"Cam's our quarterback ..." until he isn't.

Cam Newton will be the starter ... until he isn't. That's always how the story goes.

Some people never learn. 

Last night, after Patriots' coach Bill Belichick met the media to discuss his selection of Alabama quarterback Mac Jones with the 15th selection overall, most of the collected reporters made a big deal out of the fact that Belichick said in his opening remark that "Cam's our quarterback" -- of course, in reference to Cam Newton.

Well, what else was Belichick going to say? And since he's been here since 2000, hasn't the media picked up on his mannerisms yet?

As always, it will be Bill's call.

Belichick is not going to say publicly that Newton should be ready to pack his bags. First of all, he respects veteran players too much to publicly humiliate them. And he's not going to give the media fodder to create dissent and disruption within his team. It's his way -- although I have to give one unnamed reporter credit from the transcript I read, for getting Belichick to say that for Newton to not be the starting quarterback, "Somebody would have to play better than he does."

Well, duh. That's usually the case with all players. And indeed, I'd have to agree with what Belichick said at the top, although I would presume to finish his initial statement by adding "until he isn't."

Belichick is not going to anoint Mac the Knife (younger readers, Google "Threepenny Opera.") as his starter right now, before he has even set foot on the artificial turf at Gillette Stadium. He'll probably even make the kid wear some stupid number like 58 (sorry, Pete Brock) in training camp. Only Bill knows when Jones will become the starter, and he won't tell anyone outside the team until long after the decision has been made.

Mac Jones is here to be a starter.

But I'll tell you one thing. Nobody in the NFL has ever drafted a college quarterback within the first 15 picks without the intention of starting him -- and soon. I do remember that Bill Parcells danced around some nonsense of starting journeyman Scott Secules over Drew Bledsoe, the No. 1 pick in the land in 1993, but that foolishness didn't last very long.

Mac Jones will be the starter for the New England Patriots soon. Very soon -- unless he absolutely shits the bed in training camp. That's not likely. 

Newton will remain here only as long as Belichick sees him as a necessary insurance policy. But given his struggles last year, and the blueprint that Belichick laid down through his free-agency expenditures, it almost seems inevitable that the Patriots will move on from Newton as quickly as possible.

It's not that Newton didn't try. He did. He played as well as he could -- and, he had the unfortunate circumstance of coming down with COVID-19 early in the season. Some say he never fully recovered, but COVID does not turn a man's arm into jelly. Athletic old age does. And given how much Belichick spent in the offseason to upgrade his receiving corps and tight end, he does not want to hand the keys over to a quarterback whose last option for success is to run the ball himself.

That's not to say that Newton can't help some other team. And usually, Belichick is quite accommodating to accomplished veterans. If he is convinced that Jones can take the reins at the start of the season, and he can't find a willing suitor for Newton through trade during the lead-up to training camp, Belichick will release Newton early in camp to give him time to find another interested team and to get familiar with their system in time for their season to start.

Call it a professional courtesy. Bill's big on those.

Meanwhile, he has nine other draft picks to ponder when the draft resumes tonight at 7. The odds of him using all nine in their original positions have to be worse than 1/1,000. And that's why I'm glad I don't cover the draft any more, because no matter how many bands the NFL invites to turn the most boring three days in sport into a boring three-day fan festival, it's still a whole lot of "hurry up and wait" for the media members covering the proceedings.

But at least Belichick didn't trade out of the first round this year. We can all be thankful for small favors.

The Owner's Box After Dark, Ep. 45.

Glen Farley, left, and I agreed about the merits of the "Fall II" sports season.

The high school football season is finished here in Massachusetts, although with a little luck, a new one should be starting in another four months or so. So it's a good time to recap what we've seen, and what we think may happen in the future, here on the area's most compelling video podcast.

