Top 10 summer reach subjects for sports bloggers

10) Soccer. Every few years, there's some World Cup or Team USA moment for Blogfrica to huff and puff about, along with the standard line of discussion, i.e., This Will Really Change Things. It never does, other than making actual soccer fans see the writer for the poseur he is. (And yes, soccer fan, I know you call it football. Americans don't.)

9) Tennis. Wimbledon finals have a way of giving tennis fans the annual woody, especially when they go long and remind everyone how compelling a good tennis match could be. Now, if they could only (a) dial down the ridiculous technology on the racquets, which is basically making the game a case of serve or die -- seriously, it's like playing MLB with aluminum bats and no mound, and (b) somehow get the women's game back from the brink of soft-core porn, what with the moaning. On second thought, scratch the second one.

8) Wrestling. Another niche interest that gets attention when the calendar gives you nothing but baseball. This one is especially novel if the writer looks down his nose at the shenanigans, or notes that Vince McMahon is sleazy. Rail on, brave blogger!

7) NFL training camp. There are, of course, people in this world who are good at watching a football team practice and determine actual useful information from the experience. Those people are full-time daily beat writers and scouts, which is to say, people with a lot more experience and access than your average blogger. But please, feel free to repost someone else's observation, or the same statistics you could have thrown out in February. Insightful!

6) Poker. Can you point out that Phil Hellmuth is a tool, poker isn't really a sport, and that many of the people playing at the World Series of Poker (Jason Alexander was a chip leader, for heaven's sake) are probably more lucky than good? That's great. Now please move along, and let the rest of us geek out.

5) Death. Ready for the weeklong ruminations on What Steve McNair's Death Means? Personally, I wasn't ready to move on until ESPN told me what Brett Favre had to say about it. Thanks, World Wide Lemur. That really made me think.

4) Golf. Especially when the blogger's coverage of the sport consists entirely of Tiger Stalking and/or Tiger Taunting. Either care enough about the sport to write about it routinely, or just accept the fact that you are more interested in celebrity than athlete.

3) Disease. Hey, what's more cheery than feeling all morbid about an athlete's death? Well, getting hectored that sports aren't all that important in the wake of someone's fight with cancer. As if anyone in the audience is really making that point. But thanks for that, concerned writer...

2) Bicycling. Oh, for heaven's sake, do we actually have to pretend to care about this again, since Lance Armstrong decided to stop slapping his surviving junk into Sheryl Crow? Bicylcing is a wonderful aerobic activity, a great thing to do for the environment, a tremendous way to take something away from oil companies and something that this increasingly obese nation needs to embrace. I just don't need to watch it, or care which Euro is going slightly faster than some other Euro, or how French Guy is all bent out of shape.

1) Home Run Derby / All-Star Game. Wow, look at all of these players, all on the same field! It's like, um, every other day of the season, really, when I can see all of them play in games that matter. But even that is better than the annual exercise in public wanking that is the Home Run Derby, aka the thing that convinced even Middle America that Chris Berman is a tool. I'd rather watch soccer, played on bicycles with tennis racquets. Play me out, boys...