Steve Greenberg

Their postseason hopes hanging by a thread, the Cubs sent out Hendricks to oppose rookie sensation Paul Skenes — like racing a tired, old mule against a thoroughbred.

Is this what college football that matters is supposed to look like?

It's playoff or bust for the Irish, period. Also: picks for Central Michigan-Illinois, Alabama-Wisconsin, Eastern Illinois-Northwestern and others in this week's "Big Game Hunting."

In this week's "Big Game Hunting," we also look at Miami (Ohio) at Notre Dame, Buffalo at Northern Illinois, USC at Michigan, Utah at Oklahoma State, Tennessee at Oklahoma and Iowa at Minnesota.

We're witnessing the worst kind of baseball history: an unimaginably bad team finding unimaginable lows as utter hopelessness surrounds and suffocates a franchise in tatters and a fan base that has been roundly — and repeatedly — betrayed.

Here's how you voted in this week's "Polling Place."

“If we can win out from here, we’re totally in,” more teams than we could count are saying.

Believing in such a thing blindly would be unwise.

The only way for the Illini to move up in a playoff-mad world is to win ’em all from here.

In this week's "Polling Place," you voted on that, picked the winner of the Bears-Cardinals game Sunday and weighed in on the White Sox' hiring of Will Venable as manager.