What the hell? How is it already March?
Wasn’t it just last night that the Cowboys opened up their Mountain West season with UNLV on New Year’s Eve? Now the Wyoming community is anticipating the leave of five seniors from their team, and a possible Mountain West crown in Vegas. Hope springs eternal, I suppose.
We have now entered what is the greatest two-month stretch at any moment of the sports calendar. The regular season for Major League Baseball is upon us, March Madness is to ensue and both NBA and NHL playoffs are only a short six weeks away. If you just read that last sentence and thought “What about the NFL Draft,” go ahead and take a seat in the corner. You need a timeout. The NFL Draft doesn’t count. You need to seriously reconsider how you evaluate sporting events.
No other time of the year can even touch what is about to go down over the next eight weeks. Sure, September and October feature the MLB playoffs and the start of the NFL season. The beginning of June has both the Stanley Cup Finals and the NBA Finals, along with the major league baseball season starting to gain steam. By the way, Spring Training has not even started yet, and I’m fairly certain the Rockies have already been eliminated from the playoffs. Darn.
But these two months are unreal. Especially with March Madness, my favorite three weeks of any given time of the year, no other stretch can touch this. The weather is starting to get nice, and so is the idea of finally getting to fill out another bracket. I won’t tip my hand too far as to my official bracket picks (keep the look out for a future column), but I will tell you that Kentucky will not be winning it all for me. Now you’re questioning whether or not I’ve watched a basketball game in my life. Indeed I have seen a basketball game before and I can feel it in my bones. Big Blue Nation will be very disappointed.
What chaos! How am I supposed to keep track of so many races at once? NBA and NHL teams have seen the trade deadline come and go, and now have to gear up for the push for the playoffs or a push for the first overall pick. What matchups will come of the playoff push? Will the Golden State Warriors really have to play a healthy Kevin Durant/Russell Westbrook combination in the first round? Talk about bad luck. Will the Chicago Blackhawks choke away a Stanley Cup with their name on it?
There’s only one-way to find out, to live in the next two-months. Breathe it and feel it sports fans. In three months, we’ll be stuck with baseball for an eternity.
