If you’re a fan of both the Indiana Hoosiers and the Chicago Bears, you must think this is all a dream, right? 

“When a flashlight grows dim or quits working, do you just throw it away? Of course not. You change the batteries. When a person messes up or finds themselves in a dark place, do you cast them aside? Of course not! You help them change their batteries. Some need AA … attention and affection; Some need AAA … attention, affection and acceptance; some need C … compassion; some need D … direction. And if they still don’t seem to shine … simply sit with them quietly and share your light.”

There is a lot to be said for leftovers from the holidays.

Veterans in Indiana have a lot to be thankful for. We receive state tax reductions and enjoy hiring preferences when we apply for state jobs. And no state in the U.S. has a city like Indianapolis, which is home to more monuments and acreage dedicated to veterans than any other state in the nation.

It was about 11 a.m. on a mid-April day in 1914. Several maintenance men were raking and burning leaves below the Chestnut Street Hill, south of the Winona Hotel.

This week, we will continue to discuss the basics of financial planning and getting a handle on your money issues. While we are using the start of the new year as the reason for doing this, you can make these first steps at any time of the year.

A lot has happened since the last time I sat down to write one of these. The Bears beat the Packers in one of the craziest games I’ve ever watched and then clinched a playoff spot a day later. The College Football Playoff got underway, leading to a few stinkers, a couple good games and the absence of any blue bloods in the final four. Meanwhile, during all of this, Notre Dame fans still haven’t stopped crying! Remarkable stuff. 

In my almost 35 years of broadcasting games in Warsaw, I have had a lot of opportunities to do a lot of fun and cool things.

Indiana, admitted to the Union as the 19th state on Dec. 11, 1816, was populated initially by a variety of indigenous Native American peoples. The name “Indiana” means “land of the Indians” or “Indian land” and dates back at least to the 1760s. It was applied to the region by the U.S. Congress when the Indiana Territory was incorporated effective July 4, 1800. It was signed into law by President John Adams, separating it from the Northwest Territory. The state’s northernmost tier, which includes Winona Lake, was settled primarily by migrants from New England and New York.

Happy New Year! I’m hoping for a constructively boring 2026… in life, not in sports.

As we settle into 2026, it is a good time to review your investments and potentially make adjustments based on your results in 2025.   Plus, reviewing your portfolio is something you can do …

As we put 2025 to bed and say “hello” to a new year, it’s time to consider what 2026 could bring for the universe of sports.

Editor, Times-Union: A shelter vs. a hotel isn’t the point; a shelter is a last resort in a crisis that the town could easily prevent. The shelter itself is not supposed to be Plan A; it’s there as a safety net if the other resources fail. Those resources are not supposed to fail intentionally. Employment connections are important, but they do not replace stable housing or prevent eviction. We should be doing everything possible to prevent that trauma in the first place. The Mission can be an important resource, but it cannot replace prevention when arrears are still small enough to resolve. Prevention is cheaper, more humane, and more effective than response.

Editor, Times-Union: We choose to believe what we want to believe. Too many people take advantage of that fact and know the gullible will believe lies if they are what the gullible want to believe.

The casual mention of “the house where the lady with the TV show lived” led to a search to find out more about Marcia Adams, a colorful and accomplished former resident of Winona Lake.

My vocation (almost 41 years and counting altogether) sometimes involves the following paraphrased dialogue. “Chip, I see one of your sites’ operating costs are higher than usual,” they’ll ask. “So have you addressed concerns about this?”

This week, I took my son, Will, back to Bloomington for his sophomore year at IU. He is the youngest of my four boys, and I feel like we have been paying college tuition for a long time. It’s always a struggle, and it can compete with other financial priorities, like saving for retirement. I am 55, so retirement, which once seemed so far away, is getting closer and closer. Some folks get to this age and wake up one morning to realize they are 55 and haven’t saved anything for retirement. It happens more often than you might think. Maybe college tuition has eaten up your nest egg, or maybe unexpected medical expenses, or a job loss or bad investments. It doesn’t really matter how you ended up there; the important thing is to take action.

The Lilly Center for Lakes & Streams is a research and education center based at Grace College in Winona Lake. The organization helps landowners and businesses by recommending lake-focused best-practices, based on thorough research, and it helps local families and businesses adopt those practices.

I spent the early part of the week doing a lot of bellyaching at work and at home, more than usual in fact. Suddenly, while listening to one of Colin Cowherd’s The Herd segments available on Spotify, he remarked about avoiding toxic people as much as he can.

With Christmas falling a week from today and New Years Day the week after that, this will be my final column of 2025. I will return for the NFL playoffs with a column on January 8. With this being my final piece before the holidays and new year, I figured I’d try to combine the two and have some fun this week. 

Man, this Colts season sure took a turn for the worse, didn’t it?

When Sol Dickey purchased Spring Fountain Park from the Beyer brothers in 1894, the deed included a 55-acre peninsula that jutted out from the eastern shore of the lake. It was flat, marshy and infested with rattlesnakes and muskrats. Al Cuffel, who was employed to help clear the vegetation, recorded killing 22 rattlesnakes in one day.

College football is troubled, but - like in Monty Python’s “bring out your dead” scene in Holy Grail - it’s “not quite dead yet.”

I'd like to talk about the best football team in the state of Indiana. The one that plays in Bloomington.

You guessed it, I am angry.