A handful of the best games of the weekend – everything from College Football, to the English Premier League, to the NHL – and why you should watch.

The Triple-Dub – Jan. 28th-Jan 30th

Winter X Games:

• Friday Jan. 28th – Sunday Jan. 30th

Winter X Games 15 (Buttermilk Mountain – Aspen, CO)

Winter X Games 15 started yesterday and concludes on Sunday. Coverage can be found across the ESPN platforms – ESPN, ESPN2, and ESPN 3-D.  The events I’ll be tuning in for (or recording on the DVR) include: Skiing SuperPipe Men’s Final & Snowboard Big Air Final (Friday 7:00-10:30 PM ET – ESPN, ESPN 3-D), Skiing Slopestyle Men’s Final (Saturday 4:30-6:00 PM ET – ESPN, ESPN 3-D), Skiing Big Air Final (Saturday 9:00-11:00 PM ET – ESPN, ESPN 3-D), Skier X Men’s & Women’s Finals, Snowboarder X Men’s Final, Snowboard Slopestyle Men’s Final, Mono Skier X Semifinal and Final (12:30-6:00 PM ET – ESPN, ESPN 3-D), and Snowboard SuperPipe Men’s Final (8:30-10:00 PM ET – ESPN, ESPN 3-D).  What these athletes do is amazing, ridiculous, and borderline insane.

College Football/NFL Draft:

• Saturday Jan. 29th

North vs South – Senior Bowl – (Ladd-Pebbles Stadium – Mobile, AL) 4:00 PM ET – NFL Network

Photo via zimbio.com

The Senior Bowl is considered the best of the NFL Draft prep weeks and games – most of these guys will be playing in on Sundays in the near future. This will be their last chance to show scouts what they can do with pads on.  A few North players I will have my eye on are Colin Kaepernick (Nevada), Casey Matthews (Oregon), Titus Young (Boise State – pictured above), Austin Pettis (Boise State), Kendall Hunter (Oklahoma State), and Vincent Brown (San Diego State).  A few South team players I want to see are Andy Dalton (TCU), Jeremy Kerley (TCU), Christian Ponder (Florida State), Von Miller (Texas A&M), and Ahmad Black (Florida).  Here are the rosters for both teams.

National Basketball Association:

• Sunday Jan. 30th

Miami Heat (31-14) @ Oklahoma City Thunder (29-16) (Oklahoma City Arena – Oklahoma City, OK) 1:00 PM ET – ABC

Dwayne Wade and LeBron James playing against Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant? I’ll definitely be watching on Sunday morning.  All four of these players will likely be on the next Olympic team for the U.S. and will be super stars for years to come.  Not to mention, these are two of my favorite teams to play with on NBA Jam.

Boston Celtics (34-10) @ L.A. Lakers (33-13) (Staples Center – Los Angeles, CA) 3:30 PM ET – ABC

How nice of ABC to give us the Celtics against the Lakers right after the Heat and Thunder play on the Sunday before the Super Bowl.  These games are always good, even during the regular season because these teams simply don’t like each other.  To make things just a little more interesting Kevin Garnett is reportedly going to wear shoes with the Celtics all-time record against the Lakers (152-120).  I don’t even like these teams but this could be a good one.

National Hockey League:

• Sunday Jan. 30th

Team Lidstrom @ Team Staal - NHL All Star Game – (RBC Center – Raleigh, NC) 4:00 PM ET – Versus

Photo via zimbio.com

In this year’s unique All-Star format each team was assigned a captain – Nicklas Lidstrom (pictured above) & Eric Staal – who then picks the rest of his team from a pool of 40 players.  The draft will be televised live on Versus (Friday 6:00-7:30 PM ET).  It’s hard to say who to watch but this year’s format should should make the  All-Star game more exciting when most All-Star games are usually pretty boring (see: Pro Bowl).  It’s always fun to watch so many highly skilled players playing at the same time but a couple names that wont be participating include Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, and Jarome Iginla.

English Premier League:

Sorry – no EPL games scheduled this weekend. Most teams appear to be playing FA Cup matches on Saturday or Sunday though.

National Football League:

As you should know, the Super Bowl isn’t until NEXT Sunday (Feb. 6th) so we have a week to wait for that…

I believe they’re “playing” the Pro-Bowl this weekend in Hawaii but since basically nobody tries in the Pro-Bowl and half of the best players don’t even show up I wont be watching.

What are you watching this weekend?