If you were looking at your calendar sometime after rousing yourself from slumber, looking out the window at the blindingly white landscape, and then either deciding to go back to bed or wishing you could, you might have noticed Thursday was Boxing Day.

Established long before Kwanzaa, the other cultural observance which starts on the same day, Boxing Day – also known as St. Stephen’s Day – was established sometime in the Middle Ages almost 1,000 years ago as a traditional day to give gifts to servants/service workers. The tradition grew to include boxing up unwanted or unneeded clothing and other items to give to the poor.

In non-British colonies, it’s simply “the day after” and another day for a shopping onslaught at local malls as people return or exchange gifts.

In the spirit of Boxing Day, it’s a good time to consider gifts that sports fans and couch potatoes may like to exchange, return or simply “re-gift” and pass on to someone else.

High school basketball fans across the state, but most notably the ones in Eastern Maine who follow Class A ball particularly close, would probably like to exchange the new TV contract The Maine Principals’ Association awarded to Maine Public Broadcasting (MPBC) for one of the old ones between MPBC and Bangor TV station WABI (Channel 5).

The old deal, in effect for 50 years, resulted in the live broadcasts of all Eastern Maine Class A boys and girls tournament games. The new one will put both Eastern and Western tourney games on TV in their respective markets, but the quarterfinal games will no longer be part of the package due to budgetary constraints.

The fact the games are on at all is a testament to their popularity in this state, and it is a positive thing that all of the later round action from regional semifinals on will be televised on one statewide network, but the loss of the quarterfinal broadcasts is a further erosion of local high school sports coverage.

For the second straight year, none of the three state championship football games were available on any affiliated TV stations. Local high school and even college baseball is almost non-existent on TV. Other sports like soccer, field hockey and even hockey games are rarely televised by anything other than local independent stations, usually on a tape-delayed basis.

In hindsight, officials at Bangor TV station WABI would likely gladly have exchanged Maine’s first round playoff football game for the quarterfinal as the first one was a thrilling, come-from-behind win for the Black Bears while the quarterfinal was a blowout loss. Not that WABI officials had a choice, since budget limits wouldn’t allow them to send a full crew to do the game and no other station was airing Maine’s win over Appalachian State. If not for those handicaps, WABI likely would have aired both games.

New York Giants football fans would like to be able to return the current system used by Fox Network officials to determine which NFL games air in the Bangor market on WCKD (Ch. 33) to the old one used by WABI, when it carried NFC, not AFC, games. It used to be the Giants were the first choice for local affiliates and as such, almost always were on the tube. Due to WCKD’s status as a secondary Fox Network sports affiliate, station officials can still request certain teams, but rarely get them, as the network prefers to air the “game of the week” instead.

Moviegoers who actually shelled out real money to sit through “Like Mike” and the big screen debut of Lil Bow Wow – even the most ardent basketball fans among them – would have had their time and money better spent if they’d traded in their tickets to that for ones to The Rookie, starring Dennis Quaid. Inspirational and uplifting are good words to describe The Rookie, whereas cliched and schlocky are words best-suited for Like Mike which, judging from box office earnings, viewers didn’t.

Andrew Neff can be reached at 990-8205, 1-800-310-8600, or aneff@bangordailynews.net