While preparing to address the main theme of this pillar of observation and comment, I am scratching my head and getting dandruff all over my first class Jos. A. Bank blue blazer and wondering why some basketball goon was the coin flipper at the championship college football game.
Was that 55-19 blowout a championship game or a joke?
These puzzlers will rank in my mind with the mysterious disappearance of Judge Crater and why John Henry O'Hara has never received the prominence he so richly deserves.
Was there no icon from the football world to flip the coin? One wonders. But one must soldier on with the lucubrations for today, which is some observations on the National Football League.
It is not yet discernible, but the NFL is corroding. It is tottering and soon the cracks will show. The stuff the coaches and players pull just are not going to stand the test of time.
As the teams approached playoff time, with all sorts of complicated this-n-that combinations possible to see what temas would, finally, emerge into the playoffs, the fans in several cities were ill treated.
How?
Many of the teams did not play their front line players. While folks (i.e., suckers) pay big money to see top football, some coaches held their best guys out of play, saving them for the playoffs.
This is wrong.
But much is wrong in a league that is obessessed with money and personal records and outrageous personal behavior.
Shaun Alexander of the Seahawks, for example, has no concept of the "team" idea. He bellyached because his play wasn't called, "robbing" him, he said, of a chance at a record. Me me me. That's the theme of the NFL.
Randy Moss of the Vikings walked off the field before the game was over. He takes orders from no one, does what he pleases, like so many of his colleagues.
Last year, you will remember, Keyshawn Johnson, a hot dog from the word go, gave his coach a dressing down on the sideline that few who saw it will soon forget. Why did he do it? Because he can.
The NFL players are a gang whose stories are rife with drive by shootings, children out of wedlock, night club murders, beating up girl friends and wives. They are "thugz." An NFL game these days is street gang warfare carried into the taxpayer paid for stadiums. It is the Crips against the Bloods.
One Baltimore player in recent days spoke out about the divisiveness in the team's locker room. That sanctum sanctorum was ultra private in the days when this agent was traipsing around stadiums -- but no characters like these were around.
The showboating is obvious and, I suppose, harmless. Let me substitute the word stupid for harmless. When a wild tribal dance takes place after a simple opening game tackle you wonder.
Some of these celebrations -- over nothing, really -- are on the level of those at national political conventions.
With few exceptions, coaches have little or no control over million dollar players, many of whom have the emotional maturity of a 12 year old girl.
Players hollering and gesticulating to the nearest tv camera (this goes on at college games, too) is an embarassment to watch. It makes an observer feel that he has wandered into the monkey house.
To top it all of, the gang of morons -- former players, for the most part -- who commentate, and lead the cheers in pre-game broadcasts are all part of the show.
It would be a disaster if any of them had to get a real job.