As everyone knows, these are unusual times. Here are some things that I miss and some things that I don’t miss.

We are missing sports. Now that we have no live sporting events, the national networks are filling the time by showing old games. They are also making lists.

The southern coalfields of West Virginia lost one of their greatest athletes in late April.

The summer of 2009 was a special college football time for West Virginians. The 2009 College Football Hall of Fame induction ceremony in South Bend, Indiana, featured a strong Mountain State flavor.

This has been a tough week for baseball fans in the Kanawha Valley. For many of us, it is hard to imagine a baseball world without Cal Bailey, who died last week at age 77.

Life has not been much fun for the last month. What can I say? I am a sports guy and I miss baseball, spring football, the NBA and satellite sports talk radio. I love the old westerns, but I have seen enough of “Wagon Train,” “Rawhide,” “Gunsmoke” and “Laramie.”

Those of us who love sports and athletics are going a little stir crazy. I worked in college athletics and sports media for over 40 years, so I’m used to a frenetic and frenzied pace.

Over the years, there have been several ties between West Virginia and Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Hopefully this won’t happen, but for sports fans in West Virginia, it’s time to discuss “the elephant in the room.”

This is hard. I love spring. I love the basketball tournaments and the start of the baseball season. I even enjoy spring football.

There will be no high school boys basketball state tournament basketball in Charleston this week. That means no crowded food court at the Town Center and no gathering of coaches in the lobbies of the Marriott and Embassy Suites.

This week, Charleston will welcome many new visitors as the girls basketball state tournament will take place Wednesday through Saturday at the Charleston Coliseum and Convention Center.

I am feeling nostalgic today. It happens every year around this time.

The Kanawha Valley lost one of its more memorable athletes this week with the death of former Charleston High athlete Paul Daugherty.

You may have missed it, but longtime college football coach Randy Shannon was in the news again.

We love and appreciate basketball in our state.

Our small state has a history of producing athletic stars from small communities. This past week, I learned of a couple of special honors for two more small-town heroes who played at Class AA high schools.

Can West Virginia win a national championship in basketball?

Last year at about this time I wrote that two of the best college football hires of the offseason were Neal Brown at WVU and Scott Satterfield at Louisville.

Families often get together at this time of year, and for many families the holidays are a time to play board games and card games.

Historically, southern West Virginia has always been passionate about basketball. Towns such as Beckley, Mullens, Oceana, Logan, Williamson, Welch, Northfork and Princeton used to dominate basketball in our state.

This past Thursday, Nov. 14, Marshall University stopped to remember the 75 people who were killed in the football team’s plane crash on that day in 1970.

West Virginia is not a big NBA state. Since we don’t have an NBA team, we focus our attention on college basketball in the winter months.