Maybe it was the contrast. The week before, Kansas City and Arrowhead, all those happy people 'cuein out in the parking lot (and no one 'cues like K.C. 'cues), the Chiefs fans who took an Indiana sportswriter under their wing and gave him some jovial dinner company.
The next week ...
Foxborough. Gillette. Cold, gray place; cold, gray fans that made me glad I wasn't a Colts fan rockin' that Manning jersey.
Which brings us to Minneapolis, Minn., where it's supposed to be a high of 11 degrees for the S-s-s-s-uper B-b-b-b-owl, happy news for those of us (like me) who think if Patriots fans aren't the worst, Eagles fans purportedly are. I got the Patriots experience back in 2003, following the Colts to their inevitable Gillette Stadium doom. The Eagles' experience I've only heard stories about, which means maybe they're all apocryphal and Eagles fans really aren't that nasty after all.
Although it is irrefutably true the authorities installed a holding cell in their stadium. Which suggests they're not all fine congenial folks, either.
Neither do the numerous tales that Eagles fans all but put out a contract on anyone wearing visiting Vikings purple at the NFC title game. This likely won't make the good people of Minneapolis feel any better about hosting those same fans this week, and also the Patriots fans. They don't even get the joy of watching them freeze to death in those 11-degree Minnesota winter temps, on account of the Vikings owners, the Wilfs, put a roof on that new stadium for which they squeezed the taxpayers a few years back.
No doubt Bud Grant rolled his eyes at the news, having coached the Vikes when they played outdoors, like men, instead of indoors, like pantywaists.
Roger Goodell, on the other hand, loves these new stadiums, especially the squeezing the taxpayers part. And so the Shield is coming to Minny for its big party, a reward to the Wilfs for their success in conning the citizenry with the usual new-stadium fairy tales about Creating Jobs and Boosting The Economy.
New stadiums rarely do either, of course. Neither does the Super Bowl have much sustained economic impact on the host cities, mainly because the NFL essentially gets everything for free. But it all sounds good, and so the owners and the league keep trotting it out there.
In any case, on with the show. Perhaps, if we're lucky, the two fan bases will engage in some high-spirited revelry, given their respective reputations.
After all, YouTube can always use more drunken fan fight footage.
Wednesday, January 31, 2018
Tuesday, January 30, 2018
Out, damned logo
Common sense and common decency have taken some uncommon hits in the last year, for reasons that are obvious to any American who's caught even a tiny portion of Our Only Available President's act. So it's refreshing when the two commons manage to pull off a W.
Which is to say: The Cleveland Indians are finally ditching Chief Wahoo.
This will undoubtedly provoke the usual cry of "Political correctness run amok!" from the usual suspects, who never met a racial slur or stereotype they wouldn't fervently embrace. That Chief Wahoo is an obviously racist caricature far out of its time doesn't matter to those usual suspects, given that our entire national policy openly seems to yearn for those rightfully gone times.
And yet ... it is 2018, no matter how much Our Only Available President and his constituency wishes it were not. And so Chief Wahoo belongs on history's ashheap, not on the sleeves of baseball players whose demographic is increasingly diverse.
Consider, after all, its genesis: It was created allegedly to honor Louis Sockalexis, a Penobscot Indian who played for Cleveland for three years in the late 1890s. Sockalexis' first year in Cleveland was 1897, seven years after Wounded Knee, generally regarded as the last gasp of Native American resistance to white rule. By the time Sockalexis came along, the process of herding Native American children into white schools whose purpose was to eradicate their culture was already well under way.
Chief Wahoo was a product of those times, just as this and this were a product of those times. It's safe to say not even the Usual Suspects (or at least some of them) would regard the latter two, in the America of 2018, as anything but the outrageous racial slurs they are.
So why shouldn't Chief Wahoo be regarded that way?
Which is to say: The Cleveland Indians are finally ditching Chief Wahoo.
This will undoubtedly provoke the usual cry of "Political correctness run amok!" from the usual suspects, who never met a racial slur or stereotype they wouldn't fervently embrace. That Chief Wahoo is an obviously racist caricature far out of its time doesn't matter to those usual suspects, given that our entire national policy openly seems to yearn for those rightfully gone times.
And yet ... it is 2018, no matter how much Our Only Available President and his constituency wishes it were not. And so Chief Wahoo belongs on history's ashheap, not on the sleeves of baseball players whose demographic is increasingly diverse.
Consider, after all, its genesis: It was created allegedly to honor Louis Sockalexis, a Penobscot Indian who played for Cleveland for three years in the late 1890s. Sockalexis' first year in Cleveland was 1897, seven years after Wounded Knee, generally regarded as the last gasp of Native American resistance to white rule. By the time Sockalexis came along, the process of herding Native American children into white schools whose purpose was to eradicate their culture was already well under way.
Chief Wahoo was a product of those times, just as this and this were a product of those times. It's safe to say not even the Usual Suspects (or at least some of them) would regard the latter two, in the America of 2018, as anything but the outrageous racial slurs they are.
So why shouldn't Chief Wahoo be regarded that way?
Your Super Bowl Media Day highlights
Or Media Night. Or, as the NFL is now calling it, Opening Night, seeing as how Media Day never had much to do with the media anyway, except for the fake media who showed up dressed as superheroes and the like.
(That guy, if I recall, was from Nickelodeon. No, I don't know why he was at a gang presser for a professional football game. But he wore a cape and everything, so we interviewed him. It beat watching Bill Belchick, aka Darth Hoodie, tell some Boston radio guy he would NOT be putting on the red plastic tricorn hat the radio guy was waving at him.)
(And speaking of Boston radio guys, how about the douchenozzle who called Tom Brady's 5-year-old daughter an "annoying pissant"? Who does that? And is every Boston radio guy required to have an advanced degree in douchenozzle-ry to get on the air?)
Where was I again?
Oh, yeah. Media Day/Night.
Where once upon a time the highlights included a "media personality" from Telemundo traipsing around interviewing players via hand puppet. And where someone once asked one of the Chicago Bears -- I think it was tight end Desmond Clark, though I can't recall for sure -- what position in football Chewbacca would have played.
None of that last night. Last night, the highlights were hats, and Bill Belichick smiling.
Tom Brady donned a hat that kind of looked like the hat Billy Jack wore. Belichick wore one that belonged to his father, Steve, a longtime coach at Navy.
He also smiled, which looked kind of creepy considering how rarely he smiles in public. He did this after someone told him what Brady said when asked what could make Belichick smile, and Brady said there were four things: The Navy, lacrosse, Bon Jovi and Lawrence Taylor.
Red plastic tricorn hats, notably, did not make the cut.
Of course, Belichick already had a hat. Maybe he remembered.
(That guy, if I recall, was from Nickelodeon. No, I don't know why he was at a gang presser for a professional football game. But he wore a cape and everything, so we interviewed him. It beat watching Bill Belchick, aka Darth Hoodie, tell some Boston radio guy he would NOT be putting on the red plastic tricorn hat the radio guy was waving at him.)
(And speaking of Boston radio guys, how about the douchenozzle who called Tom Brady's 5-year-old daughter an "annoying pissant"? Who does that? And is every Boston radio guy required to have an advanced degree in douchenozzle-ry to get on the air?)
Where was I again?
Oh, yeah. Media Day/Night.
Where once upon a time the highlights included a "media personality" from Telemundo traipsing around interviewing players via hand puppet. And where someone once asked one of the Chicago Bears -- I think it was tight end Desmond Clark, though I can't recall for sure -- what position in football Chewbacca would have played.
None of that last night. Last night, the highlights were hats, and Bill Belichick smiling.
Tom Brady donned a hat that kind of looked like the hat Billy Jack wore. Belichick wore one that belonged to his father, Steve, a longtime coach at Navy.
He also smiled, which looked kind of creepy considering how rarely he smiles in public. He did this after someone told him what Brady said when asked what could make Belichick smile, and Brady said there were four things: The Navy, lacrosse, Bon Jovi and Lawrence Taylor.
Red plastic tricorn hats, notably, did not make the cut.
Of course, Belichick already had a hat. Maybe he remembered.
Monday, January 29, 2018
Hey, Purdue is ... pretty good
I hate the skeptic in my head. He's always ruining every sunny day by A) pointing out the ONE cloud in the sky, or B) saying, "Yeah, but tomorrow it's supposed to rain. Or snow. Or sleet. Hell, it's Indiana, who knows?"
Anyway ... the skeptic has been watching this Purdue basketball team, which some prisoners of the moment have said is the Best Purdue Team Ever, and has been shooting down every positive the more congenial elements of the Blob sees.
Yes, Purdue has won a record 17 games in a row, but the Boilermakers aren't exactly blowing people out.
OK, so they're blowing some people out, even on the road, but those people don't count because A) they're not that good, B) all their good players are hurt, or C) they're not that good.
Purdue is 21-2 and 10-0 in the Big Ten, but they only beat Michigan by four in Mackey, and they only beat an inferior Indiana team by seven.
OK, so the Michigan team shot so well that night it would have beaten anyone else in the nation, and it's the same Michigan team that beat Michigan State by double digits in Breslin.
And, OK, so yesterday was a rivalry game, and it happened in one of the toughest places to play in America (Assembly Hall), and Indiana, when it shows up to play, is actually not terrible. When Robert Johnson and/or Josh Newkirk show up to play -- which they don't always, occasionally vanishing into the ether -- the Hoosiers can beat people. And Johnson in particular showed up to play yesterday.
Of course, Purdue still won. The Boilermakers put it away with a 9-3 run in the last three minutes, doing all the right things down the stretch because that's who they are, while Indiana didn't because that's who the Hoosiers are. And so the seven-point win was about what should have been expected given the occasion.
Ah, the skeptic in my head says. Just wait.
Just wait until the Boilers play Ohio State or Michigan State. Better yet, just wait until March, when they'll fold like laundry same as ever, because this is Purdue and March is Purdue's kryptonite. The Boilers haven't gotten past the Sweet Sixteen since Matt Painter's been on the sideline. They haven't been to a Final Four since before Gene Keady. So slow your roll, everyone.
Have I mentioned how much I hate this guy?
Because, you know, he's dead right about the aforementioned, and we all know it. Whether or not this is Purdue's Best Team Ever wasn't decided Sunday, and it won't be decided this month or next. It'll be decided in March, because that's when these things always get decided.
In the meantime, the Blob's judgment is this: Purdue is pretty damn good. They play solid defense. They have a multitude of weapons on offense. They not only have an old-school physical presence on the blocks in Isaac Haas, they have some of the best 3-point shooters in the nation on the perimeter, a pretty devastating combination. They are deep. They are unselfish. They make you work overtime on defense because they move the basketball so well and they find the open man -- and they have about six open men who can kill you when they're found.
Best Purdue team ever?
I don't know. That 1969 Final Four team with Rick Mount was pretty good, too. And the Troy Lewis-Todd Mitchell-Everette Stephens team in 1988 was even better -- and never mind that it got knocked out in the NCAA regional by Mitch Richmond and Kansas State.
A cautionary tale, perhaps?
No. Just Purdue being Purdue, the skeptic in my head whispers.
Hate that guy. Really, really hate him.
Anyway ... the skeptic has been watching this Purdue basketball team, which some prisoners of the moment have said is the Best Purdue Team Ever, and has been shooting down every positive the more congenial elements of the Blob sees.
Yes, Purdue has won a record 17 games in a row, but the Boilermakers aren't exactly blowing people out.
OK, so they're blowing some people out, even on the road, but those people don't count because A) they're not that good, B) all their good players are hurt, or C) they're not that good.
Purdue is 21-2 and 10-0 in the Big Ten, but they only beat Michigan by four in Mackey, and they only beat an inferior Indiana team by seven.
OK, so the Michigan team shot so well that night it would have beaten anyone else in the nation, and it's the same Michigan team that beat Michigan State by double digits in Breslin.
And, OK, so yesterday was a rivalry game, and it happened in one of the toughest places to play in America (Assembly Hall), and Indiana, when it shows up to play, is actually not terrible. When Robert Johnson and/or Josh Newkirk show up to play -- which they don't always, occasionally vanishing into the ether -- the Hoosiers can beat people. And Johnson in particular showed up to play yesterday.
Of course, Purdue still won. The Boilermakers put it away with a 9-3 run in the last three minutes, doing all the right things down the stretch because that's who they are, while Indiana didn't because that's who the Hoosiers are. And so the seven-point win was about what should have been expected given the occasion.
Ah, the skeptic in my head says. Just wait.
Just wait until the Boilers play Ohio State or Michigan State. Better yet, just wait until March, when they'll fold like laundry same as ever, because this is Purdue and March is Purdue's kryptonite. The Boilers haven't gotten past the Sweet Sixteen since Matt Painter's been on the sideline. They haven't been to a Final Four since before Gene Keady. So slow your roll, everyone.
Have I mentioned how much I hate this guy?
Because, you know, he's dead right about the aforementioned, and we all know it. Whether or not this is Purdue's Best Team Ever wasn't decided Sunday, and it won't be decided this month or next. It'll be decided in March, because that's when these things always get decided.
In the meantime, the Blob's judgment is this: Purdue is pretty damn good. They play solid defense. They have a multitude of weapons on offense. They not only have an old-school physical presence on the blocks in Isaac Haas, they have some of the best 3-point shooters in the nation on the perimeter, a pretty devastating combination. They are deep. They are unselfish. They make you work overtime on defense because they move the basketball so well and they find the open man -- and they have about six open men who can kill you when they're found.
Best Purdue team ever?
I don't know. That 1969 Final Four team with Rick Mount was pretty good, too. And the Troy Lewis-Todd Mitchell-Everette Stephens team in 1988 was even better -- and never mind that it got knocked out in the NCAA regional by Mitch Richmond and Kansas State.
A cautionary tale, perhaps?
No. Just Purdue being Purdue, the skeptic in my head whispers.
Hate that guy. Really, really hate him.
Sunday, January 28, 2018
Buildup time
And now, on to the Please Don't Hurt Me Bowl, aka the Pro Bowl, in which some of your favorite players represent the AFC and the NFC in a contest to see who can best avoid the fabled Nagging Groin Injury that might hamper future contract extensions.
The NFL says that's not going to happen, that the Pro Bowl is real football players playing real football. This is always one of the great comic lines of any sporting year, right up there with "We stand by Coach Slobberknocker despite his 3-49 record" and "I'm not going to watch the Super Bowl because I don't care about either team, especially the X%$#@ Patriots."
Which brings to this: The Pro Bowl means we're one week out from the Super Bowl, and that means it's time to start hyping what might be a thrilling game of American football, but probably will be just another NFL game.
Notwithstanding that, plus the X%$#@ Patriots, you'll watch. You're not fooling anybody.
You'll watch because it's an American institution, and therefore you are required to pay homage to it. Plus you like grilled meats, brownies, chili-cheese dip in a football-shaped bowl and beer, lots of beer. Nothing like the Super Bowl as an excuse to roll all of that out, even though your doctor told you to knock that (bleep) off, you damn fool, or your heart will seize up like an '82 Escort.
So ... yeah. You'll watch.
Oh, maybe you'll pay more attention to the commercials, or the halftime show, or barely know anything about football. This is because the Super Bowl isn't about football. It's about the food and the beer and the prop bets ("How often will Bill Belichick scowl? I say 512 times") and the chance some edge rusher will turn Tom Brady into macramé.
Which will give you the chance to have the sort of conversations that always pop up during the Super Bowl, on account of half the people watching barely know who's playing.
NON-FOOTBALL PERSON: Look what they did to that poor fellow! Is that legal?
FOOTBALL PERSON: Well, it used to be.
