Sports Give Us A Little Bit Of Everything This Week
July 28, 2016 at 4:25 p.m.
By Roger Grossman, Lake City Radio-
Think about these:
• The Final Four of March Madness is the day before opening night of Major League Baseball, which falls on the same night as the women’s basketball Final Four. And the next day is Monday, which is the men’s championship game and opening day of baseball.
• The opening of the NFL season is also the weekend of the finals of the U.S. Open tennis tournament.
• The NFL’s regular season ends or its playoffs begin during the height of the college football bowl season and right after the NBA gives us its Christmas Day ‘launch.’
• And Thanksgiving week means the end of college football’s regular season, a trio of NFL games on Thursday, six high school football state championship games in Indy, and it’s the start of the high school boys basketball season.
But none of those can match this week. Let’s review what is on the docket:
• We start with the NFL Draft Thursday, which has become the single biggest non-game sporting event in the world of sports. It’s when teams in our country’s most popular sport try to get better by selecting players from our second most popular sport. But this year it’s even a bigger deal because, for the first time ever, the draft is being held outside of New York City. When Commissioner Roger Goodell steps to the podium to announce that Jameis Winston has been selected by Tampa Bay, he will be doing it in Chicago. The first round goes down on Thursday, with rounds 2 and 3 on Friday and the rest of the draft on Saturday.
• Hop on I-65 and head south on Saturday for the Kentucky Derby. It’s the one horse race that everyone pays attention to every year. Even if you don’t bet, you grab a paper or get online and pick a horse you like and cheer for him.
• Saturday night gives us a boxing match that we have been craving for years – Floyd Mayweather vs Manny Pacquiao. These two guys are as good as anyone in any weight class in their sport, and they have been staring at each other across the imaginary boundary that prevented them from actually getting together and “duking it out” for five years. But as happens in boxing, the cable networks and promoters have kept these two from being on the same card. This fight should have happened five years ago, but in a way that has helped make the fight juicier for sports consumers. It will be a spectacle, if nothing else, because that is what boxing does best.
• The NBA Playoffs will either finish off first round series or start the second round this weekend. It’s been a relatively ho-hum start to the playoffs so far, but the Bulls-Bucks series got a lot more interesting than it should be, and the Spurs and Clippers seem destined for a Game 7. We all still think the Bulls are going to win their series, which will give us the much-anticipated meeting between Chicago and Cleveland (a lot of NBA experts think that the winner will represent the East in The Finals).
• And the NHL playoffs. This weekend will be the start of the second round of the playoffs, and we will have some great matchups. The Blackhawks slayed Nashville in the first round, and will host Minnesota in Game 1 on Friday night at the United Center.
So which is the biggest?
Well if you think about it, frequency makes for complacency and the antithesis of that would be a mega boxing match like Saturday night’s. And before the invention of pay-per-view, big fights were something we saw all the time because we were able to watch them on broadcast television. We ALL watched it and we all knew the fighters and their personas were larger-than-life and we were into it. But boxing, to use a business term, set its price point to where only people who can afford $60 or more for an evening of entertainment can watch. I don’t know about you but I’ve got better things to spend my time and cash on.
So by definition, the fight is ‘the thing’.
But the draft is … football! It’s not a game, but it might as well be. We have been breaking this down since late February and the rumors and speculation get gobbled up by fans and media alike.
However, we can’t escape reality as we enjoy sports this week and weekend.
The events that have unfolded in Baltimore have reminded us that the great escape we find in sports can’t always evade the events of real life, and sometimes they cross over. The White Sox game tonight was moved to this afternoon so it could be played in daylight, and the stands will be empty. No fans allowed. No fans screaming “Oh” during the National Anthem. No introduction of players as they walk to the plate. No messages on the jumbotron. Just baseball players playing and media covering the game.
The Orioles series at home with Tampa has been moved to Tampa because of the fear of weekend violence.
Sad. Very sad.
But let the sports play on and let it be the BEST sports weekend in my lifetime. Let us have a photo finish and a 12th-round knockout and overtime hockey, and let the people of Baltimore be safe.
