February 7 1991

There's No Excuse for February Sports

It's great to have excuses. You know, excuses that allow you to avoid doing something that you should be doing. Like studying, for example. Studying for midterms.

So it's time to chastise the University of California for putting UCSD on the quarter system. Why?

Not for the tough 10-week academic sprint that allows you no time to catch up once you've fallen behind -- that's a minor point. Not for the difficulty I have coordinating any sort of vacation with friends of mine who go to semester schools. And not for the fact that we get out of school in mid-June.

It's because during Winter Quarter midterms -- which always come in February -- there are very few diversions.

For those of us who use sports as a diversion, February midterms mean only one thing: study, study, study. I mean, what else are you going to do?

Here are my sporting alternatives for February:

Watch a meaningful NHL game. (Yeah, like I actually have cable.) I could do this, but there aren't quite enough fights to make it entertaining. Besides, the entire NHL season exists just to eliminate a handful of teams and decide who plays at home and away during the playoffs. There aren't any meaningful NHL regular-season games. Nice try.
Watch a meaningful NBA game. Even less chance of seeing a fight. Novelty value of watching really tall guys wears thing quickly. Novelty value of slam-dunks even less: no matter what they do, it still comes down to putting a ball through a hoop. As for the relevance of the NBA regular season to the NBA playoffs... see the NHL, above.
Pro Bowling. While Earl Anthony may be my personal idol and Mike Albee has been on David Letterman's show a few times, bowling has failed to catch my fancy.
Maybe the PBA telecasts could be more interesting if they focused more on the exotic locales frequented by the bowling tour. When I see the Moline AC/Delco Bowling Classic live from Moline, Illinois, I'm always longing to see the sights of Moline.
I'm sure the Moline Monkey Institute and the National Chainsaw Accident Museum and Gift Shop would make great little feature stories.
College Basketball. Dick Vitale is still on the air. Sixty-four teams will make it into March's NCAA tournament. Wake me up then. I'll have an excuse not to study for my finals.
The Pro Bowl. What, it already happened? And I missed it? Who won? Who cares?

Those are the prime events offered to me in February. It makes me even more anxious for spring training to begin. I mean, I haven't yet stooped to watching American Gladiators -- I don't need an excuse that badly -- but I'm close.

When I was a kid, I'd always feel sort of bad when I looked at calendars during the month of August.

Much to the disappointment of Hallmark Cards, August has no real holidays.

Well, February has holidays -- Groundhog's Day is my personal favorite, though I will give a nod to Presidents' Day -- but February has no sports.

Of course, there are good things about that -- for the UCSD public, it means that they won't have to see any of Phil's Prime Picks for a month.

It also means that Phil has to live in his own personal hell for picking the Buffalo Bills to easily win last month's Super Bowl. (Last month's Super Bowl? Yeah, like the Super Bowl could ever be in February...)

Nationally, February is a dead sports month. That's why, years ago, the editors of Sports Illustrated decided to put out a swimsuit issue (initially just an exotic travelogue) -- in order to fill space in otherwise empty issues.

Swimsuit issue? Hmm...

Read Sports Illustrated. Hey, what am I going to do, study?