NFP: Why don't the fellows in the striped shirts put a stop to it?
FP: I'm sure they will, because it's Tom Brady, and you're not allowed to touch Tom Brady. It's like a league rule.
NFP: Look at that scowling man over there. Is he the Boston coach? Why does he look so unhappy all the time? Doesn't he ever smile?
FP: Some people say they saw him do it once, but that's just a rumor.
NFP: And who is the Philadelphia quarterback again?
FP: I think his name is Nick Foles, Folds, something like that. No one ever heard of him until about two months ago.
(Silence while Brady rises, shakes his head, reattaches his arms and legs and makes his way back to the huddle like nothing happened)
NFP: Oh, look, Braden is OK!
FP (shotgunning another beer): It's Brady. And of course he's OK. He's a (bleeping) cyborg.
NFP: Is that legal?
The NFL says that's not going to happen, that the Pro Bowl is real football players playing real football. This is always one of the great comic lines of any sporting year, right up there with "We stand by Coach Slobberknocker despite his 3-49 record" and "I'm not going to watch the Super Bowl because I don't care about either team, especially the X%$#@ Patriots."
Which brings to this: The Pro Bowl means we're one week out from the Super Bowl, and that means it's time to start hyping what might be a thrilling game of American football, but probably will be just another NFL game.
Notwithstanding that, plus the X%$#@ Patriots, you'll watch. You're not fooling anybody.
You'll watch because it's an American institution, and therefore you are required to pay homage to it. Plus you like grilled meats, brownies, chili-cheese dip in a football-shaped bowl and beer, lots of beer. Nothing like the Super Bowl as an excuse to roll all of that out, even though your doctor told you to knock that (bleep) off, you damn fool, or your heart will seize up like an '82 Escort.
So ... yeah. You'll watch.
Oh, maybe you'll pay more attention to the commercials, or the halftime show, or barely know anything about football. This is because the Super Bowl isn't about football. It's about the food and the beer and the prop bets ("How often will Bill Belichick scowl? I say 512 times") and the chance some edge rusher will turn Tom Brady into macramé.
Which will give you the chance to have the sort of conversations that always pop up during the Super Bowl, on account of half the people watching barely know who's playing.
NON-FOOTBALL PERSON: Look what they did to that poor fellow! Is that legal?
FOOTBALL PERSON: Well, it used to be.
NFP: Why don't the fellows in the striped shirts put a stop to it?
FP: I'm sure they will, because it's Tom Brady, and you're not allowed to touch Tom Brady. It's like a league rule.
NFP: Look at that scowling man over there. Is he the Boston coach? Why does he look so unhappy all the time? Doesn't he ever smile?
FP: Some people say they saw him do it once, but that's just a rumor.
NFP: And who is the Philadelphia quarterback again?
FP: I think his name is Nick Foles, Folds, something like that. No one ever heard of him until about two months ago.
(Silence while Brady rises, shakes his head, reattaches his arms and legs and makes his way back to the huddle like nothing happened)
NFP: Oh, look, Braden is OK!
FP (shotgunning another beer): It's Brady. And of course he's OK. He's a (bleeping) cyborg.
NFP: Is that legal?
Saturday, January 27, 2018
The housecleaning begins
The university president is gone, trailing a lot of self-serving nonsense about how a great tragedy had been "politicized," and so the only thing she could do was step down.
(By which she meant, as almost everyone does when they resort to the P-word, that the tragedy got exposed by dedicated newspeople committing top-drawer journalism. Yes, Lou Anna Simon, getting caught not doing your job does indeed suck.)
Now the athletic director is gone, too, opting for retirement over outright banishment. Mark Hollis stepped away right before ESPN rolled out another devastating Outside The Lines report that indicated Michigan State's ham-handedness in dealing with athletic sexual predators extends far beyond letting Larry Nassar give young women a lifetime of nightmares for 20 years.
Which means this house ain't tidy yet, and the reckoning in East Lansing is going to continue. The latest OTL report puts bullseyes on both football coach Mark Dantonio and basketball coach Tom Izzo, which means they could easily get caught up in the purge. Even NCAA president Mark Emmert is on the griddle after it came out that he'd heard about the allegations against Nassar as far back as 2010.
It's an ugly business, getting yourself clean.
This brings us to Michigan State's utterly clueless board of trustees, currently backtracking in furious haste. The head of the board, Brian Breslin, now says it's obvious that MSU "has not been focused enough on the victims," mere days after telling us how important it was for the board to stand by the irretrievably tainted Simon. Various other board members who gave Simon the thumbs up are now telling the victims how sorry they are. You can take those statements with the grain of salt they deserve.
And then, show the people making them the same door Simon and Hollis took, and ask them to do the honorable thing.
(By which she meant, as almost everyone does when they resort to the P-word, that the tragedy got exposed by dedicated newspeople committing top-drawer journalism. Yes, Lou Anna Simon, getting caught not doing your job does indeed suck.)
Now the athletic director is gone, too, opting for retirement over outright banishment. Mark Hollis stepped away right before ESPN rolled out another devastating Outside The Lines report that indicated Michigan State's ham-handedness in dealing with athletic sexual predators extends far beyond letting Larry Nassar give young women a lifetime of nightmares for 20 years.
Which means this house ain't tidy yet, and the reckoning in East Lansing is going to continue. The latest OTL report puts bullseyes on both football coach Mark Dantonio and basketball coach Tom Izzo, which means they could easily get caught up in the purge. Even NCAA president Mark Emmert is on the griddle after it came out that he'd heard about the allegations against Nassar as far back as 2010.
It's an ugly business, getting yourself clean.
This brings us to Michigan State's utterly clueless board of trustees, currently backtracking in furious haste. The head of the board, Brian Breslin, now says it's obvious that MSU "has not been focused enough on the victims," mere days after telling us how important it was for the board to stand by the irretrievably tainted Simon. Various other board members who gave Simon the thumbs up are now telling the victims how sorry they are. You can take those statements with the grain of salt they deserve.
And then, show the people making them the same door Simon and Hollis took, and ask them to do the honorable thing.
Friday, January 26, 2018
X marks the not
And now ... it's XFL 2.0, folks!
Proving once again that no bad idea ever dies, it just hibernates until someone trips over it, nudges its sleeping carcass with one foot and exclaims "Hey! Look at this! I bet it'll work THIS time!"
There's a lot of that going on right now in the America of Our Only Available President, who never met a proven-to-explode policy he wouldn't roll out again. And so we've got the return of the old trickle-down economics shuck-and-jive, and letting Wall Street robber barons and the big banks off their well-earned leashes again, and a million other tired retreads that always end in disaster and will again this time.
In that sense, Vince McMahon is a man for his times, wanting to reboot the XFL. And to be honest, it was fun the first time, right? Who can forget He Hate Me? Who can forget the whole crazy, Wild West ambience of it all?
That was it was crushed under the weight of the Great American Behemoth, the NFL, was as predictable as everything else about it wasn't. And so the XFL went the way of the USFL, which went the way of the WFL, and for a lot of the same reasons: Because absurdly rich guys who've been successful in other ventures discovered that professional football is a wholly different animal.
(And, in the USFL, it failed because one rich guy turned out to be a lot less smart than most of the rich guys who launch start-up sports leagues. That, of course, would be our Only Available President, who was almost personally responsible for driving the USFL into a tree in less than two years. It was his bright idea to engage the NFL in a bidding war, failing to recognize that that way lay madness. Which is why the Blob has a hearty laugh every time L'Orange's true believers talk about what a brilliant businessman he is.)
Anyway ... you'll go broke taking on the NFL, but you'll never go broke betting there will always be people who think this time it will work. And so here comes another rich guy who's talked himself into believing the Great Behemoth is vulnerable.
It's not, really. Yes, it has its issues. Yes, the TV numbers are down. Yes, the Get Off My Lawn brigades hate that the sport allegedly has been "sissified" because the NFL belatedly has taken an interest in its players' welfare. Bring back guys drooling in their soup again, by God! Those were the days!
And so the Blob can see McMahon's reboot being sold to America with the slogan "The XFL: Football For Real Men." Or, perhaps, "The XFL: Where We Don't Give A (Bleep) If Our Players' Heads Get Turned Into Squash. They're Gettin' Paid, Aren't They?"
OK, So perhaps that's not what this will be. McMahon, in fact, says his reboot will be more family-friendly, and also safer. But we'll see what form it actually takes if it ever actually takes a form..
No, the problem with XFL 2.0 is not that it might present a radically different product. The problem is it wouldn't be different enough. Part of the reason the NFL's numbers are down, after all, is that there's just too much of it. For five months, the NFL is on Monday nights and Thursday nights and Sunday afternoons and Sunday nights, and occasionally even Saturday afternoons and Saturday nights. And so the notion that fans out there are hungering for even more football -- especially if you make it more violent -- seems a trifle head-in-the-clouds-y.
And here's the other thing: McMahon is rebooting this on the premise there's a vast pool of talent out there to be tapped. And it's true there are some 1,000 players who get cut by NFL teams every year. But as XFL 1.0 showed us, a lot of the reason those players got cut is because they weren't very good. Even without the XFL, the overall quality of quarterbacking in the NFL is often shockingly deficient. How bad will it be in the reconstituted XFL?
Even if the "safer" vision goes out the window, and you let edge rushers take QBs' heads off, mount them on the down markers and march up and down the sidelines howling at the moon.
The XFL: We Got Your Concussion Protocol Right Here.
(Until We Get Crushed Again By The NFL)
Proving once again that no bad idea ever dies, it just hibernates until someone trips over it, nudges its sleeping carcass with one foot and exclaims "Hey! Look at this! I bet it'll work THIS time!"
There's a lot of that going on right now in the America of Our Only Available President, who never met a proven-to-explode policy he wouldn't roll out again. And so we've got the return of the old trickle-down economics shuck-and-jive, and letting Wall Street robber barons and the big banks off their well-earned leashes again, and a million other tired retreads that always end in disaster and will again this time.
In that sense, Vince McMahon is a man for his times, wanting to reboot the XFL. And to be honest, it was fun the first time, right? Who can forget He Hate Me? Who can forget the whole crazy, Wild West ambience of it all?
That was it was crushed under the weight of the Great American Behemoth, the NFL, was as predictable as everything else about it wasn't. And so the XFL went the way of the USFL, which went the way of the WFL, and for a lot of the same reasons: Because absurdly rich guys who've been successful in other ventures discovered that professional football is a wholly different animal.
(And, in the USFL, it failed because one rich guy turned out to be a lot less smart than most of the rich guys who launch start-up sports leagues. That, of course, would be our Only Available President, who was almost personally responsible for driving the USFL into a tree in less than two years. It was his bright idea to engage the NFL in a bidding war, failing to recognize that that way lay madness. Which is why the Blob has a hearty laugh every time L'Orange's true believers talk about what a brilliant businessman he is.)
Anyway ... you'll go broke taking on the NFL, but you'll never go broke betting there will always be people who think this time it will work. And so here comes another rich guy who's talked himself into believing the Great Behemoth is vulnerable.
It's not, really. Yes, it has its issues. Yes, the TV numbers are down. Yes, the Get Off My Lawn brigades hate that the sport allegedly has been "sissified" because the NFL belatedly has taken an interest in its players' welfare. Bring back guys drooling in their soup again, by God! Those were the days!
And so the Blob can see McMahon's reboot being sold to America with the slogan "The XFL: Football For Real Men." Or, perhaps, "The XFL: Where We Don't Give A (Bleep) If Our Players' Heads Get Turned Into Squash. They're Gettin' Paid, Aren't They?"
OK, So perhaps that's not what this will be. McMahon, in fact, says his reboot will be more family-friendly, and also safer. But we'll see what form it actually takes if it ever actually takes a form..
No, the problem with XFL 2.0 is not that it might present a radically different product. The problem is it wouldn't be different enough. Part of the reason the NFL's numbers are down, after all, is that there's just too much of it. For five months, the NFL is on Monday nights and Thursday nights and Sunday afternoons and Sunday nights, and occasionally even Saturday afternoons and Saturday nights. And so the notion that fans out there are hungering for even more football -- especially if you make it more violent -- seems a trifle head-in-the-clouds-y.
And here's the other thing: McMahon is rebooting this on the premise there's a vast pool of talent out there to be tapped. And it's true there are some 1,000 players who get cut by NFL teams every year. But as XFL 1.0 showed us, a lot of the reason those players got cut is because they weren't very good. Even without the XFL, the overall quality of quarterbacking in the NFL is often shockingly deficient. How bad will it be in the reconstituted XFL?
Even if the "safer" vision goes out the window, and you let edge rushers take QBs' heads off, mount them on the down markers and march up and down the sidelines howling at the moon.
The XFL: We Got Your Concussion Protocol Right Here.
(Until We Get Crushed Again By The NFL)
Thursday, January 25, 2018
Dumb. Dumber. Dumbest.
That Avalanche of Dumb coming out of East Lansing, Mich., has now reached Irwin Allen disaster-film proportions.
The latest outbreak of nitwittery comes from Michigan State trustee Joel Ferguson, who gave a radio interview the other day that plumbed new depths of cluelessness. First he said it only took about 10 minutes to decide on the disastrous vote of confidence for tainted president Lou Anna Simon. Then he scoffed at the notion that Michigan State's reputation was at all harmed by its sheltering of sexual predator Larry Nassar for two decades, saying "there's so many more things going on at the university than just this Nassar thing."
Dude. Dude, dude, dude.
Little truth bomb here for you, Joel: There is nothing going on at your university right now besides the Nassar Thing, because the Nassar Thing is defining Michigan State's image and will continue to define it as long as people like you remain so oblivious to that fact. Until you clean your house of the Nassar taint -- including jettisoning Simon, who's involved in the Nassar Thing to her eyeballs -- nobody's going to care how many games Tom Izzo's basketball team wins, or how many prestigious awards are bestowed upon your faculty, or how good Lou Anna Simon is at raising money.
Sorry, but nobody cares about that. They care about that parade of young women, confronting Nassar with what he did to them. They care about how some of them are still being billed by MSU for the appointments in which he abused them. They care that, outside the East Lansing bubble, the only image Michigan State has is as a facilitator of sexual abuse.
That isn't going to change until the people who have the power to do so change it. And it's pretty obvious those people aren't interested in doing so, despite mounting pressure from alumni and the student body.
To which the response seems to be, hey, it's only women's gymnastics. Right, Joel Ferguson?
The latest outbreak of nitwittery comes from Michigan State trustee Joel Ferguson, who gave a radio interview the other day that plumbed new depths of cluelessness. First he said it only took about 10 minutes to decide on the disastrous vote of confidence for tainted president Lou Anna Simon. Then he scoffed at the notion that Michigan State's reputation was at all harmed by its sheltering of sexual predator Larry Nassar for two decades, saying "there's so many more things going on at the university than just this Nassar thing."
Dude. Dude, dude, dude.
Little truth bomb here for you, Joel: There is nothing going on at your university right now besides the Nassar Thing, because the Nassar Thing is defining Michigan State's image and will continue to define it as long as people like you remain so oblivious to that fact. Until you clean your house of the Nassar taint -- including jettisoning Simon, who's involved in the Nassar Thing to her eyeballs -- nobody's going to care how many games Tom Izzo's basketball team wins, or how many prestigious awards are bestowed upon your faculty, or how good Lou Anna Simon is at raising money.
Sorry, but nobody cares about that. They care about that parade of young women, confronting Nassar with what he did to them. They care about how some of them are still being billed by MSU for the appointments in which he abused them. They care that, outside the East Lansing bubble, the only image Michigan State has is as a facilitator of sexual abuse.
