What are we going to do about sports?

That was the question my 12-year-old son asked me recently after the Boston Celtics beat the Dallas Mavericks in a five-game NBA Finals series that lacked much drama.

“What do you mean?” I asked him.

What do we watch or talk about now that basketball is over, and he wrinkled his nose a bit when he mentioned Major League Baseball being one of the few options this time of year. To those hardcore MLB fans that I know, you’re weird but we still love you.

So, I thought about it for a minute, as I pondered options for the next couple months.

One option I thought about is the WNBA. It is reaching its halfway point of the regular season, and the league has never been more popular.

It feels like Caitlin Clark and her Indiana Fever have played Angel Reese and the Chicago Sky at least 10 times this season and there has been high drama in each matchup.

Women’s basketball on the collegiate level is being marketed so much better than the men, as players like Clark, Reece and Cameron Brink were way more recognizable than their men’s counterparts during 2024’s March Madness.

Speaking of, did you watch the NBA Draft on Wednesday?

The Atlanta Hawks selected a tall, skinny French kid with the first pick. Then the Washington Wizards selected a different tall, skinny French kid with the second pick.

Another tall, skinny French kid got picked number nine by the Charlotte Hornets.

Of the American college players that were picked around the French legion, none are household names.

There is also high-level soccer being played in North America and Europe right now on the international level, but after Panama beat the United States on Thursday, the fellas of the USMNT might be on the sidelines when the elimination round starts in the Gold Cup.

Speaking of athletic competition on an international level, this is one of those summers where we all get invested in random sports via the upcoming Olympic Summer Games.

The 2024 Olympics are being held in, you guessed it, France. France is so hot right now – seriously, the French tried to build an athlete village without air conditioners in an effort to be more environmentally friendly.

It made me proud to be an American when our committee told them we’re bringing our own AC, dudes. I just can see it now, row upon row of window units blotting up the views in Paris.

We need our guys and gals from the USA to get plenty of good rest in a cool room if we’re going to do battle with Australia in the pool and China in air rifle.

The Olympics will carry us through the month of July and that gets the calendar closer to the most glorious time of the year, Labor Day and the return of college football.

There are aspects of the current state of college football, such as NIL and the transfer portal, that I believe need reform badly.

And I hate all the conference reshuffling that will begin this year.

Still, I can’t quit college football. Just like Diet Mt. Dew, I can’t stay away from it, even when I want to.

Speaking of, did you see where a team from America lost 41-20, in American football, to Japan this week. It was a game put on by the International Federation of American Football and featured a U20 team from the US.

Look, if we added Jalen Hurts, Alvin Kamara, and Micah Parsons to this team, we beat Japan 100-0, so let’s not compare apples to oranges and overreact too much.

I actually don’t mind it, think about how much the Dream Team at the 1992 Olympics spread the sport of basketball on a global scale. We’re sitting here all these years later having French kids with arms and legs as thick as baguettes become lottery picks by the handful in the NBA.

Maybe now that the world knows we’re not unbeatable in the greatest game ever invented, American football, maybe that means they’ll all start trying harder to knock us off.

Maybe one day we’ll see tall, skinny French dudes getting drafted into the NFL too.

Did I mention how ready I am for the return of college football?

Cliff Furr is the sports editor of The Daily Leader. He can be reached via email at sports@dailyleader.com