In this festive season of love and peace for all humankind, I’d like to pause for a moment, throw my arms open wide to this great, big wonderful world — and let the hate pour forth.
I want to say at the outset that I don’t hate any one person but rather, as Tom Hanks said in “Punchline,” I am more of a hate “stylist.”
For example, while some might say my heart is two sizes too small, I was nonetheless delighted to read the other day that the Dallas Cowboys were no longer America’s team.
No great loss. I never voted for them and I haven’t liked the Cowboys since all the little front-runners at my Illinois grade school chose to root for the successful Dallas teams in the1970s.
Unfortunately the Cowboys have been replaced in national popularity by the Green Bay Packers, who have been embraced by a new generation of snot-nosed little front-runners that includes my nephew, which leads me to ask: Anyone know how to gift wrap a wedgie?
For me, swapping the Cowboys for the Packers is like swapping lima beans for stewed tomatoes.
As a Chicago Bears fan I hate, hate, hate Green Bay — a little more than Dallas and a lot more than stewed tomatoes, which make me gag like a TV critic watching “Jersey Shore.”
While I’m at it I’m not too fond of the St. Louis Cardinals, the New York Mets, the Florida Marlins, that Tim Tebow guy and Steve Garvey.
It’s not personal. I would never, for example, key the Cards’ team bus or call Tebow and ask if his refrigerator is running. And in fact, a few years back, Garvey was nice enough to grant me a very pleasant telephone interview.
It’s just that all of the above-mentioned, recently or long ago, dared to have success at the expense of one of my favorite teams or while one of my favorite teams was floundering.
This I can’t forgive.
An intelligent man recently told me that as a sports fan gets older he is defined as much by the teams he hates as by the teams he follows and, the gentleman said, “There is nothing wrong with that.”
It’s true. Only in sports fandom does a person collect more enemies, so to speak, than friends.
We keep our favorite teams close to us. We revel in their successes and sigh at their failures and forgive them as if they were our own, underachieving children.
And we only have room in our hearts for three or four teams. Maybe there is a favorite NFL and MLB club, perhaps an NBA or NHL franchise and a college athletic program, which usually means football and basketball.
Naturally it seems like the rest of the sports world is out to get us. All those other teams are trying to beat yours and some of them, because of proximity, history or the antics of certain personalities, become grudge foes.
We have to have our rivals; our sports thrive on it.
Look what the epic, Frazier-Ali bouts did for the legends of both, or look at the Celtics-Lakers (subtitled Bird-Johnson), Connors-McEnroe or the electrifying impact of McGrath-Pastrana on MX biking.
Look at the annual Arkansas-Arkansas State showdown.
Well, it’s Christmas so we can wish, right?
Of COURSE I look forward to the Bears-Packers and Cards-Cubs every year (though I have taken to watching while curled in a helpless ball with a pillow covering most of my head).
I don’t have a dog in the hunt but I wouldn’t miss Duke-North Carolina or the Yankees-Red Sox. Why? Because they have a great big, burning, slobbering, glittering, well fed HATE for one another.
It makes it fun. At least as long we keep our hate stylings in their proper place and no one sets fire to anything after the game.
So this Christmas season I wish my fellow sports fans peace and prosperity, health and well-being, life and laughter.
And 12 months of happy hatred for those clowns in the different colored jerseys.

