Saturday, February 7, 2015

The blah time of the sports year

For your average couch tater, hear hear (or is that here here?), this is a boring time of the sports year. Consider:

The Australian Open just wound up and the next biggie tennis tournament, the French Open, won't be played until late May. That's just about the same time the Indy boys and girls will be firing up their ridiculous racing machines at the Brickyard. An interesting week. Regarding tennis, sure, they'll be playing tourneys every week somewhere until then, but who cares? Blah.

Major League baseball teams don't even begin to start reporting for spring training for another couple weeks. Always did find that term odd. Why do they call it "spring training" when it happens in the middle of winter? And let's get real. The baseball season doesn't get exciting until September and October. There's a reason they call it the "dog days of summer". That's because we dogs have to suffer through it with nothing else to watch. Blah.

The NASCAR boys and girls have been busy running practice laps checking out their gear at Daytona for some time now. But the big race itself isn't until Feb.22. Idle thought: Why does NASCAR start off the season with their "Superbowl"? Instead of the final race of the year being at Homestead, also in Florida, wouldn't it make more sense to swap the two races, with the mega-event being the grand finale to determine a champion?

The NBA and NHL are in the middle of their own dog days. They won't get interesting until the playoffs start in a couple months. Blah.

On the PGA front, Tiger came up lame again, in more ways than one. The dude can't seem to stay healthy enough to walk around a swanky golf course and swing a club every 5 or 6 minutes. It's not like this is mixed martial arts. It's golf. And even if he "toughs it out", he's become almost embarrassing to watch. Let's just say his game is not exactly good.

Nonetheless, like tennis, they'll be playing golf tournaments somewhere for the next couple months, but who cares? The big deal happens at the start of April, sometimes known as the Masters. Don't kid yourself. The big boy golfers will play various tourneys here and there leading up to it, but they're all gearing up for the showdown at Augusta National. But for the next couple couch tater months -- blah.

March Madness in hoops is not yet upon us, because it doesn't start until, well, March. Pretty sure that's still a few weeks away. Sure, there's tons of games to be watched on various channels as teams slog their way through conference play (and tournaments), but c'mon. Does it really get interesting before the whole bracketology insanity begins? I mean, it's great that Geno won his 900th game, Coach K his 1000th, and everybody wonders whether Kentucky can go through the regular season undefeated. But doesn't all that get thrown out the window when the real tournament starts, especially when it gets down to the Elite 8 or so? Until then -- blah.

The NFL draft? Spare me. This is the most over-hyped crapshoot of them all. Every team will say they got exactly who and what they wanted. In the end, some first round picks will turn out to be busts, and latter picks will turn out to be stars. Remember Ryan Leaf?  He was the #2 overall pick in 1998. Forget not making the grade in the NFL and washing out of football. He's now in Montana State Prison. That's a serious bust, no pun intended. Conversely, Tom Brady was a lowly 6th round pick. He's now a 4-time Super Bowl champion (and MVP) -- again. That's a serious star. So one never knows how the draft will turn out.

And that's not even to mention the meat market, sometimes called the "combine" in Indianapolis, where all such prospects will be examined under a microscope like they're a new strain of Ebola. Hype, hype, hype. Does it really matter how fast a defensive tackle can run the 40? Or how high an offensive guard can jump? What's the point? Either they can play at the next level or they can't, and nobody will find out until they get on the field against NFL competition. All the rest is just -- blah blah.

As I get older, it seems like time has speeded up. Yours truly could swear he's getting utility bills every week instead of every month, and maybe I should check into that. But I do rather like having the Sunday NY Times crossword puzzle to do every 2 or 3 days or so. Hmmm.

So maybe this down time in the couch tater world will zip right by like everything else. The blahs will be short term.

What's next? Oh, right. Daytona. Gentlemen, Danica, and y'all start them thar engines. Boogety, boogety, boogety.

But hurry up, already. Too much political commentary, Alex Trebek, and Anderson Cooper go beyond the blahs. It's enough to make a man go plum loco.























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