October sports are…bad right now?

October is supposed to be one of the greatest times of the year for sports. We have postseason baseball, are in the midsts of the college and professional football seasons, and hockey and the NBA seasons are just starting to rev up.

And yet, I am not enthralled. The Brewers regular season was fun. A rag-tag lineup of youth and journeymen held up by Craig Counsell, one of the better pitching staffs in the league and maybe a fair bit of duct tape. And sure, perhaps it was slightly buoyed by a less than stellar NL Central, but a division championship is a division championship, and the Brewers have precious few of those.

However, as fun a roller coaster as the regular season was, the playoffs were decidedly not. The Crew had some of the least clutch hitting I’ve seen awhile; when they lost to the Braves in the playoffs two years ago, they just couldn’t hit at all. This year, in their two games against the Diamondbacks, they totalled 21 hits, which is actually pretty impressive. If you had said that we would have gotten 21 hits in the first two games heading into the series, I would have been ecstatic.

Unfortunately, those 21 hits somehow only translated into five runs and our pitching failed to live up to the hype and after a 162 game season, Brewers were done after two subpar games filled with missed opportunities.

Bleh. Normally, I would be able to wash out the taste of yet another early exit by the Brewers with some Badgers and Packers football, but there has been no such reprieve there either.

Ah, what can one really say about Wisconsin’s two football squads that hasn’t already been said before? I could lament the pure mediocrity of the Badgers thus far this season, from the subpar defense nowhere near as dominant as it was for years with Jim Leonhard at the helm to an offense that is struggling to utilize pieces that were recruited for a scheme that is practically the exact opposite of the one they are now trying to implement.

The Packers are somehow worse. I would hesitate to even call the Monday night game against the Raiders football, because neither team really looked like it knew that was what they were playing. Perhaps the first game against the hapless Bears set up unrealistic expectations, but the Packers look like they have somehow devolved over the past three weeks, against fairly weak competition as well. I do not expect Jordan Love to be anywhere near peak Aaron Rodgers, but it feels like the creativity of play calling from LaFleur’s first two seasons with the Pack is completely gone, instead running extremely safe plays to protect the young quarterback. Which would be fine, I suppose, but we can’t play safe and also have him throw three interceptions. And also have a defense that has not lived up to any expectations the last two season. And also have a special teams that has done absolutely nothing for the first five games. I mean, you can, I guess. But that’s how you get to be what is called a “bad football team.”

Bleh. There is also only so much interest I can hold for the NBA as well, but my curiosity over how the Giannis Antetokounmpo/Damian Lillard connection will play out is really the only Wisconsin sports thing that is catching my attention right now. And they still have a week of preseason stuff...

I wish I cared about hockey. Maybe life would be more fun right now if I did. Is there still room on the Golden Knights bandwagon? I might just jump on, because the situation is looking a bit dire.

A C ertain Point of V iew