So back to sports....

Short bit of navel-gazing today, as I need to get back to writing a brief, on which task I am a bit behind schedule. But, just a few things...

I could start by ruminating about surprising starts by perennial doormats Detroit, Buffalo, and of course our own Cleveland Browns. But really, there isn't anything much to say about it. We're three games in. It will matter more what everyone's record is when we're ten games in. As a Packer fan I will say Detroit now officially scares me some. I will also say that Ravens and Steelers fans have zero reason to be scared of the Browns just yet.

But here's an NFL tidbit I did find interesting. Apparently, the new NFL collective bargaining agreement now specifies that sexual orientation is one of the grounds upon which owners are prohibited from discriminating against players. This doesn't cover other team employees, necessarily, and honestly I have a hard time thinking that simply adding this protection is going to persuade any currently-closeted gay NFL players to come out. Pro team sports are still ruled by an ethic of machismo, and simply a statement by your bosses that being gay isn't going to get you fired probably isn't going to persuade anybody worried about acceptance by fans and teammates. Still, though, I think that one of these days sooner rather than later, we're going to start seeing a few openly gay professional male athletes. Coaches and owners and general managers are sports guys and businessmen. They're in the business of putting together winning teams if they can, and they have a comparatively miniscule number of people in the labor market from which they can draw to do it. If you're running an NFL team and you need a bruising cornerback with blazing speed on your team and there's one available in the draft, you can't afford to care whether the guy has a boyfriend or not. You're going to take him before your division rival does. And I suspect that a lot more players are open to gay teammates than one might guess, certainly more than 20 years ago. The incomparable Charles Barkley may have said it best (as he has a way of doing!) when he said earlier this year that he knew he had some gay teammates and he didn't care. "I'd rather have a gay guy who can play than a straight guy who can't." He can't possibly be unique among athletes in having that opinion.

And on a completely different topic, I can now watch baseball postseason again with some actual interest in who wins, which happens occasionally but not all that often. But I have to show some Cheesehead solidarity, so come this weekend I'll be watching the Milwaukee Brewers. I will admit that I haven't seen them play even once this year (my local team is in the American League, after all)--I don't know how many times this year they were playing in whatever nationally televised game Fox or ESPN was showing. I do know the networks have to make room to televise 432 matchups every year between the Yankees and the Red Sox, so that doesn't leave time for too many other games. But I'm hoping they don't just summarily get dispatched by the juggernaut Phillies--I'd like to see them stick around long enough for me to learn the names of all the players, heh.