I'm beginning to think that maybe April is the cruelest month - at least in the sports world, that is. With March and its annual madness quickly coming to a close, we are truly entering some sort of horrible sport wasteland.
April 2 marks the end of bracket watching and the beginning of the countdown to Virginia's first football game against Wisconsin.
What's a sports fan to do? Watch professional baseball? I don't think so. Baseball starts on April 1, but if you think it can fill the void left by the absence of the NCAA Tournament, you've been the victim of some sick practical joke played by Bud Selig.
Watching baseball in April is like watching a glacier make its way from the Arctic Circle down to Cooperstown, N.Y. Sure, in the long run, stuff is happening, but it's pretty impossible to gather any sense of progress. Unlike professional football or college basketball, a loss really doesn't mean all that much. Even the best teams end the season with more than 40 losses. There's just a lack of drama in the sport for the first few months. No, it's best not to start watching until late August at the earliest.
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I suppose I could watch the NHL playoffs, which start in a few weeks. But for me, the first few rounds of the tournament are just an extension of the regular season. To make the NHL playoffs, a team barely has to be above .500. In fact, fewer teams don't make the playoffs than do. (To counteract this statistical oddity, I hear that the NHL will add eight expansion teams next year, including the Roanoke Express.) I'll probably tune in some time around mid-June, just in time for the more exciting action.
Then there's the NBA. Ugh. Don't get me started on the myriad of problems surrounding that suggestion. The only exciting thing about the NBA is its players' abilities to jump over other players en route to scoring. "Sportscenter" does an adequate job of informing me whenever that happens, so I don't need to watch the 76ers steamroll over the 32-38 Pacers in the first round. That series has nothing on Duke/Monmouth in terms of inevitability. I'll probably check in for the finals or when Jordan and Barkley make a comeback, whichever comes first.
Rumor has it that there are in fact other sports at the University that aren't basketball or football. Often when reading the final version of my column in the paper, my eyes wander down and I see accounts of games taking place in lacrosse or baseball or softball. So, with the realization that there's nothing really left to watch on the national scene, I think I'll go cheer for some sports that don't always get the support they deserve.
There's always something to cheer for in a collegiate game, even it's only school pride. Besides, I get the feeling that the majority of these student-athletes play because they love the game and not for the money that makes leagues like the NBA ultimately so uninteresting.
As for the Cinderella stories and 8/9 matchups that make the NCAA Tournament so entertaining, I'm sure they're out there. I just don't have Greg Gumbel and Clark Kellogg to tell me where to look.
So, I guess it's not as bad as I made it out to be. There are sporting events on a local level that can fulfill my unhealthy need for sports. I will persevere. I'm resilient like that.
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