NFL Follies: "Billion dollar teams choosing to fail rather than sign Kaepernick is a scandal for reasons beyond wins and losses."

I'm told that the national concussion league's playoffs begin this weekend, moving from wild cards and betting lines toward the inevitable Stupor Bowl, which exists for otherwise intelligent people to indulge their childlike glee while comparing the merits of advertisements designed to relieve them of their money.

Meanwhile, Dave Zirin remains the only sportswriter who matters, because he writes about things that ... matter.

Zirin places sports into a context, as a part of life, not removed from it. I only wish he had time to bring the same skill set to beer writing, which is in a wretched condition these days.

As a prelude to Zirin, consider this: Colts fans offended by anthem kneeling could receive refunds under legislative proposal.

Colts management tanked its season after it became obvious Andrew Luck wouldn't return -- but fans are strongly urged to be outraged by freedom of expression and civil rights, not the team's ineptitude.

Uh huh.

The NFL Chose to Tank Its Season Rather Than Sign Colin Kaepernick, by Dave Zirin (The Nation)

Billion dollar teams choosing to fail rather than sign Kaepernick is a scandal for reasons beyond wins and losses.

... That is why the sports story of 2017 was how many NFL teams chose to flush their seasons, screw their fan bases, and gut the local economies that had lavished them with tax payer dollars rather than sign free agent quarterback Colin Kaepernick ...

... This matters not only because it reveals the moral rot of a league that would sign abusers of women before people who have given time and money to organizations that empower women or a league that lives in fear of the tweets of a racist autocrat with a 32 percent approval rating. It matters because so many of the above teams cited have stadiums at least partially built on the public dime. Whether you are a sports fan or not, you are subsidizing these organizations. By fielding an inferior product, that means fewer fans in the seats, fewer people in the bars and restaurants, fewer rooms filled at the hotels. It means that the always exaggerated bang-for-your-buck that comes from subsidizing a stadium was muted just so NFL owners could send a shot across the bow to other players that political talk would not be tolerated. Of course, all they did was spur more resistance.

Kaepernick’s current collusion lawsuit against the NFL should not be complicated. It should be as basic as showing videotape from the 2017 season and asking the question, “Why would multiple NFL teams with playoff hopes willingly choose to tank rather than sign me? Why was Tom Savage put under center only to be concussed?” To even ask the question is to answer it: the Bob McNairs and John Elways of the world hate the idea of a free-thinking, openly anti-racist player more than they love the idea of winning a Super Bowl. That damns this league as much as hiding concussion data, and ignoring instances of violence against women. It’s more evidence that the league’s moral compass points in one direction: it’s not toward money and it’s not toward winning. It’s toward remaking this country in their political image: an image where billionaires make the decisions and the rest of us just shut up, work, and salute on demand.

Sporting news: AFC Wimbledon versus greyhound racing in a battle of London traditions.

Note the proximity of the pet store.

Three years ago, I was delighted to indulge in a quintessential "old" London experience: Pie, mash, eel and liquor (the latter is gravy).

Today in London.

Sadly, A. Cooke's has since lost its lease after more than a century in operation, which makes me even happier to have supped in the epicenter of Shepherd's Bush -- home of the 'orrible Who.

Roughly seven miles south of Shepherd's Bush is the London neighborhood described in this "long read." The rising fortunes of a venerable local football club are contrasted with the overall decline in the popularity of greyhound racing.

It's gentrification with a twist, and worth a look.

Underdog eat underdog: the victims of football’s greatest fairytale, by Oliver Bullough (The Guardian)

AFC Wimbledon are a fan-owned team who have beaten the odds. But there’s a catch. They can’t have the happy ending they want unless the last greyhound racing track in London is demolished.

From boxing to Westerns ... to pro football?

By Tuesday of last week, it occurred to me that even though I'd avoided viewing the NFL's championship game as it occurred, Katy Perry's 13-minute Super Bowl halftime show could still be seen on YouTube.

I stopped watching it after an hour.

I've stopped watching football altogether. Brain injuries in progress just aren't that entertaining to me.

Lexington: The end zone (The Economist)

... The mingling of football and politics stretches back to the turn of the century, when Theodore Roosevelt, who worried that a fondness for billiards had made the country’s ruling class soft, brokered a deal to make football safer. The three most recent Republican presidents were all cheerleaders, before that activity came to be considered girlie. Hunter S. Thompson once spent most of an hour talking football with Richard Nixon. “Whatever else might be said about Nixon—and there is still serious doubt in my mind that he could pass for human,” wrote Thompson, “he is a goddam stone fanatic on every facet of pro football.”

Though it may not seem like it, the days of politicians using football to relate to ordinary Americans are numbered. This Super Bowl has an extra edge because it is the first since actuaries for the NFL, which runs the professional game, estimated that a third of ex-pros may eventually suffer brain damage. Put another way, 35 men on the pitch in Phoenix can be expected to endure early-onset Alzheimer’s or dementia pugilistica for the entertainment of everyone else. (The NFL agreed to set up a fund to compensate players with brain injuries in 2013.)

Basketball's Steve Nash: "A voice of resistance when it mattered most."

As one of the few sportswriters who truly matter, Dave Zirin's essays always are a must read for me. That's because the world of sports does not exist in a vacuum, untethered to society in the main. When you've read one account of a high school football game, you've read them all, but blessed are those capable of viewing sports in larger context, as Zirin always does.

And yes, as both a writer and brewery owner, I believe Zirin and Steve Nash are role models. Our machines do kill fascists, after all.

The Bridge: A Political Appreciation of Steve Nash, by Dave Zirin (The Nation)

... The appreciations of Nash and his arsenal of ambidextrous passing will continue to fly fast and furious, but we should also take a moment to appreciate Nash for reasons apart from his ability to do this. We should also thank him for daring to be a voice of resistance when it mattered most. As the war on Iraq was being planned early in 2003, there was silence throughout the sports world. This was not surprising. It had been years since athletes had put themselves out there to use their hyper-exalted brought-to-you-by-Nike platforms to make political statements. Today, as jocks—from Richard Sherman to Serena Williams to Robbie Rodgers to Jason Collins to the Miami Heat—have used social media to speak difficult truths in unwelcome spaces, it is difficult to remember just how deafening the political quietude was back in 2003. While several million people converged on New York City to say no to what we then called “Bush’s war,” the sports world institutionally, from team owners to media puff pieces, was a center of unquestioned patriotism. For people who only read the sports page, and stay off the front page, being confronted with dissenting views was a non-option.