Reverie for an October morn

(Yesterday, Oct. 12, 2025, Penn State fired football coach James Franklin, less than 24 hours after the Nittany Lions lost their homecoming game to Northwestern ... a week after they gave up 42 points and lost to a previously winless UCLA team that scored 47 points all season ... and just two weeks after they were undefeated and ranked third in the country.

 What follows, from the Blob's own admittedly diseased mind, is an imagined (or not) phone conversation between Indiana University athletic director Scott Dolson and IU president Pam Whitten on Oct. 13, 2025:)

"Scott? Pam here."

"Yes, El Presidente?"

"Come on. I told you not to call me that."

"Sorry. Just trying to lighten the mood after the news from Pennsylvania yesterday."

"Ah, so you've heard. Well, what do you propose to do about it? I mean, this couldn't have happened at a worse time."

"You mean because Coach Cignetti just pulled off the biggest road win in our admittedly beige football history? You mean because it was our first win over a top five team since beating Purdue to go to the Rose Bowl in 19-freakin'-67? You mean because we're now ranked No. 3 in the nation, the highest we've ever been ranked in 138 years of playing football?"

"Yes, of course I mean that! Jesus, you're dim sometimes."

"Sorry."

"Anyway ... Coach Cig's stock has never been higher. And now Penn State, one of the legendary programs in all of college football, is looking for a head coach? Gee, where do you think will be the first place they look?"

"I know, I know. But what do you propose I do about it? We're already paying the man an arm and a leg."

"So make it an arm and two legs, then. You have my green light."

"I don't know. How's that gonna look now that you're eliminating entire programs and firing faculty members left and right? 'Yeah, we don't need any of those snowflake-y liberal arts programs or history professors who refuse to stick to the Whitewash 101 script, but we'll spare no expense for football.' People will think we're Ohio State, for heaven's sake -- or, god forbid, Alabama."

"Hmm. Yeah, bad optics, I get it. Well ... why don't you just confiscate Coach Cig's phone? I mean, if Penn State can't contact him, it can't poach him. Can't you do that?"

"Not without breaking about fifty laws. Besides, he's probably got a couple of burner phones tucked away. Coaches usually do."

"So get ICE to raid his home and office. Hell, those guys do that all the time."

"Because that would be against the law, too."

"Are you kidding? Those cowboys don't worry about laws. They just kick in your door and zip-tie your toddler. This is 2025, Scotty. Laws are for losers."

"You would know."

"What was that?"

I said 'You would know.'"

"Damn straight, I would know. Never forget I'm the one who illegally changed the rules overnight and then called in the staties to run off all those damn protesters. Even had 'em deploy a sniper. God, it was beautiful."

"Well, I'm not gonna do it. I mean, what if Coach Cig is having a cookout for the team? You want to see half our players get bundled into unmarked vans and taken God knows where? Think about it."

(Pause)

"OK, OK.  Didn't consider that. Well ... maybe we can kidnap Coach Cig's wife and kids and hold 'em in an undisclosed location until Penn State hires a new coach."

(Another pause)

"Nah, I'm just kidding."

(Another)

"Maybe."

For real

 Listen to the narrative one last time, before it fades to a whisper and then the memory of a whisper. Listen to it riding out from the Pacific Northwest, out from an unfathomable scoreboard and a stadium awash in yellow and green, out and out until it's gone.

What were the naysayers naysaying about Indiana football, before Indiana 30, Oregon 20?

Overrated.

Fraud.

Never beaten anyone who's actually good.

Travesty of the century, making the playoffs last year.

And this morning, of course, this one, as surely as night follows day:

Gee. Obviously Oregon wasn't as all that as we thought.

Because you know it's coming. Because even as Indiana continues to kick it to shards, the narrative is Indiana football simply can't be THAT good, not really, because it's INDIANA FOOTBALL. It's all a trick of the light, smoke and mirrors, a bunch of wins over Who's That State, Nobody Tech and the Big Ten's table scraps.

Well. What can the naysayers naysay now, after 30-20 in Autzen Stadium?

What can they say after the Hoosiers destroyed a ranked Illinois team, 63-10, and won out in Iowa City, and took down third-ranked Oregon with an attack dog defense and just enough offense to get the job done?

They can say, yes, that obviously Oregon wasn't as all that as everyone thought.

Except the Ducks marched into Happy Valley and took down then-No. 3 Penn State before Penn State had begun to unravel.

