Back in the summer of 2011, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) selected PyeongChang, South Korea as the site for the XXIII Winter Olympic Games, which take place over the 17-day period February 9th – 25th, 2018. I often wonder… had the future been revealed to the IOC seven years ago, would the Games have been set down on the Korean Peninsula, where North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, has made a vivid display of his nuclear ambitions to the entire world?

Great college football games have always been a staple of ad-supported cable television, and make no mistake about it… ESPN is the “stapler.” Out of something like 40 College Bowl Games last season (2016-17), ESPN carried over three-quarters of them, delivering a solid Live average U.S. household rating of 2.6 (and a 5.8 share.)

With college football well under way, the Men’s NCAA College Basketball Season is right around the corner -- a marathon of games (thousands of them) over the next four months before ending in “March Madness” and the crowning of the NCAA Division I National Champion. And like college football, Ad-Supported Cable is the premier source for watching college basketball all season long – from the regular season on ESPN, ESPN2 and The Big Ten Network (BTN), to the NCAA Tournament on TBS, TNT and TruTV.

Who would have ever thought that a 30-year old Canadian, with a Phys. Ed. degree from Presbyterian College in Montreal, would one day immigrate to Springfield, Massachusetts, and in order to occupy his unruly students during the long New England winter months end up inventing the game of basketball?

I’ll be the first to admit that ice hockey isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, and certainly does not enjoy the same level of popularity as the other three major U.S. sports (football, baseball and basketball). That may have something to do with ice hockey being invented north of the border, (although it should be noted that the “American game” of basketball was invented by the Canadian, Dr. James Naismith). Moreover, the tradition of ice hockey in the United States evolved where the game could be played – in far northern states with frozen ponds and lakes.