I'm looking forward to baseball as much as the next fan...although as a Cubs fan I sometimes wonder WHY...there's always that little back-of-the-mind voice saying, "Why waste your time?"

However, to find an endeavor that so fully celebrates the human body's potential for both strength and beauty, one would be hard-pressed to find an alternative to the "spart" (sport + art) of skating.

The lamest part of this controversy is believing that mistake-free football (i.e. no offsides, no broken plays due to missed audibles) is a laudable goal. Sure the crowds don't want to see incompetent football, but that is not a problem. Mistakes make for great drama.

Taken one step further: In the NBA, can you imagine the referee handing a free throw shooter a pair of noise-cancelling headphones as a gigantic curtain drops behind the basket to protect the poor millionaire athlete from seeing a sea of waving hands?

How far are we away from this bizarre really?

Forgive me if I'm dreaming, but didn't Paul Brown try this during the 1960s with the old Cleveland Browns? I seem to remember hilarious tales of plays being radioed to the QB, and the amount of interference being great enough that fans were treated to the laughable picture of the QB rotating in place, first left, then right, trying to see which position got the best reception? The experiment was scrapped soon thereafter, since the low-tech solution of sending in plays with wide receivers was faster and more accurate.

Seems to me, though, that even if tech is better now (doesn't Motorola pay for the product placement of their headsets on every NFL coach in prime-time TV?), this will not make the game any more robotic than it already is. Plays and patterns have all been computer-generated for years now. The entire ethos of football has become simply an analog of corporatism, with all the players simply playing their role in the strategic plan passed down literally from on high. I once read a Marxist analysis of NFL football in the 1980s which made the point that individualism is discouraged in pro football, that it is the ultimate corporate sport from top to bottom. This seems to me true in every sense of the word; even the rules of the game are designed to lower the risk and increase the predictability of the outcome.

This is why, about a month ago when Super Bowl fever started in earnest here in Chicago, I told an incredulous Bears fan that I thought they were a very boring team, whether or not they were good or successful was irrelevant -- I didn't get much enjoyment out of watching them win OR lose, they were predictable in either instance.

I'd much rather watch the NBA (and my favorite mercurial, erratic team, the Bulls) any night of the week. They still have to actually play the game to find out who is going to win, and how.

...between Kaufman's complaint and your baseball comparison is that in baseball, 90 mph baseballs are being thrown at you. The empty seats have everything to do with the safety of the players.

MLB stadia have shut off the center outfield seats to make a hitting backdrop. This seems to me much like the NFL's plan. Crowd noise that keeps the visiting team (but not the home team) from using audibles would be like opening up those seats, and then having fans who decide to keep still and wear black t-shirts while the home team is batting, but switch to white shirts and jump around a lot while the visitors are batting: a clear, tangible home-field advantage.

thatbob's note about the cyborgization of athletes helps explain FOX's idiotic animated football robot graphic -- they're just showing the future of the NFL.

Wes, how can there be 150 of the best? The difference between #1 and #10 is as great as between #10 and #150.

Besides, doesn't everybody know tennis is a sport and golf is a game, sort of like darts but bigger?

Tennis you have to directly confront and outstrategize and outplay.

Golf is you and an inanimate object (sort of like wanking).

;-)

I still think the Grateful Dead make good music and that Adam Sandler makes good movies.

I really get annoyed at generalizations, even those made by women, that "we" are joyful that football season is coming to a close.

I did NOT watch figure skating this weekend. I watched Inside the NFL. And my season tickets are to the Texans, not to Stars on Ice.

The only comfort I find in the end of football season is that pitchers and catchers report to Spring Training shortly after the Pro Bowl.

The story was run by a local newspaper. It took place in a small town in Entre Rios, a province in Argentina and, considering the source, it is likely true.

http://www.lavoz.com.ar/nota.asp?nota_id=36280

What the other websites that picked it up forgot to mention is that the kid - who is 17 - is mentally retarded - his actual "mind age" being just 11 - and he seemingly had an infection as a result of the tattoo as well.

Not such a fun story anymore ...

I am finding it more and more difficult to be an ignoramoose about the business end of sports. I know too much about Lovie Smith's contract and have heard too much about how the Bears will or will not be able to keep Lance Briggs next year because of the salary cap. This is happening before the Bears play for a Super Bowl, not during the slow-news off-season.

I also know how sports teams blackmail cities into building places of work for some of the richest people in the world. I believe the trust exemption status of baseball comes up all of the time.

Another major sports story that consumed 6 weeks of news coverage was the Red Sox bidding over $50 million to speak to a potential free agent in Japan.

Thank you Voice of Reason for pointing out the obvious. Thank you Voice of Reason for shaming me in my blind and oblivious following of the greedy corporate interest.

The points you bring up have become so commonplace on the sports page, that it's hard to avoid.