We only need 11.
If the Beatles can adjust to have “Eight Days a Week,” then we are perfectly within our rights to scale it down to 11 months a year, because one thing is becoming increasing obvious.
August is a waste.
Unless you have a birthday, name something good that happens in August. There are no holidays, unless you consider “Find Your Inner Nerd Day” as some kind of cause for celebration. (That’s today, by the way.)
Golf hated this month so much that it took the PGA Championship out of August and moved it to May.
Plus, it’s too damned hot and school has no business cranking up in August.
Even with that, there are things that make August even more miserable, if possible.
And it has everything to do with sports.
Everybody talks/writes and nobody says anything that means anything. He’s got a pre-season Top 25, they’ve got a pre-season Top 25. This self-important hack has a prediction on who is going to make the College Football Playoff. That one has run it through the computer simulation 10,000 times and has it all figured out.
Basically, all they are predicting is air because nothing has happened. But we are so desperate that we actually give it more than a casual glance.
Even more ridiculous are college football practice reports. “The defense dominated today” or “the wide receiver corps looks unguardable” is what you’ll see on countless message boards.
Exactly who did the defense dominate? The scout team, which is full of non-scholarship players?
And if the first string defense can’t guard the wide receiver corps, doesn’t that say more about the defensive backs than it does the receivers?
Doesn’t matter. All college football fans need is an iota of positive news and they’ll eat it up.
High schools wouldn’t mind skipping August as well. After two weeks of drill after drill, both players and coaches are tired of seeing the same helmets. This is scrimmage weekend, with its goofy 10 straight plays on offense and 10 straight plays on defense format that doesn’t seem to make any sense, but at least there is someone else on the other side of the line of scrimmage.
Sadly, someone will try to keep score in a high school scrimmage and act like it means something. And if that’s the case, I guess that makes next week’s jamborees on the same level as the Super Bowl.
All you need is one NFL pre-season (read: exhibition) game to decide that Bo Nix of the Denver Broncos is (a.) going to be the starting quarterback and (b.) will soon be inducted into the Hall of Fame.
Who’s holding out? Who’s holding in? What coaches are on the hot seat?
All of these things that we are supposed to think that matter and none of it does. That’s August for you. It has nothing going for it, but we just can’t seem to ignore it even though we know we’d all be better off if we did.
Can’t we just skip August and go straight to September? Let’s just act like August has a temporary green and head to September’s tee box.
We’d all be better off if August would just leave us alone.
Contact JJ at johnjamesmarshall@yahoo.com