Sorry, NFL, But This Is Not The Best Weekend In Sports

By JOHN P. WISE
One Great Season

The arrival of college football season to me is the best time of year, but that actual opening weekend isn't necessarily the best the sport has to offer, what with its many lopsided games between powerhouses and weak sisters.

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And pro football fans have reason to bark about the second weekend of the NFL playoffs. You've got the Round 1 winners taking on division champs, a Saturday and Sunday each filled with at least seven consecutive hours of football at its finest.

But the real weekend in sports has always been somewhere in the middle of March, the first weekend of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament.

No other weekend in sports brings what those opening two rounds offer. First of all, the tournament begins at noon on Thursday, so the weekend consists of four days, which is awesome. That's a lot of beer and pizza.

Secondly, 16 games on Thursday and 16 more on Friday give fans plenty of opportunities to witness thrilling buzzer-beaters, heartwrenching upsets and miracle comebacks. And eight more games on both Saturday and Sunday bring a better quality of matchups. Forty-eight games in four days? Can sports seriously get any better?

And here we are talking about this weekend's four football games over a span of about 27 hours. Sure the NFL playoffs are fun to watch, but this weekend falls well short of what we'll be able to enjoy in less than nine short weeks now.