This week's sports minute for you

The just Cardinals won the National League Championship Series. It was the first time they ever did NOT blown a 3-1 series lead in a league championship series. That is a bizarrely ugly history.

In a similar way the many-traveled Cardinals of the NFL were not able to convert a single third down of longer than seven yards through the first six weeks of the season.

This week the Minnesota Vikings will be starting Josh Freeman at quarterback. It will be his four start of the season - the previous three were for the Tampa Bay Yuccaneers who cut him just two weeks ago (but don't worry I am SURE he knows the playbook inside and out now). Tampa probably flushed him because he had completed just 46% of his passes in a winless start to the season. Admittedly on a team coached by Greg Schiano who has need less than a season and a half to conclusively prove he wasn't NFL ready despite turning Rutgers around - but 46% is inexcusable (Tim Tebow complete 47% in his career). He is the THIRD starter six weeks into a 1-4 season for the Vikes who have taken just over two seasons to give up on their 2011 #1 pick Christian Ponder. How do you know your team is in a directionless freefall? This is how.

Or you can be the Grambling State Tigers who forfeited their football game this weekend because the players refused to get on the bus to their game. Players have boycotted practice and walked out on school officials over anger about the month ago firing of coach Doug Williams, collapsing facilities, and having to bus to distant games (such as a 750 mile trip to Indianapolis).

While it worked out for UCF tonight if you get to the five yard line needing a TD with 34 seconds to go and one timeout you DO NOT burn first down spiking the ball (especially given that the clock stops with a first down in college ball). You have 4 shots to get into the endzone, you keep them even though the clock is important.

For all the talk about concussions in football, hockey rarely get similar deserved scrutiny, but the sport that gets almost no attention is soccer. Turns out heading that ball can add up to damaged brains (more than goals) so much so that some former female player from Samford is suing the NCAA.

Have I convinced you college football players should be paid yet?

There was yet another study pointing out the college athletes are being robbed blind by the NCAA. Just a few fun stats: in 2011 US colleges and universities pulled in $12.6 billion in athletics revenue. Conversely the behemoth that is the NFL only brought in $7.6 billion in 2009. Admittedly that is 32 teams against hundreds of schools, but it shows how much cash is out there.

In pro sports players get 50% of profits, but in Division I-A football only 15% of revenue heads to players (and that is in scholarships, not cash - ignoring boosters of course).

The percentage is actually higher in lower divisions because money coming in is less and tuition is fairly similar (although they have less scholarships to give). Honestly I was surprised that I-AA and Div. 2 both were around 30% because they aren't close on TV, ticket, and merchandise revenue.

Professor Andrew Zimbalist of Smith College also added a good point: if the NCAA was truly amateur, they wouldn't have multimillion dollar coaches.