York Yankees and Toronto Blue Jays. They’re divisional opponents battling it out for the division title but it’s still a cross-border affair.

Wednesday: The Capital One Cup is a tournament in British soccer, open to any team in the top two divisions. That’s 92 teams — way more than normal Premier League play. Unfortunately for American viewers, we normally only get the games between two Premier league teams. That’s true in today’s game. In the evening, I suggest watching two Florida colleges battle it out on the women’s volleyball court.

Thursday: Only one of the semifinal teams in the WNBA has been decided yet, the Phoenix Mercury. Regardless of who is playing, the playoffs are the playoffs, and they’re worth watching! Later on, the New York Giants and Washington Redskins play. Although both teams have looked poor so far this year, the injury to Tony Romo, the quarterback of their divisional rivals, leaves their division wide-open. This should be a hotly contested game.

Friday: Date night! You have my permission to ignore sports completely.

Saturday: Start the day in England and work your way gradually westward. Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester City is a compelling game, particularly since City just lost their first game of the year this past weekend. While UCLA vs. Arizona and Utah vs. Oregon are the only college football games between top 25 ranked teams, I’d rather watch Texas Tech and TCU battle it out for supremacy in the sneaky Texas smaller football program division. If you want to stick with baseball, it’s hard to find a game better than the Cubs and the Pirates.

Sunday: Get up early and root for the USA in the Rugby World Cup as we take on Scotland. The USA team lost its first match to Samoa, so this is virtually a must win game. (Note that I do not know if that is true. It just sounds good.) At 11 a.m. you get a rare chance to see Watford play soccer. This leads into a wonderful afternoon of vegging out on NFL football, men’s golf, women’s basketball, NASCAR, and an excellent MLS soccer game. Enjoy!

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.