The Post-Super Bowl Blues

The Super Bowl has come and gone. Peyton Manning got his championship, and the Colts got their victory celebration in Indy in front of thousands of adoring fans.

Now what? How do we go on without football??

The next couple of weeks are a bit of a wasteland for sports fans. In that space of time, we have not one, but two of the most irrelevant, uninteresting events in all of sports - the professional All-Star Game.

First, you have the NFL Pro Bowl, the worst All-Star Game of them all. In a sport in which players conceal major injuries for weeks so they won't have to lose playing time, players annually fall all over themselves to find any excuse to avoid going. Did you get a paper cut that required a bandage? Hey, call in sick - the conference's fifth alternate at your position is eager and waiting to take your spot in Honolulu.

Then you have the NBA All-Star Game, which might have a little bit of novelty appeal this year, with it being played in Vegas. The problem with the NBA All-Star Game, much like the MLB All-Star Game, is that the most anticipated event isn't the game itself. Like the Home Run Derby in baseball, the Dunk Competition in basketball is the main event. Actually for me, the actual game is third on the list of All-Star related events. First is the Dunk Competition, second is the unveiling of the game's starters and reserves, and then it's the game itself. It's almost anticlimactic, really.

With college basketball's conference tournaments leading into the NCAA Tournament still about a month away, there's about a month of drudgery ahead before we get an exciting event to throw ourselves into. Not that I can't appreciate the NBA and NCAA regular seasons, but after a month of glory that was the NFL playoffs, being plunged back into the routine is a little tough to get used to.