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Week In Pictures
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I was rushing out of the office Thursday night because I had to get home in time to see the telecast of the NBA Draft — an event I never, ever miss.
For me, the NBA Draft is always one of the best sports days of the year.
Which got me to thinking. What are, year in, year out, the best days of each sports year.
Here are 10 I plan my life around.
10. College football signing day.I love this for the pure preposterousness of the whole crazy thing. Each year, roughly 3,000 high school football players sign letters of intent with Division I colleges.
There's no rational way to know which players are best — or which players will be the best four years hence. Nor is there any realistic way to measure which colleges have signed the best class.
Yet in spite of that uncertainty — or maybe because of it — this event has become a national obsession. I find the whole phenomenon fascinating.
9. UK basketball Midnight Madness. My guilty pleasure. Every year, I think there's something totally daft about filling up Rupp Arena (23,000 strong) for a glorified practice.
I never go — but my own curiosity for a ”first look“ at each year's Kentucky basketball teams means I also never miss the live local telecast of the event.
8. Super Bowl Sunday. Clearly, this is America's favorite sports day. The commercials and the parties rock, but I don't have it higher on my list because the quality of football so often disappoints (and usually doesn't live up to the NFL's conference finals).
7. The Bristol night race. Starting from 1999, when Dale Earnhardt the elder spun out Terry Labonte on the final lap to win, I've made a point to never miss the short-track that tends to be NASCAR's wildest and woolliest event.
6. The Kentucky-Louisville football game. I actually like our state's intrastate football Armageddon better than the more nationally resonant Cats-Cards basketball rivalry. There is so much fear and loathing associated with the hoops rivalry that it sucks the fun from it for me.
The UK-U of L football game is far more important to the ultimate success of each school's season (fewer games in football raising the relative importance of each). And, yes, I still think the game is a more distinguished event with a better chance of attracting national attention as the season opener.
5. The first two rounds of the men's NCAA basketball tournament. For my money, the ”upset rounds“ — when the David-sons try to slay the Goliaths — are more fun than the Final Four.
4. The first day of the Kentucky Boys' Sweet Sixteen. This event uniquely ties Kentucky of the past to Kentucky of the present.
My parents took me to my first boys' basketball state tournament in 1971. Even now, I still see people every year at the tourney that I remember from my childhood. The tourney format was essentially the same for Darius Miller that it was for King Kelly Coleman.
Yet, even in an age of iPods and Facebook, high-school kids get stoked about ”making it to state.“
3. NBA Draft night. Admittedly, it was better when the players being drafted were mostly three- or four-year college veterans that we all knew, not 19-year-old kids and 7-foot Turks.
Still, I love the atmospherics — the wild dress suits; the crying mothers; David Stern being dwarfed by draftees while shaking hands at the podium — of this.
2. New Year's Day bowl games. Admittedly, it was better before the BCS, but the day when high-level college football bowls begin before noon and don't end until after midnight is still a blast.
Never, ever call me on this day.
1. Selection Sunday. The day that the NCAA announces its men's basketball tournament field is the hoops Christmas Eve.
