How about a one-game playoff for the top two wildcard finishers in each league? From competing divisions, so that no third-place finisher would have a berth.

Result: truly intense division races, since second place would deliver, at best, only half a shot at mainline postseason play. One more team in the wildcard race. And a rested division winner facing a wildcard team staggering in after travel and pitching depletion.

But also the necessary fourth postseason team, an incredible day of baseball, and an outside chance at a Cinderella story.

Football seaon started already?

Kaufman's unique perspective is why we love his columns to begin with, and the other side of that coin is that he doesn't just cover whatever events might be going on in a bland, reporterial(?) style, but he writes about those things which he finds interesting, and about which (therefore) he has interesting things to write. So with regard to begging hiim to write about other things, be careful what you wish for.

On the other hand, when it is all football football football, which is of course his prerogative, I just find myself not reading the columns. I can see from the headline and blurb that it's more NFL picks, and in my opinion that does not make for interesting reading. That of course is my prerogative. And anybody else who is not satisfied with what Kaufman is writing can do the same thing. Why don't we just leave it at that? Because we like his articles and we look forward to reading them, but we are disappointed when it's another round of the same old thing. So we exhort him, please, write about my sport, write about what I'm interested in. And I have been guilty of that myself, and I'm about to be again. But, King, don't take it as negative criticism; see it for what it is: you've set such high standards and high hopes that when you do fall into what many perceive to be mundane, we want you to be better. ("Better," of course, being in the subjective, inconsistent, and diverse eyes of the beholders.)

So. All that said, the US Women's National Team is playing in the World Cup now (and has been for a couple weeks already) and is on to the Semifinals, where they will play Brazil, another absolutely great team. All the games of the World Cup have been aired live on ESPN or ESPN2 and the US has a chance to win it all. It's only once every four years, after all. And hey, you never know, the last time the US won (in '99), one of the players ripped off her shirt.

Had a conversation with another weight-lifter at my gym. Big dude. He knew that I played baseball, I knew that he played football. This guy was a linebacker in NFL Europe - until he broke his back. He can't tell me enough how much he wishes that he had focused on baseball (even though I've heard it enough).

The media is doing a disservice to young American men. The media has a 3 day orgy of football every week. Please quiet down a little, people's lives are getting seriously messed up.

Update - Kevin Everett's injury is no longer life threatening. Game on.

What the Heck pick of the week -- there will be 100 concussions on Sunday. 1000 on Saturday. and 10,000 on Friday.

King: It's not my fault that September baseball isn't nearly as interesting as it used to be.

Translation: The Giants are 18 games back with 5 to play.

and Barry Bonds is King's hot stove. He's learned to stay away. Conditioned response.

Isn't that bad if they just list their picks and leave it at that. But they always go overboard and toss in the why. First off why include the why? Now you have two picks for each game. If you picked the game correctly against the spread but were off base as to how it happened, that's a loser in my book. If you do get both right, that probably means it was so obvious to begin with that 60 percent of a chimpanzee colony could have nailed it, or 59 percent of a human.

All sports are dangerous, Mike. Heck, life is dangerous. Are your concussion guesses including from beans in baseball, heading in soccer, collisions in basketball, fights and collisions in hockey, etc, etc?

Or are you engaging in acts of wild hyperbole that undermine your actual argument?

You think baseball isn't dangerous? You're kidding yourself.

Football and boxing are really above and beyond the other major sports. A simple comparison of the types of and number of injuries sustained in baseball versus football proves this.

I think you are kidding yourself if you don't recognize the difference between the sports. The simple fact that many people consider Brett Favre's consecutive starts for a QB record more impressive than Ripkens (a number in the 100's versus the thousands) is one simple indicator.

I don't think smelling salts are typical in a basketball or baseball medical kit (or used very often). The basic premise of football involves several hard collisions. This is not true of the other sports. The routine actions of a football play will result in severe suspensions in "non-contact" sports.

Tragedy will happen in any sport, but this doesn't mean that the risk involved is equal in all sports.

I will admit that there aren't a lot of great playoff races right now, but what's going on out West between the Diamondbacks, Padres, and Rockies (ROCKIES!!!) is fantastically interesting. The Rockies (ROCKIES!!!) are a game back in the wild card race (which is tied) and have a shot (a long shot, granted) of winning the division for the first time ever.

ESPN has actually started talking about the Rockies, which is how you know that they must actually be doing something interesting, since usually Baseball Tonight is about 25 minutes of yankees talk, and 15 min of highlights from around the AL. I know, I know, nobody will ever care about the Rockies ever, but they're having the best season of their existence, and nobody even notices.