That isn't going to change until the people who have the power to do so change it. And it's pretty obvious those people aren't interested in doing so, despite mounting pressure from alumni and the student body.
To which the response seems to be, hey, it's only women's gymnastics. Right, Joel Ferguson?
"This is not Penn State," he said, laughing at the notion of Michigan State being investigated by the NCAA. "They were dealing with their football program. ... They're smart enough to know they're not competent to walk in here on this."
Um, Joel?
Wrong again, dude.
Update: As the Blob predicted would happen (because anyone who knows how these things work could have predicted it), MSU president Lou Anna Simon has resigned. Makes Ferguson and the rest of the board who foolishly backed her play look like even more of a clown show.
Um, Joel?
Wrong again, dude.
Update: As the Blob predicted would happen (because anyone who knows how these things work could have predicted it), MSU president Lou Anna Simon has resigned. Makes Ferguson and the rest of the board who foolishly backed her play look like even more of a clown show.
Tuesday, January 23, 2018
That time of year
It's Drama Season in the NBA, that time of year when Lillian (that hussy!) gets caught cheating on Colin, who's in a coma after a mysterious car accident everyone thinks was orchestrated by his ne'er-do-well stepbrother Jeremy, who's miffed that Daddy cut him out of his will and thinks Colin had something to do with it.
In others words ... let's go to Cleveland, where the Cavaliers are sinking like a chunk of granite and all mad and stuff at Kevin Love for calling in sick in their time of need.
And let's go to Portland, where Damian Lillard met with Trail Blazers owner Paul Allen, wondering what the heck is up with this franchise, anyway.
And let's go to Washington, where J.J. Barea of the Dallas Mavericks says nobody likes Wizards star John Wall. And to various places around the league, where everyone's griping about the refs and wondering why the officiating has to be this bad.
What in the name of The Young and The Restless is going on here?
The Blob has a theory.
Like most of its theories, it's probably completely ridiculous. But the Blob is going to advance it anyway.
What's going on here?
It's simple. Just look at the calendar.
By which I mean, it's late January, dead center in the doldrums of the endless NBA season. It's three months since the beginning of the season, long enough that the players feel as if they've been playing forever. And it's still three months until the playoffs, when all of this actually starts to matter.
That's so far off that not only can the NBA's weary legions not see the light at the end of the tunnel, they're starting to suspect there is no end to the tunnel. That's especially true for those teams who've already realized that the bright hopes of October were fool's gold. And yet they've still got three months to slog through before they can go home at the end of another losing season.
And you wonder why everyone's suddenly crabby and out of sorts?
Look. The Blob gets it. The NBA season lasts longer than the Hundred Years War, yet it's not going to get any shorter. Lopping about 20 games off it would both improve the product and likely cut down on the bitching and moaning, but it's not going to happen. Way too much lost revenue involved.
So, The Young and The Restless it is. Deal with it.
After all, by late March, with the playoffs in sight at last, all of this will have subsided.
OK. So most of it, then.
In others words ... let's go to Cleveland, where the Cavaliers are sinking like a chunk of granite and all mad and stuff at Kevin Love for calling in sick in their time of need.
And let's go to Portland, where Damian Lillard met with Trail Blazers owner Paul Allen, wondering what the heck is up with this franchise, anyway.
And let's go to Washington, where J.J. Barea of the Dallas Mavericks says nobody likes Wizards star John Wall. And to various places around the league, where everyone's griping about the refs and wondering why the officiating has to be this bad.
What in the name of The Young and The Restless is going on here?
The Blob has a theory.
Like most of its theories, it's probably completely ridiculous. But the Blob is going to advance it anyway.
What's going on here?
It's simple. Just look at the calendar.
By which I mean, it's late January, dead center in the doldrums of the endless NBA season. It's three months since the beginning of the season, long enough that the players feel as if they've been playing forever. And it's still three months until the playoffs, when all of this actually starts to matter.
That's so far off that not only can the NBA's weary legions not see the light at the end of the tunnel, they're starting to suspect there is no end to the tunnel. That's especially true for those teams who've already realized that the bright hopes of October were fool's gold. And yet they've still got three months to slog through before they can go home at the end of another losing season.
And you wonder why everyone's suddenly crabby and out of sorts?
Look. The Blob gets it. The NBA season lasts longer than the Hundred Years War, yet it's not going to get any shorter. Lopping about 20 games off it would both improve the product and likely cut down on the bitching and moaning, but it's not going to happen. Way too much lost revenue involved.
So, The Young and The Restless it is. Deal with it.
After all, by late March, with the playoffs in sight at last, all of this will have subsided.
OK. So most of it, then.
Monday, January 22, 2018
And now, even more cluelessness
Meanwhile, in East Lansing, Mich., the avalanche of dumb rumbles on.
This just in from the university that employed Larry Nassar, sexual predator, and continues witlessly to protect his protectors even as one victim after another steps forward to testify to how Nassar destroyed their innocence:
Apparently Michigan State's billing department ain't up to snuff, either.
This after a 15-year-old young woman named Emma Ann Miller addressed the court about Nassar betraying her trust and sexually abusing her, by now a familiar tale. What sets Miller's testimony apart is her claim that the MSU sports medicine clinic is still trying to charge her parents for her appointments with Nassar.
“My mom is still getting billed for appointments where I was sexually assaulted,” she said in her statement.
Fire 'em. Fire the whole damn lot of 'em.
This just in from the university that employed Larry Nassar, sexual predator, and continues witlessly to protect his protectors even as one victim after another steps forward to testify to how Nassar destroyed their innocence:
Apparently Michigan State's billing department ain't up to snuff, either.
This after a 15-year-old young woman named Emma Ann Miller addressed the court about Nassar betraying her trust and sexually abusing her, by now a familiar tale. What sets Miller's testimony apart is her claim that the MSU sports medicine clinic is still trying to charge her parents for her appointments with Nassar.
“My mom is still getting billed for appointments where I was sexually assaulted,” she said in her statement.
Fire 'em. Fire the whole damn lot of 'em.
Another lousy Patriot Game
Well, isn't this just craptastic. It's January 2018 and we're no better off than we were in January 2017.
Which is to say, we've got our Super Bowl matchup, and once again it's a bird against the (Your Favorite Expletive Here) Patriots.
What's the Roman numeral for "Oh for God's sake, them again?!"?
Asking for a friend.
Actually, asking for a lot of friends, all of whom live outside of New England, all of whom would rather shove red-hot needles in their eyeballs than have to watch the most boring team in the National Football League in the Super Bowl again. But that's what we've got, America. Last year it was the Patriots against one kind of bird (the Falcons); this year's it's the Patriots against some other kind of bird (the Eagles).
Outcome to be determined, but, come on, we know how this is gonna go.
The Patriots are in the Super Bowl for the eighth time in the Belichick-Brady era, and they're not playing the Giants, so we know the script by now. Bill Belichick will spend the entire Super Bowl week scowling and releasing various non-statements from the Kremlin. Tom "Really, I Had An Owie" Brady will talk about what a great team the Eagles are and, gosh, this is such a wonderful opportunity, and then he'll clam up like a CIA operative when asked to reveal something vaguely interesting about himself.
The Eagles will talk a lot, because how often do the Eagles get to the Super Bowl? Then they'll go out and lose the way they're supposed to.
They'll do what Jacksonville did (and Atlanta last year): They'll give the Patriots trouble early, and then they'll realize who they're playing and go into their prevent offense. Tom "No Lie, There Were Stitches And Everything" Brady will reel them in, and the Eagles will say "Ah, crap, I knew we couldn't beat 'em" and fold like laundry.
After which Belichick will smile that creepy smile he has, and Tom "Come On, Why Doesn't Anybody Believe Me" Brady will hoist the Lombardi Trophy, being careful not to re-injure his "injured" "right hand." Which of course has just thrown for a gazillion yards and a handful of sixes in the Patriots' win.
The media will slobber all over them again, calling Brady the GOAT (which he is, 'cause look what he did with that "injured" "right hand"), and Belichick the greatest coach of all time, better even than Lombardi and Landry and Chuck Noll and Don Shula. And by now you're all wondering what you can do, as a Real American, to avoid all of this.
Well. The Blob is nothing if not a full-service public service Blob.
And so here are a few suggestions for What To Do If You Don't Want To Watch The (Favorite Expletive Here) Patriots Again:
1. Two words: Movie night.
2. Replay the two Super Bowls the Patriots lost to the Giants. How did David Tyree catch that thing, anyway? And how did Eli Manning, of all people, beat them twice?
3. "Well, dear, there's always Netflix."
4. "Well, dear, there's always next year."
5. "OK, my bad. I forgot the Patriots will be in the Super Bowl next year, too. And every year after that for the foreseeable future."
6. Puppy Bowl! Puppy Bowl! Puppy Bowl!
7. Pop in the NFL Films documentary, "Through The Years With The Bud Bowl." Remember the year the 40-ouncer was the star of the game? Good times, man. Gooood times.
8. Eat up. You bought all this food, you might as well chow down. Beer-steamed brats on the grill taste just as good watching "Victoria" on PBS. Really.
9. Puppy Bowl! Puppy Bowl! Puppy Bowl!
And last but not least ...
10. Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Because the Black Knight's arm was off, too..
Which is to say, we've got our Super Bowl matchup, and once again it's a bird against the (Your Favorite Expletive Here) Patriots.
What's the Roman numeral for "Oh for God's sake, them again?!"?
Asking for a friend.
Actually, asking for a lot of friends, all of whom live outside of New England, all of whom would rather shove red-hot needles in their eyeballs than have to watch the most boring team in the National Football League in the Super Bowl again. But that's what we've got, America. Last year it was the Patriots against one kind of bird (the Falcons); this year's it's the Patriots against some other kind of bird (the Eagles).
Outcome to be determined, but, come on, we know how this is gonna go.
The Patriots are in the Super Bowl for the eighth time in the Belichick-Brady era, and they're not playing the Giants, so we know the script by now. Bill Belichick will spend the entire Super Bowl week scowling and releasing various non-statements from the Kremlin. Tom "Really, I Had An Owie" Brady will talk about what a great team the Eagles are and, gosh, this is such a wonderful opportunity, and then he'll clam up like a CIA operative when asked to reveal something vaguely interesting about himself.
The Eagles will talk a lot, because how often do the Eagles get to the Super Bowl? Then they'll go out and lose the way they're supposed to.
They'll do what Jacksonville did (and Atlanta last year): They'll give the Patriots trouble early, and then they'll realize who they're playing and go into their prevent offense. Tom "No Lie, There Were Stitches And Everything" Brady will reel them in, and the Eagles will say "Ah, crap, I knew we couldn't beat 'em" and fold like laundry.
After which Belichick will smile that creepy smile he has, and Tom "Come On, Why Doesn't Anybody Believe Me" Brady will hoist the Lombardi Trophy, being careful not to re-injure his "injured" "right hand." Which of course has just thrown for a gazillion yards and a handful of sixes in the Patriots' win.
The media will slobber all over them again, calling Brady the GOAT (which he is, 'cause look what he did with that "injured" "right hand"), and Belichick the greatest coach of all time, better even than Lombardi and Landry and Chuck Noll and Don Shula. And by now you're all wondering what you can do, as a Real American, to avoid all of this.
Well. The Blob is nothing if not a full-service public service Blob.
And so here are a few suggestions for What To Do If You Don't Want To Watch The (Favorite Expletive Here) Patriots Again:
1. Two words: Movie night.
2. Replay the two Super Bowls the Patriots lost to the Giants. How did David Tyree catch that thing, anyway? And how did Eli Manning, of all people, beat them twice?
3. "Well, dear, there's always Netflix."
4. "Well, dear, there's always next year."
5. "OK, my bad. I forgot the Patriots will be in the Super Bowl next year, too. And every year after that for the foreseeable future."
6. Puppy Bowl! Puppy Bowl! Puppy Bowl!
7. Pop in the NFL Films documentary, "Through The Years With The Bud Bowl." Remember the year the 40-ouncer was the star of the game? Good times, man. Gooood times.
8. Eat up. You bought all this food, you might as well chow down. Beer-steamed brats on the grill taste just as good watching "Victoria" on PBS. Really.
9. Puppy Bowl! Puppy Bowl! Puppy Bowl!
And last but not least ...
10. Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Because the Black Knight's arm was off, too..
Sunday, January 21, 2018
Voice in the wilderness
Well. Apparently at least one person in East Lansing has his head screwed on correctly.
His name is Mitch Lyons, and he's a member of the Michigan State University board of trustees, and Saturday night he fired the first shot in what's about to become a firestorm: He called for President Lou Anna Simon to resign in the wake of revelations that university officials knowingly shielded a sexual predator for close to 20 years.
Included among those officials who received reports about Larry Nassar, the aforementioned predator, was Lou Anna Simon. And so of course she should resign, because anyone with a scrap of sense knows that's the endgame for her anyway, and better for Michigan State and its soiled reputation if it's sooner rather than later.
As Lyons so clearly pointed out.
A shame no one else on the board was as astute.
This from the head of the board, Brian Breslin: "Yesterday, a unanimous Board of Trustees stated that we continue to believe President Simon is the right leader for the university and that she has our support. Regrettably, Trustee Mitch Lyons announced his intention to call for President Simon's resignation. Importantly, all of the other trustees continue to support President Simon."
Three sentences. Entire worlds of cluelessness.
"Regrettably" one clear-eyed member of the board is calling for Simon's resignation?
"Importantly" all the other trustees have chosen to back an irretrievably tainted president, further sullying the university's image with yet another horrendous optic?
As we said not all that long ago about Penn State and Jerry Sandusky: These people do not get it.
Do. Not. Get it.
His name is Mitch Lyons, and he's a member of the Michigan State University board of trustees, and Saturday night he fired the first shot in what's about to become a firestorm: He called for President Lou Anna Simon to resign in the wake of revelations that university officials knowingly shielded a sexual predator for close to 20 years.
Included among those officials who received reports about Larry Nassar, the aforementioned predator, was Lou Anna Simon. And so of course she should resign, because anyone with a scrap of sense knows that's the endgame for her anyway, and better for Michigan State and its soiled reputation if it's sooner rather than later.
As Lyons so clearly pointed out.
A shame no one else on the board was as astute.
This from the head of the board, Brian Breslin: "Yesterday, a unanimous Board of Trustees stated that we continue to believe President Simon is the right leader for the university and that she has our support. Regrettably, Trustee Mitch Lyons announced his intention to call for President Simon's resignation. Importantly, all of the other trustees continue to support President Simon."
Three sentences. Entire worlds of cluelessness.
"Regrettably" one clear-eyed member of the board is calling for Simon's resignation?
"Importantly" all the other trustees have chosen to back an irretrievably tainted president, further sullying the university's image with yet another horrendous optic?
As we said not all that long ago about Penn State and Jerry Sandusky: These people do not get it.
Do. Not. Get it.
Saturday, January 20, 2018
America's Team
And no, sorry, Jerry Jones. It's not the Cowboys.
It's the Jacksonville Jaguars, and who cares if they wear those weird helmets that look half-charred, as if the boys sat them too close to the bonfire at the big pregame rally. That doesn't matter. Neither does the fact that the Jags' quarterback is Blake Bortles, who could not be more respected if his name were Donald J. Trump, First Buffoon of the Republic of I Got Mine, formerly known as the United States of America.
In other words, every sports person in America thinks Bortles' playbook is written in crayon, and contains sets with names like Run, Spot, Run and See Dick Throw A Swing Pass To Jane. For this reason alone the Blob would like to see Bortles get the Jags to the Super Bowl. The halftime show could feature the heads of every yapping poodle on sports-babble radio exploding at once.
