NFL is a despicable league that we should say goodbye to, but won't

There are dozens of reasons why the NFL deserves to go away, to be banished from our sight forever. There are at least two reasons why that won't happen.

Tradition and Peyton Manning.

The Oct. 8 PBS show "A League of Denial" was a journalistic masterpiece. If you haven't seen it, find it. It is everywhere on the Internet. It should be.

It was two hours that can be oversimplified in one sentence: For years, the NFL knew its players were suffering head injuries that would bring serious long-term damage, yet it denied that, stonewalled the players seeking help and spent millions to muddy the truth.

Did Louganis Act Properly? : Diving: Some wonder whether he should have revealed he was HIV-positive during '88 Games.

When Greg Louganis hit his head on the diving board and spilled his blood into the pool at the 1988 Olympic Games, did he have an obligation to disclose to doctors who treated him and to other athletes using the pool that he was HIV-positive?

It is a question being asked since Louganis, who won four gold medals in two Olympics, revealed this week that he has AIDS and was HIV-positive at the Seoul Olympics when he hit his head and bled during the preliminaries of the three-meter springboard competition.

The story of Louganis' overcoming the accident and coming back to win the gold medal is part of diving lore. Until now, only a very few knew the untold portion of the story: That Louganis failed to tell the doctor who applied stitches to the back of his head that he carried the AIDS virus. The doctor, James Puffer, did not wear gloves when he sutured the wound.

The Billy Beane way still works for A's, and team's owner

As the calendar turned to September, with the Oakland Athletics in the heat of a pennant race, their general manager was half a world away.

Billy Beane was in Prague, and not on a scouting trip.

Baseball's most unconventional operation has done it again. The A's will be crowned champions of the American League West for the second consecutive year, perhaps Sunday.

Beane has run the A's for 16 years. Oakland is about to win the AL West for the sixth time in his tenure. The Angels have won five times in that span, the Texas Rangers four times, the Seattle Mariners once.

You could write a book about his financial wizardry. The first five times Beane assembled the AL West champs, he did so with the lowest payroll in the division. This time, the A's are paying about $62 million — the same as the Angels paid to win the World Series 11 years ago.