This is a tough time for fans of professional sports. There’s not much going on in the sports world right now: football is over, and the draft is months away; spring training has just begun in Major League Baseball, and the National Basketball Association is slowly moving through the mid-season doldrums toward the playoffs. Things are so rough for sports fans that people have resorted to checking hockey scores. Hockey?!

Yes, March is definitely the most boring time of year in professional sports. The die-hard NBA fan will try to convince you that this time of year is great for basketball, that mid-season battles for first place will translate into exciting playoff races. This is a difficult claim to support, however, as the NBA playoffs do not start until April 20, six full weeks from now. With so much time remaining in the season, it is hard to imagine that there will be any truly meaningful games for quite some time. Furthermore, the old saying that an NBA game isn’t worth watching until the fourth quarter holds true for the season as well. With the powerhouse teams that exist today, most fans already know who’s headed to the finals. It is as easy as choosing LeBron for MVP. While NBA basketball might provide a brief respite from March boredom, the current point in the season does not provide the type of excitement that sports fans crave.

All hockey jokes aside, the NHL season progresses at an even slower rate than the NBA. Regular season competition is scheduled to continue until April 27. This means that, at this point in the season, games are even less meaningful and even more boring. There are seven full weeks left — plenty of time for the seven teams in each division not currently in playoff contention to make a run. Overall, mid-season hockey remains an unsatisfying fix for the professional sports fan.

Watching preseason baseball is completely unsatisfying in a manner similar to that of preseason football. Superstars play for only a small portion of the game and are quickly replaced by completely random players who may not be around at the start of the regular season. Teams shuffle personnel around with the intention of seeing who fits rather than trying to win. Let’s be real: No one wants to watch a sporting event in which neither team is actively trying to win the game.

In the end, it seems that all we can really do is just sit back and wait. Hopefully it won’t be too bad. After all, March is only 31 days long.