Funny thing, NFL schedules. Fans and journalists yammer, before the season, about how easy or tough this or that team’s schedule is. And then they play the games … Which this year has led to an unexpected, semi-elite showdown of division-leading 7-2 teams, the Los Angeles Rams and Minnesota Vikings teams. Teams who, two months […]

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OK, everyone who predicted the 2017 Los Angeles Rams would win six of their first eight games, with Jared Goff in the upper third of the league in passing yards (2,030, ninth) and quarterback rating (97.9, ninth) … please stand up. All of you standing … thanks to owning up to your outrageous lies. We […]

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The National Football league prefers to focus all attention on what happens between the lines, even when brains are being battered. So we can be confident that league executives took no pleasure in the confusing mess that was the players’ protest during the national anthems at 14 stadiums today. The protests were not unexpected. They […]

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By population, the city of San Diego ranks No. 8 in the country, with approximately 1.4 million residents. By professional sports teams, however, San Diego now ranks perhaps No. 40 in the U.S. It has baseball’s San Diego Padres … and we are done talking about Big Four U.S. sports teams based in one of […]

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Young sports fan me, ages 9 to maybe 15, would have been very happy with how this day turned out. My two favorite pro teams won! Dodgers 5, Philadelphia 4, leaving them one victory shy of clinching the National League West. The Rams 41-39 over the San Francisco 49ers, their greatest rivals, on the Thursday […]

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So, the NFL. The pain begins anew, tomorrow, with the New England Patriots and the not annually concussed Tom Brady playing the Kansas City Chiefs. The initial round of maiming for the 2017 iteration of a dead-end sport will be in prime time. Which prompts me to think about the two teams in greater Los […]

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Oh, for the comparatively sane salaries of American sports! The NFL gives out big contracts but rarely means it — most of the money is not guaranteed and often is not paid out. The NBA spends enormous sums on players but 1) the league has a salary cap, which taxes big-spending clubs and 2) its […]

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This would not be as annoying if it were not about the New England Patriots. Generally, the rest of the National Football League — and their fans – hate the Patriots. Why? For the usual reasons. “They’re better than us” would be the overarching explanation. Most Super Bowl victories (five); most Super Bowl appearances (nine); […]

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Another story, another alarming connection between NFL players and brain damage. How long can the league semi-ignore this and hope it goes away? That $765 million settlement the NFL made in 2013, concerning former players with brain damage … now seems so 20th century. It is going to cost the league more money than that. […]

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I love it when onetime brash young athletes emerge as critics of “kids these days”. Whether it is Charles Barkley going on and on how he and other players back in the day (the 1990s, I suppose) would handle LeBron James … to Jeff Kent being driven to distraction by the antics of a young […]

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