SPORTS COLUMN
T
he sporting world continues to get crazier and crazier. Greatly influenced by Northern Illinois University athletic director Sean Frazier, the Mid American Conference has decided to cancel all fall sports. With the announcement last week, the MAC becomes the biggest conference to date that is postponing football to spring, or possibly cancelling the entire year. Who knows anymore? What is significant is that a precedent has been set and larger and more prestigious leagues, such as the Big 10, may follow suit. If that is the case, NIU will be known nationwide for pioneering such change.
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reston, Le-Win, Dakota, EPC, Stockton, East Dubuque, Galena, Du-Pec and West Carroll. No doubt, Le-Win will be the consensus No. 1 team in the pre-season rankings.
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Congratulations to Sean Considine of Byron for being named the greatest player to come out of the Rockford area in the past 75 years by the Register Star newspaper. Sports Editor Matt Trowbridge did the rankings based upon how players did in high school, college and the pros. Of his top 25, Adam Dach of Byron was 18th and Troy Drake, another Tiger, was No. 10. Bucky Babcok was 23rd for Stillman Valley and Winnebago had two top 25s in Larry Clark and the Boeke twins. The other BNC pick was James Robinson of Lutheran at 15th. The rest were all from the NIC-10, other than No. 3 Stan Campbell, a 1948 Rochelle grad who
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sandwiched a standout pro career around serving in the Korean War. Trowbridge did an excellent job of feature stories on all 25 selections, with tons of interesting grid history. Earlier, he had a series on the 10 greatest games played. He also did the same for the Freeport paper, with Jake Coffman and AJ Christensen of Forreston making the cut among the greatest 25 from that area.
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Cross country, golf, tennis and swimming/diving can begin practicing this week, with the first competitions on Aug. 24. There are extremely detailed guidelines these sports must follow, per the IHSA. The biggest issue is limiting the competitions to 50. Considering Oregon has over 1,000 runners show up for its first cross-country meet of the year, that is going to drastically impact things. The beauty of a cross-country meet, is that regardless of ability level, everyone gets to run. Anyone that didn’t run in the main varsity meet, would have the chance in the open meet. Another detail to consider is the loss of economic revenue businesses in town had derived from all the big sporting events Oregon hosted. There is not another school the size of Oregon the state that hosts as many functions
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• Friday, August 14, 2020
Speaking of pioneers, Polo was the school that gave credence to 8-man football. Everyone is excited that Aquin, AFC, Amboy, Milledgeville and Orangeville will be joining Polo and River Ridge as 8-man teams for the 2021 season. Here’s a suggestion to the NUIC. Since the upcoming football schedule has so many uncertainties, what would be wrong with letting all of the above-mentioned schools start 8-man this spring instead of waiting until next fall. The way it looks, teams may only play 6-7 regular season games anyway, with hopes of some kind of area-wide post season. The remaining NUIC 11-man teams are For-
COMMENTARY Andy Colbert
OGLE COUNTY NEWS | Ogle County Newspapers / oglecountynews.com
Sporting world craziness continues in August
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