I'm sitting at home, watching the Twins play game 1 of a 3 game set against the Oakland A's. Good game, entertaning, the bench's clear twice, and just some pretty good baseball. But then I come to realize something: the summer pretty much sucks in terms of good sports.
Every other season and time of the year has good stuff. Early in the calendar year, you have the January college bowl games. This year included Ohio State's unreal OT win over Miami in one of the best games I've watched (I had a chance for getting tickets to that game also. Will kill me forever). Then the NFL playoffs kick in and are in full swing leading up to the Super Bowl, which sometimes lives up to the hype, but all around, is just a good sporting event to watch and get ready for. The end of NFL football leads into mid-February, when the college basketball stretch run heats up along with college hockey and NHL & NBA teams begin to get their intensity levels up a notch.
February leads into March, which is crazy times. High School hockey & basketball, March Madness, the Big Dance, 65 teams, 12 seeds knocking off 5th seeds, schools like Holy Cross, Gonzaga, & Butler defeat schools like Kentucky, North Carolina, & Arizona. March & April are non-stop drama for a sports fan. The NCAA's then lead into the Masters and the Stanley Cup playoffs along with the NBA playoffs. These playoffs kick off a good two plus months of excitement until the culmination of lifting the cup.
But as these events close, then you're left to the U.S. Open and that's it. After that, you have nothing to look forward to. I'm sorry, but watching the Mariners play Boston on the Fox Game of the Week doesn't really turn my crank. The summer months are filled with nightly reports by Baseball Tonight & Peter Gammons on how the Red Sox are looking for some more left handers in the bullpen. The trading deadline being the most eventful sports moment of the summer? Is this Russia?
At least early August is filled with NFL training camp reports. You can always count on your yearly fight between the Raiders & Cowboys when they go to one another's camp for the day, a Chiefs & Vikings fight in River Falls, and the heating up of college football two-a-days. Good thing middle August comes to the rescue, because July is the Richard Gere of sports months: wildly untalented yet it keeps coming back around each year and nobody really seems to understand why..
September is filled with weekly football unti the middle of December, and by that time, I'm already trying to get Christmas shopping done and making bowl trip plans.
We are coming up to the most uneventful time of the year. Our nights get to be filled with double plays in unfilled stadiums, 90 degree heat with mosquitos that keeping on nibbling on my fat skin, skateboarders doing the thing it is that they do. Good thing I have ESPN classic to watch some old college football, because I might just go hibernate. Wake me up when NFL 2Night gets back on the air & Ron Jaworski is breaking down some film.
