The View From Wisconsin

I am openly starting to wonder if all four major league sports need to take a year off.

The complete and total ennui surrounding the NHL lockout in the United States (and, for the most part, in Canada) seems to suggest that people just don't care about sports, unless it is essentially right in front of them.

So I wonder - what would happen if not only the NHL, but the NBA, NFL and Major League Baseball all simply said, "we're taking the year off"?

More than likely, the year off would be labor related, but either way it would force the owners, players and fans of those sports to re-evaluate everything about the game.

And, most importantly, it would cause everyone to re-evaluate the sport's importance to society as a whole.

At this point, it would be hard to say that losing sports wouldn't have an effect on society; between the four major league sports, there's an awful lot of pepole who have a lot of money invested in them.

But, could we all survive without the NFL for a year? Or Baseball? Or Basketball? The litmus test for this idea may be the current hockey lockout.

The old saying is, "if a tree falls in the woods, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"

In that spirit, the question may become, "if a sport doesn't play for a year, and no one cares or notices, does it really matter?"

And, is this something pro sports really wants to do?