And now ... Da Prediction

Which, yes, is a few days early, because the Blob is taking a few days off to get out of God's icebox and desecrate the game of golf in a more gentle clime.

("Wait, you play golf?" you're saying).

(No, not really. I swing the clubs. I hit the balls. Everything that happens after that is stand-up comedy).

Anyway ... this means I have to do the requisite thing for this week, which is predict what will happen Sunday in the Big Roman Numeral. The short answer is, I have no idea what will happen Sunday in the Big Roman Numeral. Well, except that everyone will hate the halftime show because everyone always hates the halftime show, on account of no one ever thinks the NFL picks the right act.

Me, I've got nothing against Maroon 5; they seem like nice boys. Some people do, though. No, I don't know why that is, either.

As to the game, like much of America I'd really prefer not to pick either team. This is because one team is the New Bleeping England Bleeping Patriots, and the other team is the Los Angeles Rams, who are owned by Stan Bleeping Kroenke. Stan Bleeping Kroenke is a loathsome human being unworthy of being in the same room with the Lombardi Trophy, let alone putting his grubby mitts on it. Not only did he abandon St. Louis to take the Rams back to a proven loser of an NFL market, he felt it necessary to crap all over the city on his way out of town.

So, you know, screw him.

Still ... someone's got to win Sunday. And the Blob has resigned itself to the fact it's going to be the New Bleeping England Bleeping Patriots again.

I have no Xs and Os or charts and graphs or deep-dive analysis to explain this. I have only my gut, which tells me the Patriots will find some way to beat a team that, on paper, is better than they are.

I think their O-line will find some way to slow down Aaron Donald and the boys and keep them out of Tom Brady's face. (Although if they do get in his face, or come within a nautical mile of it, the zebras will throw a flag. Because, Tom Brady). I think they'll find some way to exploit whatever the Rams take away by doing something else. They're a chameleon that way.

Defensively, meanwhile, I think they'll also figure out a way to rattle Jared Goff. Bill Belichick, aka Darth Hoodie, loves young quarterbacks like Jared Goff. He's the best ever at getting inside their heads. And it's not like other teams occasionally haven't been able to do that to him this season.

So, yeah, it's going to be the Patriots. Partly for the aforementioned reasons, but mainly because we're all sick to death of them and the Patriots love nothing more than rubbing our noses in that. Witness their latest sneering little slogan, "Still Here." If that's not twin middle fingers extended to America,  what is?

Can't wait for them to do it again, figuratively, after they win. By, say, 31-28 or something.

Meanwhile, enjoy the Puppy Bowl. I'm off to hit golf balls sideways.

Big top time

Look, the Blob tried. It tried to be like the good people of New Orleans, who are still in a snit over that missed call and have decided (at least in some locales) to ignore That One Game the Los Angeles Rams and New Bleeping England Bleeping Patriots are playing on Sunday.

Seriously. A few bars in NOLA are actually refusing to air the game at all, instead opting to show the 2010 Super Bowl that was, of course, won by the Saints.

Well, the Blob would like to do that, too. Instead of weighing in on the Super Bowl, it would prefer handicapping the Puppy Bowl. Or rambling on about what a television pinnacle "Friday Night Lights" was. Or popping in "North Dallas Forty" just for the scene where Nick Nolte pees in the whirlpool while drinking a morning beer.

Now that says football to me, by God.

But ... no. The Blob has an obligation, and that obligation is to talk about That One Game. Especially because last night was the event that's pretty much become emblematic of the entire Super Bowl hypefest -- what we used to call Media Day, and what they now call Opening Night.

This is when they bring select players from both teams onto the field, stick them in little booths and let the media interrogate them. Or should I say "the media."

That's because it's not a night for people who actually work the beat. It's for circus clowns like the guy from Telemundo who went around interviewing players via sock puppet one year. Or the guy from Nickelodeon dressed as a superhero; I can't recall his name, nor do I want to. Or the guy who, on Media Day in 2007, asked Bears tight end Desmond Clark what kind of football player Chewbacca would be.

Or Downtown Julie Brown. Or Gilbert Gottfried, aka the Most Annoying Person On The Planet.

Now, if you're asking at this point how any of these people got credentials ... well, pretty much anyone apparently can get a credential to the Super Bowl if he or she has a schtick. You don't have to be an actual media person. In fact I suspect the NFL delights in handing out credentials to the circus clowns, because above all else the Super Bowl is a circus.

And so last night we got the usual goofiness, Serious Questions Being Asked By Serious People. Someone asked Julian Edelman about his Grizzly Adams beard. Someone asked Gronk if he knew where he was. Someone gave an embroidered pillow to Tom Brady, and a poncho with Bill Belichick's face on it to Bill Belichick.

This prompted perhaps the only actual news of the night: Belichick actually smiled and cracked a joke.

This was much more newsworthy than what happened in 2012, when the New Bleeping England Bleeping Patriots played the Giants in Indy. On Media Day, some radio goober waved a red plastic tricorn hat at Belichick and asked if he'd put it on for a photo op.

"No, I'm not gonna do that," Belichick growled.

Ah. Reality at last.

Your trivia item for today

In which the Blob functions as a quasi-news source and passes along the score of the Pro Bowl, aka the Hey, Not So Hard, Bro Bowl, aka the Tag You're It Bowl:

The score down there in rainy Orlando was AFC 26, NFC 7.

Patrick Mahomes of the Chiefs was the offensive MVP and Jamal Adams of the Jets was the defensive MVP -- although not for what he should have won for, which was taking down the Patriots mascot, Two If By Sea Revere (OK, so his name is really Pat the Patriot).

The Blob informs you of all this as a public service. And you know why?

Because someday it will be on a test. Or, even better, someday it will win you a bar bet when someone says "OK, wise guy, what was the score of the 2019 Pro Bowl?"

You're welcome.

Hoosier waning

Two days later, and my answer remains the same, Blobophiles: No, I don't know what's wrong with your Indiana Hoosiers.

It's a bomb crater down there in Bloomington now, after Michigan went off on them in a 23-point blowout. That's two losses in their last two games in Assembly Hall by a combined 38 points. They may have turned the place into a shrine to Indiana basketball with all the statuary and what-not, but it's a shrine that inspires no reverence anymore. Or awe, or fear.

Assembly Hall?

Just another shrine to past glories now, where opponents come to expose the pale imitation of those glories, and pick up an easy road W.

That this should not be keeps getting curiouser and curiouser, as the Hoosier free fall extends to six straight losses now. This is not a team, on paper, that should be losing six straight or getting blown out by 23 at home by anyone. It's not a team, on paper, that should be down 17-0 in their own previously inviolable fortress in a relative eyeblink, and that should be this inept in virtually every phase of the game.

