UPS AND DOWNS for AUGUST WEEK 2

Welcome to Following Football 2.0 - updated format, updated focus, better prepared to service you, the eclectic football fan! UP FIRST, most appropriately, our Tuesday column stretching across three countries and four versions of the sport... UPS AND DOWNS for the second week of August, 2015!

UP - the OTTAWA REDBLACKS, winners of just two games last year in their inaugural CFL season, are already 4-2 in this young season, tied for the best record in the Eastern Division. They've done it with their retread, 40-year old QB Henry Burris, who's held up while most other teams are on starter number two or three behind center, and a team that's willing to keep fighting when they've been behind, winning in 4Q comebacks a couple of times already.

DOWN - the NEW JERSEY JETS, who just reached a new level of Jet-ness by putting their starting QB Geno Smith (already embattled and getting booed in PRACTICE by those wonderfully supportive New Yack "fans") on the IR for 6-10 weeks...after having his jaw broken in two places from a SUCKER PUNCH from a TEAMMATE, I.K. Enemkpali (rephrase that: FORMER teammate - at least the Jets had that much sense!) over a debt Smith apparently owed the backup linebacker for a plane ticket he never used. All parties seem to be content with the resolution, but...I mean, WTF? The Oakland Raiders called, and said the Jets are stealing their schtik!

UP - the RACIAL SENSITIVITY OF AUSTRALIAN FOOTY FANS, after continued ugly booing incidents over the last few months of indiginous star Adam Goodes, which finally drove him from the sport for a week in July. That was met with outrage from throughout the AFL community, drowning out the few confederate-wannabes who claimed it wasn't about race (hmmm...), after which Goodes returned to the Sydney Swans for their game at Geelong last Saturday, where he was met with (in the opinion of the pollyannish announcers) all positive reactions. (I'm not nearly as convinced, myself...) So, we'll see where this goes from here. Australia, you know, has a much worse race issue history than even the US - aborigines were hunted for sport by the white settlers at first.

DOWN - the PUBLIC OPINION OF TOM BRADY OR ROGER GOODELL, depending on which side you choose to take in the somehow-still-ongoing "DeFlateGate" ridiculousness. We side with Goodell for once - you flipping DESTROYED your phone? What kind of idiot are you? And you would then have us believe you HABITUALLY do that, Tom? First of all, if so, you're on a Tom Cruise level of crazy, but even so, why would you do that NOW, knowing how guilty it makes you look, unless (of course) you ARE guilty, which Occam's Razor now says you are. And do you realize, Mister former Hall Of Fame quarterback, how hard it is to make ROGER FLIPP'N GOODELL look like the voice of REASON? That takes a Lance Armstrong level of paranoia and delusion. Congratulations. You turned what should've been a slap on the hand fine (had you said, Oops, didn't think anyone would notice, my bad, before the Super Bowl) into, literally, a federal case, and a four week suspension, and a black mark on your career that will be paragraph two in your obituary.

Remember yesterday, when I said that Character Counts?

So, yeah, I forgot I was talking about the National Football League. 

This is the league that sent Ben Roethlisberger back into the fourth quarter of a playoff game last Sunday after being hit and getting (to a 98% degree of probability) a concussion which under the league's own newly-enacted concussion rules should have kept him out of the rest of the game - if not from the concussion itself, then from the examination protocol which by definition would have taken longer than they had left in the game.

Except...no, wait! There's Big Ben coming back into the game, three flipping plays later, dropping back to throw...perhaps the WORST pass of his professional life, right into the arms of the waiting Ravens and ending the Steelers' season. Explain again how that was helpful to anyone involved?

This is the league that calls penalties, walks them off...and then reneges on them. If someone can offer a better explanation, be my guest. I pray that this one was incompetence. The "mixed all-star crew" makes that more plausible, although why a professional referee marks off a penalty and THEN gets all the relevant points of view is beyond explanation. 

Because if it's NOT incompetence, then that means they realized a Detroit first down with five minutes to go and a 20-17 lead past midfield probably made the game Detroit's to lose, a dangerous proposition if the league's flagship team, playing in its flagship stadium, were to lose to a no-public-perception team when the chance for an Ice Bowl rematch looms, Romo v Rodgers, and all that entails. Better to make it fourth down and pray that the corpse they installed as Lions coach actually punted on 4th and 1 at midfield. Which he did,  and it went ten yards, and Romo had a man's drive, and Garrett made a man's call to go for it on 4th and 6, and from THAT standpoint the Cowboys absolutely deserved to win... But outcome does not justify poor choices, or idiocy; the end never justifies the means.

And now, this is the league which paid for its own "independent" investigation to investigate ITSELF with regards to what it knew about the Ray Rice elevator video when it issued the insanely inadequate two game punishment for a criminal act heinous enough that no one will even HIRE Rice again.

The Mueller Report, paid for by two league owners, found that (surprise!) the League office ISN'T comprised of liars: just incompetents! (Hooray!) Of course, since all of their original explanations involved them lying about being incompetent, you can draw your own conclusions. Certainly, since they claimed in September that they asked EVERYONE for a copy of the elevator video back in February that the Mueller Report says the proof shows they didn't know existed...well, either the NFL blatantly lied about that in order to - to what, make themselves look inept? - or the report itself is completely farcical, in which case they've succeeded in making us forget about the Warren Commission Report. 

(If your history is as faulty as Roger Goodell's memory, the Warren Report proved that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing President Kennedy. The problem is, no one at the time believed a word of it, although time has proven that that was indeed the most likely scenario.)

The credibility of bureaucrats is often dicey to begin with, but when your best case scenario was that you were an idiot? Are you sure that's who you want in charge of your favorite sport?