Party crashers

 Saw a factoid the other day that, by playing on Christmas Day yesterday (and here's hoping you and yours had a wondrous holiday, by the way), the Kansas City Chiefs set some sort of weird NFL record. They officially became the first team ever to play a game on every day of the week but one.

Yessir. Because Christmas fell on a Wednesday, the Chiefs have now played games on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Which perhaps revealed more than the NFL intended.

Mostly it revealed the NFL's insatiable grasping at the big stage, and its equally insatiable gluttony. More is never enough for Roger the Hammer Goodell and his Shield. It already monopolizes the American sporting landscape like some Gilded Age robber baron, and it shares those celebrated money-grubbers' naked and unrepentant greed.

So there were the Chiefs and the Steelers and the Ravens and the Texans, horning in on Christmas Day. And as a card-carrying, fist-shaking codger, I reverse the right to bitch and moan about that.

I do it because card-carrying, fist-shaking codgers love their traditions, and the NBA playing a quadruple-header on Christmas has been around long enough to make it one. I am a lukewarm NBA follower at best, but I am with Lebron James on this one.

"I love the NFL," the league's unofficial patriarch said yesterday. "But Christmas is our day."

And it was one gaudy day, as befitted the occasion. LeBron, to begin with, was speaking after going for 31 points and 10 assists to help the Lakes hold off the Warriors, who got 38 points from Steph Curry, including a ridiculous 31-foot three that tied the score as the clock drained. 

Everyone else followed suit.

In New York, Mikal Bridges scored 41 points to help the Knicks edge the Spurs, who got 42 points and 18 boards from the Big Phenomenal, Victor Wembanyama. In Dallas, Anthony Edwards had 26 points, eight rebounds and five assists as the Timberwolves survived a late rally by the Mavericks. And in Boston, Tyrese Maxey and Joel Embiid combined for 60 points as the 76ers knocked off the defending NBA champion Celtics.

But of course, you only know that because I just told you. And that's because you were probably watching the Chiefs wash the Steelers 29-10 and Lamar Jackson 'n' them run all over the Texans, 31-2. 

I'm sorry. But that's just wrong.

Bad enough the NFL recently decided to violate the sanctity of high school football by scheduling a handful of games on Friday nights. May Tim Riggins, Matt Saracen and Coach Eric Taylor scatter nails in the path of the Chiefs (or Packers or Rams or Steelers et al) team bus for that affront.

 But now they've gotta crash the NBA's traditional big party, too? When is enough, enough?

To reiterate, it's never enough. And as a crabby, lost-in-the-past geezer who remembers when the only football on Christmas Day was the late, great Blue-Gray Football Classic, I can only splutter crabbily about that.

Consarn it all anyway.