With football gone, a long period of dull begins for sports fans

National Signing Day is over, having come and passed last Wednesday.

Likewise, the final pieces of confetti have been swept from the streets of Indianapolis by now with the Super Bowl’s completion.

Long story short, there’s very little going on right now in the world of national sports.

Basketball is my love, but the NBA is still a few weeks away from really being a topic of mainstream conversation.

Hockey stinks n that’s a topic for another day.

And the Olympics are still months away.

Sure, baseball is about to simmer. But even with that hot stove cooking, the MLB is still several thousands of innings away from being meaningful.

So honestly, I have nothing to do today but complain n good times, right?

But I’ve always been told that without complainers, nothing in this world would ever get fixed, so let me give this my best shot.

There’s a lot that needs to be fixed in the world of sports n that’s putting it mildly.

We have injustices in terms of rules, injustices in terms of regulations and just injustices in terms of restricting people from being true fans.

Talk is cheap, so here goes n here is my list of seven things I’d like to fix in the world of sports.

I love the sport of women’s basketball. Don’t laugh. That’s not sarcasm. I truly do. The shooting is more pure. The decision making is better. The game is played the way it’s supposed to be played. I know, I know. You’ll now proceed to tell me how the sport is boring because the ladies can’t dunk. But I counter that argument by saying basketball is the only sport in the world with universal rules and dimensions for both males and females. In softball, home runs are slugged because the fences are closer to home plate, right? So why not allow the ladies a chance to make posters by lowering the rims a foot to 9 feet? The quality of play would remain the same and the sport would gain much-needed popularity.

Both the NBA and MLB seasons are too long. My proposal would be to cut games off the top. For financial reasons, that will never happen. So my co-worker, the honorable Mr. Eric Besson brings up a good point regularly n why not make mid and early season games important? Why not reward the team with the best record at the All-Star break in the NBA with a first-round bye in the playoffs? Why not give the first baseball team to 50 wins in the MLB some sort of preferential treatment? It’d make the whole season worthwhile, not just the final four weeks.

Football is a global game. Sure, in Louisiana, the Saints are king and understandably so. But why can’t the NFL adopt a policy like NCAA’s March Madness and create a system where all of the games are able to be found on TV networks? I know the obvious reason is because it’d kill Direct TV’s deal with the league for its NFL Sunday Ticket package. But wouldn’t more money be had long-haul in advertising if all of the games were readily available? Chalk me up as one who believes that would be among the greatest inventions of all-time.

Sure, this is purely for selfish reasons on my end because I love basketball. But there are hundreds of professional leagues around the world where guys aimlessly wander the globe hoping for an extra few years inside of the sport. So why doesn’t the NBA take advantage of this and create a true developmental system for its teams? It’d allow fans to be more entrenched in the team’s prospects and it’d allow teams to have control over how their projects are seasoned. And for a purist like me, it’d mean an excuse to watch hoops, because it’s very likely a handful of the Hornets’ teams would be glittered across the state, maybe even in Houma. I hear the Civic Center wants more sports. Just sayin’, Mr. Stern. I truly feel like it’s safe to say that you owe us one after trading our best player away to the Los Angeles Clippers for Eric Gordon, who has been hurt ever since. Again, just sayin’.

I’m not a fan of instant replay in football. I never have been. There are too many times where officials outthink themselves and still get the call wrong, even after studying it in super slow motion countless dozens of times. But in baseball, there truly is an opportunity to get every call right. So I say we should open the umbrella and include plays at the plate, fair and foul balls and maybe even batters being hit by pitches. I would do it in moderation to prevent excessive time added to games. But is a sport with a 162-game schedule really that concerned with the amount of time one spends on the field? Give me a break!

Allow rentals in sports

I’m not a giant soccer nut except during World Cup time. But the sport does have one thing right n its rental system. I know you small market homers (Hornets fans) are whining about how this would destroy the fabric of your team because you’d never be able to afford a rental player. But instead look at it in a different way. Wouldn’t you like to rent Eric Gordon to a contender for the rest of the season for much-needed salary cap money? For good players on bad teams, this would be an amazing thing to see. The postseason play would be unbelievable.

Bring back baseball cards

People scratch their heads wondering why our nation’s youth is headed in the wrong direction. Some say parenting, others point to bad influences from mainstream media. Sure, those are valid. I point to a lack of baseball cards in today’s world. Seriously, who doesn’t remember running to the store to try and grab a pack or two in order to get that coveted Chipper Jones or that Michael Jordan missing from his or her collection? Right around my teenage years, the entire industry got greed stricken and has truly become a joke, now almost invisible in the sports world. But the fact that my nephews will grow up without a LeBron James rookie card makes me sick. It truly does. Every child deserves the right to be able to swap cards with their buddies over a stale school cafeteria lunch.

That’s a basic childhood right that should return – and once back, should never go away ever again!

So that’s all I have. Ponder and discuss as needed. What else is there to do? It’s not like there’s a football game on.

Not for another six and a half months or so, anyway.

Tear drop.

Tear drop.