To summarize: They can't shoot the 3. They can't defend the 3. They can't defend in general, nor make any attempt in-game to adjust to whatever it is by which they're getting beat. And, as their own head coach observed after the Michigan debacle, they're soft as Charmin physically and mentally.

That a good deal of this is on the aforementioned head coach is evident, and for that the perpetually displeased Hoosier Nation can be forgiven for the creeping fear that Archie Miller might be Tom Crean 2.0. That Tom Crean 1.0 deserved far more credit from the Perpetually Displeased than he ever got is a moot point. The point is, the Perpetually Displeased are growing displeased yet again with an IU basketball coach.

So what's going on?

Well, not even the main characters seem to know. Miller seems utterly perplexed. Juwan Morgan -- the only player on the floor who's consistently battling and producing right now -- talked post-Michigan about how they have to fight, they have to punch back, and that everyone in the IU locker room is embarrassed by how they're playing.

Which begs the obvious question: Then why don't they do something about it?

Mystery upon mystery. About the only thing that seems obvious at the moment is that teams have figured out how to defend Indiana in general, and alleged lottery pick Romeo Langford in particular.

 Earlier in the season, Langford was consistently getting to the rim and finishing, which is his signature suit. Now opponents are taking that away by putting bigger people on him and clogging the driving lanes, recognizing that the weakest part of his game (and Indiana's) is shooting. And so he's become less and less effective, because no one around him and Morgan are stepping up to knock down shots and open things up for them.

In short: The Hoosiers can't shoot. And opponents are recognizing that and taking advantage of it.

The one sunbeam in this is that shooting tends be cyclical, and feeds on confidence. No one on the Indiana has any confidence right now that when they launch it's going to find a home. That can change, almost literally, as soon as someone splashes two or three in a row. And maybe that happens against Rutgers, the weakest link in the Big Ten.

If not ...

If not, then they get Michigan State. And the death spiral continues.

Today in mascots

Faithful* readers of the Blob have long known that its affinity for mascot-related mayhem is paramount. And so we bring you this from the Pro Bowl yesterday, which will likely be the highlight of the event better known as the Try Not To Get Hurt And Mess Up Your Next Contract Extension Bowl.

(*Editor's note: The readers of the Blob object to this characterization. They say the word "faithful" should be replaced with "accidentally-clicking-on readers of the Blob." Whatever.)

Anyway ... yes, that is Jets DB Jamal Adams taking down the New England Patriots' mascot, Pat the Patriot (or Minuteman Merle or Doofus Revere or whatever else you want to the call him.) Then he joked that he'd laid such a hit on Pat/Merle/Doofus that the poor guy had to go to the mascot hospital. This turned out not to be true; apparently mascots at the Pro Bowl never get hit hard enough to get hurt, either.

In any case, it was the best takedown of a mascot since the Oregon Duck beat the crap out of the Houston Cougar. So, you know, kudos.

Time and perspective

They're going to get in, eventually. Cooperstown might as well start crafting the plaques now.

Raise a glass now to the 2019 baseball Hall of Fame class, led by the greatest reliever of all time, Mariano Rivera, who sank a dozen pro forma columns when he became the only player in the Hall's history to be unanimously inducted. So, no need for the standard This Guy Should Lose His Vote For Not Voting For (Inductee Name Here) outrage.

Lost in the deserved celebrating of Rivera and the others, however, was this little nugget: Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens both pulled just shy of 60 percent in the voting. Seventy-five gets you in.

So, yes, they're going to get in. And should.

This is because a Hall of Fame without one of the top five players of all time and the greatest pitcher of his generation is a Hall of Fame made of tin, and that's all there is to it. And the further time takes us from the Steroids Era, the more evident that becomes.

This is what time does, after all. It lends perspective. Widens the lens. Enables us to see what we couldn't see before, because we were too close to it and unable to see the forest for the trees, literally as well as figuratively.

In 2019, therefore, that both Bonds and Clemens likely used performance-enhancing drugs during the Steroids Era makes them products of their time as much as anything else. If they were juiced, so were a lot of guys; the late Ken Caminiti, himself a juicer, estimated as much as 80 percent of MLB was ingesting or injecting some sort of magic beans. That might be a tad high, but it's probably in the general vicinity.

Yes, it was a cheat. Yes, it rendered a lot of their numbers artificial. But the Hall is full of cheaters -- how many players in the '60s, '70s and '80s were gobbling amphetamines like M&Ms to get them through day games after night games? -- and baseball's numbers have always been subject to distortion. How many home runs does Babe Ruth hit if he'd been playing against more than just white guys?  How many immortals' numbers would have been different if they'd had to play night games? Would Christy Mathewson or Walter Johnson had won as many games if they'd played in an era when the ball was livelier and there was such a thing as middle and long relief?

Something to think about.

And in Bonds' and Clemens' cases, there is this: Because it's fairly well documented exactly when they allegedly began juicing, we can say for a certainty that both were already Hall of Famers before they so much as touched a needle or a pill or the Cream or the Clear. So the point of keeping them out because of that is moot.

And as the Blob has said before, it's an easy fix. If it's such a moral dilemma, you simply insert a line onto each of their plaques: "Some of his numbers were accrued during what is known as the Steroids Era."

So much for the dilemma.

And, sooner than we probably think, so much for having to write all this again.

Let the litigation begin

Of course everyone in New Orleans Saints country has his shorts in a twist. If I were one of the folks who spelled "Go" with an "e-a-u-x," I'd have my shorts in a twist, too.

By now, after all, the egregious zebra fail in the NFC championship has been replayed more than the Zapruder film. This will happen when what we're seeing is the worst non-call in NFL playoff history. I mean, not only was it pass interference, it was helmet-to-helmet pass interference. Stripes could have thrown two flags, not just one.

Instead, as everyone knows, they threw none. And outrage spread across the land.

Louisiana's governor sent a letter of protest to the NFL. A Louisiana businessman put up billboards whose essential message was "We wuz robbed." And, because we're that kind of country, the lawyers have gotten involved.

At least two lawsuits have been filed on behalf of Saints fans who, essentially, want a do-over. They want NFL commissioner Roger Goodell to rule that the final 1:49 of regulation be replayed. I have every confidence this will be given the serious consideration it deserves by Goodell and the courts.

Which is to say, it may be awhile before they stop laughing.

Look. What happened to the Saints was an abomination. They got royally screwed. But they also had a 13-0 lead at home and then got outscored 26-10 across the last three quarters and overtime. And they got the ball first in OT.

