Is it time to panic?

How many times have you heard those words before from others when their team isn't performing as well as they think they should be? Probably a lot.

Yet, in the sports world, sometimes one has just cause to set their hair on fire and run naked through the streets clutching a life-sized blow up doll of one's favorite Muppet, cabbage patch doll, or, in extreme cases, Honey Boo Boo. For example if, before the season started, you went all-in and wagered everything you own, or ever will, that the Lions would win the Super Bowl this season, then -- as they say -- you be in a heap of trouble boy/girl. It is most DEFINITELY time to panic.

Just stay out of my neighborhood. I've got yorkie pups. While they might enjoy looking out the window at someone running by with their hair on fire, that Honey Boo Boo thing might traumatize their innocent little doggy brains for life. And no fatheads of Michael Vick are allowed either. Somehow I think the little tykes know. How else to explain them growling at the TV every time I clicked on an Eagles game? Click over to something else and they'll go run and play. Click Back to the Eagles game and -- zoom --  they were back on the couch growling again.

At that, even we mature 2-legged sports fans, and I use that phrase loosely, including yours truly, might soon have a time to panic ourselves. After this weekend, when the college football conference championship games are played, what are we going to be left with?

The bowl games won't start for a few weeks. Nobody cares about NBA games just yet. The NHL isn't even playing. College basketball? Much hoopla will be generated about that for the next few months over who is ranked at what number and why, but doesn't all that go out the proverbial window when March Madness starts, Cinderella stories and all? For now, it's a non-entity.

The NASCAR boys and girls, fresh off the "Chase", are enjoying what little time off they get every year. They'll be back at Daytona testing things out in January. If you're into watching one car at time, with no fancy paint job, decals, sponsor logos, etc, with interminable stretches before the next one takes the track -- then Daytona Speedway is the place for you in January. Been there, done that, but the museum's pretty cool. Regardless, the Daytona 500 won't drop the green flag until mid-February. Nothing much happening there for a while.

There's probably golf tournaments going on in such places as Abu Dhabi or Kemo Sabe, but few will get interested in that until the Master's Tournament. That's not until April.

Same with tennis. They're playing someplace. Does anybody know where? Does it matter?

Yours truly has been an Indy car fan for decades and wouldn't miss the big race for anything, well, almost anything, because the pure speeds those cars achieve makes NASCAR racers look like they're in slow motion.  But the Indy 500, what's left of it after the infamous "feud" a while back, won't happen until the last weekend in May.

Baseball? Wake me up in September.

European soccer? They seem to come up with a few new teams every week that nobody in the New World ever heard of. Worse, one can plant seeds in the garden, have them germinate and blossom into veggies, and they might STILL be waiting for a goal to be scored. Did I mention boring? Worse yet, those teams we never heard of are probably better than any team the USA can scrape together.

Alas. For the next few weeks we're basically left with the NFL. That's only on Sundays, and Monday and Thursday nights. That leaves 4 days a week with pretty much a total void.

So is it truly time to panic? It depends on how prepared one is.

Following up on that next time.