It's been a tough fall and early winter to be an Illinois sports fan. To start off with, the White Sox, after leading their division for a good chunk of the season, did their now-traditional September Swan Dive, and we had to watch the Tigers take the division and then the pennant, and then get blitzed (again) in the World Series. And then the Chicago Bears, after starting 7-1 in the first half of the season, took it down to the last game of the season and lost a playoff bid to the Vikings, who (surprise, surprise) beat a Packers team that had already nailed down the division title. Couldn't get any more disappointing than that, could it?
Oh, but it could. On New Year's Day, the NIU Huskies got their first appearance on the big stage of the BCS, and lost the Orange Bowl in Miami to Florida State by three touchdowns. I know it was a genuine testament to the way the program has improved in the last few years that they even got to play in a BCS game, but still - wouldn't it have been nice if they could have pulled it off? We're all proud of them, and looking forward to next season, but it's hard not to think about 'what if'.
That's three big slaps in the last four months of 2012. I know that the Orange Bowl was technically the first day of 2013, but honestly, 2012 was such a bummer that I prefer to think the NIU loss was just the last gasp of that miserable year instead of the first loss of the new one. More hopeful that way, somehow. So what do we do now? Well, there's no NHL at all, for all you major-league hockey fans, and I'm just not into basketball. So, I guess we have to wait till pitchers and catchers report to MLB training camp the middle of February. That's only six weeks, right? Can we last that long?
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