Let The Games Begin

The NFL’s preseason games begin in earnest on Thursday night, ushering in four weeks of debate over rosters, injuries and emerging stars.

It will be a blessed relief from the overwrought haggling and fighting, the court battles, the arrests, the complete sense that this league has lost control of itself and its senses.

 
Against the backdrop of these preseason games we have Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton getting in a fight with a teammate, New York Jets quarterback Geno Smith getting punched out by a teammate (now a former teammate) and New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady attempting to punch out the NFL for its attempts to suspend him.

Players have retired early due to health concerns, mostly concussions. Players have been released for committing or allegedly committing a variety of offenses, mostly late Aldon Smith of the San Francisco 49ers. Imagine, a pass-rusher with 44 sacks in four years, who was the seventh overall pick in the 2011 draft, unemployed after a string of offenses.

 
Three teams want to leave their long-time homes for Los Angeles, which doesn’t have a stadium and saw its two teams leave in 1995. The second-largest market in the United States has not had a team of its own since 1995, when both the Los Angeles Rams and Los Angeles Raiders departed (and now want to come back).

Are the games an attraction or a distraction from the league’s messy business?

We’ll vote for an attraction. We’re going to put aside the problems on this Thursday evening and watch the nation’s most popular sport. We’ll talk about the prospects, the wins and losses (meaningless as they may be), which players helped themselves and which did not.
 
 
Post By: Larry Weisman, a longtime sportswriter for USA TODAY, blogs for Twistity.com. Follow him on Twitter @MrLarryWeisman .