Self-Evident Truths

These ten things we at Sportsthodoxy hold to be self-evident:

1. There is no such thing as an "elite" quarterback, and any argument over who is or is not elite is purest bullshit. This is why video games are better than football; in video games, you know when you level.
2. There is nothing funnier than a "nation" of fans. Until you implement taxation, borders, currency and a legal system, you are not a "nation". You are a marketing category. Yes, even you, Red Sox fans.
3. There are Cirque de Soleil performers in Vegas less contorted than a consistent winner's attempts to play the "no respect". If you really need motivation, think of the giant piles of money you're being paid to do this.
4. OK, there's something funnier than a "nation" of fans. It's watching said "nation" go full on psychotic defending the honor of multi-gazillionaires. Tom Brady is a multi-multi millionaire, folks. He has oodles of money. He is married to a supermodel. He lacks for nothing in this world except perhaps a reliable pass catching option out of the backfield. And yet, somehow without the help of the WEEI listening base, he would be helpless. (Also: Those "The North Remembers" t-shirts? Pretty much everyone who ran "The North" got stabbed. Think about it.)
5. There is absolutely nothing worth mentioning about a training camp fight, unless someone actually gets injured. That narrows it down to whatever Geno Smith just did and any time Steve Smith is involved. Beyond that, it's about as meaningful as the bullpens emptying in a Brewers-Padres game in August. That will, of course, not stop the internet and the commentariat from going wild with the hot takes.
6. Most baseball trade deadline deals, by definition, do not help teams win the World Series. That's because only one team can win the World Series, which means everyone else doesn't. Judging a deadline by how many teams it helped with the World Series is the purest idiocy; the answer in any given year is, at most, one. The point of trading is to improve your shot of being the one - hence the Brewers going all in on CC Sabathia a few years back. Most of the time, it doesn't yield the big prize. But then again, most of the time not trading doesn't get you the title, either.
7. Preseason football is always terrible. Half the time you're watching undrafted free agents from Arkansas-Pine Bluff square off in hopes of landing a practice squad gig by biting the other guy's face mask in half, the rest you're watching dumbed down versions of actual offenses because no coach in his right mind wants to show off his entire playbook. The fact that people honestly look forward to this is terrifying. The fact that the same people bitch about paying to see the thing they've been slavering over for months indicates that they've got a problem.
8. Politicians giving hundreds of millions of dollars of public money to billionaire team owners is never a good idea. It damages the cities giving the money by handing over some combination of cash, real estate, and future revenues. It puts cities on the hook for decades and ungodly sums of money (see: the Marlins' stadium boondoggle) and it generally has no effect on the team. Any calculation of the revenues that would be "lost" by not giving a team a few hundred million dollars should be met by mordant laughter and the immediate recruitment of someone who actually knows math to show how badly the locals had been ripped off.
9. The primary purpose of training camp is to sell shirseys. 
10. For all that Bud Selig resembled the navigator of a used clown car, he generally understood how to keep a league humming. Not so Roger Goodell, who has failed to learn the key concept that stepping on your own junk while wearing golf shoes hurts. He's even managed the impossible and turned both Tom Brady and Richie Incognito into figures of (limited) sympathy. The only way he's going to top that would involve loaves and fishes.