Of course, that isn't really why the Jags are America's Team. It's because of who they're playing.
Which would be the New England Patriots, of whom every true American is heartily sick. Out here in Real America, we wish the Patriots would just go away and never come back. We are sick of them. We are sick of their boring Transcript-Speak. We are sick of their equally boring head games, the latest of which is entitled Talk To The Hand.
That would be Tom Brady's throwing hand, which apparently sustained some sort of minor owie in practice this week. The Pats are milking this for all it's worth, sending Brady to yesterday's presser wearing gloves and giving the sort of non-answers we've come to expect from the Bill Belichick Kremlin. The sports media of course swallowed this whole, hyperventilating all over itself about oh, my God, what if Brady can't go and can the Pats still win with Brian Hoyer.
Out here in Real America, this provoked gales of laughter, because out here we know standard Patriots gamesmanship when we see it. The whole thing is so obviously the Pats trying to get an inexperienced playoff team (the Jags) off-balance it hardly bears mentioning. Brady, despite his little stage play, apparently threw the ball as well as ever yesterday. So ... yeah.
And also ...
Please, Jacksonville. Beat these clowns.
Do it for football. Do it for all the long-suffering sportswriters who'd like to get a usable quote out of Super Bowl week. Do it for America.
Yeah. Do it for America.
It's the Jacksonville Jaguars, and who cares if they wear those weird helmets that look half-charred, as if the boys sat them too close to the bonfire at the big pregame rally. That doesn't matter. Neither does the fact that the Jags' quarterback is Blake Bortles, who could not be more respected if his name were Donald J. Trump, First Buffoon of the Republic of I Got Mine, formerly known as the United States of America.
In other words, every sports person in America thinks Bortles' playbook is written in crayon, and contains sets with names like Run, Spot, Run and See Dick Throw A Swing Pass To Jane. For this reason alone the Blob would like to see Bortles get the Jags to the Super Bowl. The halftime show could feature the heads of every yapping poodle on sports-babble radio exploding at once.
Of course, that isn't really why the Jags are America's Team. It's because of who they're playing.
Which would be the New England Patriots, of whom every true American is heartily sick. Out here in Real America, we wish the Patriots would just go away and never come back. We are sick of them. We are sick of their boring Transcript-Speak. We are sick of their equally boring head games, the latest of which is entitled Talk To The Hand.
That would be Tom Brady's throwing hand, which apparently sustained some sort of minor owie in practice this week. The Pats are milking this for all it's worth, sending Brady to yesterday's presser wearing gloves and giving the sort of non-answers we've come to expect from the Bill Belichick Kremlin. The sports media of course swallowed this whole, hyperventilating all over itself about oh, my God, what if Brady can't go and can the Pats still win with Brian Hoyer.
Out here in Real America, this provoked gales of laughter, because out here we know standard Patriots gamesmanship when we see it. The whole thing is so obviously the Pats trying to get an inexperienced playoff team (the Jags) off-balance it hardly bears mentioning. Brady, despite his little stage play, apparently threw the ball as well as ever yesterday. So ... yeah.
And also ...
Please, Jacksonville. Beat these clowns.
Do it for football. Do it for all the long-suffering sportswriters who'd like to get a usable quote out of Super Bowl week. Do it for America.
Yeah. Do it for America.
Friday, January 19, 2018
The tie that binds. Updated.
This just in from the Detroit News: The newspaper's investigation has found that at least 14 Michigan State representatives received reports of Larry Nassar's abuse in the two decades prior to his arrest. At least eight women told MSU he was abusing them, and among those notified was MSU President Lou Anna Simon.
As the kids say, (bleep) just got real.
As the kids say, (bleep) just got real.
Cold war
And now to Charlotte, N.C., Queen of the Frozen South, and also kings of irony, at least until Our Only Available President fires off his next spasm of Twitter buffoonery.
Charlotte, it seems, canceled a hockey game because of ... winter.
OK, so it didn't cancel it. It only canceled the fans, which is why the AHL's Charlotte Checkers played in an empty arena.
This happened because Charlotte got six inches of snow and ice, a normal winter's day up where most of the Checkers call home. Charlotte all but shutting down because of it must have been highly amusing to them, but, being hockey players -- generally the most polite athletes on earth away from the rink -- none of them openly laughed, or even snickered behind their hands in public. About the most extreme reaction any of them had was that it was definitely a weird experience.
Still, you can just imagine the inner eye-rolling. The South, as we all know, simply doesn't do winter. This is why so many people who've spent their lives doing winter move there. If they wanted to shovel snow and stand in line at the grocery store for bread and milk, they'd have stayed in Holy (Bleep) It's Cold, Minn., or Maybe We'll Tunnel Out In The Spring, N.Y., a suburb of Buffalo.
So, yes, we all get it. Yet it's deliciously amusing. Hockey fans, after all, glory in their toughness. That's why they'll gladly bundle up in parkas and toques to watch the Winter Classic on New Year's Day, when two NHL teams play outdoors as a testament to the heartiness of hockey's roots. Six inches of snow and ice? Shoot, isn't that why you have a Zamboni?
Perhaps the Checkers should have loaned the city of Charlotte theirs. 'Tis a thought.
Charlotte, it seems, canceled a hockey game because of ... winter.
OK, so it didn't cancel it. It only canceled the fans, which is why the AHL's Charlotte Checkers played in an empty arena.
This happened because Charlotte got six inches of snow and ice, a normal winter's day up where most of the Checkers call home. Charlotte all but shutting down because of it must have been highly amusing to them, but, being hockey players -- generally the most polite athletes on earth away from the rink -- none of them openly laughed, or even snickered behind their hands in public. About the most extreme reaction any of them had was that it was definitely a weird experience.
Still, you can just imagine the inner eye-rolling. The South, as we all know, simply doesn't do winter. This is why so many people who've spent their lives doing winter move there. If they wanted to shovel snow and stand in line at the grocery store for bread and milk, they'd have stayed in Holy (Bleep) It's Cold, Minn., or Maybe We'll Tunnel Out In The Spring, N.Y., a suburb of Buffalo.
So, yes, we all get it. Yet it's deliciously amusing. Hockey fans, after all, glory in their toughness. That's why they'll gladly bundle up in parkas and toques to watch the Winter Classic on New Year's Day, when two NHL teams play outdoors as a testament to the heartiness of hockey's roots. Six inches of snow and ice? Shoot, isn't that why you have a Zamboni?
Perhaps the Checkers should have loaned the city of Charlotte theirs. 'Tis a thought.
The tie that binds
Here is a dark narrative for you this day, and let's see if doesn't sound familiar.
It begins with a serial pedophile employed/affiliated with a state university, utilizing university resources while he sexually abuses young people on school grounds. When the victims lodge complaints, they are not taken seriously by the head coach of the program involved, and other school officials.
Eventually, the perpetrator is sentenced to what amounts to a life sentence in prison, and the university officials involved in enabling him wind up in court themselves, while the NCAA imposes the harshest possible punishment.
Penn State, right? That whole sordid Jerry Sandusky business?
Wrong.
Michigan State. And Larry Nassar.
Who this week literally cannot face his dozens of victims, sitting in a courtroom with his face in his hands as one woman after another comes forward to tell the world what he did to them as children. One of Nassar's young victims wound up committing suicide. The father of another killed himself when he couldn't cope with the guilt of not initially believing his daughter.
There will be just shy of a hundred such stories, before it's all over. The damage done to them by Nassar, an alleged doctor who used his position to sexually abuse girls as young as 6, is incalculable.
And some of it he did on the grounds of Michigan State University.
Twenty years ago, Michigan State employed him to treat both university athletes and young athletes in a gymnastics program affiliated with MSU. He operated out of an office in the basement of Jenison Fieldhouse. There -- according to two of his victims in an ESPN Outside The Lines piece -- he abused several young girls.
Among them was Larissa Boyce, 16 at the time. She says when she went to Michigan State gymnastics coach Kathie Klages to complain, Klages said she didn't believe her, that Nassar was someone she "trusted and knew for years."
A second victim, meanwhile, says when she complained about Nassar, she was asked who she had told, and then told not to discuss it further.
"They just kept it quiet, and that is what's so hard -- knowing that if adults were to make the right decision and do the right thing at the right time, that the abuse could have stopped," the second gymnast told OTL.
And who does that sound like, boys and girls?
Thaaat's right. It's Penn State and Sandusky all over again.
What separates one from the other is only the complete spinning out of the narrative; no Michigan State officials have yet been sued and hauled into court, though that is surely coming. And the NCAA hasn't dropped the hammer on the Spartans, nor even picked it up.
It will be interesting to see what happens, if and when the NCAA does pick up the hammer. There is, after all, a school of thought out there that the organization overstepped its authority when it injected itself into a criminal matter. And yet, it has established a precedent.
How can it punish Penn State for Sandusky, and not punish Michigan State for Nassar?
They are, after all, virtually identical scenarios. How can the NCAA's reaction not be identical as well?
It begins with a serial pedophile employed/affiliated with a state university, utilizing university resources while he sexually abuses young people on school grounds. When the victims lodge complaints, they are not taken seriously by the head coach of the program involved, and other school officials.
Eventually, the perpetrator is sentenced to what amounts to a life sentence in prison, and the university officials involved in enabling him wind up in court themselves, while the NCAA imposes the harshest possible punishment.
Penn State, right? That whole sordid Jerry Sandusky business?
Wrong.
Michigan State. And Larry Nassar.
Who this week literally cannot face his dozens of victims, sitting in a courtroom with his face in his hands as one woman after another comes forward to tell the world what he did to them as children. One of Nassar's young victims wound up committing suicide. The father of another killed himself when he couldn't cope with the guilt of not initially believing his daughter.
There will be just shy of a hundred such stories, before it's all over. The damage done to them by Nassar, an alleged doctor who used his position to sexually abuse girls as young as 6, is incalculable.
And some of it he did on the grounds of Michigan State University.
Twenty years ago, Michigan State employed him to treat both university athletes and young athletes in a gymnastics program affiliated with MSU. He operated out of an office in the basement of Jenison Fieldhouse. There -- according to two of his victims in an ESPN Outside The Lines piece -- he abused several young girls.
Among them was Larissa Boyce, 16 at the time. She says when she went to Michigan State gymnastics coach Kathie Klages to complain, Klages said she didn't believe her, that Nassar was someone she "trusted and knew for years."
A second victim, meanwhile, says when she complained about Nassar, she was asked who she had told, and then told not to discuss it further.
"They just kept it quiet, and that is what's so hard -- knowing that if adults were to make the right decision and do the right thing at the right time, that the abuse could have stopped," the second gymnast told OTL.
And who does that sound like, boys and girls?
Thaaat's right. It's Penn State and Sandusky all over again.
What separates one from the other is only the complete spinning out of the narrative; no Michigan State officials have yet been sued and hauled into court, though that is surely coming. And the NCAA hasn't dropped the hammer on the Spartans, nor even picked it up.
It will be interesting to see what happens, if and when the NCAA does pick up the hammer. There is, after all, a school of thought out there that the organization overstepped its authority when it injected itself into a criminal matter. And yet, it has established a precedent.
How can it punish Penn State for Sandusky, and not punish Michigan State for Nassar?
They are, after all, virtually identical scenarios. How can the NCAA's reaction not be identical as well?
Tuesday, January 16, 2018
Quiet legend
Dan Gurney died the other day, which means something to a certain generation of racing fan, and probably not as much to those not of that generation.
Almost everyone everywhere knows his contemporaries, after all: A.J. Foyt and Mario Andretti and Bobby and Al Unser, and maybe even Jim Clark, in the Blob's biased judgment the greatest Formula One driver of all time. Gurney, however, likely doesn't have the same shine of legend about him for the casual fan who wasn't around back in the day.
Which is a shame. Because he should.
He was, arguably, the most influential American racing figure of the 1960s, a man who not only won in every major discipline but designed and built his own iconic American Eagle line of race cars. The most successful American grand prix driver after Andretti, he was the first driver to win an F1 race for Porsche, and the second driver to win one in his own car. He won in Indy cars. He won in NASCAR. He won, with Foyt, the 1967 24 Hours of Le Mans, driving the legendary Ford GT40.
A week later, he won the Belgian Grand Prix in the Eagle.
Among American drivers, only Andretti and Foyt won as often in as many disciplines. If he is not remembered by some as being on their footing, therefore, it is their failing, not his.
Just ask that certain generation.
Almost everyone everywhere knows his contemporaries, after all: A.J. Foyt and Mario Andretti and Bobby and Al Unser, and maybe even Jim Clark, in the Blob's biased judgment the greatest Formula One driver of all time. Gurney, however, likely doesn't have the same shine of legend about him for the casual fan who wasn't around back in the day.
Which is a shame. Because he should.
He was, arguably, the most influential American racing figure of the 1960s, a man who not only won in every major discipline but designed and built his own iconic American Eagle line of race cars. The most successful American grand prix driver after Andretti, he was the first driver to win an F1 race for Porsche, and the second driver to win one in his own car. He won in Indy cars. He won in NASCAR. He won, with Foyt, the 1967 24 Hours of Le Mans, driving the legendary Ford GT40.
A week later, he won the Belgian Grand Prix in the Eagle.
Among American drivers, only Andretti and Foyt won as often in as many disciplines. If he is not remembered by some as being on their footing, therefore, it is their failing, not his.
Just ask that certain generation.
Loyalty hits the wall
This just in from the Fluffy Celebrity Folderol wing of the Blob, in which we discuss items of no particular merit except to answer the question, "She's dating him?"
Today's response: Yes, Danica Patrick is dating him. As in, Aaron Rodgers.
The romantic pairing of the NFL's most prolific passer and auto racing's one-time most prolific needle-mover immediately jumps them to the top of Sportsball World's power couple list, and also raises the subject of loyalty. Patrick, after all, grew up in Roscoe, Illinois, as a Chicago Bears fan. Rodgers plays for the Bears' mortal enemy, the Green Bay Packers. What to do, what to do.
Patrick already knows the answer to that.
"I told (Rodgers) a long time ago I'd always root for him as a player," she told the Associated Press. "Now I am probably going to cheer for the whole team."
And then:
"Take out the word 'probably.' Now I'm going to cheer for the whole team."
This will no doubt bring howls of pain from all the Grabowskis in Chicago, along with the usual declarations that "I never liked her anyway" and the tired old "What does she know, she couldn't drive a race car to save her life."
(Although how, in that case, you explain her six top-ten finishes in seven Indianapolis 500 starts is a legitimate question. Also what that has to do with her knowledge of football, and in particular the merits of the Bears vs. the Packers as football organizations.)
In any case, Patrick's rep as a serious football fan just took a major hit. No fan worth the name so easily throws over his or her team for his or her's most hated rival. It is, after all, just as much an affair of the heart as, well, affairs of the heart.
Or not, apparently.
Today's response: Yes, Danica Patrick is dating him. As in, Aaron Rodgers.
The romantic pairing of the NFL's most prolific passer and auto racing's one-time most prolific needle-mover immediately jumps them to the top of Sportsball World's power couple list, and also raises the subject of loyalty. Patrick, after all, grew up in Roscoe, Illinois, as a Chicago Bears fan. Rodgers plays for the Bears' mortal enemy, the Green Bay Packers. What to do, what to do.
Patrick already knows the answer to that.
"I told (Rodgers) a long time ago I'd always root for him as a player," she told the Associated Press. "Now I am probably going to cheer for the whole team."
And then:
"Take out the word 'probably.' Now I'm going to cheer for the whole team."
This will no doubt bring howls of pain from all the Grabowskis in Chicago, along with the usual declarations that "I never liked her anyway" and the tired old "What does she know, she couldn't drive a race car to save her life."
(Although how, in that case, you explain her six top-ten finishes in seven Indianapolis 500 starts is a legitimate question. Also what that has to do with her knowledge of football, and in particular the merits of the Bears vs. the Packers as football organizations.)
In any case, Patrick's rep as a serious football fan just took a major hit. No fan worth the name so easily throws over his or her team for his or her's most hated rival. It is, after all, just as much an affair of the heart as, well, affairs of the heart.
Or not, apparently.
Monday, January 15, 2018
That play
Already, up there where it's cold and purple, they've got a name for it: The Minnesota Miracle. That's what we do when things happen that make you literally grab your head. That's what we do when someone's dangling from the last frayed strands of the rope, and they need Bud Grant or Fran Tarkenton or the Purple People Eaters to materialize and use the Force, or some such mystical thing.
The Minnesota Miracle. The Immaculate Reception II. The "Why Isn't Jack Buck Here To Say 'I Don't Believe What I Just Saw!'" Play.
Because listen, Case Keenum-to-Stefon Diggs was all of that and more. Start with the desperation: The Vikings were down one, there were 10 seconds on the clock, they had no timeouts. And they still needed a chunk of yards to get into field goal range.
And so Keenum reared back and threw the deep ball to Diggs. It was, of course, a play in which the Vikings had never thrown to the deep man, even in practice. But New Orleans safety Marcus Williams, trying to avoid pass interference as he'd been instructed, hesitated a millisecond too long with the ball in the air. Diggs climbed the ladder and caught it, Williams missed the tackle -- and suddenly Diggs was somehow putting his hand down to stay upright, and then there was nothing but green carpet between him and immortality.
A Miracle, with all the ingredients. And, because this is who we are these days, one more: The inclination to pick at the magic by choosing to emphasize what poor Williams didn't do rather than what Keenum and Diggs did.
Almost immediately after the play, see, social media lit up like a Saturn 5. A lot of it was not about what a great play it was. A lot of it was about what a horrible defensive play it was, and how Williams would probably be cut before he got on the plane back to New Orleans, and how it would go down as one of the worst defensive breakdowns in NFL history.
Not, you know, that it would go down as one of the most memorable finishes in NFL history.
Look. I get it. Negativity is what social media does best, especially in the Age of Our Only Available President. Safe behind our faceless devices, we fire away in a manner we'd never have the nuggets to if we were face-to-face. Human contact tends to breed a certain civility, even in contentious situations. Lack of it breeds the opposite.
And so it was heavy on the negative last night. And light on perspective.
Here's the thing about plays like the Minnesota Miracle, see: They almost always contain two essential elements. One, someone has to make a great play. Two, someone else has to allow it to happen. You rarely get one without the other.
Doug Flutie's fabled Hail Mary to Gerard Phelan, for instance, doesn't happen if the Miami Hurricanes don't allow Phelan to get behind not one but two DBs on the last play of the game. Ken Stabler's "Sea of Hands" touchdown to Clarence Davis doesn't happen if one of the three Miami Dolphins surrounding him knocks the ball away. And the original Immaculate Reception doesn't happen if that Oakland Raiders defensive back gets to Terry Bradshaw's wobbler a millisecond quicker, avoiding the hit that causes the ball to ricochet to Franco Harris.
In every case, what didn't happen is as important as what did. The difference is, there was no social media then to pick at those plays, to tweet "What a horrible defensive play! How could the Hurricanes let that guy get behind them in that situation?" or "Good lord, the Dolphins had three guys around him! Terrible defense!"
They wouldn't have been wrong about that, of course. But why ruin the magic?
The Minnesota Miracle. The Immaculate Reception II. The "Why Isn't Jack Buck Here To Say 'I Don't Believe What I Just Saw!'" Play.
Because listen, Case Keenum-to-Stefon Diggs was all of that and more. Start with the desperation: The Vikings were down one, there were 10 seconds on the clock, they had no timeouts. And they still needed a chunk of yards to get into field goal range.
And so Keenum reared back and threw the deep ball to Diggs. It was, of course, a play in which the Vikings had never thrown to the deep man, even in practice. But New Orleans safety Marcus Williams, trying to avoid pass interference as he'd been instructed, hesitated a millisecond too long with the ball in the air. Diggs climbed the ladder and caught it, Williams missed the tackle -- and suddenly Diggs was somehow putting his hand down to stay upright, and then there was nothing but green carpet between him and immortality.
A Miracle, with all the ingredients. And, because this is who we are these days, one more: The inclination to pick at the magic by choosing to emphasize what poor Williams didn't do rather than what Keenum and Diggs did.
Almost immediately after the play, see, social media lit up like a Saturn 5. A lot of it was not about what a great play it was. A lot of it was about what a horrible defensive play it was, and how Williams would probably be cut before he got on the plane back to New Orleans, and how it would go down as one of the worst defensive breakdowns in NFL history.
Not, you know, that it would go down as one of the most memorable finishes in NFL history.
Look. I get it. Negativity is what social media does best, especially in the Age of Our Only Available President. Safe behind our faceless devices, we fire away in a manner we'd never have the nuggets to if we were face-to-face. Human contact tends to breed a certain civility, even in contentious situations. Lack of it breeds the opposite.
And so it was heavy on the negative last night. And light on perspective.
Here's the thing about plays like the Minnesota Miracle, see: They almost always contain two essential elements. One, someone has to make a great play. Two, someone else has to allow it to happen. You rarely get one without the other.
Doug Flutie's fabled Hail Mary to Gerard Phelan, for instance, doesn't happen if the Miami Hurricanes don't allow Phelan to get behind not one but two DBs on the last play of the game. Ken Stabler's "Sea of Hands" touchdown to Clarence Davis doesn't happen if one of the three Miami Dolphins surrounding him knocks the ball away. And the original Immaculate Reception doesn't happen if that Oakland Raiders defensive back gets to Terry Bradshaw's wobbler a millisecond quicker, avoiding the hit that causes the ball to ricochet to Franco Harris.
In every case, what didn't happen is as important as what did. The difference is, there was no social media then to pick at those plays, to tweet "What a horrible defensive play! How could the Hurricanes let that guy get behind them in that situation?" or "Good lord, the Dolphins had three guys around him! Terrible defense!"
They wouldn't have been wrong about that, of course. But why ruin the magic?
Sunday, January 14, 2018
And yet another stilled voice
So apparently the good Lord isn't happy with the quality of sports broadcasting up there in the great beyond.
Apparently all those games he can get now on Direct-To-The-AfterlifeTV are sorely lacking in able chroniclers, and so he called home another one yesterday. Goodbye, Keith Jackson. No more rumblin'-fumblin'-stumblin' for you. No more praisin' the big uglies up front. You are off to the good place, where you will spend eternity calling Oklahoma-Nebraska '71, or maybe Texas-Arkansas '69, or maybe the last game you called, the epic Rose Bowl of '06, when Vince Young 'n' them knocked regal USC off its high horse.
Like every stellar voice of his generation -- like Dick Enberg, who just went to his reward last month -- Jackson commanded microphones in a lot of booths, but for those of us of a certain generation he will always be tied to one. Like Enberg was the voice of college buckets for a lot of us, Jackson was the voice of college football.
He and Chris Schenkel are always who you hear when you think about Saturday afternoons back in the day, when you only got a couple of college football games a weekend on national TV, and the games therefore seemed like occasions in a way they don't today. As fun as college football is now, it seemed even more fun then, and Jackson's folksy porch-swing cadence fit it almost organically. So tied to college football is it in your mind, in fact, that you almost forget his other notable gig.
Keith Jackson, after all, was Howard Cosell's and Don Meredith's original third partner in the booth on Monday Night Football.
Keith and Howard and Dandy only lasted that inaugural season, and maybe that was for the best. Jackson and college football, the man and the sport, simply fit one another too well. Whether or not he ever actually uttered his signature "Whoa, Nelly!", or whether he uttered it once and not the dozens of times we seem to remember hearing it, remains a matter for conjecture. And in the end, it doesn't really matter one way or the other.
He was, after all, a "Whoa, Nelly!" kind of guy. It fit his style, and his style fit college football like no one else's has.
And so, have fun calling the classics forever, Keith. And may the big uglies keep you safe.
Apparently all those games he can get now on Direct-To-The-AfterlifeTV are sorely lacking in able chroniclers, and so he called home another one yesterday. Goodbye, Keith Jackson. No more rumblin'-fumblin'-stumblin' for you. No more praisin' the big uglies up front. You are off to the good place, where you will spend eternity calling Oklahoma-Nebraska '71, or maybe Texas-Arkansas '69, or maybe the last game you called, the epic Rose Bowl of '06, when Vince Young 'n' them knocked regal USC off its high horse.
Like every stellar voice of his generation -- like Dick Enberg, who just went to his reward last month -- Jackson commanded microphones in a lot of booths, but for those of us of a certain generation he will always be tied to one. Like Enberg was the voice of college buckets for a lot of us, Jackson was the voice of college football.
He and Chris Schenkel are always who you hear when you think about Saturday afternoons back in the day, when you only got a couple of college football games a weekend on national TV, and the games therefore seemed like occasions in a way they don't today. As fun as college football is now, it seemed even more fun then, and Jackson's folksy porch-swing cadence fit it almost organically. So tied to college football is it in your mind, in fact, that you almost forget his other notable gig.
Keith Jackson, after all, was Howard Cosell's and Don Meredith's original third partner in the booth on Monday Night Football.
Keith and Howard and Dandy only lasted that inaugural season, and maybe that was for the best. Jackson and college football, the man and the sport, simply fit one another too well. Whether or not he ever actually uttered his signature "Whoa, Nelly!", or whether he uttered it once and not the dozens of times we seem to remember hearing it, remains a matter for conjecture. And in the end, it doesn't really matter one way or the other.
He was, after all, a "Whoa, Nelly!" kind of guy. It fit his style, and his style fit college football like no one else's has.
And so, have fun calling the classics forever, Keith. And may the big uglies keep you safe.
Saturday, January 13, 2018
Skyfall in Cleveland
Well. At least it's not the river that's on fire in Cleveland this time.
Instead, it's entire headsful of hair on fire, as the Cavaliers Cav-ed in again last night, letting a 22-point lead slide away in Indianapolis in a two-point loss to the Pacers. It was the Cavs' third straight loss -- two of them by 25 or more points -- and eighth in 11 games. They're now 26-16, and people all around the NBA are starting to revive one of their favorite memes, What's Wrong With The (Team Name Here).
And the Pacers?
The Pacers are only 22-20. And yet everyone is ecstatic, loves the way they play, marvels at how the team's chemistry has completely flipped now that Paul George is in Oklahoma City and Victor Oladipo, who came over in the trade, has emerged as a sort of PG 2.0.
All of which goes to show you, everything's perspective. The sky is falling in Cleveland, and the sky's the limit in Indy. That the sky, as noted, is still a January sky doesn't seem to occur to anyone.
It should, of course. One of the consistently amusing aspects of the NBA season is how people consistently seem to forget that the NBA season lasts longer than the Hundred Years War. And so every slump by a team like the Cavaliers becomes hilariously over-magnified when measured against the broader context.
OMG, the Cavs have lost eight of 11! The wheels are coming off! It's the end of an era!
Um ... no.
No, it's just a bad patch in January, three months before any of this matters. Will the Cavs continue to slide? Maybe. Two months from now, will we be talking about them winning 10 games in a row and suddenly being the hottest team in the league as the playoffs loom?
Just as maybe.
Look. Eight losses in 11 games is a sign that things aren't lovely in Cleveland, but it's also an incredibly small window through which to draw larger conclusions. It's 11 games out of 82, remember. It's one five-game road trip out of 82 games. And those 82 games are spread over an absurd six or so months.
And so: Perspective, people. Perspective.
And here's a fire extinguisher to use on your hair.
Instead, it's entire headsful of hair on fire, as the Cavaliers Cav-ed in again last night, letting a 22-point lead slide away in Indianapolis in a two-point loss to the Pacers. It was the Cavs' third straight loss -- two of them by 25 or more points -- and eighth in 11 games. They're now 26-16, and people all around the NBA are starting to revive one of their favorite memes, What's Wrong With The (Team Name Here).
And the Pacers?
The Pacers are only 22-20. And yet everyone is ecstatic, loves the way they play, marvels at how the team's chemistry has completely flipped now that Paul George is in Oklahoma City and Victor Oladipo, who came over in the trade, has emerged as a sort of PG 2.0.
All of which goes to show you, everything's perspective. The sky is falling in Cleveland, and the sky's the limit in Indy. That the sky, as noted, is still a January sky doesn't seem to occur to anyone.
It should, of course. One of the consistently amusing aspects of the NBA season is how people consistently seem to forget that the NBA season lasts longer than the Hundred Years War. And so every slump by a team like the Cavaliers becomes hilariously over-magnified when measured against the broader context.
OMG, the Cavs have lost eight of 11! The wheels are coming off! It's the end of an era!
Um ... no.
No, it's just a bad patch in January, three months before any of this matters. Will the Cavs continue to slide? Maybe. Two months from now, will we be talking about them winning 10 games in a row and suddenly being the hottest team in the league as the playoffs loom?
Just as maybe.
Look. Eight losses in 11 games is a sign that things aren't lovely in Cleveland, but it's also an incredibly small window through which to draw larger conclusions. It's 11 games out of 82, remember. It's one five-game road trip out of 82 games. And those 82 games are spread over an absurd six or so months.
And so: Perspective, people. Perspective.
And here's a fire extinguisher to use on your hair.
Thursday, January 11, 2018
Things passed along
Somewhere today, Vince Lombardi is getting an earful.
Somewhere, in a place where the good people of this earth find their reward, a grinning man in horn-rimmed glasses is plucking at the sleeves of various Green Bay Packers, laughing that laugh none of us will ever forget. He is reminding them of the glory days, when Fuzzy and Bart and Nitschke worked their magic. He is talking about the Ice Bowl. He is wondering if Jimmy Taylor still runs like a red-mad bull, and if the Packer sweep still works up here in the great beyond.
And now I have to stop for a moment.
I have to stop to apologize, because the Blob is going somewhere else today, and you'll all just have to indulge it. Where it's going has nothing to do with sports, Green Bay Packers aside. It does, however, have something to do with competition, and with teaching young people there are things they can find inside themselves they never knew were there.
My high school choir director died the other day, you see.
His name was Chuck Henke, and he loved the Packers, and the choir room at New Haven High School was his sideline. No one ever prowled one with more passion.
In that choir room, on fall days and winter days and spring days, he taught us to sing, and then he taught us to sing our hearts out. There is a difference, and that difference is the difference between what a mere instructor brings to the table, and what a teacher brings. If you're lucky, you get one of the latter. If you're very lucky, as those of us were who spent time in that room in the early 1970s, you get a Chuck Henke.
A million memories burbled to the surface when the word came down the other day that he had passed, at the full-measure age of 91. His unabashed Packers worship, sure. The equally unabashed love for what he did. The way he pushed and cajoled and brought out the best in us for every performance, whether it was a routine swing choir gig or a concert choir state competition.
Our senior year we went up to the latter and nailed a perfect score, and don't even bother trying to tell me we weren't the best high school choir in the state that year. It was the year Mr. Henke decided we were ready for a double motet, which requires eight parts instead of the standard soprano-alto-tenor-bass.
I can't say for sure how unusual this is for a high school choir. Pretty unusual, I'm guessing. I can say for sure that Mr. Henke convinced us we could pull it off -- and then, right before we did pull it off at state, gave us the Lombardi "Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing" speech.
