The professional sports year tends to follow a predictable pattern. When the seasons change from summer to fall or winter to spring, the games are especially exciting. But before this, the excitement is not as palpable. Here is a sports fan’s guide to getting the most out of the doldrums of March before the awesomeness of April starts raining down.
Spring Training
For baseball fans, the idea of pitchers and catchers reporting to spring training is the sign that the long winter is over and the games are ready to begin. Unfortunately, that event occurs in mid-February, and March brings an entire month of meaningless spring training games. Unless fans are enamoured with battles for fifth starters’ jobs or bench spots, the games offer little incentive in terms of excitement. Plus, once the season starts, the rosters seem to shuffle every day, meaning that the team that breaks camp often looks quite different in June and July. Spring training games make for awful television as well. I remember watching a Blue Jays spring training game that was inexplicably broadcast on Citytv. The final out was recorded during a pre-taped segment and not even shown. For a casual baseball fan, spring training is the time to brush up on a long-neglected team, or perhaps a hated opposing team, in order to invent some heckles for the upcoming season.
March Madness
The first few days of March Madness, which took place last Thursday and Friday, featured enough games that if no major upsets take place, there is still enough going on peripherally to keep any fan entertained. But after most of the favourites take care of business, and the Cinderella teams lose their glass slippers, the Madness becomes something of a mild haze. The choices in the later rounds often come down to cheering for teams that are still left in your pool that you would never want to cheer for in real life, like Duke. The other possibility is jumping on the bandwagon of a random school that you have never heard of before (or will again) or the one with the prettiest uniform. Plus, the final game of March Madness takes place in, you guessed it, April. So tell people that you knew that Cleveland State was a sleeper all along and don’t reveal that you never actually knew that there was a Cleveland State.
NBA Basketball
The problem with March Madness, at least from a broadcaster’s perspective, is that single-elimination games with real emotion reveal the plodding speed and lack of heart demonstrated in a March NBA game. By this point, many teams have already decided that they are not going to make the playoffs (or had it decided for them), and tank the rest of the games in order to have a better chance of landing a high lottery pick. For teams that are still in it, March is when the grind really starts to set in and players seem far less fresh, especially considering that the NBA feels the need to have every team play each other twice, resulting in frequent cross-country road trips. If you happen to be a Raptors fan, the team still has a shot at advancing into the postseason, which is an increasing rarity in these parts. So if the Raptors are your passion, check out the team before the playoff matches are set. If the local team qualifies, the games are played at odd times to boost television ratings.
NHL Hockey
The Olympics revealed that hockey can be exciting without fighting, and the start of the playoffs in April are always a blast until the weather gets nicer and the prospect of seeing a semifinal match with a random team is easily trumped by going outside. The grind in the NBA is just as noticeable in the NHL, especially in an Olympic year, where the games become even more compressed.
Football
Basically just wait until September, or June, if you prefer the Canadian game. I don’t know, you could watch to see if Brett Favre is going to come back for another season. Or perhaps you could rent the Keanu Reeves classic The Replacements. Either activity should keep you entertained until the start of the season.
