Sportswriters and Sports section opinion columnists who love all sports are rarer than you think. They’re handy because they can maintain an enthusiastic level of opinions as their readers navigate the seasons, and almost everyone is happy.
I’m not one of those folks.
Once scholastic sports are finished – baseball, softball, and boys’ golf are in the midst of winding up things between this morning and the remainder of the week – I’m disinterested in most of the sports currently in season, including Major League Baseball, golf, and auto racing.
The NBA Finals are the most interesting thing going on for me during this current time period, and I expect a Boston Celtics “gentleman’s sweep” – a 4-1 series win over the Dallas Mavericks – the aforementioned sweep is where the underdog wins one of the first four games and the fifth clinching win is in the favored teams’ home gym.
If I miss any NBA Finals games, I don’t feel I’m missing much this year. I’ve seen both teams play a lot, and the Celtics, especially with Kristaps Porzingis playing (20 points in 20 minutes Thursday night), are sure to win convincingly.
Nonetheless, running out of in-season sports of interest does not leave me at a loss for opinions on the business and the competition of sports.
There are many of us who will abandon our interest in watching live action on television to check out replays and inside stories regarding the NFL, and that’s the way the folks running the Shield want it to be.
The NFL realizes its sport is a television program, and they’ve found a way to get notably large media “real estate” (as Colin Cowherd calls it in relation to controlling TV and talk time) among the year’s twelve months.
January and February belong to the NFL for the final 1-2 weeks of the new 18-week regular season, the playoffs, the Super Bowl, and the start of the combine.
March and April are the continuation of the combine and free agency, and the April draft.
May through late July is fair game for the rest of the sports, and the NBA and NHL playoffs occupy most of this stretch of real estate.
Once training camp, exhibition football, and the regular season start the NFL owns the biggest chunks once again. College football gives the Shield some TV competition, but it pales in comparison to the product the NFL puts on the tube.
It will be interesting to see what a 12-team playoff does for college football in December.
In the meantime, here we are in June., a month where my apathy for its in-season sports is hard to mask.
It’s a time where I try – but usually don’t get around to – watching series available in full season binge buckets.
There are some things last year – kayaking, and spending time on my porch – I didn’t do at all last year, but I shall this year, and I’ve prepped the porch and the kayaks for some action this year.
I’m trying to find some ways to catch Southern hemisphere’s Super Rugby without having to wake up at 2:30 a.m. for games played in New Zealand… again. I’m also going to catch some WNBA action on the tube. My wife has them all set for reminders on our cable TV system.
The Cleveland Guardians are playing well, so I’ll look for highlights on ESPN’s SportsCenter, but I won’t watch an entire game unless I just let it play while I do my chores.
I’ll try to rewatch some selected NFL + condensed games from last season, and other things I’ve mentioned in past columns during this part of the calendar year.
What I’m going to try to avoid doing is watching selected episodes or full seasons of series I’ve already watched. I’m trying to move forward because I am way behind the rest of the world.
In terms of non-sports entertainment, my series of choice are the following:
Reservation Dogs, The Wire, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Party Down, and the final season of Curb Your Enthusiasm.
I’ll still have other sports on the brain, especially the upcoming high school football season, so there is plenty to share. In the meantime, I’m going to be more intentional about taking action to enjoy some of the things I mentioned here and last summer to avoid June though August’s glorious late sunsets and weather slip from my fingers like it all did in 2023.