Brian Spurlock/USA Today Sports, via Reuters
It’s been roughly a month and a half since the last pro basketball or hockey game. March Madness was canceled. Baseball never started. For my group of childhood friends and me, and surely for plenty of others, this year’s N.F.L. draft has become the most important sporting event since the Super Bowl.
We make a big deal out of sports holidays. Since college, we have made an event of the first round of the N.C.A.A. men’s basketball tournament: We take off the first Thursday and Friday of the first round, travel to a new city and do nothing but watch basketball, drink beer and eat fried food for roughly 96 hours.