It’s that time again.  That time right before the Super Bowl where everybody’s awash with excitement and hype for the “Big Game.”  Even though there are two gameless weeks between the Conference Championship games and the Super Bowl, there will still be 2 full weeks of coverage.  Daily NFL wrap ups will further preview every aspect of the game, right on down to which team’s trainer has concocted a better flavor of Gatorade. I guess you can’t blame everybody for over-covering the Super Bowl.  For all the pre-game shows that start before I wake up on a Sunday morning; you have to wonder, what do you guys have planned next?

And it’s nothing. 

I can hear Al Michaels now: “Coming up Next on ABC, is an absolute lack of meaningful sports until March Madness, For John Madden, I’m Al Michaels. Have a great night.”  That’s what’s so depressing about Super Bowl time.  When I start to think about the Super Bowl, I start to feel like a little kid thinking about Christmas.  In a certain sense, I look forward to the Super Bowl every year.  I mean, it is the culmination of an entire year’s worth of drafting, trading, signing, practicing and playing.  Even when my Team isn’t in the Super Bowl (as is always the case for Browns fans.), I still mark the date, and make sure I have it free.  Need more proof about the divinity of the Super Bowl?  We probably just ought to go ahead and make an official three day weekend out of it; enough people call off the day after anyways. We could call the Monday after the game “Observation of the Super Bowl”.  We could all use the day to recover from the huge parties we go to for the game.  Regardless of if you’re a fan of either of the 2 teams playing, friends get together across the country to revel in all of its glory.  This is the time of year when perfectly normal individuals go from being perfectly normal individuals to compulsively gambling, binge drinking, and rib eating partiers, even if for only one day.  The celebration is no longer over merely the football, it is over the commercials, the half time show, what’s on the other channels during half time, and even the most football illiterate individual can still take down a sizeable pot by owning the winning square on a score board. 

For all the festive fun of the Super Bowl and Christmas, there’s one sad fact that remains after both of them have come and gone.  The day after.  The day after Christmas is a sad one.  Next Christmas could not be further away, and all that’s left is the hangover and the mess to clean up from all the fun the night before.  In a Super Bowl sense not only do you have to pick up the remains of your party, but you’ve got to buckle down for about a month of Nothingness in the world of Sports. 

From the moment that final whistle blows, and the MVP says he’s going to Disneyworld, we don’t have a whole lot left to look forward to until they start playing the conference tournaments in college basketball.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m as big a baseball fan as anybody, but pitchers and catchers reporting in February just doesn’t give me that much of a buzz after I’ve been devouring high quality playoff football for 2 months.  The NBA hits its midseason ho hum stride, we’ll be soon be greeted with the All Star break and for about four days we have even less sports to obsess over.  The NHL as always will be there, but for both it and the NBA, being that I know their seasons will still both be going on in June, I find it real difficult to get into these regular season match-ups.  We won’t get to see a major golf tournament till April, and without the heavy use of prescription pain killers I just can’t seem to sit through a golf tournament that isn’t one of the big 4. 

So what am I left to watch to feed my ever growing addiction for all things competitive and athletic?  The Olympics, but they’re hardly a drink of water in the desert.  Once every 4 years I’m subjected to such wonderful sports such as: curling, ice dancing, speed skating, bobsled, skiing, and everybody’s favorite combination of hunting and skiing, the biathlon.  You’ve got to be kidding me right.  I’m coming down off the high of a White Sox world series, the opening of the NBA season, and the NFL playoffs, and now the only sports I can score are the Winter Olympics?  Wow, now that’s what I call a serious sports drought.  When it gets dry, it gets dry in the world of sports.  Not that I don’t like watching some Nordic guy tote a gun on his back while he goes cross country skiing until the next time he shoots his gun, it’s just that I’d actually rather be watching some sort of competitive sport where teams have to play each other and generally use some sort of strategy against their opponents other than, shoot better and ski faster.  I mean who really cares who can skate around in a circle 5 times faster than somebody else?  

Yeah, yeah, the Olympics are great, and they foster international goodwill and competition…blah blah blah.  The sports displayed are weak, and I sure as hell don’t need the total 418 hours of coverage that NBC plans on airing.   

So this year I’m not going to get strung out, I’m not going to worry about trying to fill the void with some other lower quality sports, I’m just going to try to tough it out, always remembering to keep my eyes on the prize that is March Madness.  Maybe I’ll just have to get a new hobby or something; maybe I could start an American Idol fantasy league…

Seth Glasgow is a staff reporter for Atomic Sports Media.com. He can be reached on seth.glasgow@atomicsportsmedia.com