Let the battle for the NFL team known as the Rams begin, and the combatants may not be St. Louis and the Inglewood (Calif.) City Council. Instead it may be a battle between the billionaires, Phil Anschutz, who wants an NFL team in his planned Los Angeles facility and Rams owner Stan Kroenke. Continue reading

It is, when you get down to it, a business … a for-profit, “what have you done for me lately” business in which the bottom line is the bottom dollar.

Pro football, heck, all pro sports (and, really, big-time college ones, too), are all about making money, about generating revenue, about return on investment … and if that return doesn’t match or surpass the investment, it’s typically sayonara time to the idea, plan, facility, administrator, coach and, perhaps the most disposable of all, player. Continue reading

The leader of the small, but vocal group of protesters, a woman who identified herself only as Sandra and claimed to be a teacher, burst into the lobby of the five-star hotel opposite Copacabana beach where the IOC Executive Board were wrapping up their three-day meeting.

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The toughest 12-year-old you are likely to know is sitting on a couch in the place that saved her life.

Her name is Claire. She lives in Prairie Village with her father, mother, older brother and younger sister. Claire is quick to smile, at least here, surrounded by love. She likes fast cars and jumping on the trampoline in her backyard. She wants to be a lawyer someday, and heaven help you if you ever go against her in a courtroom.

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You knew it was coming.

With all the recent talk about the possibility of freshman ineligibility being reinstated, and the highfalutin chatter by the Big Ten about leading the way in this new agey attempt at returning to a perceived better past, you figured at some point, in some way, a voice with some impact would speak to the contrary. Continue reading

If it’s the first week in March, the pre-Madness madness has kicked in with its full-court press. As teams jockey for position, in terms of berths and bragging rights, for the upcoming NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament, it can get a little crazy.

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As reported in a recent issue in the American Medical Association (AMA) Morning Rounds (2015, February 5), lung cancer is now the leading cause of cancer deaths for women in wealthy countries. Morning Rounds reported announcements from various organizations and news agencies of a recent report from the American Cancer Society. The reports reflect a recent analysis of data from the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) and the World Health Organization.  The analysis was conducted by the American Cancer Society and IARC, and published on World Cancer Day, marked annually on February 4 (Townsend, 2015).  Deaths from breast cancer have “dropped dramatically in the previous two decades” (Ungar, 2015).  However, worldwide trends suggest that lung cancer death rates are rising. Continue reading