This story in USA Today talks about something that Lynn Lashbrook, the founder and president of Sports Management World Wide, has been talking about for more than a year.

People have made huge investments in high-definition television and sound systems for their home these days — and you can’t blame them for staying home and watching games, rather than paying to get into games. For a lot of reasons — including rude fan behavior, traffic, too-crowded stadiums, to name just a few — watching at home can be a better experience than actually attending the games.

It’s the new challenge in professional sports — even for a league as wildly successful as the NFL, where at the height of the sport’s popularity attendance has dropped for two straight seasons. How do you get people to come to your stadium and buy tickets when it’s so easy to sit at home and watch the game for free?

Well, in the NFL, the blackout rule helps. If the game isn’t sold out, home-team fans CAN’T watch the games at home. No other sport has this rule — but they probably should. Even though teams are making more money off television than they are gate receipts in every major sport, they are still reliant on those gate receipts for a significant portion of revenue.

That’s why, at this point, serious thought is being put into added value for spectators at games. And I’m not just talking about bobblehead dolls and refrigerator magnets, either. The huge scoreboards are a help, as are insightful interviews on those boards before and after games. All-you-can-eat buffets in certain sections is a big deal these days. But you’re going to see more innovations inside arenas and stadiums as teams attempt to fight the battle against stay-at-homes.

Just wait until you see sports on 3D TV. I watched a baseball game in 3D earlier this summer and it was spellbinding. Sports have been playing a dangerous game for years now, competing against their live gates with home TV.

And it’s shaping up to be quite a fight.

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I have to tell you, I’m totally on board here with John Canzano on this one.

LeGarrette Blount really did learn plenty from his experience at Oregon didn’t he? Please, don’t bother me with how common fights are in NFL practices. If you watch the video you will see how Blount injects himself into the middle of a small scuffle where no punches are being thrown and then decides to throw the first punch.

The guy still has no filter. I got so sick of hearing from people in Eugene that he’s “learned his lesson” and that it would “never happen again.”

Yeah, right.

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It was first known last week that Portland State added a new assistant coach, Richard Seigler, to its football staff. Since then, I’ve been wondering if anyone was going to write anything about the hire.

I like new PSU head coach Nigel Burton a lot. Seems like a very solid, intelligent and hard-working guy. I wish him the best. But Seigler has quite a past and I’m surprised the Vikings didn’t get out in front of the story immediately when they hired the former Oregon State linebacker. But there has been no mention of his past at all anywhere that I can find.

There is more on Seigler here and it should be noted that he eventually beat the rap. In fact, he may have been the victim of a very unfortunate circumstance in which he was accused of an unseemly crime that he didn’t commit. But this messy story was big at the time — come on, an NFL linebacker being accused of living off the earnings of a prostitute? — and the sad thing about tales like this is that people often remember the accusations a lot longer than they do the end result of a trial.

All that said, it was interesting to see the quote from Burton in the official Portland State press release about the hiring of Seigler:

“Our staff had a chance to watch Richard work our camps this summer. He showed great enthusiasm, rapport with the kids and a great deal of detail and knowledge,” Burton said. “In addition, I think he is a great story for our kids to emulate in that he was one of the last guys to receive a scholarship at Oregon State his senior year of high school. He went on to become one of the greatest linebackers in the history of the program, as well as winning a Super Bowl with the Pittsburgh Steelers.”

That part about “a great story for our kids to emulate” strikes me as an interesting thing to say, given the circumstances.

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Everyone else is.

I knew this would happen. Journalists all over the place are attempting to pass the conditioning test that “Fat Albert” Haynesworth has failed a couple of times. The interesting part of this story is the allegation that ESPN’s Mike Golic — who is continuing to crow on the air about passing the test — may have fudged on it.

But anyway, go ahead and run it if you like. I’m guessing that most of you will pass it, too. I will sit this one out. Sounds to me like a pulled hamstring waiting to happen.

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– Donovan McNabb + Mike Shanahan = championship? Maybe. I do not believe I would have traded McNabb within the division. If this thing is going to come back to haunt the Eagles, it doesn’t have far to go.

– Funny how all the state agencies are so interested in Mike Bellotti getting $2.3 million as a golden parachute. The guy was the highest paid state employee around here for years and nobody thought much about it. And right now, the Ducks are out there searching for a basketball coach they may end up paying more than $2.3 million a year. A handshake deal? It happens. It’s binding. So what? Find some serious state problems to deal with.

– I don’t see how Butler can stay with Duke tonight. Too big, too talented.

– Speaking of Butler, Brad Stevens — college basketball’s Doogie Howser — just has to be a guy Oregon is going to talk to about that open job, right?

