It’s the most wonderful time of the year.
Mid-to-late December is one of the best periods on the sports calendar. Bowl games have started, college basketball is getting into tougher non-conference matchups as teams prepare for the start of conference play, the NFL is well into the playoff hunt and NBA teams are hitting their stride.
Just Saturday, we had seven bowl games -- ranging from 10 a.m. to nearly midnight -- and three NFL games, including the biggest comeback in NFL history after the Vikings came back from a 33-point deficit.
We had five matchups of top-25 teams in college basketball with two of those being top-10 matchups and the No. 5 Houston Cougars beating the No. 2 Virginia Cavaliers 69-61. Locally, we got Missouri beating Central Florida on a buzzer-beating 30-foot 3.
And for good measure, sports added seven NBA matchups to our list of early gifts.
There’s hardly a minute of the day in the next couple of weeks where you can’t find some good sports on TV, especially if you add in high school basketball shootouts and tournaments like the 24-plus consecutive hours of the Norm Stewart Classic from Friday morning into Saturday night.
Looking ahead to today, you can start your day with the World Cup final as one of the greatest soccer players of all time in Lionel Messi looks for his first World Cup championship against someone who looks like he’ll be one of the best players of the next decade and a half in Kylian Mbappé trying to defend France’s championship from 2018.
You won’t have any bowls to watch today, since college football can’t directly compete with the NFL on Sundays, but there will be a few good games in the NFL slate if you don’t want to watch one of the four ranked college basketball teams taking the court, three of which are taking on tough Power Five opponents.
The bowls return Monday with at least one game every day through Saturday, including Missouri facing Wake Forest in the Gasparilla Bowl on Friday. Before the Tigers’ bowl game, we’ll have the annual Braggin’ Rights between Missouri and Illinois at 8 p.m. Thursday.
If you want to either avoid your family or bond with them over sports, you’ll get most of next week’s NFL slate Christmas Eve with 11 of the 16 games Saturday. But we’ll also have three games on Christmas, marking the first time the NFL has played on Christmas since 2017.
And of course the NBA will play premiere matchups throughout Christmas day ranging from the Philadelphia 76ers against the New York Knicks, to the Milwaukee Bucks against the Boston Celtics and the Memphis Grizzlies playing the Golden State Warriors. If you want, you can have NBA games on from 11 a.m. to midnight.
For the baseball fans, we’ve been in the heart of free agency season, though it looks like we’ve just about hit the end after Dansby Swanson signed with the Chicago Cubs on Saturday. But teams will continue to make trades throughout the winter so keep a look out for those breaking news tweets and notifications.
With all the gifts sports are giving us across the next couple of weeks, it will be hard to ask for anything else. So enjoy this wonderful time as the weather keeps getting colder and gives you a perfect reason to stay in, cuddle up with a blanket and stay on the couch for hours at a time to watch sports all day every day.