Posted by Travis Rodgers on Feb 9, 2010

Sports Dead Zone Starts Now

The Draft, better than real NBA basketball.

Now what? Football is over, the NBA doesn’t start mattering for a couple of more months, and unless you are 60 years old and think baseball's spring training is some sort of mysterious poetry to be dissected, MLB won’t be interesting again until April, and the Masters may even be played without the world’s most famous sex addict, (unlikely).

Dead zone.

Yes, I know the Olympics are coming. I know that for a couple of weeks we will all pretend that we care about downhill skiing, Lindsay Vonn - who is worth the watch - hockey, speed skating and other trivial sports. There will be good stories to come out of the games, but not nearly enough to fill the holes in weekends and late at night. I love the USA, but I really don’t care if Ohno Apollo Anton wins or not. Sorry, it’s true. Yes, the two-man luge is oddly compelling, but after 20 seconds, I have seen what I need to see.

The NCAA basketball season has never been less appealing nationally. Quick, name me the players and teams that matter. John Wall, Kentucky, Kansas, Texas and uh, well, uh,...there you go. Enjoy the NCAA tournament this year. The good news is, everyone knows an equal amount about the teams (nothing), so you may actually have a chance in your local bracket pool come March. The competition is so thin, so mediocre that the Mountain West is getting national run. That’s fun for everyone, right? Oooh, Steve Alford and the University of New Mexico Lobos; everyone run to their TVs.

The nation awaits Steve Alford's center-part.

This is why the NFL Draft has become the biggest sporting event of the late winter and early spring. At least we have seen these guys play and know their names. Sure, no one knows anything about who will be a good pro and who will flame, (remember the Ryan Leaf v. Peyton Manning debate, or Akili Smith and Tim Couch) but at least we can all pretend that we have some insight. We don’t. Every freak can throw on his game replica jersey, get together with his buddies, drink beer, devour chili and pretend that they know about what is actually happening with the draft.

No wonder ‘pitchers and catchers reporting’ means so much to some people. It has nothing to do with baseball, but at least it’s better than watching guys in ugly suits put on hats with Roger Goodell.