The NFL Draft starts in 16 short days, and as is the tradition, piles upon piles of NFL-related blogs, sites and other digital outposts are trying to figure who drafts who and where. In other words, the mock drafts have taken over the football realm — well, as long as Donovan McNabb doesn’t get traded. That little fact disrupts all that fun NFL Draft talk. Nevertheless, the mocking the upcoming draft has taken on a life of its own, something a quick, little Google search reveals.

Granted, those 2 million-plus sites don’t all have mock drafts going, but the point remains: There are a lot resources out there who think they can predict the draft. The question is, how accurate are these experts?

The Butler Bulldogs are, amazingly enough, in the final game of the college basketball season when they tip-off against the Duke Blue Devils, and while they are known as a defensive squad — very much so, in fact — in order to beat the Blue Devils, Butler will have to excel on the offensive end. Unfortunately, being a high-scoring team is not their calling card, seeing how the most points they’ve posted since February 6th is 77 points.

It will take at least that many if Butler stands a chance at beating Duke.

While it’s true Butler will try to slow the game down and force the Blue Devils to execute in their half-court offense, and they may very well succeed in doing so. However, if they have another 10-plus minute scoring drought in the second half like they did against Michigan State (game minutes, no less), the Bulldogs will get blown out of the gym, defense be damned.

We all know what today is — April Fool’s just in case someone’s late to the party — and because of embrace today gets from the Internet, I’m not sure the significance of the date has been more popular than it is now. In fact, the Internet’s adoption of April Fool’s Day has been so complete, it’s hard to take any news story without a “you’re trying to trick me” grain of salt.

That being said, has there been a sports-related April Fool’s joke that can top the story of Sidd Finch?

If you don’t recall, Finch was a Sports Illustrated concoction about an undiscovered baseball phenom who could throw a fast ball in excess of 160 MPH. The story was released over 20 years ago, and it still resonates, especially when another April 1st comes strolling by. With that in mind, here are a few other April Fool’s jokes with a sports twist. Unfortunately, they don’t quite capture the imagination like the Finch story did, but still, they make for a good time.

If West Virginia is going to get past Duke to advance to the NCAA Championship game, they will apparently be doing so without the services of starting point guard, Darryl “Truck” Bryant. Bryant is nursing a broken right foot, something he did during a practice session before the Mountaineers’ Sweet 16 game against Washington.

While it doesn’t look like Bryant will be playing Saturday, never say never. Before the Kentucky game, Bryant was fitted with a special shoe, and declared himself ready to play; although, his self-diagnosis fell on deaf ears when Bob Huggins went with Joe Mazzulla, who had a career game against the Wildcats, while powering his team to the Final Four.