Scattered Super Bowl weekend thoughts

I’m feeling so conflicted this morning about the Super Bowl I’m going to use the words of surrogates instead.

On the bright side, my buddy Paul, a fellow Boston-hater, said, “If it makes you feel a little better, those most devastated tonight were cheering Sid Bream heroics 16 years ago.”

He’s referring to the Atlanta Braves 1992 victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates in Game 7 of the NLCS. The Bucs were one out away from the World Series when gimpy-legged Bream — a former Pirate — slid home to win the game. It was the most cruel loss of my life.

So, he’s right. It soothes my soul knowing many of those Braves fans are today feeling as distraught as we were.

On the other hand, I think KDKA radio host John McIntire summed it up most perfectly when he posted on Facebook, “Jesus, the forces of evil are on a roll.”

Scattered thoughts:

• The Patriots were awarded the Super Bowl, but Melissa McCarthy won the weekend. Her scathing SNL parody of press secretary Sean Spicer was as funny as anything I’ve ever seen. And her Super Bowl Kia ad was good, too. But if they don’t do a Spicer bit once a week I’m going to feel sad. She was great, too, with Bill Murray in "St. Vincent."

• I kept wondering if Aaron Hernandez got to see the game. He’s the serial killer Patriot fans used to revere. He’s now serving life in prison for one murder, is one trial for another and is a suspect in two more. Say, what you want, but Tom Brady only deflated footballs.

• That’s exactly the kind of snark I wish I could overcome. Brady is the greatest QB ever; Bill Belichick, greatest coach; and, gulp, Patriots the greatest NFL dynasty. I guess I always have the feeling that when they win, they’ve somehow cheated. We just don’t yet know how. And numerous times I’ve seen Brady act what I once thought was uncharacteristically surly to opponents (and even teammates). Who does he think he is? Tom Brady?

• If I can separate myself from my disdain for the winner — I’m trying — I can acknowledge it was all highly entertaining. Great game. And a fantastic halftime show.

• Slow-mo replays of the Julian Edelman catch were mesmerizing and will be replayed long into the future. But it was only the second greatest catch of the day. If Lady Gaga fumbles that walk-off pass, it’s all anyone would remember.

• I wouldn’t be surprised to learn it was Brady who threw the Gaga bullseye.

• I liked the Budweiser immigrant ad, the Malkovich one, sloppy Bradshaw, Skittles, AirBnB, but I guarantee you I could have improved them all with the oldest trick in commercial history: just add monkey.

• I declined generous offers to attend two Super Bowl parties, preferring to watch the game in a place where I can be assured of being able to watch the game. I enjoy watching the game with my family. Usually. There’s always one moment when I feel like running out of the house to watch in any nearby bar. Happened in the 2nd quarter when the girls were enthusiastically decorating the 5th grader’s festive Valentine’s Day card box and Nana (84, dementia) kept asking every four minutes for the girls to explain again what they were making.

• Reveling in all the Patriots showering Roger Goodell with boos at the trophy presentation almost made me glad the Patriots won. Almost.

• Think today out to be a national holiday? I encourage you to read this ’13 story about how I argue Super Bowl loser fans should be forced to work for winning counterparts. It’s an idea whose time has come.

• There. Now, I can contend I worked today while much of America took the day off to nurse their hangovers and loaf the day away. For one day, at least, America, you’re me!

I think MLK would have become a Steeler fan

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I’m guaranteeing the Pittsburgh Steelers are going to beat the hated New England Patriots on Sunday and go on to win the Super Bowl.

Take it to the bank!

And the last time I felt this arrogant about a prediction was Nov. 8 when I assured everyone that on Jan. 20 Americans would be unified in celebration of the landslide election of President Hilary Rodham Clinton.

For what it’s worth.

But I have a good feeling about the Steelers. They haven’t lost since Nov. 13 (it was a bad week for liberal Steeler fans) and are riding a 9-game win streak into Foxboro. They are 5 1/2 point underdogs against the Patriots.

The Steeler dominance upends my custom of artificially rooting for teams based on on cities where I’ve enjoyed getting drunk or ones populated by women who were easy when I was single.

By that standard I used to think I’d one day write a glorious ode about why I was rooting for the Cleveland Browns to win the Super Bowl but it doesn’t look like that’s ever going to happen.

Rooting for Pittsburgh is in my blood. I absolutely love everything about the city. Oddly, it only meets one of my essential criteria for fandom.

