Top ten things to do now that football is over

The football season finally came to a close last night as ____ topped ____ by a score of ___ to ___ (I wrote this well before the game even started and chances are I won't come back to edit).

To be honest, these past few weeks, I hardly realized there was still a game to be played, so some of these things I have been doing since the Bears got waxed by the Andre Johnson's, an event that feels like occurred eight months ago. Below are ten things we can do to pass the time until the 2009 season.

10. Start a Madden dynasty of your own
Many NFL fans have Madden; it goes hand-in-hand. So start a new dynasty and talk about it at work like it's a real team. Treat it like your baby, like Angelo treats the Bears.

9. Go to Church
No "The game is at 12" excuses anymore. Go to mass, the Man is so mad at you. Atheist football fans, just keep doin' what you're doin'.

8. Study for exams
Midterms are this week for many young college students on the quarter system, and even those that go to schools with the traditional course layout, tests are coming up sooner than you think. There will be no distractions. Or at the very least, study the Madden guide to improve the dynasty you are to be pimping.

7. Calculate your Pro-Bowl bets
The only way I am watching the Pro-Bowl is if some NFL official personally hands me money and says "Please bet on our game with this." I would surely take the "over" on such bets as "Amount of players who will back out of the game +/- 25" and the "under" on "times a defense blitzes +/- 2."

6. Come up with top ten lists of your own
With the recent departures of Zach Martin and Scott Phillips, we are possibly looking for a guy who is willing to come in from the bullpen and create with a list once every few weeks. (Like a 2005 Neal Cotts, not 2007 or even 2008 for that matter). That person could be you! Grandpa, you want in???

5. Get ready for the Rookie/Sophomore Showdown
With no Bulls in the the All-Star game for possibly the last time (Everybody shed a tear for 11-year-occurrence) why not watch King Rose lead a freshmen team that is three-times more talented than a Bulls squad he plays on now. What is truly sad is the fact that Noah didn't make the lowly sophomore squad.

4. Watch Kiper and McShay duke it out
For those of you football die-hards that can't hear enough about third-string tight ends from Oregon or back-up kickers who declared early, then this should be your #1. To me, these guys are totally pointless. And they did it to themselves, for this simple reason: They update their mock drafts more often than some people go to the bathroom. McShay dropped Crabtree three spots to Oakland recently. Why? Did Todd wake up and like Mark Sanchez a little more that morning? And then they decide to argue about it, which is ridiculous because by the time the whole thing is all said-and-done, the first ten picked were in eight different spots of Kiper's top-ten at some point in this whole time. This is making getting me upset, don't do #4.

3. Gear up for Spring Training
I cannot wait for baseball to start. So much of my life will change. Sports Center will once again become my most-viewed TV show, and this feeling of extreme boredom caused by basketball and hockey will be no more. While the Cubs are the cream of the NL crop (ask Kenny), the Sox, though typically unpredictable, I cannot say the same for.

2. Pick up fantasy earnings
Fantasy football has been over for a month at the earliest now and while I did not have a lot of success, many of you readers probably did. There is on occasion however, a problem with actually getting the money. I won a league a few years back and had to wait until early April to get my winnings because my clown of a commissioner decided to take the money with him to Vegas, where he just so happened to have blown it all away (He's actually a nice guy and has since ridded himself of the "clown" status). Colleague Ricky O'D is backing out of a baseball league he has competed in for numerous years now because he is yet to be paid for winning his fantasy football league with the same group of guys (He drafted Tom Brady with his first pick too).

1. T.O.-TV

This says it all.