Dog, meet tail

The kid's number -- 79 -- is still painted on the grass in the end zone, and inscribed on the flags carried fluttering into the stadium by his teammates. And of course it is carved into the hearts of those teammates, because that is what a team does when one of their own falls.

So at least there is still that bit of decency, where the University of Maryland is concerned.

Of the rest, one can only say there are priorities, and the Maryland board of regents displayed their university's in screaming neon letters yesterday afternoon.

They called a news conference and announced -- inexplicably, unaccountably and apparently with only one dominant thought -- that they were reinstating head football coach DJ Durkin, on whose watch No. 79, Jordan McNair, died of heatstroke last spring. And they were retaining the athletic director, Damon Evans. And they were retaining the school president, Wallace D. Loh, although Loh will step down next June in a move widely interpreted as a forced resignation because Loh, alone among those in a position of authority, advocated Durkin not be reinstated.

And so the university was responsible for Jordan McNair's death, but no one was really responsible. This makes exactly as much sense as you think it does.

Which is to say no sense whatsoever, unless you understand the obvious, which is that college football on the level Maryland plays it is a business, and business supersedes everything else. It is the tail that wags the academic dog, despite the gauzy fables the people who run collegiate athletics love to spin about education and The College Experience. 

And yet ...

And yet even on that level, nothing about this makes sense.

On Durkin's and Evans' watch, for instance, the football program continues to leak interest and money, and -- according to a Baltimore Sun report published last week -- has become something of a black hole, incurring annual operating expenses of about $19 million. Football scholarships accounted for five times the amount for any other team; the $6.2 million budget for the football coaching staff, meanwhile, accounted for more than one-third of spending on all of the school's coaches.

Maybe the regents therefore thought they'd invested too much in Durkin to blow things up so soon. After all, they'd have to shell out another $5 mill to buy out his contract, piling further debt on an already debt-heavy program.

In any case, their explanation for retaining him suggested strongly that the regents had been into something stronger than coffee and Danish. Yes, the atmosphere around the program was toxic, but it wasn't, you know, toxic. Yes, the fired strength coach, Rick Court, was abusive, but that wasn't Durkin's fault, even though he personally made Court his first hire and had known him for years. Yes, the university was responsible for McNair's death, but, you know, not Durkin, who, as a first-time head coach, was deemed not to have given the proper training for his job.

Even though Durkin has been coaching on the college level for 17 years, and worked under the likes of Urban Meyer, Jim Harbaugh and Wil Muschamp. Even though he has been head coach at Maryland since 2016 -- during which time he's gone 10-15 and 5-13 in the Big Ten, not exactly the sort of record you'd think anyone would stand behind so resolutely.

And yet the Maryland regents have. And now Durkin will return to the sideline, despite the fact no one but the regents seems to want him there. Sources told ESPN that several players, including some starters, walked out on him when he spoke to the team yesterday.

This does not suggest the Terps are going to be winning a lot of games in the near future; when a coach loses his team, after all, he rarely gets it back. In which case it doesn't seem likely Maryland football is going to be much of a going concern in the near future, either.

No, sir. All the regents seem to have done here is transform their expensive, under-achieving football program into a full-blown dumpster fire.

In the meantime, Jordan McNair is still dead.

Jordan McNair is still not coming back to his family, or to his friends, or to his teammates, ever again.

"Saturday my teammates and I have to kneel before the memorial of our fallen teammate," Ellis McKennie, one of those teammates, tweeted yesterday. "Yet a group of people do not have the courage to hold anyone accountable for his death. If only they could have the courage that Jordan had. It’s never the wrong time to do what’s right."

Except this time, apparently.

Same old thing

Time now to check in with the National Basketball Association, which has been playing for, I don't know, a month or so already, even though we're still a day away from Halloween.

Speaking of which, is the NBA still this scary place where everyone already knows the Golden State Warriors are going to win again, even though we're still a day away from Halloween and approximately a century from the NBA Finals?

You'll be horrified to know the answer is "Yes"!

When last seen, after all, the Warriors were still the Warriors, and had not morphed into the Anaheim Amigos or Dallas Chaparrals. They were, in fact, laying almighty wood to the hapless Chicago Bulls, who are one of many Happlesses in the NBA, especially when they play the Warriors.

Anyway, the final score was 149-124 in favor of the Warriors. The winners had 92 points at halftime.  They were so Warriors-y, in fact, that Klay Thompson scored 52 points all by himself, hitting a record 14 3-pointers. He did this in just 27 minutes, or three minutes more than a half. And he did this just four days after his backcourt mate, Steph Curry, went off for 51 points and 11 triples in three quarters in a 144-122 beatdown of the hapless Washington Wizards.

In other words, in just those two games, days apart, the Warriors averaged 146.5 points and Curry and Thompson combined for 103 points and 24 threes in just 64 minutes.

So ... yeah. Nothin' new to see here, apparently.

In which case, tune in for our next Association update in, I don't know, 2020 or so.

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 8

And now this week's edition of  The NFL In So Many Words, the Novocaine of  Blob features, the Ambien of Blob features, the Pill They Give You In Science Fiction Movies To Wipe Out Your Memory So You Don't Remember It's The Novocaine And Ambien Of Blob Features ... Blob feature:

1. It's Tuesday morning and Ty Montgomery is still trying to bring it out of the end zone.

2. Oh, wait, he's not. The rest of the Packers have duct-taped him to his locker.

3. In other news, Adam Vinatieri!

4. Passes Morten Andersen as the NFL's all-time leading scorer!

5. "Congratulations, Gramps. Took you long enough." (Morten Andersen)

6.  So the Browns, in spite of a (for them) stellar 2-5-1 start, fire head Hue Jackson and offensive coordinator Todd Haley, and put a guy in charge of the offense who's never called a play in the NFL.

7. "Stupid Browns." (Browns fans)

8. "Stupid Browns." (NFL analysts everywhere)

9. "Wait, what?" (Baker Mayfield)

10.  "Browns, Schmowns. Let's talk some more about how old Vinatieri is." (Morten Andersen)

"T" as in "team." Also "Todd."

Look, I feel your pain this morning, Mr. Fantasy Dude. I, too, am helplessly a-whirl in the fantasy football vortex. And my team ... boy, does my team stink.

How bad does it stink?

Dude, my team is the Raiders. My team is so bad, in fact, the Raiders are sending sympathy cards. It's so bad I'd fire me if I could, but that's not how this works, so I'm stuck with me. Kind of the way the Raiders are stuck with Jon Gruden.

But enough about me.

Let's talk about you, Mr. Fantasy Dude. Let's talk about what a bummer to have a team player in your lineup -- and worse, a team player who has a brain.

That would be Todd Gurley of the Rams, one of the best running backs in the NASH-unal FOOT-ball League. He's worth his weight in Bud Light and fully loaded nachos to Mr. Fantasy Dude. Why, look, there he goes again here in the last minute or so against the Packers, breaking free at the 21-yard line. He's headed for the end zone! Six more points for Mr. Fantasy Du--

Wait. What is he doing?

He's slowing down, that's what he's doing. He's slowing to a bleeping jog, for God's sake. He's running like a hot-damn old lady, letting the Packers catch him, letting them drag him down four yards shy of those aforementioned six more points.

What is he doing??

Using his brain, it turns out. Taking one for the team.

See, by letting himself get caught, the Rams were able to end the game with a kneel-down. They avoided giving the ball back to Aaron Rodgers with a minute to play in a 29-27 game. And Todd Gurley was smart enough to know giving the ball back to Aaron Rodgers in that situation would be like asking to get kicked in the tender mercies. Hard.

So he gave up the six.

It was the right play. It was the smart play. It was the team play. And it was the kind of play that goes a long way in explaining why the Rams are still unbeaten at the halfway point of the season.

Even if it likely gave Mr. Fantasy Dude a coronary. And maybe made him consider, in a fit of pique, to trade Mr. Todd Smarty-Pants I'm-All-About-Team Gurley.

Which would be just fine, if you ask me.

I mean, I could use a running back.

Your moment of transference today

So the Boston Red Sox did what they were supposed to do last night, closing out the Los Angeles Dodgers in five games behind a maligned pitcher who found his mojo and a journeyman slugger, and there was joy unbridled in New England and everywhere overdogs are celebrated.

The Red Sox won 108 games this season and were thus the overwhelming favorite to do what they did, but it was a triumph leavened with irony: The overdogs were led by an underdog, 35-year-old Steve Pearce, who hit three home runs in the Series and was proclaimed its MVP. A man untouched by the limelight the Red Sox have been basking in for 15 years, he's played for eight Major League teams in his career. If he was the MVP of anything in all that time, it was the waiver wire.

And now fame has touched him, much as it did journeyman David Ross two Octobers ago. A Cinderella story in the midst of an anti-Cinderella story, and a storyline worth the telling at last in this Series.

