The Lull

$5 says Ryan Leaf is behind the wheel.

You may not have noticed, but we've reached the point of no return. I usually gauge "the point of no return" as the point where I turn on the tap water and can make a slushie, but this year, it comes sooner than expected. Every year, there is a period (about a month and a half) that is absolutely brutal for sports fans, and for us, it starts Monday.

The Superbowl blinds you -- it makes you think that you have some personal stake in the event, and that somehow makes your team's regular season failure that much easier to handle. I'm sure fans all over America care about the Patriots and Giants...but only because ESPN told them to. In reality, I would root for any other team as the underdog -- I would cheer for a prison-based team playing the Pats -- but I just find both teams so unlikeable. I'm sure fans in Oakland, San Francisco, Arizona and St. Louis are watching the Superbowl intently, but little do they realize that The Lull is upon them.

Starting Monday, you will have nothing to watch until MLB Spring Training.

Think about it -- there's only so much "exciting Chicago Bulls action" that I can take, and the Bulls don't play every day. Oh, and did I mention that we're god awful!? Sure, Aaron Gray throws the vicious screen on occasion, but what about the rest of the game that's filled with fake injuries (I'm looking at you, Noccioni) and missed shots? This isn't sports for me. I need intensity. I need energy.

I'm down to maybe two/three days a week of sports that I don't even want to watch. Does curling interest me? Not unless they're throwing to kill. The Dogsled race? Only if their master gets mauled horribly before the finish line. I hate to admit it, but I need to see roided out freaks of nature trying to hit something. I have been trained by the sporting world to feed off of it.

There are plenty of ways to try and tide yourself over until baseball season rolls around. One way is to pretend you care about college sports, but that's generally difficult to just "jump in" on (Duke sucks!). Other people like to invent their own sports, but there's only so much you can do without looking like a total moron or killing yourself. The best way is to really get organized and try and finish your college degree in 41 days.

The Lull ends around the point where it's safe to talk about baseball in the present tense -- usually about March 8th. If you've held out long enough to make it to this point, give yourself a pat on the back, sit down with a beer, and then remember that your team is just as bad at baseball. Goddamn it.

At least the beach is an option in the Summer.