The Super Bowl craze is over, though The Call will be beaten to death until the NFL 2015-2016 kickoff. So, Tom Brady joins Joe Montana and Terry Bradshaw with 4 Super Bowl rings, a feat that looked uncertain after New England’s previous two trips to the Super Bowl ended in defeat at the hands of the New York Giants. Is it March yet?
Darn, I thought I could write enough about the Super Bowl right now that when this post was done the calendar would have turned to March. The sad reality is when there are no winter Olympics; when our basketball teams look as flat as the “deflated” footballs used in the AFC Title game; when the best team in NY right now is, incredibly, the Islanders; and when the crack of the bat and the pop of the mitt seem so far away, the month of February absolutely sucks for sports.
Sure, we can look forward to see how the Big Dance is shaping up in college basketball, but this isn’t Kentucky or Chapel Hill (UNC) or Durham,NC (Duke). It’s NYC and traditionally sports fans rely heavily on the pro teams than they do the college teams. Yeah there is always hope for Seton Hall and St. John’s while the pro teams are in the middle of an adjustment period with two brand new coaches trying to work out their playbooks. Sadly even Seattle had done something right with their playbook to be in the spot to blow a chance to win their 2nd straight Super Bowl under Pete Carroll.
In hockey, the Rangers are just being outplayed by the Islanders. Divisional changes cannot be an excuse either since they made it to the Cup against the Kings in 2014. Martin St. Louis enters tonight’s game on a cold streak at 7 games without a goal, that is where slack has to continually be picked up by Rick Nash, who netted 2 goals this past Monday night against the Panthers. The Devils are barely filling out the Rock in Newark dealing with a triumvirate of coaches after the dismissal of Pete DeBoer. Back to the Islanders, who are led by a fully recovered John Tavares after his injury in Sochi a year ago. Also, the battle of goalies is seemingly going to Jaroslav Halak in the Empire State.
You won’t hear much hockey talk on the national airwaves, instead you will most likely hear every day until the A-Rod saga begins in Tampa that Carroll got it wrong, yada yada yada. That is why February sucks because the same Super Bowl rhetoric and reaction will continue everywhere. Because Gary Bettman ruined the league for the fans and for commentators all over. Because James Dolan would rather have a beautiful arena than a beautiful style of basketball that graced the Garden for years. Because baseball is just too far out of reach at the moment, and because quite frankly there is no motivation to watch sports during this cold month.
The Writings of Alex Garrett 