I talk with my broadcast partner for North TV's coverage of King Philip Regional High School football, Glen Farley, about how the state responded positively top the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic to create a season for the fall sports' athletes that couldn't play during their traditional time of year. It's a thoughtful conversation, but it may take a little extra effort to listen to it; we recorded it at Macktaz Field in Wrentham just before the KP-Franklin game last Friday, and the pre-game music blasting over the loudspeakers provided us and our vocal cords with a rather unique challenge.

I also include highlights of this thoroughly entertaining game, and then add some comments in praise of a couple of former local athletes that are making their way up the ladder of basketball success, former Bishop Feehan standouts Lauren Manis and Katie Nelson. It's all in a jam-packed 45th edition of The Owner's Box After Dark ... and yes, even the Hugh Hefner pipe makes an appearance in this one.

The Owner's Box, Ep. 35

King Philip's Nick Viscusi, left, defends a pass intended for Franklin's Shane Kindred.

You want audio? We've got audio -- our second episode of The Owner's Box in the past week after more than a month off.

In fact, this episode will test your eardrums, as I speak with my broadcast partner and guest, Glen Farley, while the loudspeakers at King Philip's Macktaz Field are blasting out the Warriors' unique pre-game music. We talk -- or more accurately, we shout -- about how the Fall II season went and what the future of Massachusetts high school sports may hold.

Also I recap the important scores of the weekend, catch up with a couple of powerhouse basketball players undertaking new challenges, and I target the NFL Draft for my Final Rant.

All in Episode 35 of the Original Gangsta of the Owner's Box podcasting empire.

The Owner's Box After Dark, Ep. 44.

Members of the North Attleboro and Attleboro teams show their throwback uniforms.

It's the last weekend of the "2020" high school football season (I think that's better than calling it "Fall II"), so I devote the latest After Dark episode to topics related to the final games being played tonight and tomorrow.

With Attleboro High and North Attleboro High having turned their canceled 100th annual holiday meeting in 2020 into a two-game celebration in 2021, I talk to North coach Don Johnson and AHS coach Mike Strachan about the "Century Game" to be played at Community Field on Saturday as well as November's "official" 100th annual holiday game, And remember -- for the complete interviews, go to my original audio podcast, The Owner's Box (Ep. 34), and you can find a link to that on the post below this one. 

I also discuss the cancellation of the 90th annual meeting of Mansfield High and Foxboro High on the gridiron because of a COVID-19 outbreak in Foxboro. It's the first time since 1938 that the two schools' football teams won't be playing, but Mansfield (5-0) picked up a game against 4-0 Marshfield for tonight to replace it.

Before we get to all that, however, I explain why I have such a love for Southern-style pork barbecue sandwiches and why I have spent a lifetime trying to replicate the flavor and texture of the sandwiches I used to buy at a small BBQ joint in Williston, Fla., back in the 1960s -- and they are still sold there today.

And there's also some quick talk about the Patriots Hall of Fame -- and why there won't be a new member this year. The nominating committee met yesterday, but we're going to give new Hall of Famer Richard Seymour the due this year that he was denied by the pandemic last season.

It's all in the 44th episode of The Owner's Box After Dark ... a little while in the making since the last episode, but well worth the wait.

The Owner's Box, Ep. 34.

Attleboro (blue) and North Attleboro will play twice in 2021 with a holiday feel.

It's been a while since our last audio podcast, but we've got a compact one (less than 40 minutes) that's just jam-packed with goodies.

At the top of the list are the conversations I had with North Attleboro High School football coach Don Johnson and Attleboro High coach Mike Strachan about the special circumstances surrounding Saturday's game between their teams at North Attleboro's Community Field.

The Thanksgiving game that was canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic would have been the 100th holiday meeting of the teams, so the coaches, athletic directors, school administrations and civic leaders got together and determined that there would be special designations for the two games that will be played in the 2021 calendar year.

Saturday's game (10 a.m. start) is the "Century Game," marking the 100th anniversary of North Attleboro football. Then in November, Attleboro will play host to the official 100th holiday game. The teams will therefore have played 104 times before that one, but some were played in consecutive Octobers when the Hockomock League divisional split forced them to play twice in a season, and one was an MIAA Super Bowl.