In other words ... they blew it. The horrendous non-call clearly didn't help, but it never should have mattered.

And so that's that. Life isn't fair, and sports isn't fair, either, sometimes.

I should know. My baseball team, the relentlessly crummy Pittsburgh Pirates, have mostly sucked eggs for the last quarter century.

Tell me how that's fair.

Tyranny of the moment

We live in reactionary times, informed and shaped by the Head Reactionary himself. Snap judgments are our thing. Spin gets swallowed, only to be replaced by reverse spin, which we then swallow whole with equal credulity.

And, no, I'm not talking about that business in D.C. with the kids in the MAGA hats -- who, if perhaps not entirely the baying mob of racists that snippet of video seemed to portray, were hardly prayerful cherubs being menaced by one mean Native American senior citizen. Or so the spin being sold us now would have us believe.

No. I'm talking about football, dammit.

Specifically, I'm talking about the wholly unjust thing that happened to the Kansas City Chiefs in the AFC title game, which they lost in overtime to the Patriots because of an unfair coin toss. The coin toss, see, was won by the Patriots. Tom Brady then did his usual Tom Brady things, marching the Pats right down the field to the winning touchdown.

People were outraged by this. (Because that, too, is what we do these days.) They said it wasn't fair that Chiefs wunderkind Pat Mahomes never got to touch the football. They said the Chiefs should have had a shot at answering, and because he didn't the overtime rules needed to be changed.

And clang went the cell door, imprisoning everyone in the moment again.

I say this because over in the NFC, the Saints and Rams went into overtime, too. The Saints got the ball first. They had the same chance as the Patriots to end it and go riding off to the Big Roman Numeral. Instead, Drew Brees threw an interception, and the Rams won it with a 57-yard field goal.

I'm just blue-skying here. But why do I think if Brees had, in fact, driven the Saints to the winning score like Brady did, no one would be clamoring for the rule to be changed?

The Blob holds a candle to no one in its weariness with the Patriots. But let's be honest: If the roles were reversed and the Chiefs had won the overtime coin flip and driven for the wining touchdown, would anyone outside of New England be talking about how unfair it was that Brady didn't get to touch the football?

Of course they wouldn't.

Truth is, 90 percent of this clamor to change what no one has clamored to change before is because it was the Patriots. And this, again, is coming from someone who holds no brief for Darth Hoodie and his occasionally shady legions. I'm as sick to death of them as y'all are. I'm banging my head against the wall just as hard at the thought of having to spend two more weeks, and yet another Super Bowl, hearing about Bill Bleeping Belichick and Tom Bleeping Brady and the New Bleeping England Bleeping Patriots.

As my inner teenager is saying right now: Borrrrr-ing.

That said, in both the NFC and AFC games, the overtime rules worked the way they're supposed to. And there's nothing inherently unfair about that. Kansas City had its chance to get Mahomes on the field for the win; it didn't even have to stop the Patriots from scoring to do so. All the Chiefs' defense had to do was keep them out of the end zone, the way it kept the Colts out of the end zone so many times in the divisional game.

It couldn't. Moreover, if Dee Ford doesn't line up offside in regulation, the overtime rules never even come into play. The interception on the play would have stood and the game would have been over.

I don't know how you blame the overtime rules for that. I don't know how you blame them for the Chiefs not being able to make a stop -- or even a quasi-stop -- when their entire season depended on it.

Don't like the overtime rules?

"D" up, then. It really is that simple.  

Hoosier eclipse

The moon didn't exactly turn Gouda crimson last night during the Blood Moon Wolfman Jack Eclipse (or something like that.) It turned more the color of rust, which was still plenty breathtaking for those who ventured out into God's icebox to give it a look.

So I guess the analogy isn't exact between the not-quite-crimson eclipse and the ongoing eclipse of the cream-and-crimson.

That would be your Indiana Hoosiers, currently wallowing around in a four-game losing streak that has been all kinds of butt-ugly. The firearchiemiller.com domain hasn't gone viral yet, but the usual natives are getting restless in the usual way. Even some of the media has become captives of the moment, floating suggestions that Miller may have lost his basketball team.

I'm not convinced the apocalypse is that imminent. But you lose by 15 at home to Nebraska (without putting up a fight), and then by 15 in Mackey Arena to your archrival (without putting up very much of a fight), these things will happen.

It's hard not to fear the worst when a team looks as lost as the Hoosiers did in West Lafayette on Saturday, and hated Purdue looked exactly the opposite. The Boilermakers, who continue to look more coherent with every game,  had a plan and mostly executed it. But Indiana had no plan and made no adjustments to Purdue's, and couldn't even complete the simplest of basketball tasks.

Which is to say, the Hoosiers missed 11 of their 18 free throws.

There's no excusing this when you're a team with as much high-end talent as Indiana has. The current narrative that says IU is too much a two-man team (or three, counting Robert Phinisee) ignores the fact that Romeo Langford and Juwan Morgan are hardly all the Hoosiers have. This is not Romeo and Juwan and Them Others. There is talent all up and down the roster. It's not that they can't perform, it's that they aren't doing it.

Which, yes, goes to coaching. Miller may yet be exactly what Indiana needs, but a season-and-a-half in he's yet to put his full imprint on a team that's not entirely his yet. And right now it shows.

On Saturday, Matt Painter put exactly the right guy (Nojel Eastern) on Langford, and Eastern (plus foul trouble) effectively took Langford out of the game. At the other end, meanwhile, freshman Trevion Williams continued to get better and better on the low blocks, Painter continues to develop Aaron Wheeler and Evan Boudreaux and Grady Eifert into viable complements to Carsen Edwards -- and, on Saturday, 7-3 Matt Haarms exploited Indiana's lack of recognition with one pick-and-roll cut to the basket after another.

Indiana never adjusted to any of it, or even appeared to try. That, of course, goes to coaching. And so if Hoosier Nation is unhappy with Miller right now, they have reason to be.

The good news?

The good news, for Miller and the faithful, is Indiana gets Northwestern next. And Northwestern has lost two of its last three games by double digits, beating only bottom feeder Rutgers.

So, yes, the Blob is saying there's a chance.

That this team should be better than just having a chance, of course, is the problem.  

Same stuff. Different Supe.

Well. At least you've still got the Puppy Bowl, non-Patriot Nation.

Or a good book (The Blob can recommend a few.)

There's a couple decent movies out there. Netflix always has something going. And, of course, you can probably find a few "Law & Order: SVU" reruns knocking about, because Benson and Stabler are eternal, hallelujah world without end, and Munch and Fin, too.

