The sporting dark days of summer are drawing to a close and the best time of the year is within sight: Autumn! (Or Fall if you prefer).
Why’s Autumn/Fall the best season?
Because that’s when all the decent sports are back on:
- In 2 days’ time we have some proper basketball on with EuroBasket (5th September)
- A week today the NFL season starts (10th September)
- In 2 weeks’ time the Rugby World Cup starts (18th September)
- In a month’s time the European basketball season starts (3rd October)
- In ~2 months’ time the NBA season starts (28th October)
Yep, this is what we want: tall guys throwing a ball through a hoop, and big guys colliding over a funny-shaped ball.
Eurobasket starts on Saturday, with a whopping 24 games on over the weekend. If you only watch one game make it Spain v Serbia on Saturday at 5pm BST, which is noon Eastern time. Most of the big name bookmakers will have streams on their sites of all the games. There’s plenty of value to be found in international basketball competitions if you’re willing to put in the research. The only bets I’m giving away for free on this blog are Spain to win their group at 1.90 or better, and Team Lithuania to win theirs at 1.57… barring the Jeb Bush bet, these are the first bets I’ve placed for a long time, It’s good to be back in the swing!
The NFL season starts next Thursday, with the Steelers travelled to meet a Tom Brady-less Patriots. I’ve got a post about the lopsided NFL schedule that I’ll get out before then. (It focuses on the Seattle Seahawks)
As previously mentioned, I’ve entered a NFL supercontest, so I’ve got some work to do on that next week…
Trivia Question of the Week Fortnight
Many moons ago I asked:
In soccer, which is the only club that has won the Champions League/European Cup more times than it has won it’s domestic League?
And the correct answer is Nottingham Forrest. Very nice.
Next question and it’s probably the only cricket one I know, and it’s a decent one:
Which cricketer has scored the most test runs and has never scored a test century?
I’ll rephrase it in case there’s any doubt: out of all the players to never score a test century, who has scored the most test runs?