After the awful sports month of February, and the largely boring month of March (save for 10 days of college basketball), April has finally arrived, and with it comes nicer weather (in theory, at least) and better sports.  And also, for the 17th time, the return of ERP with a declaration by yours truly that I’ll be a more active writer.  Once again, if you’d like to help out on a sports blog, talk to me, because I’d like to get this site active again.

For now, though, lets bring back my favorite part of ERP… the Monday Morning Hangover.

Here’s my biggest problem with the college basketball tournament: the buildup to the tournament is great, and it starts off with a bang, but it fades.  And quickly.  Tonight is the National Championship.  Yet I feel like nobody is talking about it anymore.  Most people have moved on to baseball already.  Or are looking ahead to the Masters.

Obviously once tonight comes around, everyone will be focused back on the game itself, but I feel like the actual Final Four weekend is so much less of a big deal than any other major National Championship, amateur or professional.  Part of this is unavoidable, because the early part of the tournament is so exciting, and that can’t be replicated by one game.  Yet at the same time, I feel like the NCAA can avoid some of this downfall as well.  For starters, how about starting the game a little earlier than 9:30 eastern?  Yeah, yeah, East Coast bias, I know, but a large majority of the viewers live in this time zone, and aren’t going to stay up until midnight to watch a college basketball game.  I’d also push everything up a week.  Don’t let the Final Four share the spotlight with opening weekend of baseball.  Give it its own weekend, one where there is nothing else to talk about, and UConn-Butler may be a bigger deal than it already is.

That said, it still is a pretty big deal, and the Little School That Could vs. Big School That Could storyline promises to deliver a great game.  I can only hope it rivals last years game in terms of excitement, and of course, that Butler wins.

Speaking of adjusting your schedule, baseball needs to do the opposite of what college basketball needs to do; they need to start later.  March 31 opening day is way too early.  It’s not spring yet.  It doesn’t feel like baseball.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m excited that its back, but it just doesn’t feel right.

If I were the commissioner, opening day for me would always be the Monday after The Master’s.  The Master’s, to me, is the true signifier that spring has arrived.  If you push opening day back 10 days, until after the Master’s, believe it or not you’ll fix a lot of the cold weather/snow-delays that plagued the first week or two of the season.  The last few days here in NJ the temperate ranged from mid-40′s to low-50′s… decidedly not baseball weather.  According to the long-range forecast, next Monday it is going to be 63 degrees, and it’ll top out around 70 in the middle of next week.  That’s baseball weather.

I’d also take a week off the end of the season, shorten the schedule to 154 games, and implement 6 scheduled double-headers for every team (one per month) in an effort to not have the World Series end after Election Day anymore.  Baseball is a summer sport.  To have the most important series of the season played in flurries is asinine.  But I can go into that and my other genius ideas to improve America’s Past Time in another post.

For now we can celebrate my Phillies sweeping their first 3-game, series-opening homestand since 1899.  It’s been a long time coming.  We can also celebrate how excited I am by my fantasy team this season.  I once again have assembled one of the 2 or 3 best rotations in the league (probably the best, IMO, save for my disastrous closer situation), and this time I have a good offense to go along with it.  I know talking about your fantasy team to people who aren’t in the league with you is uber-lame, so I’ll stop.  But I’m looking forward to winning that championship.

Speaking of fantasy baseball, though, in general, can we agree once and for all that it is superior to fantasy football?  If I didn’t have fantasy football, I’d still sit in front of my TV for 12 hours every Sunday watching every NFL game I possibly could.  Without fantasy baseball I don’t know what I’d do for the 6 months that baseball is on.  I’d still follow my team, but I wouldn’t devote nearly the amount of time and energy into baseball season as I do now.

Last year, either on this site or on facebook, I declared Master’s Sunday one of my 10 favorite sports days of the year.  A lot of people agreed with me, and a lot more thought I was crazy.  Regardless, the Master’s return this weekend.  To me its still the best event in golf, and one of the best in sports.  I’d still put this Sunday as a Top 10 day in sports (Conf. Championship Sunday, Super Bowl Sunday, first 2 days of NCAA Tournament, Kentucky Derby, Father’s Day, NFL Opening Day, that Oct. Sunday w/ NFL, World Series, hockey & basketball, and New Years Day are the other nine).

It’s supposed to be nice in NJ this Sunday, which means I’ll get up early, go for a run, open the windows to the house, do some yardwork/spring cleaning, and then BBQ and kick back in the afternoon for the back-9 of the Master’s.  Life doesn’t get much better, if you ask me.

Since the MMH is my thing, I’ve decided it doesn’t have to be all sports all the time.  It’s mostly sports, but a few things in entertainment happened this week that are worth discussing.  First was the finale of Top Chef.  I was glad to see Richard Blais get the title, even if he did get slightly neurotic towards the end (and by towards the end, of course, I mean 1 episode into the season).  To me, he’s on the Mount Rushmore of Top Chef’s, along with the Voltaggio Brothers and Kevin Gillespie.  I think you can put Hung on there in place of Kevin, as he’s probably a better chef, but to me Kevin deserves that spot.  Maybe its because of the way Top Chef slighted him in his finale (still bitter about that), or maybe its because of his beautiful beard.  Regardless, those would be my Top 5 Cheftestants of all-time, with Stefan, Angelo, Jen, and Carla (yes Carla) being the other notable cheftestants.

Also, if you didn’t watch AMC’s two-hour premiere of The Killing last night, do yourself a favor and watch it on demand this week before the third episode airs this Sunday.  It was fantastic.  I had no expectations for this series, really, just because I didn’t know how it could be pulled off.  After watching last night, though, I think they’ve nailed what they were trying to do.  And what they’re doing, to me, is taking a great novel and putting it into video form.  That isn’t to say that this is based on a novel, because its not.  But rather, a great book is always better than a great movie or adaptation, that is fact.  That’s mostly because they try to squeeze 500+ pages of story into 2-3 hours.  This show is taking one storyline, the murder of a 17 year old girl, and turning it into a 13 hour event.  Genius.  In doing so, we got to be introduced to a lot of characters (a bit confusing at first, much like the first 50 pages of any great novel), and build a relationship with them.

Because of this, it was incredibly moving when the parents of the girl discovered she had been murdered.  Moving in a way no other pilot episode of any TV show ever has grabbed me.  Watching that unfold, while very tough to see, was also incredible.  Very seldom do you get to see acting like the mother and father did in this show.*  I highly recommend checking it out if you have 2 hours to spare this week.

*Spoiler: When Michelle Forbes is curled up on the kitchen floor, against her cabinets, screaming her husbands name into the phone, that did it for me.  I lost it.  I’ve also never seen an actor fully grasp a parent’s horror as much as she did in those 10 seconds.  Pure perfection of the most terrifying kind.

Happy Monday, everyone!