Otherwise ...

Well, otherwise, Super Bowl Sunday will give us a team that probably shouldn't be there (the Rams) vs. a team that's there every freaking bleeping-bleep year (the Patriots.) So here come two more weeks of numbing repetition -- Tom-Brady-is-the-GOAT, the Genius Of Bill Belichick, Isn't Robert Kraft A Fine Man, blah-blah-blah -- plus the compliant media trying desperately to make Los Angeles look like the pro football town it isn't.

Or the Super Bowl participant it shouldn't be, frankly. Although it bears mentioning the Rams dominated the NFC title game for most of the last three quarters and overtime -- they outscored the Saints 26-10 in that span -- ultimately the MVPs were the zebras, who blew that obvious pass interference at the end of regulation which would have left the Saints with a chip-shot field goal to win.

Instead, the Saints won the toss in OT, Drew Brees threw a pick on a ball he probably should have eaten, and the Rams cashed their own field goal for the win. And because this is that kind of time in America, out came the Grassy Knoll People, sensing some sinister plot on the part of the NFL brass to get the L.A. market into the Big Roman Numeral.

This is, of course, patently absurd. The first rule of any successful con, after all, is to make sure the mark doesn't know he's being conned. Obviously blowing an obvious call hardly meets that standard. So if this was some sort of dark conspiracy, it was an extremely clumsy one.

No, this was just more bad officiating, a season-long plague in the NFL. The focus on just two games Sunday only made that plague more obvious; in addition to the non-call in the NF game, there was the equally ridiculous roughing the passer call against Chris Jones of the Chiefs in the AFC game, and a number of other examples, too, most of them having to do with pass interference (or not.)

In any case, this is what we're left with two weeks from now. The Blob can't speak for the rest of you, but I know what I'll be doing when Tom Brady is hoisting the Lombardi Trophy again, as seems perfectly inevitable now.

I'll be thinking, "Damn, Stabler really went rogue that time."

Your fake Rodney Dangerfield moment for today

Well, well, well. I wondered when this little critter was going to show up.

Hey, look, folks! It's the We Don't Get No Respect card!

Because, you know, come Sunday afternoon in the arctic wastes of Arrowhead Stadium, the Chiefs are going to destroy the New England Patriots. The final score will be, like, eleventy-hundred to zero. Patrick Mahomes will throw 10 touchdown passes. Chris "The Human Eraser" Jones will swat a dozen Tom Brady passes into oblivion. The rest of the Chiefs defense will turn Gronk 'n' them into so many Tide pods.

Or, you know, so everyone allegedly thinks, according to the Patriots.

Here's a quote this week from Tom Brady, to Tracy Wolfson of CBS: “It’ll be a good game, they’re a good team. We played them earlier this year and I know everyone thinks we suck and  ..."

OK. You can stop right there.

"Everyone thinks we suck"?

OK, Tommy. Whatever you say, fella.

Look. I know the We Don't Get No Respect card -- variously known as the Nobody Believes In Us card, the No One Gives Us A Chance card and the Everyone's Overlooking Us card -- is a staple when it comes to locker room motivation. That it's also a frequently laughable staple is an equal staple.

Especially in this case.

I mean ... the Patriots, of all people, trying to convince themselves they're some forlorn, forgotten underdog?

Please. Puh-leeze.

Forget the fact that the Patriots, of all people, should be able to come up with a more imaginative motivational stratagem than this tired old play. They're supposed to be the smart ones, right? The franchise that's got it all figured out?

So this is all they can come up with?

This is not just laughable, it's completely ludicrous. Really? No one gives the franchise that's been to eight straight conference championship games a chance? Everyone thinks they suck?

Sorry, but no one thinks they suck. No one is overlooking them. Everyone, rather, expects the game in Arrowhead to go right to the wire -- and in fact may actually favor the Patriots given what the weather is supposed to be.

But why let the facts get in the way of a good persecution complex?

A more modest suggestion than it sounds

Likely you've heard of that absolute load playing basketball for Duke this season, a 280-pound freshman named Zion Williamson who throws down armloads of highlight-reel dunks and is almost certain to be the top pick in June's NBA draft.

The kid's as sure a thing as there is an unsure world. In fact the only reason he's in Durham at all, rather than already throwing down armloads of highlight-reel dunks for the Knicks or someone, is because of the NBA's benighted 19-year-old rule.

In other words, Duke's just a bus stop for him. It's not like he's actually a college student or anything.

Which brings us to Monday night, when Williamson went for a  "career" high of 35 points and took 10 boards in Duke's upset loss at home to Syracuse. The next day, NBA Hall of Famer Scottie Pippen made a radical suggestion that actually isn't radical at all.

He said it was time for Williamson to protect the assets -- i.e., stop playing and begin preparing for the draft. Why continue playing and risk an injury that could wind up costing him dearly in June?

The back-in-the-day crowd would no doubt immediately react with horror at such a notion, and on its face it does sound ludicrous. Why come to Duke at all if you're going to bail halfway through the season?

But like a lot of things, the more you think about it the less ludicrous it sounds.

First of all, the question could just as easily be "Why come to Duke at all if you're going to bail after one season?" And we all know the answer: Because guys like Williamson have to hang out somewhere until they turn 19.

And so they go to Duke or Kentucky or Kansas or wherever as, essentially, rentals. No matter how Mike Kryzyzewski tries to frame it, that's what Williamson and R.J. Barrett and Tre Jones (who's already hurt, by the way) are. They're not college students in any real sense. They're not even Blue Devils, really. Their connection to Duke is tenuous at best.

Dirty little not-so-secret: One-and-dones sometimes aren't even going to class during the spring semester. To maintain eligibility, they're only required to do so for the fall semester. So the name on the front of the basketball jersey is mere camouflage.

It's an obvious charade, a shabby deal whose terms are implicitly understood by both the player and the coach. The player gets somewhere to play basketball and keep his skills sharp for one winter. The coach and his school maybe get a deep NCAA Tournament run out of it, which of course translates to a fatter bottom line.

Neither can possibly be happy about it. But it's the game the NBA is forcing them to play, and so they play it.

All Pippen suggested the other day was that Williamson simply not play it anymore.

Can't say I disagree.

The relentless march of cluelessness

Maybe they'll all get it, someday. Maybe. When they play the Winter Classic on the River Styx, perhaps.

Maybe then the wider world will get that "no" does, in fact mean "no" ... and that she wasn't asking for it, going up to his room so late Dressed Like That ... and that she didn't report it not because it didn't happen but because she was A) ashamed; B) needed the job; C) trying to convince herself it really didn't happen.

