NFL Draft to NBA & NHL to Manchester Derby: Best Five-Day Weekend of the Year

Whenever a sports weekend starts on Thursday night with something as big as the NFL draft, you know it's going to be a pretty spectacular four days of sports.

Add in NHL and NBA playoffs and an exciting debut in MLB and it gets even better. But when that weekend culminates in a huge event on Monday afternoon like Manchester United facing Manchester City for EPL supremacy, we get five days of amazing sports moments, both on and off the field, that puts this weekend into the short list of best weekends of the year.

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A weekend without football games being the best weekend of the year? I know, it sounds crazy, but it's not.  

Clearly a weekend of watching football is better than not, but really, the NFL draft weekend has every football fan around the country interested in what will happen to their favorite team.

The bad teams excite their fans by replenishing mediocre rosters with top-flight talent. The good teams find late-round steals their fans can use to mock the bad teams for passing over (to pick two quarterbacks in the first four rounds or a punter in the third round instead).

A punter? In the third round. You aren't getting this kind of entertainment in Week 15, Jacksonville fans. You just aren't.  

The long weekend hasn't just been about the NFL draft, of course. As mentioned, NHL playoffs gave us some great first-round Game Sevens and already Round 2 has seen multiple overtime games. There are few things better in sports than overtime in the NHL playoffs.

Except maybe a buzzer-beater in the NBA playoffs, scored on a ridiculous shot by the league's leading scorer. We got that this weekend, too.

How about a miraculous 27-point comeback on the road? The NBA had that as well.

Sure, the NBA had a few injuries, including the devastating knee injury to Derrick Rose, which not only put a damper on Chicago's title hopes, but also threw a bit of a wet blanket over the Eastern Conference playoffs. But even the injuries were not enough to take away from an exciting first weekend in the NBA's real season.

None of that, not the NFL draft or NHL playoffs or NBA comeback wins or Bryce Harper making his MLB debut, has the world buzzing like the Manchester Derby on Monday. What a way to end a weekend.  

Manchester United are three points clear of bitter rival Manchester City with three English Premier League matches to play. Should United beat City, the EPL race is ostensibly over (United would need one point in its final two matches with Swansea and Sunderland while City would need to beat Newcastle and QPR and hope for a miracle).  

Should City beat United, they will be tied on points atop the EPL but ahead on goal differential, meaning wins over Newcastle and QPR would guarantee a title for City for the first time in a generation.

(Listen to the audio file attached to this post to hear a chat with Will Tidey about the Manchester Derby and the sudden resignation of Barcelona manager Pep Guardiola. The conversation starts at the 10-minute mark.)

There is not much better in all of sports than bitter rivals facing off in a late-season tilt to determine who will win the most competitive league in the world. The match is so important ESPN has moved it from the traditional ESPN2 slot on Mondays to the mothership, putting the match on ESPN.

This follows the trend of Fox Soccer recently, putting Champions League matches on FX and putting the upcoming UCL final on Fox. Soccer coverage is certainly growing in America, and with it, the excitement of matches like Monday's contest has begun to boil over across the Atlantic.

It's a great week to be a sports fan, whatever your sport.

NFL DRAFT REACTION

Our podcast this week also focuses on the great weekend (read: week) we are experiencing. As mentioned, we talk about the big stories in soccer and the NBA, but the show also covers the NFL draft, from what went right and wrong on TV to how much faster Mel Kiper talks than Mike Mayock (it's amazing when they are both talking about the same player at the same time) to which teams "won and lost" the draft. 

As always, thanks for reading and listening.