04/18 (NFL Schedule) Quickie

It is a testament to the power of the NFL that the release of its schedule last night was the biggest deal in sports.

The headline/headliner is Peyton: He opens against the Steelers, and if there is a single game that everyone is circling as the most hyped game of the year, it's Broncos-Pats.

Otherwise, it has become a signature moment of annual optimism: Looking through the schedule and thinking your team has as good as any of making the playoffs.

(Good Quickish stuff on the NFL Sked here.)

More:

*Moyer Mania: 49-year-old Jamie Moyer becomes the oldest pitcher ever to get an MLB win. Again: There isn't a single player more worth seeing in person this season than Moyer.

*Kentucky 5 goes pro: I absolutely do not understand any hand-wringing about "one-and-done" players -- the only hand-wringing worth doing is over the existence of any age limit, period.

Don't get how people would want to force these kids to have to stay in school, particularly if the NBA -- the market -- signals (via projected draft position) they are clearly ready to enter the league.

*Anthony Davis will be the No. 1 overall pick. Michael Kidd-Gilchrist ("MKG") will be either No. 2 or No. 3. Terrence Jones will go in the Lottery. Marquis Teague will go in the first round. Doron Lamb might go in the first round, but probably the second. Not a bad class.

*NBA: That was a pretty good game by Melo and a pretty good win by the Knicks -- they will open the playoffs with either the Heat or Bulls and New York's best-case scenario is simply to keep things interesting through 6 or 7 games before losing in the first round.

*Ozzie is back: It's like he never left (except he will likely be way more careful about what he says -- to the extent that Ozzie can ever be too careful about things like that).

*Time's 2012 "Top 100 Most Influential People" list included six athletes: Novak Djokovic, Jeremy Lin, Lionel Messi, Oscar Pistorious, Tim Tebow, and Yani Tseng.

More later. Tons of great stuff on Quickish yesterday -- Will Leitch's GQ cover story on Derrick Rose, Wright Thompson on Ozzie Guillen and politics in Miami, Peter King's mock draft for this week's SI, Part 3 of John Branch's excellent series on a girls' high school hoops team in Tennessee being run by the local correctional system. Click here to check it out.

-- D.S.