Being a sports fan can be a lot of work. Especially for those who enjoy a variety of sports, finding the time to watch them all. All of a sudden doing that assignment or going to sleep at a regular time can be a difficult task to accomplish.
If you are the type who follows one or two sports, it can still be hard to find a time where there is truly nothing happening. In team sports, there is always a regular season to follow, then the playoffs to crown a champion. In soccer, the entire season is about crowning the champion, making every game even more important. But every sports fan knows that just because the game shave ended, doesn’t mean that the sport goes quiet. There are drafts and free agency, which change the roster of the team, or signing periods in the case of soccer. Once you add in training camps, there is always something to follow.
The real challenge of finding time is when you enjoy multiple sports. If you follow baseball, there is a game to watch almost every day for eight months a year if you include spring training (and hard-core sports fans always include this). When baseball is in the off-season, you can waste your falls watching the NFL and college football. If football isn’t your thing, don’t worry. By November, both the NBA and NHL have started along with most European soccer leagues.
After football season is done, you can watch the end of the NHL and NBA seasons while also following along with NCAA basketball to help you look like a genius once March Madness begins. You can also enjoy the race for the titles in European soccer including the beginning of the knockout round of the Champions League.
If instead of watching a team, you rather focus on an individual story and players competing head-to-head, you can watch tennis year round including the four majors. You can waste a full two weeks of January (Australian Open), the last week of May and the first week of June (French Open), the last week of June and the first week of July (Wimbledon), or the last week of August and the first week of September (US Open).
For those not interested in head-to-head competition, you can watch golfers overcome the obstacles of a golf course. Golf is another sport that goes almost the entire year, so for those of you with interest in other sports you may only pay attention to the majors: The Masters (second weekend of April), U.S. Open (third weekend of June), British Open (mid-July) and the PGA Championships (early August).
If you are more interested in endurance sports that offer a mix of teamwork but ultimately come down to head to head then cycle is a great sport to watch. There are three major races, the Vuelta a Espana from late August to early September as well as the Giro d’Italia at the end of June going into July. The grand finale is the Tour de France, which is held over the first three weeks of July. All the events combine many competitions into one over a three week period providing lots of entertainment to keep you busy daily.
As an added bonus, the summer of 2016 will also provide two more international competitions to keep people busy. The UEFA championships will place the best European nations against each other in what is the second biggest soccer tournament behind the World Cup.
There is also the Olympics. An event that covers dozens of sports and has competitions scheduled for 12 hours a day for two weeks (Aug 5-21). That may provide an escape and excuse for some people to ignore their responsibilities.
For those who enjoy combat sports, finding a weekend without boxing or MMA is almost impossible.
All of these special events, along with the major sports leagues, result in an environment of never-ending competition to watch and discuss, providing an escape from the struggles of day-to-day life, although following too many may lead to being stuck in front of the TV, forgetting about assignments or feeding the dogs. Finding a balance and picking which sports to enjoy is key.
Now that I’ve managed to write this it’s time to go back to watching sports.
