No surprise, Patriots, Brady avoid punishment

Sports fodder for a Friday morning... Did anyone ever doubt Tom Brady’s four-game suspension would vanish? The New England Patriots constantly break the rules and all they ever receive at most is a slap on the wrist. But give the Pats credit. They constantly prove to be the smartest organization in all of pro sports. They know exactly what they can and cannot do in order to win championships. This time, though, the end result was the right thing to do. Brady’s silly four-game suspension was always too harsh, like throwing a 75-year-old grandmother in jail for a week because she failed to signal a right turn. He let a little air out of a football. Big deal. Even a slap on the wrist would have been too harsh a punishment.

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It’s time the NFL owners consider relieving Roger Goodell of his commissioner duties. Goodell has repeatedly messed up in recent months. Ray Rice, Adrian Peterson and now Brady. You can also add all of the silly fines and suspensions players get for simply making tackles. Goodell’s punishments never fit the crimes. He botched the Brady incident beyond belief, letting it linger for months until a third party had to come in and bring some sanity to the situation. Goodell constantly blows things out of proportion to the point where it embarrasses the entire league. It’s what he does. So it’s time he moves on. He’s lucky this country is in love with his sport and nothing he does can ruin the television ratings.

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If Goodell was the commissioner of baseball the sport would be on life support right now. Baseball could never survive a commissioner like Goodell. Bud Selig was a bumbling fool who looked the other way for two decades while his players blatantly cheated. That is true. But Selig was just happy to see fans in the stands and thrilled to see his sport rebound after a silly strike in 1994. If Goodell was baseball commissioner in the late 1990s when performance enhancing drugs turned the game into a circus freak show, he would have suspended about 200 players every year. The World Series would have been canceled every fall because of a lack of talent. If Goodell was baseball commissioner now he‘d suspend Mike Trout for four games for wearing his socks too high.

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Tell me again why Football Bowl Sub-division teams (like the Nevada Wolf Pack) play Football Championship Sub-division teams (like the UC Davis Aggies). There are tailgate parties more competitive than most FBS vs. FCS games. Yes, we know, the games exist because teams like the Wolf Pack need easy victories and teams like UC Davis want the paycheck. But is it really worth it? Nobody wants to see the games. And nobody really wants to play in the games. It’s also a no-win deal for the FBS team. There’s always the risk of injury. A victory means nothing for an FBS team but a loss can become an embarrassment that can leave a stain on a program for years. You want to put an end to these glorified exhibitions? The NCAA needs to stop allowing FBS teams to become one game closer to bowl eligibility by beating an FCS team. That would stop the bulk of these games.

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The Wolf Pack season comes down to four key games. The non-conference season is all about the home game against Arizona and the road game at Texas A&M. And the Mountain West season is all about the season-ending road games at Utah State and San Diego State. The rest is just fluff. The Wolf Pack will play the role of UC Davis in the Arizona and Texas A&M games. A win in either of those games will make the Pack season and give coach Brian Polian something to talk about in the off-season to recruits. But the Utah State and San Diego State games will have a Mountain West division title on the line. Football is always better when the games mean something and not merely a way for a coach to pad his record.

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The San Francisco Giants will now need a minor miracle to salvage this season. Losing three one-run games to the Los Angeles Dodgers earlier this week has all but left the defending World Series champions scrambling to simply finish above .500 this year. In the end, barring that miracle, the Giants simply had too many injuries. For much of the year they’ve had to play a lineup that would have struggled to finish third in the Pacific Coast League. The Dodgers were gracious enough to keep the Giants in the race until September but when it was all said and done they simply had too much Clayton Kershaw and Zack Greinke.