Well, the New Year is upon us and most people make New Year’s resolutions. This column isn’t going to have any resolutions in it, it’s simply going to be a prediction or two. I’m going to pay attention to the three sports I’ve always been associated with – football, basketball, and baseball.

Football wise, since the college bowl seasons are basically over – 42 bowl games this year – and I don’t care what kind of a football fan you are, you get tired of watching those things after a while. Anyway, the National Championship is coming up and most will be shocked if Georgia doesn’t win it all, but I like Michigan. That’s good news for TCU and Ohio State.

The Super Bowl is still in front of us. I’m not the biggest Dallas Cowboy fan in the world by any stretch, but they’re good. I don’t think this is an exceptional team, or a great team, or anything like that, but I do think that the Cowboys are a good football team and I about as good as anyone else in the league. Fact is, I really think they’ll win the NFC Championship. Win the Super Bowl? I like the AFC top teams a little bit better.

Basketball – I would love for the Mavericks to win an NBA Championship again. They went farther last season than I thought they would – but – they still didn’t win it all. I don’t think they’re as good this year as they were last. “Cool Hand Luka” is about as good a player as there is in the NBA, but he can‘t do it by himself. Not sure who’s going to win, but I’m pretty sure it’s not going to be the Mavericks.

And baseball – I’ve made it very plain that the Astros are my team. They have been since the mid ‘60s. So, I had a great season last year watching them win it all! Can they do it again? I don’t know. It may be harder this time around but I think offensively, defensively, pitching, depth-wise, everything is going to be about the same. But, it’s hard to make a prediction when you have to subtract Justin Verlander and his eighteen wins last year and his leadership role. The leadership role is going to be the difficult part, but I think the Astros can fill the other part, and that is the eighteen wins. They have pitchers on staff right now who can come pretty close to making up that void. But I think the one key, and this may sound silly, but I think the one key for Houston ’23 is a rookie pitcher, a kid named Hunter Brown. He showed flashes of brilliance late in the year last year and he reminds scouts of a young Verlander.

If he can step up and step forward big time and kind of fill the role of Verlander, then it wouldn’t shock me at all for Houston to repeat.

Oh, there’s another team in Texas – The Rangers! It’s amazing if you spend about a billion dollars the odds are you can buy a pretty good ball club and that’s exactly what the Texas Rangers have done. I’m going to pick them to make the playoffs. They’re not going to win it all, but I think they could make the playoffs because they’ve purchased some mighty strong pitchers and that makes them a pretty good ball club. Baseball is a game of pitching. If you have it, you’re going to win, if you don’t, there ain’t no hope.

Speaking of hope, I hope you have a great New Year! Happy 2023! May the Lord bless each and every one of you.

Until next time, so long everybody.

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‘Out of the Box’ with Dallas Huston is published each Monday morning at BrownwoodNews.com. Dallas was the radio voice of the Brownwood Lions and Howard Payne Yellow Jackets for more than 55 years. He currently is Pastor of Center City Baptist Church and hosts a Men’s Bible Study in Brownwood on Monday evenings. Your comments are welcome at [email protected].