By JOHN MOOREHOUSE
There are certain sports weekends where you’re just happy to be a fan.
Where you try to clear your schedule, acquire your favorite snacks and drinks (this was more of a task before home delivery expanded its services so greatly within the past few years), and camp out on your couch or recliner for a day of watching sports.
This weekend definitely qualifies. So, this week on the Friday 5, we decided to look at the best sports-watching days of the year, in no particular order. We’re only looking at events that happen every year, so the Olympics and World Cup don’t qualify.
NFL Wild Card Weekend
In addition to the full slate of college basketball conference games and European soccer (if that’s your thing), we’ve got three days of playoff football. By now, we’ve winnowed down the pro football slate and eliminated the truly dismal teams, and the ones who were close but not close enough to contending. This year’s slate features some big matchups but seeing the Packers and Bears on Saturday night in Chicago with snow in the forecast really jumps off the page! The six NFL games happening this weekend also come right after College Football Playoff semifinals on back-to-back nights. That means five straight days with high-stakes football games to watch. Yes, please!
The Masters
I’m not a golf guy, so I asked Mark to weigh in on this one. The Masters is truly “a tradition unlike any other,” as Jim Nantz would say. From the moment a round begins, to praying for mercy at Amen Corner, everything about Augusta feels intentional, from the cheap concessions and the (maybe fake) bird noises to what I find most appealing of all: no cell phones allowed. The people at Augusta National understand they’re selling an experience, not just another major golf tournament. Honestly, they could put members from the local country club on the course, and with the same level of preparation, it would still be must-watch TV.
Opening weekend of the NCAA Tournament
Wall-to-wall basketball for four days. Need we say more? The vast majority of sports fans have at least one core memory from an upset that happened in the first and second rounds of the NCAA Tournament; the first one that crops up for me is watching ETSU beat Arizona in 1992. Those big upsets seem a little harder to come by as NIL money created a bigger resource gap between the big boys and the mid-major schools. Still, it’s a tradition to hole up and watch as much of the Rounds of 64 and 32 as possible. My wife hates this weekend, by the way.
Four MLB playoff games in one day
The expansion of the baseball playoff means more games to watch. Typically, the first day of the wild card round and the first day of the divisional round are quadruple headers, with four games in a single day. This is my personal favorite. Playoff baseball is the best (especially when a certain team from the North Side of the Windy City is in the mix), and I try to watch as much of it as I can. Getting to watch four playoff games in a single day borders on decadence for the truly dedicated seamheads.
Any Game 7
Elimination games at the end of a series are usually worth watching, but there’s something about a seven-game series reaching its culmination that transcends to another level. Maybe it’s that a seven-game series represents such a grind — the final chapter in a lengthy back-and-forth campaign. NBA playoffs. NHL playoffs. League championship series in baseball. I don’t really follow the NBA any more, but when a Game 7 crops up, I’m sure to watch. I think it’s genetic; this summer, my dad was in home hospice but insisted on seeing Game 7 of the Finals between Oklahoma City and Indiana.