#at least until atl united has a women’s team

[cavillary]

bay fc really gonna make me support them aren’t they

[junker-town]

The 2018 SB Nation Hope Generator for the Despondent Sports Fan

Yes, 2017 was trash, but we’ve got some sports hope for you in the new year.

Soccer

Christian Pulisic is only 19 years old and, barring disaster, will have at least two more shots at a World Cup team as an American soccer player. # http://ift.tt/2A5gfSq

ATL United drew 886,000 people to watch soccer in Atlanta in its first season.

Weston McKinnie is only 19 years old and, barring disaster, he’ll have at least two more shots at a World Cup team as an American soccer player. # http://ift.tt/2A5gfSq

Lionel Messi is still one of the best soccer players in the world at the age of 30.

^ Cristiano Ronaldo is still one of the best soccer players in the world at the age of 32.

^ If either, or both, of these things makes you sad or angry: Neither one of these things can stay true for long.

The failure of the United States to make the World Cup hopefully means a complete demolition of everything wrong with American soccer. # http://ift.tt/2A5gfSq

We will all get to watch Fox hilariously work overtime on selling a World Cup to an American audience without the United States Men’s National Team in it. #http://ift.tt/2A5gfSq

Everyone will get to root for the team of their choice on their merits alone in this World Cup. # http://ift.tt/2A5gfSq

^ This should be Nigeria, of course, because Nigeria is the most entertaining soccer team, and deserves your love above all others.

A rabid, gluttonous soccer fan may now stream nearly every league’s games on the planet directly into their faces. (Legally, of course.) # http://ift.tt/2Cuat2E

^ You’d never stream illegally, we know that, we just want to clarify that. We’re not the police as far as you know.

Sports gambling will be legal everywhere, and you will be able to wager on anything from the comfort of your phone.

^ Sports gambling will be legal everywhere, and you will be able to make fun of your friends for being stupid enough to gamble on sports live from the social media accounts on your phone.

^ Sports gambling will be legal everywhere, meaning you can gamble on sports from jail with your contraband cell phone after you commit crimes to feed your sports gambling addiction.

MLB/Baseball

Baseball is actually a very healthy sport with strong local followings. It’ll be fine. Nothing else sells 162 games worth of ads per team. Nothing.

This is the part where we tell you to be very excited about a young baseball player—someone like Ronald Acuña, baby! (Grant Brisbee told me who he was, but he seems very exciting!) Baseball is fun.

College baseball is growing even if Mississippi State abandoned their glorious fire trap of a tailgating situation.

The best, most passionate, and underrated college sports playoff is the Women’s College World Series.

NASCAR/Auto racing

Auto racing is suffering, but it’s also the sport most likely to put you into a VR helmet, showing you exactly what a driver is seeing during a race in real time.

^ Did you just think about what this might look like during a rally car race? Get nauseated but excited thinking about what this would look like for an F1 race at Monaco? Auto racing might not be dead-dead yet.

Less money coming into NASCAR might mean a designed return to lawless racing and on-track brawling for ratings. This might be desperate. It might also be very entertaining.

^ A desperate need for viewers might also get NASCAR to do something serious about hiring diversity in the sport—and not just behind the wheel.

A car can still run at 200 miles per hour flat out at Talladega without touching the brake once.

NBA

The NBA is in a golden age and it’s so obvious that even saying this is already a cliche.

A 6’11” point guard who plays in Milwaukee can dunk from the three-point line in two steps—and does this pretty frequently.

Boogie Cousins and Anthony Davis play on the same team—and they might be the three spot on the menu on any given night on League Pass.

LeBron James is only 32 and still playing the best basketball of his life.

^ He also called the President “you bum” on Twitter, which made him the new President. LeBron James is now the first man to be President and also an MVP candidate.

The 76ers and Knicks are stocked with astonishing talents for years to come. No, really, that’s an accurate sentence.

James Harden is allowed to do whatever he wants on any night of the week in the city of Houston and it is a delight to watch.

Russell Westbrook exists, and sometimes that alone is enough to keep going.

The NBA has MVP-grade talent from Greece, Los Angeles, Cameroon, Akron, Latvia, and Washington, D.C.

Someday someone will love you like John Wall loves Washington, D.C., and the Wizards. And like D.C. and the Wizards, you won’t deserve it. (But you’ll take it.) # http://ift.tt/2A6oeyy

Doris Burke is calling NBA games.

The NBA on TNT is still the best wraparound sports TV show even if Charles Barkley has been phoning it in hard for like 10 years now.

The NBA playoffs are still incredible.

College basketball

The good news for college basketball is that the FBI should be done with things in three to four years, tops.

^ That’s it, there’s really not a whole lot else to be optimistic about here.

NFL

The Chiefs offense under Andy Reid uses every cool play from college football and makes it work at the pro level, which is fun.

^ Andy Reid is also using Alex Smith to run it because Andy Reid understands comedy and football.

Tom Brady operating the Patriots’ offense is a marvel to behold, and Brady is the most graceful quarterback of all time.

^ No one has to admit that Tom Brady The Football Player is good publicly but we can all share this here on the internet where no one can see it.

^ He’s starting a second career as a new age fitness grifter, true, but none of that should interfere too much with watching him instantly recognize the weak point in a defense and putting a ball on a receiver with jaw-dropping accuracy.

Von Miller comes off the edge every Sunday like he’s speed skating in hell and racing one inch ahead of the devil.

