The February Blues
What's a sports fan to do during the lean days of February?
By Justin Sanders, 12:27PM, Tue. Feb. 17, 2009
“Now is the winter of our discontent” are the first words uttered by King Richard in Shakespeare’s play Richard III describing how he felt about his situation in life. It’s a powerful statement that sets the general tone for one of Shakespeare’s best works. So what does it have to do with sports? Well I believe if Shakespeare were alive today, that instead of writing those words for a long dead king, he would instead use them to describe the barren landscape of sports in the month of February. Sure fans are treated to the Super Bowl at the beginning of the month and then later on they get the NBA All Star Game (both of which are fun and exciting), but the rest of the month is about as exciting as drinking a bottle of NyQuil and watching bass fishing on ESPN6.
You could say that many fans are burnt out after the Super Bowl and could use the month of February to recover from the football season, and I would agree for the most part. The problem is that once your football hangover wears off, you’re forced to face the reality that there are only two things to watch on television in the month of February, and that’s basketball and NASCAR. Talk about Sophie’s Choice, I love basketball, but even I find it hard to get worked up about a game when the season is 82 games long. NASCAR is even worse when you consider that every race basically consists of a bunch of dudes circling a track 500 times.
[insert stereotypical accent here] Whizzzzzzzzz “There they go!” Whizzzzzzzzz “There they go again!” “Who’s in the lead?” Me: “No clue, I’m drunk and I'm bored out of my skull!”
College basketball is another option and a fun one at that, the problem is that the Final Four pretty much renders regular season useless. Who cares who the No. 1 team in the country is when you know that the only thing that it guarantees you is a trip to play in the NCAA tournament where you'll still have to beat out 63 other teams for the championship. As a fan it’s just hard for me to care about the regular season or even the conference tournaments for that fact, when the Final Four has so much to offer. You don't see anyone bothering to fill out a bracket for the Big 12 Conference tournament do you? That’s why they call it March Madness and that’s why millions of people across the country fill out their tourney brackets dreaming of winning the office pool. Of course that's also why college basketball sucks in the month of February. It’s unfortunate that once the final gun fires in the Super Bowl that the entire sports world goes on life support, but at least fans can look forward to March Madness around the corner. Until then, if sports fans get desperate they can always tune into a sports station somewhere near the end of the dial and check out the Winter X Games, dart throwing championships, or even the Daytona 500. It’s not much, but it’s better than nothing, right?
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