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AMERICA AT LARGE:THE SPECTRE of an NFL team opening its training camp with its star player outside the stadium gates is a late-summer circumstance so reliably familiar that by now midwestern farmers probably plan their harvests around the inevitable occurrence.

Ordinarily the situation arises when said player, as often as not a quarterback, stages a holdout in an effort to renegotiate his contract. Occasionally the holdout presents itself as an undisguised attempt by the dissatisfied player to force a trade. We note that this once-uniquely American custom seems to have recently migrated overseas (See Ronaldo, Cristiano).