This season, the NFL rolled out a new ad campaign. You've probably seen it during games. Players, close-up, talk into the camera about their families, or friends they made in the league, or legends they've met. It's called "Football is Family."
There's a sweetness there. A reminder that fans really can cheer for men like Connor Barwin and Eric Dickerson, Marcus Mariota, DeAngelo Williams and Jim Kelly.
Until the day your team moves to Los Angeles. Because football can be as close as family, this reminder stings a little more: Football is business.
You always know it's a possibility, a team threatening to pick up stakes and head to a more pliant community -- unless its hometown city delivers the moon in tax cuts and stadium financing. Idle threats like this are typically rewarded with bags of cash. But then the day comes when a franchise like the Rams actually breaks hearts.
The NFL didn't invent the hypocrisy of this, of a professional league leveraging a fan's love and respect until the moment it decides there's more money to be made outside of Seattle or Montreal or -- sigh -- Brooklyn.
When the Dodgers picked up and left, also for Los Angeles, it left a hole right in the heart of Brooklyn. Those baseball fans couldn't root for the Yankees, and the Mets didn't exist yet. Instead, the Ebbets Field site was turned into a housing project, which was termed "deteriorating" in this Newsday story about a visit from New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio last year.
What can you really do with a stadium after a team leaves town? Or when an event, like the World Cup or the Olympics, is over? Think of all those "white elephants" rotting in South Africa and Greece. Governments opened the coffers in hopes of an even bigger return on their investment.
It's a return that rarely comes, as this St. Louis Dispatch story on the Edward Jones Dome illustrated last June. St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay tried to address the issue at a news conference this week.
"With the Rams moving, the city will lose money in the short run," Slay said. "But without the Rams in the Dome, we will be able to book more citywide conventions, which will help offset the revenue loss."
That revenue loss includes, according to reports, the annual $500,000 that the Rams paid to rent the stadium. What's more, St. Louis still owes at least $100 million in debt it took on to build the stadium more than two decades ago.
Rams owner Stan Kroenke, who orchestrated the deal, tried to tell fans the move was "difficult" and "bittersweet." He even invoked his own family upbringing in a statement about the transition.
"I am a Missouri native named after two St. Louis sports legends who I was fortunate enough to know on a personal level. This move isn't about whether I love St. Louis or Missouri. I do and always will."
He can wipe those crocodile tears with $100 bills.
So in many ways it's a double loss for the community. St. Louis fans have to say goodbye to their team, and at the same time bear the cost of the stadium built to stage glories that never fully materialized. Since 1995, the team has only had four winning seasons.
Ah, family. It's always the ones closest to you who hurt you the most.
Other things on my mind this week:
The ugliness of the Bengals-Steelers game was a low mark -- a coach pulling a player's hair, really?? It was also notable for two devastating helmet-to-helmet hits that appeared to leave two players briefly unconscious, Gio Bernard and Antonio Brown. One hit, Vontaze Burfict's on Brown, was flagged right away. The NFL, by rule, can eject players for "flagrant" violations such as headhunting. Burfict was suspended for three games. That's a strong penalty. Additionally, ejecting a player upon review would show NFL audiences that violating another player's safety brings immediate consequences.
Most everything Ta-Nehisi Coates writes is worth reading, and this piece for the Atlantic on Bill Cosby's enablers is no exception. "Criminals flourish when no credible system exists to adjudicate the claims of their victims."
Black assistant coaches in the NFL aren't promoted at the same rate as their white colleagues, reports Mina Kimes in ESPN The Magazine.
The New Yorker takes on the grim connection between domestic violence and brain injury.
This was a very funny look at President Barack Obama's State of the Union speech from the culture blog VSB.
Jess Mendoza is a permanent member of ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball booth. Full disclosure: She's a colleague. But hell yes, Mendoza!!
Presidential candidate Donald Trump used a campaign stop to say the NFL has gotten too soft.
I saw this video on my timeline and was charmed. It's an old woman and a dance instructor. I plan to age just as beautifully!