Colin Kaepernick, seen here in 2012, is locked in a struggle with the NFL over wearing Beats headphones.

The Beats go on for football – America’s religion, America’s travesty

October 14, 2014

From the Friday night lights of small towns across the U.S. to the NFL, football has never been more popular – or more besieged.

Sayreville, N.J. is just the latest community to be rocked and torn apart by allegations of sexual assault, this as part of a hazing ritual among the players on the Sayreville War Memorial High School team. With seven players under arrest, the season has been canceled.

“It’s a town that lives on Friday night lights. It was something for everyone to enjoy,” town Councilman David McGill told The New York Times. “We don’t want to see that big-league sports mentality start to trickle down to us….”

Carry on, Cleo: New exhibit considers the Egyptian queen’s ancestors

October 13, 2014

Thanks to Hollywood (on one end of the spectrum of ludicrousness) and historical revisionism (on the other), there are many misconceptions about Cleopatra.

She was a sex kitten unfurling herself before Julius Caesar, a beautiful siren setting Marc Antony on a collision course with Rome. She was milky white. She was black.

She was nothing of the kind but rather something more complex and far more interesting – a striking if not beautiful, intelligent , commanding woman who managed to attract two of the most powerful men of her time as she balanced two very different cultures. That she could not hold a third culture in the equation was part of her undoing.

Like many great and tragic figures – the sculptor Isamu Noguchi comes to mind but we might also want to throw President Barack Obama into the mix – Cleopatra was part of two worlds. And when you’re part of two worlds, you often end up belonging to neither. She was the last of the Ptolemies, who were in turn the last pharaohs and are the subject of a new exhibit, “When the Greeks Ruled Egypt,” at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World through Jan. 4. ...

Men – the fairer sex?

October 11, 2014

Boy, nothing gets women piqued faster than telling them that men are the better-looking sex.

I had this conversation with two female friends recently, one of whom skeptically said to me, “Do you really believe that?”

Yes, I do, though perhaps not in the way they might think. Of course, the average woman – with her makeup and her Spanx – might be more gussied up than the average guy. But what I mean is that aesthetically, the best-looking man is better-looking than the best-looking woman, that I would take the Apollo Belvedere over the Venus de Milo any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

Blame it on hormones. Male hormones give them bigger, hotter, lusher, more dangerous looks that read easily across a crowded room. Consider Colin Kaepernick, photographed by Bruce Weber on the cover of the new V Man magazine.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, he has a nose like a toucan, closely cropped hair and lots of tattoos, which displease some of the fashion police.

And yet – wow – those eyes, like Cognac in firelight; those long, thick lashes; that cut jawline (to go with that cut body). Ladies, ladies, do you think a woman could carry those off? ...

Phelps gets help

October 9, 2014

Michael Phelps has entered an alcohol treatment program, this as USA Swimming has suspended him from the sport until March. (He has a Nov. 19 court date for his recent, second DUI arrest.) So he won’t be taking part in the short-course world championships in Doha, Qatar Dec. 3-7 with Ryan Lochte and company. (Maybe he wouldn’t have swum short course anyway.) In any event, no Phelpte for a while.

It’s all terribly sad, particularly as Phelps has been doing his usual superb Phelpsian job on the aquatic comeback trail. And you don’t want to take away something that gives a person purpose.

But sometimes in life you have to put your career on hold to get your house in order.

It is a humbling experience to ask for assistance. ...

Jim Harbaugh – Gone guy?

October 7, 2014

Who needs the Bard when we have the San Francisco 49ers? Talk about your drama.

From quarterback Colin “I’m not the baby daddy” Kaepernick to defensive end Ray McDonald, arrested but not yet charged with the abuse of his pregnant fiancée, the stories are endless if not always entertaining.

The latest narrative centers on teensy-bit-excitable Coach Jim Harbaugh, who may or may not be steering the team next year, even if the Niners win the Super Bowl. Harbaugh has already been to the dance, so to speak, where he and his miners lost to the Baltimore Ravens, who are coached by his brother, John. (You can’t make this stuff up.)

So Harbaugh, Jim, is pretty good at what he does. But there are rumors, and here you can take your pick: He’s too hyper, contorting his face on the sidelines like something out of “Chicken Run”; he treats the guys in the locker room like the college kids he once coached at Stanford; he did wrong by then-Niner QB Alex Smith by secretly courting Peyton Manning when he was a free agent. (Ultimately, Smith would go to the Kansas City Chiefs after losing his starting job to a concussion and Kaepernick,)

Enter SF CEO Jed York, who only fanned flames by tweeting that the team is trying to win a Super Bowl, not a personality or popularity contest. Translation: “Yeah, Harbaugh’s a jerk, but he’s our talented jerk.” ...

Under fire, the NFL thinks pink

October 6, 2014

A shout-out to two former colleagues covering the NFL’s domestic abuse crisis.

Jane McManus of ESPN continues her fine reporting with a piece on the NFL’s addition of more women to the team that will ultimately help clean up this mess. A revelation: Off the Field, the NFL wives organization, is just being included in the discussion now. (Apparently, a first letter from the wives to the league was lost. What a surprise.)

If you’ve been reading this blog, then you know that Jane and I worked together at The Journal News, a Gannett publication. One of our estimable colleagues was longtime religion reporter Gary Stern, who contributed a piece on the entwined lives of NFL commish Roger Goodell and suspended player Ray Rice in the paper’s Oct. 5 edition. ...

Alex Smith, Colin Kaepernick and ‘the good wife’

October 4, 2014

So the San Francisco 49ers face-off against the Kansas City Chiefs Sunday, Oct. 5 for the first time in the regular season since the Niners traded quarterback Alex Smith to the Chiefs, signaling that Colin Kaepernick would be their guy.

The Niners seem destined for an embarrassment-of-quarterback-riches drama. This is the team that traded Joe Montana – possibly the greatest quarterback to date – to the Chiefs no less, because they had Steve Young.

When Alex Smith suffered a concussion back in 2012 and Kaepernick took over for him, leading the Niners to the Super Bowl, well, it was a bit like that moment in “42nd Street” when the star breaks her ankle, the ingénue goes on and the rest is theatrical history.

Even though Kaepernick has better statistics than Smith – and from a pure performance standpoint is a helluva lot more thrilling to watch, because he’s a running quarterback – the Smith-Niners reunion has led to the inevitable “Did the 49ers Make the Right Choice?” column.

Here’s the thing...