I am a discriminatory sports fan, meaning I do not like all sports equally. Yes, we all have our favorites, but my life revolves around two; baseball and football. Thus, February is the most excruciating month of the year for me. Every year this month that seems to never end leaves an empty feeling like I lack any real substance in my life (wow, just re-read that and it doesn’t sound good, let’s clean it up). Every year this month that seems to never end leaves an empty feeling like I lack any real substance in my life…except for the wonderful joy that my wife brings to me (there that will keep me out of trouble).
The first week brings us the Super Bowl, which is magnificent. At first when the NFL decided to add the week off between the Conference Championship games and the Super Bowl I didn’t like it. Then I grew to love it because it meant one less week in the cold grey hell of a month that is February. From there it is all downhill waiting slowly for the long stagnant month to end.
Here it is at a glance:
Week 1: Taking in everything the Super Bowl gives us can be exhausting. Watching your favorite live sports shows on location omits jealousy for the people who cover these events and are paid for it. The amount of exposure tends to go a little bit overboard, but you watch hour after hour of coverage every single year. Half because you love it, half because you know your hourglass of watchable sports is coming to an end. The dreaded dry spell is about to begin.
Week 2: The Super Bowl hangover looms, and you get a few good days of season wrap-ups and projections for next year. After the last John Clayton interview, and one final check in with Mort and Adam, you are left with nothing but basketball. You watch SportsCenter with your old friends John Anderson and Stuart Scott, pining for some news about your favorite sports. But you are left with story after story of Lebron and Kobe. You get all excited that pitchers and catchers report this week; then you realize that means nothing to you until actual games are played. Luckily at the end of this week Valentine’s Day helps you find a well needed distraction from your lack of sports post Super Bowl. That is of course if you’re not lonely and alone. If you are it just compounds your depression.
Week 3: You begin checking Spring Training rosters and schedules. The players have reported and you are checking on them daily, but without games it feels like those gag lottery tickets that make you think you have won thousands of dollars for a couple of seconds until your friends all start laughing at you. SportsCenter taunts you “Ha, you really thought there would be actual games, we are going to show you endless clips of players doing lunges, jumping jacks, and long toss”. You give the NBA your annual try for a couple of days, but it just doesn’t have the luster and appeal it had in the 90’s. Personally I would much rather watch a Royals-Indians game (for you non-baseball fans, those two are REALLY BAD) than watch a Heat-Lakers matchup.
Week 4: You can see the light at the end of the tunnel! You jump the gun a little bit and change that calendar on the fridge to March. No matter how pretty the girl or how cool the car February has; it is getting changed. Spring Training games have started and you get to watch the players you know for two or three glorious innings at a time. It is not ideal, but the long hard month of depravity is slowly reaching its final days.
March 1st is one of the most glorious days ever. The sun is brighter, the sky is more blue, and the world is a happier place. While you still have a month until Opening Day, March is full of fun distractions that keep you going. EVERYONE fills out a bracket for March Madness and becomes a college basketball fan/expert for three weeks. You watch the Conference Championships the first week of March so you can feel like you’re getting a leg up on the other people in your bracket pool. Little do you know that you are actually ruining your chances because you will fall in love with a Syracuse team that makes a spectacular run and wins the Big East. They go from the NIT to being a five seed in the tournament. You say to yourself “I watched them beat UConn (in six overtimes) and West Virginia. Those guys are going to the elite eight!” WRONG! Then two years later you see UConn make the same type run and actually WIN the Big East, but you reel yourself in after the Syracuse choice. “There is no way Kemba Walker is that good, they will lose the first weekend”. WRONG AGAIN! I’m still bitter about those picks.
Anyway, back to the topic at hand. March has distractions that keep you going, and make SportsCenter and all your other favorite shows interesting again. It’s like waking up in a whole new world. It’s refreshing, exhilarating, and flat out wonderful.
It is a scientific fact that February sucks (I think). Once every four years we get the Winter Olympics, which is extraordinary, but the rest of the time we are stuck inside shielding ourselves from the cold and waiting for the month to change. February is the shortest month (mercifully) but it always goes by the slowest. So soak in every bit of great sports coverage over the next three weeks, because it’s going to get bad. The tough times are coming, but they won’t last forever. Bundle up, find a couple of good books, and suffer like the rest of us. March 1st is right around the corner.
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