Maybe the wider world will listen then, instead of going through the motions of doing so. Maybe it will pay more than lip service to the idea that sexual assault is, in fact, something to be taken seriously. Maybe the wider world actually will take it seriously instead of saying just enough to take the heat off -- because, after all, the accuser is a mere student-athlete, and the accused is a Widely Respected Person In His Field.

And you know what else?

Maybe -- maybe -- the bureaucrats charged with making things right will not grow resentful of having to do so, and make brainless pronouncements about how the bureaucrats' victims kind of enjoy the notoriety of being victims.

Which brings us to John Engler up there at Michigan State, who suggested pretty much that the other day, and was forced to resign as MSU's interim president because of it.

And so it goes, and so it goes, as Kurt Vonnegut used to say. How many times does the Blob have to say "These people just don't get it," because, well, these people just don't get it? Worlds will collide and eons spin past and the sun will go supernova, and there will still be a multitude of John Englers not getting it.

Penn State begets Baylor begets Michigan State, all trying to one-up each other in the race for the cluelessness national championship. The Blob would like to believe what happened at those places is not as institutional as it appears, the inevitable result of collisions between moneyed interests (i.e., big-time college athletics) and anything that threatens those interests. But it certainly looks that way.

To be sure, the institutions all say (and occasionally do)  the right things after the fact. The trick is to get them to do it before the warrants and the lawsuits and the TV cameras descend on their campuses. The trick is to get them to actually take seriously what they all say they take seriously -- again, only after the fact.

The Blob is not optimistic about that happening any time soon. Because if the #MeToo movement represents a seismic shift in the sexual assault landscape, the pushback has been both inevitable and  predictable.

Witness the vilification, from the White House on down, of Brett Kavanaugh's primary accuser, the same old narratives being trotted out in the same old vicious way. Witness Engler's comments and, before them, the bitter whining of his predecessor, Lou Anna Simon -- who, upon her well-deserved exit, tried to paint herself as some sort of victim  after years of enabling a sexual predator.

Let's face it. We live in #MeToo nation, but we also live in a nation where a razor ad encouraging men to be their best selves is somehow regarded as "controversial." And only because it ignited the same old tired blowback from the same old tired suspects.

I'd hate to think John Engler is more in tune with the national zeitgeist than the courageous gymnasts who came forward to bring down Larry Nassar. But sometimes I wonder.

Shield power

Truth bomb for you this morning, as a 5-foot-9 pipsqueak considers a life among giants: Professional football will break you.

It is, in fact, designed to break you.

Its appeal, and much of the gravitational pull for those who play it, is in a great sense predicated on the inevitability of that breakage. The entire edifice of the National Football League -- its operational business model -- is constructed on that inevitability, on the premise that the game wears out its human assets at an alarming rate, and thus those assets must be constantly replenished.

Which brings us back to the 5-9 pipsqueak.

His name is Kyler Murray, and he's not just any 5-9 pipsqueak. He just won the Heisman Trophy, for one thing, as the quarterback of the Oklahoma Sooners. He's a dazzling athlete. And he's projected as a first-round draft pick in next April's NFL draft.

Which is why he's decided to enter that draft. Even though, unlike many of his peers, he's got other options.

For Murray, the main option is baseball, in which he also dazzles. It's why the Oakland Athletics made him the ninth overall pick in last June's draft. It's why they've signed him to a $5 million contract.

On the other hand ... it's only baseball.

This will not sit well with the generation who still regards it as the National Pastime, swaddled in myth and legend and unassailable history. It is not, of course. That is football now. That has been football for some span of years.

And so the NFL, aka the Shield, remains unsurpassed in its attraction to young men like Kyler Murray, who was raised swaddled in all of its myths and legends just as surely as his grandfather was with baseball's. The game will break you, it's designed to break you, and yet there will always be Kyler Murrays willing to be broken. It's why the pearl-clutchers predicting doom for football are so utterly wrong; if players will in the future not play it as long as they do now, they will still play it.

Even when it makes as little sense as it does in Murray's case.

No quarterback as tiny as Murray has played in the NFL since Doug Flutie three decades ago, and that was before football became the game it is today. A good case in point is Lamar Jackson, another Heisman winner, another smallish guy the draft gurus all said should choose another position. He proved them wrong this season, but the jury is still well out on whether or not, at 6-2 and 212 pounds, he'll be able to survive running as much as he runs right now.

Murray is a runner/passer cut from much the same mold. With, of course, one glaring difference:

At 5-9 and 194, he's almost half-a-foot shorter and almost 20 pounds lighter than Jackson.

And yet ... the Shield casts its spell. And so Murray will throw in his lot next April, even though the actuarial tables suggest he'd have a much longer career and make much more money long-term playing baseball.

Eventually, he may realize that, and come back to the baseball fold, if only for the economics. Other baseball/football standouts have done that. But just the fact he's willing to give the NFL a shot speaks volumes about football's place in the American sporting consciousness.

And baseball's as well.     

Happy meals for the (White) House!

Look, the Blob has nothing against Big Macs. Or fries. Or pizza. I mean, there's a reason it's called the Blob.

And so Our Only Available President rolling out the fast-food carpet for Clemson's national champion football team didn't exactly strike the Blob dumb with horror, as daily an occurrence as that generally is  with OOAP's runaway clown car of an administration. They're college kids. They're conversant with drive-thrus. So why not?

But there's a reason why the intersection of sports and politicians is almost always an awkward one.  And this overshot awkward and proceeded right to contemptible.

Serving college kids fast food is one thing, see. Using them as props in a transparently cheap political stunt is quite another.

And so OOAP served Big Macs and fries not as a gesture of cheerful generosity to Clemson's nation champs, but to show the world that, by golly, we Republicans are Doing Our Austere Bit during the shutdown our president precipitated.  Look! We're eating Quarter Pounders, not caviar! And all because WE BELIEVE IT'S VITAL TO ADDRESS BORDER SECURITY!

Which is exactly what OOAP managed to sneak in there while honoring Clemson's football players.

This undoubtedly played well with OOAP's base, which has never been very good at seeing through even his most painfully obvious stratagems. And it might have played well with quite a few of the Clemsons, football people being the demographic they sometimes seems to be.

But you have to wonder if at a least few eyebrows went to full staff when OOAP launched into his mini-sermon about his latest fetish object, The Wall That Will Solve Our Largely Imaginary Border  Crisis. There have to have been a least a couple players who were thinking, "Again with the stupid wall? The hell, man?"

Of course, that was an awesome spread of Big Macs OOAP laid out. So maybe not.

We can hope, though.  

