It's not fair, dang it. It's not fair that college football has the longest offseason of any major sport.I'd probably feel a lot differently if, you know, something actually happened during this interminable stretch. Nothing ever does, however. The coaches are more or less all hired within a day or two of the title game. National Signing Day has proved this year that women are right when they say men don't understand what "commitment" means. And seriously, all you recruits out there, that stupid hat trick is played out. Pulling the ol' baseball cap switcheroo doesn't tell us you're impish and edgy. It tells us you're a sheep without any original thoughts.
What does it mean when we're only nine weeks removed from the crystal football and college football's most buzzed-up personality is Lane Kiffin (above), who hasn't even coached his team to a first down yet?
It means the offseason is just too long, that's what it means.
Like I said, it's not fair. Some sports get to have nice, lengthy seasons. The hockey season, for instance, is so long that the 2006 NHL playoffs don't start until next week. Some sports have offseasons littered with meaningful events. Baseball's winter meetings, the NFL draft, and the annual shuffling of teams, drivers, and sponsors in NASCAR come to mind. And some sports, like MMA and tennis, don't even seem to have an offseason.
We're not so lucky. About the only thing we have to look forward to is spring practice, an event which is about as well coordinated as a Wall Street bailout. Some schools have already had spring practice. Some are having it right now. Here in Big Ten country, we're not having it because it isn't spring yet.
So we fans go online, looking for something--anything--to quell our college football jones, but we don't find it. Maybe somebody got arrested or something. Maybe Lane Kiffin has said something else audacious. Nine times out of ten, though, we wind up on Facebook, taking quizzes like "Which 1980s Sitcom Character Best Represents Your Stance On Third-World Debt Relief?"
We're only about nine weeks removed from the national championship but it already feels like it happened a couple years ago. I can't even remember if I'm supposed to like Urban Meyer or not. But hey, let's all buck up. The first big weekend of the season is only (sigh) 24 weeks away. It's enough to drive a person to basketball.
