Yahoo Sports It's time for the Greatest Sports Week In History
Get ready to wear out 10 batteries on your remote control. Get ready to scroll Twitter like you’re panning for gold. Get ready for the alert chimes from your Yahoo Sports app to cascade like cathedral bells on a wedding day.
Friends, The Greatest Week In Sports History is upon us.
You may know about the Sports Equinox, that peculiar overlap in the calendar where baseball, basketball, football and hockey happen all in the same day. In normal circumstances it only comes around once every few years; this year, we’re getting them by the armload. Now, though, we’ve stepped it up. Now we’re into Sports Supernova territory.
Consider what we’ve got ahead in the next seven days. Deep breath: NBA Finals. Stanley Cup Final. WNBA Finals. Major League Baseball playoffs. The French Open. NFL Week 4. College football’s Week Something-Or-Other. NASCAR’s playoffs at Talladega. UFC’s Fight Island 4. Plus regular-season events on the PGA Tour, MLS, NWSL and the Premier League, along with a bunch of smaller sports I’m surely missing.
Yeah. Remember when all we had to watch on TV was some country-buck tiger wrangler and old Chicago Bulls games?
Go ahead and wipe your calendar clean right now, because you’re going to want to watch roughly 200 hours of sports this week:
Monday: The best Monday Night Football matchup in years, with Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs meeting Lamar Jackson and the Ravens. At the same time, the Dallas Stars will be trying to force a Game 7 against the Tampa Bay Lightning. Oh, and the French Open is underway on the clay of Roland-Garros.
Tuesday: Baseball begins with four American League wild-card games, with first pitches ranging from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m. Eastern. Think that’s a lot of baseball? Just wait. Also, the WNBA’s semifinals come to a head with a win-or-leave-the-bubble Game 5 between the Connecticut Sun and the Las Vegas Aces. Winner gets the Seattle Storm in the WNBA Finals.
Wednesday: If there’s a Game 7 in the NHL, that’s your top play today; nothing tops a Game 7. Over in the NBA, the Finals tip off with the favored Los Angeles Lakers meeting the Miami Heat. And baseball has an astounding eight playoff games, virtually every hour on the hour starting at noon.
Thursday: The baseball playoffs continue; the wild card round is a best-of-three series, so there’s the potential for some all-or-nothing Game 3s in the American League. Plus, there’s an NFL game between the Broncos and … well, the Jets. OK, they can’t all be winners.
Friday: More baseball playoffs, this time all Game 3s involving the eight National League teams. Anybody still playing in this round by this point is playing for their season tonight. Plus: Game 2 of the NBA Finals, and Game 1 of the WNBA Finals.
Saturday: College football nirvana, led by a top-10 matchup between Georgia and Auburn. But as last week showed, no blowout is guaranteed and nobody’s safe in this chaotic season. There’s also a full slate of soccer, with MLS and NWSL in action. Plus, for you Premier League fans, or degenerates who need sports starting at 3 a.m., this weekend represents another complete run of matches. You can end your night at Fight Island as Holly Holm-Irene Aldana heads the card for UFC Fight Island 4.
Sunday: NFL Week 4 in full swing, led by Pats/Chiefs and Browns/Cowboys. Game 3 of the NBA Finals tips just before Sunday night’s Eagles-49ers game. NASCAR heads to the ever-treacherous Talladega for the latest round of its playoffs. The PGA Tour wraps the Sanderson Farms Championship, which may not boast the biggest names but at least has a gigantic rooster as its trophy.
Sweet mercy, that’s all we could ask for and much more, like three helpings of Thanksgiving dinner.
Bonus: if you’re in a state that allows betting, this is the mother of all parlay weeks. I whipped up a random parlay of the Chiefs, Dodgers, Lakers, Stars, Chelsea FC, Georgia Bulldogs, Serena Williams and Rafael Nadal that would pay out a tidy $112,063 on a $100 bet. (Build your own wild parlay over at BetMGM. Please parlay responsibly.)
Why, it’s enough to make you go back into a self-imposed quarantine! Enjoy the games, friends. All 500 of them.
_____
Jay Busbee is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Follow him on Twitter at @jaybusbee or contact him with tips and story ideas at jay.busbee@yahoo.com.
More from Yahoo Sports:
