Is every sports-related show on TV under some legal obligation to consist only of all-or-nothing, rhetorical questions?

Doesn’t that drive you insane?

What if a columnist, desperate for fodder in these first, dreadful days without scholastic sports, submitted a Sunday morning menu without periods or exclamation points? Would you keep reading? Is now a good time to find out?

Would Michael Jordan have allowed himself and any four third-grade Little Dribblers to lose by 39 in an NBA Finals elimination game?

Will one-tenth of the kids playing soccer in Portland, Falmouth and Brunswick this week watch five consecutive minutes of a game on TV once they grow up?

Should it be alarming when the first reaction to Celtics draftee J.R. Giddens was that he “sometimes lacks direction on and off the court?”

Can’t we get 25 more interleague games and one fewer trip every year to Camden Yards and Rogers Centre, or whatever that monument to 1980s excess in Toronto is called these days?

Has there ever been a more hilarious and accurate assessment of professional sports than the late George Carlin’s comparison of warlike football and daydreamy baseball?

Who else thinks it’s a shame that 98 percent of Maine’s Little Leaguers go back to eating cheese puffs and playing Game Boy this week to make way for seven weeks of all-stars?

Why does anybody care what Don Imus thinks about their ethnicity or mine? Don’t they have fingers and a dial that will carry them to Al Franken, Sean Hannity or somebody they don’t find offensive?

Speaking of which, may I slap silly the first play-by-play guy who fulfills the ridiculous request and refers to the Dallas Cowboys’ still-suspended defensive back simply as Adam Jones?

Is there any deader giveaway that the economy’s in the crapper than available Loudon tickets on the weekend of the summer Sprint Cup race?

When did playing golf on a bad knee become courageous? Can’t I throw a pitching wedge from here and hit some 72-year-old doing the same thing times two right now at Springbrook, Fairlawn or Turner Highlands?

Wasn’t this the time last year when all the pink hats and people who think it’s spelled “Big Poppy” were bellyaching about J.D. Drew’s contract?

Does anybody outside Bristol, Conn., or a six-mile radius around St. Petersburg take the Tampa Bay, um, Rays seriously?

Was Pete Sampras the last American male tennis player ever worth skipping “The Price Is Right” to watch live at Wimbledon?

If I can buy a lightning detector online for $189, why are local umpires being required to wait 30 minutes for the end of a thunderstorm that’s already in the next county?

Had the University of Maine won it all in 1981, ’84 or ’86, would the pundits give the Black Bears their props and label Fresno State “the second greatest Cinderella story” in College World Series history?

Could a potential merger between ESPN and NFL Network mean my cable company might finally carry both? Please?

Shouldn’t real labor unions have a conniption when the MLB Players Association uses their name in vain while trying to extort $1 million on behalf of somebody who assaulted his general manager?

Am I out of line to say that if I should perish behind the wheel of a burning top fuel funny car, I want my family and friends to take the next day off?

On the day God passed out personal preferences and genetic codes, did I simply miss standing in the line that would enable me to get mixed martial arts?

Are any broadcasters able to pronounce the letter ‘L’ when it comes at the end of a word?

Assuming he’s able to curb NFL rookie salaries to the gross national product of Ghana, does Roger Goodell already become the greatest professional sports commissioner of all time?

Huh? You want me to stop?

Kalle Oakes is a staff writer. His e-mail is [email protected].