My wife Dahn and I were sitting on the couch Saturday night watching football (yes, my wife watches football. In fact, she

loves football, which makes me a lucky, lucky, lucky man.)Sometime between the 1 millionth pickup truck commercial and the 10 trillionth beer commercial, she turned to me and said something very profound."Just once I'd like to see a (feminine hygiene) commercial during a football game," she said. "Chicks watch football, too."It resonated with me, just like her previous observations about pink football jerseys made for women — "Since when are the Steelers' colors

pink and gold!" she'd exclaim — and why kickers wear one soccer shoe and one football shoe. Why not wear two soccer shoes?In sports, there are things that happen just because it's always been that way, even though times have changed and the old status quo no longer applies.•

Hockey fights.It used to be the NHL needed fisticuffs to attract casual fans and keep the fan base interested, but it is unnecessary now.Who really wants to watch Sidney Crosby throw down?•

The college bowl system.College football fans want just one winner now, not a bunch of them at the end of meaningless bowl games that lost their tradition sometime before Desmond Howard struck a Heisman pose.Not everyone can be a winner. We want to see a bunch of losers, too.Yes, everything was great until greed — that killer of all things good in sports — took over and games like the EagleBank Bowl, the Humanitarian Bowl and the St. Petersburg Bowl were concocted.Now, every mediocre college football team can play in a bowl game.Proof? Five Mid-American Conference teams played in a bowl this season.Five!Keep this up and Kent State may be playing in the Humanitarian Bowl next year. Believe me, there is nothing humanitarian about being forced to watch the Golden Flashes play football.•

Pride stickers.Former Ohio State football coachWoody Hayes and trainer Ernie Briggs came up with the idea in 1968 to give players helmet stickers to reward them for great play.The idea caught on and many college football programs have turned their helmets into a third-graders lunch box ever since.We know, James Laurinaitis. You are a great player. Your helmet doesn't have to look like it was dipped into a bowl of chicken and stars soup to prove it.•

Unnamed sources.This has always been used as a crutch (see Ed Werder), but it is more rampant now than T.O. outbursts and Plaxico Burress legal troubles."Unnamed sources should be banned," an unnamed source told me.Mike Kilroy is a staff writer for the Butler Eagle.