Colaianni: Sport fans get a break

There are few alternatives available for sports fans after March

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By Ryan Colaianni

Tuesday, April 3, 2007

Welcome to the dog days of the sporting year.

College basketball is over. The NFL is over. We must now relegate ourselves to the start of the Major League Baseball season, but even that will get old after a few weeks.

No longer will you be able to turn the television on and have a choice between, a top 10 match-up in the Big East, a rivalry game in the Pac-10, and a college football bowl game. We will be stuck listening to chatter about the Red Sox and Yankees rivalry.

Until college football begins in five months, there will be a decent sporting event held sporadically. The Masters is the first, which starts Thursday, and is by far the best golf tournament of the year, but after that what do fans have to look forward to? The NBA playoffs?

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College basketball is over. The NFL is over. We must now relegate ourselves to the start of the Major League Baseball season, but even that will get old after a few weeks.

Sure the playoffs will start up in a few weeks, but the NBA playoffs feel like they last as long as the regular season, with commissioner David Stern trying to milk as much television exposure has he can over

the nearly two month playoffs. Plus we all know what is going to happen; whoever comes out of the west is going to win it all.

We also will get to continue to watch ESPN self promote its coverage of the NFL draft until late April and will probably start to see more Arena Football since ESPN is a partial owner of the league. No one cares that the Dallas Cowboys are looking to improve its defensive line in the upcoming draft. Just because ESPN broadcasts the draft doesn’t make it necessary for the network to cover it daily for more than a month. I wonder if they will do the same thing with the NBA draft that occurs in late June?

Hockey playoffs start around the same time as the NBA’s. Even though their playoffs are often more entertaining than its basketball counterpart, very few in this country care about the sport. I am not a hockey fan but it is pretty fun to watch an overtime playoff game that goes until the early morning hours or seeing an entire team elect not

to shave for two months.

The only thing that I am really looking forward to is finally seeing Tim Kurkjian whip out some obscure facts on Baseball Tonight. Kurkjian and Peter Gammons are by far the more knowledgeable analysis’s sports journalism has to offer in any sport.

ESPN Classic can provide some entertainment. We can watch old college football games to get ready for the season that is too far away, or relive the 1993 NCAA Men’s Basketball tournament. Those will at least get your mind off the mind numbing sporting events that are occurring daily for the next five months.

Locally, not much will go on in two weeks after Royals fans realize what the rest of the baseball world has been saying, that they overpaid for pitcher Gil Meche. It certainly doesn’t help that the Royals finally increased their payroll, only to see themselves play in arguably the most difficult division in baseball. They probably will still finish in last place. I guess we could start counting the days until the first buck night at Kauffman, which the Royals are unveiling early this year, it is tomorrow.

The Kansas spring game will be held in a few weeks, but that will only get me more depressed, knowing that even after that game that college football will not start for four months.

So I guess the only alternative to watching these average sporting events, is to get outside, play some golf, and hibernate until sports become important again.

Colaianni is a McLean, Va., senior in journalism and political science.

Comments

Hendrix321 (anonymous) says...

I hope he's right about the Western Conference winning the NBA, though it didn't happen last year. Go Dallas!

April 3, 2007 at 2:17 a.m. ( | suggest removal )

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