It’s one of my favorite lines, so please excuse me for dusting it off once again. But as it relates to the folding of the AAF, the famous Son of Sam line applies once again: “What took you so long?”

Among the least surprising news items of this week/month/year/millennium is that the fledgling pro football league has gone (body part) up. (Does anything ever go from fledgling to un-fledgling? Seems like “fledgling” is always on the road to bad news.)

Eight weeks into a 10-week season, they pulled the plug. That’s about eight weeks too long. This was never going to make it and much, much smarter people that the Designated Writers staff should have know that. Among the reasons:

** Too many vowels. You can’t have anything that starts with AA unless you are talking about batteries or strange looking animals.

** OK, we are five paragraphs into this thing … do you know what AAF stands for? F for football is a given, so don’t pat yourself on the back. “Alliance of American Football” was just a bad name.

** “We’ve got (famed GM) Bill Polian and coach Steve Spurrier!” So?

** One team had to move its practice three hours away to another state. The location for the championship game had to be moved from Las Vegas to Frisco, Texas, because of legal issues. Stop me when any of this sounds like good news.

** Did you think there might be some issues when some rich guy buys in for what was going to be a $250 million “investment” to keep things going? Oh, he did get to call himself “league owner.” How is that investment working out?

Let’s simplify everything here folks. Don’t give me business plans and experimental rules and key TV markets. It comes down to this — people don’t want year-round football because, as it turns out, they already have year-round football. Free agency, the combine, the draft, OTAs … that’s what fills the February-to-August gap. The NFL — the only league people care about — is a 12-month a year news item. And its little brother, college football, is there to fill in any voids.

Nobody wants to see players they have never heard of in goofy uniforms play on a Saturday night in March. They haven’t for a long, long time. They’d much rather sweat out who the Vikings are going to take in the third round in the draft.

Is there anybody out there who could be dumber than those who thought this was going to work? Yes, those who think the “new” XFL — coming in 2020 — is still a good idea.