It’s time for the Winter Games, baby!

I know, I know – it feels like the Summer Olympics took place just yesterday. Probably because, at least in terms of standard Olympiad timelines, it did. We just had some global athletic goodness just a few short months ago, thanks to the shifting of the 2020 Games to last year.

Are some people going to complain about Olympics fatigue? Of course they are! There are people who will complain about anything!

Not me, though. I am here for another installment of the Winter Olympics. Give me a collection of people standing/lying on various bits of wood and hurtling down hills or chutes of what have you. Maybe they go fast. Maybe they do tricks. Maybe they go fast AND do tricks. Doesn’t matter to me – I want it all.

Now, as a general sports enthusiast, I’m probably more familiar with the Olympics than most. I’d consider myself fairly knowledgeable compared to the average person. That does not mean, however, that I am in any way qualified to make any sort of prediction regarding outcomes. Just because I know what skeleton is and most of the basic rules of curling doesn’t mean I’m capable of telling you anything about who is going to win any of these events.

And so I figured I’d follow in the footsteps of last summer’s Summer Olympics preview and just share an assortment of thoughts about the various and sundry sporting events that will be unfolding in China over the next couple of weeks. We had some fun last time, so I figured why not run it back? Or skate it back, at any rate.

I’ll also be including some folks with Maine connections who have been or will be involved with the Games. You’ll likely be unsurprised to hear that the Pine Tree State has generated a few more Winter Olympians than Summer. Oh, and there are some elite facilities here in the state for events like cross-country skiing and biathlon, in case you didn’t know. Check out the Nordic Heritage Center and/or the Fort Kent Outdoor Center to find out more.

So sit back and get ready for some fun facts, Winter Olympics-style.

While it isn’t my primary beat, I’ve spilled plenty of ink writing about sports over the years. While most of it consists of middling-to-poor predictions and getting demolished by my football-picking dog, I’ve had a few standout stories in my time, pieces that have stayed with me long after they’ve been filed.

It’s an interesting mix, to be sure – a few interviews and the like, but for the most part, my favorite sports-related stories have been participatory ones. These are stories where I was able to share a direct experience with the reader, be it from the point of view of a spectator or from right there in the midst of it all.

Every year, I make a plethora of sports predictions. And every year, I take the opportunity presented by the annual year-in-review issue of The Maine Edge to revisit those predictions and hold myself accountable.

And so we’re going to look back on my prognostication in 2021, celebrating the wins and acknowledging the losses. As far as this stuff goes, I’ve had better years and I’ve had worse ones (though not many of the latter), but in truth, the real predictions were the friends we made along the way.

Let’s have a look.

Are you ready for some football?

By the time read this, the 2021 NFL season may have already kicked off – the first game of this year’s slate is scheduled for September 9, when the reigning Super Bowl champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers will play host to the Dallas Cowboys.

For the second year in a row, the NFL season will play out under the long shadow cast by the pandemic; it remains to be seen how the continuing evolution of that nationwide health concern will impact the schedule. Despite the NFL’s robust demands with regard to vaccination and other safety protocols, it seems likely that the game on the field will be impacted. How often and how thoroughly? Well, that remains to be seen.

With all of this uncertainty, it would seem to be even more foolish than usual to attempt to predict the outcome of the 2021 NFL regular season. And yet … here we are.

I will be making my usual predictions regarding how I believe the season will play out. And as usual, I anticipate being wildly off-base with a significant percentage of these predictions. I have a long and storied history of middling picks, after all – why expect anything different this time around? There’s even an extra regular season game, adding yet another little bit of possible inaccuracy to my personal equation.

And so, here you have it, friends – my monkey-dart-throwing attempt at prognostication. Ladies and gentlemen, your sure-to-be-inaccurate 2021 Maine Edge NFL Season Preview.

(y = division winner; x = wild card)

I’m a sucker for sports history. It doesn’t even really matter the sport – I generally lean toward the Big Four, but honestly, any discussion of the athletic past will work. I have my sporting foci – baseball and football foremost among them – but as a general fan, I can derive joy from coverage of just about any athletic endeavor.

The moral to the story is simple: With the right pairing of subject matter and author, a work of sports nonfiction can really sing.

Longtime Boston sports journalist Leigh Montville is one of the best to ever do the gig, with a decades-long body of work covering some of the most iconic moments in American sports. His latest book is “Tall Men, Short Shorts – The 1969 NBA Finals: Wilt, Russ, Lakers, Celtics, and a Very Young Sports Reporter” (Doubleday, $29), a look back at the series that would ultimately mark the ending of the lengthy Celtics NBA dynasty of the 1950s and 1960s. A series that saw a certain bright young man – just 24 years of age and setting out on what would become an iconic career as an ink-stained wretch – crisscrossing the country as part of the now-legendary NBA Finals matchup between the Boston Celtics and the Los Angeles Lakers in 1969.

It’s also a wonderful bit of autobiographical writing, a reflection on the beginnings of a storied career. Those moments of memory and memoir are what elevate this book from what would be a perfectly adequate work of sports history into something more, a wry look back from someone who understands that the person he once was had a lot to learn.

