Saturday, March 12, 2016

The best time of year in sports

What’s your favorite sport? For someone like me, that may seem like a pretty easy question to answer. But from now until the middle of June, it’s also easy to see why that’s such a hard question to answer. Not much happens in February. The weather is cold, football is over and sports fans are left looking forward to the spring.  But once the second week of March arrives, things start happening again.

It’s championship week in college basketball with conference tournaments being played across the nation this week with the field of 68 released Sunday evening.  The big dance is the best postseason tournament in all of sports if you ask me. But with some of the games we’ve seen this week in the conference tournaments, it’s safe to say the madness has already begun. As I watched the four-overtime thriller between Cincinnati and Connecticut, and saw Oklahoma’s Buddy Hield drain a half court short at the end of regulation against West Virginia, only for the shot to be waved off, the same three words kept running through my head. Only in March.

With conference tournaments still to be decided this weekend, and then the big dance starting on Tuesday, there should be many more photo finishes and instant classics. Of course everyone fills out a bracket, but one of the best parts about championship week is that it allows you to just watch game after game come right down to the wire and just enjoy it and that’s always fun.

But after it’s all over, there’s more fun for sports fans. The NHL and NBA regular seasons both have about one month left. This year, the Golden State Warriors are chasing the record for most wins in an NBA season. The playoffs, particularly in the NHL, bring plenty of parity and excitement. This all leads to champions being crowned in both leagues by the middle of June.

The free agent frenzy kicked off this week in the NFL as the new league year started Wednesday. Teams begin to shape rosters for the following season and scouting efforts ramp up with the NFL Draft looming on the horizon. The hypothetical scenarios fans dream about what their team should do to ensure a bright future are endless.

Golf’s first two majors will be played during the next three months. There is truly nothing like the tradition that comes with The Masters at Augusta National Golf Club in early April.  The second tennis major of the year comes at the end of May in Paris at the French Open.

Now if I had to answer the question and tell you what my favorite sport is, I would probably say baseball. It was the first sport I started playing and watching as a kid. The season is about three weeks away and opening day is certainly one of my favorite days in sports.


But these next three months are just why answering that simple question can be so hard for me. So while February can be very boring for sports fans, March, April, May and the first couple weeks of June are just the opposite. It all starts now and it’s not slowing down. So buckle up and enjoy the ride sports fans.

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