Dangers of taking finals during NBA Finals
June 6, 2003
No other unrelated time reference determines so much devastation in the world of sports than the end of the school year.
Think about it. After the Spurs polish off the Nets in Game Four next Wednesday, the sports world will once again crash deep into its annual abyss faster than Neuheisel can commit another NCAA violation.
Cosmically, this is also the same day I begin moving home for the summer.
Legitimate athletic competition remains in this dormant hibernation of boredom for an entire two and a half months. There it stays until Aug. 23, when the college football season finally takes on the role of Neo to jumpstart the sports fan's heart.
Don't get me wrong. Major League Baseball is OK. But truthfully, the season doesn't even spark minute interest until at least late August. Even then, the appeal level is minimal, focusing on lame rumors that the Red Sox might make a run at the Yankees in the American League East, and that the Braves might actually lose the National League East to -- gasp -- the Expos.
Of course, these events never actually transpire; they are merely the product of three months of bland sports reporting, and a desperate scraping for newsworthy events.
The symptoms of this period of sports stagnation have already begun to show.
They all began to arise May 16, when Disney clinched a Stanley Cup Finals berth. I must add: Never has one sports team inflicted so much harm upon a sport than the Anaheim Mighty Ducks. A professional sports team named after a kids movie -- a frightening development.
Only days after this disturbing occurrence, news spawned about the beginning of the WNBA season. Now, it is bad enough that the season simply consists of 34 games per team, but these 34 games are painfully stretched out through the end August. Even worse, the league's late-spring start time is not made to conform to the NBA; rather, it is an adaptation to conform to the women's European leagues. Why? Because the majority of these women just consider the WNBA as an afterthought -- an off-season practice session -- at the conclusion of their European leagues.
As a final symptom, we have already become witness to the spawning of 2003's horrible baseball stories. Example in hand -- Roger Clemens' quest for his 300th win. Is it a record? No. A milestone? Maybe. Look at it this way: While The Rocket is good, he will still be the 21st pitcher to reach the 300 plateau, and he will still be 211 wins a way from Cy Young's all-time record. In comparison, Clemens is strikingly mediocre, and yet sports media insists that his quest head the day's news.
For me, personally, the ailments of the summer abyss call for more attention than a 550-foot home run off Sammy Sosa's hormonally enhanced chest and doctored bat. The adrenaline rush of the autumn, winter and spring seasons are quickly drifting away as I regress to the summer doldrums. I have already retreated to taking my summer sports dosages by reading golf stories, watching NASCAR and, as an unfortunate addition for 2003, I joined a fantasy WNBA league.
The time is coming. It is the inevitable time period when ESPN swaps Baseball Tonight into the SportsCenter time slot, and pretends like nobody noticed. During the late-night SportsCenter, you can recognize the pain first-hand as Dan Patrick can't help but drone on into a monotonous review of the night's events, and Kenny Mayne actually runs out of catch phrases.
While Baseball Tonight rears its ugly head in the evening, the afternoon sports fan is only able to watch re-runs of The World's Strongest Man from the 1980s. No football. No hockey. No basketball either -- unless you're watching the WNBA.
I am powerless, with nowhere to turn. All I can do is look to the future in anxious anticipation for the opening kick off of the Cal vs. Kansas State game on Aug. 23. So, as my sports world once again prepares for hibernation, I have come to recognize that my academic finals are not the concern, but rather the implied message that tags along with the looming exams. It simply signifies that my life is soon to be robbed of my sports passion.
It signifies another summer removal of ESPN to be succeeded by -- cringe -- a showing of Finding Nemo.
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