S.F. Examiner: These NFL meetings will be anything but ordinary

By Art Spander
San Francisco Examiner

So the big boys from the NFL — the owners, not the players — come to The City by the Bay seeking peace and a new extra-point rule. Of course. Isn’t this the cool, gray city of love? Wasn’t the United Nations Charter signed in a hotel on Nob Hill?

Didn’t there used to be a pro football team playing in San Francisco?

Read the full story here.

© 2015 The San Francisco Examiner 

The Sports Xchange: Even in New York, it's still Super

By Art Spander
The Sports Xchange

NEW YORK — What a brilliant idea bringing the Super Bowl to greater New York, where a feta cheese omelet at Lindy's costs $18, the tabloid stories that haven't been about Peyton Manning have been about brother Eli, and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell makes the concession, "We cannot control the weather." 

And we mistakenly believed the league could do anything it wished.

Read the full story here.

COPYRIGHT © 2014 The Sports Xchange

RealClearSports: Goodell Punishment Fits Saints' Crime

By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com

Someone had to make a stand. Someone had to make us believe the rules in sports, as the rules of society, were created for a reason, and just because the country is full of scofflaws and liars and thieves who masquerade as businessmen – yes, you Bernie Madoff – we should keep winking and nodding.

These are serious times in football, the game, although wildly popular, undercut by the stories of concussions and dementia, of Dave Duerson shooting himself, but not in his head, so medicine could research the effects of a lifetime of tackling and blocking had on the human brain.

Read the full story here.

© RealClearSports 2012

RealClearSports: I Told You So: NFL Back in Business

By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com

The New York tabloids gave it that, "This is the most miraculous thing ever,'' approach, but, hey, understatement is not their style.

"Christmas in July,'' was the headline fromon the Daily News. Be interesting to see their assessment of Christmas in December.

Look. I don't want to say I told you, but ...

Read the full story here.

© RealClearSports 2011

SF Examiner: Draft allows NFL to get back to football

By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner

The commissioner, Roger Goodell, says the NFL Draft is one of his favorite events. “Because,” he told USA Today, “it’s all about football.” Apparently so is the honorable Susan Richard Nelson, who has decided people who play it for a living, well, ought to be able to play it for a living.

Nelson is the U.S. District judge in St. Paul, Minn., who ordered an end to the lockout declared last month by the owners against the players.

Read the full story here.

Copyright 2011 SF Newspaper Company