It might have been the most Mr. Henke moment ever.
Years later, after I'd left Fort Wayne and then come back to work as a sports columnist for The Journal Gazette, my phone would ring occasionally. It was usually, but not always, after I'd written something related to pro football. On the other end of the line was Chuck Henke, wanting to talk sports with one of his former students. It never failed to be the highlight of my day.
Now I've moved on from those days, and Mr. Henke has simply moved on. But teachers, the great ones, never really move on, of course. If we're lucky, a little piece of them stays with us. It's their legacy, and it lives forever.
A few years back, for instance, I had the opportunity to sing the national anthem at a TinCaps game. I have never been more than a serviceable tenor, but I could usually carry a tune without a bucket, and dogs usually didn't howl at the moon when I did. Since high school, though, I'd sung in public only in church -- and never solo, in front of several thousand people.
Yet Mr. Henke's lessons stayed with me. And so, when they came to get me, and I walked up the ramp toward the field, I remembered the most important lesson of all.
And I sang my heart out.
Somewhere, in a place where the good people of this earth find their reward, a grinning man in horn-rimmed glasses is plucking at the sleeves of various Green Bay Packers, laughing that laugh none of us will ever forget. He is reminding them of the glory days, when Fuzzy and Bart and Nitschke worked their magic. He is talking about the Ice Bowl. He is wondering if Jimmy Taylor still runs like a red-mad bull, and if the Packer sweep still works up here in the great beyond.
And now I have to stop for a moment.
I have to stop to apologize, because the Blob is going somewhere else today, and you'll all just have to indulge it. Where it's going has nothing to do with sports, Green Bay Packers aside. It does, however, have something to do with competition, and with teaching young people there are things they can find inside themselves they never knew were there.
My high school choir director died the other day, you see.
His name was Chuck Henke, and he loved the Packers, and the choir room at New Haven High School was his sideline. No one ever prowled one with more passion.
In that choir room, on fall days and winter days and spring days, he taught us to sing, and then he taught us to sing our hearts out. There is a difference, and that difference is the difference between what a mere instructor brings to the table, and what a teacher brings. If you're lucky, you get one of the latter. If you're very lucky, as those of us were who spent time in that room in the early 1970s, you get a Chuck Henke.
A million memories burbled to the surface when the word came down the other day that he had passed, at the full-measure age of 91. His unabashed Packers worship, sure. The equally unabashed love for what he did. The way he pushed and cajoled and brought out the best in us for every performance, whether it was a routine swing choir gig or a concert choir state competition.
Our senior year we went up to the latter and nailed a perfect score, and don't even bother trying to tell me we weren't the best high school choir in the state that year. It was the year Mr. Henke decided we were ready for a double motet, which requires eight parts instead of the standard soprano-alto-tenor-bass.
I can't say for sure how unusual this is for a high school choir. Pretty unusual, I'm guessing. I can say for sure that Mr. Henke convinced us we could pull it off -- and then, right before we did pull it off at state, gave us the Lombardi "Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing" speech.
It might have been the most Mr. Henke moment ever.
Years later, after I'd left Fort Wayne and then come back to work as a sports columnist for The Journal Gazette, my phone would ring occasionally. It was usually, but not always, after I'd written something related to pro football. On the other end of the line was Chuck Henke, wanting to talk sports with one of his former students. It never failed to be the highlight of my day.
Now I've moved on from those days, and Mr. Henke has simply moved on. But teachers, the great ones, never really move on, of course. If we're lucky, a little piece of them stays with us. It's their legacy, and it lives forever.
A few years back, for instance, I had the opportunity to sing the national anthem at a TinCaps game. I have never been more than a serviceable tenor, but I could usually carry a tune without a bucket, and dogs usually didn't howl at the moon when I did. Since high school, though, I'd sung in public only in church -- and never solo, in front of several thousand people.
Yet Mr. Henke's lessons stayed with me. And so, when they came to get me, and I walked up the ramp toward the field, I remembered the most important lesson of all.
And I sang my heart out.
Wednesday, January 10, 2018
The accomplishment of being famous
Rick Carlisle is miffed. Stan Van Gundy is threatening retaliatory measures. And Steve Kerr, basketball coach and unusually perceptive human being, sees it all in his usual sharp focus.
The subject is LaVar Ball, celebrity basketball dad and shrewd in the ways of America in 2018, where being famous for being famous has replaced true accomplishment as the metric for success. And how ESPN, alleged news organization, has bought into that by breathlessly hanging on every word that comes from the mouth of a former college hoops benchwarmer who happened to get lucky in the progeny department.
The benchwarmer made "news" again recently when he tore into Lakers coach Luke Walton, who coaches the benchwarmer's oldest son, Lonzo. LaVar Ball said Walton had lost the team. He said he didn't know how to utilize his son's talents. He said ...
Well. He said pretty much the same things he's said about every coach his sons have ever had who wasn't, you know, him.
Of course, we know this because ESPN (and to be fair, other news outlets) put it out there as if it mattered. Which is why Carlisle, another NBA coach, is miffed at the Worldwide Leader. And why Van Gundy, president of the Detroit Pistons, has threatened to deny ESPN access to his club. And why Kerr, the NBA champions' coach, noted the other day that you can't blame ESPN, that this is just who we are now.
Basketball Dads from Hell, though common as dirt, get taken seriously. A game-show host and famous-for-being-famous rich guy gets elected president. Mere celebrity becomes an end in itself, rendering actual achievement irrelevant. Remember when you had to have qualifications to be President of the United States? My, how charmingly quaint that all was.
Or as Kerr put it, vis-Ã -vis LaVar Ball: "Where we’re going is we’re going away from covering the game, and we’re going toward just sensationalized news. It’s not even news, really. It’s just complete nonsense. But if you package that irrational nonsense with glitter and some ribbon, people are going to watch.
“So, I talked to people in the media this year. I said, ‘Why do you guys have to cover that guy?’ And they say, ‘Well, we don’t want to, but our bosses tell us we have to because of the ratings, because of the readership.’ Somewhere, I guess in Lithuania, LaVar Ball is laughing. People are eating out of his hands for no apparent reason, other than that he’s become the Kardashian of the NBA or something.”
Exactly. People are eating out of his hand -- people who should know better, and probably do -- and, in Lithuania, LaVar Ball is laughing. He's laughing because he understands what America's about these days better than you do. He's laughing because, although he had no game himself, his children do -- and he's smart enough to know what that means.
What that means is the usual rules don't apply, and so you can go your own way if you've got the nuggets to do it. You can skip the one-and-done college racket and create one of your own. You can launch a shoe line that's flying off the shelves even though it just got an F rating from the Better Business Bureau.
You can, because your sons have game, become a larger-than-life figure simply by opening your mouth and saying outrageous stuff. That's because, in a media universe where lunatics like Alex Jones are taken quasi-seriously because the lunatic in the White House takes him seriously, all it takes to bring ESPN running is for some Hoops Dad From Hell to say he could have taken Michael Jordan one-on-one, or that Luke Walton is a terrible coach.
When he does, Stephen A. Smith splutters. Rick Carlisle and Stan Van Gundy find themselves talking indignantly about LaVar Ball. And LaVar Ball laughs all the way to the bank, because publicity is publicity, and all the indignation and spluttering have done is put up another billboard for LaVar's shoe company.
He may have had no game, see. But he knows this one.
The subject is LaVar Ball, celebrity basketball dad and shrewd in the ways of America in 2018, where being famous for being famous has replaced true accomplishment as the metric for success. And how ESPN, alleged news organization, has bought into that by breathlessly hanging on every word that comes from the mouth of a former college hoops benchwarmer who happened to get lucky in the progeny department.
The benchwarmer made "news" again recently when he tore into Lakers coach Luke Walton, who coaches the benchwarmer's oldest son, Lonzo. LaVar Ball said Walton had lost the team. He said he didn't know how to utilize his son's talents. He said ...
Well. He said pretty much the same things he's said about every coach his sons have ever had who wasn't, you know, him.
Of course, we know this because ESPN (and to be fair, other news outlets) put it out there as if it mattered. Which is why Carlisle, another NBA coach, is miffed at the Worldwide Leader. And why Van Gundy, president of the Detroit Pistons, has threatened to deny ESPN access to his club. And why Kerr, the NBA champions' coach, noted the other day that you can't blame ESPN, that this is just who we are now.
Basketball Dads from Hell, though common as dirt, get taken seriously. A game-show host and famous-for-being-famous rich guy gets elected president. Mere celebrity becomes an end in itself, rendering actual achievement irrelevant. Remember when you had to have qualifications to be President of the United States? My, how charmingly quaint that all was.
Or as Kerr put it, vis-Ã -vis LaVar Ball: "Where we’re going is we’re going away from covering the game, and we’re going toward just sensationalized news. It’s not even news, really. It’s just complete nonsense. But if you package that irrational nonsense with glitter and some ribbon, people are going to watch.
“So, I talked to people in the media this year. I said, ‘Why do you guys have to cover that guy?’ And they say, ‘Well, we don’t want to, but our bosses tell us we have to because of the ratings, because of the readership.’ Somewhere, I guess in Lithuania, LaVar Ball is laughing. People are eating out of his hands for no apparent reason, other than that he’s become the Kardashian of the NBA or something.”
Exactly. People are eating out of his hand -- people who should know better, and probably do -- and, in Lithuania, LaVar Ball is laughing. He's laughing because he understands what America's about these days better than you do. He's laughing because, although he had no game himself, his children do -- and he's smart enough to know what that means.
What that means is the usual rules don't apply, and so you can go your own way if you've got the nuggets to do it. You can skip the one-and-done college racket and create one of your own. You can launch a shoe line that's flying off the shelves even though it just got an F rating from the Better Business Bureau.
You can, because your sons have game, become a larger-than-life figure simply by opening your mouth and saying outrageous stuff. That's because, in a media universe where lunatics like Alex Jones are taken quasi-seriously because the lunatic in the White House takes him seriously, all it takes to bring ESPN running is for some Hoops Dad From Hell to say he could have taken Michael Jordan one-on-one, or that Luke Walton is a terrible coach.
When he does, Stephen A. Smith splutters. Rick Carlisle and Stan Van Gundy find themselves talking indignantly about LaVar Ball. And LaVar Ball laughs all the way to the bank, because publicity is publicity, and all the indignation and spluttering have done is put up another billboard for LaVar's shoe company.
He may have had no game, see. But he knows this one.
Tuesday, January 9, 2018
Wrong? Right
Wow. Did the Blob ever step in it this time.
OK, so it didn't.
OK, so it did.
OK, so ... it kinda did ... maybe mostly did ... and then ...
It didn't.
All of which is to say Alabama won the national title last night exactly the way the Blob said it would, and also nothing like the way the Blob said it would. The Blob predicted 'Bama would roll Georgia pretty much the way it rolled Clemson. Instead, it got rolled for most of the night, and the guy the Blob said would be the difference -- Alabama quarterback Jalen Hurts -- was not the difference at all.
In fact, he was sitting on the bench when the guy who made the difference made the difference.
That would be true freshman quarterback Tua Tagovailoa, who was never mentioned in any of the pregame analysis, but who won the game for the Crimson Tide. Came in at halftime after Hurts guided the Tide to zero points in the first half, and generated 26 points in the second half to steal it from the Bulldogs, 26-23 in overtime.
Not only that, but Tagovailoa won it in the most dramatic way conceivable, on a 41-yard strike to DeVonta Smith with 'Bama trailing 23-20 and down a 2nd-and-26 hole. Three more stops for Georgia, and the Bulldogs would be celebrating their first national title since Herschel Walker was trampling people in Athens.
Instead, with all the weight in the world on his shoulders, a kid who was in high school a year ago reared back and threw an absolute seed against the Georgia Cover Two defense, hitting Smith in stride with the kind of throw you're not supposed to make against a Cover Two. But the kid did it.
(And, please, no more talk about what a genius move it was for Nick Saban to insert Tagovailoa into the game, that it was a move few other coaches would have made. Sorry, but no. It was actually a move a lot of other coaches would have made, given the circumstances. After all, it's not like Saban didn't know what he had in his freshman backup. Knowing that, what coach, with the national title on the line, would have stuck with Hurts after he was so completely ineffective in the first half? It might have been a bigger gamble to leave him out there, in retrospect.)
In any case, all credit to Tagovailoa. And a tiny, tiny portion of credit to the Blob, which did get some things right -- the Crimson Tide defense did largely shut down the Georgia running game in the second half, as the Blob figured it might -- and did get the outcome right.
Everything else, though ...
Well. Prediction fail.
OK, so it didn't.
OK, so it did.
OK, so ... it kinda did ... maybe mostly did ... and then ...
It didn't.
All of which is to say Alabama won the national title last night exactly the way the Blob said it would, and also nothing like the way the Blob said it would. The Blob predicted 'Bama would roll Georgia pretty much the way it rolled Clemson. Instead, it got rolled for most of the night, and the guy the Blob said would be the difference -- Alabama quarterback Jalen Hurts -- was not the difference at all.
In fact, he was sitting on the bench when the guy who made the difference made the difference.
That would be true freshman quarterback Tua Tagovailoa, who was never mentioned in any of the pregame analysis, but who won the game for the Crimson Tide. Came in at halftime after Hurts guided the Tide to zero points in the first half, and generated 26 points in the second half to steal it from the Bulldogs, 26-23 in overtime.
Not only that, but Tagovailoa won it in the most dramatic way conceivable, on a 41-yard strike to DeVonta Smith with 'Bama trailing 23-20 and down a 2nd-and-26 hole. Three more stops for Georgia, and the Bulldogs would be celebrating their first national title since Herschel Walker was trampling people in Athens.
Instead, with all the weight in the world on his shoulders, a kid who was in high school a year ago reared back and threw an absolute seed against the Georgia Cover Two defense, hitting Smith in stride with the kind of throw you're not supposed to make against a Cover Two. But the kid did it.
(And, please, no more talk about what a genius move it was for Nick Saban to insert Tagovailoa into the game, that it was a move few other coaches would have made. Sorry, but no. It was actually a move a lot of other coaches would have made, given the circumstances. After all, it's not like Saban didn't know what he had in his freshman backup. Knowing that, what coach, with the national title on the line, would have stuck with Hurts after he was so completely ineffective in the first half? It might have been a bigger gamble to leave him out there, in retrospect.)
In any case, all credit to Tagovailoa. And a tiny, tiny portion of credit to the Blob, which did get some things right -- the Crimson Tide defense did largely shut down the Georgia running game in the second half, as the Blob figured it might -- and did get the outcome right.
Everything else, though ...
Well. Prediction fail.
Monday, January 8, 2018
And now, that other title game
The College Football Playoff National Championship Game Everywhere But The University of Central Florida is tonight, and so I suppose it's incumbent upon the Blob to pick a winner, even though the Blob doesn't especially care who wins, or even care particularly about watching it.
(This process is helped along by the fact the Blob cast itself into the non-cable wilderness a few years back. So, no ESPN, which is televising the game. The Blob may venture out somewhere to watch it, o it may not. We shall see.)
Anyway ... it's Georgia, it's Alabama, it's a clash of SEC titans. This is great unless you live outside the southeastern United States, and realize Georgia and Alabama are the only titans the SEC had this year. In that case it's just another SEC game.
The Blob's prediction: 'Bama wins. And I suspect in much the way it beat Clemson in the semifinals.
Which is to say, thoroughly.
