It's the time of year for filler sports--stuff you try to convince yourself you enjoy but are really killing time.

Baseball is number one. 162 games in a season? Even if I wanted to care, it's the epitome of meaningless games. And all the arguments about how close things are a playoff time makes no sense. It would be just as close with 80 games and each game would be exactly twice as meaningful. And as far as college, I firmly believe the only reason 80% of Gamecock baseball fans exist is because that's the only sport we're consistently relevant in. Take a survey of actual fans (not nutcases on message boards) and I bet the vast majority would give up our entire baseball program for a run like Clemson football.

NBA playoffs are solid. All 3 months of them.

Hockey is definitely a sport (in comparison to baseball) but it's just a cluster. I know some Northerners will argue I don't get it, and that's fine, but it's just madness for a while and then there's a goal followed by more mayhem.

Soccer I can get behind. EPL is in the home stretch and every game matters. Champions League is just fun to watch and women's soccer is a very good product. To me, in comparing high level professional sports between genders, soccer is the closest. For disclaimer, I just recently started watching it (the past 3-4 years), thanks to my oldest kid playing it.

So, for optimism: If you actually like baseball, it's cool. If you're just a gamecock fan, like me, I just hope to hit the ballpark a few times, let my kids run around, and drink some beers at the Fireflies. It'll be a successful season if I get a face sunburn a few times and the Gamecocks make it out of a regional. Soccer is fun. And you can grill anything and it smells great.

This post was edited on 3/19/19 at 11:53 am