This isn’t sports related, but it’s the best forum that I have so I’ll just come out and say it: I have a beef with Leap Day.

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.

Follow me on Twitter @danbilicki

Thanks to some poor weather on Sunday that carried into Monday morning down on Daytona Beach, Florida, NASCAR’s most prestigious race, the Sprint Cup Series’ Super Bowl, went green in prime time on Monday night.

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.

The NBA and its players really messed this one up. Because everybody waited until the last minute to start serious negotiations, the 2011-12 season is about 90% not going to happen.

There are a lot of questions that should be asked, so why not throw them out here and then not expect a reply from the NBA or the entity formerly known as the union.

-Why wouldn’t these two sides start sitting down with each other seriously back in August, when the players seemed too busy because many were touring the states, playing charity event or pickup games at places like Rucker Park?

-Why wouldn’t the owners realize that they’re also losing money too and damaging their product and its reputation by cancelling games and possibly an entire season. Did they not see how their sister sport, the NHL did? After all, many of these teams play in the same buildings and even have some of the same owners.

-Why didn’t the players start the decertification process earlier if they were seriously interesting in it? When the NFLPA decertified, it was long before games were at risk of being cancelled giving it a realistic chance of helping them get a deal. This move by the NBPA now puts this entire season in serious jeopardy by getting the courts involved.

-Why didn’t the owners offer up a better deal? The proposed 50-50 split in Basketball Related Income seems fair to just about everyone on the outside, but it would be a massive loss for the players, who were getting 57% in the previous deal. I don’t see why the owners couldn’t accept the 52.5% deal the players were offering and then set the deal for only three or four years, then come back to the table.

-Why didn’t the players offer a counter proposal at their press conference? The NBA’s final proposal, as posted by the New York Times, didn’t seem too terrible and featured a system that would have helped level the playing field in the league. So why did the NBPA push the proverbial button and blow things up? Could they not have thrown back a proposal based off of that deal?

-Why were none of the league’s proposals even put to a vote by the union? The NBPA seemed to act like most sports unions, catering to its top stars while somewhat ignoring the middle class. So what if one of these deals was better for those guys, the majority of its constituency? Well, we’ll never know now.

-Will more players head over to Europe and China now to play? One would think that with the season on the verge of cancellation, a mass exodus to the European leagues could start very soon.

-Will a deal get done in time to save the season? Considering the decertification process will tie the two sides up in court for a while now, the best case scenario may be a season like 1999: Shortened to half the length in games, but still seriously compressed. Then, we’d see a lot of out-of-shape players playing a lot of back-to-back-to-back games. That’s not fun for anybody and even further punishment for fans.

Follow me on Twitter @danbilicki

I can understand the rules in sprinting that disallow guys from getting a free shot at trying to get a jump on the gun, but does anybody have the fans in mind?

On Sunday, tens of thousands of people attended the Track & Field World Championships in Daegu, South Korea, many with the intention of just watching Usain Bolt do his thing and dominate the 100-metre dash. Guess what? They were sorely disappointed.

Because the world’s fastest man had a single false start, he was disqualified from the race and sent home. Is that really the way that we should be treating the world’s top stars? The guys that make the most money for their sports?

Well, honestly you do have to give everybody the same rules – I mean, come on, imagine if Peyton Manning had five downs to work with or if foul balls weren’t strikes for Derek Jeter. But this one-strike-and-you’re-out policy over false starts in sprinting makes no sense at all. The previous rule of one false start charged to the field and then individual DQs made a lot more sense. But then guys were still trying to get a jump on the gun the first time around because they knew everyone else was too.

My solution is something similar, but with a soccer twist. Also, it would revert back to the previous rule where in any race a false start is first charged to the field and then runners would be DQ’d. That’s a no-brainer. Now, throughout many tournaments, there are three or four races before you make the final. If the rule was that if you were responsible for a false start charged to the field, you are awarded a yellow card. Get charged twice and your tournament is over.

Doesn’t that solve everything? Guys would be hesitant to try to jump the first gun because they wouldn’t want to carry a yellow and the guys who are patient enough to wait for the real start can afford to make one gaffe in the final and not go home. Doesn’t everybody win here?