We don't realize how much the NFL is quietly drifting towards flag football. During the '80s, part of the defense's goal was to put the fear of God into offensive players... that's fading away.

I am old enough to remember every Red Sox season since 1975. Baseball is long. Baseball takes forever. It's day in, day out, for six solid months - seven if you're lucky. Winning is always fun.

I started my Twitter account for selfish reasons: I wanted to have a place to post updates on my book signing tour and stuff like that. I never realized that I'd have so much fun tweeting. It's become the deleted scenes for my DVD of columns and podcasts.

You always hear that tragedies put sports in perspective, that they prove we shouldn't care this much about the successes and failures of a bunch of wealthy strangers. I'm going the other way - sometimes, sports put everything else in perspective.

I don't think you can ever tell the story of Ted Turner's involvement in professional wrestling-slash-sports entertainment without devoting several chapters to the rise and continued ascent of Sting.

To meet my goals, I couldn't let up when I was playing tennis.

English, Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish football gains so much from being in Europe. Clubs and fans all benefit from European action, laws and funding.

Every league has its own culture, its own identity, and its own type of football. It's very physical in England, but technical skill comes to the fore in Spain, where everybody wants to play beautiful football. The standards are very high in Germany, too; the teams are physically strong, very disciplined, and very well organised.