Here's another one: The tongue-in-cheek headline that ran in the Detroit Free Press after the Red Sox closed out the Dodgers.

They Did It! 2014 Detroit Tigers Finally Win World Series!, it read.

This is because, in an age of continual player movement, what goes around eventually comes around for pretty much everyone. Steve Pearce knows that this morning, as a former Yankee (among many others) celebrating as a World Series MVP for the rival Red Sox. And, yes, the Tigers get a piece of it, too, puckishly pointing out that the Red Sox heroes included a liberal sprinkling of 2014 Tigers.

That would include Price, who won two games in this Series, including the clincher. It would include Rick Porcello, another Red Sox starter who won 17 games and struck out 190 batters for the Red Sox this season. It would include second baseman Ian Kinsler. And it would include J.D. Martinez, the anchor bat in the Red Sox lineup, and who along with Pearce and Mookie Betts powered the clinching 5-1 win with homers.

So, yeah. Go Tigers!

And Red Sox. Them, too.

Night baseball

And now a complete list of those in this neck of America who made it all the way to the end of the longest World Series in history last night:

1. Night watchmen.

2. Third-trick factory workers.

3. Bats, raccoons, various other nocturnal creatures.

4. Last-call bartenders.

5. That one guy at the bar to whom the last-call bartender has to say "I mean it, buddy, you have to leave."

Eighteen innings and nearly 7 1/2 hours it took for the Red Sox and the Dodgers to settle things in Game 3, which means neither team understands how this World Series deal is supposed to work. It's supposed to be a best-of-seven series. There is nothing in the instructions that say you're supposed to play the entire series in one night.

Yet that is almost what the Red Sox and Dodgers did, and thank God for Max Muncy. If the guy doesn't finally end it with a walk-off home run in the 18th, they might still be playing. Or not. When you get into territory this uncharted, there really aren't any landmarks. I mean, what would have happened if they'd gotten to, say, the 25th inning with no resolution? Can you imagine the possible scenario?

UMPIRE (after the final out in the bottom of the 25th): OK, that's it. I'm calling this off.

RED SOX AND DODGERS: Wait, what? Why?

UMPIRE: Why? Why?? For God's sake, look around you! The ballpark is empty! Everyone left hours ago! It's 3 o'clock in the morning, and this is the West Coast! People are eating breakfast on the East Coast! People in England who were eating breakfast when it started are having their afternoon tea!

RED SOX AND DODGERS: Yeah, but ... we can't just quit.

UMPIRE: Sure you can! I'm the ump, and I said so! Go home. Get some sleep. Come back in about 10 hours and we'll finish this thing.

RED SOX AND DODGERS: But ... but ... that'll throw the whole schedule off!

FOX TV SUIT: Yeah, that'll throw the whole schedule off!

UMPIRE: I don't care. This is stupid. You've been playing so long Clayton Kershaw's kid is warming up in the bullpen. Half the Red Sox are drawing social security. And Justin Turner's beard is so long Cabela's has made a winter coat out of it. Enough.

FOX TV SUIT (again): But that'll throw the whole schedule off!

UMPIRE: Sorry. We're goin' home. I mean, come on, neither team has any players left. The Dodgers are warming up a beer vendor. The Red Sox just called out to Arizona to see if they could unfreeze  Ted Williams and send him up to pinch-hit. It's time.

FOX TV SUIT: But what about the schedule??

(Looks around. Everyone is gone.)

Hello? Um ... hello?

A lonely word of caution

Six days along, the shine is still not off it, down there in West Lafayette. This is what happens when you capture lightning or magic or the pure essence of fairy tale in a bottle, and so they were still talking about it, still reveling in it, still crowding around all the principle figures.

Purdue 49, Ohio State 20 was the biggest night for Purdue football since Joe Tiller was walking its sideline, and that would have been enough to hang onto the glow for as long as possible. But you add a courageous young man fighting an ugly form of cancer, and the way the football team and the entire Purdue community has wrapped its arms around him, and how by some miracle of God's grace he was actually there to see the big moment he'd predicted ...

Well. That kind of story has no expiration date.

And so Tyler Trent has been on ESPN with Scott Van Pelt and various radio shows and in all the papers this week, and what a great thing that is. And the architect of the signature victory, Jeff Brohm, has been compelled to talk about it all week, and about how he's suddenly the hottest commodity in college football. And that, too, is a great thing, because if you're Purdue University, the last thing you want is a football coach no one else is interested in.

Here's the thing about all this, though: It's still only October 26.

Which means Purdue has another football game this Saturday.

Which means the wonderful story, to remain wonderful, can't have an expiration date yet, either.

To keep this thing going, in other words, the Boilermakers have to go up to East Lansing, Mich., and do last Saturday all over again, and you wonder how that's going to happen when all they've talked about this week, all they've been asked by the outside world to focus on, is what happened against Ohio State.

Michigan State, on the other hand, is a football team that has its own issues with last week. The Spartans are beat up and they're hurting and they've had six days to seethe over the spanking they took on their home turf from that bleeping Harbaugh and those bleeping Michigan Wolverines. And now they get a Purdue team radiating sweetness and light and all kinds of sudden hype?

I would not have wanted to be Coach Brohm this week, trying to get his team ready for that while all anyone wanted to talk about was Ohio State.

Now, I would not be so foolish as to bet against Brohm and his Boilers, at this point. But I would not be equally so foolish as to be shocked if Sparty rises up and smacks them, given everything that's happened in both camps this week.

You can regard that as the Blob trying to ruin someone's party, if you like. The Blob prefers to think of it more benignly.

Call it a word of caution. Nothing more.

Demagogue's harvest

The Blob could write about the usual playground stuff today. It surely could.

But as it continually reminds all you Blobophiles out there (OK, so BOTH  of you Blobophiles): My Blob, my rules. So we will depart the playground for a time.

We'll talk demagogues instead. Demagogues, what they sow and what they reap.

 Unless you've been holed up in your bomb shelter the last couple of days (not a bad idea, all things considered), you know what's been going on out there in America. An old and noxious American tradition has been revived, one that goes back nearly as far the republic itself. Or what once was the republic.

What it is now is hard to say, in this time of naked voter suppression and raving charlatans commanding our bully pulpits. But bombs being sent through the mail to political enemies and those who support them?

From anarchists blowing up the house of the attorney general in 1919 to now, that is nothing new at all.

So far, bombs or packages suspected of being bombs have been sent to a major news network, a former President of the United States, a former Vice-President, a former Secretary of State, several congress folks, a former national party chairman and several prominent supporters of that party. All of them are Democrats, Democratic supporters or non right-wing media. All of them have one other thing in common.

They've all been political opponents or critics of Our Only Available President, Donald J. Trump.

Who yesterday blamed the Democrats and the media themselves for inciting the attempted violence against them.

Who told a crowd of his supporters we all need to be nicer, not be so mean and nasty, like those awful Democrats and that awful media.

Who is as breathtaking a hypocrite as ever sat in the White House, and the purest demagogue as well.

His supporters like to portray him as something unique in America, an outsider who's no politician and has the money and clout to cut through the jungle of Washington corruption and entrenched influence peddling. In truth, there is nothing new about him.

Demagogues, after all, have been around forever. Every nation has had them to one degree or another; Germany and Italy in the 1930s and '40s are simply the most extreme examples of the ruin they bring if raised to power.  This president isn't that -- he is not nearly enough an ideologue, except in the matter of self-interest --  but he is a far more distilled version of the form than we're used to.

Like all demagogues, his rhetoric is deliberately inflammatory, deliberately hyperbolic and (in almost all cases) deliberately, flagrantly untrue. It is reckless in its execution and calculated in its goal, which is to inspire fear and loathing of imagined threats that obscure the real threat, which is the demagogue himself.

In other words: Pay no attention to what we're doing here behind this curtain. Look at what those evil Democrats are doing! What the evil, lying media is doing! And how about that invading army of killers and rapists coming up from Central America? America is UNDER ATTACK!

The genius of this is it almost always works, because it identifies and reinforces what the willfully deluded believe, no matter how absurd. The dark side of it is it almost without exception incites violence or attempted violence -- which the demagogue professes to decry with a wink and a nod.

Our Demagogue in Chief did just that yesterday, of course, but then he went right back to scapegoating those evil Democrats and the evil media. Coming from someone who has so relentlessly demonized both, and continues to do so, this was hypocrisy raised to a high art.

Not two weeks ago, remember, the Demagogue in Chief was applauding some thug in Montana for beating up a journalist. In 2016, he did the same while a handful of his goons roughed up a protester, rhapsodizing about the days when the cops could crack skulls with impunity. And he's repeatedly characterized the free press as "the enemy of the state."

