...And yet, there's the NCAA telling unpaid scholar-athletes (ahem) that the game needs to be spiced up a bit, so they move kickoffs back to the 30 in an effort to roust more excitement from 3rd string human missle-launchers, or whomever else they send in to mash up the wedges.

I am mighty surprised King missed this connection. I've seen some wonderful players in high school and college end their careers on damn kickoffs, even in silly post-season senior bowls and the like. Knees and legs are the usual victims, but I'd wager that more head injuries occur here than any other situation on the field.

From hazy experiences playing but mostly through observing, it seems that some of the reason that such catastrophic injuries are relatively rare during the remainder of the game are that, for the most part:

(1) you rarely see full-speed collisions between players at max speed on any given play

(2) most collisions both participants see coming (unless you're playing Michigan, in which case it's a flailing arm you see coming, but I digress),

(3) in any given play, there's only a handful of players that are really in on the outcome of the play and will have an outcome on the tackle, whereas, again, on a kickoff it's 11 coming straight at you or your 'wall' at full speed, and odds are *someone* is going to get through and deck somebody

(4) the way special teams are structured the only available incentive for most members of the kicking teams is to blast a highlight reel block or tackle, regardless of where the returner actually is. If you're at a game, pay attention to the entire field and watch the cheap shots all over the place, especially on longer returns -- you won't see it on TV since all attention is on the carrier, but it's there.

I don't know of a prescription to make it safer. I do know it's one reason among millions more to pay these, um, students. Mr. Everett is one lucky (in an unlucky way) SOB to have been wearing an NFL uniform when the injury happened.

The crossover career of us footballers into rugby is short and limited. Trying to deliver a Bob Sanders-hit on a fellow coming across the middle made for a very long, long afternoon for me.

It kind of has a pond-hockey self-enforcing aspect to it. Deliver a shot outside the realm and there's a parking lot of louts and ruffians who'd like to have a word with you...

Rugby isn't exactly without it's head-injured and walking knee-wounded, but I would guess

from the ruggers I've known that overall it's probably more on a level with soccer or wrestling than football. Just a guess.

Either way, there's no comparison to the violence of football kickoffs in rugby. Or, really, in any other sport save for boxing or UFC, and even then I bet the physics of the act aren't as extreme.

I've ran Chicago twice. First time, nearly 30K runners. Good race, 4:30 for a first timer who, yes, was running for equally for fitness and the social scene. In Chicago, training is a superb way for newbies to meet and greets. 2nd time, little more serious. In a spate of just two years, it increased to over 35K registrants. That second time, I couldn't even get moving until it got to about mile 9. The upshot is that my last 6 miles were obscenely (for me) fast splits to get me back to where I wanted to be.

But 45K? Look, the roads aren't getting any wider, and since they won't move the start to 4 AM, the carrying capacity of the race is FAR exceeded.

The Chicago marathon works only for two kinds of runners: the elite racers in the way front, and the barely-walking-it-through at the back. For everyone else, it's a joke. People, they run out of water even in when it's perfect conditions. Part of that is due to water hogs -- remember the hydration deaths a couple years back?

Meanwhile, just north in Milwaukee -- the Lakefront Marathon (runners: 2000 or less) finished with nary a hitch.

So if you're just so committed to running, might I suggest you find yourself another race. This is a party, it's only a marathon in name only.

And if you expect me to cry because you didn't get to finish: welcome to my sorry world of nordic ski racing, kiddos, where we don't even get damn snow anymore.

...which unfortunately included more than a few firing neurons up top.

Good christ almighty, why do interviewers let creeps like Huckabee get away with the slavery remark, when their constituents are largely drawn from the dead-ending 30% that think of slavery as the high cultural and civic water mark of this country's history?

Come on.

And as for those small-fuck towns sitting on 55 to 25 zones, who knew they are such scions of morality? Thank god ambulances don't serve them, since you'd have all sorts of moral relativism going on.

The hedge fund managers and bankers can do another line of coke over this field; everyone who's seeing the VP lineup has it on the head. By golly Jesus McWhitey is going to go ahead and do their bidding for them in the next election again, aren't they?