Except they hadn't lost in Autzen since 2022, the year Dan Lanning arrived as head coach.

Except everyone was looking at quarterback Dante Moore and his guys as 1A to Ohio State's 1 in the Big Mathematically Challenged, and that if Indiana presented a challenge surely the Hoosiers weren't going to be that much of a challenge.

Because when you win 18 straight home games, and you've got Dante Moore going for you, that's how you're gonna think.

But then here came that Indiana D, a couple thousand pounds of bad attitude and grievance, intercepting Moore twice and sacking him six times and making eight tackler for loss. And here came Moore's counterpart, Fernando Mendoza, throwing for 215 yards and a score. And here came Elijah Sarratt and Omar Cooper Jr., who made 15 catches between them for 179 yards and a six, and Roman Hemby, who bulled and quicked his way to 70 yards and two touchdowns on 19 carries.

Want to hear something crazy?

If Mendoza doesn't hang the ball and throw a pick six in the second half, Oregon finds the end zone just one time, on a busted-coverage throw from Moore to Malik Benson. It gets outscored 17-3 in the second half. It scrapes out just 13 points all day.

Thirteen points. At home. From a team that came in averaging 47 points per.

Conclusion: Yes, Indiana is for real -- really for real -- and the unglamorous past is the unglamorous past. And the narrative that attended that past?

Can barely hear it anymore.

A fall classic

 This is why we still watch baseball in October, and why we can still sometimes hear it even over the metal howl of the industrial NFL. It's why there's still magic in it, even as its fan base ages and it lives more and more in our memories than in the present day.

They played a baseball game out in Seattle last night, see, and even if our erstwhile pastime lives another 155 years, people will still be talking about it. It was a fall classic,  and it went on for15 innings and just shy of five hours. The Seattle Mariners finally won, 3-2, on Jorge Polanco's walkoff single. In so doing they eliminated but did not bow the Detroit Tigers, who were not only brave in the attempt but damn near indomitable.

The Tiges sent their ace, Tarik Skubal, to the mound to finish the deal, and all he did was strike out 13 Mariners and depart after six innings and 99 pitches with a 2-1 lead. You can argue that was a mistake -- maybe the mistake -- and it probably was. Skubal was still throwing 100-plus when he and Detroit manager AJ Hinch called it a night, and he rung up the last batter he faced. So he still had plenty of juice left in the wing.

What followed was grim, riveting hand-to-hand combat that chewed up both bullpens, neither of which would give an inch. Seattle used seven pitchers, including two other starters (Logan Gilbert and Luis Castillo, who got the win). Detroit burned through eight -- the last of them Tommy Kahnle, who finally surrendered the last run.

"An epic game," Hinch declared when it was done.

"From the eighth inning on, I had a massive headache," said Seattle starter George Kirby, who matched Skubal pitch-for-pitch for five innings. "I am glad that game is over."

Kirby is still a young man (27), so you can forgive him the missteps of youth. Because he couldn't have been more wrong.

That game isn't over.

That game will never be over, so long as baseball and memory both live.

Nun better

 An American icon passed yesterday in Chicago, and if the country still had a soul flags would be lowered in every burg that loves March and its Madness and its holy brackets. Certainly we have lowered them for lesser mortals than Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt, God and all the saints preserve her.

She was 106 years old when she died -- a life full to the top by any measure -- and she was already 98 when the nation found her. Across a couple of magical weeks in March 2018, she became simply Sister Jean to America, the spiritual groundwire/good luck charm for a bunch of gritty overachievers from Loyola University of Chicago, who became that year's beloved underdog in the NCAA Tournament.

Went all the way to the Final Four, the Ramblers did. And Sister Jean, the basketball team's chaplain, went with them, becoming in the process one those unwitting celebrities fame sometimes lands on with its full weight.

As the Ramblers kept winning, Sister Jean went from a humble nun dedicated to a life of service to, well, Sister Jean.  There were Sister Jean bobbleheads and Sister Jean T-shirts and all manner of Sister Jean accoutrements. The teevees interviewed her endlessly, endlessly. When Loyola reached the Final Four in San Antonio, tournament officials even conducted a Final Four news conferences for her.

Loyola fans broke out "Win One For The Nun!" T-shirts at the games. And in the national semifinal against Michigan, signs blossomed in the Alamadome demanding the Wolverines follow "Jean's Plan."

