Welcome to Jordon Gillis’ weekly column, A Sporting Chance.  This column is the perfect way to keep up with what is going on in the sports world, when you just don’t have time to watch anymore.

127 Hours
Unless the NFL owners and players come to an agreement by Wednesday at midnight, there will be an official professional football work stoppage for the first time since 1987. In the short term this means that players can not be traded or sign with other teams. Fortunately the NFL draft will be held next month (phew!). The real worry is if there is no labor deal by July or August. Although I won’t cut my arm off if there are no games this fall, each day an agreement isn’t worked out is another day closer to this happening.

The Kids Are All Right
The entire sports world turns its attention to college basketball for the month of March. This is when “March Madness” takes place, a 68-team tournament that decides the national champion. The beauty of March Madness is the David vs Goliath aspect of the games. College basketball’s traditional powers play smaller schools and it is almost impossible not to root for the underdog. Even though I am not a huge college basketball fan, I definitely can not wait until the tournament starts in a few weeks.

Inception
Carmelo Anthony’s dream scenario took place this week as he was traded to the New York Knicks for 4 players. Carmelo is one of the NBA’s most prolific scorers and Madison Square Garden was buzzing when he made his home debut on Wednesday night (highest tv ratings for a Knicks game in almost 20 years). The Knicks are still nowhere near as good as Boston, Miami, Chicago or the Lakers, but Carmelo gives them relevancy. They went from a nice story to a must watch and their game tonight against Miami is going to cause some arguments in houses with 1 television tonight as it is on as the same time as the Oscars.

The Week to Come
Friday, March 4- Miami at San Antonio, the NBA’s 2 best teams and a possible NBA Finals preview
Saturday, March 5 – Duke at North Carolina, round 2 of college basketball’s best rivarly

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