If you are bored this weekend, it’s your fault.[[In-content Ad]]
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Think about these:
• The Final Four of March Madness is the day before opening night of Major League Baseball, which falls on the same night as the women’s basketball Final Four. And the next day is Monday, which is the men’s championship game and opening day of baseball.
• The opening of the NFL season is also the weekend of the finals of the U.S. Open tennis tournament.
• The NFL’s regular season ends or its playoffs begin during the height of the college football bowl season and right after the NBA gives us its Christmas Day ‘launch.’
• And Thanksgiving week means the end of college football’s regular season, a trio of NFL games on Thursday, six high school football state championship games in Indy, and it’s the start of the high school boys basketball season.
But none of those can match this week. Let’s review what is on the docket:
• We start with the NFL Draft Thursday, which has become the single biggest non-game sporting event in the world of sports. It’s when teams in our country’s most popular sport try to get better by selecting players from our second most popular sport. But this year it’s even a bigger deal because, for the first time ever, the draft is being held outside of New York City. When Commissioner Roger Goodell steps to the podium to announce that Jameis Winston has been selected by Tampa Bay, he will be doing it in Chicago. The first round goes down on Thursday, with rounds 2 and 3 on Friday and the rest of the draft on Saturday.
• Hop on I-65 and head south on Saturday for the Kentucky Derby. It’s the one horse race that everyone pays attention to every year. Even if you don’t bet, you grab a paper or get online and pick a horse you like and cheer for him.
• Saturday night gives us a boxing match that we have been craving for years – Floyd Mayweather vs Manny Pacquiao. These two guys are as good as anyone in any weight class in their sport, and they have been staring at each other across the imaginary boundary that prevented them from actually getting together and “duking it out” for five years. But as happens in boxing, the cable networks and promoters have kept these two from being on the same card. This fight should have happened five years ago, but in a way that has helped make the fight juicier for sports consumers. It will be a spectacle, if nothing else, because that is what boxing does best.
• The NBA Playoffs will either finish off first round series or start the second round this weekend. It’s been a relatively ho-hum start to the playoffs so far, but the Bulls-Bucks series got a lot more interesting than it should be, and the Spurs and Clippers seem destined for a Game 7. We all still think the Bulls are going to win their series, which will give us the much-anticipated meeting between Chicago and Cleveland (a lot of NBA experts think that the winner will represent the East in The Finals).
• And the NHL playoffs. This weekend will be the start of the second round of the playoffs, and we will have some great matchups. The Blackhawks slayed Nashville in the first round, and will host Minnesota in Game 1 on Friday night at the United Center.
So which is the biggest?
Well if you think about it, frequency makes for complacency and the antithesis of that would be a mega boxing match like Saturday night’s. And before the invention of pay-per-view, big fights were something we saw all the time because we were able to watch them on broadcast television. We ALL watched it and we all knew the fighters and their personas were larger-than-life and we were into it. But boxing, to use a business term, set its price point to where only people who can afford $60 or more for an evening of entertainment can watch. I don’t know about you but I’ve got better things to spend my time and cash on.
So by definition, the fight is ‘the thing’.
But the draft is … football! It’s not a game, but it might as well be. We have been breaking this down since late February and the rumors and speculation get gobbled up by fans and media alike.
However, we can’t escape reality as we enjoy sports this week and weekend.
The events that have unfolded in Baltimore have reminded us that the great escape we find in sports can’t always evade the events of real life, and sometimes they cross over. The White Sox game tonight was moved to this afternoon so it could be played in daylight, and the stands will be empty. No fans allowed. No fans screaming “Oh” during the National Anthem. No introduction of players as they walk to the plate. No messages on the jumbotron. Just baseball players playing and media covering the game.
The Orioles series at home with Tampa has been moved to Tampa because of the fear of weekend violence.
Sad. Very sad.
But let the sports play on and let it be the BEST sports weekend in my lifetime. Let us have a photo finish and a 12th-round knockout and overtime hockey, and let the people of Baltimore be safe.
If you are bored this weekend, it’s your fault.[[In-content Ad]]
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