For many high schoolers, interscholastic athletics are a highlight of their young lives. The joy of competition intermingles with the many lessons that can be learned on the playing field – lessons of determination, of sportsmanship, of the value of hard work – and sports become an integral part of the overall school experience.

But those opportunities don’t always get extended equally.

“Changing the Game,” a documentary currently streaming on Hulu, takes a look at three individuals who are dealing with the struggles forced upon them due to their respective identities. These three young people are transgender, attempting to navigate high school sports in a landscape where different states have different rules and different attitudes about how (or even if) transgendered kids are allowed to compete.

The film, directed by Michael Barnett, follows these three athletes through their sporting journeys. Each of them is faced with prejudices regarding who they are and questions about the fairness of their presence, even as we see the support systems at work around them. It’s a thoughtful and well-executed piece, an at-times heartbreaking examination of the politicized chaos drummed up by fear and lack of understanding that also finds time to celebrate the victories of its subjects, both on and off the field.

Like the vast majority of you, I’m looking forward to putting 2020 in the rearview mirror. Still, there are certain things that warrant looking back upon.

Every year, I make all sorts of sports predictions. And every year, I use this year-end edition of The Maine Edge to hold myself accountable for those predictions. It’s not quite as robust a collection as you’ve seen in the past, of course.

For instance, the CFL cancelled its entire season, so there was neither a season prediction nor a Grey Cup pick. And when MLB began its truncated season in late July, I held off on a preview, largely because I questioned whether the season would actually reach its conclusion.

Even so, we’ve got a few predictions that we can look back on. As usual, I got some right and some wrong – par for the course, really. We’re doing things a little differently this time through – I’m offering up my championship game/series predictions for examination first, followed by a look at my NFL season picks.

We’re living in the age of the superteam in the NBA. While the league has always been star-driven, the necessity of those stars has never been more apparent. If you want to win a ring, you NEED at least two top-tier superstars. These days, assembling those dynamic duos or titanic trios involves players actively recruiting one another, with stars seeking out paths to play with other stars that they like and/or admire.

It wasn’t always that way, though. Two decades ago, we watched the most talented pairing in the league rise to dizzying dynastic heights even as they were engaged in an ongoing and off-putting internal fight.

Jeff Pearlman’s “Three-Ring Circus: Kobe, Shaq, Phil, and the Crazy Years of the Lakers Dynasty” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $30) dives deep into the eight-year stretch – from 1996-2004 – where two of the greatest basketball players of not just their generation but of all time team up to bring a string of titles to the Los Angeles Lakers even as their own interpersonal antipathy rages and boils beneath the surface. All while a renowned and legendary coach largely removes himself from the fray, content to let it work itself out.

It is a magnificently and meticulously detailed work, one featuring deep-dive interviews with all manner of people connected to that tumultuous time in the history of one of the NBA’s most storied franchises. It’s an unflinching and often unflattering portrait of the men who led L.A. to the top of the mountain; frankly, learning the extent of the chaos renders the championship victories all the more impressive.

It’s hard to believe, considering the current state of things, but the 2020 NFL season is ready to kick off. In fact, by the time you read this, the first game – the Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs hosting the Houston Texans on Sept. 10 – may have already taken place.

There’s no way of knowing how this season is going to play out. With the shadow of the coronavirus likely to loom large over the entire year, making predictions about outcomes is even more of a fool’s errand than usual.

Lucky for you, I am that fool.

I will make my usual predictions with regard to how I believe the season will play out. And as usual, I anticipate being wildly off-base with a significant percentage of these predictions. I have a long and storied history of middling picks, after all – why expect anything different this time around?

And so, here you have it – my monkey-dart-throwing attempt at prognostication. Ladies and gentlemen, your sure-to-be-inaccurate 2020 Maine Edge NFL Season Preview.

(y = division winner; x = wild card)

They say that history is written by the victors. But so too are the victors most often the ones written into history.

That fact is even truer in the sporting realm than it is elsewhere. By its very nature, sport is concerned with winners and losers. And while those who win are celebrated and lauded in the years that follow, their victory burnished by the sheer volume of memory – what of those who fall short? What of those who reach the pinnacle, only to be stopped just short.

“Losers: Dispatches from the Other Side of the Scorecard” (Penguin, $17) is a collection of pieces devoted to looking at those who never quite reached the top of the mountain. Edited by Mary Pilon and Louisa Thomas – both of whom also have work included within – this assemblage of essays spans more than a century of athletic near-misses.

All told, there are 22 pieces here, 14 of which are previously unpublished. Every one of them is devoted to exploring what it means to lose, to be beaten. The reasons behind their shortfalls vary – some are faced with legendary opposition, while others simply deal with a bad day or bad luck – but all of them find ways to reflect the impact of almost. Some of these stories are funny, while others are sad and still others inspire, but all of them together paint a portrait of the truth behind loss. It’s a compelling journey through the competitive landscape, with all manner of sport and athlete represented.