Sports Time Radio

It’s the very 1st day of 2023 and I’m guessing that a lot of you made resolutions for this year. Now I’m not going to ask you to tell me your New Year’s resolutions. What I would like to know though is what are your New Year’s resolutions for your favorite sports team or the teams in your area.

Now I didn’t have to think about this very long before coming up with resolutions for the teams in my area. As I’ve mentioned before I live in the Chicagoland area, so we have five teams in the four major America sports. I actually think that all five of the major Chicago sports team fit into my New Year’s resolution.

What I’d like to see the Chicago teams do for the New Year is to start acting like the major market teams they are. As of right now three of the five teams the Bears, Blackhawks and Cubs are rebuilding, but they’re not going about rebuilding like a major market sports team would normally do.

All three teams are looking to rebuild through the draft and adding younger players instead of spending the money that they have and bringing in top talent to try and win.

I know, I know you’re going to say that the Cubs just signed free agent Dansby Swanson to a big free agent contract. Well, that is true, but is the signing of one player going to be enough to turn the Cubs around and make them a World Series contender. Ask yourself this, does the signing of Swanson even make the Cubs a playoff team?

While it’s a big signing there was talk that the Cubs were in on all of the other free agents that signed elsewhere, and I believe that Swanson got the smallest of the free agents deals that the name free agents got this off season. So even when making a what was considered a big-time free agent signing the Cubs opted for the cheapest one available.

All the talk with the Bears is that they have nine draft picks in the upcoming draft, and they have a lot of salary cap space to sign free agents. So, what I’d like to know is what gives you confidence that the Bears will make good draft choices. Remember the Bears rarely if ever hand out big free agent contracts, so why would this upcoming off season be different.

The Blackhawks have the lowest point total in the NHL as they’ve managed to acquire just 20 points in 35 games, they’ve played this season. Now to be fair to the Blackhawks they did say that they expected this to be a down season as they rebuilt and with the hard salary cap in the NHL it’s tough to rebuild quickly. Of course, that also means that it may take quite a few seasons for the Blackhawks to just get into the playoffs again.

That leaves the Chicago fans with just two teams that have any chance of contending for anything this season and even their chances don’t look good.

The Bulls found themselves in the playoffs last season, but they were quickly eliminated in the 1st round. The Bulls didn’t make any big off season moves even though they knew that there was a chance that Lonzo Ball would miss the entire season with an injury.

As of right now the Bulls are holding onto the 10th spot in the Eastern conference which would get them into the play-in round of the NBA playoffs. It’s doubtful with the way the NBA is set up that a team will ever come out of the play-in round and win the NBA title.

That leaves us with the White Sox who were probably the biggest disappointment in Major League Baseball last season. There were quite a few people that thought the White Sox would represent the American league in the World Series and they didn’t even make the playoffs.

Now the White Sox didn’t make any big-time free agent additions they didn’t really need to since they’re still looked at as a young team. The White Sox did add the outfielder they needed in Andrew Benintendi and they added depth to the starting rotation by signing Mike Clevenger.

The White Sox did allow Jose Abreu to sign elsewhere, and he ended up with the Houston Astros. Abreu is going to be 37 years old and didn’t fit the White Sox plans, but they’ll have to find a way to replace the leadership that he brought to the team.

Obviously, we can’t force teams to spend money, but it would be nice to see them be in play for some of the better players that are available.

I’m also tired of hearing that people will stop going to games because they won’t. I believe that attendance was down a little last season, but there were quite a few people still getting back on their feet after dealing with the Covid-19 garbage we went through. Just look at the recent Bears game against the Buffalo Bills. The wind chill was 30 degrees below zero and while the game might not have been a complete sellout it was very close to one. If fans can afford to go to games, they’re going to go to games no matter if the team is good or not, so stop trying to use that as a reason for these teams to spend money.

Alright it’s your turn. Let me know what New Year’s resolution you have for your favorite team.

Don’t forget to look me up on Twitter, I’m @Burketime.