Yet now we're supposed to believe he's appalled by violence? Or that it's just awful that a pipe bomb was delivered to the home of Hillary Clinton -- whom he repeatedly refers to as "Crooked Hillary," meanwhile openly applauding the chants of "Lock her up! Lock her up!" at his rallies?

How many steps are there from "Lock her up!" to "Blow her up!"? One? Two? And can the Demagogue in Chief really be so deluded as to think his over-the-top rhetoric wouldn't eventually inspire some nutjob to action? What, then, was its purpose?

And yet it's her fault. And the media's fault.

This is impossible to take seriously if you're a thinking human and not a member of the Tinfoil Hat Brigade, which has been hard at work crafting the usual wingnut conspiracy theories. Yes, it's all a Democratic plot! They sent these bombs to themselves to make the president look bad! After all, none of them blew up, did they?

Well, no. And thank God for small mercies.

But the eternal question remains as long as a demagogue commands the most bully pulpit of all: What about next time?

Age before baseball

 ... or, "Crotchety Old Guy Who Needs His Sleep Speaks."

(And what he's saying is, "Dammit, I need my sleep.")

In other words, the Blob tried to watch Game 1 of the World Series last night, because it's the World Series and every true American should watch the World Series. This is true even if you have absolutely zero interest in the World Series, which this year I don't. Dodgers vs. Red Sox? Meh. It's just the rich getting richer. No storyline exists that's less compelling.

Alas, my sense of duty could not overcome the imperatives of being 63 years old. I made it through about four innings. But that time the game was already almost two-and-a-half hours old. It was crowding 11 o'clock, and half the game remained to be played.

And so, being 63 and in need of my sleep, and (to reiterate) having zero interest in such a pro forma Series, I went to bed.

This brings up the usual seasonal complaint: That baseball is losing the next generation of baseball fans because it insists on playing every game in prime time. And because the game has slowed to a crawl these days (in spite of MLB's attempts to speed it up), prime time regularly becomes skinny-hours-of-early-morning time before games wind up. Especially during the week, the next generation of fans is long in bed by then.

The Blob would like to point out that so is this generation of fans, in a lot of cases. And that is likely more damaging to baseball in the short term, because this generation is my generation, and my generation is pretty much baseball's chunkiest demographic now. It's increasingly a game enjoyed by seniors or all-but-seniors, and by very few others.

Now, I'm sure there are plenty of seniors and all-but-seniors heartier than I am, so maybe more of them stick it out than I suspect. But, still. The post-midnight crowd is not generally the AARP crowd.

Again, I could be wrong about that. But I don't think so. I also don't have a lot more to say about this.

It's time for my nap, you see.

Numbers game

Tonight the World Series begins in Boston, where it will be the Red Sox facing the Dodgers for the first time since Babe Ruth was a Red Sock, which was 1916 to you and me, kids. But that doesn't have anything to do with why the suits at Fox are already high-fiving each other.

No, sir. The suits at Fox are high-fiving each other because they got the matchup they wanted.

The Red Sox vs. the Dodgers was what they all were rooting for, because, well, it's the Red Sox and the Dodgers: Two iconic franchises with national fan bases in two major TV markets. That it's also the triumph once again of the overdog -- two obnoxiously rich teams winding up at the top of the pyramid, gee, what a surprise -- matters very little to the suits. All they care about is it isn't the Astros  vs. the Brewers.

Sure, Milwaukee and Houston are fine cities. But it would have been a ratings loser and the suits know it. The Red Sox and Dodgers, on the other hand ...

Well. I'm sure Fox sees ratings beyond their wildest dreams.

Me?

I think "wildest" is a relative term.

I think we're going to see now just how much juice baseball still has in America, because if Red Sox-Dodgers can't move the needle nothing can move the needle. The only better matchup for baseball happened two years ago, when the Cubs played in their first World Series in 71 years, and won it for the first time in 108. Everyone wanted to see that.

Red Sox-Dodgers won't be that; the Dodgers are in it for the second year in a row and have been historic winners for the last 70 or so years, and the Red Sox have become the New Yankees, winning three times in 14 years. But it's the closest baseball could come this year.

And therefore, is a litmus test.

Going up against with college football, will Red Sox-Dodgers get outdrawn by Notre Dame-Navy Saturday night? Going head-to-head with the NFL colossus, will they get buried by Vikings-Saints on Sunday Night Football?

We shall see. But if they do, even with the optimum matchup, an obvious truth will once again be borne out.

Which is, baseball is no longer the National Pastime. It's the National Its Time Is Past.

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 7

And now this week's edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the Blob feature of which critics have said "Hey! Why didn't you call it 'inevitable' or 'unrepentant' or 'unrepentantly regular' this time?", and also "Why not 'persistently annoying', 'cause that would have worked, too?":

1. It's Tuesday morning and that Patrick Mahomes kid is still pretty good.

2. Meanwhile, the Raiders.

3. Aren't any better on this continent, so they traded Amari Cooper to the Cowboys.

4. "Hey, look, we got Amari Cooper!" (The Cowboys)

5. "Please save my job, Amari!" (Cowboys coach Jason Garrett)

6. In other news, the Giants continue to do Giants things (i.e., lose). The Patriots continue to do Patriots things (i.e., win). The Bengals continue to do Bengals things (i.e., get everybody's hopes up, then turn into the Bengals again.)

7. "Hey, look, a running game!" (The Colts)

8. "Hey, look, a defense!" (Also the Colts)

9. "Yeah, but it was only us." (The Bills)

10.  "Please save my job, Amari!" (Cowboys coach Jason Garrett)*

* -- Because you just can't repeat this enough.

Meanwhile ...

Time now to check in with motorsports, because the Blob is a motorsports zone, dammit, and, yes, there is still stuff going on in motorsports, even if you didn't know because of football and, you know, football.

("Wait, what about the World Series?" you're saying. The Blob's response: "What about it?")

Anyway, a couple of things happened in motorsports yesterday, and I know this because both were actually on TV, which is kind of amazing when you think about it. Those things were, in order:

1. Kimi Raikonnen won the U.S. Grand Prix down in Texas. It was his first Formula One win in five years and a record 100-something starts. Also, Lewis Hamilton almost finished second, which would have clinched his fifth F1 title, except it wouldn't have because Sebastian Vettel passed Valtteri Bottas for third on, like, the last lap, keeping him in the hunt. So now Hamilton will have to clinch in Mexico.

2. Chase Elliott won the NASCAR race in Kansas. It was the second win in three races for Bill Elliott's kid, which sends him on to the next round of the playoffs, which is good for NASCAR because Chase Elliott is an extremely marketable young man. He's smart, he's personable and he's all kinds of photogenic. NASCAR needs that, because the current generation of stars is aging and the sport needs new stars to sell.

Case in point: The eight drivers left in the playoffs. They include a few of the usual suspects -- Kevin Harvick, both Busches, Clint Bowyer and Martin Truex Jr., the defending champion. But Elliott's in there, and Aric Almirola, and Ryan Blaney, another second-generation rising star, just missed getting into the final eight.

Among the missing, meanwhile, are Denny Hamlin, Brad Keselowski, Jimmie Johnson and Ryan Newman. Johnson and Newman, in particular, have been eliminated for awhile.

The future is coming, in other words. And if it looks like Chase Elliott, it's in good hands.

Defining moment

Cold brutish night in West Lafayette, In., and yet here again was the living carpet, an echo from some other time. Drew Brees was doing his thing, the last time they made the Ross-Ade Stadium turf disappear like this. Seth Morales was catching passes from heaven. And Purdue was going to the Rose Bowl for the first time in 34 years.

Somewhere in the human crush that night, some college kid waved a plastic lobster aloft. Football players, their old-gold helmets shed, clenched red roses in their teeth. And Joe Tiller, that wily old fox, was being serenaded with shouts of "Joe! Joe! Joe!", as if he were some movie-handsome idol and not the crusty old Ball Coach who'd brought the glory days back again.

No word if they serenaded Jeff Brohm like that last night. But, lord, what a seminal moment for him and Purdue football, if they can make it stick.

Purdue 49, Ohio State 20 could still be an anomaly, after all, some jaw-dropping night of magic that came winging out of the ether and might as easily vanish back into it. Iowa had one of those against Urban Meyer's legions last year, laminating the Buckeyes 55-24 in Iowa City. The Hawkeyes lost their next two games, to Wisconsin and, yes, Purdue. Ohio State destroyed No. 13 Michigan State 48-3 the next week and went on to win the Big Ten title and crush USC 24-7 in the Cotton Bowl.

So, yeah. There's that.

On the other hand, there's this: Purdue, a two-touchdown 'dog, beat the No. 2 team in the country by 29 points. It was their second win over a ranked opponent this season; they thrashed then-No. 23 Boston College 30-13 in Ross-Ade last month. And it was the first time they'd beaten an opponent ranked this high in 34 years.

Ironically, that was also Ohio State, who was also ranked second at the time.

