You've probably heard the news by now: The future of journalism is changing. As the digital age progresses, Web sites, online feeds, and Twitter have become as commonplace as the local newsstand once was.

What, then, if the need to write stories altogether were to disappear entirely?

According to a blog in The New York Times, the need to write recaps of sporting events could become a thing of the past. At Northwestern University, a program generates recaps of baseball games based on their box scores. You provide the stats, the quotes, and the pictures, and the bot does the rest.

Win.

It’s the goal that millions of athletes and their fans across the world share as they pursue victory in an athletic event. Winning is the most important thing, we are taught. Our emotions are invested in the moment. We live and die on the edge, players and fans alike.

And yet, that competitive attitude can backfire, when not aligned properly.

Holding a big trophy is a pretty awesome feeling. It’s not that we on Uni’s journalism team set out to win a trophy with three small statues of barely clothed people on it — it just happened to come along with our state championship.

Here’s how we brought that big trophy home to Uni.

The epitome of American sports comes Sunday night — the Super Bowl.

Now that the Illinois football team has lost back-to-back matchups and chances of going to a bowl game look bleak, Illini fans may feel let down about the athletic program. With the men’s basketball team coming off a 16-19 season, the future may not seem as bright as it really is.

Yet despite missing the NCAA tournament for the first time since the Stone Age last year, the season ahead won't be as bad as the season behind.

For the first decade and a half or so of my life, I didn’t care much for politics at all. To a kid, what was the appeal in a bunch of white-haired old guys sitting 700 miles away, signing ambiguous papers that had no visible effect on my life? I could not have cared less about tax cuts and budget reforms, considering my mind wasn’t equipped to deal with anything more worrisome than whether or not I’d get a double recess.

Now, my stance on politics has changed, much more than Barack Obama or John McCain can change their stance during their campaigns without losing votes.

I’ve obsessed over sports statistics for a long time. One must merely look at my extensive baseball card collection from my elementary school days to see how much I’ve overanalyzed seemingly random facets of pro athletes and their teams. But until Saturday, I’d never joined the epitome of sports fandom creations: a fantasy football league.

Time flies. No one has to toss a clock out the window to prove that it does.

A few weeks ago, I wasn't reading the signs that school was coming to an end. Only now is it starting to dawn on me that I won't be taking classes every day in about eight days — a giant countdown clock has made it hard not to notice.

Well, if The Onion says so, it must be true.

Hardly anything in life feels better than a good laugh. With APs, finals, sectionals, and graduation on top of the usual amount of homework and studying we all have to do, nothing worsens our dose of [grade level]-itis better than a good dose of humor.

Sometimes, I don’t know what to think about professional athletes, and sometimes, I don’t know what to think about the people around them either.

When you’re in the air, everything looks a lot different. Almost nothing looks better than the top of a cloud. When the Assembly Hall looks like a small mushroom, it can be startling. But flying above the ground opened my eyes to something else. Well, a lot more than else.

The first day of April means something different to baseball fans than to most ordinary people. To them, it’s a day to joke, laugh, and pull pranks. To us, well, we have baseball on our minds by now. So after I make my bold baseball predictions, there will be no one shouting “April Fool” — unless I turn out to be wrong in October.

For four months, I really didn’t care about college basketball.

My team (everyone’s team) — Illinois — was having an unusually dreadful season. My interest waned as the Illini floundered at the bottom of the Big Ten standings, losing to Tennessee State, Ohio State, and Penn State (all in a row). Illinois’ other team and the NFL’s most hated team diverted my attention from college basketball entirely.

March is quite possibly the best month of the year. There’s St. Patrick's Day and March Madness; spring break and warmer temperatures. But for me, there’s one reason above all others that makes March a month better than any.

Cats don't have to do homework. They can sleep whenever they want. And when they break the house rules, the punishment is light, if at all existent. In other words, it's just the opposite of the life that I live.