Alas, the Wolverines didn't listen. They dispatched Loyola by 12, and the Ramblers' -- and Sister Jean's -- glorious run was over.

Over, but not forgotten. For the rest of her days, Sister Jean would never be just a nun employed by a Catholic university. She would be the nun. 

And there would be, pardon the pun, nun better.

An oops for the ages

 Somewhere today Fred Merkle is throwing a spectral arm around Orion Kerkering's shoulders and saying, "Don't sweat it, son. No one will remember this."

Then he'll laugh and add: "Just kidding. No one's ever gonna forget this. And not just because your parents named you 'Orion.'"

That's because last night, with the season in the balance, Orion Kerkering, a relief pitcher for the Philadelphia Phillies, pulled a Fred Merkle. And every baseball fan worth the name knows instantly what that means. 

It means even after 117 years, every baseball fan worth the name remembers what Fred Merkle of the Giants did on a late September day in 1908. Locked up in a death struggle with the Chicago Cubs, Merkle cost the Jints a crucial victory over their rivals when, after an apparent game-winning single, he veered off and headed to the dugout rather than finishing his jaunt to second base.

By failing to touch second, he was ruled to have made the third out of the inning, and the game remained tied 1-1. Called because of darkness, the Cubs won it the next day, wound up tied with the Giants for the NL pennant, and ultimately went to the World Series after beating the Giants again in a one-game playoff.

Forever after, the notorious blunder was known as Merkle's Boner. It was a dark cloud that followed him for the rest of his days as a player.

Orion Kerkering?

His blunder was throwing the ball halfway to, well, Orion on a slow roller in the 11th inning, with the Phillies and Dodgers tied and the bases loaded. It allowed the Dodgers to score the winning run in Game 4 of the NLDS, and win the best-of-five series 3-1.

Everyone was going when Andy Pages' broken-bat squib glanced off Kerkering's foot, and panic swallowed him up. Rather than going to first for the out, he tried a hurried throw home, and it eluded catcher J.T. Realmuto by roughly ten light years.

Game, set, match to the Dodgers.

"Just a horses**t throw," Kerkering said in the postgame, manning up.

He can take solace in the fact that, no, everyone likely won't remember his oops-for-the-ages for, um, ages, the way everyone remembers Fred Merkle's. That's because baseball doesn't consumer America the way it did back in the old-timey days. Nowadays it's pro football that does that.

Which is why talk radio in Philly today likely will have a lot more folks griping about the Eagles getting rinse-cycled by the Giants last night ("34-17? To the bleeping Giants? What the hell was THAT?") than by Orion Kerkering.

Unique name or no unique name. 

Fading bloom

 The headline has been parked in the nether reaches of my brain for a couple of weeks now, or since it became apparent Bill Belichick was just another guy struggling to deal with college kids. It awaits the day the University of North Carolina finally realizes, "Damn, Bill Belichick is just another guy struggling to deal with college kids," and picks up his buyout.

On that day, the Blob's aforementioned headline would be this: "Beli-Chucked!"

Yeah, I know. You were expecting something better.

("From YOU?" you're saying now)

Anyway, that day may or may not be imminent, depending on whether you believe the always-reliable rumor mill or the equally always-reliable Official Statement. The former claims the University and Belichick are already negotiating a lower buyout, five games into Belichick's ballyhooed tenure; the latter says, nah, that's not true at all, Coach Bill still has the school's "full support."

What we know for sure is the Belichick Era in Chapel Hill is off to an underwhelming 2-3 start in which the two victories came against Charlotte and Richmond. The Tar Heels' three Power Four opponents, meanwhile, have crushed them by a combined score of 120-33.

That includes last week's 38-10 erasure by Dabo Swinney's struggling Clemson Tigers, in which the Clemsons scored on two of their first four offensive snaps and led 28-3 after quarter. And it includes the opening game of the Belichick Era, when Beli-Fever had the campus in a tizzy until TCU parachuted into all that Carolina blue and paved Belichick's boys like a county highway, 48-14.

It was just about then a thought bubble appeared over Belichick's head. It said, "Dammit, they all told me I was a genius."

OK. So I'm making that up.

