I’m worried about my country. I’m worried about a country that cares more about how much air was in a football than they do about the leader of the U.S. Senate lying about Mitt Romney on the Senate floor. Harry Reid said he had “inside information” that Mr. Romney had not been paying his taxes. Turned out to be a lie but Reid only shrugged and offered, “Romney didn’t win did he?”

I’m worried when my countrymen care more about whether or not Tom Brady deserves a four-game suspension than they do about the thirty-some thousand emails our former Secretary of State destroyed before they caused her problems.

I’m worried for my country when most care more about the sex-change operation of a former Olympic Decathlon winner than they do about providing equipment and coaches for sports in our cities and poor rural areas.

Did Tom Brady and the New England Patriots purposely deceive the National Football League officials in the now infamous “Deflategate”? A year or two from now it won’t matter. A year or two from now it WILL matter that Harry Reid deceived America, just like it mattered when Richard Nixon lied and just like it mattered when President Kennedy was assassinated. All of these things are important yet, we seem to have pushed sports in front of them in importance of our lives.

The fact that football , baseball and basketball players cheat should come as no surprise. Those slippery “bending of the rules” have long been held in rather high esteem by insiders and the press. “Just part of the game”, we’re told. Now, all of a sudden it’s a bigger sin than Cain murdering Abel in the Bible!  Yet, we, as a society, seem disinterested in the events that are happening that truly DO have an effect on our lives, our society. That we seemingly don’t care about these things some call “politics” seems frightening to me.
The sports world is to be a diversion for us from the problems of the real world. A diversion, not a replacement. That  we can live entirely in the sporting world is as foolish as thinking that Dorothy didn’t wake up from her trip to the Land of Oz.

I worry about my country when I see that so many seem willing to perpetually live in the Land of Oz.

CHALK TALK: The best line about Tom Brady and the “Deflategate” scandal was penned by sports artist extraordinaire, Ted Watts, who wrote in jokingly quoting Tom Brady: “ I did not have SEX with those footballs!”/ Major League baseball pitchers made whole careers out of bending the rules and throwing “spitters”. A real cat-and-mouse game was played by the pitchers and umps in that ongoing battle./ The Big 12 Conference huffed and puffed and DIDN’T blow the house down when they agreed to name a conference champion but stayed away from a conference championship game. The best way to fix this problem is to add two new members, like BYU and Houston or Boise State./ My wife accused me of being immature. I told her to get out of my fort!/ A judge has ruled that Donald Sterling’s girlfriend (you remember, the mess with the owner of the LA Clippers and his racist remarks) must turn over all of the cash, the home and the Ferrari that Sterling gave to her. It belongs to the wife! Oh well, easy come, easy go!/ Bob Devaney, legendary Nebraska football coach who put the Huskers on the football map once said, “I don’t expect to win enough games to be put on NCAA probation. I just want to win enough to warrant an investigation!”