Let couch season begin

By Sam Deal, Sports Editor

Spring is the best time of year to be a sports fan.

The NCAA tournament, MLB opening day, the Masters, NBA playoffs and NHL playoffs are all rolling and more than enough to keep me planted on the couch until the dulls of mid-season baseball set in.

The early season hasn’t disappointed with the best NCAA tournament in recent memory that was capped with a thrilling Duke victory over Wisconsin, who had slayed Goliath Kentucky two nights previous.

Sunday’s final day at Augusta featured some of golf’s best: Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and Rory McIlroy chasing a 21-year-old Jordan Spieth. Spieth would tie the 72-hole course record and win the tournament in a landslide.

NHL playoffs are set to start today with a wide open field where the favorite Anaheim has 9-1 odds, yet Winnipeg, the team with the lowest odds of winning comes in at 18-1, according to oddsshark.com.

This race for Lord Stanley’s Cup looks to be the tightest in recent memory and if hockey playoffs have told us anything in the past, this will be one of the most exciting events of the year.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to write a column on how the whole world is missing out by not being hockey fans (although I really, really want to).

Sunday NBA playoffs will begin.

The Western Conference is still far better than the east with nine teams who can all beat each other on any given night. And only eight of those teams will even qualify.

A simple solution, I don’t know, maybe move New Orleans to the Eastern Conference, where geographically they belong. No, why should the NBA listen to reason?

Anyways, what would be a parity-filled West is matched by a three-horse race in the East between Chicago, Cleveland and Atlanta. The story lines are plentiful. Can Lebron James make it to a fifth consecutive championship? Can Chicago stay healthy? Is Atlanta for real without a superstar?

This is why spring is the best time of year for sports. Sorry gym but the only exercise I’ll be doing for the next few weeks is curls trying to find one more chip in the empty bag and push-ups while I look under the couch for the missing remote.