It's Been Too Long...

My semester in Rome, my three-job summer and my internet problems at school now all behind me, I think I can safely start to post again. I know you missed me. I missed you.

At the risk of ranting and raving about sports events past, we'll focus on the future here. I've had a lot of thoughts on some of the ongoing stories, so here are three things I think that I think:

- I think Isiah Thomas going through a sexual harassment case is good for the Knicks. Not too much else would take the focus away from the fact that their point guard has clearly lost his mind, that their starting center and power forward can't play defense, and that they're heading for a seventh-straight losing season.

- I think that the Red Sox should ban fans from sitting on the Green Monster. Should the Sox lose the division, they would lose their chance to select the longer series (i.e. they would lose some time off during the series). This likely means the season's most comedic theme for Boston (Eric Gagne) would probably be forced onto the postseason roster. The Sawks would need more pitchers to compensate for playing more games in fewer days. All that adds up to Gagne's 7.88 ERA entering a game, followed by tens of fans launching themselves off the Green Monster. (Don't think so? I just had a diehard fan defend Gagne by telling me he pitched twice in their latest series without giving up a run...against the Devil Rays.)

- I think that football, despite Michael Vick and Rodney Harrison's HGH confession and the Pats' camera scandal, will still remain America's sport. I've tried to figure out why the baseball steroids scandal was so devastating while the dog fighting/HGH/cheating thing doesn't seem to be as big of a deal. Then I realized two things:

First, ESPN carries Monday Night Football and overhypes it like crazy. So there's no way in hell they'll let SportsCenter run too many investigative pieces on cheating in football the way it did with baseball. Sunday and Wednesday Night Baseball are popular, sure, but MNF's just too powerful. It was already amazingly huge across the nation when ESPN picked it up, it occurs once a week, and it isn't subject to other games happening around the league. You can switch to the local baseball team's channel and forget about Giants/Cardinals on Sunday Night Baseball. But a MNF version of Giants/Cardinals? There's no other game to watch.

Second, the reason football will remain America's sport despite the blemishes while baseball suffered is that baseball used to be America's sport. We need football to be the top sport, because the other options aren't much better. The nation was offended when a steroids-bloated Barry Bonds broke one of the most hallowed records in sports. It tarnished the game. The beautiful game played by fathers and sons and watched by families from all walks of life. Fans felt betrayed in '94 with the strike, betrayed again after they returned to baseball during the '98 McGwire/Sosa home run chase, only to discover that, too, was corrupt. Football not only will remain as the top sport out of the big three, but it needs to stay there.