Last night I saw a player go into the “injury tent.” Maybe it was an injury “pod” or an injury “compartment” or a medical evaluation chamber or a mobile injury assessment unit, or maybe it was an iTent. (I know that soon, very soon, some company will be branding that tent.) Anyway, the NFL wants its players to tear their ACLs and labrums in private. I get it, during the course of a game things can get pretty gnarly. I don’t want to see people in pain so, yeah, sure, put these guys in the let’s-take-a-closer-look tent.

Of course, the NFL could just instruct the networks not to show close-ups of injured players. They could tell them to stop filming their every step to the sideline, to stop following them up the tunnel and into the locker room. If they don’t want me to see injured players being evaluated by medical personnel, why are they showing me twenty-seven replays of the gruesome injury itself? Does the tent exist to protect a player’s privacy and me from all the emotional trauma, or was it really invented to shield the truth from the spies on the other team so they won’t know the extent of the injury, or worse, so they won’t see a really good doctor at work and then try to steal him for themselves?

The NFL wants a degree of civility and decorum. I understand. They don’t want me to see medical scenes of a graphic nature. I appreciate that. What they do want me to see, however, is players getting down on all fours and acting out skits in which they play the role of canines lifting their leg to pee. They also don’t seem to care if I witness a player or coach pissing on the field. You’ve seen this happen, right? A player needs to go, so he finds a place on the sideline, asks a few guys to hold up towels and then uses the artificial turf as a urinal. Holy hell, just go in your pants if you can’t hold it, piss and sweat are close relatives anyway and you’ll be the last guy anyone would want to tackle. I’m having a hard time figuring out what’s acceptable and what’s off limits in the eyes of the NFL.

Maybe I should help. Remember when the referee went under that little hood to watch a challenge replay? Well, now it can be in a tent, in fact, there can just be a bunch of tents. You can have a replay tent and an injury evaluation tent and a urination tent and an animal impressions tent. Everything either secret or gross can go under a tent. The Patriots defense can go under a tent. The coach calling plays can go under a tent (and stop holding that play sheet in front of his face every time he talks). Now every NFL game can look like a giant swap meet, heck, there are so many interruptions and delays and timeouts and discussions, they should just play the whole game in a tent and when it’s all over the ref can just come out and announce the winner … Upon further review, the Jets won!