When you put yourself out there as an expert and the people you are trying to attract are people who want to do the very show you are doing, guys standing around, sitting around arguing with each other over sports, if you make a mistake that lights up like a flare in the middle of the night. You've just got to correct that or else they're going to say, 'Well, why do these dopes have that show? I can go out there and be just as good as them.'

Everyone who ever walked barefoot into his child's room late at night hates Legos.

Ivan Lendl is a robot, a solitary, mechanical man who lives with his dogs behind towering walls at his estate in Connecticut. A man who so badly wants to have a more human image that he's having surgery to remove the bolts from his neck.

So instead of the Super Bowl, we've got the Stupor Bowl. Two once-proud teams, now 0-4 and stumbling through the season like zombies. And if you think the Cowboys are bad (and they are), the Redskins are so bad that every few plays you have to put a mirror under thieir noses to make sure they're still breathing.

When you put yourself out there as an expert and the people you are trying to attract are people who want to do the very show you are doing, guys standing around, sitting around arguing with each other over sports, if you make a mistake that lights up like a flare in the middle of the night. You've just got to correct that or else they're going to say, 'Well, why do these dopes have that show? I can go out there and be just as good as them.'

He is already past the high point in his life and coming down on the other side. By next week he'll be nostalgia. He's 12 years old, and it's over for him.

Someone I talked to who covered auto racing for a lot of years said she believed there was a 60 percent chance that Junior qualified with a car not quite up to code and people looked the other way because there’s no points involved [with the pole].