This win over this Ohio State team was far more impressive, if only because it was so astoundingly thorough. Purdue dinged the Buckeyes' defense for 539 yards. Senior running back D.J. Knox and sensational freshman receiver Rondale Moore ran and caught and punished Ohio State all night, combining for 406 yards and five scores.

Ohio State, on the other hand, committed 10 penalties and numerous acts of unaccountable dumbness, particularly on defense. The dominant image of this night will always be Urban Meyer repeatedly grabbing his head in disbelief as Moore or Knox got loose again.

In the end, Purdue did something no one believed possible: They made an Urban Meyer team look helpless. Worse, they made it looked unprepared, a clear indictment of Meyer himself.

Brohm, on the other hand, didn't just send a football team out there; he sent a razor. As the score mounted, you kept waiting for Purdue to begin doing Purdue things, all those knuckleheaded mistakes that have thrown away so many Ws in the beige decade since Tiller departed. But this time Purdue didn't do those things.

No, sir. Ohio State did.

And so here's to Purdue, and here's to Brohm. If there wasn't already, there is now a Brohm Era in West Lafayette. And last night it officially brought back to life a program thought to be dead, brought back the living carpet that turned a mausoleum into a football stadium again.

I wasn't there, so I don't know if a certain guy was down in the crush last night. But I was down in that crush plenty of times back in the Tiller days. And one of those times, I remember this guy -- eyes unfocused, grinning like a fool, clearly transported by something more than school spirit -- standing at the entrance that led back to the Purdue football complex.

For just a second, our eyes met. His grin spread wider. And then he offered up what surely was the proper benediction for that night, and for this new one as well.

"Boiler up, mother------," he rasped.

Indeed.

A 10.0 in cluelessness

Say this for USA Gymnastics: At least their dismounts are spectacular.

This after Mary Bono stepped down five days -- that's "days", as in, "days" -- after being named interim head of the ruling body, on account of she was compromised to a fare-thee-well. First she gets caught in a photo trashing a Nike logo because she didn't like its Colin Kaepernick ad campaign, Then it came out that she worked for the same law firm that helped provide cover for Larry Nassar, the convicted abuser who preyed on young gymnasts for decades with the complicity of multiple entities, chief among them Michigan State University.

So to review: USA Gymnastics hired someone who publicly smeared a powerful sponsor and worked for the people who helped facilitate Larry Nassar's crimes. Great hire there, folks.

Nuclear cluelessness always makes for great theater -- hello, MSU and Penn State -- but it's also an ultimately unrewarding study into how humans arrive at such cluelessness. In other words, "What the hell were you thinking?" is a question with no satisfactory answers.  All you can do is mark it down as one of life's great unsolved mysteries.

And so who knows why USA Gymnastics tapped Bono, except that it once more highlighted the incompetence that allowed a sexual deviant to run free for so long. Bono's predecessor, after all, lasted only nine months before being forced out. Yes, they're very good at dismounts, the USAG.

Bono, of course, went them all one better. Her statement upon stepping down was not, shall we say, conciliatory. Instead she responded by defending herself against what she called "personal attacks" from some of the most prominent figures in the sport, among them Simone Biles and Aly Raisman.

Never mind that both Biles, who pointed out the dubious wisdom of trashing moneyed sponsors, and Raisman, who questioned the hiring of someone who worked for the law firm that helped keep Nassar in the abuse business, were both as right as rain. And never mind that this wasn't exactly the time, and certainly not the place, to play the aggrieved party the way Bono did.

Astounding. If these people were an event, it would be the uneven bars.

Or perhaps the unbalanced beam.

Business decisions

Ohio State is out a star defensive end, and that is as it should be here in the age of commerce in college athletics. It is a business, college football and basketball at the Ohio State level. And that is as true for the workforce as it is for the corporate structures that don't pay that workforce.

Which is to say, Nick Bosa has left school. And if that was a hard choice, perhaps, it was also the only choice to be made.

The reigning Big Ten Defensive Lineman of the Year is also a future high-end NFL draft pick, and while college football is fun and all, it's essentially an unpaid internship. Pro football, on the other hand, is a paying job -- and for prospects like Nick Bosa, a job that will pay him handsomely. Balanced against free room and board and college tuition in return for feeding the multi-billion-dollar industry that is college football, it's a pretty simple business decision.

If you're going to be a commodity -- and make no mistake, that's what you are in corporate college athletics -- you protect your value as a commodity. That is, after all, what your school does.

And so when Bosa went down with a core muscle injury against TCU on Sept. 15, his path was pretty much set. As his father, John, pointed out to SI.com this week, it was a simple exercise in logistics: Injuries like Bosa's generally require 12 weeks to rehab. Twelve weeks would put his return, realistically, at mid-December, long after the end of the season.

Oh, he could have played in Ohio State's bowl game, perhaps. Or in the playoff if the Buckeyes wind up there, which they are on track to do. But all that would have meant to a guy entering next April's NFL draft is another chance or two to get hurt again. And getting hurt again would surely diminish his value in the NFL marketplace.

The risk, in other words, was not worth the reward. Which would be negligible when balanced against Bosa's projected future earnings as a pro.

And, yes, all this sounds depressingly cold-blooded. It is not the way we like to think of athletics, and particularly college athletics.  There is no sis-boom-bah in it, no boola-boola, let's win one for the dear old alma mater. Whatever happened to loyalty to your school?

I don't know. Perhaps it went away when loyalty to your school became synonymous with loyalty to its apparel deals. If you're gonna make your student-athletes billboards for Nike, after all, why wouldn't those student-athletes, as soon as possible, want to get paid by Nike for doing it?

And why would they risk that by playing in more games than absolutely necessary?

And so more and more we see college athletes in Bosa's position making Bosa's decision. Yes, it is cold-blooded and unsentimental. But then, so is college football -- and pro football, certainly.

And you know what?

In 2018, almost everyone understands that. Which is why there's been almost no criticism of  Bosa for his decision.

Sign of the times.

Eyes wide shut

That seamy underbelly, it's right there in front of us now. But then it always has been.

The shadow economy that feeds big-time college buckets is almost as old as college buckets, and we've always known it was there. That's why there is sort of "well, duh" meme to what's coming out of the federal fraud trial that's going on right now, in which the various machinations of apparel company agents, blue-chip recruits and their parents and, yes, the programs, coaches and schools that make piles of cabbage off their own apparel deals are making headlines.

If not exactly news to anyone who's been paying attention for at least three decades.

Look. We've always known there were blatant shenanigans going on at the nexus of Greed and Need, which is and has been for a long time located in the heart of the whole AAU hoops culture. AAU has long been a Wild West street market for kids to sell themselves to prospective employers, i.e. major college hoops powers. And, yes, sell themselves is exactly the right word, because recruitment at the highest levels of college basketball is pure commerce. We really want you, kid and Fine, here's what it'll cost ya have been long the two sides of that coin.

What's coming out in the fraud trial is nothing new, in other words. It's simply business, and it's been going on for a long time. The only thing remotely new about it is how openly it's all being conducted, and how brazenly the apparel company middlemen and the kids and their parents are willing to strike their deals.

Their corrupt deals. Because make no mistake, what's going on, and has been for decades, makes a sham of everything the NCAA claims college athletics is supposed to be about. It's corruption happening right out loud, that seamy underbelly not really much of an underbelly at all.

In which case, you'd think college basketball coaches with some stature would be rising to condemn that underbelly as loudly as possible. To defend the integrity of the game they love. Wouldn't you?

Well ... yes. Except that's not happening.

Instead, the avatar of all that is supposedly good and right about college hoops, Mike Krzyzewski of sainted Duke, is downplaying all of this. He calls what's coming out in the fraud trial a "blip." North Carolina coach Roy Williams agrees. They both think the problem is overblown, that it all fits neatly into the good old Isolated Incidents file.

Of course, they pretty much have to say that. Because they're part of the whole corrupt system themselves.

As so well pointed out by Dan Wetzel of Yahoo Sports, who's been all over this, Coach K in particular is in no position to condemn anything. After all, his star newbie last year, Marvin Bagley III, played for an AAU team bankrolled by Nike, which in turn gives wads of money to Krzyzewski's Duke program as its official apparel provider. And this year's prize freshman, Zion Williamson, was the subject of an FBI wiretap in which an apparel company middleman and a Kansas assistant coach openly discussed what the kid's family wanted -- a job for Dad, cash, rent-free housing -- to deliver him to Lawrence.

Of course, Williamson wound up at Duke. Which, yes, unavoidably makes you wonder what kind of deal got cut in Durham.

Now, it's possible, I suppose, that no deal got cut at all. Pretty much anything's possible in a nation whose chief executive gets in juvenile name-calling spats with porn stars.  But do you wonder why  Coach K is so suddenly so tongue-tied on the subject of corruption in college hoops?