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I think it’s like a cult up there in Seattle. They won’t let you go unless they’re done with you.

On the very same day that ESPN’s Todd McShay wrote that he believed Jake Locker would go No. 1 in the NFL draft, the kid announces he’s going to stay at the University of Washington for his senior season.

Really? I mean, REALLY?

He’s going to pass on possible No. 1 money to come back and risk an entire career just to play for that college team? Sorry, that’s insane. And his coach is doing him a major disservice by not telling him to go.

Yeah, if you’re not a high pick, play out your collegiate eligibility. But if you’re a top five pick — or perhaps even the top pick — it’s a very poor fiscal decision to not enter the draft. And as much as his college coach wants him back, he has a responsibility in this case to tell the kid to jump.

We’re talking about millions and millions of dollars, enough money for his family and all the Lockers for generations to come.

Ridiculous.

UPDATE: As several commenters have already mentioned, I was remiss in not mentioning that the next collective bargaining agreement between the NFL and its players may include a rookie wage scale, which would make this decision look even more severely boneheaded.

Locker may be throwing away $30-$40 million by not entering this draft.

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Some things in sports run in cycles. But there are other things I’d have thought would never come back.

Funny thing. If a National Football League coach suddenly announced, “I’m going to run some single wing this season,” they’d immediately not only fire him, they’d offer him up as a candidate for idiot of the year.

But if you just invent a new name for it, say, call it the “Wildcat,” you can not only get away with it, you will be hailed as an innovator and everyone will start copying you!

(Thanks, KVD, for reminding me!)

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I turn around and wow — all of a sudden the Ducks are a top 25 team again, the Beavers can’t beat one of the worst teams in the Pac-10, the Vikings blow another game and the Seahawks are wearing home uniforms that look like cheap ripoffs of the old Portland Storm gear.

I’m going to show up at the Trail Blazer media day this afternoon and see what happens next. I mean, Jawan Howard and Ime Udoka might show up.

And I thought I picked a sleepy time of the year to take some time out of town.

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My lifelong friend, Mike Clopton, and I stood on a street corner across the street from the left-field entrance to Safeco Field Thursday afternoon, getting ready to duck into a quiet little place called “Jimmy’s” where we’d watch Ian Furness do his talk show live on KJR.

The Mariners were playing a rare 3:40 game and I hesitated before ducking into the joint. On one side of me was Safeco Field, a glimmering baseball oasis on a perfect sunny afternoon. On the other side was a meeting hall and theater, attached to Qwest Field, where the Seahawks play — another most impressive structure.

The streets were alive with happy people. Families, business people ducking out on work, singles, senior citizens — people who seemed giddy about what their afternoon promised them. Even the scalpers had smiles on their faces.

What a town, man. Yes, Seattle lost its NBA team. Cry no tears — with the NFL and major-league baseball, it’s barely noticed.

When I was a kid, Seattle and Portland were heated rivals in just about every way. They had the Rainiers in the Pacific Coast League fighting our Beavers and the Totems in the Western Hockey League always losing to our Buckaroos. Those were the days.

But then the Kingdome went up and Seattle became a big-league city. While we were focusing on keeping it weird, they were concentrating on pennant races and dreaming of Super Bowls. They haven’t won a World Series or Super Bowl yet, but they are allowed to think about it every year. They paid the price of admission — in erecting beautiful public facilities that, yes, probably cost too much money.

But I hear no complaints as I stand on that corner. You never hear any around here. I see excited people headed to the ballpark to watch what turned into a honey of a game. As Mike and I alternated between great seats behind home plate, an inning in the press box and about four innings in the owner’s suite (Thanks to an all-time great guy, Randy Adamack), I couldn’t help but reflect.

Right there within a block of each other, twice as many sports facilities as the city of Portland has built since that coin toss when the little settlement on the Willamette became “Portland” rather than “Boston.”

It’s a shame we quit being Seattle’s rival. It’s a shame we didn’t dare to dream big. What fun we could have had in this town.

But I will say one thing for us. We’ve got Memorial Coliseum on the National Register of Historic Places. Those idiots up there in Seattle, who probably could have done the same thing with the Kingdome had they been smart enough, decided instead to implode it to make way for a gorgeous, state-of-the-art football stadium.

Fools. Don’t they know you’re supposed to keep old, disgusting, worn-out dumps like the Kingdome around and sink even more dough into them? I mean, that could have been an athletic club or a velodrome, right?

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I guess you’re never too old to make a dirty play. (Sorry folks, the video has been removed — I could explain but it’s not worth the effort).

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