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With National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell and players association executive director DeMaurice Smith just inches away from a final deal establishing the league’s financial framework for the next decade, who should suddenly start jumping up and down on the sidelines? California Attorney General Kamala Harris.

WTF? you wonder. As did we, when we learned about Harris’ move, not from one of the hundreds of self-congratulatory emails that she sends out every day, but from a mention in the New York Times. Not the Los Angeles Times or any paper with a local NFL team like the San Francisco Chronicle, San Diego Union Tribune or Oakland Tribune.

On a day when the rest of the internet was focused on the death of Amy Winehouse, our readers can rest assured that our Department of Professional Sports Economics and Illegal Use of the Hands was grubbing around for items in the 27th graf of MSM stories.

Here’s what the NYT reported:

On Friday, the California attorney general’s office issued subpoenas seeking documents from the N.F.L. and the players association for an investigation into potential antitrust violations that may have resulted from the lockout. The goal: an injunction to stop the lockout, if negotiations do not soon result in a settlement that would restart the game. The attorney general’s office contends that California could soon suffer economic harm because the San Diego Chargers play a preseason game at home on Aug. 11, and if that game is canceled because of the lockout, it could jeopardize income and jobs related to the game.

“These are tough times,” the attorney general, Kamala D. Harris, said in a statement. “The people who will really be locked out are the stadium workers and small businesses who rely on N.F.L. games for their livelihood.”

The decision to issue the subpoenas came after the N.F.L. canceled the Hall of Fame Game, scheduled for Aug. 7, on Thursday.

“We will cooperate fully,” the players association spokesman George Atallah said.

The league said it had not yet seen the subpoena.

So if the league hadn’t seen the subpoena and no California newspaper had the item, how did the Times get it? Duh. How do you spell “leak?”

But what’s the Empress of River City doing, sticking her nose into a volatile negotiation in the final seconds of the game? Surely she’s not figuring that if a deal gets inked this coming week, that she’ll get credit for having goosed the process along. Really?