It is to despair.

Sequel madness

The Blob is not generally one for pointing fingers ("Ha! Good one," you're saying), but right now it's pointing fingers. Someone's gotta be responsible for this, right?

And by "this," I mean, this.

Oh, goody! Aging prizefighter battles mostly a wrestler! That's never been done before!

OK, so it has, and it was Muhammad Ali, and it was one of greatest exhibitions of the pugilistic arts ever seen. OK, so it wasn't.

Actually it was pretty much a joke, Ali vs. Japanese wrestler Antonio Inoki. The year was 1976. The "fight" ended in a draw. Somebody made a bunch of money off it, presumably Ali and Inoki, although probably not.

You can find the "fight" on YouTube if you care to look, though why you would want to is a question best left unexamined. The point is, there was no point to Ali-Inoki. The further point is, there doesn't seem to be one for Floyd Mayweather-Khabib Nurmagomadev, either, except to make more somebodies a bunch of money.

That happened the first time the aging Mayweather fought  an MMA guy, that guy being the endlessly self-promoting Conor McGregor. The fight went 10 rounds but, as most people predicted, was never in doubt. Mayweather the boxer outboxed McGregor the MMA guy, and what a shock that wasn't.

Khabib having just dispensed with McGregor in an MMA bout, and being no fool, immediately began pounding the drums for his own crack at Mayweather. There being the aforementioned bunch of money involved, Mayweather is of course amenable. That the outcome would be even more a foregone conclusion seems a foregone conclusion, not to say entirely beside the point.

Here's the thing: McGregor's strength as an MMA guy is striking, so at least he carried semi-boxing skills into the ring against Mayweather. Khabib's strength is wrestling; he gets you on the ground, as he did McGregor, you're pretty much done. But that wouldn't be an option in a boxing match against Mayweather.

On the other hand ...

On the other hand, Khabib did become the first man to knock McGregor down. And Mayweather couldn't knock McGregor down. Upon such fragile underpinnings do circus tents go up and fast-buck artists find gainful employment.

Still, the Blob is pointing fingers. Who asked for this?

Was it you? You? You there, skulking around in the back?

Wait You mean it was all of you?

Yeesh.

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 6

And now this week's edition of The NFL In so Many Words, the unrepentantly regular Blob feature of which desperate politicians have said "This will not stand!", and also "Well, OK, maybe this will stand," and also "We're down in the polls, so, yeah, we are foursquare behind this standing":

1. Hey, look, it's Mason Crosby!

2. And he's not selling insurance!

3. Also he just won the game!

4. It's Tuesday morning and ... ah, crap, a Colts receiver just dropped it.

5. The Raiders!

6. Now available in Europe.

7. "Why would you make something this awful available in Europe?" -- Europe

8. "That Patrick Mahomes is pretty good." -- Tom Brady

9. "That Tom Brady is pretty good." -- Patrick Mahones

10. "Anyone seen the Jaguars? They were just here and then, poof, gone. Weird." -- The NFL

Playing nice, Part Deux

And speaking of the current American zeitgeist, which equates manners and civilized grownup behavior with weakness and "political correctness" ...

Let's go to Gillette Stadium, boys and girls!

Where they left the zoo cages open again and the Undiluted North American Asshat -- aka, Patriotus fanus -- escaped, leading to Tyreek Hill of the Chiefs getting a faceful of middle fingers and beer. Way to go, Patriotus fanus! In only ten centuries or so you might actually be walking upright.

In the interim, you can take solace in knowing you are totally in sync with our nation's leadership at the moment. Enjoy.

Playing nice*

(*A widely scorned concept here in the America of 2018, seen as "political correctness", aka weakness.)

(*Even though it's not.)

And so to Emmanuel Sanders, wide receiver for the Denver Broncos, who scolded the NASH-unal FOOT-ball League for getting soft after he drew a flag for taunting Sunday. Sanders got the ticket when he burned  Rams cornerback Troy Hill for a 44-yard touchdown catch and then wagged a finger in Hill's face. Out came the flag, and away went the touchdown.

Sanders thought that was ridiculous.

"To me, honestly, I feel like the league is getting soft,'' Sanders said. "I'm having fun. I didn't do anything crazy to the guy besides say, 'I got you on that play,' pointing my finger at him. [The official] threw the flag, which is crazy because I feel like I've been in the league nine years and I've been pointing at guys, go back and look at my film, I've been pointing at guys all the time and saying, 'I got you on that play.'"

The Blob's take on this: That just means you're a repeat offender, Emmanuel.

Look. We're on record here as saying the NFL has become as grim as battlements in the way it corporatizes its product, fining people for silly uniform violations and public displays of (gasp!) emotion. It's as if the league has made it company policy to present as boring and lockstep a product as possible. It's one of the many reasons college football is a far better show these days.

The No Fun League is no longer just a clever wisecrack. It's reality.

That said, waving a finger in an opponent's face is a fraudulent attempt to take back the "fun."

It's nothing of the kind. It's disrespectful to your opponent, and, ultimately, to the game.

And, yes, even as I type those words, I understand what a fuddy-duddy-ish concept they represent. Sportsmanship, to put a name on it, increasingly seems like something almost comically out of time, like stickball and penny candy. It's a quaint relic from the '90s -- the 1890s, not the 1990s.

In 2018, on the other hand, the nation, or at least a deluded wedge of it, takes its cue from Our Only Available President, a bullying manchild celebrated for speaking whatever constitutes his mind. Like OOAP, real men aren't "politically correct." Real men call a spade a spade -- or at least what they claim is one.

They taunt. They gloat. Like Emmanuel Sanders, they point fingers and say "Gotcha!"

For want of a better term, call it the Trump Effect, a juvenile-ization of society that sneers at common decency as weakness, and holds as manly what used to get your mouth washed out with soap. This election cycle is rife with examples; witness the oaf who warned his opponent to don a catcher's mask because he was going to put on his golf spikes and figuratively stomp on his face. And witness also the West Virginia city councilman who, upon Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court appointment, gloated "Better get your coat hangers ready, liberals" -- a crude reference to the possible overturning of Roe v. Wade.

This sort of thing does not just happen on one side of the aisle, of course. Those on the other side of the divide are equally culpable. But OOAP, by the very nature of his position, bears much of the responsibility for the erosion of public discourse to the level of the playground. That he started us down this road is beyond dispute.

Little wonder Emmanuel Sanders considerswaving his finger in a beaten opponent's face "having fun." He's just keeping time with the zeitgeist.

And what an indictment of where we are that is.   

Divine intervention. Or not.

Look, I've seen the bumper stickers. Also the T-shirts. They're as old as the hills, and the sentiment they express is older than that, older even than the moment Gus Dorais first threw a skinny post to Knute Rockne, and all mankind was changed forever.

Well, OK. So maybe just mankind on Saturday afternoons in the fall, then.

In any event, the bumper stickers/T-shirts said God Made Notre Dame No. 1, back when Notre Dame still occasionally was No. 1. Admittedly, it's been awhile since God did that. Perhaps he's been busy.

But the notion still endures that Notre Dame is God's favorite football team, as if the Creator of all things is just another schmo wearing a Joe Montana jersey and playing cornhole in the tailgating districts south and east of Notre Dame Stadium. Non-Notre Dame fans ridicule this pitilessly, of course. Notre Dame fans merely shake their heads at the critics' lack of spiritual understanding.

The Blob leans toward the God-doesn't-care-about-football position. Although sometimes things happen that make it wonder.

Saturday was one of those sometimes.

If you weren't paying attention, (and you should have been because it's October, and October means college football, and that I do know is ordained by heaven), a whole lot of shakin' went on in the ranks yesterday. LSU got Georgia down in Death Valley and crushed the Bulldogs. Oregon knocked off Washington. Michigan State, fresh off getting euthanized by Northwestern at home, rose from the crypt to put a smotin' on Penn State. And Iowa State kicked around West Virginia.

All four of the losers were ranked in the top eight. And Georgia was ranked No. 2 behind Alabama Inc.

And Notre Dame?

Notre Dame, sitting at No. 5, coughed and wheezed and somehow survived a sickly afternoon against a "meh" Pittsburgh squad. That, plus all the losing among the top eight teams, puts the Irish squarely in the Ring of Honor -- i.e., the top four, also known as The Playoff Four.

In other words, Saturday left you with the inescapable conclusion that everything seems to be falling into place for the Irish. And, as such, it's absolute confirmation (if you're a Domer) that God loves N.D. above all others.

Either that, or they're just a bunch of lucky SOBs who always seem to get every break -- plus they have their own TV network, which isn't fair, either.

The opposing view, naturally.

The ruins of sentiment

Erosion is no time-lapse event in the hard business of professional football. It happens in an eyeblink, seemingly, because the incremental breakdown in skills is too minute for the naked eye to discern -- at least until it's too obvious for it to miss.

