Winter Sports

With college football's National Signing Day over, there's a long, six-month wait until there's a game played. That would be somewhere near the end of August. A l-o-n-g time away.

Meanwhile there's the Super Bowl being played this Sunday. After that there's a l-o-n-g six month wait for a pro football game that means anything.

And Major League baseball doesn't start for real until around April 1. The Mets first game is April 5th, at home, against the Braves. (Spring training does start in February, but that's little more than a time to learn who's on the team.)

There's still things worth paying attention to, however. Saturday, February 4th is the start of the Yukon Quest sled dog race. This year's 1000-mile race starts in Fairbanks and ends in Whitehorse, BC. (They change the direction of the race each year.) You can follow the race through the official web site.

Coming a month before the Iditarod, the Yukon Quest often sees many of the same racers and their dogs. (Some dogs will be switched out between the two races as the teams suffer injuries or the mushers determine which dogs are better at the long distance.) The Quest hasn't got as big a name as the Iditarod and this will be just the 29th running of the Quest compared to the 40th running of Iditarod, but it is just as interesting to follow and has just as much adventure and danger.

The Iditarod itself begins on March 3rd and can be followed here. It's the World Series and Super Bowl of sled dog racing. Like the Quest, the top finishers should end up in Nome somewhere around 10 to 12 days after the race begins. And I'll be following both races from start to finish.