What I'm not making up is the fact the bloom, if not entirely off the rose, is fading fast. The rumor mill (remember: always reliable) says a planned documentary about Belichick's first season as a college coach is now on the scrap heap, and there's growing discontent with Coach B in the locker room. Meanwhile, The Athletic reports cornerbacks coach Armond Hawkins has been suspended for recruiting violations.

Which in the anything-goes landscape of 2025 must take some doing.

So, yeah, matters seem to be getting perilously close to the dreaded term "disarray." And thus the sentiment grows that perhaps Belichick, at 72, is clueless about the college game and should have just stayed on the coaching Mount Rushmore -- where, if nothing else, the view is better.

(The sentiment also grows that it mainly was Tom Brady who put Belichick on that promontory. This owes to the fact that Belichick, at New England and now North Carolina, has a decidedly beige 31-41 record post-Tom. On the other hand, it ignores the fact he was astute enough to recognize a sixth-round pick who'd started all of one season in college had the potential to be something better -- like, for instance, the greatest quarterback ever to play the game.)

Now, where were we?

Oh, yeah. Belichick. North Carolina. Down from the mountain, as it were.

Shoulda stayed up there, Bill. You really should have.

A fine(d) mess

 Somewhere today Coach Slobberknocker is giving up on 'Murica. After all, it ain't the 'Murica he  learned all the words to The Star-Spangled Whatchamacallit for, and you can take that to the bank and do whatever it is you do when you take something to the bank.

"Finin' a coach for yellin' at his dumbass runnin' back?" he's saying, incredulously. "The hell's the world comin' to?"

What it's comin' to, it seems, is the Arizona Cardinals indeed fining head coach Jonathan Gannon for a sideline, um, discussion with running back Emari Demercado on Sunday. It was right after Demercado dropped the ball before crossing the goal line on a 72-yard jaunt to Six City, costing the Cardinals a score it could have used in their loss to the Tennessee Titans. So it stands to reason Gannon was not in the best of moods.

Still, it's worth noting Gannon did not do what Coach Slobberknocker would have done, which is maintain a good grip on Demercado's facemask while informing him that he was one sorry sumbitch, and a damn dumb sumbitch besides. Also, if he had a brain, he'd be playin' cornhole with it or somethin'.

No, sir. All Gannon did was walk over to Demercado and yell at him a little, and then yell at him a little more, and then maybe/maybe not brush his arm as Demercado walked away. 

Of course, modern times being what they are, it was all caught on video. And apparently that was embarrassing for certain people in the Cardinals organization (which, considering it's the Cardinals organization, they ought to be used to). And so they're getting in Gannon's folding cash for $100,000.

All Coach Slobberknocker can do is shake his head and maybe laugh a little at the sheer ridiculousness of it all.

"Good gravy," he says, or something like it. "They're actin' like this was Georgie Patton slappin' that soldier. Or ol' Woody Hayes punchin' that Clemson linebacker. Shoot-fire, yellin' at his players was nothin' but jumpin' jacks for Woody. Got him all warmed up for tearing up sideline markers and punchin' photographers.

"Why, I bet he and Bo are howlin' up there in Headset Heaven."

They probably are. A lot of crusty old coots no doubt are. Because, no, this is not the 'Murica they came up in, or at least not the 'Murica proscribed by sidelines and 100 yards of turf and large people stomping around on it.

It is, after all, 2025, not 1925, and the world has changed, as the world tends to do. Len Dawson isn't firing up a dart at halftime of the Super Bowl anymore. Fans don't wear jackets and ties and jaunty fedoras to the games. And if Dick Butkus were playing in today's NFL, he wouldn't be playing in today's NFL. He'd be in jail for hitting people too hard.

Some of this has been to the game's detriment. Some of it has not. All of it is the consequence of a corporatized America whose first loyalty is to quarterly earnings, and whose second loyalty is to the omnipotence of the Franchise and its Brand.

So, yeah, a viral clip of Coach yelling at his dumbass running back won't play, even if the dumbass running back did something really dumbass this time. (And  DeMercado did). A marquee quarterback getting blown up by a Butkus-channeling edge rusher won't, either.  

The quarterback is, after all, the Face Of Our Franchise. And the Franchise -- aka, the product -- is inviolate.

"Good gravy," Coach Slobberknocker says, or something like it. "Football ain't supposed to be a 'product.' It's supposed to be football. Blockin', tacklin', yellin' at your dumbass running back for forgettin' to take the ball into the end zone with him. THAT'S football."

Was football, Coach. Sorry.