Dungy, who has been coaching in the NFL since 1981, finds these injuries baffling. He doesn’t remember them from his playing days in the 1970s and wasn’t even familiar with the term until about five years ago.

Today, the injury is as familiar in football terminology as high ankle sprains and turf toes, and Dungy wonders whether teams should – or could – be taking precautions to reduce sports hernias.

“We’re seeing it all the time, at all positions,” Dungy said, shaking his head. “We’ve seen it in defensive linemen, quarterbacks. I don’t have an answer for what’s going on.”

Terry and other sweaters on the team hit the IV trailer after more than two hours on the football field to replenish fluids lost during practice. It's one of the many benefits and technological advances Bucs players enjoy while trying to beat the heat during the rigorous two-a-day practices of training camp.

Bucs coach Jon Gruden recently bragged about the team's efforts in keeping guys hydrated and cool, saying the Bucs are on the ``cutting edge of technology.'' They have to be, considering temperatures soared with heat indexes above 100 degrees during the first week of training camp at Disney's Wide World of Sports Complex.

``It's not just the temperatures. It's the pace at which we practice at, combined with the environmental challenge,'' said Bucs head athletic trainer Todd Toriscelli. ``What Coach [Gruden] has allowed me to do is basically, without any concerns over budget or logistics, he told me to develop what we have to do here, and we've done it.''

During practice, players take a break in the ``cool-down tent,'' a trailer filled with benches and a room temperature in the low 60s. On the field, misting fans, which the Bucs had designed specifically, blow constantly.

Early in camp, Gatorade scientists spent a couple of days monitoring the players. They attached sensory patches to study the sodium and potassium levels in an effort to determine why some players cramp up at practice and others do not.

The ``cool-down tent'' is among the players' favorites.

Gladwell is one of those scary smart people who knows more than you do and knows how to articulate other things you 'know' but didn't know how to say them. So for all you Philly fans who know that the Iggles screwed up in the Super Bowl by not going to a no-huddle offense down the stretch, well Gladwell had this to say about the no-huddle before the game began:

I've always been so surprised that more NFL teams don't use the no-huddle. It's not just that it forces your opponent to keep a specific defense on the field. It's that it shifts the game cognitively: it forces coaches and defensive captains to think and react entirely in the instinctive "blink" mode -- and when teams aren't prepared for that kind of fast-paced thinking crazy things happen, like Iraq beating the U.S. Andy Reid has to know that Belichick has an edge when he can calmly and deliberately plot his next move. But does he still have an advantage when he and his players have to make decisions on the spur of the moment? I'd tell Andy Reid to go no-huddle at random, unpredictable points during the game -- to throw Belichick out of his comfort zone.

He'd also tell Reid to go no-huddle when TIME IS RUNNING OUT! Anyway, RTWT.

But the NFL Draft is full of complexities, which has largely to do with the high level of specialization in the NFL these days. There are two ways that a team can significantly change itself in the draft. It can draft a dominant player, who'll simply make the team better. Or it can draft a domino player--someone who makes some aspect of the team (like the pass rush, or a nickel package, or third-down efficiency) better, in turn making an entire side of the ball better, in turn making the team better. The inexact science of sports is well-documented, certainly. And there is a great deal of science in trying to figure out the many variables that go into drafting a player and signing him to a multi-million dollar contract.

Count me among those in favor of the NFL's ban, although Easterbrook's reaction to the recent court decision striking down the NFL's policy struck me as a bit much. In the case of football, I'm not sure it makes much difference. I don't think you'll see a lot of teams believing high schoolers can make the jump, so I don't think it will matter that much. Besides, let's be honest for a minute: that college degree doesn't much matter to a player unless he wants it to matter. Dexter Manley graduated from college -- without being able TO READ!

But here's a different point -- age can make a big difference from sport to sport and even within a sport. So much so that comparing how one sport regulates an age requirement with another can be an apples to oranges comparison.

In baseball, if you're in your early thirties you are in your prime. In tennis, at the same age you're over-the-hill. In gymnastics, you are almost a generation past your prime at that point. And age can, depending on the sport, make a difference from position to position within that sport. Football's all over the map, with placekickers and running backs performing at different levels at different ages. The point seems to me to be that the NFL should be free to make its own rules, no matter what they are. There are other football leagues, after all. No, seriously, there are.

The real question is why this mistake was made in the first place. Could it be the economist's well-known distinction between the seen and the unseen? If you punt, no one sees the first down you didn't make. If you don't punt and fail to make a first down, you feel bad and are easily blamed.

This is probably right, and it's not just in football. Ask Grady Little, who was fired by the Red Sox after going against conventional wisdom and keeping Pedro Martinez in too long against the Yankees in the 2003 playoffs. This was called managing with your heart and not your head. Had a reliever been burned instead, Grady might still have his job.

Of course, Yankee skip Joe Torre left Mariano Rivera in the final game against the Sox far longer, it could be argued, than he "should" have and, by taking that risk and winning, he looked like a genius.

Maybe the solution to all this is to give managers and coaches what Tyler and David Romer and many of their compatriots have: some kind of tenure. That way they might be less risk-averse, having greater confidence to make what they truly believe is the right decision every time.

Imagine that: Earl Weaver, tenured radical.

UPDATE: Robert Tagorda says the Super Bowl -- the ultimate pressure cooker -- makes risk-taking unlikely.

Also, Old Fishinghat says the smart money is on the Panthers, too.

So said Ernie Accorsi, a 30-year front office honcho with the New York Giants. It's no deep insight to say that television and broadcast technologies have changed everything, but the effect of TV on sports has been profound. Baseball, which was the national pasttime, has given way to football, and television has had a lot to do with that transformation. (Video games are another influence, more on that later).

Tyler Cowen recently wrote:

Sports is both big business and a significant part of American and global culture. I think of sports as a form of drama, except the events in question really matter to the participants, rather than stemming from a staged script. I question the common elitist view that sports are somehow inferior per se to high culture.

This was the chief insight of the creators of NFL films and it's why the HBO show "Real Sports" is among the best shows on television (despite that human water torture of a host, Bryant Gumbel). They harness the drama endemic to sports and package it for millions.

BTW: Smart money is on the Panthers for Sunday.