This can be a tough time of year for sports bettors. If you aren’t into baseball then there isn’t much to hold your attention. Golf is in an inter-Major lull. So is tennis. Basketball and football are technically on, but in versions that are far from captivating. Horse racing is in a lull until Saratoga and Del Mar get fired up. There is a bit of soccer, but not the thrilling international action of the spring and early summer. The Olympics are still a month away, and real football action is almost two months away. If you don’t like betting on baseball then you could be in some real trouble.

What’s a guy (or gal) to do? The obvious answer would be to start betting on baseball, but that’s probably not a helpful suggestion. Instead, here are 10 things you could do to fill your time until a sport you actually want to bet on rolls around:

1. Go outside. See your TV? Of course you do, you are always in front of it. See above it? There is probably a wall there. Somewhere behind that wall is this magical place called outside. It’s warm and nice. You should check it out some time.

2. Pout. It’s not fair that sports leagues set it up so that you are bored in summer, is it? No! I don’t know for sure, but maybe pouting about it will make it better. It might work even better if you throw something.

3. Practice pouting. If you feel like pouting seems a bit extreme then you could always get some practice in for next season. At some point it is guaranteed that a call will go against you, or a team you bet on will forget to show up, or they’ll build up a lead and then coast so the bad guys cover the spread at the last second. If you practice pouting now then you will be more ready to do your best when you have to do it for real then.

4. Meet people. Reportedly, there are people out there who think about other things than just sports and sports betting all the time. I don’t know any, and I certainly don’t know how to meet them, but if you try you might get lucky and figure it out.

5. Watch other sports. Just because there is nothing you would normally watch on TV, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t stuff to watch. Right now on my TV I can watch darts, cricket, bowling and a lumberjack competition. That’s entertainment. I feel like a better person already for having widened my horizon.

6. Find other things to bet on. There’s a fly and a spider on my window. I bet that the spider will move first, largely because there is some real value in him as a +175 underdog.

7. Corrupt a child. Kids grasp math surprisingly quickly if it is presented to them in an interesting way. Find the nearest kid you know – the younger the better – and teach them the basics of calculating odds. They’ll be much better off for it, and their parents will be thankful. Just make sure that it is a kid you know – there are more problems than I can describe with doing this with some random kid on the street.

8. Sleep. Just think ahead to what weekends will be like through the fall – college football Thursday and Friday nights, four or five games on Saturday, and three sets of games Sunday. Exhausting. I don’t even want to consider Monday night, or what happens when the baseball playoffs roll around. You’ll tire yourself out then, so use this time to get some well deserved rest.

9. Look back. This is easiest if you keep good records. Look back at every game you lost in the last year. tell yourself why you knew that the other team was going to win and how you meant to make the winning bet if only someone hadn’t screwed it all up for you. This kind of justification is crucial to being a sports bettor, so keep practicing until you get it right. Just remember, though – every single game you won was a perfect pick that went exactly as you expected.

10. Scout cheerleaders. Cheerleaders are at least as important as the players in modern football. Through the wonders of the internet you can easily see what both college and pro squads have to offer in their crucial fourth squad (fourth after offense, defense, and special teams – though that is definitely not by order of preference). Miami and Dallas get the traditional attention, but I like the directions taken by Baltimore and Cleveland, and what a lot of college teams are offering makes me more than optimistic about the future of our continent.