Julio Jones is healthy, magnificent, and in 2017 was evidently saving up touchdowns for your future entertainment.

Aaron Rodgers is infinitely more fun to watch than Tom Brady, just as good, actually has a sense of humor, and will never try to sell you a two hundred dollar cookbook.

Aaron Donald could be the United States’ representative for every Olympic sport—all of them, winter or summer—and we would win just as many medals, if not more.

^ Yes, including rhythmic gymnastics.

^ Maybe especially rhythmic gymnastics.

NFL cities appear less susceptible to giving cities taxpayer-subsidized stadiums than ever before.

Russell Wilson is a joy to watch work even if he is the NFL’s most Fanny Pack-ass Player. Maybe because he is the NFL’s Most Fanny Pack-ass Player.

^ He’d be even more incredible if he had more than three offensive lineman protecting him at any time.

The Bills will continue exist to validate your feelings about management being incompetent.

^ The Browns will continue to exist to validate your feelings about life being unfair, and also about management being incompetent.

^ The Patriots will continue to exist to prove your suspicion that only four people ever really own anything, and that you definitely aren’t one of them.

^ The Saints will continue to exist in order to remind you that other people are always having more fun somewhere without you.

Randy Moss is working as a paid football commentator.

Steve Young recently bit the head off a fish on air. It’s not all hopeless on the TV side. # http://ift.tt/2CrfFo1

At least Jerry Jones has the generosity to be a properly insane New Gilded Age billionaire for entertainment purposes.

Players are retiring earlier and earlier, which is a very, very good thing if the NFL is not going to fix itself for the long haul.

The NFL’s ratings falling might get the NFL to try and rebuild the sport for the long haul. # http://ift.tt/2A8NdBC

^ They probably won’t do this. But it’s nice to hope for the best from people, isn’t it? Delusional, but nice.

NHL

The NHL still has the most epic playoff in all of sport, even if it does destroy sleep schedules, productivity at work, and occasionally downtown Vancouver.

Doc Emrick could make a cockroach race sound like the Kentucky Derby’s last 30 furlongs. # http://ift.tt/2CsPMnX

Theoretically speaking, Gary Bettman can’t be commissioner forever.

^ Until then, booing Gary Bettman remains one of sports’ most reliable and respected traditions.

CFB

If an Alabama fan: Nick Saban shows no signs of retiring.

^ If you are anyone else: Eventually, one day, Nick Saban will have to retire and stop coaching Alabama football.

No one in the sport has gotten smaller, slower, or less talented—except for you, the viewer.

There is more college football on that one human being could possibly watch and that’s before you even get to the Pac-12 playing four games at 3 a.m. on a Sunday.

Several court cases could destroy amateurism as we know it, and get players a piece of the very large and unshared college sports revenue pie.

More and more people are recognizing Big Red, the greatest mascot in college athletics, and becoming aware of the good work he’s done. # http://ift.tt/2A8NeWc

The passing of time means everyone gets a day closer to the return of the NCAA Football video game franchise.

^ We’re not saying it’s going to happen. But if it does, well buddy you’re getting closer to it whether you like it or not.

Justice Hill at Oklahoma State is just a sophomore.

Khalil Tate at Arizona is just a sophomore.

Chip Kelly is coming back! At UCLA!

RB J.K. Dobbins at Ohio State is just a freshman and already has a 1,000-yard season.

No matter what happens—fall of society, collapse of civilization, flooding of the land by the rising sea—the Iron Bowl will happen in the final week of the regular season.

^ We’re very serious about this. They’ll grow gills. #RollDamnMerpeople

Misc/general

The sport of grappling will become an entire growth industry all by itself—mostly because it already is.

The World Tag Championships is the real sport of the future and that’s fine because watching two people play tag in an obstacle course is way, way more entertaining than it has any right to be.

There are more women’s sports on broadcast television than ever, and with higher ratings and better funding than ever before, too.

Serena Williams will come back to tennis after giving birth to a child and taking a full year off at minimum and still beat the brakes off Maria Sharapova in straight sets. # http://ift.tt/2CuVtBJ

E-sports will gradually become more comprehensible to the general viewer. # http://ift.tt/2A6JHrd

^ Even if it doesn’t become more comprehensible, it will become louder and more frequently broadcast, and sometimes that’s enough to get everyone adequately addicted.

Lavar Ball’s Senate campaign will be wild.

There will be actual competition for ESPN in the sports sphere. (It won’t be in the major sports, but still.)

Golf will continue to enable our nation’s most luxurious and sometimes dramatic couch naps.

With peer-to-peer economy, guess who the next AirBnB of the San Diego Chargers is? Well, it’s you.

^ This may not be an exaggeration. The Chargers might need to spend a few nights at your place.

Drones! There are just gonna be drones everywhere with cameras, and the best part will be watching them run out of juice and crash into the middle of live games. # http://ift.tt/2CtNbKE

You and your friends might be able to crowdfund that competitive MarioKart league you’ve been talking about for years. # http://ift.tt/2A6JHrd

^ You and your friends will probably not do too much jail time for encroaching on the copyright territory of the Nintendo corporation.

With a GoPro, anyone can become an extreme athlete! Except for you, you’re probably just going to hurt yourself, stop that.

Roger Federer has all the money he will ever need and is past his athletic prime, thus allowing others to flourish in his prestigious wake. # http://ift.tt/2CuVtBJ

^ That said, Roger Federer will probably win a Grand Slam this year at the age of 36.