The problem with giving an athlete all the money he’ll ever need in his life is that he’s going to ask you for something that you can’t guarantee— no matter how much money you have. And that is a championship.

If you’re one of those who think that today’s uber-rich athletes are maybe a little got up on their societal importance, last week was not a great time to be a sports fan. From Nike playing the Colin Kaepernick race card to Serena Williams pleading for women’s rights, it was the agony of the feed from the culture mavens.

In retail the time-honoured phrase is “Under-promise and over-deliver”. 
In sports you might amend that to: “If your promise something you’d better deliver”.

It’s the next frontier of TV sports broadcasting. Naturally, the Canadian Football League is leading the way.

What? The CFL schooling all the big boys on cutting-edge telecasts? 

After six months of no NFL football, fans are waking from their long sleep to discover that the league has tried yet again to fix its rules. This time it’s not to increase scoring— although the new rules will probably jack up scoring.

We sit in the golfing trough between the 147th Open Championship and the 109th Canadian Open, two of the longest-standing tournament dates on the calendar. After the Open wound down in Carnoustie, Scotland, with Italian Francesco Molinari as champion, many of the top players were on a red-eye flight back to Canada to fulfill their obligations in playing Canada’s top tournament at Glen Abbey in Oakville, Ontario.

So the penetrating question of the 2018 World Cup of Soccer— better known as Putin’s Festival of Bribery: Why do the large, powerful nations have short national anthems while the smaller countries have ones that go on forever? God Save The Queen (England) is over faster than you can save Bobby Charlton. But Iceland and Peru seem more like a six-part Netflix series than an anthem.

As far as Phil Mickelson is concerned the GA in USGA probably stands for “god awful”. In his putting protest against course conditions in Round Three of this year’s Mens U.S. Open (run by the U.S. Golf Association) Mickelson pitted his sterling reputation against the prestige of the USGA. 

Watching the super horse Justify cruise to the Triple Crown this past weekend by winning the Belmont Stakes in New York City was a sublime moment for lovers of sports. The three-year-old became just the 13th horse in the modern history of American thoroughbred racing to win the three jewels of racing’s Triple Crown.

When did sports leagues decide the the best way to decide their biggest games was to throw away the rule book and procedures at the most stressful moments of the championship? To ignore the standards that got the teams to the Finals?

This week the NFL re-cast its rules about kneeling in protest during the Star Spangled Banner. As is their wont, the NFL owners made things worse, not better, with their compromise. Stated simply, players and coaches must stand for the playing of the anthem before NFL games. However, those with objections are told they can hide out in the dressing room until game time.

Teams don’t quit on their coach. They quit on each other. The biggest fraud among the reasons why Dwane Casey was fired as head coach of the Toronto Raptors has to be that his team quit on him.

Because no one gets to break up with Toronto, the current humiliation of the Raptors by LeBron James is being seen as all about Hogtown. Sad. But when you’re the centre of your own universe, you think you should be able to buy, intimidate or use every means at your disposal to get what you want. Now.

It was a moment of blissful self unawareness that makes the NHL so enduringly quaint.

Gary Bettman’s wind therapist, deputy commissioner Bill Daly, was hosting the annual draft lottery Saturday night before and during Game Two of the Las Vegas/ San Jose Western Conference semifinal. Arrayed behind him on the dais were representatives of the NHL’s huddled masses, the teams concentrated on one night in June rather than a playoff run in April or May.