The best Christmas gifts are the ones that last and linger and become part of our lives over the following year. And so it is for sports fans as Santa and his reindeer start limbering up for their annual feat of athletic endurance. Christmas is coming — and its greatest offering this year is everything that lies ahead. For 2022 is going to be an extravaganza of activity that will require a certain degree of stamina from those of us enamored with sports to the point of no return. In some ways, looking forward to big sports events is almost as much fun as actually watching them, and in that sense we are spoiled for choice. There is rarely much of a break in the 2022 action, with two of the biggest ticket items — the Winter Olympics and the Super Bowl — actively overlapping. The first action at the Games in Beijing will take place on Feb. 2, a full 11 days before the biggest game on the pro football calendar kicks off at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles. The cold weather version of the Olympics never generates quite the same buzz as its summer counterpart but will be a worthy feast nonetheless, with some established American stars such as skiing sensation Mikaela Shiffrin once again favored, as well as some athletes not yet fully on the national radar. In speedskating, for example, the Joey Mantia is a 28-time world champion and a serious prospect in three events for the U.S. We’d love to tell you who to expect to see in the Super Bowl, but the rampant unpredictability of the ongoing NFL campaign makes it singularly impossible. In the AFC, 13 of the 16 teams are at .500 or better, and all of them are no worse than a game out of the final wild-card spot. And there is no shortage of storylines: Patrick Mahomes seeking to elevate to true greatness, Aaron Rodgers hoping past acrimony fuels present success in Green Bay, Kyler Murray, Matthew Stafford and Dak Prescott chasing postseason breakthroughs and, oh yeah, some guy named Brady who has done this thing a few times. Football season will swiftly roll into March Madness, which, for the first time since 2019, will feature fans in the stands and be spiced with the plotline of whether Duke’s loaded lineup can give Mike Krzyzewski a Hollywood sendoff. Like in the NFL, the NBA playoffs figure to be similarly wide open. The hottest teams of the regular season, most notably the Golden State Warriors and Phoenix Suns, are not the favorites for the title, that distinction going to the Brooklyn Nets. Then there is a puzzle of the Los Angeles Lakers, a team seemingly built for postseason drama but at this point looking incapable of even getting there. Toward the end point of 2022, soccer’s greatest show will take center stage, the men’s FIFA World Cup occupying a month of action in Qatar. The November-December dates are a new twist, but the plus side of it is that the world’s best players will be in mid-season form rather than exhausted from a long campaign. Those are just some of the highlights. There’s not enough space to list everything that will be going down in 2022 except to reflect upon how appetizing it’s all going to be. When a swath of big events jam into the calendar across a short span, it gives the year a special energy. Until then, hopefully there are treats to be eaten this weekend, plenty of football to watch, loved ones to spend time with and maybe, just maybe, a few good gifts to unwrap. But if what lies under the tree turns out to be a disappointment bound for regifting, worry not. The real treat — that 2022 will never be short on entertainment — is still to come. |
