Overwhelming Optimism

Have faith, you loyal fans of sport. These next few weeks are amongst the worst of all time. This weekend, excluding the two and a half hours I watched bowling on Sunday, was the worst sports weekend I can remember.

The NBA All Star game is about as exciting as watching my colleague light his socks on fire or suffering through poker on television. Speaking of which, why the hell do they put that crap on TV??

I can understand some of these other pseudo sports, but poker?? Why is that on ESPN?? How is it interesting to watch some guy give us his “poker face” for five minutes?? Its like a glorified starring contest, I’d rather see an “o-face”. That sounds bad, oh well.

It was mildly interesting to see Vandy upset Florida, but in the grand scheme of things, what does it matter? Florida will be a top seed in the tournament, and this loss will mean nothing when selection Sunday hits in three weeks.

So what do you have to look forward to until the conference tournaments?

Well, not much really. If you are like me, you understand that there aren’t many baseball storylines that you haven’t heard about 84,000 times already, surfacing again in Spring Training.

The NFL Draft is kicking into high gear with the combine, 40-times, bench press reps, and other useless bits of information that will slightly increase draft status, but ultimately are as useless as the Betty Butterface in a group of hotties.

If you are like me, you look forward to Sunday afternoons, because Sundays are for bowling. I know I’m kind of in the minority there, because few people get as fired up for bowling as I do. Speaking of which, I rolled 14 games this weekend. On Friday I rolled a 630 series, and hit 1012 pins through five games that night. (Insert Barry Horowitz pat on the back, fully understanding that nobody cares, and move on)

What has been interesting is that Michael Irvin is no longer with ESPN, and Bill Cowher has joined the CBS pre-game show. I never liked the playmaker as a player, but as a studio host, he has been mildly entertaining. However, I can see why ESPN decided to part ways with the playmaker. If Parcells is coming in to take his place like they say he is, can you blame ESPN?

Everyone loves to hate the CBS pre-game show, for whatever reason. I like Cowher a lot, but I have no idea how he’ll do as a studio analyst. Sure he can handle personalities, X’s and O’s, but can he be opinionated and present this information to you in a way that you’ll respect and understand? We’ll find out in about six months.

Personally, I think they need to give Charley Casserly more air-time. While he’ll forever be remembered as the guy that didn’t draft Reggie Bush (which could get him looked at in Texas the way Buckner is looked at in Boston) he does a hell of a job on the pre-game show of breaking down personel decisions, which are very interesting.

Those of us in the northeast must remember, the little gopher saw his shadow (didn’t he?) and the life of Old Man Winter is nearing its end. Before you know it, the snow will melt, Cindarella will go to the dance with her pretty slippers in late March and we can all tear our brackets in half when the naughty little girl in accounting who knows nothing about sports takes her extra two weeks paid vacation after she boasts the winning bracket in the office pool.

Shortly thereafter, the first pitch will be thrown, the days will get longer, the beer will taste better, the ladies will display their summer wardrobes, and all will be right with the world. Three more weeks my friends, three more weeks.