Ah, this takes me back to when my wife and I were drawing sports cartoons for ESPN. We had a little feature we called “Out There With Englehart and McGrath.” It was a video comic strip that ran on Sunday mornings as part of “Sports Weekly.”

I learned two things from that experience. Thing one, we couldn’t be very critical of sports superstars because they might retaliate against the network by limiting access. Thing two was how to draw a cartoon football.

There’s a great piece in the January 31 New Yorker about football-caused concussions, brain damage and spinal cord damage because of the insane impacts in the sport. It got so bad in the early days of the game that President Teddy Roosevelt stepped in after 15 players died on the field in 1905. I like football and appreciate the league’s attempt to limit the carnage, but ultimately, bone crushing is part of the sport.

We have a family Super Bowl party every year and serve foods from one of the featured teams. A couple years ago when Pittsburgh was in the Super Bowl, we had “Roethlisburgers.” It was basically a large hamburger, but it had a fried egg and other stuff in it, too. This year, we’ll honor Green Bay with special Wisconsin-style bratwurst and fried cheese curds. Just try and find cheese curds outside Wisconsin.

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