Sure, it’s my go-to for drunken revels, something I’ve been doing with reckless abandon (is there any other kind of abandon?) since, oh, the fifth grade.

But all the Pittsburgh debutants I knew when I was single were way too proper and refined for my ambitions. Man, it took me years to find a girl loose enough to even consider letting me kiss her.

Know what I did next?

I married her!

I was 33.

I never kissed a girl from Boston, which is ironic because I feel like I’ve been screwed by people from Boston more than any city on the planet.

The Patriots cheat.

I’m not being rash. My source on this is the Patriots. 

In 2007, coach Bill Belichick agreed to pay a $500,000 fine for Spygate, and Tom Brady dropped his appeals and served a four-game suspension for playing with under-inflated footballs, a phrase bound to induce snickers among those of us with juvenile bents.

Coincidentally, I was recently watching football with my cousin and he predicted pretty boy Brady would be the next celebrity athlete to undergo a sex change operation, ala Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner.

It’s an interesting hypothesis, one that at the very least would silence sports talk radio critics who contend Brady’s been female all along.

As for the NFC, I’m hoping Green Bay wins. I had a splendid time in Wisconsin on a 2009 travel story. I like the people and know they’ll be having fun in Sobelman’s in Milwaukee, a saloon where I’ve never felt more at home for an out-of-stater.

I’ve driven through Atlanta, which given its historic traffic problems is like winning a Super Bowl. But I’ve never socialized there for even a moment — and airports don’t count.

I wrote about Atlanta in ‘14 and how two measly inches of snow turned the entire city into the snowbound Donner Party.

I revere native son Martin Luther King Jr., and he may have become a Falcons fan. Or maybe not. He died young, just 39, in 1968 and was blessed with wisdom and foresight.

Had he lived, I could see him becoming enthralled with the leadership principles of a young Chuck Noll as he led the Steelers to four Super Bowl championships in the ‘70s.

Had King not been murdered, he’d be 88 years old. I like to think he’d have eventually moved to Pittsburgh. I imagine him at a Steeler pep rally smiling and waving a Terrible Towel.

So I’m hoping for all these reasons the Steelers kick the Patriots butts this weekend and go on to win their 7th Super Bowl.

Because the Patriots cheat and the arc of the moral universe is long and bends toward Pittsburgh.

Steelers 35, Patriots 13.

I have a dream.

Related …

Can’t hate the Packers but …

How recollections of good bourbon & horny farm girls influence my NFL picks

Pittsburgh, City of Champions, will win

Flakey thoughts on Atlanta’s snow traffic nightmare

Jump hugs with dangerous drunks

A day of light & darkness; Pens win & mourning Orlando

Great big flags & other Super Bowl thoughts

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I thought today I’d write about the patriotic desecration we all enjoy every Super Bowl, but I’d rather not today on what feels like our national hangover.

But one of these days I’m going to dig into that one. See, I’m fascinated by the construction, care and storage of those mega-flags they use at big sporting events.

The American Legion details very explicit rules about flag display. It’s a sacred piece of fabric.

I was reminded of this last week when Val and I attended a memorial service for a veteran friend of ours. The flag ceremony took place amidst the wails of the bereaved. Yet the two-man honor-guard carried out their duties with stoic dignity.

It was very moving.

Guaranteed, that flag will reside in a place of honor in the family den and will be passed down for generations.

I’m curious about what they do with those giant flags, ones that could sink an ocean liner. It’s logistically impossible to treat those flags with the care our flag guardians prescribe.

The largest of all is called Superflag. Its home is Long Beach, California. It is 505 feet by 225 feet and weighs 3,000 pounds. It takes 500 people to unfurl it.

The flag is never supposed to hit the ground. But people, I’m sure, accidentally walk on these monsters. How do you properly fold it? Transport it?

I want to know. Of course, I say that every year and am thus far too lazy to look. Maybe for July the Fourth. 

Or not. Either way, today we’ll Super Bowl scattergun starting of course with . . .

• Puppy Monkey Baby.

• My favorite commercial was the Dorito-loving fetus, but the only element Puppy Monkey Baby was lacking to make it an all-time classic was an appearance by The Three Stooges.

• The NFL should next year skip halftime hoopla and instead just have some pharmaceutical company issue every American hallucinogens that last for precisely 28 minutes. Live tweets about what we’re seeing could be more entertaining than the performers.

