By Eric Emery

On Monday, American Exceptionalism took an unneeded step forward with the naming of former USMNT player and coach Bob Bradley as manager of Swansea City.
On the editorial side of things, I have a soft spot in my heart for Swansea. And technically, an American isn’t managing an English team since Swansea City is in Wales. But for the Americans who need the education, Wales is at the butt end of the UK. Not that Wales is the figurative butt end of anything, for Wales gave us singer Tom Jones, actress Catherine Zeta-Jones, and the phrase “It’s raining old wives and walking sticks.” In my humble opinion, that’s a hell of a lot scarier than “cats and dogs.”
If you check out Breakfast In America’s Facebook page, you see our mission is to “talk EPL football. Because we are American fans, we will accidentally ruin it.” Under Bradley’s management and the various majority and minority U.S. ownership groups, we’re on our way.

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Posted on October 4, 2016

By Marty Gangler

Finally. The season is over and we can get back to essentially where we left off last year in October. You know, when the games really mattered.
So yeah, they matter again, finally. And I have to say that maybe the four days off will help Cub fans ramp it all up again. The season was essentially over like 2-plus months ago and you kind of had to “pretend” that there were big series’ pending or big games happening. But there were no big series’ or big games for these guys.
I mean, the biggest thing the past few months was making sure everyone remembered how great the backup catcher we’ve had for the last two years was.

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Posted on October 3, 2016

By Steve Rhodes

It looked like a different Bears offense out there Sunday with Brian Hoyer at the helm – and the Detroit Lions across the line of scrimmage.
Still, offensive coordinator Dowell Loggains seemed to open up the playbook, eschewing calls to “establish the run” and instead using the short pass to create options and unpredictability in the game plan.
The faster tempo – and an energetic Hoyer instead of a laconic Jay Cutler – helped keep the Lions off-balance, adding up to a convincing . . . 17-14 win.
Hoyer did what a back-up quarterback for the Bears ought to do – beat a bad, dumb team, as Laurence Holmes put it on The Score this morning – but he’s not the future, and this team, at 1-3, is not exactly back in the playoff hunt.

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Posted on October 3, 2016

By Roger Wallenstein

The curtain is drawn,
Goodbye, adios and sayonara.
The White Sox have left town –
There’s no game tomorra.
But there is a press conference,
As Hahn seeks a panacea.
Ventura is finished –
Is it time to welcome Renteria?

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Posted on October 2, 2016

By Thomas Chambers

‘Chrome is king. Beholder, beholden to no one in her fine career, might be fading. Flintshire yielded. Secret House had no horseman, headless or otherwise.
Races, including those of the Breeders’ Cup, last mere minutes. But the stories for that weekend are being written now, a month out. Horse racing is funny that way. When your next race is 22 minutes hence, you never look too far ahead. When the day is over, you process what you’ve seen. When it’s Breeders’ Cup, you look forward to the match-ups, even in a year that seems to have had an unusually nifty number of head-to-head match-ups.
California Chrome.

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Posted on October 2, 2016

Official “Divisional” Playoff Pep Rally On Division Street Hosted By David Kaplan

“The Division Street Entertainment District, Chicago’s Party Headquarters, is teaming up with ESPN’s Dave Kaplan and his CSN post-game on-air partner and former Cub, Todd Hollandsworth, to throw a pre-playoff Pep Rally on October 6. Sponsored by Buona, The Official Beef of the Chicago Cubs, and Bud Light, the rally will celebrate the success of our lovable Northsiders, a team that is statistically one of the all-time great teams in baseball history,” Blast! Marketing & PR says.
“Party like it’s a new era in Chicago baseball on Division Street’s iconic bar strip: Butch McGuire’s, She-Nannigan’s, The Lodge, Hopsmith Tavern, Original Mother’s, Mother’s Too, The Hangge-Uppe and Coconutz! The strip will be drenched in Northsider blue and bars will be filled with music, drink specials and plenty of themed banners and decorations. Look for surprise guests including former players and the inimitable Ronnie ‘Woo Woo’ Wickers.

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Posted on October 1, 2016

By Jim Coffman and Steve Rhodes

Pre-playoff exhibition games rankle. Plus: Theo Epstein Finally Gets Edwin Jackson Money; Robin’s Return?!; Bears Still Not As Bad As White Sox; Blackhawks & Bulls Go Camping; Chicago Sky, Chicago Fire, NIU And The Tribune’s Endorsement Of Gary Johnson Bring Up The Rear.

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Posted on September 30, 2016

By Carl Mohrbacher

The Bears really need to do me a solid and put together a couple games that are either 100% good football or 100% bad football, because at this rate I expect to run out of snappy opening titles by Week 6.
There wasn’t a lot to like about Monday’s 31-17 loss in Dallas, but aside from the continued high-level play of linebacker Jerrell Freeman, there were a few positive takeaways to be seen if you squinted hard enough.

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Posted on September 29, 2016

By Dan O’Shea

Random observations from a week in which almost everything that was supposed to happen didn’t happen:
The Bears were supposed have no hope and no one with fantasy value after two weeks, but Zach Miller and Jordan Howard rewrote the script (well, the fantasy part anyway). Okay, the Bears still have no hope (at all) in the real world of the NFL, but TE Miller racked up 78 yards and caught two TD passes from QB Brian Hoyer in Week 3, while RB Howard showcased his rumbling self by running for 45 yards and posting 47 receiving yards after RB mate Jeremy Langford was injured.

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Posted on September 28, 2016

By Galen Clavio/The Conversation

In some potentially game-changing news for the way we understand professional football, the National Football League began the 2016 preseason by placing tracking sensors in its footballs for the first time. The chips are also in balls used in Thursday night games.
Over the past decade, we’ve seen an explosion in data analytics in sports, particularly on the professional level. Technological advances in cameras and sensors have allowed teams, media and fans to gain insight into a bunch of previously gray areas of sport performance, such as the National Basketball Association’s use of SportVU to track every bit of player and ball movement on the floor.
The concept of integrating numbers and analysis into scouting, training and coaching isn’t new. But access to powerful hardware and software has greatly increased the quality and quantity of available data. A nearly insatiable appetite for data on sports has created a sports analytics market that is set to grow from the millions to the multiple billions of dollars over the next few years.

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Posted on September 28, 2016