Summer never ends

What is your favorite part of summer? Is it corn on the cob and eating outside? Is it hot weather? Maybe you really like laying on a beach and soaking up the sun. I’m here to tell you all of those things suck. Summer has some real high points in baseball, the occasional sunny and 73 degree day, and not having to wake up when it is dark, but the rest of the thing just seems to drag on.

As you may have guessed, this has a lot more to do with basketball than it does my deep unhappiness with days when the temperature climbs over 85. (I don’t live in Cincinnati or anywhere in the south, so “hot” up here has a different definition). Baseball is absolutely a great sport in that you can turn it on and enjoy it in the background at work, at home, or at play. That pleasant monotony is the very thing that undoes the sport, though. When every game can play pleasantly just below your full consciousness, it takes a lot for any one game to really make an impact.

College basketball doesn’t suffer from that. November brings the excitement of the first game and, of course, a matchup with Wisconsin that I believe both programs are obliged to play until approximately 2045. In December comes the Shootout and, in a fantastic new tradition, a ringing in of the New Year with Big East basketball. That conference play carries us to the best month of the year, March. Any game in there can make or break a season, redeem another night of a foot of snow, or warm the coldest of nights with another win over Providence.

But right now it is still summer, it’s still hot, and the closest thing to basketball weather was the hail that fell on the Tour de France. We’ve all been worn down by unrelenting heat and humidity. Soon, though, basketball content will be on the way. Before to long, it will be time to start breaking down opponents and see how the Big East shapes up. That moment can’t come soon enough.