• My favorite halftime shows have either been baby races or drunks kicking field goals. These used to be Steeler halftime staples and they were uniformly compelling. Baby races are tremendous sport and would be even more so if the winner parents got, say, a trip to Hawaii. I’ve seen frantic moms screaming at their beloved infants to get their little buckets moving when the stakes were cans of paint. Offer something worthy and it’d be a true bloodsport. Of course, the NFL, caring organization that it is, could offer family counseling to the losers.

• Drunks kicking field goals is great, too. The Steelers used to fetch 10 inebriates from the stands or maybe the stadium tank and have them each try to kick from the 10 yard line. Make that and you move back 5 yards. It was hilarious. For Super Bowl purposes, they could have maybe a tequila maker sponsor each kick and have the contestants do a shot every 5 yards. The stakes? How about a 1-year get-out-of-jail-free card? I’d enter. 

• Do attending fans have to remain in their seats to make the big card shows work or do they have place holders to flip cards in case someone needs to take a leak?

• When are the going to move the game to Saturday?

• I’ll link it below, but I’ve suggested stakes be upped by having fans of losing team go to work for one week for fans of the victors.

• Peyton sure exudes class, doesn’t he? Having said that, I’ll be very disappointed if he comes back for one more year.

• I interviewed John Elway at the Mario Lemieux celebrity golf tournament in Pittsburgh in about 2001. I asked if he’d ever had a thrill as great on the golf course as he’s had on the football field. He said, no, not even close. “A hole-in-one might match it, but I’ve never had one of those.” He got one two weeks later. 

• One of my favorite Super Bowl related tweets was rendered moot this year by the NFL’s decision to for once to shelve the pretentious use of now-incomprehensible Roman numerals. It is: “In honor of typical Super Bowl nonsense, my phone number in Roman Numerals is DCCXXIV CMLXI MMDLVIII. Call me!” I’ve tweeted that for four years now and no one’s ever bothered to call.

• I read about a mini-controversy involving whether Peyton was paid to say he’d be drinking Budweiser all night. I read he owns two Anheuser-Busch distributors in Louisiana, but wasn’t paid to say that. I’m fine with it. 

• Just nine days ’til pitcher and catchers report!

• puppy monkey baby

Related …

Super Bowl holiday? Make loser fans work for winners

Steelers win! Jump hugs with dangerous drunks

Top 10 reasons why Super Bowl ’15 was depressing

Groundhog Day/Super Bowl ’13 thoughts

Thoughts on ’12 Super Bowl

Churches should emulate NFL to reverse declining attendance

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I drink too much, lust too often, donate too little and am prone to bouts of slothfulness so prolonged they can now be measured in decades.

As beings go, I’m perfectly human.

So my soul getting into any decent afterlife is going to take a lot of spiritual assistance.

That’s why I’m trying to attend church more often.

I enjoy church, particularly during the holiday season.

My wife’s our Lutheran church organist and hearing her play alone makes attending worthwhile. She's that good.

Plus, I like to think after all these years of steadfast adherence to the hymnal she’s bound to go rogue and play “Brown Sugar” and I wouldn’t want to miss it.

It is reported only 25 percent of us attend church even once a month.

While I've seen no corresponding surge in attendance at our nation’s brothels, the numbers sadden me.

I know so many people who’d benefit from the faith, hope and love regular church attendance bestows.

So how do we get people excited about going to church?

Is there a successful Sunday example churches could emulate that would lead to better attendance?

Of course there is.

Churches should steal pages from the playbook of the only American religion bigger than Christianity.

Yes, it’s time Sunday worship become more like an NFL game.

It all starts with a decent tailgate.

Our services starts at 8 a.m.

So that means I go in 40 jiffy minutes from dreaming about sex with a harem to fretting about the eternal salvation of my miserable soul.

I need a buffer

Hell, I need a beer!

That’s what a pre-worship tailgate would do. It would get the congregation all psyched up for the service.

My wife would be instrumental in setting the tone. Instead of the Call to Worship, she could play “We Will Rock You,” which could be reprised during any Old Testament sermons involving stoning the heretics.

Our pastor always walks up the aisle with due humility. It is appropriate, but does nothing to fire up the crowd.

What does?

I’m thinking the one perfected by the flamboyant Ray Lewis.

