The two most talked about numbers in Charlotte are Cam Newton’s salary and UNC’s record

I’m tired of the Cam Newton story. He’s the Carolina Panthers’ quarterback, so writers have to write about him. Some fans want instant answers and some commentators offer them. But the story hasn’t changed.

Newton is coming off a Lisfranc injury to his left foot, and had surgery on it in December. More troubling, at least to me, are the injuries to his right shoulder. A shoulder is comprised of an inordinate number of small muscles, and Newton has undergone two shoulder surgeries.

He’ll work out for the team next month, perhaps, or perhaps later, at which time the Panthers will have a better idea where his foot and shoulder are. The NFL draft begins April 23.

David Tepper, who owns the Panthers, has been consistent. Tepper has repeatedly said that he isn’t a doctor, and that the team’s next move is contingent on the quarterback’s health.

Newton is under contract with the Panthers for one more season, and if he stays he’ll trigger a $19.1 million salary cap hit. That’s good but not great money for an upper echelon NFL quarterback.

Incidentally, the two most talked about numbers in Charlotte might be $19.1 and 3-10. The latter is North Carolina’s record in ACC men’s basketball.

Will Newton, who has said he believes he’ll be a Panther next season, play without a guarantee? Will he give the Panthers some kind of hometown break? We often hear about such breaks. We don’t always see them.

And does it make sense to pay a quarterback who turns 31 a month after the draft what they’ll have to pay him in 2020?

If the Panthers trade Newton, a potential trading partner will insist on knowing about his health. If he’s healthy, won’t the Panthers be tempted to keep him around?

We don’t know. I would contend that Tepper doesn’t know now and that team doctors don’t know and that Newton’s doctors don’t know and that Newton doesn’t know.

We’re waiting at the station for the Cam Newton Express, and we’re going to be here a while. Also, Newton might no longer be an Express when he pulls in. You know those trains that seem to slow down and taunt you as they cross Pecan Avenue? He could be one of those.

If he can’t run, he’s not Newton anymore.

XFL is an intriguing alternative

Of course I’m pulling for the XFL. I pulled for the Affiliation of American Football. The AAF had some good people leading it. But the money on which the league depended turned out to be a mirage, and the AAF folded eight weeks into a 10-week regular season.

I pull for minor leagues in every sport because there are more good athletes than rosters can accommodate. Football players come to Spartanburg every summer for the Carolina Panthers’ training camp. These players might have a good practice and even a good exhibition game. Man, they are on their way – back home to Ohio, Pennsylvania or Arkansas. They’re cut and they’re gone, jettisoned to the Canadian Football League or, more likely, life after football.

So here they are in the XFL, wrestling tycoon Vince McMahon’s league, which opened last weekend. You see some of the names?

You see Elijah Hood, formerly of Charlotte Catholic, North Carolina and the Carolina Panthers, hurdle a Houston Roughnecks defender? Hood plants his left foot and leaps so high he cleanly clears the defender. The guy never touched Hood. Not sure the guy could have touched him if he had carried a stepladder onto the field, which might be allowed under XFL rules.

You see Austin Proehl, the former Providence High and North Carolina star and son of great receiver Ricky Proehl, who finished his career with the Carolina Panthers? Austin Proehl scored the new league’s first touchdown on a 14-yard reception. Later he caught a 57-yard touchdown pass for the Seattle Dragons, the only XFL receiver to score two touchdowns.

In other Austin news, Austin Duke of the New York Guardians took advantage of the new XFL kickoff rule. Defenders line up 5 yards from offensive players, and they’re as stationary as electric football players with the power off. Only the kicker and returner are allowed to move, and only when the returner gets his hands on the ball are the others allowed to take off. Kick it into the end zone, and the return team takes possession at its own 35.

Duke returned kicks 59 and 67 yards. He was a wisp, he was smoke, he was speed, the Tampa Bay Vipers repeatedly failing to run him down.

I remember Duke at Independence High, with the Charlotte 49ers and on the Carolina Panthers practice squad. As a 49er, his role was simple. Get open. Whenever a pass went deep, you didn’t have to train your binoculars on the ball. You just looked for Duke. Always liked the guy, and his game.

Whenever a new league is formed, there’s a contest to see who can be the first to claim it will fold? The XFL might be better funded than the AAF, and it has a cooler acronym. However…

Of course our collective blues set in after the Super Bowl, and the XFL offered fans an opportunity for bonus football. As spring wears on, and the newness of the XFL wears off, as baseball begins and the NCAA basketball tournaments begin and the NBA playoffs begin, how much minor-league football interest will there be?

I don’t know. What I do know: The XFL is a second-chance league. And football players, like most of the rest of us, can use one of those.

And ... XFL picks

This week’s XFL picks, with the home team in CAPS:

New York Guardians 3 over DC DEFENDERS

SEATTLE DRAGONS 4 over Tampa Bay Vipers

Dallas Renegades 1 over LA WILDCATS

Lock of the Week:

HOUSTON ROUGHNECKS (-8) 17 over St. Louis Battlehawks

Adding a 17th NFL game has — and always will be — a bad idea

Now that the NFL season has ended, owners will push for a 17-game schedule. Seventeen games will mean more money for everybody. It will mean fewer exhibitions that season-ticket holders must pay full price to watch. It will mean an additional bye. It will mean games in places the NFL has never tread – Germany, say, Canada, and maybe even college campuses far from the league’s reach.

Michael Bidwill, owner of the Arizona Cardinals, is an advocate of the 17-week schedule. He said this week that the extra game is “not going to impact the safety or health of the players.”

Sure. Let’s play 18, then.

Some of us like to believe that football players are mere entertainers who are sent onto the field to engage us. Yeah, they get knocked around and they get hurt. But they make lots of money, and they get to make their living playing a game.

But this is what we choose to miss.

Life goes on after the game ends. Football is an occupation, not a lifestyle. Football players are fathers and sons, husbands and boyfriends, uncles and nephews, brothers and friends.

When their NFL careers end, their lives do not. If you’ve ever watched a game from the sideline, the question isn’t: Why do players get hurt so often? The question is: Why don’t NFL players get hurt more?

The push to expand the season creates options for the commissioner and owners. The NFL still is by far the most popular sport in the country, and consumers want more. Who doesn’t want to see an additional game? Who doesn’t want to see a game in Dublin, Honolulu or Tuscaloosa?

Yet the league knows more than it ever has about Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, CTE, which is caused by repeated head injuries. We still don’t know how pervasive CTE is. But denying it would be like denying climate change.

The NFL has worked to make the game safer by making helmets safer and attempting to end the culture of headfirst tackles. But if it knows that repeated hits to the head, an inevitable part of football, can lead to concussions and long-term injuries, how does it justify attempting to add a game that will expose players to more of those hits?

I’d like to see exhibitions cut from four to two, and I like the idea of taking the game places it has never been.

But no matter how you dress it up, adding a game will shorten careers and lead to more danger when those careers end.

I hope the NFL Players Association stays strong. They’ll be the voice of reason, and the last line of defense.