NFL returns from the dead - Ingles

In early August, commissioner Roger Goodell and the players union rolled back the rock in front of the league crypt and out popped the NFL, looking surprisingly spry for a guy that had been dead for a few months.

The 2010-11 NFL season played out like the minutes leading up to closing time at your local. As it got toward the end, there was a desperate surge toward the bar to ram in a few last moments of fun.

It was capped by the perfect denouement — the forces of light (Green Bay) overcoming the army of darkness (Ben Roethlisberger). But the lead-up to the championship game was dire.

Shuffling between a series of drab hotel ballrooms in icy Dallas ahead of Super Bowl XLV, listening to a shifting roster of spiffy apparatchiks droning on about doing what was best for football by no longer playing football, it felt like whatever was coming would be long, ugly and intractable.

Once the lawyers got involved, a solution seemed impossible.

Then everyone looked around a negotiating table and realized, hey, we’re already rich, and we’re going to get much richer. Then it was suddenly over. There’s a lesson in this for all labour activists — the easiest way to divide any financial pie is to make sure it’s got a $9 billion filling.

Now the NFL looks an even bigger and more compelling juggernaut than it ever was. If Thursday night’s first tilt — Saints vs. the Packers in Green Bay — doesn’t make you tingle, then ask a friend to roll back the rock in front of your crypt.

Last season was about decline toward the unknown. This season is about renewal. Of old rivalries, hope for fading stars and a slate of new faces.

No league in the world has a shorter half-life than the NFL. As we were reminded ad nauseam during the lockout, the average length of an NFL career is three years. A new owner-friendly CBA will hasten that constant renewal. It’s bad for players and good for fans. If you don’t like today’s NFL, go watch basketball for a couple of months. The NFL will look different when you return.

That trend is apparent in the league’s ancien régime, which suddenly looks really ancien. Peyton Manning’s aching neck and his soon-to-be-broken consecutive starts streak are only the first symptom.

So the first and best storyline of the new season is “one last time.”

Can the Patriots ride Tom Brady to a fourth championship before they begin another rebuild? Can Manning do the same for the Colts? How much longer can those twin peaks of stardom in the game dominate?

February’s Super Bowl will be held in Indianapolis. If the league could give Manning and Co. a bye into that game, they would. With his prematurely aged face and bumptious patter, Manning humanized the league for those who don’t eat their meat raw.

After he’s gone, expect Ndamukong Suh, the scariest man alive, to be the guy sending you the league’s best Christmas wishes. If your TV is 3D, Suh might end up actually punching you in the face. The league would love to enjoy one more year of dominance by Manning, your grandmother’s favourite player, before a Visigoth like Suh takes over.

But getting through the AFC South looks like a tall order for Manning’s Colts, especially with creaky fill-in Kerry Collins playing the role of Manning. It doesn’t matter if the Colts forfeit the first four games, the entire first half of the season will be sponsored by the Peyton You Can Never Leave Us foundation.

This new NFL has been unfriendly to bubble players and fringe talents. There are now two classes in the league — elite stars and gap fillers. The NFL is starting to look a lot like the country it represents — a community without a middle class.

That’s allowed several teams stuck in the second-tier to reel in the traditional powers (in NFL terms, “traditional” means over the last three years).

The Saints, Steelers, Packers, Chargers, Falcons, Ravens and Jets are still class squads. While they were looking — they’ve done very little but look and worry — the Eagles, Lions, Texans and Cowboys have begun to close ground behind them.

The Eagles in particular have assembled a squad that makes opponents tremble and accountants squirm. Philadelphia added six Pro Bowlers in the off-season. For flavour, they shoehorned in a couple of other guys who used to be all-stars. The team is now so loaded that one Pro Bowl cornerback will have to sit and watch while the other two Pro Bowl cornerbacks play each series. A cornerback rotation is the new definition of defensive depth.

No merciful God would allow the city of Philadelphia to win two championships in one contiguous sports season. So since the Phillies are going to win the World Series, the Eagles will not be allowed to win the Super Bowl. We hope.

Despite the Eagles’ gains, no one is talking about dream teams — especially in Miami, where they still feel ashamed. Just getting past the Giants and the Cowboys in the NFC East is a gruelling hike. Philadelphia has to concentrate on September (and the Falcons in Atlanta in Week 2) before they start thinking about February.

That’s the beauty of the league right there.

Parity and violence drive the NFL’s popularity. The former continues to blossom, while the latter is being pruned. Purists are already moaning about the new kickoff rule — which will see the ball placed on the 35-yard-line rather than the 30, thus drastically reducing the number of run-backs and brain-rattling hits — but their complaints haven’t found much purchase in the general imagination of sports fans.

The NHL should be taking notes — if you simply implement rule changes, instead of waffling about them in public for months, fans will accept them.

That heartening equilibrium at the top makes picking winners a mug’s game. If you like the feeling of being right, head down to the bottom.

That’s where the wretched Cincinnati Bengals — who spent the off-season getting even more wretched — appear poised to win the next off-season. By finishing dead last they will guarantee themselves possession of the first sure thing in the draft since Manning himself — Stanford quarterback Andrew Luck.

That’s good news for Toronto’s imaginary American girlfriend, the Buffalo Bills. At least someone will be worse than them. It’s going to be a long season at Ralph Wilson Stadium. Playing that one game in October at the Rogers Centre is going to seem less like a carnival and more like a week-long furlough. This article was written by Cathal Kelly and appeared in The Toronto Star.