He’s the retired Baltimore Raven who in 2000 was a suspect in an Atlanta murder. Since his retirement, he continues to be a face for the NFL, making it clear that while he meek shall inherit the earth, NFL superstars who’ve dodged murder convictions shall inherit high-profile ESPN commentator positions.

A good church choir adds so much to a service, but choir robes do not and if the NFL teaches us anything, it’s that nothing says manly competition like a little T&A.

So the choir robes would have to go. In fact, so would actual choirs.

They’ll be replaced by cheerleaders.

Church needs pee breaks.

Your typical NFL game is chock full of them. I propose after every four minutes of worship, the pastor can step aside for about two minutes of truck or erectile dysfunction commercials so fans can go hit the head.

Even though a typical service only lasts 60 minutes, it still could benefit from a brief halftime. The preacher could go inside, study film and game plan the second half while a marching band entertains the congregation with patriotic standards.

NFL Church would no longer need offertories, either. They could be replaced by vendors going up and down the aisles charging exorbitant prices for refreshments and souvenirs. 

The NFL makes a lot of money with throw-back uniforms. Churches could do the same. They could set up an over-priced gift shop in the narthex selling robes and sandals. And fans could buy big foam “JESUS No. 1!” fingers to wave around when the sermon really starts hitting its stride.

These suggestions would add an element of playful spontaneity to the proceedings, as would having a big cooler of Gatorade by the altar for fired up congregants to dump on the preacher’s head after particularly satisfying services.

Of course, church traditionalists will throw a penalty flag on these ideas. They’ll say they’re too radical, blasphemous even.

Maybe a more incremental approach would be better.

So let’s start by ditching the wafers and “wine” and replacing them with beer and nachos.

Can I get an amen?

Related . . .

The Baltimore Rays & NFL’s on-going disgrace

Cheering for a devil of an NFL celebration

Life’s short, church isn’t

America needs an all-gay NFL team

When taverns usurp church; a bartender retires

Black men can't kick

Of the 724 points scored in yesterday’s NFL games, 240 of them, more than 30 percent, were scored by a lilly white group of men who’ve always ruled a crucial facet of football the way Bull Connor used to rule Selma.

It’s a racial profiling so odd it practically defies belief, but anyone looking at the history of the NFL would conclude African Americans athletes are the victims of blatant discrimination.

Because on its pale face, it looks like the fair-skinned men who run the NFL don’t want black men kicking the football. They’d rather entrust the task to small white men named like they ought to be kicking in quaint wooden shoes.

While many of our best professional athletes are black, most of our best kickers seem to be, of all things, Scandinavian, a land known more for windmills and lutefisk than football.

Some of the greatest scoring machines in the NFL history are agile black men like Jim Brown, Jerry Rice, Barry Sanders and Walter Payton. Their explosive play will dominate highlight reels for as long as the game is played.

Yet in a sport where nearly 70 percent of the competitors are African American, some of the league’s best kickers have been named Jan Stenerud, Morten Andersen, and Gary Anderson (he’s a South African in the old school sense).

Yesterday’s game between the Pittsburgh Steelers featured a game-winning kick by a white man named Shaun Suisham, thus helping his team beat the Buffalo Bills and their kicker, Ryan Lindell.

Other kickers scoring points yesterday were white men named Nate Kaeding, Garrett Hartley, David Buehler, David Akers, Neil Rackers, Ron Bironas and Josh Scobee.

I haven’t the motivation to research all their lineages, but I can pretty much eliminate equatorial regions as their ancestral homelands.

In fact, in the past three years only one African American has been summoned to try his, er, hand at kicking. And he isn’t even a kicker.

He’s Detroit Lion defensive lineman Nadamukong Suh.

And he’s scored one point.

He was called in to make the extra point after the regular kicker suffered an injury.

The regular kicker’s name is Hanson, Jason.

In what for any blogger passes for actual research, I believe I found the best African American kicker in NFL history. He played for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers from 1985-89 and is the Nigerian-born Don Amechi Igwebuike.

Igwebuike’s kicking career ended when he was indicted for smuggling $1 million in heroin from Nigeria. He was acquitted of the crime in 1991.

Some sources say there have only been seven African Americans who earned their living kicking in the NFL, none of them for any duration longer than Igwebuike’s, and several of them were punters, most notably Miami Dolphin Reggie Roby.

By comparison there are currently seven African American head coaches in the NFL (and zero owners).

Yet, just seven kickers in the entire history of the NFL.

