By Chris Taylor/Reuters

Every year, the National Football League draft makes a number of strapping young men very, very rich.
Enjoy the moment, lads. But a word of advice from former NFL stars: Start thinking about your next career right away.
“As an athlete, your body is your company – and you’re a depreciating asset,” said Israel Idonije, a former defensive end with the Chicago Bears and Detroit Lions for more than a decade, starting in 2003. “That’s why it’s important to lay a foundation for life after football, while you’re still in the league.”

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Posted on April 28, 2016

By Dan O’Shea

Sure, you could have drafted Chris Sale and Jake Arrieta in the first and second rounds of your draft, but instead you thought it wiser to use those precious opportunities on much-hyped position players like, say, A.J. Pollock and Kyle Schwarber.
Well, if you landed both of the latter two, who are now thoroughly injured, you might have bigger problems than a lack of firepower in your starting rotation. But let’s solve your pitching problems first.
Here are a few possible pitcher pick-ups, each with some waiver wire availability last time I checked:

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Posted on April 27, 2016

By Jim Coffman

So this means we definitely don’t get any more Hawk games this season, doesn’t it.
And a second straight championship celebration and fourth in the last seven years . . . that is out as well, eh? (Just because all the Canadian teams missed the postseason doesn’t mean we can’t add a little Canuckian seasoning every once in a while).
All of this after the Hawks bowed out 3-2 to St. Louis on Monday night to lose their conference quarterfinal series 4-3 and end the 2015-16 season.
No more slick stickhandling from Artemi Panarin or Patrick Kane or “strong net-front presence” from Andrew Shaw or Artem Anisimov. And the blocked shots, the ridiculously obviously painful blocked shots offered up by Niklas Hjalmarsson time after time to stop dangerous situations before they started, those are gone too for another season.

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Posted on April 26, 2016

By Marty Gangler

As this magical season keeps moving on I’m constantly hearing of all the things the Cubs have done for the first time in ____. Like the last time the Cubs were 14-5 to start the season was 1969, and some other year I think. I just can’t care about these things. They seem so meaningless because the Cubs have been so bad for so long. It’s almost laughable. But with this in mind we here at The Cub Factor have put together our own type of list.

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Posted on April 25, 2016

By Roger Wallenstein

The White Sox have outperformed what anyone could have expected this spring with 13 wins in 19 games despite scoring more runs than only one of the other 29 major league teams. We have Sox pitching primarily to thank.
However, we would be remiss if we didn’t point out the generosity of the fellows providing the opposition. No, they are not friends – comrades of the same union to be sure, but in most cases not bosom buddies – but their goofy mistakes and misjudgements have played a notable role as the White Sox have more victories than any other American League contingent.

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Posted on April 24, 2016

By Jim Coffman and Steve Rhodes

Game-winners and no-hitters. Plus: The Secret History Of Tiger Woods; The Who Sox; Blame Butler; Timberwolves Land Tom Thibodeau For Phil Jackson Money; Loyola Investigating Sheryl Swoopes After Mass Transfers; and Everton Board Rumored To Hold Emergency Meeting.

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Posted on April 22, 2016

By Dan O’Shea

Cubs manager Joe Maddon didn’t invent the saying “It’s a marathon, not a sprint,” but he has been fond of deploying it to remind both Cubs players and fans that no one wins the World Series in April. The long season, as fun as it might be, requires above many other things endurance and patience.
This is what you have to tell yourself anyway when it’s April 20 and you’ve watched some of the players you praised in the preseason do little of fantasy value for the first three weeks of the regular season.
Who are the primary offenders?

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Posted on April 20, 2016

By Steve Rhodes

We all know the Cubs were built into a World Series contender through a farm system rejuvenated by high draft picks resulting from three seasons of tanking, right? Wrong.
Let’s take a look at the team’s 25-man roster and how they all came to be Cubs.

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Posted on April 19, 2016

By Jim Coffman

Joel Quenneville moved into second on the all-time list of NHL coaches as ranked by regular season victories earlier this season. He has of course led the Hawks to three Stanley Cups. So if you want to argue he can do no wrong, a part of me is inclined to agree.
But it seems as though during just about every playoff run at the helm of the Hawks, he has made a lineup decision or two that leave(s) me scratching my head. And it happened again yesterday as the Hawks fell behind the Blues 2-1 in their first-round playoff series with a 3-2 loss. My questions are as follows:

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Posted on April 18, 2016

By Marty Gangler

As I look at this 2016 incarnation of the Cubs, it’s hard for me not to think about my shoulder.
Sure, that sounds a bit odd, but I just had shoulder surgery. So I can’t think of much of anything right now without thinking about my shoulder.
For a little background, I initially hurt my shoulder 20-some years ago playing inline street hockey on a tennis court. I wiped out and my shoulder popped out of its socket. It would continue to do this over the years and I’d have to pop it back in myself. This got to be a bit too much to deal with and I had surgery to tighten up the joint. But now the issue has become too much to deal with again and I needed a clean-out. Weird thing these days is they give you a DVD of the surgery as the doc goes in with a camera himself to work his magic. Turns out I had a ton of scar tissue, loose debris, bone chips, even an old license plate from Louisiana in there.

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Posted on April 18, 2016