It’s that time again.  Time to take notice and realize that the NHL and NBA seasons start way too soon.  It could also be that they end in June, way too late.  Either way, they are burning the public out.  Their schedule is way too long.

Tonight is the NHL’s opening night and it feels like, your kidding, right, didn’t it just end like a month ago? 

The NHL has a laundry list of problems besides the fact that their greatest star, Wayne Gretzky, couldn’t make things work in the desert (Phoenix). 

How the NHL ever thought it would make it in any warm-weather climate is tough to figure out.  Besides their one good day, the New Year’s game outdoors, they have an obvious identity problem.   

The attraction to watching sports is seeing others who can play them better than you.  But for that to happen, you have to be playing or have played the game.

At any given moment after watching a game, a person should be able to play that sport outdoors.  The NHL would work best where ponds freeze over months at a time and kids go outside and play well into the late afternoon hours. 

As Soccer becomes more mainstream, both hockey and basketball will be forced to make changes.  Both will either have to shorten the amount of games played or the amount of rest between games so their seasons don’t wear down the sporting public’s interest. 

The NFL has shown itself to be the premier league in the country for many reasons.  One reason is because of the length of the season.  Everyone looks forward to football starting back up because its such a long offseason. 

Many sports fans don’t even pay attention to hockey and they are tiring of basketball because it is the same story line year after year.  There’s Kobe and Lebron, and the same cast of stale characters.  Add college hoops to the mix, and the sportsfan just feels innundated with b-ball to the point that they are looking for something different. 

This is where Soccer can come in and fill the gap to change the seasons for all team sports for the better.  The responsibility for Soccer making the intrusion on these other entrenched team sports and making it stick for years to come lies with those who can give Soccer the relevance it deserves in the American sports calendar.