1. Hope for a new dawn at the Super Bowl

This weekend the United States, like the Saturday Times, moves into the second week of its relaunch. With uncannily bad timing, the occasion is marked by Super Bowl XLIII, which features the Arizona Cardinals against the Pittsburgh Steelers. The Super Bowl is not quite the right event to mark the birth of a newer, humbler and saner America.

American football has always been the Republican Party at play. It celebrates might and size. Someone — a liberal — said that it showcased the two worst things in American life: violence and committee meetings. Hunter S. Thompson wrote about a ride he took in Richard Nixon’s limo, in which Nixon showed near-perfect recall of every play in the history of the NFL. Need anyone say more? This is the game that made America great — and that’s a somewhat ambivalent notion. The Super Bowl is a multiple orgasm of hyperbole, showbiz and commerce, and the MVP — Most Valuable Player — traditionally goes to Disneyland. Oh, and somebody extremely famous sings the national anthem, putting in lots of individual wobbly bits while everybody grabs his own left tit.

What I would like to see at this occasion is a certain change in emphasis, a feeling that this is a sporting event rather than a celebration of American dominance. I would like to see a newer, humbler and saner Super Bowl.

2. Trying not to enjoy Newcastle's downfall

As the football season progresses, you get a macabre fascination with certain clubs. You start to wonder how far they will give themselves away. You marvel at the way one error leads to another, with dreadful inevitability. You acquire a furtive interest in the doings of a club that never greatly concerned you before. With it comes a vague malice, a rather reprehensible desire to see the club take yet another step into the mire, to descend a little deeper into the pit they have dug.

Newcastle United are just such a club. The story of their self-imposed misfortune becomes more and more compelling as the season continues — so much so that it goes against human nature to wish them anything but ill. This is accompanied by a feeling that a club who have done so many insane things really deserve to fail.

You don’t always get what you deserve in football — that is one of its greatest attractions. But as Newcastle play their derby against Sunderland tomorrow, I cannot fight against a macabre desire to see them plunge deeper into the morass.

3. Please, Roger, can I have some more?

Now Andy Murray has — temporarily, I think — turned himself from Great British Hope to Serial Scottish Loser, we can concentrate on the tennis and the real story of the men’s singles in the Australian Open. Let us dispose of partisanship and seek excellence — and who better to do it with than Roger Federer?

Federer has been playing himself back into form. I don’t mean just the ability to win tennis matches. When Federer hit form — can you remember it? — he was the greatest tennis player who drew breath. Over the past few days there have been prolonged glimpses of the old certainties, pronounced passages of the serenity and beauty that set him apart.

I am rooting for Federer to win his fourteenth grand-slam title tomorrow and to equal the record of the great Pete Sampras. But that’s not the whole of it. The weekend — and, indeed, the sporting year — would be illuminated if Federer can return to the pomp and perfection of his great days. When it comes to Federer, I am Oliver Twist. Just a little bit more, please.