A great escape

 One hundred eleven seconds to play out there in Happy Valley, and the detractors had their knives out. You could hear their gloating even over the 747 roar of the home crowd, which was all jacked up because a precious moment of redemption was right there for the downtrodden Nittany Lions of Penn State.

Who led the unbeaten (and untried, the detractors said) Indiana Hoosiers, the No. 2 team in the land, 24-20.

Who in turn were 80 distant yards away from escape velocity with 1:51 to play.

See, I told you they were a fraud ...

Got fat on a pile of cupcakes ...

Losing to a 3-6 team that's been playing out the string since its head coach got the gate four games into the season ...

Gloat, gloat, gloat.

And then ...

Well. By now you know all about "and then".

You know Indiana's quarterback, the great and powerful Fernando Mendoza, first took a sack, then completed a 22-yard pass, a 12-yard pass, a 29-yard pass and a 17-yard pass. 

Then he hoisted a throw toward the back of the end zone, where Omar Cooper Jr., leaped, caught and somehow pas-de-deuxed a toe inside the end line. There were 36 seconds to play, and the Hoosiers were still unbeaten.

"Most improbable victory I have ever been a part of," Indiana coach Curt Cignetti said, after the 27-24 W went final.

It was also the first time in program history Indiana had beaten Penn State in Happy Valley, having gone 0-for-13 until Saturday. Now they're 10-0 for the second straight year,  Cignetti is 21-2 in Bloomington -- and the detractors still claim it's all a trick of the light.

Because Coach Cig's Hoosiers had almost lost to a 3-6 football team.

Because the Hoosiers blew a 13-point second-half lead and were outgained 336 yards to 326 by that 3-6 football team.

Because the Big Ten is a poser conference and Indiana is the biggest poser of all.

On the other hand ...

On the other hand, the great escape the Hoosiers made yesterday came against a team that returned virtually everyone from a team that went 13-3 last season, won the Fiesta Bowl and reached the CFP semifinals before losing 27-24 to Notre Dame. And whose 2025 season imploded only after the then-No. 3 Nittany Lions lost 30-24 in double overtime to defending Big Ten champion and then-No. 6 Oregon -- a game that wasn't decided until Oregon defensive back Dillon Thieneman intercepted Drew Allard in the end zone in the second OT.

Oregon is now 8-1 and still ranked sixth -- its only loss, of course, coming against Indiana.

In other words, all those players who took the Nittany Lions to the natty semis and fought to the end against the defending conference champs were still around yesterday. And Indiana still found a way to beat them.

"Yeah, but ..." the detractors insist.

Yeah, nothing. Close call or not, Indiana still has 10 wins and zippo losses, and their average margin of victory in those 10 wins -- even with yesterday's three-pointer -- is an FBS-leading 32.4 points. Poser conference or not, no one else in it is beating people like that.

And so ... onward.

Conflict of what?

 Listen, I know what people are gonna say here. They're gonna hear Michelle Beadle -- an eclipsed former star in the vast sports media firmament -- going after ESPN's ubiquitous Stephen A. Smith on her radio show the other day, and say she's just noshing on sour grapes. 

Can't argue with that. Because, yeah, those people likely aren't entirely wrong.

Thing is, neither is she.

Oh, to be sure, there's little love lost between Beadle and Stephen A., and not without reason. Stephen A. did, after all, blindside her by stealing her Sirius XM radio spot, which he announced before Beadle knew anything about it. One minute she had a show; the next she was hearing Stephen A. say on the air that, nah, man, I'm movin' in. See ya, wouldn't wanna be ya.

However.

However, when she took off on Stephen A. for his sleazy deal with a sleazy online solitaire app, she was absolutely on the side of the angels.

The app, Solitaire Cash, is run by Papaya Gaming, which recently was knicked for fraud. Seems they introduced bots into competitions that were supposed to be on the level -- i.e., actual paying customers playing actual paying customers -- thereby robbing said customers. To make matters, well, sleazier, Stephen A.'s deal was an apparent attempt to cash in on the now-famous incident in which he was caught playing solitaire on his phone at the NBA Finals, when he was allegedly supposed to be working. 

