Jolly good show

As the NFL prepares for its first regular-season game in London next week, Roger Goodell said London is a candidate to host a future Super Bowl. This has some people up in arms because, of all things, they think it will alienate the average football fan to have the biggest annual event in America played on foreign soil. Some of us realized long ago that the NFL would sell state secrets to Iran if it could make a buck and holds the average fan in as much esteem as Eric Mangini holds Bill Belichick.

When you gotta go…

Baylor University has reportedly suspended an assistant football coach after he was cited for urinating on the bar at a tavern at closing time. School officials weren’t upset so much with the public urination as the fact that he did at closing time, when the tavern was polling its patrons on their Top 25, which counts as 1/4th of the BCS poll.

Mickelson gets milk shakes named after him

Tiger Woods will have his own brand of sports drink next year under an endorsement deal announced Tuesday with Gatorade. The drink will be known as “Gatorade Tiger” and cause other PGA golfers to choke if they drink it within 18 holes of Woods on a Sunday.

The most popular league with empty chairs

The WNBA has awarded a franchise to Atlanta for the 2008 season. And why not? As the Hawks have demonstrated year-in and year-out, if you’re a league like the WNBA that seems to thrive on playing in empty arenas, Atlanta is the perfect fit.

Concussion repercussions

Miami Dolphins QB Trent Green said he hopes to play again despite suffering his second severe concussion in the last 13 months on Oct. 7. Of course, this is setting off alarms with the self-appointed media experts who think they’re qualified to tell an athlete when he should call it a career. If Trent Green wants his brain to be a mushy mass when he’s 50, that’s his decision, not the decision of some 50-year-old columnist whose idea of a brain injury is hitting himself in the forehead when the press box attendant informs him that the media buffet closed 10 minutes ago.

Textbook case of NCAA idiocy

The NCAA put Ball State on probation for two years and cut three football scholarships because of misuse by athletes of a textbook loan program. Perhaps the NCAA is too close to the situation to realize that penalizing Ball State for misusing a textbook loan program for athletes by cutting football scholarships is like penalizing the University of Miami by taking away textbooks from their football players.

Full court press

Tickets for the 61st Davis Cup Final between the U.S. and defending champion Russia sold out in less than 30 minutes in Portland, Ore. Some might suggest this is a sign of the rebirth of tennis’ popularity in America, but I’m not convinced most of those tickets weren’t snapped up by the Russian mob looking to, uh, protect their investment.