With the ending of the NHL and NBA playoffs, we have officially entered this year’s ‘Tain’t Zone - that time where really ‘tain’t a whole lot going on. For the next several months, we will all be off living our lives, enjoying summer vacations, and waiting for Labor Day weekend and the kickoff of football again. There is still a lot of superfluous noise and idle fretting going on with a few things, hence the Stranger Tides, but overall things look to stay pretty quiet.
As much as the BIG 12 wants to make it a “thing,” I don’t see more realignment being something this summer. As much as some are seeing stars in their eyes for huge money for creating “Mega Conferences,” it is a mirage. Those contracts on their media bluster will over-promise the world, then under-deliver in 2024 going forward. If we see anything during this years ‘tain’t zone, it will be the release of the “fine print” details of the contracts the B1G and BIG 12 signed. As @LAUte and the other members of the legal mafia around here will tell you, the devil is always in the details - and right now no one knows fully what is in the GOR contracts of these two Conferences. If there is a huge revelation, it will likely come when the PAC 12 Conference announces their GOR contract. By then someone will have performed the dive into the other two contracts to make a comparison. If there is a big reveal this year, that will be it.
Will Utah have another crazy good season in athletics like the 2022-2023 season? In over 50 years of following Utah athletics, we have never seen such an “across the board” high level performance by our teams. The truth is only MBB and Baseball had bad seasons. Do these teams join the rest of the program and get off the schnide? Do the others continue their run forward? The fact this would even be a thing to this old man is incomprehensible. If you would’ve told me something like this would happen in 1988, I would’ve laughed my ■■■ off and declared you mentally insane, but here we are. Definitely a Stranger Tide.
Honestly, I’ve never understood this rush to get through the absolute best part of the year to barrel headlong into the worst. I don’t give a single you-know-what about the NBA and hockey is only slightly on my radar. But now, it’s baseball and only baseball and it’s the best time of year. Slow town, enjoy the sun and a cold beverage and just relax for a while. Football will come, but it can wait.
I’m going to take some time this Summer and attempt to become a better barbequer. It seems like the manly thing to do. I’m great at eating BBQ, but not so great at cooking it. Nothing much better than Utah Summer nights outside with a baseball game playing in the background enjoying the weather.
Bah, we’re into some of cycling’s busiest times. The lead up to Le Tour with several races to help define the contenders. The Tour itself, roughly a week after the Tour we restart some of the bigger one day races on the Pro Calendar. For me, I’ve been busy with Amateur Nationals, and get to work US Pro Nats in Knoxville this coming week. Yeah, baseball is reaching the slow time. The NBA hasn’t been interesting to me for awhile. The NHL lost my following once the Hurricanes lost the Tampa Bay.
So, there are other things to enjoy, if you can expand your interests beyond the typical American stuff. Then there is the ever continuing weirdness that is CougarBoard, if you don’t mind losing brain cells to them.