The Blob could be wrong, because it frequently is. ("Wow, there's a news flash!" you're saying.) But I like Alabama for several reasons, starting with the coaching matchup. It's Nick Saban vs. his clone, Kirby Smart, and that means there isn't much Smart's gonna throw at his mentor that the mentor hasn't himself diagrammed 500,000 times. So there's not much element of surprise here.
Throw in the fact that it's a quarterback who's been on this stage before (Alabama's Jalen Hurts) vs. a quarterback who hasn't been (Georgia true freshman Jake Fromm). Also throw in the fact that Fromm is exactly the sort of pocket passer against which Alabama tends to thrive, and not the sort of multiple-dimension talent (i.e., Deshaun Watson, Johnny Manziel) against which it occasionally struggles.
This means Georgia's going to have to run the football to have any chance at winning, and with its two-headed monster -- Sony Michel and Nick Chubb -- that's certainly possible. But Alabama stuffs the run as well as anyone in the country, so it may not be as possible as you think.
Of course, after Michel and Chubb combine for about 250 yards tonight, the aforementioned is going to sound incredibly stupid. But the Blob's willing to risk it, because sounding incredibly stupid is not exactly foreign territory for it.
And so: 'Bama. And probably easier than ESPN would like.
The floor opens for post-mortem ridicule around midnight.
(This process is helped along by the fact the Blob cast itself into the non-cable wilderness a few years back. So, no ESPN, which is televising the game. The Blob may venture out somewhere to watch it, o it may not. We shall see.)
Anyway ... it's Georgia, it's Alabama, it's a clash of SEC titans. This is great unless you live outside the southeastern United States, and realize Georgia and Alabama are the only titans the SEC had this year. In that case it's just another SEC game.
The Blob's prediction: 'Bama wins. And I suspect in much the way it beat Clemson in the semifinals.
Which is to say, thoroughly.
The Blob could be wrong, because it frequently is. ("Wow, there's a news flash!" you're saying.) But I like Alabama for several reasons, starting with the coaching matchup. It's Nick Saban vs. his clone, Kirby Smart, and that means there isn't much Smart's gonna throw at his mentor that the mentor hasn't himself diagrammed 500,000 times. So there's not much element of surprise here.
Throw in the fact that it's a quarterback who's been on this stage before (Alabama's Jalen Hurts) vs. a quarterback who hasn't been (Georgia true freshman Jake Fromm). Also throw in the fact that Fromm is exactly the sort of pocket passer against which Alabama tends to thrive, and not the sort of multiple-dimension talent (i.e., Deshaun Watson, Johnny Manziel) against which it occasionally struggles.
This means Georgia's going to have to run the football to have any chance at winning, and with its two-headed monster -- Sony Michel and Nick Chubb -- that's certainly possible. But Alabama stuffs the run as well as anyone in the country, so it may not be as possible as you think.
Of course, after Michel and Chubb combine for about 250 yards tonight, the aforementioned is going to sound incredibly stupid. But the Blob's willing to risk it, because sounding incredibly stupid is not exactly foreign territory for it.
And so: 'Bama. And probably easier than ESPN would like.
The floor opens for post-mortem ridicule around midnight.
A few brief thoughts on NFL Wild Card Week
And now a special edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the creepily lurking Blob feature of which people who thought it was over for this season have said "I thought it was over for this season!", and also "Please, make it be over for this season!":
1. It's Monday morning and Tyrod Taylor and Blake Bortles still can't locate their hindparts. And they're using both hands.
2. Hey, look, the Bills are in the playo--
3. OK, so now they're not.
4.. Hey, look, the Rams are in the playo-
5. Ditto.
6. Meanwhile Tyrod Taylor and Blake Bortles.
6. Is the complete list of quarterbacks your high school would be proud to have as its varsity starter. OK, JV starter. OK, practice-squad starter.
7. This is not to imply neither of them looked remotely like an NFL quarterback Sunday.
8. OK, so it is.
9. Hey, look, this could be the Chiefs yea--
10. Wait! Is that Marcus Mariota?
1. It's Monday morning and Tyrod Taylor and Blake Bortles still can't locate their hindparts. And they're using both hands.
2. Hey, look, the Bills are in the playo--
3. OK, so now they're not.
4.. Hey, look, the Rams are in the playo-
5. Ditto.
6. Meanwhile Tyrod Taylor and Blake Bortles.
6. Is the complete list of quarterbacks your high school would be proud to have as its varsity starter. OK, JV starter. OK, practice-squad starter.
7. This is not to imply neither of them looked remotely like an NFL quarterback Sunday.
8. OK, so it is.
9. Hey, look, this could be the Chiefs yea--
10. Wait! Is that Marcus Mariota?
Sunday, January 7, 2018
Go figure
Or, you know, not.
Door No. 2 would be the one to choose these days, as the Indiana Hoosiers slog through their first season under Archie Miller. Hardly ever does a team not rise and fall in exciting ways during the first year of a new regime, but Miller Era Year One has been particularly erratic, with Indiana losing big at home to its smaller state fry (Indiana State and IPFW), while giving No, 1 Duke a decent run in the Hall.
And so, on to this week.
In which the Hoosiers went up to Wisconsin and looked like a bunch of goofs, particularly in the second half, in losing to a Badgers team that isn't exactly the Frank Kaminski Badgers. A couple of days later, unaccountably, they won at Minnesota, a notoriously difficult place from which to wring Ws.
That one was especially puzzling, given that Minny was 13-3 coming in and Indiana was without the services of its big man, DeRon Davis, and one of its prime shooters, Collin Hartman. That offset the fact the Gophers were playing shorthanded as well, which meant that any reasonable individual should have been banking on another Indiana loss.
Instead, the Hoosiers up and won. Which will no doubt get the optimists aroused ("Look, they're finally getting it! Coach Miller does know what he's doing!"), at least until the Hoosiers play like goofs again and lose to someone the faithful think they have no business losing to.
That this will happen is a virtual certainty. Likewise that this will not be a season to remember. There are simply too many bad habits still to be erased with this bunch, and bad habits tend to be notoriously stubborn. And so, patience, Hoosier Nation and attendant observers.
You want to judge what sort of legacy Miller's going to weave in Bloomington, you're gonna have to wait until next winter. This winter will be what it is.
Which is, Hoosiers win!
And also, Hoosiers lose!
Door No. 2 would be the one to choose these days, as the Indiana Hoosiers slog through their first season under Archie Miller. Hardly ever does a team not rise and fall in exciting ways during the first year of a new regime, but Miller Era Year One has been particularly erratic, with Indiana losing big at home to its smaller state fry (Indiana State and IPFW), while giving No, 1 Duke a decent run in the Hall.
And so, on to this week.
In which the Hoosiers went up to Wisconsin and looked like a bunch of goofs, particularly in the second half, in losing to a Badgers team that isn't exactly the Frank Kaminski Badgers. A couple of days later, unaccountably, they won at Minnesota, a notoriously difficult place from which to wring Ws.
That one was especially puzzling, given that Minny was 13-3 coming in and Indiana was without the services of its big man, DeRon Davis, and one of its prime shooters, Collin Hartman. That offset the fact the Gophers were playing shorthanded as well, which meant that any reasonable individual should have been banking on another Indiana loss.
Instead, the Hoosiers up and won. Which will no doubt get the optimists aroused ("Look, they're finally getting it! Coach Miller does know what he's doing!"), at least until the Hoosiers play like goofs again and lose to someone the faithful think they have no business losing to.
That this will happen is a virtual certainty. Likewise that this will not be a season to remember. There are simply too many bad habits still to be erased with this bunch, and bad habits tend to be notoriously stubborn. And so, patience, Hoosier Nation and attendant observers.
You want to judge what sort of legacy Miller's going to weave in Bloomington, you're gonna have to wait until next winter. This winter will be what it is.
Which is, Hoosiers win!
And also, Hoosiers lose!
Saturday, January 6, 2018
The rule of naw
And so the About-To-Ditch-Oakland Raiders are about to do what everyone not living on the outer rings of Saturn already knows.
They're going to hire Jon Gruden as their head coach.
What that means is no longer will we have to listen to his name popping up in connection with every coaching vacancy from the Raiders down to Millard Fillmore East Junior High in Fugeddaboutit, N.J. He's got another gig, nine years after his last gig. Whether or not he's been away too long (even for Gruden, who's apparently the greatest coach who ever lived judging from how often his name comes up) remains to be seen.
The Raiders aren't waiting to see. They're reportedly handing him the keys to the franchise for the next decade, which is a light year in NFL time. And they planned on doing it from the jump, becoming the latest franchise to openly flout the league's Rooney Rule.
For those not familiar, the Rooney Rule stipulates any team with a head coaching vacancy must interview at least one minority candidate. This was the NFL's way of spackling over the embarrassing fact there were darn few individuals of color in its coaching and front office ranks. Forcing teams to at least listen to a few minority pitches, the reasoning went, would get them heard, and perhaps eventually compel teams to venture outside the same well-trodden paths when it came time to hire a coach.
The problem is, the NFL forgot to install teeth in the rule. Or rather, it installed teeth, but it almost never uses them -- even in cases, like the Raiders, where flaunting the Rooney Rule has been especially egregious. This half-hearted enforcement of its own edict means teams now regularly make a joke of the rule, and has effectively added insult to injury.
After all, what says "we don't care about this problem" more loudly than having a rule about it no one -- even the rulemaker -- takes seriously?
At any rate, here are the Raiders, the latest offenders. They were already well down the road with Gruden when they reportedly brought in their tight ends coach, Bobby Johnson, and one other minority candidate. That enabled them to comply with the letter of the Rooney Rule, while trampling all over it in spirit.
I'm trying to imagine what it must have been like for the two minority candidates, sitting there interviewing for a job both knew had already been filled. I'm trying to imagine how demeaning it must have been to both men, and how not being interviewed at all could possibly have been more demeaning.
I'm a 62-year-old white guy, so what do I know. But I think I'd have felt less disrespected if a team didn't even bother interviewing me than if it brought me in just to satisfy some arbitrary "rule." The gross condescension implicit in the latter would be far more hard to take.
Again, what do I know. What I do know is this: Included in all the reports of the Raiders signing Gruden are variations of one telling line.
Which is that the NFL has determined the Raiders satisfied the requirements of the Rooney Rule.
Really? And what would those requirements be, at this point?
They're going to hire Jon Gruden as their head coach.
What that means is no longer will we have to listen to his name popping up in connection with every coaching vacancy from the Raiders down to Millard Fillmore East Junior High in Fugeddaboutit, N.J. He's got another gig, nine years after his last gig. Whether or not he's been away too long (even for Gruden, who's apparently the greatest coach who ever lived judging from how often his name comes up) remains to be seen.
The Raiders aren't waiting to see. They're reportedly handing him the keys to the franchise for the next decade, which is a light year in NFL time. And they planned on doing it from the jump, becoming the latest franchise to openly flout the league's Rooney Rule.
For those not familiar, the Rooney Rule stipulates any team with a head coaching vacancy must interview at least one minority candidate. This was the NFL's way of spackling over the embarrassing fact there were darn few individuals of color in its coaching and front office ranks. Forcing teams to at least listen to a few minority pitches, the reasoning went, would get them heard, and perhaps eventually compel teams to venture outside the same well-trodden paths when it came time to hire a coach.
The problem is, the NFL forgot to install teeth in the rule. Or rather, it installed teeth, but it almost never uses them -- even in cases, like the Raiders, where flaunting the Rooney Rule has been especially egregious. This half-hearted enforcement of its own edict means teams now regularly make a joke of the rule, and has effectively added insult to injury.
After all, what says "we don't care about this problem" more loudly than having a rule about it no one -- even the rulemaker -- takes seriously?
At any rate, here are the Raiders, the latest offenders. They were already well down the road with Gruden when they reportedly brought in their tight ends coach, Bobby Johnson, and one other minority candidate. That enabled them to comply with the letter of the Rooney Rule, while trampling all over it in spirit.
I'm trying to imagine what it must have been like for the two minority candidates, sitting there interviewing for a job both knew had already been filled. I'm trying to imagine how demeaning it must have been to both men, and how not being interviewed at all could possibly have been more demeaning.
I'm a 62-year-old white guy, so what do I know. But I think I'd have felt less disrespected if a team didn't even bother interviewing me than if it brought me in just to satisfy some arbitrary "rule." The gross condescension implicit in the latter would be far more hard to take.
Again, what do I know. What I do know is this: Included in all the reports of the Raiders signing Gruden are variations of one telling line.
Which is that the NFL has determined the Raiders satisfied the requirements of the Rooney Rule.
Really? And what would those requirements be, at this point?
Friday, January 5, 2018
Winter advisories
So now we know the answer to the question everyone in America has no doubt been pondering: If Bill Belichick fought Bomb Cyclone, who would win?
Why, Belichick, of course!
Belichick, who threatened to punish any New England Patriot who dared to show up late for practice yesterday, even as New England was battered by a dangerous and precedent-wrecking winter weather event. An historically ferocious blizzard, it seems, was no excuse not to show up on time. And if you ran into stalled traffic, or missed your path in zero visibility and ran off the road, or encountered any of a hundred calamaties that always go unforeseen in a full-on blizzard ... well, you should have foreseen it anyway. Freezing to death's too good for you.
I'm sure all this was greeted with enthusiastic applause by the discipline-uber-alles crowd, who still pine for the days when Coach could physically lay hands on his players without getting in dutch with the namby-pamby higher-ups. Apparently there's a whole generation out there whose fondest memories involve having their facemasks grabbed so hard by Coach they couldn't turn their heads for a week. Damn, but those were the days!
Yet those days are done, and so what Belichick did can and should be seen in a different context. Which is, he literally put lives at risk for (as Allen Iverson famously termed it) practice. And, yes, that's important with the playoffs looming. Whether it's so important you threaten to punish people if they don't foresee the unforeseeable in a dangerous weather event? Another question entirely.
Not to mention an indication that your priorities are seriously out of whack.
At any rate, it's gotten the Blob to thinking what sort of cataclysm would convince even Belichick to place common sense over the sanctity of practice. And what the conversations would be like with players who opted for the former over the latter:
PATRIOT NO. 1: Sorry, I'm late, Coach. That 25-foot storm surge from our extremely rare Cat 5 hurricane was a really bad deal. My home is gone. I spent the night clinging to a tree in a raging flood, and then I had to swim three miles to dry land and wander another 10 miles barefoot over all the debris to get here. And I don't even swim.
BELICHICK (looking at his watch): You should have learned how. I'm fining you $5,000.
Or ...
PATRIOT NO. 2: Sorry I'm late, Coach. That raging wildfire burning everything between my house and the practice facility was a bitch. I had to knock out a smoke-eater, steal his gear and plunge two miles through the flames to get here. I'm lucky I'm still alive.
BELICHICK (brushing falling ash from his hoodie as the fire moves ever closer): $5,000 fine for being 10 minutes late. And you'll have to pay for the gear that melted.
And finally ...
PATRIOT NO. 3: Sorry I'm late, Coach. That unprecedented volcanic eruption was the worst natural disaster in American history. Every living thing between Boston and Providence is gone. We're the only ones left, Coach.
BELICHICK: Well, then you can still drop and give me 50. We've got the playoffs to think about. Where's your head, son?
Why, Belichick, of course!
Belichick, who threatened to punish any New England Patriot who dared to show up late for practice yesterday, even as New England was battered by a dangerous and precedent-wrecking winter weather event. An historically ferocious blizzard, it seems, was no excuse not to show up on time. And if you ran into stalled traffic, or missed your path in zero visibility and ran off the road, or encountered any of a hundred calamaties that always go unforeseen in a full-on blizzard ... well, you should have foreseen it anyway. Freezing to death's too good for you.
