Suddenly, My Sports World is Very Small

Wow.

The Jets get knocked out of the playoffs and all I care about is the draft in April and what will happen next season with a new offensive coordinator. I'm mildly excited about baseball, but not yet really, since my favorite team, the Yankees, is considered to be a lock for the playoffs. That means the next meaningful game they'll play is nine months from now. At the same time, team members include the newly added Tony Womack (can't get too excited about that), Randy Johnson (amazing but surly) and hard to root for holdovers from last year, such as steroid users Gary Sheffield and Jason Giambi, as well as Kevin "Right Hook" Brown. This is certainly testing my "root for the uniform" abilities.

Meanwhile, I can't stand the Red Sox, so we'll have to listen to the tired national themes of "They Finally Beat the Curse" and "Can the Cubs be Next?" Barry Bonds will probably go into a steroid induced frenzy after breaking Hank Aaron's home run record. In the New York area, we'll have tons of Mets fans overreacting to every single thing that happens with the team.

Will I participate in fantasy baseball? I have done so in the past few years, and this may be the only thing that could keep my interest in the season alive, however I don't really like the idea of having to follow the scores so tediously every day any more. Perhaps that will change when pitchers and catchers report.

In other sports, the NBA won't get exciting until their playoffs start. After all, half the teams make the playoffs, so not much is in doubt with that scene. Only the marginal teams, fighting for the 7-8 seeds might have anything worth watching in the regular season, but if they're marginal they're probably not too good.

Then there's the NHL, also only exciting in the playoffs. Of course, the next playoffs may be next year.

My sports world has shrunken. The Patriots will probably win their third Super Bowl in four years, meaning I have to listen to pronouncements of their being a dynasty in this "modern, salary cap era" where maintaining greatness is so much more difficult, and any team can win (I suspect if one looks at actual data, both these notions are not true) and we'll probably even get some "genius" writing articles full of popular culture references that link the two Super Bowl championships with the World Series win (I suspect his name will be Bill Simmons).

The cherry on this sports apathy sundae is the apathy I've been feeling towards politics lately. It seems in the current events arena, I've been following a number of losing causes recently. Then again, maybe it's just the winter.