The summer is a notoriously slow time for sports, but there are still several sporting events that I will spend more time watching prior to September than the ZERO minutes I’ll spend watching the NHL Finals.

Here’s a sport by sport breakdown of what I’ll be watching to get me through the summer:

Football

Obviously: Preseason NFL. Got to do some scouting. Starts August 3rd with Indy at Washington in the Hall of Fame Game.

You Know You Will Too: A random Arena League game one Saturday afternoon after taking down too many daiquiris by the pool.

And Don’t Forget: College football kicks off August 30th, which pretty much means I start getting geeked up in late July.

Basketball

Obviously: The NBA Playoffs.

You Know You Will Too: The NBA draft. Highly watchable because it’s riddled with unintentional comedy including rabid Knick Fans and the Clippers lifetime membership in the Top 10 Pick Club.

And Don’t Forget: The Olympics. In case you forgot, the United States didn’t bring home the gold from Athens, only quart sized jars of Greek dressing. It will be interesting to see if we can hold of the Argenitinians this time around. Damn you Ginobili.

Baseball

Obviously: The All-Star Game

You Know You Will Too: A Yanks/Sox game one week night when you’re equally tired of reruns and trying to take home the kind of chicks that go out drinking on a Tuesday.

And Don’t Forget: Omaha. College baseball is decidedly irrelevant until teams reach Omaha, but once they do it’s filled with drama because no lead is insurmountable due to the miracle of the metal bat.

Horse Racing

Obviously: The Belmont Stakes
You Know You Will Too: The Travers Stakes. If Big Brown beats Casino Drive at Belmont, you absolutely have to tune in to ESPN on August 23rd to see if he can pull off the historic four win season.

And Don’t Forget: Palace on a Lake is scheduled to run in June and you know we will provide all the NextRound faithful with where you can watch on the web.

There are also a couple other sporting events that will hit my radar before hockey makes a even the semblance of a blip…

Golf

I always follow the Majors, but this year the U.S. Open should capture everyone’s attention with Tiger coming off knee surgery.

Racing

The Indy 500. Whether you can’t stand Danica Patrick like me or you are a chick and pull for her, you have to check in on the race this Sunday.  She has the same effect on me that Howard Stern has on ultra conservatives: I can’t stand anything about her but for some reason I keep finding myself tuning in.

Call me a chauvinist pig if you want, but I consider that a compliment.

Poker

ESPN has implemented a new approach to televising the Main Event at this year’s World Series of Poker to try to recapture the poker fad from a couple years ago. This year the event will start July 3rd, as usual, but when the tournament gets down to the final 9 players they’re going to freeze the tournament until November 9^th, then bring everyone back to Vegas for the finals.

What if someone dies in the interim? Imagine if some really good pro makes the final table, how much motivation would some degenerate gambler who makes the final table by a stroke of luck have to put a hit out on the pro? Something weird is bound to happen.

Boxing

There are zero great matches this summer. Wladimir Klitschko is going to give some dude named Tony Thompson the pimp treatment, which could be entertaining.

Vernon Forrest is fighting Sergio Mora. If you’re wondering how you know these two names, Forrest beat Sugar Shane Moseley twice during the prime of Moseley’s career and then promptly disappeared after two terrible losses to a Mexican fighter named Ricardo Mayorga who celebrated his victories over Forrest by smoking cigarettes in the ring.

Mora won the first season (aka The Stallone Season) of “The Contender” on NBC.

Olympics

Outside the events I would normally catch (100 Meter Dash, hoops, etc.) I’m interested to see if anyone drops dead — or at least pulls up chocking — during one of the marathons due to subhuman air quality. From what I’ve heard the plan to shoot rockets into the air to dissipate the smog didn’t pan out.

In conclusion, the only thing hockey is good for is annoying me during Sportscenter.

Previous Editions of Turf Toe:

• A Fond Farewell to Those We Will Never Hear from Again
• Booth Previews the Western Conference
• Booth Previews the Eastern Conference
• Has the Sports World Underestimated Memphis?
• Booth Defends His Bracket

“Wicked Case of Turf Toe” is Booth’s regular column dedicated to passing judgment on the world of sports. Click here for the archives.

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