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Marvin Miller taught the professional athlete that the commissioner was nothing more than an employee of the owners. Roger Goodell's missteps in six-plus years on the job only make that more apparent.

In ESPN The Magazine, Howard Bryant writes about how lockouts have become as routine as the changing of the season. If only fans realized they have the power to put a stop to it.

In ESPN The Magazine, Howard Bryant makes a case against NBA and NFL owners who say a salary cap is necessary for parity, using the example of MLB's exciting pennant races.

It was a Mount Everest of a record. But the game has changed so much that Dan Marino's passing mark didn't have a chance of standing tall against the Drew Brees and Tom Brady ascents.

Are there lessons in baseball's last round of labor strife for NBA commissioner David Stern? He is racing, like Philly-era Barkley on a fast break, toward a showdown.

Sure, it's a free speech issue. But when Champion dropped Rashard Mendenhall over his tweets about the reaction to Osama bin Laden's death, it became a control issue, too. And Mendenhall now has it back.

It's time to take back the meaning of the regular seasons in professional baseball, basketball, hockey and football by cutting down on the number of games.

It's always a harbinger of hope, sure. But in this year's mixed-up, locked-out sports world, baseball's Opening Day is something else, too. It's shelter from the storm.

It's always a harbinger of hope, sure. But in this year's mixed-up, locked-out sports world, baseball's Opening Day is something else, too. It's shelter from the storm.

The already-complicated relationship we have with the players we love to watch is even murkier during the NFL lockout. Perhaps it's because fans aren't yet comfortable with the athlete as a business equal of ownership.

The business of the National Football League is currently at an impasse, but the game of football is very much alive. Will fans wake up to the power they hold?

In a nonstop culture consistently unwilling to allow time for perspective, legacy is easily the most overused, misappropriated word in sports.

The NFL once seemed invincible. But recent developments -- illegal hits, longterm health hazards, misbehaving players, continuing drug issues -- have football's reign over American sports in jeopardy.

For all its seeming invincibility, NFL may be the most vulnerable of sports, a house of brick erected upon fault lines serious and numerous.

Did Brett Favre "big-time" the Vikings? Did LeBron James do the same to the Cavs? Here's one man's answer: If they did, it's only because Minnesota and Cleveland allowed them to.

Sports keeps getting bigger, not better. The expansionist tendencies of professional leagues and the NCAA are putting cash flow ahead of competition, Howard Bryant writes.