Think a carnival huckster endorsing a new shell-game app, and you've got the basic vibe. And to make matters, well, even sleazier, several other ESPN personalities jumped on Stephen A.'s train and endorsed the Papaya site, too.

"It's gross, man," Beadle was quoted as saying by the website Awful Announcing, which reported the story. "You gotta have principles in this thing."

Or, you know, not.

This whole business, after all, is a microcosm of professional sports and its beholden media these days, in which the latter climbs into bed with the former and then claims, "Yeah, but nothin' happened, so we can still be trusted as a journalistic entity." That's how we wind up with the ludicrous scenario of ESPN reporting on, say, the recent gambling scandal in the NBA while at the same time endorsing online gambling apps on its website.

Presumably money changes hands in those endorsements. Which means, essentially, that ESPN -- and, yes, the NFL, NBA and others -- is being paid by the gambling industry. Yet we're supposed to trust its reporting on that industry?

Please.

 Truth is, Sportsball World in the Baffling Twenties is one massive ball of conflicts -- so much so that those conflicts are rarely even seen as conflicts anymore. They're just bidness, as they say in the oil industry. And if that's true in sports, sports takes its cue from Washington D.C. -- where conflicts of interest have become as natural as humidity in August, and open graft is simply the way govermentin' gets done these days.

In which case, maybe Stephen A. and the rest of the yapping poodles at ESPN are just hanging ten on the national zeitgeist. A disheartening notion to be sure.

Bogart of the year

 Raise a glass this morning to St. Louis Blues goalie Jordan Binnington, but make sure you keep a firm grip on it. Seems the guy's got some exceedingly sticky fingers. 

Last night, for instance, he tried to bogart Alex Ovechkin's milestone goal, only to have the on-ice officials basically say, "Come on, man. Give it up." What happened was, Ovi collected the trash from an errant shot from the point, neatly slid it to his backhand, and tucked it behind Binnington. 

It was his third goal of the season, and one of half-dozen the Washington Capitals put behind Binnington in a 6-1 paving. It also was Ovi's 900th career goal, making the NHL's alltime leading goal scorer the only player in history to reach that particular round number.

So what did Binnington do?

Why, what any collector of rare artifacts would do: He quickly scooped the puck out of the net and stuffed it down his pants. Puck? Puck? No, sir, Mr. Referee, sir, haven't seen any pucks around here. 

Now, Binnington didn't speak with the media after the game, so the jury's still out on whether this was an actual bogarting, or if Binnington was just pulling a hockey player prank on Ovi. Having been around hockey players as a sports scribbler for a good chunk of my professional life, I'm inclined toward the latter.

(Mind you, this is not solely -- not solely --  because I once was pranked myself by a Fort Wayne Komet who shall remain nameless. At the height of the hilarity on the night the Komets won one of their several league championships, he dumped a beer on my head.  Then he baptized me again. I forgave him because  one, he was one of those guys it was impossible to get mad at, and, two, because I was the dummy who decided venturing into the locker room during the postgame celebration was a good idea.)

Anyway ... Binnington willingly surrendered the puck, and the game went on. Presumably the officials presented it to Ovechkin at some point -- which evokes a brief conversation that probably didn't happen, but could have.

Ovechkin: He stuffed it WHERE?

Official: Um, down his pants, Ovi.

Ovechkin (dropping puck): Ewww. 

Outrage outage

 The first College Football Playoff poll is out, and calm is mostly upon the land. Except for Paul Finebaum's head exploding, it's disappointingly un-contentious out there.

"Who is Paul Finebaum, and why is his head exploding?" you might be asking now.

Paul Finebaum is America's foremost SEC shill, and so the sight of Ohio State and Indiana from the Big Arithmetic Challenged coming in 1-2 in the first poll no doubt has him re-enacting a scene from "Scanners," the greatest head-exploding film of all time. This is especially true of Indiana, whom Paul thinks is an utter fraud who will surely be exposed this week ... OK, next week, then ... OK, next week then.

But the Buckeyes are 8-0 and the defending national champs, and Indiana is 9-0 and crushing everyone who gets in their way by eleventy gazillion points. So of course it makes total sense they'd be 1-2 in the first CFP poll, and no one but Finebaum could possibly have an issue with it.

Which is the problem here.

