Now is the spring of our discontent

Made agonizing summer by the mini-camps of June;

And all the stories that loured upon our league

In the deep bosom of the off-season buried.

Now are the Patriots’ brows bound with victo- rious wreaths,

Their bruised arms held high as monuments,

Their underdog status changed to “World Champions.”

Grim-visaged battles have been smoothed into Pro Bowl frivolity,

And now — instead of watching barbed men

Fright the souls of fearful adversaries —

We caper nimbly through baseball season

To the tedious tones of Joe Buck.

But I, that am not suited for sportive alter- nates

Nor made to court a numbing NBA playoffs,

I that am solely stamped and need football’s majesty

To strut before a patriotic ambling Olympics,

I that am curtailed of this fair position,

Cheated of football by dissembling arena-sport,

Unsatisfied, unfinished, sent before my time

Into this dread off-season scarce half my columns written —

And those so lamely and unfathomablely

That Yalies bark at me as I halt by them —

Why, I in this weak piping time of peace

Have no delight to pass away the time,

Unless to spy on coaching changes

And descant on mine own mock drafts.

And therefore since I cannot prove a baseball columnist

To entertain these lazy summer days,

I am determined to prove a humorist

And mock the idle pleasures of these days.

Jokes have I laid, sports-humor dangerous,

By drunken prophecies, libels and dreams

To set my roommates Redskin and the Lion

In deadly hate the one against the other.

And if the Olympics be as inane and boring

As I am football-deprived and ravenous,

This off-season should I closely be mewed up

About a prophecy which says that “P”

Of New England’s crown the usurper shall be.