Jay Mariotti

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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It's another Nike scheme, I suspect, perpetrated to create a rush on LeBron James' new, customized No. 6 jersey. Seems even the swooshheads have to compete against the iPod Touch, Nintendo Wii, PlayStation 3 and Guitar Hero, right? That said, if it truly was LeBron's idea to relinquish No. 23 out of deference to Michael Jeffrey Jordan, I congratulate him for his style.

While admonishing Stan Van Gundy for his ignorance.

James wants every NBA player wearing No. 23 to follow his lead and find another number. It's an idea akin to placing the image of longtime basketball great Jerry West on the league's logo, a silhouette that has survived to this day. If Jordan indeed is the greatest player ever -- and anyone who disagrees should have his sports fan credentials revoked -- it's appropriate to, in effect, retire his jersey without the actual ceremony. James is the one player worthy of the number, as a legitimate heir to Jordan, and he doesn't feel right wearing it. So why would the inferior likes of Devin Brown, Toney Douglas, Stephen Graham, Wesley Matthews, Jodie Meeks, Byron Mullens, C.J. Watson and Martell Webster not feel sheepish, much less embarrassed, in continuing to wear the sacred digits? Only Jason Richardson, Marcus Camby and Kevin Martin have displayed enough skill and accomplishment at the highest level to not draw sneers for wearing No. 23. Yet they, too, should pay tribute to Jordan and get with the LeBron plan.

Oh, sure, it might be fun if they hated each other, stole each other's women, fired off nasty tweets, treated their rivalry like another bloody night in the Octagon. But the beauty of Peyton Manning vs. Tom Brady -- wait, give Brady first billing, since he has a 3-1 lead in the Super Bowl rings derby -- is that neither is a jerk on a sports planet filled with such creatures. Both are classy, dignified men who avoid blowhardish braggadocio and succeed because they rely on a tool that can be so remarkably beneficial when used properly.

The brain, we call it.

When an NFL player attacks an opponent with a dangerous, helmet-to-helmet hit, he is suspended immediately for a game or more. When Oakland Raiders coach Tom Cable acknowledges having struck his first wife -- this as two other romantic partners allege that he physically abused them, this after a Raiders assistant coach accused Cable of breaking his jaw and threatening to kill him during a training-camp confrontation -- well, I'm wondering where the NFL commissioner is right now.

Urgency has been the signature of Roger Goodell's tenure as it comes to violence and personal conduct. A violation occurs, he's on it at once, and next thing you know, Sheriff Roger is announcing another suspension. It has been the most important stance taken by a sports commissioner here in the new millennium, but just the same, Goodell must be as quick to act on a coach as he is a player. In the case of Cable, who at the least has serious anger issues and appears to have an ugly history of battering women and bullying men, it's hard for me to believe he'll be allowed to coach another week in America's most visible, successful league. The NFL says it is investigating Cable and his past, but Goodell already has the proof required for at least an indefinite suspension:

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So what do people want from their heroes, anyway: after-the-fact transparency or the perpetuation of fraud? Here we are, still wading through the slime of the Steroids Era, rightfully crucifying juicers for trying to hide behind walls of deceit. And yet, some of the same critics are pummeling Andre Agassi for volunteering 12 years after his sin -- when it would have been far more convenient to keep living the lie -- that he failed a drug test and deceived the ATP by writing a letter claiming he "unwittingly'' used crystal meth.

The admission, in an autobiography called Open,' is crippling to Agassi's reputation as one of sport's good guys. By outing himself, he hurts his family, his numerous charitable causes, his credibility and the image we have of his complete body of work, not good when one of his defining ad campaigns once had him declaring, "Image is everything.'' Knowing the damage that was forthcoming, he came clean nonetheless about his recreational drug problem, unlike the high-profile baseball stars whose performance-enhancing crimes have been revealed in investigations and exposés.