Is it February Already?

by Tyson Rauch
Senior Columnist

Sunday January 29, 2006- Grabbing a bagel and coffee, I stroll over to the couch and click on SportsCenter. What is this? Basketball, basketball and more basketball…take your choice: college or pro. It can’t be! I head to the kitchen table and open the NY Post. The headlines include the Knicks fail again, Pedro to wear fitted cleat and Rutgers University on its way back. Could this really be? What about sports radio? The topics of the morning included �Who is more dominant: Federer or Woods� “What should the Knicks do with Isiah� and “Omar Minaya is a hidden genius�. Yes it’s true; this football season is basically over.

No more analyzing weekly match-ups and injury reports. No more reviewing playoff possibilities, division rankings or post-season seeding. No more searching high and low for accurate fantasy football reports and struggling to line up a winning team. Nothing. Just about cold turkey. Sure there is the signing period for free agents and the frenzy come draft time but football is basically on hiatus now until training camp.

As a sports enthusiast, I truly believe that February is the absolute worst month for a sports fan, even worse for the diehard fans of the National Football League. The adrenaline, physicality and passion of football are replaced with the cat and mouse games between pitcher and hitter and the highflying acts of the NBA. How does it all go by so fast? It seems like just yesterday training camp opened and the season opener was soon to follow: 16 games, some highs, some lows (okay, a lot of lows) and another season is in the books.

Obviously things did not work out as many Jets fans had hoped and the organization is now in the midst of a major overhaul. There are some glimmers of hope, as well as uncertainty. Who is coming? Who is going? Does the new coaching staff know what they are doing? There are a lot of questions and not many immediate answers. At least there are forums like the one on JetNation.com that allow us fans to keep the NFL fire alive in these quiet times. Sometimes it makes me wonder what I actually did in off-seasons past prior to the Internet era. But lets not go there.

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