For most people, summer ends when school starts in late August or early September. But for sportscasters and sports writers across America, it’s much sooner than that.
Basically, my summer ended on August 8, when the Idaho Vandals opened fall football camp. The Washington State Cougars followed the next morning and I was there, in Pullman, at 9:00am on a Sunday.
You see, for us sports guys (and gals), the calendar is dictated by the sports seasons. So when fall football camps start for our local college football teams, the summer is over. And thus begins a period of eight straight months of nearly non-stop sports coverage that goes all the way through football and basketball seasons and doesn’t stop until the last team loses in the NCAA basketball tournament.
I’m not complaining at all. This is what we love. I’m just trying to shed some light into the life of a sports guy.
Between early August and late March, there is one month where we can actually afford to take some vacation. That’s December. Ahh, December. Football season is over (unless there’s a bowl game involved, which hasn’t happened around in a while) and the conference season doesn’t start for college basketball until early January. So December offers a much needed reprieve.
But otherwise, there’s no time to get away. Fridays are consumed by high school football and basketball coverage on KXLY’s Friday Night Sports Extra (which begins on September 4, by the way). Saturdays are filled with college football and basketball. And as a sports guy, you just can’t miss these.
Even though we’re always disappointed to see Gonzaga, and sometimes Washington State, get knocked out of “The Big Dance,” we also breath a sigh of relief, because the “down season” is finally upon us. Instead of covering Gonzaga, WSU, Idaho, Eastern Washington, Whitworth, the Spokane Chiefs and dozens of high schools in our area, the spring and summer is consumed mostly by the Spokane Shock, the Spokane Indians (but they don’t start until late June) and spring high school sports. And that’s no knock on those teams. It’s just nowhere near as crazy.
And that’s why you often see sports guys disappear for vacation right after the NCAA tournament ends. That’s actually our spring break.
And when the state championships wrap up for high school sports in late May, you’ll probably see us disappear again, because that’s when summer actually starts for a sports guy.
No Ratings Yet