A brief pause for states' (naming) rights

And now this welcome news from the Great Plains, where North and South Dakota have finally admitted what the rest of the country has known forever: That they are essentially the same windswept expanse of nothing.

And so, displaying the thriftiness that was a hallmark of those who decided Oregon was too far so "let's just stop here in this windswept expanse of nothing," their descendants are circulating a petition. It asks that North and South Dakota be combined into a single entity called "MegaKota."

Now, this has nothing in particular to do with Sportsball World, or why Philip Rivers doesn't just stay home the next time he's forced to play the Patriots in the playoffs. But it does afford the Blob another opportunity to indulge one of its favorite pastimes -- i.e., making fun of states that are even more boring than Indiana.

In this particular instance, it affords the Blob the opportunity to come up with a more imaginative name than "MegaKota." (A less imaginative name, of course, would be a challenge as well.) Oh, the possibilities ...

1. Can'tFeelMyFeeta-Kota.

(Sample accompanying state motto: "Come for the frostbite, stay for the hypothermia.")

2. We'veGotMt.RushmoreAndYouDon'ta-Kota.

(Sample motto: "And a big-ass building made of corn, too! So there!")

3.  SteveBuscemiBuriedThatMoneySomewhereAroundHerea-Kota.

(Sample motto: "You've seen 'Fargo', right? Think they ever made a flick that great about Indiana? And no fair bringing up 'Hoosiers'.")

4. WeHaveBombersSoWatchTheWindchillJokesa-Kota

(Sample motto: "Home of Minot Air Force Base. For all your nuclear winter needs.")

5.  NoPierreIsNotTheNameOfTheGovernor'sDoga-Kota.

(Sample motto: "Yes, it's a real city! No, we don't know who 'Pierre' is!")

And last but not least ...

6. TreesAreOverrateda-Kota.

(Sample motto: "If you want trees, why don't you move to Indiana?  I'm sure you and Norman Dale will be quite happy there!")

Deja Patriot vu

Don't worry about it, Patrick Mahomes. If you mess this up, we lose.

("Hey, that's my line!" -- Ty Webb)

("You can do it! I did!" -- Danny Noonan)

("Wanna borrow Billy Baroo? He never misses!" -- Judge Smails)

And, OK, so enough "Caddyshack." Besides, Patrick Mahomes, the Blob thinks you get the general drift.

If you mess this up ... America gets the Patriots in the Super Bowl again.

Let's be crystal about this: Nobody wants to see the Patriots in the Super Bowl again. Nobody. OK, so all the Sullys in Boston do, and probably most of the people in New England, but, come on, they don't count. Besides, they got the Red Sox last fall. They don't need this, too.

After all, it's not like the Patriots haven't been in the Super Bowl eleventy hundred times already in this millennium. America needs fresh meat. The Patriots are like your Thanksgiving turkey on Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend: Picked over, re-purposed, nothing left but a couple nubs of dark meat. What's left of that storyline?

Tom Brady's weird eating habits and endless grudge-holding over the sixth-round thing?

Done.

Bill Belichick cracking a smile once a century?

Done.

Rob Gronkowski's goofiness? Julian "I Was A College Quarterback" Edelman? Josh "Nah, I'm Good" McDaniel? Spygate? Deflategate? Robert Kraft Is The Greatest Owner In Professional Sports And Here's Why?

Done, done, done-done-done-done. Done to death. Done to the point where, if you were an enterprising sports journalist person looking to carve out more time for partying during Super Bowl week, you could just recycle everything you wrote a year ago, knowing no one would notice.

Sorry, but no. Enough of these guys. America wants you, Patrick Mahomes.  America wants you and Tyreek Hill and Travis Kelce and those two running backs named Williams and Chris Jones, the greatest shot-blocker since Manute Bol.

It wants someone to bring Hank Stram back from the dead and ask him what the deal was with that prep-school blazer he wore in Super Bowl IV. It wants to look up Len Dawson and ask him what Hank meant when he said they should matriculate the ball down the field. It wants to know whatever became of Willie Lanier and Mike Garrett and Otis Taylor and Bobby Bell, and to remind Fred "The Hammer" Williamson how he got knocked cold in Super Bowl I.

And how about Fred Arbanas, the tight end who was blind in one eye? Now there's a storyline for you.

America  needs all of this, Patrick Mahomes. It needs the Chiefs vs. the Saints or the Rams, because the Saints haven't been to the Super Bowl in eight years and the Rams haven't been there since Ricky Proehl and Isaac Bruce were catching passes from Kurt Warner.

So do it, Patrick Mahomes. You've got Tyreek and Travis and those two Williams guys going for you. You've got Arrowhead Stadium, the loudest barn in pro football. You've got the Patriots' 3-5 record on the road in the playoffs. You've got everything you need.

Do it for us, Patrick. Do it for America.

Make the Super Bowl great again.

Or at least not redundant.

Power failure

Well, of course, Chiefs 31, Colts 13. It's the No Figuring League, remember?

And so who figures the hottest team in pro football would go out to Arrowhead's winter wonderland and forget how to play football?

And who figures a third-string running back (Damien Williams) would be the first RB this season to gash the Colts' vibrant young defense for 100-plus yards?

And who figures that stout Colts offensive line -- which has kept Andrew Luck off his back and made a luxury-class back out of Marlon Mack --  would be bested by the  worst defense statistically in the NFL?

Against that allegedly lame Kansas City D, the Colts failed to scratch out so much as a first down until the last 90 seconds of the first half. The allegedly lame D sacked Luck three times and knocked down five of his throws at the line of scrimmage. The Allegedly Lame D (because this should be its official title now) never gave Mack a sniff until garbage time; midway through the fourth quarter, he'd scratched out just 15 yards against a defense the Colts were supposed to run on all day.

You sensed this wasn't going to be last week on the first play of the game, when Mack got taken down in the backfield for a loss. Fast forward to the final seconds of the half, when the Colts finally put together a drive and out came the most prolific placekicker of all time to put three points on the board from the 13-yard line.

Adam Vinatieri chimed the left upright instead. On a 23-yard attempt. When do you suppose was the last time he missed a 23-yarder?

Ever?

And then, later on, to flat-out whiff on an extra point?

If there was a signature image for this day, it was the white-bearded Vinatieri sitting on the bench as the final seconds ran out, wearing the thousand-yard stare of the shell-shocked.  Everyone figured this would be a tough go, beating Patrick Mahomes and Co. in the loudest stadium in pro football. No one could have guessed the Colts, from Vinatieri to Luck to the heralded O-line to, well, pretty much everyone, would play such horrendously addled football after winning 10 of their last 11 games.

