It’s not the fact that we have an extra day every fourth year because I do understand the reason for it. Because of the inexactness of the actual time it take the earth to rotate around the sun, our calendars don’t exactly match up, creating a difference of about six hours every year. Leap Day is the means to keep the two in sync.

But why did the Powers That Be have to make February one day longer?

The most common response that you’d get is that it’s the shortest month, so why not give it the extra day? Understandable, but they’re missing the point: It’s February!

Nobody wants an extra day of perhaps the worst month on the calendar. Nobody wants an extra day of cold, windy winter (although it may not be the best year to bring up bad winter weather). No child wants an extra day of school, either. Nobody certainly wants an extra day of the blahs.

Why can’t we move Leap Day to a better destination on the calendar: June.

Think about what we’d be getting: An extra day of summer; a nice gift of knowing that every fourth year, your vacation could be one day longer. It would even make Canada Day weekend that little bit more special knowing that Leap Day is involved.

Now, I know that technically, we won’t be guaranteed another actual day of summer. But this move would be a massive psychological boost to the world in a time with a ton of depression. It’s more about the mental effect than anything.

You obviously couldn’t take an extra day onto May, July or August since they already have 31 days and by the end of September, it’s already starting to get into the fall chills.

As for those born on February 29, they’d get the novelty of knowing that they’ll never age another year (technically).

So, if anyone can think of a better reason as to why we can’t move Leap Day, or at least start a campaign to have it considered, I’m all ears. And if the best reason that you can come up with is that “this is how it has always been,” well that’s just not good enough. And if you can find a person that would rather have an extra day in February than in June, well they might be just as crazy as Leap Day’s originators.

But was the Daytona 500 ready for prime time? Well, you can argue both ways.

Many will argue that the best part about NASCAR is the crashes and the Daytona 500 had its fair share of them. In fact, there were 10 cautions with the first coming on only the second lap. That accident took out former Sprint Cup champ Jimmie Johnson and severely hindered Danica Patrick’s chances at doing anything significant – she finished the race but was an astounding 62 laps off the pace.

But that early wreck wasn’t even the most newsworthy or even noteworthy in terms of star power.

While already on a caution, Juan Pablo Montoya lost control of his car and slammed into the back of a truck using a jet engine to clear the track of debris. The explosion – which sadly wasn’t caught very well on camera – and ensuing blaze resulted in a two-plus-hour delay.

With the jet’s fuel tank ruptured, roughly 200 gallons of kerosene poured onto the track, causing a glorious blaze that took the safety crew a while to put out. Thank God that nobody was injured in the wreck or fire – Montoya even hopped out of his wrecked race car and walked away.

But here’s where things went even worse. For two hours viewers were left with nothing but shots of crew trying to clean and repair the track, drivers standing by their cars talking and replays of the race. Does that not sound like great prime time TV to you? It certainly doesn’t to me – the desker assigned to that page.

I know that there’s no way to plan for this sort of thing, but why didn’t FOX have a contingency plan? Did they not have anything plan if there was a delay of any sorts? What if a small pocket of rain had come through – enough to stop the race, but not end it? These sort of things need to be worked out before a major event like this.

For something that is supposed to be NASCAR’s Super Bowl, it was decidedly minor league.

We had some administrative issues which has since been resolved. Now back to our regularly scheduled ramblings.

Canadian Athlete of the Year

Now, I have no problem with Sidney Crosby making the finals. He scored the gold medal winning goal at the Olympics. He had an outstanding season with the Pittsburgh Penguins and a nice playoff run. And this season, he’s tearing it up yet again.

But Georges St. Pierre? This has to be a joke. Or just an example of how popular that Mixed Martial Arts is getting. Now, I like the UFC as much as any other warm-blooded male but GSP should not have made it this far in the voting.

He’s a fine athlete and one of the best pound-for-pound fighters in the world. He’s the welterweight champion in UFC, the world’s biggest MMA competition. But, he only fought two fights in the past year, is that enough to be named athlete of the year?

He also couldn’t defeat either opponent in the ring and had to take the bouts to the judges’ cards, even though he won those decisions unanimously and handily. Also, Dan Hardy was a weak opponent and GSP had already beaten Josh Koscheck before.

The person that won the Lou Marsh Award for outstanding Canadian athlete and the person who should win every Canadian honour this year is Joey Votto. He remarkably led the Reds to the post-season, finished among the leaders in the three triple crown catergories and won the NL MVP award.

That’s a resume that’s much more deserving than a guy who competed for 50 total minutes this year.

So, sure, give St. Pierre the fighter of the year award — something he truly deserves — but don’t tell me he is the athlete of the year.