Enter Eli Manning, quarterback, New York Giants.

Who, seemingly very suddenly, can't play anymore.

You never want to put the toe tag on a man's career, because too often the reports of his demise turn out to be greatly exaggerated. So the benefit of the doubt dictates that maybe what we saw from Eli Thursday night was just a bad game from a man playing a good team behind an offensive line that couldn't block a doorway.  But somehow it looked like more than that.

It looked like Eli, in his 15th season in the NFL, has lost it the way quarterbacks on his timeline seemingly always lose it: All at once, and sadly.

In a 34-13 loss to the Eagles, he played like the old quarterback he is: Slow and jumpy and uncertain. With no confidence he could make the downfield throws he used to, he constantly dumped the ball to Saquon Barkley, even as his coach, Pat Shurmur, screamed at him to "Throw the ball!" He got caught from behind and strip-sacked. He looked like what so many yapping poodles on sports-jabber radio were calling him Friday: Done.

And if that is so, it's a window into the difference between organizations that win in the NFL, and those that don't. 

Those that win think with the head. Those that don't think with the heart.

The Giants thought with their heart last year, jettisoning head coach Ben McAdoo after he did what in hindsight was the head thing to do: Bench Eli Manning. Huge uproar followed, and Manning was promptly restored to what the Giants suits and fandom thought was his rightful place. Not long after, it was McAdoo who was told to grab some bench.

Yet McAdoo was right, of course. He saw through the sentiment and recognized that he had a football team with a juicy array of weapons in the passing game, but no longer had the quarterback who could exploit them. And so he did the hard thing.

And paid for it because his superiors, and a whole lot of Eli-jersey-wearing folks on the street in the city, couldn't see past the two Super Bowls Eli Manning brought to New York. They couldn't, in the end, envision the New York Giants without No. 10 under center.

You know who could have?

The New England Patriots.

Who have become the standard to which everyone else in the NFL aspires because they are cold-blooded SOBs, and we mean that in a good way. Throughout the Belichick era they have become famous, or perhaps notorious, for cutting loose talent long before what most regarded as its expiration date. That said talent might have contributed mightily to a few of the Lombardi Trophies in the Pats' trophy case didn't matter. When it was time to move on -- before it was time to move on, in some cases -- they moved on.

Even the Colts, who have been no one's idea of an efficient organization for much of this decade, made the decision to move on from Peyton Manning at a time when he was still an Indianapolis icon. Some saw that as heartless and crass, particularly the way it was handled. But with Manning's heir apparent waiting in the wings, it was the right thing to do at the right time.

That the Colts have since failed the heir apparent about as clumsily as possible -- and that Manning went on to win a Super Bowl in Denver -- doesn't change the wisdom of turning the page when they did. Within a year or so of landing in Denver, Manning very quickly devolved into a shadow of his Indianapolis self. He was still a high-end quarterback, but he wasn't the old Manning. He was just an old Manning.

As is, suddenly, his brother. And you wonder how all of this plays out had the Giants been more Patriot-like and cut him loose, say, a couple of seasons ago.

Yes, it would have been bloodless and cold-hearted and premature. Or at least it would have looked that way.

And the Giants would today be better off for it.

A cautionary tale

They'll wear a 44 on their sleeves this Saturday against Iowa, and around Bloomington flags will fly at half-staff on the Indiana University campus.

George Taliaferro will be remembered, in other words. And for more than just football.

A lot of the fathers of IU's current football players weren't born when George did his thing, but there are moments in America now when the long corridor of years between his time and now seems the shortest of walks. Jim Crow is dead, but the instincts that drove it keep resurfacing. If we are not who we were when George Taliaferro was a big but largely invisible man on campus, there are powerful forces who still aren't comfortable with the idea of people of color being on an equal footing. Especially in the voting booth.

And so those forces push back. On the most fraudulent of pretexts, they put up roadblocks to the franchise that erode the spirit, if not the letter, of the Voting Rights Act. And they are sometimes startlingly blatant about it in a nation that's supposed to be beyond all that.

George Taliaferro would have recognized such shenanigans. He'd seen them, and worse, before.

When he died this week at 91, all the old stories came out, and they were exactly the sort of cautionary tales we need to hear in this time of civil rights backsliding. A football player of uncommon gifts, Taliaferro was a groundbreaker on the field, leading Indiana to the only unbeaten season in its history as a three-time All-American running back. Then he became the first African-American drafted by an NFL team when the Chicago Bears took him in the 13th round of the 1949 draft.

Though he played later for four different NFL teams, he never played for the Bears. That's because he'd already given his word to the Los Angeles Dons of the All-America Football Conference, and he wouldn't go back on it.

That was perfectly in character for Taliaferro, who knew full well what it was like to live in a country that hadn't kept its word to him. As it was in so many places, segregation was in full force in Bloomington then; while Taliaferro starred on the football field for IU, he couldn't eat in Bloomington's restaurants until IU president Herman Wells threatened one of them by saying he'd make it off-limits to all IU students if it didn't relent. And if George Taliaferro wanted to go to the movies?

Well, he had to sit in the balcony, where a small metal sign reminded him of his place.

It read "Colored."

Taliaferro still had that sign when he died. As Indianapolis Star columnist Gregg Doyel put it in his profile of Taliaferro in 2015, he integrated the theater with a screwdriver, taking the sign down one afternoon when he was a senior. When he left that day, the sign went with him.

Every so often he'd pull it out, just to remind us all how it was in America then. And now that he is gone?

On Saturday, that "44" on the sleeves, and those flags at half-staff, will remind us again.

Oh, sweet malice

And now comes the part where the Blob again must admit it was wrong, and all you Sullys out there pahkin' the cah in the yahd get to hoot at me, or maybe worse because ...

Well, because it's Boston. Known for many things, not the least of which is the malice reserved for those who diss it and all those it loves.

Like, you know, those high-and-mighty punks in New York.

Not so many days have passed since the Blob took special delight in taunting Red Sox fans with visions of the Yankees knocking them out of the playoffs after a record 108-win season. It would, the Blob noted, be the most Boston thing ever. How much more angst-y could it get, in the City That Angst Never Forgets, for the team that has tortured them so cruelly over the years to do so again?

"You can almost see it happening," the Blob opined, or words to that effect.

Well, not really.

Not really, because the Red Sox closed out the Yankees in four games last night, winning the deciding game 4-3 after embarrassing them 16-1 in Game 3. So not only did the Red Sox kick the Evil Empire to the curb, they did it by winning both games in Yankee Stadium.

Delicious. But not as delicious as what they did in the visiting clubhouse when it was done.

As champagne geysered around the room, music boomed in the background. And not just any music. Oh, no. This was special music.

This was the Chairman of the Board, Frank Sinatra. Singing, you guessed it, "New York, New York" -- which plays on the sound system every game in Yankee Stadium, and which Yankees slugger Aaron Judge used to taunt the Red Sox a couple of nights before.

Owie.

Your I Love Steve Kerr moment for today

There are all sorts of reasons to admire Steve Kerr, beginning with his thoughtful and articulate insight on national issues, especially when it comes to pointing out how often Our Current Emperor is prancing about naked.

Steve Kerr doesn't give a damn if you think it's not a basketball coach's place to say such things. The opinion of trolls is so much noise to him. And that is only awesome.

So is this: His unwitting admission that preseason NBA games are an immense waste of time.

Let us take you now to the Oracle in Oakland, Calif., where Kerr's Golden State Warriors were playing the Phoenix Suns in one of those aforementioned preseason games. This being the era when even summer-league NBA games are televised, it was no doubt being televised somewhere for the benefit of those sad cases who are lacking in meaningful lives. In any case, they were playin', and Steve Kerr was coachin'.

Until, that is, he got tossed for coming onto the floor to protest a call.

At which time he said this: "I don't want to be here anyway."

How great is that? 

Because, look, bald-faced honesty is always an appealing quality, and this was bald-faced honesty at its best. I mean, it's an NBA preseason game. Unless you're roster filler trying desperately to hang onto the last seat on an NBA bench, who does want to be there?

The whole thing reminds me of a certain former high school coach in Fort Wayne, whose identity shall remain a secret. All I'll say is his teams were routinely some of the best in the Summit Athletic Conference. And so one year before the SAC Holiday Tournament, I rang him up to get a few quotes.

"So how do you see the holiday tournament, Coach?" I asked, or something to that effect.

"I couldn't care less about that thing," he replied.

Then he said he'd always hated this tournament, because it meant the kids (and the coaches) didn't get a holiday break, and they all needed a break. It was a long season. Why screw up the only pause in it by making them play a bunch of meaningless extra games?

"I don't put any emphasis on (the holiday tournament) at all," Coach Shall Go Unnamed said. "I'd rather have the break."

