With the bowl season and college football over, now what?

I went to my parents’ house Tuesday night for dinner and after talking about the national championship game for an hour, about how exciting it was to have the college football crown stay in the state of Alabama and how dominating the Crimson Tide’s performance was that night, we sat down to eat and dad says, “So what do we watch now?”

For many fans in the South, and I think for most of the country, after football season there is a long gap of awkward space in the sports world. Sure you have the NFL playoffs going on to give sports fans something to do on the weekends. But after being spoiled with football games on almost every night, no matter how meaningless they were, fans miss that sense of action to fill the void during a long work week.

At my house growing up our nights usually revolved around sports, and I think for most sports fans that same practice reigns true. Basketball just isn’t exciting until the playoffs, and while I love hockey, it doesn’t get enough national exposure on local sports channels and there aren’t enough games on to get into it where I live.

I guess the next big thing for most fans in the South will be National Signing Day, which comes early this year as it’s on Feb. 1. Most recruiting classes are wrapped up by this time, but there will still be those top recruits that will wait till the last day to get all the exposure they can and then leave their schools three years later to make money. I wonder how many kids that have waited till the last day to sign have left early for the draft.?

Then immediately after that you have the Super Bowl on Feb. 5 in Indianapolis. I bet when they picked Indy to host they didn’t think the Colts would be the worst team in the league. The Super Bowl is fun and something I’ve watched every year since I can remember. But now that I’m in the working world it seems such an inconvenience to have it on a Sunday night; especially with how late they draw these games out now with commercials, replay, etc. I’m sure I’ll get together with a couple of people to watch it, but no matter who is in it, I’ll be ready to get in bed before the start of the fourth quarter — where I will proceed to watch the updates on my phone until the game is over of course.

Pretty much the rest of February is the most boring time of the year as a sports fan. Pitchers and catchers report to the beaches or desert at the end of the month and some teams even have Spring Training games before March so that’s a big deal for me. But other than that, there really isn’t anything exciting going on until you get to March Madness.

March Madness this year will begin on the 13th (of March obviously). This has become something that’s even more exciting to me than the Super Bowl and bowl season combined. For the first few weekends there are so many games going on and filling out a bracket has become a yearly tradition. At any point you can have three games going on and you’re almost certain to have a buzzer beater or upset in one of them. Granted I don’t know who half these teams are and I haven’t watched a lick of college basketball up to this point, but by the end of it I’ve become an expert and I’m telling myself how much I’m going to watch college basketball next season and really know the teams before the tournament starts — that never happens.

This year March Madness will take us all the way up until April 2, which will bring us to the beginning of Major League Baseball on April 4, which technically begins March 28 in Tokyo with the Mariners playing the Athletics. The Braves don’t start playing till April 5 so we’ll say that’s when the season starts.

Then as a sports fan you have one of the most exciting times of the year. For how boring and dreadful the NBA and hockey seasons can be, the playoffs can be highly entertaining and give you meaningful games on a nightly basis. On any given day of the week you can have NBA playoff games, NHL playoff games and baseball games going on. Never will your sports schedule be so busy on a Tuesday night.

This, to me, becomes the ultimate pinnacle of a sports season. I would say that when college football season starts at the same time as the MLB playoffs that could be the same, but college football isn’t every day like the NBA, NHL and MLB. And quite frankly, I hate the fact that college football takes away from the MLB playoffs. But, with the end of the long baseball season comes the new football season and the cycle starts again.

So while it’s cold and gloomy outside and you’re forced to watch Dancing with the Kardashians, just think, we’re a hop, skip and jump away from being tangled into one of the most exciting parts of the year for a sports fan.

You can follow Jake on twitter at: @j8a1k0e