The Bullshit Factory

Welcome to the Four Day Dead Zone, the annual time in the sports year when smarter people than me just close up shop and move on. The dumber among us complain about the All Star Game (especially the annual abomination that is the Chris Berman Home Run Derby Stab Out Your Ears And Make Your Contemplate Funding An Assassination), crank out What It All Means Pieces about the first half of the regular season in MLB, chew over any second tier free agent signing in the NBA, and read the tea leaves of NFL summer camps.

And yet, for the past several years, something has always lurched into huge prominence at this time, whether it be a self-immolation (the Michael Vick Affair), a trade drive (Kobe Bryant being a freaking loon), an MLB dust-up (there's Hall of Fame voting sometime soon, isn't there?), or that old favorite, violent crime (some athlete is due to be relieved of their valuables at gunpoint).

There will also be the usual second-tier sports trying to clamor for attention. This year, that'll be the Olympics, the presidential election, whatever the Lemur invents to fill the void -- remember Who's Now? I do, mostly at night, when the shakes come.

In short, there *is* no dead time in sports now, because the eco-system is self-propelling, like any bullshit factory. Some athlete with a taste for attention (Brett Favre is on lines 1 through 8) will push for the pub. Another will do something dubious, or have a court appearance. There are more than enough people with past prominence that a notable death will create pundit gruel. Sabermetric stuff will take the fore and tell us something -- anything -- that we didn't know. The presence of camera phones will generate cheap heat and a story (and, to be candid, I still think it's meaningful that Matt Leinart was drinking with the underaged -- and if you disagree with that, feel free to draft him too early in those upcoming roto leagues, as he will be there).

There is no off-season anymore, and that goes for everything. I work in online advertising, and even though the creative community in most advertising circles packs it in and tries to take time off in the summer, there's still loads to do -- prep work for back to school and winter seasonal creatives, sudden fire drills to help an advertiser spend a budget, businesses that move to re-do failing art or a re-work for a new brand, etc., etc. It's even more telling in a bad economy, as people try to look busy at all costs (and frankly, I suspect the economy is a lot worse than the media is telling you, if only because that industry is still flush, thanks to the infusion of political dollars, oil company PR, and Olympics hype).

There's also this... people blog for money. (Not me, of course, or I'd have loads more titty images.) The desire to make a buck doesn't go away when the weather gets warm; hell, it probably increases, especially when new blood, in the form of college grads and high school folks with time on their hands, hits the market. The sports blogosphere is just a low-rent section of the same Bullshit Factory that the Lemur is. We are just as guilty as inventing things for your time and interest as anyone else. (Speaking of which... where's my pointy hat for winning Iron Ref? I demand a pointy hat.)

So welcome, my friends, to the Dead Zone. I promise it'll be lively. And then, the NFL will come again to save us all...