Local baseball fans never got to see Albert Pujols when he was on his way up as a St. Louis Cardinals prospect in 2000.
And even though Pujols has signed with the Los Angeles Angels, the Class AA Arkansas Travelers’ parent club, fans aren’t going to see Pujols now.
At the dawn of the last decade the Travelers were still affiliated with St. Louis and people could reasonably expect to see the Cards’ future hotshots play in old Ray Winder Field, as J.D. Drew and Rick Ankiel had in the late 1990s.
But by 2000 St. Louis’ long relationship with Arkansas was headed for a flameout that would make Chuck Yeager whistle through his teeth.
Cardinals general manager Walt Jocketty wasn’t happy with conditions at the old ballpark and combative Travs general manager Bill Valentine wasn’t taking it lying down. Valentine — who fought with anybody, even those who tried to agree with him — didn’t like what he perceived as demands for improvements to Ray Winder.
Admittedly, the ballpark was substandard and required waivers from Major League Baseball to allow its continued use. But attendance and revenues were flat as warm Pabst and at that time there was no push or support for a new facility, so the Travelers spent what little they had on what little improvements they could make.
Either because of Pujols’ immense talent or because of the feud and playing conditions, or both, Pujols jumped right over Class AA Arkansas to Class AAA Memphis in 2000 and made his big league debut at the start of 2001.
Clearly Pujols was on the fast track in 2000. But after batting .324 for Class A Peoria, in the Midwest League, he hit .284 in 21 games for Potomac, of the Class A Carolina League, before jumping to Memphis, where he played in just three games and batted .214.
One would think there would be a little Class AA seasoning in there somewhere.
And it is a chin-scratching point of interest that by the end of 2000 St. Louis wasn’t even supplying the Travs with a full team, leaving the roster at 19 instead of 23 and hastily signing one player’s twin when the guy was in town to visit his brother.
Valentine rushed to sign with the Angels that fall, ending 35 years with the Cardinals and infuriating a few local fans apparently upset they would no longer get to see the prospects the Cards were no longer sending.
Fast forward to now and the Travelers still have their player development agreement with the Angels and a nice modern ballpark in North Little Rock while the World Champion Cardinals now have their Texas League presence in Springfield, Mo.
With Pujols signing his better than $250 million deal with the Angels, local fans are once again thinking they might see him play in their backyard, this time on an injury rehabilitation assignment.
Forget the idea of hoping a guy gets hurt so you can see him play, which was sort of Kathy Bates’ line of thinking when she busted up James Caan in Misery.
The truth is, despite a fairly chummy relationship with Arkansas, the Angels just don’t rehab guys in Dickey-Stephens Park.
While other Texas League teams, like Springfield, welcome rehabbing big leaguers all the time, that has not happened in Arkansas since the Angels moved in. Not once.
Arkansas has just not proven to be a practical destination for injured Angels trying to get their game back on track.
Los Angeles has a team in the Class A California League as well as the option of sending players to Class AAA Salt Lake, also much closer to Anaheim, or even to spring training headquarters in Tempe, Ariz.
Angels outfielder and Pine Bluff native Torii Hunter was the eye of a rumor storm in 2010 when it was speculated he would stop off in North Little Rock for a rehab stint and then join the Angels on the road somewhere.
But in the 11th hour the rumors dried up and Hunter was a no-show.
Let’s face it, if the Angels aren’t going to send a guy from Arkansas to Arkansas, they aren’t going to send a gazillionaire, future hall-of-famer like Pujols who is so good the Cards didn’t rehab him anywhere when he fractured his forearm last season.
The closest we’ll come to seeing Pujols at Dickey-Stephens will be the fans sporting his No. 5 jersey.
The question is whether they will be Angels or Cardinals jerseys.

