As we prepare for 2018—which absolutely, positively, has to be better than 2017—we’ve followed the example of the great Chris Wallace and asked the TWS staff for predictions for next year along four vectors: politics, sports, entertainment, and foreign policy.
Happy New Year!
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2018 Predictions: Sports
Sports
Jim Swift: The Cleveland Indians will win the World Series. It will be an amazing run, and they’ll shut down all of the clubs who have bulked up for a deep playoff run. Like 2016, but in five games.
The Cleveland Cavaliers will win NBA Finals. It will be a slog, and probably take seven games. Again, just like 2016.
The Cleveland Browns will botch all of their picks after what is likely to be an 0-16 season and will win four games.
Hannah Yoest: Football is canceled forever. A shrine is built to Tom Brady and we all move on. The years of battered women and broken skulls propping up an industry churning out ever weakening commercial entertainment is finally recognized as a modern-day gladiator arena of exploitation.
Mark Hemingway: Football ratings will decline further as the NFL continues to step on rakes. Not coincidentally, Roger Goodell will use part of his new $49.5 million salarr to install sensory deprivation of tanks in his multiple residences, so he can spend as little time as possible hearing about what a terrible job he’s doing.
Rachael Larimore: The Alabama Crimson Tide win their second College Football Playoff and fourth national title since 2010. While the nation collectively grumbles, a (very quiet) cheer goes up in northeastern Ohio. Because Cavs fans know that, in one of those weird cosmic coincidences that mean both nothing and everything, LeBron James’s three NBA titles have all come in years in which the Tide wins the national football championship. Go Cavs.
Eric Felten: Unlike four years ago, there will actually be snow at the Winter Olympics.
Stephen F. Hayes: After seven consecutive seasons without a top-10 defense (and two consecutive years in the bottom 10) the Green Bay Packers will, finally, part ways with defensive coordinator Dom Capers.
John McCormack: People who actually like watching football will continue to watch football. Other people who never really cared for it or prefer to politicize everything will stop watching football.
Ethan Epstein: The Olympics in South Korea will go off without a hitch, demonstrating how utterly bizarre it was for the U.S. to claim it was considering not sending athletes.
Alice B. Lloyd: The FIFA World Cup in Russia will be a Sochi-level disaster. Actually, worse: Count on corruption, cheating, maybe even a bomb threat or a hostage crisis. (Bonus prediction: By 2019, someone will have sold the option for the FIFA 2018 spy thriller.)
Andrew Egger: Rid of their top winter competitor, the dope-addled Russians, the United States will stampede to a record medal count in February’s Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. Anxious questions about event security in Kim Jong-un’s backyard will fade from our minds as we ponder the real issues at stake in the games—things like the decades-long battle between Bob Costas’s flash-frozen face and Father Time, or whether halfpipe maven Shaun White should bring back the Rapunzel look.
Jonathan Last: The Philadelphia Eagles will lose a heartbreaker in the NFC championship game.
Chris Deaton: San Antonio Spurs assistant coach Becky Hammon will become the first woman in any of the four major American sports leagues to interview for a head coaching vacancy.
William Kristol: Shohei Ohtani will not be among the league leaders in hitting or pitching in his first year in major league baseball.
Adam Keiper: It’ll be a bonanza year for fans of the most dangerous game! I predict that The Man in Black won’t survive his encounters with Dolores Abernathy, and the returning Yautja will score some major wins.
