Welcome to "The Dead Zone."

This is the time of year when sports fans are in purgatory.

Football season is over, and the best we can hope for is classic games involving Brett Favre on the NFL Network in tribute to his 10th retirement.

The first pitch of the major league baseball season is more than a month away.

In the meantime, we have to hear about steroids, Manny Ramirez and hope for the Pittsburgh Pirates for six weeks.

March Madness isn't until, well, mid-March. And, I'm sorry, February Frenzy just doesn't do it for me.

The Arena Football League isn't even around anymore to provide a few minutes of diversion from "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" repeats.

No more quick cuts to see Jon Bon Jovi or John Elway in the owner's box.

Shucks.

Sure. There's the NHL and the NBA. But, really, how interesting are those leagues now, anyway?

The biggest drama in the NBA now is just how far will Shaq go to try to finagle a trade back to the Lakers.

He literally has a man crush on Kobe Bryant all of a sudden.

This is an exclusive transcript of intercepted text messages between Shaq and Kobe:

Shaq: "No, I wuv u."

Kobe: "Nuh, uh. I wuv u more."

In the NHL, the only compelling story line is how many goals will the Penguins give up in the third period tonight?

So, here we are, sitting in a sports vacuum.

The biggest thing we have to look forward to is how high will 334-pound B.J. Raji jump in the vertical leap drill at the NFL Scouting Combine — and what the Richter Scale reading will be when he lands.

There are no big fights scheduled for this month — unless you count the JoanRivers-Dennis Rodman throw down on the "Celebrity Apprentice."

That could be mildly entertaining from a sports view.

Under normal circumstances, the World Baseball Classic would be of some interest, but there are some big stars sitting it out.

Put OilCan Boyd, who wants to make a comeback at age 49 and 18 years removed from his last major league pitch, on the United States team and I will watch just for the pure macabre curiosity.

Make Rickey Henderson the leadoff hitter on that team, and I'm planted on my sofa for every game just to see who will break a hip first.

But that isn't likely to happen.

The PGAand LPGA tours are under way, but the PGA is sans Tiger and the LPGA lost Annika Sorenstam to Brett Favreitis.

Michelle Wie

almost won, so that is something. But she's just as likely to shoot her age over par in her next event.NASCAR got its engines revving last weekend inDaytona. It's a long season, however.I don't profess to know much about auto racing — it's an acquired taste and one I haven't quite grown a palate for — but the Daytona 500 seemed more like the Pro Bowl of racing than the Super Bowl.So, what else is there? Soccer? Lacrosse? Cricket? MMA? Poker? The Bassmaster?How about I see you in March.Mike Kilroy is a staff writer for the Butler Eagle.