See, this first poll seems so well-duh for the most part there's hardly any outrage over it, and outrage is what makes college football fun. But this first poll seems to be suffering from a distinct outrage outage.

The first four teams -- the bye teams -- are Ohio State, Indiana, unbeaten Texas A&M and once-beaten Alabama. Georgia, meanwhile, is fifth. This seems so entirely inarguable it's almost ... um ... OK, boring.

And elsewhere?

The only serious quasi-controversy is BYU coming in at No. 7, which a lot of folks would consider four or five places too high. Oh, sure, the Cougars are 8-0 and going through the Big 12 like you-know-what through a goose, but they've got a big one this week at Texas Tech, who comes in as the 8th seed in the first CFP poll.

If the Cougars lose -- and they well could -- then the CFP seedings re-set themselves and BYU will no longer be seventh and, well, problem solved. Everyone will forget how mildly annoyed they were at the Cougars' lofty place in their first poll.

The Blob, meanwhile, only hopes subsequent polls maintain the respective positions of Notre Dame and Indiana, because as the seeding currently stand there's a good chance they'd play one another in the second round. This would be a rematch of last year's first-round game, in which the Irish easily dispatched the 11-1 Hoosiers in South Bend.

But Notre Dame would have to come to Bloomington this time, and the Indiana team it would face is several degrees better than the one the Irish faced a year ago, especially on defense. On the other hand, Jeremiyah Love and Jadarian Price are several degrees better, too, comprising as they do the best running back tandem in the college game. Who wouldn't want to see that collision?

"Paul What's-his-name?" you're saying now.

Well, OK. Maybe him.

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 9

 And now this week's edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the shockingly regular Blob feature of which critics have said "God, it's so shockingly regular!", and also "Come 'ere, so I can shock you on the regular with this cattle prod!":

1. "Wait, what? THIS ain't regular!" (The Packer, the Lions and the Bengals, shocked at home by the Panthers, the Vikings and the Bears)

2. "Ditto!" (The Panthers, Vikings and Bears)

3. "Double ditto!" (Bears quarterback Caleb Williams, who, a week after playing like the love child of Jack Concannon, played like the love child of Tom Brady in a 47-42 win in Cincinnati, completing 20-of-34 passes for 280 yards and three touchdowns, catching a pass for another score, and hitting tight end Colston Loveland down the middle for 58 yards and the game-winning six with 17 seconds to play)

4. "Well, if THIS ain't shockingly regular!" (Bengals fans, watching two tacklers bounce off Loveland on the way to the end zone.)

5. "Wait ... what?" (85-year-old Joe Flacco, who'd just thrown his fourth touchdown pass of the day with 54 seconds left to put the Bengals ahead)

6. In other shockingly regular news, the Dolphins were paved at home by the Ravens; the Super Bowl-bound Cowboys lost by 10 at home to freaking Jacoby Brissett and the freaking Cardinals; the Patriots beat the Falcons (again!); and Jaxson Joe Willie Dart, the King of New York, threw for two touchdowns, ran for another and racked up 247 total yards against the 49ers.

7. Who beat Jaxson Joe Willie and the Giants anyway, even though Mac Jones was playing quarterback for them. Because the Giants, of course.

8. "Of course!" (Giants fans)

9. "Hey, at least we didn't lose this week!" (Gloating Jets fans, whose team extended its lifetime unbeaten record in its bye week)

10. "What? The Jets are unbeaten in something?" (The rest of America, properly shocked)

A big reveal. Or not.

 God it looks like Daniel ...

-- Elton John

Well, it did.

Look like Daniel, I mean.

And by "Daniel," I mean the Other Daniel, aka Manhattan Daniel Jones, aka That Guy Who Only Became Indiana Jones When He Came To A Place -- Indianapolis-- That Had A Running Back And Some Actual Wide Receivers And, Oh, Yeah, The NFL'S Next Great Tight End.

Well, forget that noise. At least for one Sunday.

It was a day when Other Daniel re-emerged thanks to the Pittsburgh Steelers, who put together a game plan that sent Indiana Jones into hiding. As his Indianapolis Colts went down 27-20, Other Daniel completed 31-of-50 passes, took five sacks, threw three picks and lost two fumbles. That's five turnovers to you and me, kids.