It’s extraordinary.

The only thing I can conclude is blatantly racist.

Blacks are just too cool to kick.

It has to be. The culture that gifted humanity with the Delta blues wants nothing to do with an essentially silly skill practiced by grade schoolers at recess and men who reside countries that insist on calling soccer futbol.

Every aspiring football player, black or white, probably first aspires to be a quarterback, then wide receiver, etc.

A good kicker is likely someone who’s failed at every other position.

But why it seems to draw men of Scandinavian/Northern European descent mystifies.

Perhaps the harsh conditions of their ancestral homelands make them immune to the inevitable criticism that comes with high stakes kicking. Because even skillful kickers are eventually hooted out of town for missed kicks or evident stupidity.

That’s what just happened here in Pittsburgh with Jeff Reed. He said some stupid things, missed some easy kicks and now we’re all in love with this Suisham guy.

At least until next Sunday.

In this regard, Reed followed in the cleated footsteps of the former Indianapolis Colts kicker named -- Hello, Holland! -- Jeff Vanderjagt.

During a drunken interview, he once told reporters Colts quarterback Peyton Manning and head coach Tony Dungy were chumps and would never win a championship.

Manning could have been disparaging the entire kicking community when he said, “What can I say? Our idiot kicker got liquored up and ran his mouth off. The sad thing is, he’s a good kicker. A good kicker, but an idiot.”

The next year Vanderjagt was gone. The year after that Manning and Dungy won the Super Bowl.

You’d think there’s bound to be some grant money out there for a guy like me to snag to study the whole thing. It’s fascinating.

Of course, if I was serious about money, I’d devote my time to learning how to boot a football through the uprights.

Really, it’s perfect for a white guy like me. I’m Swedish and certainly have a high tolerance for disparaging remarks about my shortcomings.

I could kick myself for not thinking of it sooner.

Namby pambies, jack wagons and the NFL

My suggested slogan for the new NFL: “Now With More Ticklin’ than Tacklin’!”

The NFL spent the week neatly dividing itself into the two roles of the Geico commercial about the drill instructor and the weepy therapy patient who gets sad about things like the color yellow.

On one side, you had the drill instructors calling the jack wagons on the other side a bunch of namby pambies.

And playing both roles was James Harrison of my hometown Pittsburgh Steelers. He started out last Sunday as one of the most ferocious linebackers in the game and by Wednesday he was fretting about retiring because he felt misunderstood.

Talk about being a jack wagon.

The color yellow makes me sad, too. Every time I see it on the football field. And we’re going to be seeing a lot more of it now as the league leans on referees to call more penalties for the hits it once deemed legal.

This has been an outstanding week for connoisseurs of hypocrisy such as myself.

First of all, they fined Harrison $75,000 for his vicious hits -- neither were flagged for on-field penalties -- and later on its official website sold snazzy pictures of the hit for $250 dollars.

Who can blame Harrison for being confused?

The league which is now preaching player safety reiterated its interest in extending meaningful games from 16 to 18, something the battered players adamantly oppose.

It’s all alot like the beer titan commercials that dominate NFL games. They want you to consume massive quantities of beer as long as nobody gets hurt.

And this all happened during the month when the manliest sport not played on ice ordered its players and coaches to accessorize in pink to demonstrate its sensitivities toward breast cancer awareness. 

I believe it’s all part of the grand scheme to cultivate the nearly 50 percent of the population that doesn’t reflexively reach for the remote every Sunday at 1 p.m. Plus, every time they release a new jersey, they know many of their loyal fans will shell out money to buy the trendy new color schemes.

Now commissioner Roger Goodell is getting squeamish over the thought of all these new pink fans seeing so much hi-def black ‘n’ blue. The day before the high profile hits, a collegiate player at Rutgers suffered a devastating spinal cord injury and may never walk again.

The NFL knows its behemoths are capable of such mayhem on every single down. It knows emerging head trauma studies and autopsies of its dead-too-young players show massive brain damage.

It knows it’s on a collision course with a massive court-ordered settlement for not doing enough to take care of its players.

It knows that the little warning label on the back of every weaponized helmet that reads the product doesn’t prevent head, neck or spine injuries is meaningless.

And it knows that by tinkering with any aspect of the nation’s most popular game it risks jeopardizing millions of fans so loyal they build their entire identities around the home team.

