Canadian skeleton sensation finds courage after football star boyfriend’s death . . . Bruce Arthur’s NFL picks,

Since Hitler is in the news more than you would expect for this time of year, one of the dictator’s biggest blunders was the Battle of Moscow, where the Germans marched on the Russian capital as winter approached, and . . . yeah, a retreat would have probably been a good idea at some point. Knowing when to retreat is something every leader should have, because the next thing you know you’re failing to take Stalingrad, or STILL obsessively tweeting about being criticized by the meanies at the newspaper, on TV and in the theatre.

Anyway, the NFL never retreats, unless the class-action concussion lawsuit can be settled on its terms. Commissioner Roger Goodell has said he wants this to be a $25-billion-a-year business, and you don’t get that by sitting on your couch, where literally anything can just kill you. No, you expand. And so, there are weeks where football can be consumed in the following order, chronologically, if you live in the Eastern time zone.

Roll out of bed Sunday morning. If you do not have kids and are not religious, you are probably hungover. If you have kids and are hungover, well, enjoy the world of quiet TV cartoons in the basement, kids! Stumble to the kitchen, pour some cereal into a bowl, sit down on the couch, it’s 9:30 a.m. Click. Hey, football from London! Crap, it’s the Houston Texans, which means Brock Osweiler playing quarterback like he’s got flippers for hands. Oh well. Beats the Sunday morning political shows. They keep talking about Hitler. That’s tough, when you’re hungover.

The London game ends, there’s time for a spot of lunch, and the 1 p.m. games start. That ends, then the 4 p.m. games. There’s time for dinner between then and Sunday night, and then bam, Al and Cris. Monday night? Check. Thursday night! Uniforms that look like they were designed by the people who design for presenters at the MTV Video Music Awards in 2024, check. Has your wife left? Are the kids still watching cartoons? Do you own a toothbrush? Probably, right? Football is family, they say, but it is also not spending time with your family.

But! ESPN’s Adam Schefter is reporting that the London games may get rescheduled to 1 p.m. Eastern time in “a move to combat what many believe to be an oversaturation of games and start times.”

Wait . . . OVER-saturation? TOO much football? In AMERICA?

Could Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban have been right when he said of the NFL in 2014, “I’m just telling you: Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered.” Could the non-stop incompetence and moral rot of the league and too much football and some bad games lead to a . . . retreat? A small one, not even on the continent, but for a league that had visions of dominating the world, any step back is notable.

The league already blamed its drop in prime-time TV ratings on the election, which turned out to be the most successfully hateful con since whoever invented (if you are a woman) high heels, or (if you are a man) having to shave. Hipsters and the lazy (I count myself as the latter, for the record) have worked their way around that one, reminding me of what my elderly Italian barber once told me: during the ’60s, he had to take a second job at the track because not enough people wanted a haircut. It was a different time.

Well, the track used to be among the biggest things in sports, and so did boxing, and so did baseball, and times change. The tide comes in, and the tide recedes, and the tide may eventually come in and keep coming and eventually force Floridians to go and be fully polarized weirdos somewhere else. Mistakes are made and echo across generations. Hitler should have retreated, but he didn’t, and it was for the best in the grand scheme. Luckily, people who admired him were never given a significant platform or reason for political hope in a powerful country ever, ever again.

Last week this space went 5-8-1, but at least it did it honestly. As always, all lines could change.