Where to start?

The answers probably say more about my advanced stage in life than about the National Football League. But as Popeye said: “I yam what I yam.”

And I am, among other things, scandal weary.

It’s not just DeflateGate and “Shady Brady,” as Tom Brady is called in my barbershop. There are all those other media-dubbed “gates”: “Spygate,” where the New England Patriots broke league rules by videotaping an opponent’s signal-calling; “Bullygate,” where a Miami Dolphins player said he was harassed off the team; and “Bountygate,” in which the New Orleans Saints offered bounties to knock opposing players out of the game. Of course, there’s also that video of Ray Rice knocking out his then-fiancee in an elevator. But it’s more than that.

The sport is being reduced to vaudeville.

I certainly respect the talent and skills of professional football players. I don’t put them on pedestals as models of character to be looked up to and emulated.

I do, however, expect grown men to act their ages, not like immature, egotistical showoffs. Unfortunately, Sunday after Sunday, some players use NFL fields across the fruited plain as platforms to display an intellectual development appropriate to juveniles.