Also, I top off the episode with a timely "Final Rant." All yours in the most popular podcast Mansfield has ever produced.

Another time-honored tradition is interrupted by COVID.

Mansfield (green) and Foxboro (white) battle almost three decades ago at Memorial Park.

Over the course of the last 81 years, there has been one constant in the communities of Mansfield and Foxboro. Fads and fashions may have come and gone, and the makeup and character of the towns have changed radically over the course of time, but at least the residents could count upon the high schools' football teams meeting at least once each year.

That wasn't the case in 2020, a woe-begotten year in which a diabolical virus disrupted the very fabric of community life from the middle of March through the last day of December. Thanksgiving came and went without the athletes from Mansfield or Foxboro suiting up for the 74th annual holiday meeting of the teams, and the 90th meeting overall since 1925.

But the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association gave the state's high school athletes a reprieve of sorts when it created the "Fall II" season as a wedge between the traditional winter and spring seasons, with the intention of allowing a couple of the traditional higher-contact fall sports to compete once it was deemed that the grip COVID-19 had upon the world was in its waning stages.

That's what we all thought would happen, that is.

As those two towns were painfully reminded in the last couple of days, the coronavirus has not stepped out of the way quite yet. Despite safety precautions, including the use of masks and oceans of hand sanitizer, and the rising numbers of vaccinations in the commonwealth -- many of them dispensed at Foxboro's own Gillette Stadium -- COVID is as persistent as ever. 

And it has risen its ugly head to interrupt a tradition that has extended unbroken since the fall of 1938 -- the last time before this cycle of football that the Mansfield and Foxboro football teams have not met on the gridiron.

A breakout of COVID in Foxboro has forced cancellation of the 2020 season's game, which was scheduled for 10 a.m. this coming Saturday at Mansfield's Alumni Field. It's the second straight cancellation for the Warriors, who were supposed to have played Franklin in a Hockomock League crossover game last Friday.

Mansfield and Marshfield are familiar playoff foes.

Instead, Mansfield coach and athletic director Mike Redding has come up with an intriguing alternative -- one that I am dubbing "the Typographical Error Bowl," for reasons that will become obvious momentarily. The Hornets, one of the best teams in the state at 5-0, will play host to Marshfield High School's 4-0 Rams on Friday night, a 7 p.m. start at Alumni Field.

Yup, Mansfield and Marshfield -- probably the most popular example of spelling confusion within the newsrooms of the Boston Globe and Boston Herald for the better part of the last 50 years, or at least until both newspapers started paying better attention to the Hockomock League around the 1990s or so. 

That mistake isn't made as frequently now as it was when I was in high school back in the '70s, when the Hockomock was perceived as too low-rent to garner much notice from the metro papers. But once Marshfield started running into teams such as Mansfield and North Attleboro in playoff circumstances, the Globe's and Herald's copy editors finally figured out that Marshfield could not face two different teams on the same night on a regular basis.

As Redding said in a tweet announcing the schedule change, Mansfield and Marshfield have become familiar postseason foes in the era of the MIAA's extended football playoffs.

"These teams are long-time Division 2 playoff rivals with games in 2014 (Marshfield State Champs), 2015, 2016 and 2019 (Mansfield State Champs)," wrote Redding, who's in his 33rd year at the Hornet helm.

The Hornets are actually 2-3 against the Rams in the current format of the football playoffs. Mansfield (seeded No. 2) prevailed in the first round of the 2019 bracket, ousting No. 7 Marshfield 24-6. They also met in the quarterfinals in 2017 with No. 4 Mansfield ousting No. 5 Marshfield 34-14. Prior to that, the Hornets had suffered three straight defeats to the Rams, losing 41-35 in the 2016 quarterfinals, 22-0 in the 2015 semifinals and 42-14 in the 2014 quarterfinals.

