This is an opinion piece ok? I'm not trying to say that if you enjoy the sports that I don't that you are stupide. The people of the world think differently and I don't think that I am being too outrageous when I say that most Americans really prefer football (hand egg) over any other sport.
This time of year is a bit of a lul for me not just because both college and professional football seasons are over, but also because basketball of the NBA variety isn't yet into the nitty gritty just yet. The NBA season is LONG, I would say and have said many times in the past that I think it is too long. Therefore I normally don't really start to dip into what is even going on in the NBA until about a month from now.
As far as the NBA is concerned I am a Celtics fan, but I really don't even pay that much attention to their games and I rarely watch any of them until we get closer to the post-season. They currently sit at the top of their conference in the East so, fantastic. I'm still not going to bother to watch a game.
I think that a lot of Americans kind of go through this after all the hoopla that surrounds the start of the year with the 3 dozen bowl games, the NFL playoffs and then the Super Bowl at that point I think that you kind of feel like you've just been through a sport marathon and really need a break and the little bit of time we get before the NCAA basketball tournament is probably a good thing. It begins on the 16th of March, which is just a little over 2 weeks away from today.
There are others that follow the teams pretty closely before the tournament but let me tell you something, there are nearly 1,500 college basketball teams and that is just a mind-boggling amount. Even if you were to only look at Division-1 schools, we are still at around 350 teams and I can't imagine anyone having the time to be able to keep up with that many teams. I certainly don't. Hell, when the brackets get made in March I am normally not even familiar with a few of the schools that manage to get in there.
When Southern Illinois University made the tournament a few years ago, I was unaware that this college even existed.
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I still don't know what a Saluki is... some kind of cat I'm presuming
March Madness is another crazy and long tournament that requires a lot of attention, but then, dear viewer, sports, as far as my perspective is concerned, goes into a bit of a duldrums where I rarely watch them at all unless there is a UFC event on. Over the summer the only sport that we have on with any consistency is baseball and just like that was the only sport that I was terrible at as a child it is also the only sport that i never really developed much of a liking for as far as watching it is concerned. In my opinion is it a game of chess in a way because the season is, once again, extremely long, so it isn't just a question of who has the best players, it is a question of who manages their bench and especially their pitching roster the best throughout the season.
The XFL was exciting when it was announced years ago as something for football fans to enjoy during the off season for the NFL but that balloon quickly burst as it was quickly identified that this league was just not that interesting and while there was a lot of interest in the first few weeks, the season was so bad that they never bothered to have a second season. They revitalized it unfortunately in 2020 and it was actually getting kind of good but then the politics of the world had other things in mind when Covid happened and they just shut the season down.
Later Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson got involved and it looked like it could be good again but then they sold it again to the USFL, which I didn't even know exited it is so minor, and then it got changed to the UFL, which rather than being its own league is kind of a minor league for the NFL where players are mostly there to hopefully get noticed by the NFL. It's kind of like farm teams for baseball or the minor leagues or G-league for NBA.
There's 8 teams and they have 10 weeks of regular season followed by a playoff of something. I don't know. This is all really new information for me and I don't know anyone that knows anything about it. It could be interesting I guess especially if you are from one of the places that has a team and nothing else to do during that time of year. The tickets are, no doubt, very inexpensive and I suppose if I lived in Birmingham, Alabama, or Memphis, I probably wouldn't have much else to do so why not?
It starts on March 28th and they have slightly modified rules in an attempt to make it more interesting so I imagine I will probably give it a go if I can even find it being broadcast anywhere. Fox has the rights and they have like 437 channels so I'd imagine if I try hard enough I can find it.
In a way though, even if UFL is really exciting, I would almost prefer that they don't have this season because remember how I said that baseball and basketball seasons are too long and that is why I don't really follow them? Well this is basically the same thing and it could end up being sort of sport-overload.
Other Americans perhaps go through the same experience of sporting fatigue. Maybe we should all go outside and exercise a bit instead of looking for more things on our televisions so maybe we could stop being the best or close to the best at being fat as a country.