Sports Page (it may not rhyme with the Arab stereotype, but...

Warren Sapp levels a guy who lays there like a dead man until he's rolled off the field on a mortuary cart. And Tommy Maddox? The list is endless. I can't speak for every football fan in the world, but you don't have to cripple each other for my pleasure. It's a sport -- it's not the Roman coliseum.

One thing that would help is if you guys --Talking Heads, players, coaches -- would stop lying to us and to yourselves. "Nobody wants to see another player hurt," you guys say over and over and over again. Who do you think you're fooling? My old high school football coach may have been a Neanderthal man, but at least he told the truth: “I want to see that sonofabitch (the other team’s star halfback) carried off the field.”

Admit the truth: every defense in the NFL is trying to knock the other team's best skill players out of the game on every play. If he's any good, the other team's quarterback is usually the Target of Choice.

Bottom Line: the reason that so many players are getting hurt is because you intend to hurt them.

The issue is NOT that the hits are illegal. The issue is that hits that are now defined as legal are wiping out the best players in the league. I want to watch a Superbowl in which the best players on the two best teams in the league play each other. The way pro football is now, I feel like I'm watching the makeshift teams that were thrown together when league went on strike a few years ago.

At the risk of sounding like a Boy Scout, if you can't beat the other team without knocking its best players out of the game -- they are better than you. Bill Bilicik is not a "defensive genius," he's a guy who realized that, as the game is played now, defense has a couple very distinct advantages: 1) if everybody on defense smashes everybody on offense in the mouth on the same play, you get a distinct "psychological" advantage and the officials can only call one penalty (that's largely how the Patriots beat the Rams last year); 2) defense can cripple or concuss the other teams best players and the worst thing that can happen is that one player gets called for a foul and is fined by the league. That's an incredibly cheap price to pay for knocking one of the other teams best players out of the game. carry over and the only way you can win

The NFL must do whatever it has to do to stop the carnage:

= change the rules as drastically as you have to to protect the players

= redesign uniforms so that they give better protection to the players

= redesign helmets so that they aren't so easily used as weapons

= outlaw crack back blocks

... whatever it takes

If I had my druthers, the league would make turnovers much more difficult to come by. Steve Young says, joking but meaning every word of it, "Parity is ruining the game." Steve is referring to the fact that the NFL is like a crap shoot: there's no logic behind who wins when; it's completely unpredictable not only from one year to the next, but from one game to the next.

It isn't parity that's ruining the game, Steve. It's: 1) the fact that there's such a big payoff for knocking the other teams best skill players out of the game; 2) the drastically out of proportion

A-Rod’s $252 million

Despite the fact that virtually everyone in America considers high-paid sports figures crybaby millionaires, every great athlete has the potential to be a hero. The heros we need in post 9/11 America are not heros who risk their lives, we need heros who have the courage to use their inflated salaries to make changes that our country needs before it freezes out half of our citizens.

“It’s the owners against the players, the billionaires vs. the millionaires in the war over how to divvy up what’s now a $4 billion booty.”

Capitalism is no longer our economic system, it’s our religion, so nobody dares blasphemy of calling jocks “overpaid.” No matter what your job is, you squeeze the market for all it’s worth and get every nickel you can: it’s the moral thing to do.

To a great extent, the salary structure of every occupation is inherited.

Salary Cap

And, as if baseball were being played on Mars, the players, owners, journalists seem oblivious to the fact that baseball is being played in America. In post 9/11 America to be exact

Iverson

Although I’ve lived in the New York/New Jersey area for most of my adult life, I have never been privy to the Philadelphia sports media

I don’t quite understand what’s going between the city of Philadelphia on with Iverson. Those who blame the media, accuse you talking heads of “blowing the situation out of proportion.” As if it’s the quantity of media coverage that’s at fault.

Your questions to your callers are either “Do you think Iverson will serve jail time?” or often multiple choice like: 1) Will he serve jail time? 2) Will he plea bargain his way out of it? 3) Will he find some way to get out of it? 4) Will the 76ers nail his skinny little ass to the wall? All of the above, like all of your questions, presuppose Iverson’s guilt.

I will tell you point blank that it had never occurred to me that Philadelphia might be a very racist city until your coverage of the Iverson affair. (“Racist” may be too harsh; I’ll say “racially divided” and leave it at that.

ANYONE WHO DOESN'T LIKE ALLEN IVERSON IS A JERK!

90% of communication is nonverbal. No matter what they say, the people who badmouth Iverson It’s personal; you don’t like Iverson.

The reason that the media and the people are

INTENTIONAL DUM^BNESS:

27 Reasons Our Athletes Are Violent

l Why They’ll Get MORE Violent Unless We Stop Playing Dumb

l Why Our Children Will Get MORE Violent If We Don’t Wake Up

l An Attempt at Real-World Solutions

Dear Sports Journalists—Are You Guys Lying or Merely Blind?

Coachy Woachy—“Nobody wants to end an athlete’s career.”

MY Coach—“I want to see that sonofabitch carried off the field on the next play.”

Vince Lombardi—Canonizing a Moron

Sportscasters—Overselling Lombardi’s dumb Mantra

Tonya Harding—The Spinoza of Lombardism: “If the bitch is better than you, kneecap her.”

Ulterior Motives—Who exactly benefits from the Winning Is the Only Thing,,, thing?

“Ask not…”—Con Man’s Morality (nobody fell for that except Marilyn Monroe)

The Army boils it down for you—“Wrong is what you get caught at.”

The Bad Boys—Did the 1990 Pistons really increase crime in Detroit by 20%?

Karl Malone’s Elbow—

Deacon Jones—The Fine Art of Compartmentalizing

Michael’s Wrist—

Evander’s Ear—The real reason Tyson bit Holyfield’s ear off

Pat Riley—The Velvet Thug

O.J.’s Bronco—The Real Moral of

Wrestling 1—It’s the Only Honest Sport We Have

Wrestling 2—It mirrors reality: the contest is rigged

The Salary Cap—Tell Me Again How the Lakers Can Buy that Team?

Levelling the Playing Field—Is It Really More Important in Sports Than It Is in Real Life?

Honest Sociology—The Nazi Formula

Dumb Lawyers & Rich White Guys—Why Tyson served time for rape

Iverson & Sprewell—Two of the cleanest, most passionate players in the NBA

The West 4th Street All Stars—Meryl Streeping it on every play

Lying With The Body—When do I trust thee

Role Models: Portnoy Before He Complained

The Role Models’ Role Models —What exactly is so bad about murder?

Prison—Club Med for Young Black Men?

Sports Writers—Masters of Intentional Dumbness

Frustration Fouls—

Wrestling—It proves that WE don’t care about winning to the exclusion of everything else