Y'all, Deadspin is Pleased to Announce the Commencement of ... Silly Season!

The sports calendar is loaded right now. The Stanley Cup playoffs are in full swing. The NBA is right about to start its postseason, NFL teams are in training camp, and in baseball, the Los Angeles Dodgers are…

…looking at a whole lot of ass?

Well, that beats the St. Louis Cardinals having to play a buttload of games over the next month-plus after having two weeks of their schedule wiped out by coronavirus.

It’s stupid, and the Cardinals really maybe shouldn’t be playing at all, but this is a stupid time we’re living in. How stupid? Well, here’s a real headline from ESPN — in fact, the No. 3 story on the Worldwide Leader’s “Top Headlines” as of Friday afternoon:

“ Dallas Cowboys using popsicles as way to cool off players”

See, the Cowboys are holding training camp in Texas, where it is hot during August. So they need to make sure the players don’t get too hot. And, would you believe it? One of the ways that they’re helping these guys stay cool is to give them lightly flavored ice ice cubes on sticks.

“The whole premise of it is to try to take down your core temperature and whatnot,” said Cowboys center Joe Looney. “I’m a big guy with a bunch of hair so I need it. I’m in there dumping water on my head. I think it’s wonderful. Practicing in Texas presents a different challenge for us, just getting used to the heat. I think it’s an amazing technique that we can go in there, grab a popsicle, cool down and then head back out to practice and hit it real hard.”

It’s not really clear what “a bunch of hair” has to do with it. Also, it wasn’t even so ludicrously hot?

“The temperature at the start of practice was around 85 degrees but it was above 90 by the time the session ended,” ESPN’s Todd Archer wrote. That’s… what it’s like for weather in a lot of the country? Yes, as Archer noted, the forecast for the day in Dallas was triple-digit heat, but Mike McCarthy scheduled practice for the morning to avoid that.

Also, as Archer wrote, “the Cowboys can use Ford Center, their 12,000-seat indoor facility, but McCarthy’s preference is to practice outside as much as possible.”

So, it’s not ludicrously hot relative to other places because the Cowboys practicing earlier in the day, and they have the option to go inside, but their coach likes it better outside, and one of the available refreshments in the field-adjacent tent is a slightly different version of shoving a few ice chips in your mouth to cool down.

In other news, Patriots coach Bill Belichick said, “I think all of our rookies have worked extremely hard.”

What a whirlwind.