The Hunt for the Best Sports Month

Almost without question, the best sports month of the year is October.

The operative word? Almost. I say “almost” because I am an unashamed, biased Texan who has a tilted opinion (though I assure you, my unorthodox politics balances that tilt, so I’m not totally insane).

Nonetheless, I’ll try to draw it out as logically and objectively as possible and I’ll save my bias for the last paragraph.

First of all, football season (especially college) is right in the middle, which means many of the teams who will make the serious runs at their respective championships are just starting to heat up.

Offenses are lighting up the scoreboards, defenses are sending opposing QB’s to local hospitals, and the best teams are starting to play in sync.

In college, we’re also seeing some of the midseason rivalries like Texas-OU, Florida-Georgia, Alabama-Tennessee, Notre Dame-USC when the game is in South Bend (which it is this year) and a litany of other rivalries thousands of fans care so much about.

Basketball and hockey are in the infant stages of their respective seasons. For the all around sports fan, this is perfect for a week day fix for TV. Bored husbands across the nation need not suffer the Desperate Housewives episodes and the Sex and the City re-runs just to satisfy their wives’ “tastes” in TV shows.

Between football weekends, we can all watch the NHL and NBA begin to blossom into yet another pair of very competitive seasons. And these are watchable sports, too. What do you have to watch during the week in the summer after those end?

In the winter and spring, you can at least still use that weekday fill with the NBA and NHL, but the weekends aren’t that special. It’s kind of like eating a Salisbury steak with potatoes every night. That’s not healthy for a sports fan.

Weekends in the fall are our lobster nights.

I almost forgot one thing: The MLBPlayoffs and the World Series! This is the ultimate in week day fixes.

In between two weekends of some very tense football rivalries and some very important conference games, we can observe the playoffs and the Fall Classic to keep us sane.

Of course, there’s also a downside to October that I have to point out in the interest of fairness.

There’s no golf, there’s no tennis, the weather starts to look grim if you live up north, we’re nowhere close to the real competitive stages of the aforementioned NBA and NHL, and there’s never an Olympiad in even years (too early for the Winter Games, too late for Summer Games).

I don’t watch NASCAR so I can’t speak intelligently about their schedule except to say that the big race in Daytona is months away, and pro wrestling’s big event is in late March-early April (and it isn’t near as fun as it was in the late '80s, early '90s).

Here’s my response to that downside: I’ll take that with the upside that the rest of the year doesn’t have. October is the last month of the year in which the Big Four professional sports are in session (NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB), thus that’s the most competitive all of them will be.

Oh yeah, there’s also college football being played. Those two facts alone make the value of October skyrocket in terms of sports.

On my personal note I alluded to, here’s my final reason for claiming October superiority: The Texas vs. Oklahoma football game.

Those who say “that’s just a football game” haven’t the slightest idea of what they’re talking about because they’ve obviously never been to one. I’vebeen going to it since 1992 and I’ll just say this: there’s nothing like it.

The teams come from cities pretty much equidistant from Dallas, the stadium is split at a perfect 50-50, the fans are as rabid as they’ll be all season, and no amount of hate in sports could top the hate expressed in the Cotton Bowl on the second Saturday in October.

Fights break out on the field as often as they do in the stands, the chants are as derogatory as any that will be heard, and the hits are absolutely massive (just ask Lendy Holmes).

But here’s the thing about Texas-OU: the greatness I just described is just the game itself. The greatness in the Texas-OU game isn’t just the game.

It’s the day. It’s the Fair. It’s the being there. It’s the spending a couple of hours in a sea of humanity; a melting pot of the two tribes, if you will. It’s the Fletcher’s Corn Dogs. It’s the deep fried [insert dessert food item]. It’s the rides. It’s Big Tex.

It’s everything an elite football rivalry should have that only one of them does. The Dallas Metroplex is the one populated by more Oklahoma alumni than any other and it’s just because of that one game.

It can therefore be said that the month of October dictates the entire lives (more or less) of the bulk of the Oklahoma alumni base. I doubt very seriously that you could say the same about any other game/event/month/etc and any other university.

So to recap, the fact that October is the last month the Big Four all play at the same time and that the Texas-OU game is played then is what vaults it over the other 11 months.