I'm sure all this was greeted with enthusiastic applause by the discipline-uber-alles crowd, who still pine for the days when Coach could physically lay hands on his players without getting in dutch with the namby-pamby higher-ups. Apparently there's a whole generation out there whose fondest memories involve having their facemasks grabbed so hard by Coach they couldn't turn their heads for a week. Damn, but those were the days!
Yet those days are done, and so what Belichick did can and should be seen in a different context. Which is, he literally put lives at risk for (as Allen Iverson famously termed it) practice. And, yes, that's important with the playoffs looming. Whether it's so important you threaten to punish people if they don't foresee the unforeseeable in a dangerous weather event? Another question entirely.
Not to mention an indication that your priorities are seriously out of whack.
At any rate, it's gotten the Blob to thinking what sort of cataclysm would convince even Belichick to place common sense over the sanctity of practice. And what the conversations would be like with players who opted for the former over the latter:
PATRIOT NO. 1: Sorry, I'm late, Coach. That 25-foot storm surge from our extremely rare Cat 5 hurricane was a really bad deal. My home is gone. I spent the night clinging to a tree in a raging flood, and then I had to swim three miles to dry land and wander another 10 miles barefoot over all the debris to get here. And I don't even swim.
BELICHICK (looking at his watch): You should have learned how. I'm fining you $5,000.
Or ...
PATRIOT NO. 2: Sorry I'm late, Coach. That raging wildfire burning everything between my house and the practice facility was a bitch. I had to knock out a smoke-eater, steal his gear and plunge two miles through the flames to get here. I'm lucky I'm still alive.
BELICHICK (brushing falling ash from his hoodie as the fire moves ever closer): $5,000 fine for being 10 minutes late. And you'll have to pay for the gear that melted.
And finally ...
PATRIOT NO. 3: Sorry I'm late, Coach. That unprecedented volcanic eruption was the worst natural disaster in American history. Every living thing between Boston and Providence is gone. We're the only ones left, Coach.
BELICHICK: Well, then you can still drop and give me 50. We've got the playoffs to think about. Where's your head, son?
Thursday, January 4, 2018
Claim jumpers
So Alabama and Georgia play for the alleged national title Monday night, which is nice and all, but it really doesn't mean a whole lot outside Athens, Ga., and Tuscaloosa, Ala.
This is because the national title has already been claimed in Orlando, Fla.
Central Florida, see, has declared itself the national champion, on account of it finished the season undefeated while Alabama and Georgia will not. Plus, in the Peach Bowl, UCF beat Auburn, which beat both the Crimson Tide and the Bulldogs.
So, UCF is the people's champ, or some such thing. There's even going to be a parade.
"Well, that's just silly," you're undoubtedly saying now. "Central Florida can't be the national champ just because it says it is. Who does that?"
Well ... as it turns out, a lot of people.
Including, ahem, both Alabama and Georgia.
As Adam Rittenberg of ESPN points out here, 'Bama is actually the leader in the clubhouse in the We're National Champs Because We Say So sweepstakes. The NCAA credits Alabama with 14 national titles; 'Bama claims 16. This includes the 1941 national title, which Minnesota actually won but which the Crimson Tide claims as one of its 16 even though it went 9-2, finished third in the SEC and was ranked 20th in the final Associated Press poll.
But 'Bama declared itself national champ because it was ranked No. 1 in some obscure metric called the Houlgate System.
Similarly, Georgia declared itself national champ the next year, even though Ohio State was ranked No. 1 in the final AP poll. USC and Minnesota, meanwhile, retroactively claimed national titles in 1939 and 1904 -- in Minnesota's case, 108 years after the fact.
So there you have it: Central Florida is the national champ because it says it is. And because history says it can do that.
Enjoy that runnerup game Monday night.
This is because the national title has already been claimed in Orlando, Fla.
Central Florida, see, has declared itself the national champion, on account of it finished the season undefeated while Alabama and Georgia will not. Plus, in the Peach Bowl, UCF beat Auburn, which beat both the Crimson Tide and the Bulldogs.
So, UCF is the people's champ, or some such thing. There's even going to be a parade.
"Well, that's just silly," you're undoubtedly saying now. "Central Florida can't be the national champ just because it says it is. Who does that?"
Well ... as it turns out, a lot of people.
Including, ahem, both Alabama and Georgia.
As Adam Rittenberg of ESPN points out here, 'Bama is actually the leader in the clubhouse in the We're National Champs Because We Say So sweepstakes. The NCAA credits Alabama with 14 national titles; 'Bama claims 16. This includes the 1941 national title, which Minnesota actually won but which the Crimson Tide claims as one of its 16 even though it went 9-2, finished third in the SEC and was ranked 20th in the final Associated Press poll.
But 'Bama declared itself national champ because it was ranked No. 1 in some obscure metric called the Houlgate System.
Similarly, Georgia declared itself national champ the next year, even though Ohio State was ranked No. 1 in the final AP poll. USC and Minnesota, meanwhile, retroactively claimed national titles in 1939 and 1904 -- in Minnesota's case, 108 years after the fact.
So there you have it: Central Florida is the national champ because it says it is. And because history says it can do that.
Enjoy that runnerup game Monday night.
Wednesday, January 3, 2018
The worm keeps turning
And so the sea change in America continues, this time in the most unlikely of places: The desert.
Where the University of Arizona eighty-sixed its head football coach, Rich Rodriguez, after a sexual harassment allegation the university has been investigating since October, and a pending hostile-workplace lawsuit against the school.
You knew eventually the wave of sexual harassment j'accuse would crash ashore in sports, because it is and always has been fertile ground for men treating women badly. It's a male-dominant culture that presumes certain things about women, and those presumptions go all the way to the top. Which is why so many athletic hierarchies -- (cough) the NFL (cough) -- have been largely ineffective at getting their arms around the issue.
Well ... not so much now.
In show business, in business generally, and now in sports, women have decided enough is enough. They are tired of being prey. They are tired of having to kowtow to artificial social constructs because men can't control themselves. They are tired of being tired.
And so they are speaking out, more and more of them -- and if the backlash says a mob mentality has come into play in its wake, well, it's hard not to think it's about damn time. There has, after all, always been a mob mentality at work in this area. The mob in question just had a different gender.
Now the shoe's on the other foot, and so goodbye, RichRod. You may be as innocent as you claim to be, but the length of the school's investigation suggests otherwise. And let's face it: Hardly any male in a male-dominated culture ever thinks he's treated women badly when he's treated women badly. The culture itself precludes him from seeing it otherwise.
Well, gentlemen. Welcome to your wakeup call.
It's being sounded by all those women who've suddenly discovered strength in their common experience, and in their numbers. And it's so loud it's impossible for those at the top to block it out anymore.
"After conducting a thorough evaluation of our football program and its leadership, both on and off the field, President [Robert] Robbins and I feel it is in the best interest of the University of Arizona and our athletics department to go in a new direction," athletic director Dave Heeke said in a statement, upon the announcement of Rodriguez' firing.
A new direction. Do tell.
Where the University of Arizona eighty-sixed its head football coach, Rich Rodriguez, after a sexual harassment allegation the university has been investigating since October, and a pending hostile-workplace lawsuit against the school.
You knew eventually the wave of sexual harassment j'accuse would crash ashore in sports, because it is and always has been fertile ground for men treating women badly. It's a male-dominant culture that presumes certain things about women, and those presumptions go all the way to the top. Which is why so many athletic hierarchies -- (cough) the NFL (cough) -- have been largely ineffective at getting their arms around the issue.
Well ... not so much now.
In show business, in business generally, and now in sports, women have decided enough is enough. They are tired of being prey. They are tired of having to kowtow to artificial social constructs because men can't control themselves. They are tired of being tired.
And so they are speaking out, more and more of them -- and if the backlash says a mob mentality has come into play in its wake, well, it's hard not to think it's about damn time. There has, after all, always been a mob mentality at work in this area. The mob in question just had a different gender.
Now the shoe's on the other foot, and so goodbye, RichRod. You may be as innocent as you claim to be, but the length of the school's investigation suggests otherwise. And let's face it: Hardly any male in a male-dominated culture ever thinks he's treated women badly when he's treated women badly. The culture itself precludes him from seeing it otherwise.
Well, gentlemen. Welcome to your wakeup call.
It's being sounded by all those women who've suddenly discovered strength in their common experience, and in their numbers. And it's so loud it's impossible for those at the top to block it out anymore.
"After conducting a thorough evaluation of our football program and its leadership, both on and off the field, President [Robert] Robbins and I feel it is in the best interest of the University of Arizona and our athletics department to go in a new direction," athletic director Dave Heeke said in a statement, upon the announcement of Rodriguez' firing.
A new direction. Do tell.
Tuesday, January 2, 2018
(Self) lovefest
And now, on to the sectional championship game.
Which, yes, is supposedly the College Football Playoff Championship Game, but not now, not after Alabama took down No. 1 Clemson 24-6 and Georgia toppled Oklahoma 54-48 in double overtime in a non-Rose Bowl Rose Bowl that will go down as one for the ages.
Now we get 'Bama-Georgia for the national title. Now we get an all-SEC championship game. Now we get a week of obnoxious bragging (even from the SEC's paid lackeys at ESPN) about how the SEC is the greatest thing since toast on a stick, vastly superior to all the lower classes of Them Other Conferences, who live in the SEC's servants' quarters and exist mainly to serve its needs.
"They say the SEC doesn't dominate any more, but I beg to differ," Alabama center Bradley Bozeman crowed after the Crimson Tide's win.
"I'm trying to figure out how a one-team league has both of the teams playing for the national championship," snickered SEC executive associate commissioner Mark Womack.
Oh, I don't know. Maybe because, at least this year, you were actually a 2-team league?
Let's go to the tape, shall we?
Let's go first to Georgia having to go double overtime to knock off Oklahoma, which doesn't exactly equate to total SEC dominance in this corner. Let's go to the Big Ten's 7-1 record against outsiders in bowl games this season. Let's go to the SEC's 2-5 record. Does all this add up to, as ESPN put it, "there's no doubt" the SEC is the best conference in college football?
No. No it does not.
What it adds up to is, at least this year, there's no doubt the Big Ten was the best conference, top to bottom. What it adds up to is the SEC had two really good teams, one sporadically really good team and a whole lot of "meh" outside that.
Which will not change the narrative this week, of course.
Let the self-lovefest begin.
Which, yes, is supposedly the College Football Playoff Championship Game, but not now, not after Alabama took down No. 1 Clemson 24-6 and Georgia toppled Oklahoma 54-48 in double overtime in a non-Rose Bowl Rose Bowl that will go down as one for the ages.
Now we get 'Bama-Georgia for the national title. Now we get an all-SEC championship game. Now we get a week of obnoxious bragging (even from the SEC's paid lackeys at ESPN) about how the SEC is the greatest thing since toast on a stick, vastly superior to all the lower classes of Them Other Conferences, who live in the SEC's servants' quarters and exist mainly to serve its needs.
"They say the SEC doesn't dominate any more, but I beg to differ," Alabama center Bradley Bozeman crowed after the Crimson Tide's win.
"I'm trying to figure out how a one-team league has both of the teams playing for the national championship," snickered SEC executive associate commissioner Mark Womack.
Oh, I don't know. Maybe because, at least this year, you were actually a 2-team league?
Let's go to the tape, shall we?
Let's go first to Georgia having to go double overtime to knock off Oklahoma, which doesn't exactly equate to total SEC dominance in this corner. Let's go to the Big Ten's 7-1 record against outsiders in bowl games this season. Let's go to the SEC's 2-5 record. Does all this add up to, as ESPN put it, "there's no doubt" the SEC is the best conference in college football?
No. No it does not.
What it adds up to is, at least this year, there's no doubt the Big Ten was the best conference, top to bottom. What it adds up to is the SEC had two really good teams, one sporadically really good team and a whole lot of "meh" outside that.
Which will not change the narrative this week, of course.
Let the self-lovefest begin.
Monday, January 1, 2018
Partings
And so the calendar turns over again, and here we are in 2018. It's a time when we resolve to be better human beings, at least until January runs out. It's a time when the National Football League puts a cork in another season, and coaches get called into the office to be told their services will no longer be needed.
A new year. An old theme.
Goodbye, then, to Chuck Pagano, who's been a dead man walking since the Indianapolis Colts brought in Chris Ballard as their new general manager last spring. Some stuff happened in the interim, most of it bad, not all of it Pagano's fault. He's not the one, after all, who broke Andrew Luck. He is the one who presided over a 4-12 season only made worse by beating the Texans on Sunday, a nice auld lang syne moment that nonetheless cost the Colts a spot on draft day.
Jim Caldwell had the Suck For Luck season. Pagano had ... a nice auld lang syne moment against the Texans.
And speaking of Jim Caldwell ...
The Lions greeted 2018 by pink-slipping him, too, a somewhat more curious move. For whatever faults he has, Caldwell did manage to squeeze three winning seasons out of his allotted four, including 9-7 this year. He also got them to the playoffs twice in four years, losing in their first game both times.
This doesn't sound like a lot until you realize it's the Lions, one of the NFL's chronic losers. Caldwell's four-year record of 36-28 represents the highest regular-season winning percentage (.563) for any Lions coach in the Super Bowl era. Until Caldwell came along, the Kitties had seen the postseason just once in the new millennium, and they'd put up just two winning seasons in that same span.
And if they lost both playoff games under Caldwell ... well, that was simply a matter of playing to type for a franchise that hasn't won a playoff game in 26 years.
Lions management clearly thinks that's not acceptable anymore, a good thing for everyone but Caldwell. Mediocrity apparently will not suffice anymore. It has, after all, been 60 years since the Lions last won an NFL title. Bobby Layne 'n' them was a long time ago.
And so, out Caldwell goes. Out Pagano goes. It's New Year's Day, after all, when everyone resolves to do better.
Even if you're the Lions.
Update: Bears have turned the page, too.
A new year. An old theme.
Goodbye, then, to Chuck Pagano, who's been a dead man walking since the Indianapolis Colts brought in Chris Ballard as their new general manager last spring. Some stuff happened in the interim, most of it bad, not all of it Pagano's fault. He's not the one, after all, who broke Andrew Luck. He is the one who presided over a 4-12 season only made worse by beating the Texans on Sunday, a nice auld lang syne moment that nonetheless cost the Colts a spot on draft day.
Jim Caldwell had the Suck For Luck season. Pagano had ... a nice auld lang syne moment against the Texans.
And speaking of Jim Caldwell ...
The Lions greeted 2018 by pink-slipping him, too, a somewhat more curious move. For whatever faults he has, Caldwell did manage to squeeze three winning seasons out of his allotted four, including 9-7 this year. He also got them to the playoffs twice in four years, losing in their first game both times.
This doesn't sound like a lot until you realize it's the Lions, one of the NFL's chronic losers. Caldwell's four-year record of 36-28 represents the highest regular-season winning percentage (.563) for any Lions coach in the Super Bowl era. Until Caldwell came along, the Kitties had seen the postseason just once in the new millennium, and they'd put up just two winning seasons in that same span.
And if they lost both playoff games under Caldwell ... well, that was simply a matter of playing to type for a franchise that hasn't won a playoff game in 26 years.
Lions management clearly thinks that's not acceptable anymore, a good thing for everyone but Caldwell. Mediocrity apparently will not suffice anymore. It has, after all, been 60 years since the Lions last won an NFL title. Bobby Layne 'n' them was a long time ago.
And so, out Caldwell goes. Out Pagano goes. It's New Year's Day, after all, when everyone resolves to do better.
Even if you're the Lions.
Update: Bears have turned the page, too.
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