No Games College Basketball Thursday is the opposite of the Cat’s Meow

Don’t cry, dry your eye, here comes your mother with a pizza pie. Mandatory Credit: Brian Spurlock-USA TODAY Sports

Thursday, December the 26th or the day that the college basketball world stopped.

That is right, kiddos. There happens to be as many college basketball games on your picture-box today as there will be reruns of Teddy Ruxpin (I miss you, Teddy). Does that make you sad? I bet it does. I mean, at least it should. You just got done spending all this time with your (supposed) family, listening about your cousin Bobby’s brilliant plan of selling his plasma for a Wii Fit Plus and learning that Grandma Rose used to work part-time at a brothel in Atlanta during the war.

All of that is to say that you could sure use a few hours of relax time. But alas, there are no Jabari Parker jumpers, Andrew Wiggins dunks, Julius Randle monster-boards, Anthony Drmic threes, Dick Vitale yellings, Antoine Mason scorings for something called the Purple Eagles or even a Gus Johnson ulcer induced epileptic scream fit, in your future. Really, simply, sad face — mine looks like this, :*(

I guess, if you want to that is, you can spend even more time with your family. Possibly find out about Uncle Tim’s exploits as an amateur filmmaker. Who knows, maybe it means he took some pictures of some naked people or something — likely something or something about monkeys, but F semantics.

Another option can be you, you know, doing something charitable. You can go to the Salvation Army to donate some of the clothes you don’t need anymore for people who do, find a homeless guy in the city and throw a dime in his general direction and/or (and is probably better) go teach a group a young people — at a place where young people hangout — how to properly guard a pick-and-roll.

Really, all of that nonsense is up to you.

Let me tell you what I will be doing, though. I will sit in my living room, stare at my TV, think about the time Bootsy Thornton scored 40 points on the Duke Blue Devils (history, look it up) and ask my children to reenact all the players who declared early entry to the NBA Draft and shouldn’t have.

Picture it now; a two-year-old who just had a solid but average NCAA Tournament run, declaring for the NBA Draft, only to go undrafted and settling for a career playing overseas. All of that while her five-year-old sibling tore her ACL and has been forced to call MAAC games for a living. Dream big, kids. Dream big.

There might be some even more solid options for you (Not for me. Bootsy, my two and five year-olds and I are all set). Maybe your local high school team is playing a game. If you have a good enough imagination you can pretend they are adults, women and are two teams in the WNBA. The style of play isn’t that much different and the two dollar cover to go see the Local McLobsters play the Crosstown Unicorns is a far better deal than shilling money to go see a real WNBA game.

Then again, movies are a decent option. I mean, if you have 40 bones to blow on you and a loved one. I will tell you one thing. I don’t love anyone enough in my life — sans my kids (which is iffy, at best) — to dump that kind of coin for only two hours. Unless the movie is featuring Christian Slater’s triumphant return as a leading man, Christina Ricci randomly proposing to me for some reason or a battle of dinosaurs against aliens who later team up to stop the zombie plague.

Please and no thank you. Again, unless it has something to do with Ricci.

(note to self: call Christian Slater and Christina Ricci’s agents, pitch them a movie about dinosaurs, aliens, zombies and Ricci marrying me for no other reason than fulfilling a semi-chubby guy’s dream)

You can always opt for rest. Sleep in, take a nap every three hours and watch a Dexter marathon. Those all sound like swell things, but only if Netflix allows for such awesome, novel ideas as complete series, new titles (not “new” as in 10 years old new either, Netflix) or even adult-movies. Heck, even my kids are sick of watching the same gosh slam Mickey Mouse every day. Netflix, memo to you, fix your shenanigans or I’ll resort to illegal streaming. Giggidy, I kid Netflix. You have my broken, cold and nearly soulless heart forever.

There is one final, desperate option. We as a human species who loves college basketball can finally band together and do something that we should have helped each other do a long, long time ago…..

Eh, let’s just wait until Friday for college basketball games.