A Bad Week For Chicago Sports

Some of you may know that I am a big fan of hockey, and here in the Chicagoland area, I have two teams to choose from, the NHL Blackhawks, who quite honestly don't seem to be doing very well, and the AHL Wolves, who quite regularly win. Personally I prefer the Wolves anyway, as they are closer to home, and they seem to have a much better attitude. Watching their games is always great fun, even when they do lose.

I was hoping to be able to boast about a great weekend of Chicago sports, with the Wolves playing the Toronto Marlies, going 2 goals up in the first period, with one of the best net minders in the AHL, I was confident. I didn't, however, legislate for the referee giving way more penalties against the Wolves than I have seen in a while, and most of those in the second period where we let in 5 goals unanswered.

We came back in the dying seconds to within one goal, and actually had one disallowed, right after that, which looked to all of the crowd like it was in, but ultimately we should never have been in the position anyway. Then they lost again last night, which leaves them in 6th place out of 7 in the West Division, with three games in hand..not their best season ever!

I also actually watched a whole NFL game yesterday, rather than just "had the game on" in the background. I was particularly interested in this game as it was the Chicago Bears versus the Carolina Panthers, and with the Superbowl only two games away, it would have been pretty incredible to have a local team in the World Series and the a local team in the Superbowl in such a short space of time, but alas, it wasn't to be. I think Rex Grossman, the quarterback, had a pretty average game.

Now, I will be the first to admit that I don't know a whole lot about the sport, other than it seems like a 1 hour game that is at least 1.5 hours tooooooo long. I think yesterday's game was over three hours! At one point, with only 1m52s to go at the end of the 2nd quarter, I timed it, and 12 minutes later the game went to half time!

Of course since the whole Janet Jackson "accident" we don't even get to see the most interesting bit of the game, the cheerleaders, on TV any more. I was especially looking forward to these two possibly being there, but they got canned after their recent antics. So stuck with the game, I have to say, and I am sure most Bears fans will agree, the better team won on the night. I don't think that the Bears played well enough to deserve a win, although they did fight hard to keep them honest with large chunks of the game only seeing a two point deficit.

Will I still watch the Superbowl, of course, if only for the commercials which were hilarious last year (the careerbuilder.com and the Ameriquest mortgage ones are the best) and hopefully for that elusive glimpse of the odd cheerleader (for my male readers).