It happens only twice a year, just like daylight savingsswitchovers and J.T. Snow home run trots — all across the nation,the pocket schedules and stat sheets align and merge into what Ilike to call a “sports nexus.”

The nexus occurs when every major sport in America is eithergearing up or grinding down — and every sports junkie from coastto coast is forced to balance their love of the game with theirobligations to school, work, friends and family.

Of course, it’s hard to beat the bounty of the mid-fall nexus,when one can actually unwind from a Sunday full of NFL football andNBA fantasy drafts by watching Game 4 of the World Series.

But the April nexus has it beat — you barely have time to pickup your collapsed NCAA bracket (Which one of you assholes pickedMarquette, anyway?) — before the sporting onslaught occurs. Thesweet promise of baseball’s opening day kicks the month off, andthe furious tension of the NBA playoffs sends it out.

April is a time when even hockey-indifferent sports fans willsit in front of their TV’s to watch the NHL playoffs, following thepuck and furrowing their brow in confusion whenever offsides iscalled.

The nexus encompasses both a quarterback-heavy NFL draft onApril 26 — pity the poor team that wastes their pick on RexGrossman, football’s answer to Mike Dunleavy, Jr. — and the lastround of a protest-heavy Masters on April 13.

Yes, the April nexus is by far the most engrossing of the two,and for a struggling student more concerned about the A’s bullpenthan the “A” papers, it’s by far the most precarious.

Only a true sports fan knows how hard it is to drag themselvesto class when the Mavericks and the Spurs are set for tipoff, orwhen Pedro is facing Clemens.

However, as a graduating senior/sports junkie, I’ve learned afew things about sneaking sports into my daily school life, and Ifeel it’s my responsibility to pass it on to a younger generationof Sacramento State students.

I only wish someone had written an article like this for me whenI was your age.

Tip No. 1: Go high-tech. You can get periodic updates ofgames off the Internet in classes with computer labs. The trickhere is to appear to maintain a modicum of interest in theteacher’s lecture. My advice: Go to espn.com, find your game andset it to automatically update every sixty seconds. Occasionallylook up at your teacher — make eye contact, look very serious andnod. Occasionally write something in your notebook. Take it fromme, this actually works!

TIP No. 2: Go low-tech. Pack a transistor radio into yourbackpack to squeeze a basketball score into a bathroom break.

TIP No. 3: Study the attendance feature on your teacher’ssyllabus, buy a daily planner and use those absences wisely. Don’tskip a Spring Training test when you could be missing an OpeningDay lecture.

TIP No. 4: Shut up and use your phone — everyone oncampus is yammering into one, but you can get scores on thosethings, too. That’s about the extent of my knowledge on thatsubject, though if you’re looking for information on anothersubject, I like the Pirates to upset in the NL Central.

Otherwise, happy box score hunting, and remember, look serious,make eye contact and nod.

Always eye contact and nod.

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