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Today Might Be the Best Sports Day of the Year

For sports fans, today is as good as it gets: it's the Sports Equinox. 

There are a ton of awful things happening in the world, so take a second to appreciate that Thursday is about as good as it gets on the sports front. 

That's because, as FiveThirtyEight pointed out, Thursday is the rare Sports Equinox! What is this "Sports Equinox," you might ask? It's when there are games in each of the four "major" American sports leagues. (Major is in quotations because I'm a soccer guy.) 

There's a Thursday night game in the NFL (Chiefs at Raiders), three NBA games, nine NHL games and an MLB playoff game, with the Cubs trying to keep their season alive in Game 5 of the NLCS vs. the Dodgers. For good measure, there are also two college football games, the better of which features No. 25 Memphis playing at Houston.

This hasn't happened that often—tonight is the 17th Sports Equinox, per FiveThirtyEight—mainly because baseball playoffs now run later than usual, the NBA's new scheduling policy moved opening night up a week and a half, and Thursday night football wasn't a consistent thing until recently. All these developments mean we're likely in store for more of these glorious days. 

Granted, only one of Thursday's games (the Cubs-Dodgers) has real significance, so this doesn't compare to some of sports' most electric days. Conference championship Sunday in the NFL comes to mind, when both the AFC and NFC Championship Games are played, as does the first few days of March Madness. Now that I think of it, New Year's Day is pretty awesome with both College Football Playoff semifinals and no work.

But if you're not a fan of college basketball or college football or the NFL, those days don't do much for you. Thursday has something for pretty much everyone.

Here's to all you generalists.