Every day, too: "NFL Owners Sure Came Off Like Dumbasses When They Met With Players About Protests."

"Don’t ever get old. Don’t ever get rich."

Terry Pegula, owner of the Buffalo Bills, might be interested to know that Charlton Heston retired from the National Rifle Association in 2003 and died in 2008.

One wonders if Pegula ever read a book.

NFL Owners Sure Came Off Like Dumbasses When They Met With Players About Protests, by Tom Ley (Deadspin)

... How do advanced age and generational wealth affect a person’s ability to have a meaningful discussion about a heavy subject? Not well, it seems. The Times reports that the meeting was full of school-room invocations of Wise Men Of History—Falcons owner Arthur Blank quoted Thomas Paine while Dolphins owner Stephen Ross brought up Martin Luther King, Jr.’s march on Selma—and failed metaphors. Bills owner Terry Pegula was in rare form.

Then the pinnacle of foot-shot references from Pegula, who made his fortune in fracking.

And then Pegula came back with whatever the hell this idea is:

Pegula offered that he thought the league was battling a perception and “media problem.” He said it would be great for the league to find a compelling spokesman — preferably a player — to promote all of the good things they were doing together. He suggested that the league could learn from the gun lobby in this regard.

“For years we’ve watched the National Rifle Association use Charlton Heston as a figurehead,” Pegula said. “We need a spokesman.”

"Is keeping a football team more important that putting police officers on the street? More important than giving teachers raises?"

Yesterday there were some football games. I watched none of them. Ditto for basketball games, and the vast majority of baseball games.

It's so much more fun playing games than watching them. My current favorite game is Bait the Party Elder.

There are brain injuries -- but not mine.

In Losing the Rams, St. Louis Wins, by Joe Nocera (New York Times)

Don’t cry for St. Louis, sports fans.

The departure of the Rams to Los Angeles, whence they came two decades ago, is something for the city’s residents to cheer, not bemoan. St. Louis got lucky ...

 ... the economics underpinning the recent deal St. Louis and the State of Missouri tried to put together to keep the Rams would have been financially ruinous. Let’s not be coy about this: St. Louis, a city of fewer than 320,000 people, with a shrinking tax base, simply couldn’t afford to help finance the $1 billion stadium that the Rams’ billionaire owner, E. Stanley Kroenke, was seeking. Its mistake was in trying.

And the truth.

... whatever the deficiencies of the proposal from the city and state, it was more than the city, especially, could bear. It would have broken St. Louis’s back, and quite likely forced cutbacks in service that the city badly needs. And it raises again the question of whether cities should really be in the business of subsidizing sports facilities. Is keeping a football team more important that putting police officers on the street? More important than giving teachers raises?

Of course not. But mayors and governors can’t bring themselves to tell a team good riddance when it threatens to leave. Instead, they move heaven and earth to keep the team — even if, as in the case of St. Louis, they can’t afford it. That’s why the pro sports business model works so well. It relies on the expectation that government officials will panic at the thought of losing a team.

"Keith Olbermann Reflects on the Life and Career of Doug Kotar."

The NFL settled, and to me, that's too bad. We won't know the extent of its complicity with respect to generations of players and their brain injuries. In short, it was a good time for Keith Olbermann to return to ESPN, as the commentary above attests.

Brain injuries, the NFL, and my indifference ... to football.

Several times over the past two or three years, I've posted links to stories about brain injuries in sports, primarily football, but with at least one sobering report on concussions in hockey. Readers can search for them if they're interested.