Vinatieri missing kicks he never misses. Luck missing throws, and sometimes reads, he never misses. Kansas City breezing through the Colts' D like a commuter through a turnstile early on, going 90 yards in just five plays on its first scoring drive and 70 yards in eight plays on its second.

Everyone sort of knew the Chiefs would move the football, because there's no one on whom they haven't moved the football this season. Hardly anyone would have guessed they'd have done so at a dead sprint, however.

But it was that kind of day, and if there was any consolation in it, it's that this young football team is far ahead of curve projected for it, and positioned to push that curve even further moving forward. And maybe this lost snowy afternoon in Arrowhead will serve as a barometer for what that process involves.

Until then, we are left with one final inexplicable image of an inexplicable day: The clock running down, the Colts in striking distance of the end zone for a face-saving, if meaningless, score, and ... did we mention the clock running down?

From 14 seconds to 13 seconds to 12. From 10 to nine to eight. From seven to six to five to four as the Colts kept fiddling around, fiddling around ...

Triple zeroes on the clock now. And the Colts still fiddling around, either unable or unwilling to get the ball snapped.

If the former, it was yet another moment of incompetence on a singularly incompetent day. If the latter, it was simple surrender from a team whose vocabulary hasn't included that word all season.

Fitting.

Run like the wind, Holy Father!

OK, first off, the obligatory disclaimer: No, this is not a Monty Python sketch.

The Vatican, following Pope Francis' long-standing promotion of sport as a force for good and peace in the world, really is forming a track team.

It really is looking to join the International Association of Athletics Federations.

It really is hoping to compete in international competitions, with an eye toward eventually competing in the Olympics.

I can see now you all are aflame with questions. OK, so not all of you. OK, so the one guy who wandered in off the street because he thought the Blob was giving out free donuts.

At any rate, we'll do our best to answer, one question at a time:

1. Who will be on this track team?

According to Sports Illustrated, the team initially will comprise about 60 Holy See athletes as the first accredited members of Vatican Athletics. These will include, priests, nuns, pharmacists, a 62-year-old professor and members of the Vatican Swiss Guards.

2. Do the Swiss Guards get to carry those pointy things when they run? 'Cause those could come in handy when the pack bunches up.

Not that the Blob is aware. Although it is a thought..

3. What about the stripey pantaloons and the puffy berets? Do they get to wear those?

No. They will be dressed like any other track athletes. Besides, two words: Wind resistance.

4. Yeah, but Dave Wottle got to wear a hat. Didn't slow him down any, right?

Good point.

5. What's the story on the 62-year-old professor?

He works in the Vatican's Apostolic Library. Rumor has it he's got a killer finishing kick.

6. Any standouts among the nuns?

Again, it's only a rumor. But a certain Sister Bertrille apparently crushes it in the high jump. Also the long jump.

7. OK, last question. How will this impact Notre Dame football?

You mean will they no longer be God's favorite sports team?

Yes.

Well, obviously not.

 Which will no doubt be reflected in next fall's preseason rankings.

And the winner is ...

... I don't know. How about "Don't rush me"?

Looking ahead toward Colts-Chiefs in that red-mad prairie hell known as Arrowhead Stadium, and I know what the First Law of Homerism demands I do. It demands I find some way to pick the Horsies, because it would that continue a magical storyline. It also would be what a lot of the wise guys expect to happen.

And that, as usual, makes me nervous.

Also making me nervous are, well, the Chiefs.

I get that they've played .500 football for the last six weeks. I get that, if you put this thing on a graph, the Colts would be tracking upward while the Chiefs would be flat-lining. I get that the Chiefs' cruddy run defense creates absolutely perfect conditions for the Colts to run the football all day behind that stout offensive line, which would enable them to grind the clock to dust and keep the ball out of the hands of Patrick Mahomes long enough to outscore him.

I get all that.

I also get that this is the NFL, which stands for the No Figuring League. And that makes me nervous, too, because it presents a whole raft of who-saw-that-coming scenarios.

Like the Chiefs' cruddy run defense actually doing a better job stopping Marlon Mack than the Texans' really good run defense did.

Like Mahomes therefore getting the football enough to start pinballing the scoreboard.

Like the Colts' defense, which has become a true force since that 1-5 start, not being much more successful at slowing down the Chiefs than any of the other top defense Mahomes and Co. has lit up.

I'm hoping that's not going to happen. I'm hoping the defense continues its rise and Mack runs wild and Andrew Luck out-Mahomes Mahomes. I'm hoping these are exactly the completely reasonable hopes they seem to be right now, on Saturday morning.

But one annoying fact keeps buzzing around in the back of my head: The Colts have faced exactly one top-ten offense all season. And the Chiefs' offense is not only top-ten, it leads the NFL in a whole pile of categories.

And so ...

And so, I gotta say it: Chiefs 34, Colts 27.

Dang it.

Winter's revels

Pitchers and catchers don't report for, like, a month yet, and here in the Midwest this morning the world is a study in classic January: white snow, gray sky, skeletal trees, deep winter silence.

This means it's time for the question the Blob knows it uppermost in your mind right now: What do baseball people do when the world is gray and white and frozen, and the ballpark is deep in its hibernation phase?

Well ... in Kansas City, Royals employees do this.

Which, over and above the fact it's for charity, is awesomely cool. And, in the Blob's humble opinion, would be a fine addition to the hotdog/condiment/President/taco sauce packet races that have become a staple of between-innings entertainment on summer baseball evenings.

Amiright?

Rulebook 1, Justice 0

And now this voice pops up in my head ("Voices now? What's next with you?" you're saying), as the Alabama High School Athletic Association continues to steal Maori Davenport's senior basketball season. It is the voice of Gene Cato, legendary commish of Indiana's high school athletic association. And he is repeating the quote with which I will always associate him.

"The rules are clear," Gene the Machine used to say. "And the penalties severe."

He forgot to add, "Also occasionally stupid. And unjust. And a slave to process over simple fairness."

Which brings us back to Maori Davenport, and the AHSAA. She's one of the nation's top girls high school players, which is frankly irrelevant to this except that it landed her a summer playing for USA Basketball. It was a great honor, because not many high school players get to represent their country. Davenport did, and the team for which she played won a gold medal in a tournament in Mexico City.

Here's the rub: Like all the members of the team, she got a check from USA Basketball to cover her expenses. The check was for $857.20. That was well beyond what the AHSAA allows for participation in such activities. USA Basketball acknowledges this was its screwup -- it apparently never cleared this with the AHSAA -- and when Davenport learned of said screwup, she returned the check.

