Happy New Year! What? It’s already February? My bad. I suppose it has been too long since we last conversated. I have to admit, I kind of miss our time we used to spend together. It has been a busy 2010 for me and there are no signs of letting up. Between work, school, and all two of my household chores, I barely have time to breathe. Oh, who am I kidding, if I wasn’t so lazy, I would still have plenty of time for everything, especially bitching, my favorite pastime! Move over baseball.

     I don’t even know where to begin. National signing day, the Super Bowl, the Pro Bowl, the NBA All-Star game, the Olympics. All of it sucks. So does NASCAR, even with Danica, the PGA Tour with or without Tiger, but especially without, and 47 year-old men competing in MMA, give it up Hershel. Hockey and NCAA Hoops are still irrelevant, the non-fight between Mayweather and Pacquiao ruined boxing even more than it already was, and people still don’t care about Tennis, even if Roger Federer is unbeatable. It sounds to me like all is right in the wide, wide world of sports. But what would MANstruating be without a grumpy, cranky attitude?

     Most high school kids around the nation have signed their letters of intent. They are being treated like rock stars. They are getting a free college education, one in which upwards of 75% of them will spit on by leaving early, transferring, or dropping out. Now, college football is following in the steps of college basketball and offering scholarships to infants! Okay, not quite that young, but 13? USC and Lane Kiffin offered a scholarship to a seventh grader from Delaware. What’s next, claiming dibs on Tim Tebow’s unborn child? I wish I could find a word to describe how pathetic this whole National Letter of Intent Day has become. I heard that next year we might even get that holiday off!

     The Super Bowl is two days away and all my big, bold talk about not watching it has subsided. Like the rest of you lemmings, I’ll tune in on Sunday, but only because that is what the mass media tells me I should do, after all, it would be un-American to ignore the Super Bowl, right? I don’t want to watch it, I really don’t. First of all, the Saints don’t deserve to be there. They were dominated by Minnesota. It always sucks to have an inferior team in the Championship game. The Colts may be the best team in the AFC, but I have lost all respect for them. They stared in the face of the game’s integrity and blinked first. Not only did they blink, they turned their back on it and walked away, no, sprinted away. That’s bush league. Everyone associated with that franchise should be ashamed of themselves.

     On Sunday, everyone in America will sit around drinking unhealthy amounts of carbonated piss-water (Budweiser, Coors, Miller, etc.) and eating enough food to feed the entire planet’s starving children for weeks. I’ll be one of those selfish Americans. Not because I want to, but because I’m told to. Yes, like you, I’m just another lemming, following the leader. I hope they don’t jump off a bridge.

     Are you going to watch the NBA Slam-Dunk Contest? Yeah, me neither. Does anyone really think they will see anything original? You can bet someone will attempt a takeoff from the free throw line; only instead he will miss and jump from three feet closer. You can also bet one of the competitors will try to jump over someone or a group of someone’s. One of the contestants might even try a behind the back or through the legs reverse. Hey, at least you might get to see an original wardrobe idea, or not. It’s all beautiful artistry if you have been living under a rock for 20 years, but once you’ve seen one contest, you’ve seen them all. I’ll watch when these athletes can think for themselves instead of ripping off their predecessors’ ideas.

     How bad has it gotten for NASCAR that they need to prop a girl up as the face of the series? This has nothing to do with a woman competing in a man’s world; this has to do with the current status of NASCAR and its unpopularity. Jimmy Johnson is arguably the most dominant athlete (if that’s what you want to call him) competing in any sport right now and all the talk is about a newcomer who will not even participate in half of the races. I guess it is good publicity, but she didn’t even win in a car that she’s used to driving; and Japan doesn’t count. How is she going to fare in a completely foreign screaming machine? Even more reason to ignore cars driving in circles. As if we needed another one, right?

     Poor Phil Mickleson. Without asking for it, he has become the face of golf; the face that fell flat on itself. Surely you’ve heard he was accused of cheating, right? Not the Tiger version, I mean on the course. I’m not sure which one is worse given the honorable mentality of golfers. The funniest thing is, Phil wasn’t even cheating. Sure, he was taking advantage of a loophole in the rules, but it was not illegal. Besides, who cares what grooves are on a wedge? How many great shots are made with a wedge out of the deep rough? Not enough to ban a certain groove pattern. I don’t know about you, but I like awesome shots; shots I couldn’t dream of making, maybe I’m just crazy like that. Professional athletes are supposed to be the best in the world at what they do. I don’t want to see professional’s struggle. Would you enjoy basketball if the rims were raised a couple of feet? What if they outlawed cleats in football? Doesn’t sound like something I’d want to watch. Of course, who watches golf anyway?

     Both Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather, Jr. will be fighting soon. Only instead of fighting each other, in what would be the biggest fight of all-time, they will have different opponents. Boxing needed this fight desperately. Everyone in the world knows that boxing is run by selfish, greedy, douche bags. This one fight alone could have gone a long way in repairing the sport’s mangled image, if only briefly. Instead, egos got in the way; big surprise. Yeah, this fight will happen, there is WAY too much money on the table to turn it down, but because the promoters, trainers, and fighters acted like a bunch of primadonnas, this fight will not be the spectacle it could have been. Don’t get me wrong, this fight will generate huge interest, more than any other fight in any other sport in all of history, but crying about a needle in the arm and steroid accusations is petty, especially when tens of millions of dollars are on the table. What a couple of whiny little girls. Hell, for $20 million, I’ll fight them both at the same time. Let’s get it on!

     Thank you, dear reader, for putting up with my one-man therapy session (again). My time is up and I have no money to pay for another hour, so my work here is done. I apologize to anyone who was distraught because I failed to MANstruate in January. Believe me, just because I didn’t share my feelings last month, does not, in any way, mean I was not MANstruating.

     Even though the sporting landscape tends to die after the Super Bowl, I am sure I will still be able to find something to frivolously bitch about. There is an endless supply of morons in this world; I can’t foresee a problem finding a few people, places, or teams to verbally castrate. See you in March, where there will be no shortage of madness.