A safe bet: You likely forgot it was Derby week

Along with complete-game pitchers, heavyweight boxing champions and the Indianapolis 500, the Kentucky Derby belongs to a growing list of sports relics.

Can you name one of the horses entered in Saturday's Run for the Roses?

It might help to know that another Derby actually is approaching. If you didn't, you're not alone.

When the post positions are chosen today at Churchill Downs, race coverage on TV, the Internet and in newspapers will improve as the media recover from their NFL draft hangover.

Still, more and more each year, the Derby sort of sneaks up on us, a clear sign of the event's failing relevancy. It's less a national attraction now than a quaint sports artifact.

You can blame the muted buildup to the race on our obsession with the NFL or wall-to-wall coverage of the NBA playoffs or even the Stanley Cup playoffs. But there was a time when the Derby - still known as "the most exciting two minutes in sports" - would have fought through the clutter and made itself heard.

There was also a time when nobody could have imagined people sitting in front of their TVs watching other men and women play poker.

Point is, the gambling culture has gone elsewhere in its pursuit of amusement. Not only isn't the track the draw that it was, our institutional memory for horse racing long ago faltered.

Outside of the celluloid exploits of Seabiscuit, the only recent racing story with legs involved Barbaro breaking one of his.

Even then, it was unclear if the melodrama really held the interest of true track fans or whether it was just an excuse for animal lovers to take their maudlin emotions way over the top.

If only because of the spectacle that was created around a single steed, it's possible to remember - with a little nudging - that Barbaro won the 2006 Derby.

But can anyone name last year's winner?

It was Street Sense. (I had to look it up.)

Like the Indy 500 being eclipsed by NASCAR, the Derby has lost its place as one of the year's most anticipated sporting events. Some attribute the decline to the fact that there hasn't been a Triple Crown winner since Affirmed in 1978, but a changing culture that offers online gambling probably has more to do with it.

As for Saturday's race, what can I tell you? I just read that Colonel John isn't a bad pick to lead the stampede to the finish line. Or maybe Big Brown will do it. Or Gayego. Or Tale of Ekati. The race will likely feature one filly: Eight Belles.

Anybody hoping to familiarize themselves with the 3-year-olds can take a crash course in handicapping this Derby. There's still time. But if it were the monumental event it supposedly once was, the media wouldn't approach race day like a feverish railbird rushing to the $2 window to get down a last-second bet.

Not that many years ago - well, maybe 30 or 40 - when you saw the word "racing," it conjured up thoughts of majestic beasts, not stock cars. It was a time when commentators like Red Smith wrote about thoroughbreds as if they were athletes worth getting to know.

Now, except for when a high-profile winner pulls up lame and taps into a reservoir of sentimentality, people are not conditioned to wrap their arms around four-legged slot machines.

Another Derby is almost here. Down the stretch it comes.

But the mystique has been missing for a long time.

Two minutes, exciting or not, is about all most of America can spare for horse racing.