The Dog Days of Winter

1-28-90

It was a pretty good week for Cobber sports. The hockey team broke out of a slump with two impressive wins. The men's basketball team ended a 5-game skid with a last-second win. The Lady Cobbers regained the MIAC lead with three more wins. And the track teams each opened their long season with victories.

Last week was an especially nice time to get some wins.

Last week was winter sports' version of dog days, that time of the year when you no longer feel like the season is just beginning, and the season's end, be it merciful or thrilling, still seems far away.

Winter sports' dog days are an old phenomenon, though there has never been a solid consensus as to their precise dates. Sometimes coaches, players, and sports writers only notice them in retrospect. But they always seem to happen.

Long ago, as a seventh-grade basketball junkie who longed for a 90-game junior high schedule, I was dismayed at seeing NBA players just going through the motions in their late-January games. At first I took it to be an example of pure sloth, something you'd expect from the Bulls or the Bullets. But later, when I saw it happening to the Celtics, I knew it must indeed be part of some fixed cycle of nature, something even virtue could not overcome.

There are many tell-tale signs as to when you or your team has hit winters' dog days. Here are a few.

Coaches have become openly embarrassed about the sameness of their pre-game talks. The players are lip-syncing the words.

Talk about the playoffs still sounds premature and presumptuous on the part of the teams that are winning.

And it begins to sound ludicrous when it comes from teams that are struggling.

People are beginning to avoid talking with losing coaches because there is almost nothing one can say that is right.

Your team is going into or coming out of their second slump of the season.

Sports writers are struggling to find ways to describe a game as meaningful. Sports writers are also being less delicate in their writing, referring to teams getting "drubbed" instead of "edged," "stomped" instead of "beaten."

Players are beginning to calculate how many points they need in their remaining games to make sure they end up averaging double figures.

No one watches the tape of yesterday's game.

Coaches are remembering their hopelessly complicated pre-season offensive and defensive schemes and wondering how they could have let themselves engage in such folly.

Players are asking questions like "Who is it we're playing tonight?"

Daily practice schedules, which used to be detailed and neatly-typed, are now being scrawled on the backs of envelopes.

Coaches are beginning to speculate with each other on what positions at other schools are going to be open next year.

Almost no one remembers their team's record. "Something like 11-7," is a common answer.

Coaches have given up harping on individual players' weaknesses and are just looking for ways to hide them.

Players are beginning to estimate how far behind on their studies they'll be when the season ends.

Coaches are begging to the refs instead of yelling at them.

Coaches, in between daydreaming about golf, are trying to draft speeches that will get their players focused again.

As teams on a roll begin to face teams that have given up, you notice the first signs of what will become the annual year-end flood of blowouts.

But dog days pass.

Shortly, the end of the season will become imaginable.

Real signs of spring will replace the cruel teasing of a January thaw.

Players and coaches will again start to think of each remaining game as a precious opportunity. Seniors will resolve to somehow go out with fond memories. Coaches will again sound credible when they describe the upcoming game as crucial.

Losing teams will try to muster the energy to pull off a late-season upset, if only to prove to themselves they really weren't that bad.

Fans and sports writers will be re-energized as they follow and chronicle the end of their favorite team's long odyssey. Cinderella stories will unfold.

Long-awaited title games will finally take place.

Seemingly-long playing careers will come to tearful conclusions. The trophies will be handed out. And those who do such things will note the records broken and the milestones passed.

Nearly all will go away from the process exhausted, and richer for having been a part of it. The deep bonds of friendship and trust that were formed during the season's triumphs and failures will endure for a lifetime.

And no one will remember the dog days.

These pages are maintained by Jerry Pyle pyle@cord.edu. These articles are copyrighted © and may not be published or reproduced without the express permission of Jerry Pyle.

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