By Mark Carpenter – 

Oh, isn’t it just wonderful? This time of year I mean. For a sports fan, it is, to quote Andy Williams, “the most wonderful time of the year.” Fall weather will soon be upon us, I hope, and for the sports fan, it is a cornucopia of choices. At this moment, we have October baseball, albeit again without the Reds, the NFL is in full swing (kneeling or not), college football fills every Saturday, the NHL season has begun, the NBA season isn’t far off (yawn), and right here at home our local teams are finishing up their regular seasons and priming for tournament play.
Does it get any better than that? Sports, sports, and more sports, which is good unless perhaps you are a sports writer who just can’t cover as much as you really would like to. It’s another busy week on the local sports scene, highlighted by boys’ golfers from North Adams and West Union hitting the links on Friday and Saturday to compete in the OHSAA State Tournament. For a high school athlete, it sure doesn’t get any better than competing at the state’s highest level. Good luck to the Green Devils and to Elijah, and Patrice snap lots of good photos for me!
And how about them Bengals? Here we go with another season of, if they had just won the “fill-in-the-blank” game, they would be sitting pretty. Well, if they had beaten Houston and Green Bay which they should have, they sure would be sitting pretty. As it is, the orange and black are on a two-game winning streak and seem to have things figured out for the moment, but of course the dreaded bye week now approaches. Since they are playing much better, it would be nice to just keep playing, especially with those dastardly Steelers on the horizon in that place they named after a ketchup bottle or something.
I heard on the radio earlier this week that the Bengals’ home attendance was way down for that Buffalo game. Don’t worry, those who jumped off the bandwagon will soon be jumping back on and the Jungle will be in good shape. It does seem like the whole protest thing is dying down, until of course the Vice-President stages his getaway from a Colts-49ers game. But seriously, who could blame him for wanting to leave a Colts-49ers game?
October baseball is also in the air and even thought the home team is not participating again, there are plenty of ex-Reds out there to cheer for, pretty much at least one on every team in the playoffs. I don’t really have a dog in the fight with the Reds and Mets sitting at home, but it would be nice to see some new blood in the World Series, or translated, anyone but the Cubs.
College basketball is just around the corner, at least until the FBI shuts everyone down, except of course Coach Cal and the Cats, they are clean as a whistle (insert emoji for winking). Shut down the money-grab known as AAU Basketball and solve the problem, but that is a whole other column for another time. We loved Rick Pitino when he rebuilt UK, we now rejoice in his downfall, just obligatory for all members of the BBN. But really Rick, we did think you were smarter than that. Time will pass and he will get another coaching job somewhere. Eventually Rob Davis has to retire (another winking emoji please).
I probably could think of more witty and sarcastic things to type, but duty calls. I think there is a soccer game somewhere where I can see kids kick a ball in a goal. Such a simple game that is, right there with tossing a ball through a hoop.
It’s fall, its’s great, and “Here come the Irish”!