Bettman and Goodell can see this. So can the heads of the hockey and football players' associations. So, increasingly, can the players,Chloe Bags, their wives and families, and their lawyers. The commissioners and their leagues — mostly — are now beyond simple denial, defensiveness, and counterattack. The challenge is no longer awareness of the problem. It's awareness of the solution. If you are Gary Bettman or Roger Goodell, what do you do?

I come back to the Crosby press conference. I'm not sure how it could have been done better. The message was that we are in uncharted territory. We know some things, there is much more we don't know, and we're going to do what we know and respect what we don't until we know better. This is serious, and we are serious. And we want you — all those who are watching — to experience what we have experienced and learn what we have learned, because as people who love sports, we're in this together. It is this same tone, attitude, and approach on head injuries that Bettman and Goodell need to take,Chloe Handbags.

For Bettman, it's time to say: This is a great game, but it has a big problem, one that will only get worse if we don't do what needs to be done now. Our players will not get smaller, they will not skate slower, the force of their collisions will not diminish. The equipment they wear will not improve fast enough to mitigate the greater risks they will face. "Tweaking" is not the answer,Chloe Bags.It was like watching some perverse Gamecast where there is no narrative or flow, just the random play of algorithmic abstractions. I realized I had bought high and watched with horror as I took a penny-size bath,Chloe Marcie. I clicked refresh over and over, forgetting that only day traders tend to track things so feverishly, and that's out of necessity. I was caught up in a twisted game of my own design. I kept repeating the words of Clive Tyldesley in the dying moments of the 1999 Champions League final: "Can Manchester United score? They always score,Chloe Handbags."

They did not score, and in this case,Chloe Bags, a draw felt like a humiliating loss. The trading day ended with United's stock back where it began — a disappointing showing and a far cry from the now-laughable $18-to-$20-per-share valuation that had been rumored last month.

What exactly had I been rooting for? The notion of a "team" feels so quaint once "MANU" is one of many stocks clotting the ticker,Chloe Marcie, with a value dependent on how successfully the debt's been leveraged and how well positioned it is in the global tournament of brand recognition. Is it a franchise? A thicket of corporate interests, of which a team of athletes passing a ball to each other on a field of grass is merely one of many, diversified tentacles? Suddenly the notion of "outperforming the market" — the market being something that, by its very nature, needs to constantly grow — began to make more sense than ever,Chloe Bags. There are clubs that need to sell in order to buy, and then there are the ones whose resources — backed by debt or the largesse of an eccentric trillionaire — seem to grow exponentially, emergent "financial fair play" regulations notwithstanding. Even if I made back my pennies and earned a few quarters, I would never outgain the market, and that was never the point of United's stock flotation. It was just a new form of merchandise, something solid melted into air.