I really do enjoy the NFL — especially now that the Bears have won four in a row — but from hyperbolic announcers to stadiums costing more than top-of-the-line aircraft carriers, the league tends to err on the side of wretched excess.
That is probably why I shot my mouth off a little prematurely during last summer’s labor strife when I said something like, “I’d love to see a year without pro football. Maybe people would find better things to do, like read or spend more time with their kids.”
Whatever it was I actually said, and it was certainly something snooty and judgmental, I’m glad I had my friend Phil Elson handy to bring me back to Earth.
Phil, of course, is a Pittsburgher and, since the Steelers are almost always competitive, he had a vested interest in seeing the NFL stay on schedule.
But Phil was right when he pointed out that the people who would suffer if the lockout continued would not have been the wealthy owners and players, discounting of course the college draft picks and guys on the reserve rosters.
The people who would have suffered most from a season’s cancellation would have been the security guards, ticket takers, concession workers and cleanup crews who relied on the extra income and, yes, the same fans I felt needed to get off the fantasy league web sites and pick up a good book.
Because in these troubled economic times, Phil noted, people need something to root for, something to take their minds off their problems and something to draw them together.
As much as I advocate good literature, I’ve never seen anyone wearing Shakespeare home whites and cheering “The Tempest” in a bar on Sunday afternoon. And spending time with the kids? My son and I never miss a Bears game, at least when they can be found on TV in this forsaken Cowboys country where I have chosen to make my stand.
Like it or not, and I do mostly like it, the NFL has become an institution on which people rely, and who knows how its absence might have impacted our national psyche in these times of recession and 9 percent unemployment.
And so I take my good friend Phil’s argument and turn to the NBA, which is teetering on the brink of a similar fate. In fact, the NBA is in a worse state because the season should have started two weeks ago, and with the latest impasse between the owners and players association, it is becoming more likely each minute there will be no season at all.
The NFL owners and players were at least able to resolve their issues in time to kick off the season. They even got to squeeze in those preseason games that are so satisfying — like winter sunshine and non-alcoholic beer.
In a good-faith effort I tried to read up on the issues affecting the NBA discord — I have a story open in another window on my computer right now — and all I can tell you is it has something to do with a revenue split, contracts, free agency and the potential disbanding of the players union so the players, acting as a trade association, can sue the league for damages.
But my half-assed research does show that the league revenue was $4.1 billion last season, and the average player salary is $5.15 million, though there is much argument to be had over the definition of “average.”
Still, we are talking about figures the “average” American will never sniff in his lifetime, short of winning the lottery. Folks who are pining desperately for a distraction, a little entertainment and a reason to get together in the cold winter months, are being asked to understand how the already wealthy are quibbling over a 50-50 split of $4.1 billion.
Try explaining that to the guy who is losing rent money because he can’t sell T-shirts on the Staples Center concourse.
Occupy Wall Street? Occupy the NBA while you’re at it.
With all those empty arenas there should be plenty of room.

Remember when you were a kid on the playground merry-go-round and your buddies would get that thing spinning really fast?
You wanted to jump off, but you had to make your move before the merry-go-round reached top speed and you were sliding all over the place and couldn’t control your trajectory and guarantee a pain-free landing.
Three different sports figures ended their merry-go-round rides recently, and not all of them landed well.
A friend pointed out that St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa went out on top, on his own terms and with class. He picked his spot and got off the merry-go-round while the getting was good, after a thrilling, seven-game victory over Texas in the World Series.
The Arkansas Razorbacks fans, continuing their hate-fest with former coach Houston Nutt, are just giddy over his flop at Ole Miss. Nutt was forced off the merry-go-round after it had picked up a little speed, and though he landed roughly there is some buyout money to cushion his fall.
And then there is Joe Paterno, who was about to have his likeness chiseled on college football’s Mt. Rushmore before allegations of sexual abuse of minors by a former assistant reached out and grabbed him, in the 11th hour of his career, and dragged Paterno down into the muck.
A hard landing indeed.
Three men. Three different fates.
La Russa and Jo Pa represent the two extremes — going out with a bang or going out under a cloud of scandal — while Nutt’s fate is perhaps the most common.
Just what does it take to reach that Vince Lombardi level of exaltation in sports anyway?
Certainly it takes a little luck, a number of victories and keeping one’s nose moderately clean.
Each man had his share of luck and victories — though a recent deficiency in the latter area is what doomed Nutt at Ole Miss — while all three at one time or another failed in the third category.
La Russa had the drunk driving thing during Spring Training in 2007, when he was found passed out in his SUV at a Florida stoplight.
While at Arkansas Nutt made the mistake of flirting with both Nebraska and a female television reporter, and his text message game of footsie with the woman made it harder for fans to forgive him his mishandling of quarterback Mitch Mustain.
Actually the Mustain thing and Nutt’s inability to live with offensive coordinator/genius in residence Gus Malzahn are the more heinous offenses in many Hog fans’ eyes. Heinous enough to obscure what should be warm memories of great victories over LSU and Texas or the fact Nutt’s 123 victories at Arkansas are second only to Frank Broyles.
But we’re talking about scandalous behavior here and it’s not a scandal to bench a kid who is 8-0 as a starter. Stupid, maybe, but not scandalous.
Then there is Paterno, who with a record 409 victories in 46 years looked all but untouchable until the sex abuse allegations against former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky blew up in Happy Valley.
Sandusky may be the one who was reportedly showering and taking sexual liberties with underage boys but Paterno, 84, committed the great crime in which so many are so often complicit — when he could have done more he didn’t, for close to nine years.
La Russa hung on through the bad press and, with the exception of fans second-guessing his batting order and bullpen management, his ride got smoother. After the Cards won two World Championships and played for another he enjoyed a soft landing.
Nutt apparently jumped from one merry-go-round to another when he left Arkansas for Ole Miss, and for he and Paterno the ride got irreversibly out of control for very different reasons.
For Paterno, especially, there was nothing left but a hard landing.