"I'm so disappointed in you, Junior," Sean Connery said in a postgame statement.

OK, so he didn't. But every skeptic in America who'd been waiting for Daniel Jones to stop impersonating a really good quarterback and go back to being Daniel Jones again got some meat and drink yesterday.

All it took was for the Steelers to A) get an early lead, and B) thereby take Jonathan Taylor out of the equation, or mostly out of the equation. Taylor lugged it 14 times for just 45 yards Sunday, as Jones tried vainly to pass the Colts back into it. But with Taylor mostly erased as a factor, the Colts offense became a three-legged stool minus a leg.

And Indiana Jones became merely Daniel Jones again.

"Told ya!" the skeptics sneered.

So they did. But does yesterday mean the Colts are going to go back to being the Colts again?

Nah.

Oh, sure, mimicry being a way of life in the NFL, everyone the Horseshoes will face from here on out will study the Pittsburgh tape, and then try to duplicate it. But not everyone has a T.J. Watt, an Alex Highsmith or a Keeanu Benton, who combined for four sacks, five tackles for loss and four quarterback hits Sunday. And Jonathan Taylor is not going to stop being Jonathan Taylor, which means he likely has a few more 100-yard days left in him.

Which means Jones will face more defenses that will have to play him honest, which in turn means they won't be teeing off on him the way the Steelers were able to. And which also means he can resume picking people apart with throws to Michael Pittman Jr. and Alec Pierce and Josh Downs and Tyler Warren, and all the other quality targets the Colts have in their stable.

In other words, that big ugly reveal the skeptics have been predicting perhaps wasn't as revealing as it looks. After all, it wasn't magic dust that turned Manhattan Daniel Jones into Indiana Jones. It was what it always is: The right combination of scheme, personnel and confidence in both.

You've gotta figure that combination is still there. Or, if you're the Colts, you hope it is.

Meanwhile, in NASCAR ...

 ... and, yes, before you start, it was still going on Sunday.

Yesterday was the last race of the season, in Phoenix.

Kyle Larson won the title for the second time, even though the last race he won was six months ago and he never led a lap Sunday.

Denny Hamlin was the guy who should have won, but, after 20 fruitless seasons, the racing gods kicked him in the tender bits again. And this time they clocked him a good one.

Hamlin, see, was leading the race with three laps to go, and no one was going to catch him. He was finally going to grab the brass ring, or whatever they call the Big Trophy in NASCAR. Unless something really stupid and cruel happened, he would never again be known as the best driver never to win a title.

And then ...

And then something really stupid and cruel happened.

With those aforementioned three laps to run, William Byron flatted a tire and smacked the wall, bringing out a yellow.

Hamlin led the field down pit lane, where he took new rubber all around.

Larson, on the other hand, elected to change just two tires, bringing him out in fifth while Hamlin came out in tenth.

The overtime green-white-checker that followed wasn't enough for Hamlin to make up the difference. He wound up sixth; Larson finished third and won a championship he both couldn't believe and -- let's be honest here -- totally lucked into.

"We were 40 seconds away from a championship," Hamlin said, when at last he could find his voice.

"This sport can drive you absolutely crazy," he said.

"Sometimes speed, talent, none of that matters," he said.

No, it doesn't. And now there will always be questions from those who love to ask questions after the fact.

The Blob's question: Why did Hamlin take four tires when he was already leading and so little time was left?

Why did he pit at all?

And, sure, OK, maybe thought he'd get beat on the green-white-checker restart by everyone who did take fresh rubber. But if his tires were that bad, why was he still  leading?  Wasn't track position more important at that point?

And while we're second-guessing stuff, who else sick to death of these manufactured green-white-checker finishes?

Mind you, this is coming from someone who is not and never has been a Denny Hamlin fan, particularly. But the green-white-checker thing has always annoyed me for some reason. It's always felt ... well, manufactured.

And, sure, without it, Hamlin wins the championship under yellow, which would have been seriously anticlimactic. But at least it would feel, I don't know, honest. If that makes any sense whatsoever.

If not ... well, here's to Kyle Larson, then. He is, after all, probably is the best driver in the sport right now. 

Just not yesterday.