The Never-Ending Sports Cycle
March 2, 2007
You can come out now. I’m speaking to those of you who have burrowed into some sort of hole and gone into a sports-hibernation after the fourth of February. The (what I like to call) ”dark ages” of sports are over.
Personally, it is one of the worst times of the year for me. Forget winter, the WNBA playoffs, or finals week—the ”dark ages” have them all beat.
What exactly are the ”dark ages?” It’s that horrible time period in between Super Bowl Sunday and the day pitchers and catchers report for spring season. Some would say that this period of time stretches all the way until the NCAA Selection Sunday, the day when the teams that will compete in the March Madness tournament are announced.
In these weeks, sports fans have little to look forward to. Sure, the NBA and NHL seasons are going on, but games of significance in the NBA pre-All Star break are few and far in between. Most people probably didn’t even know the NHL season was going on before reading this paragraph.
I live off information from my favorite sports teams, frantically checking ESPN.com at a gratuitous rate, drinking in whatever exciting news I can—but during this time of year, the tap is dry and I’m left here begging for something interesting to come along the way.
Sure, as a Boston Red Sox fan, I get the annual Manny Ramirez late-to-training-camp story, but honestly how many more times can I read about Manny Ramirez being late for spring training [insert his mother’s fake illness here] in the newspaper without getting bored?
Unfortunately, Boston’s professional hockey and basketball teams aren’t exactly captivating me with their spectacular play. Hell, Tom Brady being Bridget Moynihan’s “baby’s daddy” story has caused more of a stir in Boston than the actual teams that are in action.
The most news the Celtics have made this year is having their representative, Gerald Green, win the All-Star Slam Dunk Contest. This will probably be the happiest moment for Celtics fans this season. Can you even comprehend how pathetic that sounds?
However, this will all be irrelevant if the ping-pongs bounce the Celtics way and we get either Greg Oden or Kevin Durant with the first pick in the draft. The way this season has gone for the Celtics though, it will be most likely that the Celtics will get the fifth pick, package it in a deal with Paul Pierce, and get some overrated white guy with messed-up knees along with two below-average guards—Danny Ainge does not have a great track record with huge trades. I should point out that pessimism and cynicism are common characteristics of those going through sports withdrawal in these dark times and it happens to the best of us.
Needless to say, I welcome the new sports year with open arms. This upcoming sports year seems to hold a lot of promise starting off with the beginning of spring training. Sure, spring training is meaningless in the grand scheme of things—the games are dull, played by people you’ve never heard of who have a greater chance of bagging your groceries in a couple of months than playing in a big league game.
But spring training is a signal that spring is fast approaching and that summer is soon to follow. With spring training, you can already anticipate sitting in the ballpark on one of those hazy, hot summer nights, eating hotdogs, singing, “Take Me Out to the Ball game,” and feeling that rush of adrenaline with each pitch and swing.
Particularly with this baseball season, fans are looking to see how all the new free agent acquisitions are going to work out. This offseason featured players moving around all over the place—even from different countries—with a lot of cash being thrown around. Will Daisuke Matsuzaka adjust to the league? Will teams regret giving the likes of Barry Zito and Alfonso Soriano astronomical contracts?
For international football fans, this time of the year is more exciting than a bunch of ballplayers hitting around at some little park in Florida. Mid-February usually marks the start of the elimination rounds in the Champions League tournament. The most anticipated match will be between Real Madrid and Bayern Munich, with Munich hoping for a win for their only chance at getting any hardware this season. While the average American sports fan might not have even heard of the Champions League, it is a signal of the beginning of the sports year.
From here on out, there are multiple options for sports fans. The beginning of March means the NCAA March Madness tournament. This year, “Selection Sunday” is March 11 and the tournament will feature two of the most highly regarded college basketball players in a long time—Texas’s Kevin Durant and Ohio State’s Greg Oden.
With teams drooling over these phenomenal freshmen, the fan bases of the NBA teams vying for young talent (mainly Celtics fans who are looking for the light at the end of the tunnel after this absolutely dreadful season) will get to see these two freshmen on the big stage on national television.
March Madness itself is one of the more exciting sports events all around. Every game has the chance to feature a Cinderella team or some sort of shocking surprise. It seems as if there are classic games every round and it’s refreshing to see players play like these college kids do, and of course there’s that little extracurricular activity of creating pool after the brackets have been announced. The March Madness tournament basically welcomes back those sports fans who have been thirsting for intense and meaningful competition since the Super Bowl with an entire month of exciting basketball.
With April comes the start of the baseball season and from there on out, we roll right into the NBA and NHL playoffs. Both of these leagues come into their own in the playoffs. In fact, the NHL playoffs has the potential to be better than the NBA playoffs since essentially only one NBA conference’s playoffs feature teams worthy of being watched (Sorry Eastern conference, but there’s no denying it). Playoff hockey is vastly different from regular season hockey; it’s hard to believe that we’re not watching the AHL from October till April.
The rest of the spring and summer is taken care of with the MLB season, the NBA and NFL Drafts, and training camp for the NFL. This year’s NBA Draft is supposed to be one of the deepest drafts in years with people comparing it to the draft that produced LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, and Dwayne Wade. The NFL Draft is also going to feature big name players such as wide-receiver Calvin Johnson from Georgia Tech and running back Adrian Peterson from Oklahoma.
This summer will also mark the arrival of David Beckham to the Los Angeles in his MLS debut, and with him hoards of soccer fans all over rushing to the fields just for a glimpse of his legendary leg and for non-fans, his celebrity wife.
Needless to say, the magic all begins in September with the start of the NFL season and the MLB playoffs getting into gear. Arguably, baseball and football are the most popular sports in America so the fun for fans doesn’t stop until February; even after the World Series, the NFL is only midway through its season with the playoff chase heating up each Sunday.
And so the cycle goes with some adjustments on the way. The “dark ages” remind us of what we were missing for the entire time we took sports for granted. In many cases, it’s a rejuvenation period where you can recover from whatever losses you endured or a time for reflection as you look back at the magical season your respective team had.
Whatever the case is, the ”dark ages” are over and now we can finally look forward to something. We can re-familiarize ourselves with the feeling of butterflies in our stomach, we can experience our hearts beating a million miles per minute, and we can lose our voices after cheering for hours. In other words, hibernation is over—adjust your lazy-chair, stock up on chips and beer, bring out those old, ratty jerseys—it’s time to play ball.