As I sit here and watch this press conference announcing Joe Paterno has been fired at Penn State, I think back a few years.

I was sitting at lunch with a couple of colleagues at a university where I used to work. Between us, we had probably 65-70 years of experience working in college athletics. We were watching a similar press conference from Baylor University. They were discussing the terrible happenings in the men’s basketball program, including one player killing another, a cover-up led by the head coach, drug dealing, paying players and a myriad of other terrible offenses.

We were talking about this being as bad as it can get.

I will never say that again. The awful, despicable, atrocious actions of a former Penn State football coach and the pathetic inaction of any number of people at the university leave me with a numb feeling, not sure how I should feel.

I am glad that the Board of Directors at Penn State did the right thing. This is more important than any legacy of a football program or a coach.

Joe Paterno did countless good for the football program and the university and for college football as a whole, but it is what he did not do that brought him down.

The millions of dollars donated to the university, the library named after him, the bronze statue in front of the stadium. None of them means a damn thing, because he did not look out for the children.

The victims were kids. Young boys who came from troubled homes and were looking for somebody to look up to.

The assistant coach, who is the monster that did these terrible things, will rot in hell and that is too good for him. However, Paterno, and the rest of the administration at the university are just as much to blame.

Yeah, Paterno did what he was supposed to do legally. Nevertheless, it was his complete lack of compassion for these kids that is intolerable.

This is alleged to have gone on for at least 10 years. TEN FREAKING YEARS.

Somebody should have followed up. Somebody should have said, “Hey, whatever happened with that coach and the kids?”

Somebody should have called the police. Everybody should have called the police.

The graduate assistant who walked into the locker room. Paterno. The athletic director. The vice president. The president. Who stepped up and followed through. Who thought, you know what, he is preying on kids and he needs to be stopped.

From all accounts, they all did the minimum that was required and then washed their hands of it.

Well, the stink of this is still on them. And it is not going away soon.

So far the president, vice president, athletic director and legendary head coach have all either stepped aside or been fired. That is a good start.

There has been a number of scandals just in the last year. Most of them have had people making legitimate arguments on both sides. Not here.

Watching the reaction on the sports news outlets, I have not heard one person make a case for Paterno to stay on and coach even one more game. The pure anger that a number of these national reporters are expressing, is something that I have never seen. They are paid to keep their cool and to report what is happening. On occasion an opinion will be expressed, but the pure emotion is rare to see. They all seem to feel bad that his career ended like this, but they all have agreed that this was the end that it had to have after what has transpired in the last week.

The board of directors did the right thing in making a very tough call. It is never easy to tell a legend that his time has come, but they did.

There has been talk of a lack of leadership on this campus in the last week. Tonight we saw the board step up into that leadership role. This was a big first step, but there are many more to take.

I thought I had seen the worst that there was in college athletics.

I am not going to say that this is as bad as it gets, because I do not want to be proven wrong.