Needless to say, this sort of unvarnished honesty was shocking. I asked Coach if I could quote him.

"Sure, go ahead," he said.

 And so I did. It might have been the greatest quote I ever got.  The fact a lot of us in the media (or at least me) secretly hated the SAC Holiday Tournament ourselves, and for the same reasons Coach did, made it all the greater.

So good on you, Steve Kerr. And thanks for being someone who's had never had to be asked what he really thinks.

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 5

And now this week's edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the inevitable Blob feature of which critics have said "God, it's so inevitable!" and also "Like winter and President Donald 'A Day Without A Lie Is Not A Day' Trump's latest fairy tale, only worse!":

1. It's Tuesday morning and Mason Crosby just hit Wednesday with a kick.

2. Look, he did it again!

3. And again. And again. And yet again.

4.  "Good morning, ma'am, I'm Mason Crosby. Will that be whole life or term insurance today?" (Mason Crosby)

5. In other news, Drew Brees passes Peyton Manning on the all-time passing yardage list.

6. "Hey, no fair! Drew Brees just passed me!" (Peyton Manning)

7. Meanwhile, Patrick Mahomes continues to be pretty good. But just wait'll he faces (opponent name here)

8. "Damn, that kid is pretty good!" (Opponent name here)

9. Graham Gano, meet Tom Dempsey. Tom Dempsey, meet Graham Gano. Yes, 63 (yards) is a nice round number isn't it?

10. "Crap. I wish I was Graham Gano." (Mason Crosby)

Irish ascending, Part Deux

... in which the Blob officially says it's OK now to slowly -- slooooowly -- speed up the roll.

This after Notre Dame went to 6-0 with 45-23 night cruise past Virginia Tech, an easy win over a decent team in a tough place to win. Now the Irish are 6-0 for the first time since 2012, and they're up to No. 5 in the polls, and there's talk that if this keeps up they'll be in the playoff a couple of months hence.

Which is why the Blob is saying "Don't mash that throttle too hard just yet, Sparky. Take it easy."

The reason for this is not that Notre Dame isn't visibly getting better every week, especially since Brian Kelly found the right quarterback to drive the bus. It is getting visibly better. It's getting visibly better enough that it's no longer some wild Domer hallucination that the Irish could run the table, finish unbeaten and then ...

Well, what?

Win the national title?

You mean like they did in 2012?

Yes, let's return to those palmy days for a moment, if only for the object lesson they contain. Notre Dame went unbeaten that year, too, putting the Irish in the national title game against Alabama. That's when Domer Nation discovered there are various levels of unbeaten. There's the unbeaten that's not a mirage, and then there's the unbeaten that gets you crushed 42-14 by Alabama.

Notre Dame was the latter.

And now?

Well, now the Irish have six games left against opponents with an aggregate record of 17-16. The presumably toughest games (Pitt, Florida State and Syracuse, which nearly beat Clemson a couple weeks ago) are all at home. The others are Navy (which is having a down year for Navy at 2-3), Northwestern (also 2-3) and USC (3-2 but not particularly USC-ish this year.) Of those, Northwestern might be the most dangerous; the Wildcats lost at home to Akron, but beat Michigan State on the road by 10 Saturday.

So, yeah, maybe that's the one to watch out for. It's not like Northwestern hasn't spoiled things for Notre Dame before, after all.

Taken as a whole, there's just enough dangerous ground here to give pause, especially given Kelly's tendency to lose at least one game a year he shouldn't lose. Yet it's not dangerous enough ground, one suspects, to get the Irish into the playoff even if they run the table. If the four teams ahead of them -- 'Bama, Ohio State, Clemson and Georgia -- run the table themselves, or even if one of those teams loses a game, Notre Dame's strength of schedule will do it no favors.

The Irish have played one top-ten team (Stanford), and that top-ten team was so counterfeit it's no longer ranked in the top 25. Aside from that, they've played exactly one currently ranked team (Michigan at No. 12). None of their final six opponents is ranked.

So if, say, Georgia or Ohio State comes in with a loss, Notre Dame could still easily wind up on the outside looking in, unbeaten or not. This would no doubt cause a great outcry across Domer Nation.

On the other hand ...

On the other hand, it's hard to envision an unbeaten Notre Dame team getting left out of the playoff, if only for its unmatched earning power. Notre Dame in the playoff makes the playoff much more attractive to the high finance types who bankroll big-time college football. That's a primary consideration for an entity that is, as the Blob constantly reminds, a business above all else.

In which case there would be a great outcry in Georgia and Ohio, no doubt.

In any event, next the Irish get 3-3 Pitt, at home. Pitt just squeaked past Syracuse. Onward.

Mixed mayhem in Vegas

The only time I've ever been to a mixed martial "arts" card, I left before night fell.

It was an amateur outdoor show put on by God knows who, and I went for the reason I usually went to quirky events put on by God knows who in those days: Because I thought I could get a column out of it.

I did. Wrote mostly about the atmosphere, because the "art" was mostly pairs of guys with a very high tat quotient rolling around on the mat punching each other in the head. The audience, too: Very high tat quotient. Also some kinda scary folks, which is why I left before it got dark.

(This is doubtless stereotyping at its worst, I'll admit. First of all, everyone except me has tats now. CEOs have tats. My sister and my nieces have tats. This does not mean they're about to shiv me if I look at them sideways.)

(Also, I'm pretty sure all those scary people were not actually scary people. They just looked scary. And bad-ass. And possibly armed with shivs.)

Anyway ... I came away thinking not very much of mixed martial "arts." It just looked like a glorified street fight to me, only with tickets and T-shirts and other promotional gear.

I still think it looks like a glorified street fight. Even when professionals like Khabib Nurmagomedov and Conor McGregor engage in it.

That happened last night in Vegas, and people who know way more about MMA say it was a brilliant fight. McGregor you know because he fought Floyd Mayweather and he's the consummate self-promoter, yapping and yapping and yapping until you just want to tell him to shut up already (but not too loudly.) Nurmagomedov is less known but more formidable, which is why he remained unbeaten by choking out McGregor in the fourth round last night.

(Which was both a fitting end for a guy who never shuts his mouth, and more fodder for my MMA-is-just-glorified-streetfighting position. I mean, choking a guy out is the kind of thing that happens in a streetfight. Or, you know, when Dick the Bruiser and Baron von Raschke got together.)

And if you're wondering here what my initial anecdote was leading up to, other than the Blob rambling on pointlessly like always, it was what happened immediately after Nurmagomedov choked out McGregor.

He attacked McGregor's jiu-jitsu coach.

After which some of his goons (oops, sorry, "team members") jumped into the ring (oops, sorry, Octagon) and started pounding on the still-prostrate McGregor. After which McGregor's goons  started fighting with Nurmagomedov's goons and the whole thing devolved into a good old-fashioned ... well, streetfight.

Various goons were arrested. UFC president Dana White said he was going to punish Nurmagomedov bad, really bad, although secretly he probably was loving the goonery, because it likely was going to put the UFC front and center  on a day when White's sport was competing with college football and the baseball playoffs.

The whole business, it turns out, was the by-product of bad blood between Nurmagomedov and McGregor that smacks hugely of the choreographed plotlines of professional wrestling.  Not too long ago, McGregor threw a crowd-control gate at a bus containing Nurmagomedov and some of his goons, a move straight out of the WWE. In the run-up to the fight, he accused someone in Nurmagomedov's camp of being a terrorist. Hence what happened last night.

Where all that was missing were the folding chairs and heaving McGregor out of the ring/Octagon onto a strategically placed table.

Now that would have been arts-ful.

Excuse me. "Arts"-ful.

Your MVP moment for today

No, it wasn't Chris Sale and J.D. Martinez saving the Boston Red Sox from an onset of Tight Collar Disease by beating the Yankees 5-4 in Game 1 of the ALDS.

(Although, really, can you imagine how those old "Oh, my God, we're losing to the Yankees!" heebie-jeebies would have risen up had the Evil Empire beaten Boston's ace in Fenway? 'Tis Halloween-y scary to think about.)

Anyway ... no. This playoff baseball moment involves beer!

It involves a Houston Astros fan and all-around magnificent human, Eddie Flores, who promised to buy beer for everyone sitting around him if George Springer hit a homer in Game 1 of the Astros-Indians ALDS. And in the fifth inning, George Springer did! And Flores bought everyone around him in Section 103 of Minute Maid Park a beer to celebrate!

It cost Flores somewhere in the neighborhood of $500. But it was worth it!

"I just love my team, man," Flores told the Houston Chronicle. "I knew Springer was going to hit one, and I wanted everyone to know it. I called it."

He did!

Isn't playoff baseball great?

Nightmare scenario

Apparently this is the week for the Blob to torment the fan bases of its betters.

First there was the boundless fun of pointing out the way the Cubs routinely punish their fans in the manner of a sadistic child pulling the wings off flies. And now ...

