Plenty Lost in All the Hype

Thank God last week is over.

You see, the people who talk about sports and write about sports simply cannot bring themselves to not talk about The Super Bowl even when there is nothing to talk about because the NFL insists on taking a week off in order to hype the game even more than it is already going to be hyped.

And so, Tom Brady showing up at his girlfriend's place in Manhattan wearing some kind of walking boot makes more headlines than the South Carolina primary. Bill Belichick, who loves to play mind games with the media, refuses to discuss Brady's status for the game. (Note to media: here's his status -- definite.) Then Brady shows up at the Patriots' pre-takeoff rally walking just a little bit gingerly and everyone acts as if Judge Crater has turned up.

Meanwhile, the Giants, ESPN breathlessly reports (to be fair ESPN reports everything breathlessly) have put in 80 percent of their game plan! Wow, please get back to us as soon as they get to 90 percent.

This is why the NFL is the NFL -- the dominant force in today's sports world. When the Giants and Patriots do finally get around to playing on Sunday, the Giants will be playing their 20th game of the season, the Patriots their 19th. Twenty is the absolute maximum a team can play; twenty-five if someone plays five exhibition games and then reaches The Super Bowl through the wild-card round. That leaves at least 340 days a year when a team isn't playing a game, in most cases the number is closer to 345.

That's a lot of time to kill. In Washington, the Redskins haven't played a game since January 5th but have been the lead story in the sports section every single day since then, and on the front of the entire paper on a number of occasions. Joe Gibbs's resignation as Coach was a major story but in the three weeks since, the amateurish maneuverings of owner Dan Snyder and his man, Vinny Cerrato, have kept the Redskins at the top of the page on a daily basis.

That is the genius of the NFL -- taking almost no news and making it into big news. That's why almost every sports talkshow host in the country is heading to Phoenix today, even though the game isn't until Sunday, and almost all the media covering the game is en route right now or already there. Who among us can wait for Commissioner Roger Goodell's "state of the game," press conference on Friday?

Actually it should probably be, "State of The Game," since it is only slightly more important than the "State of the Union," which should be worth at least a few chuckles as President Bush tells us again "mission accomplished," the war is going.

Last week a lot of people were moaning that, because of the NFL's off-week, there was nothing going on in sports. Again, more evidence of the NFL's ability to hold us all hostage for almost the entire year. College basketball is smack in the middle of conference play -- think about this, by the time they finally present The Lombardi Trophy on Sunday night it will only be six weeks until Selection Sunday -- and the NBA and NHL are also in midseason.

Let us pause here for a moment to discuss All-Star games. Are they really needed at this point in time. The NHL held its game on Sunday and the final score was 8-7. The team with eight won. In another couple of weeks the NBA will hold its All-Star game in New Orleans and the final score will be 144-142, the team with 144 winning. No one cares. Players do almost everything they can to bail from playing in the NFL's Pro Bowl. And what was once the real gem of All-Star games, baseball's has fallen so far that Commissioner Bud Selig declared several years ago that the league that won the All-Star game would win the right to host the seventh game of The World Series.

The American League has won every game since then. There hasn't been a seventh game in The World Series since then either. Call it, "The Curse of Bud."

Give the players three days off to catch their breath at midseason in each sport and leave it at that. Very few players, even those with All-Star bonus clauses would complain. Even fewer fans would complain, or notice.