Too Much of a Good Thing — Head Butting in August?

There’s such a thing as too much of even the best of things. Dolly Parton proved this. And most have enough restraint not to eat a dozen glazed, Krispy Crème donuts at one sitting. But if Roger Goodell and his merry band at NFL HQ had their way, we would have NFL football, another good thing, year-round. The first NFL games I watched, when the world and I were young, Ike was snoozing in the White House, and 5-7 inch quarterback Eddie LeBaron was running the Washington Redskin offense, the NFL regular season was 12 games, to which few took notice. But as the game’s popularity grew, the regular season grew from 12 games, to 14, then to 16, then 17, and now Roger is lobbying for 18. (Cue the auctioneer: “I have 18 games, I have 18. Do I hear 20? Do I hear 20? I have 20. Thank you, Roger. Do I hear 22?”)

I am well struck in years now. But my general health is good. So, I believe, are my chances of seeing the NFL season grow to 20 games and beyond. This would extract a terrible toll on NFL players in this gladiator sport who are banged up enough after the present, demanding 17-game season. Tough enough fighting off frostbite in Lambeau Field in January. No need to be guarding against heat stroke in Tampa and Miami in July. Only the pit bull NFL Players’ Union stands in the way of this lunatic expansion of the fall sport. A formidable force. But if the viewers and ticket buyers, and therefore the $$$, are there, and I believe they are, America being football crazy, then no force in the world can stop it. No matter how insane banging heads in full pads in July and August is.

TV sports producer Don Ohlmeyer was prescient when he told a sports reporter long ago that, “If your question is about sports, the answer is money.” Just so.

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