It’s nearly here – the annual sports funeral for America, the end of the football season. When the final whistle blows at the end of the fourth quarter of Sunday night’s Super Bowl, pigskin watchers will go into their annual seven-month slumber while anxiously awaiting the kickoff of the first college games in September. (Yeah, I know I’m ignoring a whole August’s worth of NFL preseason games, but doesn’t everyone else pretty much ignore those, too?)
Anyway, we then are forced to turn our attention to other sports matters for any passing glimpse of anything competitive in nature that results in a winner and a bunch of nonwinners (calling everyone else losers seems a little harsh). Some of us will turn to what’s left of the college basketball season, but the only part that REALLY matters, March Madness, is still more than a month away.
NASCAR’s first flag will wave in a couple of weeks, but it seems like the previous season just ended, so it’s not like it really went away. Then there’s the NBA, which will go on until pretty much the NFL preseason returns, and America’s pastime, baseball. Personally, wake me up when the final outs are tallied.
But trucking, like professional wrestling, never has an offseason, and our trucks keep rolling nonstop. Wouldn’t it be great if we could take a three- or four-month break, chill by our mansion pool, do a few commercials and host “Saturday Night Live” until all of trucking decided to rev up for the 2013-14 season?
The next time some high-priced athlete complains about his lot in life, throw him the keys to your rig and tell him the next delivery is on the other side of Texas. Bet he won’t gripe too hard about a long season after that.
