Still Keeping Score

Too much of anything isn't good for you.  Too many girlfriends can get a guy killed.  Too many twinkees can make a guy fat.  Too many beers can make a guy drunk AND fat.  So how many NFL regular season games is too much? Utilizing a basketball analogy, the NFL is putting on a full court press on adding two more regular season games every year.  We don't know if that means an extra bye week (sorry fantasy football fanatics) will be added to help the players out with two additional weeks of games that count.  So, an extra bye week and two more 'real' NFL contests suggests such a season would have started a few weeks ago.  Full on football before the leaves begin to turn or all the kids get back to school and folks stop watering the lawn in hopes of less yard work to end the summer. Setting traditional time lines aside, there are some substantive hurdles to consider before we all jump feet first into the idea that more is better.  The NFL has pre...

Apparently, when Texas decided to keep the remnants of the Big-12 together, the conference shuffle didn't stop. It just moved to another old west shoot-out between the WAC and Mountain West. The first jerk of the knee lends most folks to blame the chase for the almighty dollar, but it may be more about survival than greed in the latest move toward "super" conferences. ESPN.com released an interesting report on the latest numbers regarding NCAA economics and in that article, it notes only "14 of the 120 Football Bowl Subdivision schools made money from campus athletics in the 2009 fiscal year, down from 25 the year before." Of course the same company that published that report offered BYU four million bucks for four home games in 2011. I'm no math major, but that any time the numbers break down into a cool million per contest, it is a pop quiz worth another look. That kind of cash will motivate any school to look beyond the super conference into corporation...

Well, the four letter network has finally called off the emergency alert status, and have returned to displaying dunks, home runs and occasional sports news.  Brett Favre decided to play football again, thus returning the focus of fall to watching the pigskin fly and eventually blowing some leaves into the neighbor's yard.  When future generations look back at all of this, they are going to laugh.  A lot.  And not at the first ballot Hall of Fame quarterback.  No, those who have a realistic sense of perspective will gain quite a bit of fun observing the inane amount of coverage dedicated to a football player's desire to continue playing -- get this -- football. This story may turn out to be the most 'much ado about nothing' in the history of sports.  If I had the guy's talent, I would play that great game of football for as long as I could walk.  That is all he is doing.  Taking some time each of the last few years to see if he can get out there...