THE FINAL SAY
By Zach McCrite
The Offseason : Where We Celebrate Sports Hope
To the regular human , there are four seasons .
And here we are , embarking on one of those seasons : summer . The sun shines ( usually ), the temperature is hot ( most of the time ) and the kids are out of school ( have fun , parents ). That ’ s to the regular human being . However , to most of you who would bother to flip to this back page to read the thoughts of this mind-wandering gasbag , there may be only three seasons . Regular season . Postseason . Offseason . And for a sea of fans wearing the Cardinal Red or the Wildcat Blue or the Hoosier Crimson who love their football or basketball , we are in the longest of those three seasons : the offseason .
Of course , it ’ s a bummer for most of you to not have actual games going on during the offseason . I feel the same way . The offseason drags when you don ’ t have something to look forward to watching .
But , especially with the advances in technology over the last decade and a half , many people have cashed in on your offseason boredom . Offseason is now the recruiting season . Many of you out there get so fired up this time of year . You want to know where the top prospects are going to go to school . You marvel at their ability to shake a defender or get fancy with their moves . With every “ ooh ” and “ ahh ” they make you belt out , you become more and more like a child who sees bubbles being blown for the first time .
You hope they go to your favorite team . You hope they shun the enemy .
And you create this vision of your team with that recruit on it , even though , except in the rarest of cases ( perhaps like local basketball star Romeo Langford ), you ’ ve only seen a 2-minute YouTube clip of any high-profile recruit ’ s very best moments from his high school career . Don ’ t lie . You ’ ve done this . I ’ ve done it , too . The offseason feels good . New players come in . Veteran players get healthy , fans get excited , and at some schools ( ahem , Indiana ) you get a new coach as a cherry on top . Every year , it feels like a new beginning .
And new beginnings spawn hope . Lots of hope . We hope with the “ hopiest ” of hopes . And it gives us the warm-and-fuzzies .
Now , don ’ t get me wrong , I like to hope , too . But I ’ m over this particular kind of hoping .
Too many times I ’ ve looked at that YouTube clip , I ’ ve looked at the recruiting rankings scattered all over the internet , I ’ ve imagined that awesome recruit on my favorite team . You have too .
And when that player shows interest in coming to play for our school , we tell our friends , “ This is the guy .”
And like more summer beverages into summer beverage cooler , the recruiting services toss hope into our summer party . Even if our team is truly terrible , we start to believe anyway . Because “ what if ,” right ?
Then , after the hopeful “ offseason ,” the best players commit to colleges all over the land and some of them may even go to your school .
And now it ’ s time for regular season . Ya know , actual games ! And those recruits start playing in our favorite team ’ s jersey . And , it ’ s not nearly what we imagined . We were fantasizing about unicorns and lollipops and national championships . Instead , we got less than that . Almost every time .
Let me let you in on a little secret : the same thing happens with your favorite team as well .
In other words , all that chatter about those recruits coming in – it ’ s a ruse . It ’ s us being tricked into thinking that “ this might be the year .” We fall for it every time .
And , hey , every once in a blue moon , it IS our year . Sometimes our favorite team got the right mix of new recruits and old savvy vets and the coach works his wizardry and — voila — we are the champions !
But , it ’ s hard to win a national championship . Only one team does . And come to find out , that mixtape someone threw on the internet about the recruit that ended up at your school ? Well , turns out that guy , along with every other college recruit , makes mistakes on the floor ( and sometimes off the floor , too ). The guy who produced the video failed to get those mistakes into that mixtape , I guess ( wink , wink ).
And then the regular season ends , the postseason ends , and here we are in the offseason again .
And we rinse and we repeat . Because next year might be the year .
Look , if this is what you want to do , more power to you . I ’ m not saying you ’ re wrong for doing it . I ’ m just saying that , for me , it feels like an exercise in futility .
I ’ m not trying to be “ Debbie Downer .” Far from it . I just have no idea what my team is going to look like even if we got every great recruit in the country to come to my team . Newsflash : neither do you . And in all honesty , the recruiting services out there that tell us how good each recruit is at basketball , they ’ re guessing too , albeit with more information .
Shoot , even the millionaire head coaches have whiffed on highly-touted recruits . Louisville fans remember Carlos Hurt . Kentucky had Daniel Orton . Indiana and Hanner Parea parted .
Yet , here we are , having seen very little of these college-bound kids ever shoot a basketball or catch a football , and we ’ re convinced that we ’ ll go far if they sign to play with our school .
Combine all of this with the fact that we ’ re grown adults following around kids who are barely old enough to drive .
Ah , you smell that ? That breezy morning air ? That fresh coffee ? It ’ s that time of year .
There may be four seasons for Jane and John Doe and family . But , for the basketball- or football-crazed fanatic , there are only three .
And we ’ re in the longest season right now . The offseason .
It ’ s hopeful . And annoying .
Want to find Zach on Twitter ? Just follow @ BigEZ .
48 EXTOL SPORTS / JUNE 2017