October: The best month of the year

Photo courtesy CNN

As a sports fan, every month of the year provides its own benefit. February brings the Super Bowl and NBA All-Star Weekend, August and September signal the start of college football and the NFL, but October mounts a rare culmination of sport that no other month of the year provides. Every major U.S. sport either starts or finishes the season while college and professional football are running with a full head of steam.

To begin the month, MLB wraps its season with pennant races that began the middle of August. MLB then begins the playoffs, which have added excitement with a one-game elimination in the Wild Card Round and a best-of-five series in the Division Series.

By the middle of the month, college football and the NFL are running full tilt. The College Football Playoff polls have not been released yet, but the top contenders are jockeying for position and pretenders have already been eliminated from the mix.

Meanwhile, the NFL is dressed chin-strap to shoelace in pink to raise awareness of the importance of regular breast screenings, and the upper echelon teams have begun to separate themselves from the bottom-feeders. This is also about the time the NHL drops the puck after four months of hibernation.

All the while, the MLB playoffs press forward.

The NBA preseason runs through the majority of the month, and the season tips off just before Halloween. This is the time we get to see what all the hub-bub during the offseason was about with the free agency period and draft. In addition to the start of the NBA, the end of the month sees the conclusion of the MLS season and the World Series.

What other month do we get to enjoy the five major professional sports and college football? March comes close with Spring Training baseball and the start of the MLS season, while the NBA and NHL seasons begin their final pushes to the postseason. However, the NFL and college football are well over by that point. That’s the closest we get to the five-sport convergence outside of October.

Despite the change of weather and shorter days, there’s no better time to be a sports fan than the month of October. The only problem sports fans have during this wonderful time of year is finding enough screens to keep up with everything that’s happening.

So find a comfortable spot where you can tune in your TV and stream from your computers, tablets and smartphone. There is no better time of year to zone in on what’s happening in the world of sports. October is the best month of the year.