One columnist's look at what the future holds

This time next year, the defending Super Bowl champion Seahawks will be watching the big game on TVs at their homes or in some hotel in L.A. or Orange County, as many of them will already be in California as participants in the final NFL Pro Bowl.

Wondering what happened. How they didn’t repeat. How this generation’s best defense allowed another team to beat them in their quest to be further engraved in NFL history.

(Part of the Seahawks’ non-repeat, outside of losing Klint Kubiak as OC, might be the NFL not wanting the most joyless, all-chill-personality champions in this modern-day turn-up football history to have the final spotlight on them two Februarys in a row. Well, that was true until the team showed up to the parade and turnt all the way up. Which could end up being another NFL reason.)

This time next year, there will be no Winter Olympics for a Super Bowl to hand off its energy to. No Lindsey Vonn heroic Shakespearean tragedy to capture the nation’s attention. No Mike Tirico heroics calling the Olympics immediately after being in the booth live-calling the Super Bowl. No ‘‘Quad Gods’’ to be fascinated by.

This time next year, the Epstein files will still be being discussed and still be being
unredacted.

There will be no feel good buzz hanging over a Derrick Rose jersey retirement here in Chicago. Gary, Indiana — and Iowa — will be totally out of the conversation for the Bears’ stadium being there. There won’t be stories being written about what the Bears need to do the next season to get to where the Seahawks once were. Non-baseball geeks of Chicago will legitimately care about pitchers and catchers reporting to spring training for the Cubs . . . and the White Sox.

There will be no deep-seated heartache surrounding decisions made by the Bulls’ new president of basketball ops and GM at the trading deadline. No gutting of the roster with no plan in sight. Yet the conversations about how the team didn’t get Giannis Antetokounmpo over the offseason will still exist. And exist. And persist.

There will be interest and energy for the NBA All-Star showcase — no longer called a game. The three-team round-robin tournament with USA young vs. USA old vs. World for this year will have — even with so many players missing (dodging?) it this weekend — returned some passion and pride to what for years (since the 2020 game in Chicago and years prior to that) had become one of the worst sporting events on the annual American sports calendar.

There will be no reposts from Donald Trump co-signing his true beliefs on Black un-evolution and white supremacy, only because he will be too busy waving at the crowd from his suite at Super Bowl LXI. But a first-year intern from Michelle Obama’s ‘‘team’’ will ‘‘accidentally’’ post a video of the president in full orangutan likeness without being photoshopped. Blame AI.

This time next year, Robert Kraft and Bill Belichick will be voted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

There will be no Bad Bunny backlash coming from Turning Point USA or the White House because Jelly Roll or Snoop will be the forced entertainment to calm the resilience and resistance of the Kendrick Lamar/Bad Bunny back-to-back SB ‘‘non-white, un-American’’ halftime takeovers.

There will be much attention on NCAA women’s basketball and the final season of Unrivaled. The WNBA strike that held up the 2026 season will have made the owners give the players everything they asked for in their new CBA, with one catch: a non-compete clause by another league owned by WNBA players. And the pre-Super Bowl game in women’s college ball will be USC vs. USC. Dawn Staley’s unbeaten squad vs. JuJu Watkins. It will be all the everything.

There will also be no former G League players in the NCAA. The Pistons won’t be involved in another squabble. (Not brawl.) And all of the talk surrounding the NBA will be about the year’s rookie class as the ‘‘greatest rookie class in the history of the game.’’

This time next year, people will have unfortunately forgotten the names Breezy Johnson and Erin Jackson. With no Olympics, they won’t be as prominent and meaningful then as they are right now. But somehow Hunter Hess will have remained a part of the larger societal conversation. Also, Bank of America will not have aired a TV spot as powerful as its Aretha Franklin-driven ‘‘Something Big’’ spot during the week of and after the Super Bowl to bring the country together.

And, lord willing, there will not be a kidnapping of a national anchor’s mother at the forefront of the entire country’s concerns.

This time next year, the Bears’ current 25-1 odds — their shortest preseason Super Bowl odds since 2019 — will be 5-1 odds the day after SB LXI.

Because the day after Valentine’s Day 2027, the Bears will be walking off the field at SoFi Stadium having suffered the same defeat the Patriots just did as the Ravens or Broncos hoist the Lombardi. Only for coach Ben Johnson to vow during a news conference in Halas Hall the following Monday that the next year, 2028, the Bears will not return home from Mercedes-Benz Stadium empty-handed.