Comrade Bach tells us from the far-flung outpost in Santa Clara that Frank Gore, the 49ers running back, endorsed the idea of faking an injury to slow down or change the pace of a game.
Whatever it takes to win, was the way he put it.
And there is why the sports various rulebooks are thicker than a whale omelet.
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Every now and then someone complains that the rules are too complicated, especially in football, where 22 mesomorphs seek each other out at high speed in hopes of making new human shapes. They like the simpler game where the ground doesnt cause a fumble, where a quarterback can be hit and not just "engaged", where pass interference has the same rules in a bar fight that it does on Sunday afternoon.
And football was exactly that once. The NFL rulebook was once a hand towel. But competition attracts people who like to compete the hell out of something. And if there was only one rule in footballsay, not shooting someonethere would be 31 head coaches and one general manager trying to figure how to smuggle concealed pistols on players.
Sport is about cheating, whether you like it or not, and all the things you teach your children about fair play and sportsmanship are put in abeyance (a fancy word meaning ignored completely) when people get paid.
And every time someone figures out a way to bend an existing rule, a new one is introduced, to be circumvented and then repaired in an endless dance that leaves everyone properly cynicized about what is and what is not football any longer.
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I mean, faking an injury is pretty greasy stuff in a sport whose proponents blather on endlessly about character and will and drive and an ongoing list of moral absolutes. But Gore speaks not only for himself, but for every player, coach, general manager, owner and cheerleader in the league.
Whatever it takes to win, and if you get hit in the nethers in a pile-up, its your fault for not building up your nethers to withstand a human fist.
In short, we are sending Comrade Bach out again tomorrow to see how many players believe carrying a gun into a game "just in case" is a good idea, and we are here to tell you that 91 percent will answer with some variation of lock and load.
And the other nine percent will say, I dont know. What did Coach say?