When reading the sports pages (physical or on-line), there are lots of coverage on the sports that are "off-season", or those that have no competition taking place. This leads one to question whether there is an off-season anymore, for the participants and those who follow them alike.
From what I have read, there was a period when there was no such thing as a "full time athlete" — athletes had a "day job" and competed in their sport only when a competition was being held. Even professional athletes held "regular jobs" in period between the end of one season and the beginning of the next. Today high-level professional athletes dedicate most of their time training for the next set of competitions during the off-season. Thus a professional athlete has become a full-time job — an athlete has to dedicate a large portion of one's time and effort on one's field of "work". (This is also a consequence of the length of a sporting season — it has become so long that often there is only a small gap between seasons and athletes have little time to recover from the rigours of the previous season before preparing for the next season.)
In addition to providing coverage to the competitions they are assigned to cover, sports reporters and journalists today have to track off-season activities of the teams and athletes they cover. When there is no news to report, the media often resort to publishing rumours (on player transactions and change of agent/coach, for example) to give an impression that there is something happening to the sport they cover.
One major reason why such rumours are published is that the sports fans today have a large appetite for news on their favourite team/athlete and they want to know what happens to the teams and athletes they follow as soon as it happens. Thanks to the Internet, sports fans today have lots of outlets to talk about any sporting activity on-line. When news on their favourite sport breaks (such as player changing teams), fans often comment on what had just happened in droves. Even when the news is only a rumour (something that, I think, is more likely to occur when there is no games being played), fans can (and often do) fiercely discuss and argue over the consequences of the event, even if it turns out to be proven untrue. When there is no games being played, fans can spend an inordinate of time fantasizing what their favourite team would look like, even if the chance of their desired athletes joining one's favourite team is zero.
Since sports leagues have tangible reasons for not shortening their seasons (less media exposure, smaller television contract, lower gate income), the likelihood of the off-season becoming shorter is quite low. With that being the case, perhaps fans (such as myself) should stop following their favourite sport while no competition is being held.