The most sensible solution came from one of the toughest and most revered men to ever play the game. That’s hall of famer Mike Ditka. He said the way to cease dangerous helmet-to-helmet hitting to is to strip the equipment of face masks sturdy enough to serve as interstate truck grills.

That would force players to tackle with their arms the way one of my favorite players, Hall of Famer Jack Ham, used to. The old Steeler’s tackles weren’t spectacular. They were just efficient.

He brought ball carriers to the ground the way NFL coaches used to teach players before the league began elevating spectacular hits as touchdown worthy plays.

Football’s always been a brutal game and that’s a big part of its appeal, even for a natural pacifist like myself.

So, like me, the NFL is both shouting drill instructor and jack wagon therapy couch critter.

We love the violence as long as nobody gets hurt.

That means this little sideline debate will rage all season long and it’s going to be as fun to watch as anything that takes place in bounds.

So let’s all just sit back and enjoy all the games. 

And please drink responsibly.

The NFL sacks itself

Prediction: in five years someone is going to offer you a cushy seat to an NFL game for just $25 and you still won’t go. Neither will the diehards who paint their faces and torsos in team colors to depict their fanaticism.

In five years, it will be impossible for the most powerful enterprise in all professional sports to give away tickets to attend games in their state-of-the-art tax-payer financed stadiums.

I know this because I am one of the most privileged people in all American fandom: I am a Pittsburgh Steelers season ticket holder.

Have been for 20 years. My father held the tickets for 40 years before that. When he died, it was understood he’d hand the tickets down to me in a way other parents hand down deeds to lakeside cottages and heirloom strings of pearls.

That’s how valuable these tickets were.

But in the last 10 years, we’ve all enjoyed a technological advance that’s rendered attending a game meaningless.

It’s the high-def big screen TV.

What was once unthinkable has become fact: people would rather watch the games on TV than attend them in person.

Who can blame them?

There’s no traffic, no miserable weather, no lines at the bathroom and the only way you’re likely to encounter a vomiting drunk is if you’re reckless with the jello shots.

I have here on my desk four tickets to Sunday’s home opener against the Atlanta Falcons. Three days before kickoff and I can’t find a buyer for the four $81 seats in section 507, row JJ. 

I’ve called all the people who always say, hey, lemme know if you ever get spare tickets. I’ve sent out word in my bar full of sports nuts.

I’ve received no offers, only lame excuses.

Now, I must face the unthinkable. I might actually have to attend the game myself.

Understand, I’ve been to over 250 professional football games in my life. I’ve been going since I was 7 and have seen and done everything there is to do at an NFL game.

In fact, by many standards I could be considered one of the NFL’s most loyal fans.

Know how they reward that devotion? They screw me every chance they get.

When Pittsburgh opened the new Heinz Field in 2000, they made me and every other season ticket holder shell out for Personal Seat Licenses that line the pockets of owners that hold cities hostage with their franchises.

They’ve steadily raised my ticket prices from $46 in 2000 to $81 this year. 

They charge me $7.50 for a glass of warm beer.

For TV purposes, they hold games on Thursdays nights and holidays when people want to be home with their families.

They make me pay full price for two meaningless pre-season games.

But now the tables are turning. One of the big stories of this year will be empty seats at these palatial stadiums. It’s happening already.

People are staying home in droves and guys like me, the canaries in the mines, understand there is a significant problem. If I can’t find a buyer for my opening day seats then the league is in trouble.

And this is when the weather will be mild and enthusiasm high. Guaranteed, if the forecast had been for 22 degrees and slushy December snows and the Steelers were out of playoff contention, I wouldn’t be able to sell my tickets for less than half face value.

But what makes my prediction so salient is the NFL is about to commit one of the most egregious self-inflicted wounds in sports history. Owners are about to lock out the players in the hopes of getting a larger share of the revenue pie.

Yes, during a down economy in a sport where rookies earn $50 million signing bonuses and owners revel in $1 billion stadiums, they’re going to tell their fans, sorry, it’s not enough.

And they’re tinkering with the integrity of the already injury-riddled sport by lengthening the seasons by two games to 18. 

So, mark my words, we are about to witness the unthinkable: The mighty NFL is on the verge of an historic tumble.

Me, I lifelong fan, will still be cheering. Only instead of yelling, “Go Steelers!” as I have my whole life, I’ll be yelling, “Go Screw Yourselves!”

Because there won’t be anyone left to screw in the stadiums.