On New Year’s Day, for the first time in a long time, everybody seemed to be talking about hockey. The college football bowl games have been incredibly boring, everyone is sick of Roger Clemens, and no can get excited about a Charlotte Bobcats-Atlanta Hawks NBA matchup. Therefore, on Jan. 1, the NHL presented the “Winter Classic,” an outdoor game at Ralph Wilson Stadium in Orchard Park, N.Y., (the normal home of the Buffalo Bills) between the Buffalo Sabres and the Pittsburgh Penguins.

Financially, the game was a big coup for the NHL. The contest was the highest rated regular-season NHL game in over a decade, with a bigger audience than last year’s Stanley Cup Finals. The stadium was full with Sabres fans who drank so much Genny Light that they didn’t feel the cold. In addition, media outlets who normally only talk about hockey when the Islanders’ Chris Simon commits a crime on the ice talked about the game ad nauseam.

Wait, the Patriots are 15-0? I hadn’t noticed. I guess I missed the constant articles, coverage, prime time games and the “Patriots” section of ESPN’s “Bottom Line.” Believe it or not, New England will in fact be going for a perfect regular season this weekend. I have ardently rooted against New England for 15 games, all for naught. Normally, this week I would continue my hatred of the Pats, but Saturday night’s matchup presents a conundrum for any Jets fan like myself – the Patriots against the Giants.

Right now, there are no two teams in the NFL than I hate more than these two. Because a Patriots victory would mean the second undefeated regular season in NFL history, I obviously will be watching the game. But who should I root for?

Congratulations Tiger Woods! Yes, Woods has won 12 majors, is a new father and could probably run Nike. But that is nothing compared to his most recent win in ESPN’s Who’s Now competition! Yeah! Every day for the past several weeks, ESPN’s Sportscenter has been running this inane competition and now that it is over, I feel like ESPN owes me my life back. I have not met a single person who either liked Who’s Now or thought it was a good idea. Yet, for some reason, ESPN executives were probably all congratulating themselves and high-fiving each other after coming up with the idea.

For baseball fans, the trading deadline, which is always held on July 31, is one of the best days of the year, along with the playoffs and opening day (with the worst day being the day where I inevitably find out that Tim McCarver still works for FOX). The deadline used to be at midnight, which I really liked when I was younger, as I imagined GMs working endlessly into the night, watching Nickelodeon, placing “Truth or Dare” and making trades. The new 4 p.m. deadline is relatively anti-climatic, but still fun to follow. Therefore, I thought I’d do a daily diary for the three days before 4 p.m. Tuesday, and chronicle all the moves.

I was all set to blog about David Beckham’s debut match with the L.A. Galaxy. It was a great idea; I was going to give a non-soccer fan’s perspective on the event, because I admit that I am truly ignorant about soccer. I barely know the difference between Ronaldo and Ronaldinho and I would rather watch The Big Green than watch an MLS game. Additionally, I don’t understand why the Los Angeles Galaxy was going to play a team from England in the first place and I don’t like games where 2-0 is practically a blowout.

It’s almost August, and many sports fans have stopped caring about the NBA (except me, who rejoiced when the Nets decided not to overpay Mikki Moore). Baseball rules the world right now, NFL training camp is around the corner and David Beckham is about to supplant Kobe Bryant as one of the four people ESPN talks about (along with Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds and Alex Rodriguez). That is why this will be my last NBA draft blog and next week I will be back about something else. For this entry, though, I want to point out the key college players for next year’s draft. Like last year, which boasted top-4 picks Greg Oden, Kevin Durant and Mike Conley, Jr., there is another bumper crop of freshmen this season, along with a number of veteran prospects.

I was going to write my last NBA Draft blog this week, but after the latest installment of “How Yi Jianlian Turns,” I had to extend it for at least a week. It is not often that a top-10 player refuses to play for the team that drafts him, so I had to write about it. Yi was drafted by Milwaukee even though he had previously made it clear that he did not want to play there. He had not invited the Bucks to his private workout, and had expressed concern about the fact that there were only 1,200 Asian-Americans in the city, approximately the same amount of people who saw Gigli in theatres.

Well the draft is finally over, which means you won’t hear the name Brandon Wright again until Francis Ford Coppola makes another movie. We have reached that time of year when all the draft pundits around the world grade each team’s performance in the draft. Of course, this is a silly proposition; right now, who would know whether taking Gilbert Arenas in the second round would be a good move or that taking Kwame Brown first overall would be a bad move?

I wrote my mock draft last Sunday, but by yesterday, it seemed as dated as Austin Powers. Rumors were flying that Kevin Garnett would be traded to anyone from Boston to Phoenix to Los Angeles to Golden State to Peoria. Indiana was trying to play the Lakers and the Nets off one another for Jermaine O’Neal. Prospects such as Sean Williams and Glen Davis were shooting up mock drafts, as general managers apparently instantly forgot about Williams’s drug troubles and Davis’s weight problems. Other guys such as Julian Wright and Thaddeus Young, once locks for lottery picks, possibly might go in the 20s. Finally, the draft is upon us, and here are my thoughts about the big issues as the draft unfolds.

In between watching reruns of The Real World/Road Rules Challenge: The Inferno and trying to figure out how Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer made so much money at the box office, you may have missed a critical piece of NBA Draft news. This past Monday was the deadline for players who had not yet signed with agents to withdraw from the draft. Some players rolled the dice and stayed in the draft, while some apparently missed frat parties and D.P. Dough and decided to return to college.