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Todays World of Instant News and Social Media as Re-defined the off Season in Sports, There Really Isnt one Anymore

I remember a time years ago when The NFL would go thru a silent period, known to many of us as The Off Season. There wouldn’t be much news during this time. Players would go their separate ways for several months and emerge during the late summer. You’d see them vacationing in Mexico or in Europe, spending time with their families and friends.You wouldn’t hear much from them nor would the National media have much to say about them. Coaches and staffs would be even more silent, some going on hiatus, others looking for new jobs. Now that we are all constantly connected by social media, streaming news video, pod casts and about a million and one sports media outlets those days are over. We now get bombarded with information, we literally swim in a sea of it. The old days of your local newspaper’s sports page bringing your sole source of information are long gone. In actuality, I sincerely doubt if a lot of the younger generations of sports fans know what a sports page actually is, or in this instance, was. For me personally, the unknown in sports has always been everything. I call it the X factor. The unknown, the what if factor. I don’t need nor do I want a lot of information. I don’t need to know about who is struggling with injury from February to August, who is taking a pilgrimage to a Hobbit Hole in Wisconsin or who made the most “big time passes” last season(whatever that means). Surely every NFL pass should be considered “big time” right? Past player or team stats really don’t concern me. When it’s fourth and goal with the game on the line no one is gonna be concerned about where you placed in the draft. No one is gonna care if you ran the fastest 40 in the combine or had the most yards per carry last season. What matters is the here and now. Like I’ve said before, live sports is the ultimate reality TV show. You can’t hope to script it, you can only prepare yourself for that one moment, that one play for the win. It’s those singular moments that make watching sports worth while for not only millions of people like me but for everyone that follows sports. Look at it this way, if Boy Wonder Brock Purdy hadn’t been injured on San Francisco’s first drive of the NFC Championship game this year would the Super Bowl outcome been the same? You decide. A very important part of the here and now is being played out as I write this article, that part being NCAA basketball. As you’ve probably noticed, national coverage of the NCAA season gets going full throttle just about now. There are games on just about every day of the week, sometimes even several in prime time. The national sports media and the sponsors eat it up. There’s a lot of exposure for both the men and the woman in college basketball. After all, it’s a billion dollar industry. At this point in the season with just a couple short weeks left until the NCAA Tournament there are no clear favorites to win it all. Teams that are on top of the basketball standings one week find themselves loosing repeatedly the next. Like it has been all year, the National Number one ranking seems to be the kiss of death, just ask Purdue, Alabama and Kansas. Irregardless of where you stand at the end of the year one loss in the tournament and your season is over. Kinda like NFL Football in the playoffs. The NCAA Tournament is the place where many great college progrsms have come to die. No one remembers or cares what your season was like if you get tossed in the early rounds, just ask Brock Purdy and The 49ers. The NCAA Tournament will consist of 64 teams. For the most part we already know who around 25 or 30 of those teams will be already, kinda sort of. Many teams are having excellent seasons. The other 25 or 30 odd spots will be filled by teams that win their conference championship(an automatic entry for the winner) and at-large bid teams, which is like the selection committee saying that “your not that good but we think you deserve a shot in the tournament”. that’s how bubble teams like Florida State sneak in. Go figure. Speaking of bubble(bubble teams are programs that may or may not get in, hence the term “On The Bubble”) teams, the chance of Duke, Kentucky and North Carolina missing the tournament entirely seems highly possible unless they play lights out basketball in their respective conference tournaments. All three are loaded with 4 and 5 star recruits, Macdonald’s All Americans across the board but not one of these perennial championship contenders can put together a decent game winning run. It pretty much proves that coaching is everything and coaching is something Duke and North Carolina lack. Most of Kentucky’s players are one-and-done wanna be’s anyhow. In a matter of a couple weeks the Tournament Challenge Brackets will available. Your picks won’t be based on a point spread, you just need to pick the winners. It’s not as easy as it looks believe me. Most professionals can barely pick more then 60 percent of the winners. I of course usually don’t do well because I tend to lean towards the underdog and although there will inevitably be several upsets by small school over national power houses the end result usually is a top seeded team from a top basketball conference. I like following my heart, I don’t try to analyze mountains of statistics. It’s a grueling tournament. Few teams can go the distance. In the end the award is bragging rights between you, your friends and co workers. There are hundreds of opportunities to win cash and prizes if you can pick a bracket that beats out everyone else. I always start by talking slot of trash and in the end my tournament bracket ends up covered with X’s and O’s rolled up in a ball in the trash can. Let hope that it doesn’t happen to too many of us!! Until next week! Kev