It's the Red Sox!

Playing the Yankees!

For the 245th time this season or something!

Yes, all you Sullys in Beantown and wanna-be Beantowns,  it's the greatest playoff scenario possible, and also the nightmare scenario. You get the hated Yankees in the ALDS, and your team comes in having won 108 games, a franchise record. Is that not a setup for the most crushing disappointment ever? Would the Yankees ruining all that not be the wicked pissah of all wicked pissahs?

I mean, sure, you came from 3-0 down to knock out the Yanks the last time you met in the playoffs, which was 2004, the Year of Jubilee in Boston. But you were underdogs then. Now you're the doggiest of overdogs, and it's the Yankees who are the quasi-upstarts. So you know in your bones exactly what's going to happen here.

Aaron Judge will hit eleventy-hundred home runs and the Yanks will knock you out in Game 5 in Fenway.

Or, Giancarlo Stanton will hit eleventy-hundred home runs and the Yanks will knock you out in Game 5 in Fenway.

Also, one of Aaron's or Giancarlo's bombs will hit the Citgo sign and blow it up.

They will ruin the greatest Red Sox season ever. You know it's coming. You know it's coming the way you knew Bird would always find McHale open for the layup.

After all, you only won the season series by one game. And the Yankees won 100 games themselves. So it's not like it would even be a monumental upset. It would only be one of the more aggravating.

Especially when you consider who's sitting in the Yankees dugout as their manager now.

Aaron Boone. Aaron ... Bleeping ... Boone.

Pleasant dreams, Sully.

Night falls hard in Wrigley

This is why we still love this game, stubborn coot that it is these days. It is too slow for its times and too set in its ways, but when October comes and night falls fast and the long winter is one swing of the bat away, it still rivets us like nothing else.

And so to Wrigley Field last night, where the NL wildcard game lasted 13 innings and more than five hours and yet no one could bear to look away. Kyle Freeland for the Rockies and Jon Lester for the Cubs were magnificent on the bump. The Rockies got a run in the first and Freeland made it stand until Javy Baez tied it in the eighth. And then ...

And then, five more innings crept past on little cats' feet, as the evening grew late and every Cubs fan wrung his hands and perched on the edge of his seat. Finally, Tony Wolters -- a third-string catcher with a .170 batting average -- drove home the go-ahead run off a Kyle Hendricks changeup, and half an inning later it was all over.

Rockies 2, Cubs 1.

Welcome to winter, Chicago.

And such a very Cubs way for it all to end, proving once more that even in these palmy days for the formerly star-crossed northsiders, their capacity for tormenting their faithful remains robust. Could they have been anymore cruel, dangling a division title and the best record in the National League in front of Cubs Nation all summer and then snatching it away in less than 48 hours?

First they lost the tiebreaker, and the title,  in Wrigley. Then they lost the win-or-go-home playoff game, in Wrigley. And not just lost, but made their fans endure 13 unrelentingly tense innings to do it.

I mean, if they were going to lose, why not just lose 9-2 and be done with it?  Would that have been so hard?

As a matter of fact, yes.

Here's the thing: In building the Cubs into perennial contenders and World Series champs at last, Theo Epstein rebuilt the culture as well. The old Lovable Losers would have just caved early and eased Cubs Nation into a winter of shrugged shoulders and "oh, well, it's the Cubs."  But a team built to win World Series is a team built not to go gently.

And so the Cubs fought. And fought. And fought. And thus made it a much harder thing when they did go down.

"Wait 'til next year," used to be the old watchword for Cubs fans, spoken with conscious irony and a certain acceptance of inexorable fate.

Now?

Now every year is supposed to be next year. And if there is waiting, it is waiting 13 innings for the bitter end to come.

The Jittery Confines

... or in other words: What? You thought all that lovely angst had disappeared forever?

Return with us now to the good old days on the north side of Chicago, where the Cubs aren't the Cubs anymore -- they're now exactly the spoiled rich kids Cubs Nation used to despise -- but haven't lost their taste for torturing their fan base. Who takes more delight in slooooowly removing the fingernails of their faithful than the former Lovable Losers? Who more enjoys saying "Ya know, we coulda beat the Brewers yesterday and given you folks a few days to normalize your heart rates, but, nah. What fun would that have been?"

Instead, the Cubs lost to the Brewers in Game 163, which means the Brewers filched the NL Central title at the last possible second and now are the No. 1 seed in the NL playoffs. And now the Cubs host the Rockies tonight in a win-or-go-home wild-card game, which means nine more innings of excruciating torture for the residents of Wrigley Field.

(Unless, of course, the Cubs jump all over Rockies starter Kyle Freeland and win 10-2 or something. But it's the Cubs, so who really believes that's going to happen? Letting their fans off the hook has never been a thing for them.)

Anyway, it's Jon Lester on the hill for the home team, and he's 4-1 with a 1.52 ERA in five September starts. On the flip side, the Cubs touched up Freeland for three runs and six hits in seven innings the only time they squared off this year.

Then again, that was in April.

Then again again, Freeland is 9-1 with a 2.48 ERA since the All-Star break.

And then again again ... again, he's going tonight on just three days' rest.

In other words: Who knows?

That, of course, is the whole problem right now for Cubs fans. Who are saying "Let's go Cubs!" right now, same as ever.

And also "Damn them, anyway!"

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 4

And now this week's edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the unrepentant Blob feature of which critics have said "My God, he's unrepentant!" and "How arrogant of him to be so unrepentant!":

1. Mitchell Trubisky!

2. Is the greatest Bears quarterback since Gary Huff!

3. OK, so BETTER than Gary Huff!

4. Better than Bob Avellini, even!

5. Meanwhile, Patrick Mahomes.

6. Was finally human.

7. Until he wasn't.

8. In other news, the Cowboys squeaked past the Lions and are now BACK, baby! Greatest football team since the Duluth Eskimos and the Pottsville Maroons!

9. Until they're not.

10. OK, OK. So Mitchell Trubisky is better than Doug Flutie, Jack Concannon, Sid Luckman, Rex Grossman and Peter Tom Willis, too.*

(* -- But not better than Jim Miller. Let's not get carried away here.)

The faintness of hearts

Come on now, folks. It's not like gambling isn't part of the NFL's deal now, with it going to Vegas and all.

(Oh, and more on the NASH-unal FOOT-ball League tomorrow, when the Blob rolls out its weekly The NFL In So Many Words. Patience, children. Patience.)

Anyway, there was Frank Reich Sunday afternoon in sun-washed Lucas Oil Stadium, where they rolled back the roof and apparently the traditional conservatism so cherished by NFL coaches. The Colts were looking at fourth-and-4 from their own 43-yard line to keep alive a potential winning drive in overtime in a game that had looked hopeless for them for most of the afternoon. The smart move was to punt away, give the Houston Texans the long field, play for the tie.

Not how Colts coach Frank Reich rolls.

No, Frank Reich, rookie head coach, opted to go for it. Andrew Luck threw a one-hopper to Chester Rogers. The ball went over, the Texans had the short field, and they capitalized with the field goal that ended it in their favor, 37-34.

"I'll address it now: I'm not playing to tie," Reich said later. "I'll do that 10 times out of 10."

Lots of people, including some in Indianapolis media, thought those were the words of an inexperienced head coach. Those people thought what Reich did was dumb.

Those people are probably right.

But it was also magnificent.

Magnificent, because nowhere are there more faint hearts per capita than on an NFL sideline, where gambling, unlike elsewhere in the league, is not allowed. The fourth-and-1 punt at midfield is as much an NFL staple as Brady-to-Gronkowski down the seam. This is because jobs are at stake in the NFL, and they're precious few. It is also because money is at stake, especially if you're gunning for a spot in the postseason. So it just doesn't pay in most cases to cowboy up.

And when you do ... well, you get criticized. Even when it works.

That goes for rookie head coaches and also Mt. Rushmore head coaches, like Bill Belichick, who got dinged for going for it on fourth down from deep in his own territory against the Colts a few years back. The attempt failed and the Colts went on to win. And Belichick heard about it.

Of course, that was the Patriots, for whom the playoffs are always in the mix. But these Colts?

Even four games into the season, it's become apparent (if it wasn't from Day One) that this isn't a playoff team. It's a team positioning itself for the future, with a glut of promising young players, particularly on defense, who are still growing into their jobs.

So if they play it safe and get the tie, great. And if they roll the dice and lose because of it?

Well, as Reich said, at least they set the proper tone. And at this stage in this team's development, you can argue that holds at least as much value as a tie.

A 1-2-1 record vs. 1-3, after all, is pretty much the same thing right now for these Colts. Especially if you're playing the long game Reich seems to be playing.

That may be giving the man more credit than he's due. But the Blob will give it anyway.

And for cowboying up, instead of trading down.