Money, money, money....or exciting sport?

This spell on what American sportswriters would call injured reserve or the disabled list means I've missed the chance to comment on the Olympic Games, the start of the football and rugby Premierships and the final few weeks of a first-class cricket season that never really seems to have got started.
But as I have said since starting this blog that I don't believe readers are interested in yet another person's views on those subjects, I don't think it's been much of a loss.
I can't even comment on the big event of this week, England's remarkable 4-1 World Cup qualifying group win in Croatia. My views on the growing influence of pay-television haven't changed since I first aired them here nearly a month ago [although a moment of weakness on day one of my holiday almost saw me purchase a Setanta Sports set-top box) while the deal to broadcast highlights on ITV was so hurried that the first I knew about it was in my morning paper 12 hours after the event.
Yet two things have caught my eye since my return to the field of play that I can't pass up the chance to comment on. One of them sees me say something I never believed possible....I agree with Arsene Wenger.
I can't quite believe I've just written that, so I'll write it again....I agree with Arsene Wenger.
Ever since he arrived in English football, I've found the Arsenal manager a rather unlovable individual. Perhaps it's that slightly aloof and superior tone; perhaps it's the fact that the Gunners' first-team squad only seems to contain an Englishman as a last resort, even if his name is Theo Walcott; perhaps it's the fact that Arsenal personified the foreign takeover of English football on the field before it moved into the boardroom. Whatever, I haven't liked him.
But this week, in the light of the extraordinary buyout of Manchester City, Wenger said this: "If you push things too far, there are no rules any more. Football is not a supermarket. You cannot come out and say 'We will pay £250,000 a week to [Cristiano] Ronaldo and £135million to [Manchester] United when the player has a five-year contract with United. It is not possible or acceptable."
"I always did fight for my whole life for the players to make as much money as possible but you have to respect what football is. It came out from the roots of the country through local communities who identified themselves with their team and you have to be careful not to destroy that."
Now you could argue that the manager of a club which charges between £33 and £94 for adult admission to its' 60,000-seater £390million stadium has done that already but I'm sure most fans would agree with the sentiment.
It is, of course, why I prefer non-league football, where you pay as much as £10 to get in and still can identify with players combining day-jobs with four-hour round trips on a coach to an away game on a Saturday.
Like the Arsenal boss, I understand that professional sporting careers can be short and players have to make what they can when they can, even if that does mean earning more in four days than my wife earns in a year as a phlebotomist.
What sticks in the craw of most fans (and perhaps M Wenger agrees) is the spectacle of business moguls using historic sporting entities as cash cows in a bid to turn billions into trillions.
Now come with me across the Atlantic to the National Football League, where players and owners alike are mourning the death of Gene Upshaw.
Unless you are a football anorak like me, you won't have heard of Upshaw, but he was one of the most influential men in American sport and can be credited with making the NFL one of the most balanced and unpredictable sporting leagues on earth.
As a player for 15 seasons with the Los Angeles Raiders, Upshaw was one of the best offensive linemen to ever play American Football. When he retired, he became executive director of the players union, the NFL Players' Association.
In that role, he hammered out a deal by which players could become free agents far more quickly than previously, rather than be tied down to long-term contracts. In addition, the league and the NFLPA negotiated a tightly-managed salary cap for each team, meaning none of the league's 32 clubs could buy their way to glory.
So successful was the former that the league's 1500 or so players will make $4.5billion between them during the season that started last weekend.
So successful was the latter that 12 different teams have won the league's championship game, the Super Bowl, since 1988 and seven teams have won the last ten titles.
Players and league officials have queued to pay tribute to Upshaw. Players' uniforms and playing fields across the NFL this season will feature a logo bearing his jersey number, 63, and the initials 'GU'.
Here was a man who understood that while he had to get what he could for his players, what mattered to the fans was a vibrant, entertaining league and he helped deliver it.
Can you see anyone saying that about Mike Ashley? Or George Gillett and Tom Hicks? Or Roman Abramovich? Or the Abu Dhabi royal family?
No, I thought not.