Jay Mariotti

He is, with no apologies to Isiah Thomas, the best little man ever to play the game. Allen Iverson exudes a sinister sort of energy that makes him appealing in every arena, if also polarizing and detestable. He's fun and dynamic and a perpetual conversation piece, always armed with a combustible dagger on and off the court, yet there's a side of him so unnecessarily pigheaded -- "We talkin' about prac-tiss!" -- that you really want to grab his earlobes and shake him.

So we gather again collectively, crammed into kitchens and living rooms, ready to feast on food and football. We consume the turkey, the ham, the stuffing and potatoes, the corn and green beans, the rolls and pie, the wine, the beer and anything else we can stuff into our screaming bellies. It satisfies us. It fattens us. Life is swell.

And then we look over to the television, where the most powerful and popular sport in the history of this country, if not the world, gives us the entertainment equivalent of take-out sliders and Spam.

The punch, which left him with a black eye outside a South Bend bar in the wee hours, should remind Jimmy Clausen that it's time to go. No matter the circumstances -- even if it was as innocuous as Clausen being coldcocked by a jerk as he and his girlfriend were leaving C.J.'s Pub -- it should have been clear as he was absorbing a sucker punch that there's no good reason to return to Notre Dame next season.

CHICAGO -- Well, that confirms it. When Devin Hester's pants were inadvertently yanked down Sunday night by a Philadelphia tackler, it proved that a full moon hangs over this bedeviled city. Just what has happened to the parochial mojo here, anyway?

Chicago was skunked in the race for the 2016 Olympics, out-Chicagoed by the backroom politics of smirky Eurocrats apparently unimpressed by President Obama's four-hour campaign stop and Oprah Winfrey's cheerleading charm. As for Winfrey, she is halting production of her TV show after next season, another setback for a town that feeds off her global starpower and cash-cow machinery. Two major trade shows have opted for smaller Orlando and Las Vegas, saying Chicago is much too expensive. Meanwhile, the once-invulnerable mayor, Richard M. Daley, is losing his power amid the ongoing sleaze of Chicago politics. Obama is struggling in the big chair in Washington, just 54 weeks after his starry, surreal speech on Election Night in Grant Park. The city's two newspapers, which used to brawl like bloodthirsty MMA toughs, are irrelevant, soft and straining to stay in business.

SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- Outside Notre Dame Stadium, where Touchdown Jesus is considering whether to hold his nose and wear a brown bag over his head, a student waved two tickets at anyone who walked past. "Freebies. Who wants free tickets?'' he hawked Saturday.

There were no takers.

"After we lost to Navy,'' he said, "everyone gave up.''

Juxtapose that scene against one inside the famed bowl, where Charlie Weis did something we'd never seen him do. Locked arm-in-arm with his 33 seniors, who were playing their final home game, he wept openly as they emerged from the tunnel and walked onto the field. Weis initially was standing in the back, wanting the seniors to have their day, when he was told to join them at the front. This was their show of support for a man about to lose yet another maddening game -- and, ultimately, his job as Notre Dame coach.

If it's true that Kansas football coach Mark Mangino, upon seeing a receiver named Raymond Brown drop a pass, launched into a hideous tirade that concluded with a racially tinged threat -- "If you don't shut up, I'm going to send you back to St. Louis so you can get shot with your homies" -- then the university should dismiss Mangino immediately. If it's true Mangino told receiver Marcus Herford that he'd send him "back to the street corner where you came from,'' then keeping the coach would be a Rock Chalk Crock.

And if it's also true that another Kansas player, who had told the team that he dreamed of becoming a lawyer and that his father was an alcoholic, was subjected to this insensitive, vicious onslaught from Mangino -- "Are you going to be a lawyer or do you want to become an alcoholic like your Dad?'' -- then we might have to strap Mangino in a straitjacket and haul him away.

For he is a madman.

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A day doesn't pass without another ode to the NFL's massive popularity, be it another monstrously rated broadcast, another epic game, another billion-dollar gambling feast or this from ESPN: "Pro football is the ultimate reality TV.'' And who can argue, really? The NFL is the epicenter of sporting life in our entertainment-driven land, conquering the consciousness of men and women, old and young, reality and fantasy.

It's so big, in fact, that it's easy to miss the dirty little problem that the league -- and all levels of football -- are attempting to rectify without drawing too much attention to themselves. That would be the irresponsible and dangerous pressure within the sport to view concussions as merely an everyday occupational hazard, no different than sore buttocks or hangnails, and forcing dazed and dinged players to return quickly to the field lest they be known as soft and cowardly. Volumes of medical evidence now conclude that football-related head injuries can lead to brain disorders, including dementia and Alzheimer's, and leave players in such vegetative states that they can't function in their 40s, 50s and 60s, assuming they live that long.

CLEVELAND -- The mental welfare of this perpetually beleaguered, nationally pummeled, unemployment-burdened, sports-doomed, pray-if-LeBron-leaves city was fairly stable between 1996 and 1998. Those were the three years when the NFL didn't exist by the lake, when civic outrage over the Browns' devastating departure to Baltimore faded into a hope that something better and more loyal was on the way. Who knew that not having them at all was a far saner fate than resurrecting them for the next decade?

And how many folks would like to light the franchise on fire about now, just as the Cuyahoga River once went up in flames in Cleveland's most infamous moment?

INDIANAPOLIS -- He was wearing a dark blue hoodie, stylish with a shirt collar, and my thought right now is that Bill Belichick should go back to the old tattered version. Because on Sunday night, in one of the most inexplicably arrogant brain cramps in the history of football and any other sport known to humankind, the coach who gave us Spygate introduced Stupidgate to the American lexicon.

There were the New England Patriots, three-time champions of the Super Bowl and Team of the Decade, facing 4th-and-2 at their own 28-yard line. They owned a 34-28 lead over the Indianapolis Colts. Two minutes and eight seconds remained. Armed with a capable punter and adept special teams, the Patriots could have pinned back the Colts and forced Peyton Manning, great as he is, to drive his offense about 70 yards. The Patriots' defense already had forced him into two interceptions. Two of the Colts' young wide receivers, Pierre Garcon and Austin Collie, were dropping the ball. This was the most obvious decision a coach could make on any level, NFL to Pee Wee.

Punt the friggin' ball.

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Welcome to the heartland, home of the Big Ten, a league that doesn't deserve its own TV network and should respectfully reject a Rose Bowl bid on the basis of stodginess and cowardice. Ever wonder why the best talent routinely heads southward and westward? You should have seen the final minutes of the conference's unofficial title game Saturday evening, when two prominent head coaches laid down, played for overtime and reminded us why college football in these parts is maddeningly prehistoric.

There was Ohio State's Jim Tressel, the sweater-vested genius who writes self-help books about life, unable to help himself. Armed with a two-touchdown lead with 11:32 remaining in regulation, he watched the Buckeyes allow a 99-yard kickoff return for a score and have their own interception and touchdown return nullified by an offsides call. So what did Tressel do with 2:37 left and the score tied at 24-24? He shut down all creativity, went ultra-conservative in his own end and punted. In the process, he didn't utilize the running and passing talents of Terrelle Pryor, who might be one of the dynamic weapons in the college game if Tressel wasn't stuck in the 20th century and had a clue how to develop and utilize a two-way quarterback.

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