February sucks. It's terrible. I hate it more than Christian Bale hates random workers on his set. It makes me feel worse than David after the dentist. Let's count the ways why the second month is the annual black sheep of our calendar year:

1. It’s a short month. So that means your monthly bills come a couple days earlier than usual--big downer for the vast majority of us that are paid weekly or every other week.
2. The weather here in Minnesota has teased us lately with warmer temperatures and some melting snow, like it usually does in February. But we all know that we’re still probably in for at least three feet of snow and a couple months of freezing temps before we can even think about Spring. (By the way, that groundhog is full of crap. We're getting six more weeks of winter every year no matter what that little bastard's shadow does.)
   
3. Valentine's Day is smack dab in the middle of this awful month. If you're single, it's like the world is celebrating your loneliness. If you're in a relationship, it's like the world is celebrating the emptying of your wallet. Either way, this "holiday" is anything but.
4. President's Day: is this even a real holiday? Unless you work at a bank or for the government, there's a very slim chance you get this day off. But on the plus side, just about every local car dealership will run horribly produced commercials with middle-aged men in bad suits screaming about their President's Day sales...oh wait, that sucks too.
5. St. Patrick's Day = not in February. So we still have to wait a month to drink copious amounts of green beer and wear our creative St. Patty's Day shirts.
   
6. Finally, and most importantly, the sports landscape is a barren wasteland of tediously boring offseasons and overblown stories.

That last one is a real pain when you've recently been appointed as a co-writer for a fairly popular football blog. The Super Bowl is already old news. The Pro Bowl matters about as much as company performance matters to CEO bonuses. The draft isn't for another 2 1/2 months, and there are only so many mock drafts you can do on the internet before mathematically covering every possible permutation of the first round.

College basketball is starting to ramp up, but let's face it--we can't fill out brackets in February. The NBA and NHL are trotting out mostly meaningless games the entire month until their playoffs, which take about as long as the playoffs in the movie "BASEketball" anyway. (That Costas line at the end of the trailer is still an all-time great.) Pitchers and catchers are reporting soon for Major League Baseball, but meaningful games are still well over a month away. And since I don't live in a trailer, wear my old leather #3 jacket 360 days a year, or commonly use the phrase "Git 'R Done", I'm not exactly thrilled for the upcoming Daytona 500. (Sorry NASCAR fans; I just don't get it.)

So what are we left with as sports fans during this horrendous month? Anything that would otherwise be a blip on the sports radar gets covered like it was the Watergate scandal. For example, perhaps you may have heard about the transgressions of one Alex Rodriguez in the past couple of days. Or more likely, you've been bludgeoned over the head with the story so much that you can nearly recite his phony apology to Peter Gammons by heart.

But that's nothing compared to the most terrible feature of February. The nastiest part of of the month is much worse than all of the aforementioned horrors combined. Yep, you guessed it--February marks the beginning of Brett Favre's annual "Pay Attention to Me Festival". Since Favre is one of the finest media manipulators of all-time, he also realizes that February is the doldrums of the sports year. He knows that he can dominate the headlines for weeks with virtually no competition, which is precisely why he just announced his "retirement" from the Jets. He even did it in his usual fashion: contacting only the reporters he knew would write about him favorably. The story only mentions notorious Favre teat-sucklers Ed Werder and Chris Mortensen, but I'm sure he still sent a text message to his BFF Peter King. That, or Favre just whispered it to King while they were spooning last night.

We writers, readers, and commenters of the Daily Norseman have got a head start on the Favre over-hype, mostly because A) we need a quarterback, B) Brett Favre is a quarterback, and C) there isn't much else to talk about concerning the Vikings right now. We're all smart enough to know that although Favre just announced his "retirement", this story isn't going away for a very long time. There will be plenty of speculation, conflicting stories, and of course a heavy dose of Favre-flopping ahead. (I just made that word up...feel free to use it.)

So buckle up boys and girls, we have a long and painful ride ahead of us. February only marks the beginning of the Pay Attention to Me Festival.

God I hate February.