Football's over. What's next?
With football season over, a new issue arises for fans. What do we watch now?!
The answer may be easier than you think around this time of the year. Sure the NFL ended, but many football fans are just sports fans in general.
“Football is the biggest season, but you just transition into the next sport,” said R.J. Santillo, a SUNY Brockport freshman and communications major.
For example, many pro football fans are college football fans, too. On Thursday, Feb. 7 ESPN was already broadcasting the recruiting classes for the 2008-09 college football season. So although the NFL season was over, fans were eager to see who was going to end up where on the college level.
On the other side of things, a lot of New Yorkers right now aren’t totally disappointed the football season ended, because it ended the way they wanted it to. The New York Giants came out on top by beating the previously undefeated New England Patriots in arguably one of the biggest Super Bowl upsets ever.
“I wouldn’t have it end any other way,” SUNY Brockport senior and physical education major Jason Albertson said.
Albertson, who grew up in Beaver Falls, NY, has been a Giants fan his whole life.
And if you’re anything like Albertson - a well-rounded fan - your life has everything but stopped right now. Take your pick of college and NBA basketball, the NHL and pitchers and catchers report for baseball spring training in a week. On Friday, Feb. 8, ESPN broadcast a college basketball double-header featuring Syracuse versus Uconn at 7 p.m., and Duke versus North Carolina at 9 p.m.
Being about an hour from Syracuse, the 7 p.m. game probably appealed to just about every sports fan in the city of Rochester, not to mention Uconn is one of the Orange’s biggest rivals.
If you know anything about college basketball the 9 p.m. game is pretty self-explanatory. Duke and North Carolina are located on the same road (Tobacco Road) in North Carolina, and are bitter rivals. You can pretty much compare it to the Yankees, Red Sox rivalry. To make it even more intense coming into the showdown, Duke was ranked third and Carolina was second.
Soon enough in college basketball will come March Madness. This is the 65-team tournament, starting in March that will determine the champion of the 2007-2008 college basketball.
On the professional level, there are a lot of trades right now as the trade deadline is approaching. Shaquille O’Neal for example just went from the Miami Heat to the Phoenix Suns in exchange for Sean Marion and Marcus Banks. This is a trade that has many basketball fans now eyeing Phoenix as a big time contender with O’Neal and Amare Stoudemire down low, and Steve Nash at the point.
Want something colder than talking about Phoenix and Miami? There’s always hockey, where the NHL is keeping things cool as the season is just over half-done.
The Buffalo Sabres are one reason that the NHL is so big around Western New York. The team’s farm club, the Rochester Americans plays right in downtown Rochester at the Blue Cross Arena, which sparks a lot of local interest in the team.
“Sabres all the way,” Santillo said.
The Sabres are especially interesting this season because they are battling for a playoff spot, where as last season they were a lock pretty much right after the all-star break.
The bustle of the football season will be going for awhile with the Giants victory, but there will always be sports to watch for true fans no matter what time of the year…always.
