What To Do, How To Do It, About...Everything

So, I've got this problem. No, not that problem...

...what should I write my blog about this week?

• How about the National Football League and the inability of the grown men who play in it and do the coaching and administration of it to fairly split up $9 billion? Nine billion dollars! That's 9 billion. What the ...?

• I know, how about what happens despite the best intentions of doctors, scientists, trainers, coaches, referees, rules makers and the people in charge of them all when athletes collide head-to-head and then forget what they were doing there. Like, forever...

• How about, why did Dave Duerson kill himself? Kill himself? Why did a two-time Super Bowl safety and a proud, retired athlete and family man, just 50 years old, take a gun and kill himself? Was it the concussions? Or the aftermath thereof? Was it the violence of the game he played and loved or the violent men who made it so? I suppose it could've been worse. How? He could've played in the same era as James Harrison of the Steelers.

• Why is it that all four major sports (hockey's No. 4, not NASCAR, you dummy) have their collective bargaining agreements expire within a year of each other? First time ever. Maybe all four sports will have to shut down. Cancel their postseasons, their championships. No Super Bowl. No Stanley Cup Finals (eh, no biggie, already happened and the Red Sox took advantage to win the World Series for the first time since there previously was no Stanley Cup Final - 86 years before that). No NBA Finals. No World Series (been there, done that too).

All because grown men can't split up a lot of money. Two billion dollars. Three billion. Nine billion. Does it make a difference?

What will you do if there's no NFL season? No MLB season? No hockey (celebrate actually on that one)? What if players had to take time off while billionaires decided just how much money they wanted to take back from their millionaire employees? What would you do in the meantime?

Watch college football (same old concussions)? Watch minor-league baseball (whoopee!). Watch your kids play soccer (there's a novel idea)? Develop a workout regime of your own? Discover (God forbid) your family? Do cultural (yuck) stuff? Join a bridge club? Play chess? Stalk Erin Andrews (no, strike that).

Travel? What's that? You already throw the family into the trailer every weekend and follow NASCAR around? Alas...

I've got it - UCF! No, wait, that's a concussion waiting to happen. Boxing? The same. WWE? Who doesn't love Smackdown? Raw? Wrestlemania? It's fixed, you say? Hasn't that happened in pro and college football and basketball anyway?

Hey, gambling, of course, gambling. Gimme' the Packers, lay the points. No, wait...

And kiss your fantasy sports good-bye too. No more computer drafts, or better yet, barroom drafts, and drafts, know what I mean? You might have to take your girlfriend out to dinner. Or dancing. Yeah, dancing. Remember how to do that?

"American Idol" or some trashy show like "Cake Boss" or "Say Yes To The Dress" on Monday nights in the fall is looking pretty good about now. You might get so hooked on it you won't go back to MNF when the NFL returns.

Yeah, the NFL, remember that? And SportsCenter. The Top 10 would be billiards shots and gymnastic floor routines. And the lead story on the nightly news would be who got eliminated on "Survivor" or "Celebrity Apprentice." Hopefully, it was Rod Blagojevich.

But just to keep things in balance, maybe they should donate his brain to science too for further study.

Like, now, maybe?

DeMaurice, Roger, good luck. Call when you have something.

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Howard Schlossberg (hbssports) is editor of "Journal of Sports Media," the only publication totally dedicated to groundbreaking academic research in the field. He's also an Associate Professor of Journalism at Columbia College Chicago and is a sports correspondent for The Daily Herald, a Chicago-area metro daily. He is the author of two books.