Welcome to the most useless week in sports everybody.

Granted there is some college basketball, both here at Eastern and around the nation that is worth watching, and NBA in the middle of their season, but lets not lie to ourselves here. There is nothing worse than the week leading up to the Super Bowl in sports.

This week is just a tryout for whoever wants to be the next Deion “Primetime” Sanders. So I guess that means Philadelphia Eagles Wide Receiver (no, not Terrell Owens) Freddie Mitchell has taken the baton and ran.

It’s just too bad that Mitchell will probably be running his mouth more than he will be running with the football when the game itself finally rolls around.

So far, if one was to turn on ESPN, he or she could not get through any sort of telecast without the wide receiver’s name being mentioned and his mug plastered on the TV with a bow tie or whatever he decided to wear that day.

This isn’t sports news, this is entertainment weekly.

By now, though, how could any sports information show have anymore information to give, besides the daily, or hourly, update on Owens’ leg.

The Super Bowl takes up so much attention in American culture for the next week nobody can seem to avoid it. But the worst part of it all is just that there is nothing to listen to even though everybody is talking.

Mitchell has determined not only is he worthy of becoming a reporter (in jest when he interviewed a fellow wide receiver with other reporters around) but that he can rename a delivering company after himself.

“Fred-ex” may just land him a new endorsement deal, but in reality the player is an underachieving, former first-round pick who has never become more than the Eagles’ third option when all the receivers are healthy.

But who would know that by now considering all that the reporters are concentrating on is what he will say next instead of what he actually does on the field.

So we, as television consumers and junkies, are subjected to this barrage of running mouths and, as sports fans, don’t have much else to turn to.

As great as playoff football is, I don’t think there is a more disappointing finish to a season than the Super Bowl simply because the hype supersedes the game.

The sports that do not turn their finales into showcase events for entertainment are the true endings to work that is put in by athletes. Nothing can even compare to the month-long tournament in college basketball that ends a season for college athletes with perhaps the most exciting sports entertainment to be viewed all year long.

Especially when here at Eastern the pureness of sport is showcased by student athletes who play for the love of the game, and not much more, Super Bowl week shows the opposite end of the spectrum.

The glitz and glamour of the Super Bowl outshines those who take their sports seriously on any level no matter what kind of attention they receive while playing at, say, a small Division I-AA school that competes in the Ohio Valley Conference.

So eat up the mouths spewing on sports networks this week if you so choose, but understand that there are many other athletes who aren’t getting this kind of attention who probably deserve it just as much.