With baseball pennant races heating up and the start of the football season just around the corner, it’s an exciting time to be a sports fan.

Area high school football teams started practicing last week. Coaches have just two more weeks of practice to get their teams ready before “Friday night under the lights” begins on Aug. 21.

I’m thinking I might be covering a state championship football team this fall. Which team will that be? I’m not sure. To weigh in go to PharosTribune.com/

LocalSports to vote for the team you think will have the best season.

The Indianapolis Colts’ first preseason game is on Friday and the Chicago Bears’ first preseason game is on Saturday.

I think it’s interesting the Colts plan on being more aggressive on defense this season under their new coaching staff. The Colts’ biggest strength on defense — other than of course Bob Sanders — is at their defensive end and safety corps. When the Colts have a lead in the second half and the defensive ends can just focus on one thing — getting to the quarterback — the Colts have a pretty darn good defense. They can just sit back in their Cover 2 and they’re pretty effective. And if a team happens to rally and score to take a lead, when Peyton Manning has a little time to work with I always feel pretty confident the Colts can get the lead right back.

The Bears were more aggressive on defense last year than they’ve been since Lovie Smith brought the Cover 2 to Chicago, and I’m glad that they were. I think it helped, and hopefully it’ll help the Colts. If it doesn’t, they can always put their blitz packages on the shelf.

I’ve been reading and hearing a lot about Jay Cutler coming to the Bears. One thing I think that’s being overlooked is how much he can help the defense. Colts fans can appreciate how much Peyton Manning helps their defense. It’s not just putting points on the board where Manning helps, it’s things like having good field position and giving the defense a chance to catch its breath on the sidelines.

I can remember many times last season where the Bears would have a good start on defense and then after the offense would start with several three-and-outs in a row, it just seemed like the defense would tire down as the game went along. I can remember when the Bears played in Lambeau Field last year and after a Brian Urlacher interception, a camera on the sidelines caught him saying to a teammate something like, “We need this first down.” It was on a third-down play and it looked like Urlacher was fatigued as he should have been, the Bears defense was on the field the entire first half it seemed like. Of course the offense didn’t get the first down, and the Packers went on to a lopsided win.

I think the Bears really needed a quarterback like Cutler because in today’s NFL you can’t win a Super Bowl with a guy like Trent Dilfer like the Baltimore Ravens did in 2000. The Bears found that out in 2006 when they lost to the Colts in the Super Bowl. Matching up Rex Grossman to Manning was too much to overcome. You can’t beat the elite teams in the league anymore without a very good quarterback. You’ve got to put up some points to beat the best teams, because they will put up some points against you no matter how good your defense is. Part of it is the rules changes that were put in place following the 2004 playoffs when the Colts — who put together a record-breaking season of epic proportions on offense — and their receivers were mugged in New England in a 20-3 loss. The rules now give an advantage to the passing game, and you need a very good quarterback to win in the league now.

As for the baseball pennant races, the Chicago Cubs are still in a pretty good position to win the NL Central. They were supposed to have a decent lead by now as they entered the season as the prohibitive favorite to win the division. But thanks to a string of injuries and an offense that disappeared through much of the first half of the season, they’re in a neck-and-neck race with the St. Louis Cardinals. I still think that baseball usually comes down to pitching and that the Cubs have better pitching than the Cardinals, so hopefully this will prove true and the Cubs will win the division — or at least win the wild-card spot.

It looks like the Cubs are finally hitting the ball like they’re supposed to, though they have had some games of late where they’ve failed to score many runs. But it looks like the offense has woken up for the most part. And again, I think the Cubs’ biggest strength is their pitching, although the injuries they’ve had to their starters is definitely a concern.

Another concern is the back-end of the bullpen, specifically Kevin Gregg and Carlos Marmol. Gregg has been shaky of late, but I’m not really worried about him because he’s been consistent most of the season before blowing a couple saves in Florida last weekend. Marmol concerns me more because his control has not been there most of the year. It seems like he walks the first two guys he faces every time he pitches. When he throws strikes, guys can’t hit him. His batting average against him is .166.

Of course there are question marks about the Cubs, as always. But hopefully they — with Logansport product Aaron Heilman having a key role in the bullpen — have a good run in them.

• Beau Wicker is the sports editor of the Pharos-Tribune. He can be reached at (574) 732-5113 or beau.wicker@pharostribune.com