One way or another, there should be no excuse for any spelling errors this coming Friday night.

Still, there will be a sense of emptiness felt within those that are heavily invested in the Mansfield-Foxboro rivalry.

Unlike the Attleboro-North Attleboro rivalry, which started on Thanksgiving a century ago and has stayed there, Mansfield and Foxboro first needed to reach a competitive balance before they opted to make it a holiday get-together.

The schools list 1925 as the "official" start of the rivalry, at least as high school football is defined today. Earlier than that, high school kids played on what were called "town teams," which also had alumni on their rosters and even a few football-hungry ringers of indeterminate age. But even after the high schools took a controlling interest where athletics were concerned, the gritty Italian immigrants from Mansfield were just too rough and rugged for the cultured lads on the other side of Robinson Hill.

Mansfield's 1935 team played Taunton on the holiday.

Mansfield won the first eight games by a combined score of 186-0. By 1933, no one in Foxboro thought it was worth the risk to play Mansfield any more, so the neighboring towns put the rivalry entirely on hold for a six-year period.

The Green and White also ditched North Easton's Oliver Ames High School as their Turkey Day foe and took on Taunton, a much larger school, from 1933 through 1946. It was a bit of a comeuppance for Mansfield, which won only four of the 13 games played on the holiday (most of those played at Hopewell Park in Taunton because the city kids thumbed their noses at Mansfield's cow-pasture field).

Foxboro started playing Mansfield again in 1939 and hoped for better long-term results after a scoreless tie in the first game of the resumed rivalry. Mansfield would dash those hopes by winning the next five games by a combined score of 141-8.

So, Foxboro's powers-that-be knew something had to be done. In grand American tradition, they went and stole Mansfield's coach out from under them. John Certuse, a native Mansfieldian in the early days of a Hall of Fame coaching career, was signed to a more lucrative contract to coach the Blue and Gold, and that paid an immediate dividend in a 14-0 Foxboro victory -- their first in the entire series -- in the 1945 game. 

Two years later, with Mansfield refusing to schedule Taunton (a ban that extended to 2012) because of the disparate sizes of the schools, the hands of friendly rivalry were extended across the border on Route 140 to create a Thanksgiving rivalry that would endure for the ages.

Mansfield coach Mike Redding, left, chats with 
Foxboro coach Jack Martinelli before a holiday game.

Over the course of 89 meetings, Mansfield enjoys a 51-35-3 edge over Foxboro. But since the series moved to the holiday, it's been much closer -- 37-34-2 in Mansfield's favor, and that's been a recent development with Mansfield winning 14 games of 19 played in the 21st century.

The game has been played at several different venues -- the old Fuller Field in Mansfield, replaced by Memorial Park after the Great Depression and then shifted to the artificial-surfaced Alumni Field behind the current high school. In Foxboro, games were played at what is now the Booth Playground near the center of town and then at the Ahern School Field (now Jack Martinelli Field) since the 1960s. I imagine the time will come when Sam Berns Community Field will serve as the game's newest home. And lest I forget, the teams played four times at Schaefer Stadium in the 1970s and just two years ago at Fenway Park in Boston.

But this year? It goes down in the records as "2020 -- Did not play (pandemic)."

I don't mind telling you that I certainly hope the masks, the hand sanitizer and the efforts of the researchers at Phizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson will let us dispense with all of this foolishness by the time November rolls around. If not, I fear that two groups of determined lads will find a secretive clearing somewhere in the Great Woods and have at it, football-wise, because two years will be far too long to have gone without an official battle for bragging rights.

Uniforms should be uniform. Period.

The Red Sox will wear these day-glo shirts on the Patriots Day weekend.

When I was a youngster growing up, I idolized the Red Sox -- even though, for most of my early fandom, they were among the worst teams in baseball.

