Minor league sports like AA and AAA baseball, CBA basketball and arena football fall on their faces quite regularly down here in the sunny southland. A team comes to town amid a bunch of hoopla, people go to the games for a couple of years, attendance drops, and the team folds.

But the one sport that southerners in mid-sized cities like Pensacola, Florida and Mobile, Alabama have taken to their hearts is hockey. Go figure. Most of the people down here have never seen ice other than what's in their beverage of choice. Do we really believe all these good-ole-boys down here have developed an interest in the intricacies of a game played while propelling oneself around an ice-filled enclosure wearing, get this, ice skates?

Nah! It's the blood. Gotta be the blood.

Bruce