Jay Mariotti Nfl

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.

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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GREEN BAY, Wis. -- Shame on them for booing him, mocking him, staging funerals for him, wearing flip-flops and eating waffle fries to ridicule him. The hostility toward Brett Favre was an embarrassment to a community that never looked smaller, an affront to the idea that the publicly owned Packers and their fans form a unique family bond amid the greed and sleaze of 21st-century sports. If the Cheeseheads truly had perspective, they would have stood and applauded the man whose swaggering presence defined a franchise and state for 16 years, and then they'd have rooted like hell for their boys to beat the old dude and the despised Minnesota Vikings.

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Upon hearing that Jay Cutler was engaging in trash-tweeting with one Chad Ochocinco, my first impulse was obvious. Given his inaccuracy in the red zone, Cutler surely would hit the wrong letters on his cell-phone keyboard and require spell check. It wasn't wise for the Bears quarterback to answer Ochocinco's cybertaunts, not when he's being soundly embarrassed by Kyle Orton -- Kyle Orton, ladies and gentlemen! -- in first-half returns on the NFL's biggest offseason trade.

Yet there was Cutler, firing back when he should have been (a) working on his flawed passing mechanics, (b) pleading with management to find better weapons and (c) studying game film to determine why he went 2-of-9 with a bad interception inside the Atlanta 20-yard-line in Sunday night's loss. This while Orton has been the model of efficiency and near-perfection for a Broncos team that is 6-0 under coach Josh McDaniels, the first-year revelation who dared to unload Cutler and misses him now about as much as an unflushable toilet. Considering the mounting evidence against him, didn't Cutler have something better to do than play Twitter tag with a troublemaker?

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NEW ORLEANS -- The players have started wearing T-shirts bearing the inscription, "SB44." It's not a Louisiana highway or some exotic local beer but the stated aspiration of the Saints, a franchise that has managed only eight winning seasons in more than four decades and long was known for humiliated fans who wore bags over their heads. One fan was a young Eli Manning, who was a baby when his father got beat up in his final seasons but later would venture to the Superdome with his brothers, Peyton and Cooper, to see the Saints get mauled.

These days, Manning is just the latest victim of a team that doesn't hesitate to think big, even when its pedigree suggests small, careful, quiet steps to a championship. The idea of the Saints reaching Super Bowl XLIV should have been the halftime theme of the House of Shock, a musical troupe that instead gave us a Michael Jackson Thriller compilation. But then, we never, ever should be shocked by the great Drew Brees, who played a mesmerizing game of pitch-and-catch with his numerous weapons Sunday and proved again that he's among the most electrifying quarterbacks the game has known.

MINNEAPOLIS -- So here comes the folk hero once more, teasing when he should be wheezing, charming when he should be farming, reminding us again why we really, really want to love him. Anyone who had buried Brett Favre as a mercurial mope -- and who hadn't, other than friends, family and John Madden? -- was left to shut the hell up Monday night and nod admiringly at another inspirational portrait on a canvas unlike any other.

NEW ORLEANS -- You still slip-slide into a surreal daze upon entering the Superdome, recalling the horror it symbolized amid the ravages of Hurricane Katrina. No human being forgets how this "shelter of last resort'' reeked of stench from 30,000 refugees who had precious little water and food, how they reportedly were subjected to rape, violence, gang activity, drug dealing and the sight of a man committing suicide by jumping from the upper deck. But ever so quickly, the new excitement inside the Dome sweeps you right out of the past.

Refurbished and alive now, it's nothing but a den of delight in a city that still needs daily doses of hope and heart.

This is the home of Drew Brees and the Saints, a franchise once so awful that fans wore paper bags over their heads, but is suddenly resembling a team that could win a Super Bowl. Despair in the mushroom-shaped building has been replaced by raw delirium, an aura centered around a prolific and oddly underhyped quarterback, who has warmly embraced the city's recovery efforts and might not stop proving his former team, the Chargers, wrong until he reaches the Pro Football Hall of Fame.