It wasn't until I was 13 years old, in 1967, when the Red Sox renounced their stumbling ways and became winners of a sort. Yes, they won the American League in dramatic fashion and went to their first World Series since 1946, what we all came to call the "Impossible Dream" season before the St. Louis Cardinals ended the dream in Game Seven of the Fall Classic. It would be until 2004 before New Englanders would finally be able to celebrate a World Series championship.

But if there was one constant throughout my life, as well of those much older, it was the Red Sox home uniform.

Current uniforms worn by the Boston Red Sox.

The uniform worn by Xander Bogaerts on Opening Day 2021 has, in fact, been relatively unchanged since 1933. Just do a Google search of "Red Sox uniforms," and you will see that the current style can be traced all the way back to that very uniform. Yes, there have been several changes to the road uniform over the years (the current one is the best) and some tweaks to the home attire -- who can forget the double-knits of the mid-1970s with no front buttons, no piping, and the three-color elastic waistlines on the pants? -- but for the last 43 years, the home shirts have been absolutely the same with just a few exceptions.

The John Henry ownership has inserted its own touches, such as getting rid of the blue undershirt sleeves for red and making the stirrup socks all red before the pants legs touched the ground. Their premise was that the team was the "Red Sox," and thus the primary color should be red. They even went as far as creating an all-red game jersey for Friday nights at home (I despise it) as well as an all-blue road shirt (which isn't as bad).

But now, they've gone too far.

This coming Patriots Day weekend, the Red Sox will wear shirts of yellow with light blue letters that will say "Boston" across the front. They are said to be commemorative of the Boston Marathon (which is enduring another pandemic cancellation this year) and they adopt the colors of Boston's city flag as a means of celebrating the "Boston Strong" ideal that grew out of the bombing near the marathon's finish line in 2013.

At least that's what the folks at Nike are saying. They are the ones that designed these atrocities, and they are responsible for turning team uniforms in practically every sport into a cottage industry.

Ted Williams (left) and Joe DiMaggio are wearing
uniforms similar to what the teams wear today.

Back in the days of my youth, a major-league sports uniform was something special. It was something that was unattainable to everyone except those who had been talented enough to earn it. The pro uniform was the ultimate expression of accomplishment, not to be sullied by the likes of mere mortals.

But at some point, the leagues figured out that people would pay anything for replica uniforms. At first, they marketed knockoffs that were not exact copies of the real things -- maybe different fonts for the numbers or players' names, the sort of thing not everyone would immediately notice. But gradually, the demand rose for the real thing. So, for a premium price, the exact uniforms were marketed to the masses.

I took a quick look at the Patriots Pro Shop web site, and while there are still plenty of inexpensive knockoff shirts available, the most desirable are those marketed as "real game jerseys." (Aside: Having spent the better part of 43 years in the Patriots' locker room, I can tell you that "real" game jerseys for many players are specifically tailored for their position, with added elastic or cut-out areas to accommodate their movement and flexibility needs. But the ones you buy online are close.) And they aren't cheap.

A blue Cam Newton shirt, for instance, will set you back $119.99. If you want it customized with your own name and number, you have to pay $149.99. And if you're really foolish, you can buy one of their leftover Tom Brady game jerseys, complete with autograph, for $2,399.99.

Over on the Red Sox official shopping site, a customized replica jersey will set you back $149.99, and a specific player's numbered shirt is $139.99 -- but note, the white shirts come with that player's name in red letters on the back, and as we all know, the authentic home shirt does not have names on the back. And if you want an authentic, non-numbered version of the yellow "City Connect" shirt, it will set you back $439.99. A replica version goes for just $134.99.

And that wasn't enough for Nike, which now owns exclusive rights to the manufacture of uniforms in the NFL, Major League Baseball and the NBA (Adidas holds the rights to manufacture the NHL's uniforms).

Seriously, what the hell was this?

Over the past decade or so, Nike has been very persuasive in the effort to convince the leagues to introduce multiple uniform styles for its member teams. The NBA has embraced this to a fault, in that there are so many uniforms being used by its member teams, it's hard to tell from first glance whether it's a home or away game, or even what team is playing. Last night, in fact, I had to look several times at the uniforms worn by the team the Celtics were playing to see who it was. I finally figured out that the Liberty Bell with a number in it represented the Philadelphia 76ers.

The purpose of all this, of course, is to make you spend your money.

There are way too many people in the world that absolutely have to wear replica jerseys. There haven't been 68,000 people in Gillette Stadium for a while, but when there were crowds of that sort, there were games in which I'd see almost 40 percent of the crowd wearing replica jerseys.

And these weren't young kids that were idolizing their gridiron heroes. These were people old enough to know better -- mostly overweight white men in their 40s and 50s, stretching Tom Brady's No. 12 across their bloated bellies in a manner perilously close to bursting the fabric. Or there would be the occasional soul with a personalized jersey (usually with the number 69, ha ha), his own name or a nickname on the back, as if he somehow "earned" the right to wear that jersey.

In my book, uniforms are supposed to be something special. Something unique. Something that represents a level of excellence that can't be matched by just any random person. That's how I always regarded the uniforms of the Red Sox, Patriots, Celtics and Bruins. But that ship has sailed, and it's too far out of port to return.

I've heard the argument that claims colorful alternate jerseys is one way to get young people involved in the sport. Hey, MLB? If you want to get young people involved, stop playing four-hour World Series games that start at 9 p.m. Hey, Red Sox? Stop charging an average of $283 to get into the ballpark. Otherwise, if the kids haven't already left their Playstations to pick up a glove and head into the field, they're not going to do so just because you're wearing a hideous uniform that makes one think that they'd look good on a fellow scooping out a quart of Del's Frozen Lemonade for you on a hot summer day.

I have to give the Sox some credit for bucking the trend, at least for as long as they had. Some major league teams change their uniforms faster than members of their fan base change their underwear. Only the New York Yankees appear willing to reject alternate uniforms, although that doesn't mean you can't get an authentic game jersey for your very own for $150.

It's all about the marketing. And in today's sports culture, it's impossible to resist -- by the companies looking to get big contracts, the teams looking for new revenue streams, and the fans that feel the intense need to identify with the players.

I have never owned a replica jersey. I own one "game-worn" uniform, a Providence College basketball jersey worn briefly by a former local athlete which I purchased as a joke. I tried it on once. It didn't fit. It hangs quietly in a closet, awaiting the next time I can pull it out for a good laugh.

Otherwise, as a sportswriter, I had no reason whatsoever to identify with the people I covered. I couldn't do what they do, so I felt no need to act as if I could. I don't want to be the Pope, either, so you're not going to see me walking around wearing the replica vestments of Pope Francis.

I guess I have always lived by some wise words once uttered by my friend Ron Hobson, the former Patriots beat writer for The Patriot Ledger of Quincy. "Never wear a jersey of anyone younger than you are," he said.

I'd take it one step further. "Never wear the uniform of a team for which you didn't play," has been my credo. Unfortunately, the almighty dollar dictates otherwise these days. It's just too bad I don't fit into my old No. 19 shirt from the Foxboro American Legion Post 93 baseball team any more, but let's face it, at age 67, I'd look pretty damned silly to be wearing it at all.

The Owner's Box After Dark, Ep. 43.

It's a walk down Memory Lane in Episode 43 of the After Dark experience, as I react to my former newspaper's special section of last week. The paper marked the anniversary of the 1971 merger of the Attleboro Sun and the North Attleboro Chronicle by publishing a 30-page supplement that included an outstanding story about the history of the Sports Department by former executive editor Mike Kirby.

I certainly appreciated the kind words in the story, but I also wanted to take the nostalgia effort another step forward by recalling some of my favorite former co-workers from my 41-year career there.

First, however, I reflect upon the new job for former Bishop Feehan High School basketball star Missy Traversi, who has accepted the head coaching position for the Army women's basketball team after a five-year stint at Adelphi University.

It's a lengthy episode, but well worth the investment of your time.