So no problem, right?

Wrong.

The AHSAA decided a rule was a rule, and stripped Davenport of her eligibility. Common sense, not to say common decency, would have dictated association officials acknowledge that she wasn't at fault, and that, since she'd made it right, no harm, no foul.

But, no.

Oh, the AHSAA officials did acknowledge this wasn't her fault, but that of the adults around her. No matter. A rule, they said, is a rule.

 "The stories and comments being circulated throughout the media and social networks are asking that an exception be made to the amateur rule because it was not the student's fault, the fact the money was repaid, and that the student is an exceptional athlete and will miss her senior year," said Johnny Hardin, president of the AHSAA's Central Board of Control.  "However, if exceptions are made, there would no longer be a need for an amateur rule. The rules are applied equally to ALL athletes."

You could probably find more cluelessness packed into three sentences somewhere. But you'd probably need search planes to do so.

OK, first off: Hardin's contention that the outcry is happening because Davenport is "an exceptional athlete" misses the point by a nautical mile. This has no bearing on the relevant issue, which is whether or not the rule is being applied fairly or is simply being applied with blind adherence. That would be the issue no matter who was the athlete in question.

And it's a damned legitimate issue.

The AHSAA comes down on the side of blind adherence, a position revealed by Hardin's assertion that "if exceptions were made, there would no longer be a need for an amateur rule." This is so absurd it beggars belief. Exceptions to rules get made all the time in the world beyond the AHSAA's blinders; no two individual situations are ever identical, and so the adjudication of such matters are regular features in American courts. And no exception to a rule, to my knowledge, has ever eliminated the need for that rule.

It's why there's the concept of a spirit of the law to balance its letter: Because without the former, the latter cannot truly be applied equally. One size might fit all in some alternate universe, but not in this one. Insisting it does is not only delusional but has the opposite effect intended by the rulebook to begin with.

And this doesn't even address the bizarre notion that Maori Davenport violated her amateur status even though she accepted no money.

The rules are clear, and the penalties severe.

You got the second part right, Gene. The first part could use some work.

It's the Clemsons

Analysis in a thimble this morning, in the wake of Clemson 44, Alabama 16:

Ronnie "Sunshine" Bass*, man. Told you the dude never loses.

(* -- See, "Remember the Titans")

And so to last night, as Ronnie Sunshine -- aka, Trevor Lawrence, Ronnie Sunshine's flowing-locks doppelganger -- lit up the Alabamas, throwing for three touchdowns and 300-some yards and generally putting a clown hat on Nick Saban's grim legions. This was an even bigger road-grading than the Clemsons put on Notre Dame, as it turns out. Clemson whipped the Crimson Tiders up front, and Ronnie Sunshine Lawrence whipped them out back. It was a thorough, definitive, no-doubt-about-it lamination.

And what does that say about the state of college football as we know it?

Nothing we didn't already know.

Which is, there is Clemson, and there is Alabama, and then there are All Them Others. All last night did is possibly reshuffle the order between 1 and 1A -- although that will probably change again next year, when Alabama beats Clemson again for the national title.

The last four national champions have come out of either Tuscaloosa or South Carolina, and nothing about last night suggests that will change anytime soon. Ronnie Sunshine is a freshman, so he's not going anywhere. Alabama has a pile of future first-round draft picks who aren't going anywhere, either. And the future first-round draft picks Dabo Swinney doesn't land on signing day a month hence, Nick Saban will.

Much was made of Clemson's watery ACC schedule in the run-up to the College Football Playoff, multiple suggestions from multiple people that all those 40-point wins the Clemsons stacked up were a tad counterfeit. Turns out they were not, and turns out Clemson's schedule was no more watery than anyone else's.

Nine of Clemson's 12 opponents went to bowl games. Only six of Alabama's did. And for every Furman on Clemson's schedule, Alabama had an Arkansas State or a Citadel.

So, tit-for-tat, basically. Except last night, when it was all Clemson, all the time.

This time. 

Un-Bearable

First of all, the ball was tipped. Check the slo-mo replay.

And so, no, Cody Parkey is not really Public Enemy No. 1 in Chicago today, even though the memes were funny and instantaneous -- the one with Sandra Bulloch's blindfolded head photoshopped onto Parkey's body popped up, like, five minutes after the game -- and even though it wasn't the first time he'd doinked one off a post this season.

But this time?

This time was especially excruciating, whether Parkey was the true villain or not. Not just off the post, but off the crossbar. At Soldier Field. In the first playoff game for the Bears in eight years.

A bit of English -- the tiniest fraction -- the other way as the football tumbled from post to crossbar, and Parkey's the hero. The Bears, reborn in the image of another Bears team with a soul-crushing defense and a decent-but-not-great quarterback, survive and advance. And Chicago is still the City of Big Shoulders and not, well, the City of Cloudy With A Chance Of F-Bombs.

I mean, I live three hours away from Chi, and I could hear the screams when Parkey's attempt bounced once, bounced twice, and rolled back toward the goal line. The screams were not PG, and they were not particularly imaginative. One-word vocabularies rarely are.

Only the Cubs are supposed to induce heartbreak like this, and even the Cubs haven't done so in awhile. The Bears, until the ball hit the post, hadn't, either, this year. They came in 12-4, and they did it the Bears Way: Defense, a run game and a quarterback (Mitchell Trubisky) who's improving weekly but still cut from the mold of Chicago quarterbacks past.

Which is to say, serviceable most of the time, occasionally quite a bit more than that.

But the Bears ran into another stout defense last night, and also a quarterback (Nick Foles) with some kind of weird magic going on no one can adequately explain. And so it came to down to Parkey, and to a fingernail (or two) scraping the football as it crossed the line of scrimmage, and doink ... doink. And you just knew in your bones, at that moment, that God was a Packers fan.

Sitting up there in the fastness of heaven. Eating cheese curds and drinking Milwaukee's Best. Wearing a throwback Ray Nitschke jersey and high-fiving the Man himself, Vince Lombardi.

"Winning isn't everything," Vince is saying. "It's the only thing."

The Lord of all creation chuckles.

"Ah, not the only thing, Vince. Watch what I do to this kick."

And now, the Prediction

Well, not really.

This is because the Blob has run out of things to say about Alabama and Clemson, because they play every year for the national title and every year one or the other wins. The Blob predicts that will happen again tonight. Either Clemson will win or Alabama will win. And it won't really matter which, because they're essentially the same program now, with everyone else in college football  playing in the Chicken Sandwich Radial Tire Fruit And Vegetable Dot Com Bowl.

If you make me pick, though, I pick Clemson, because it's the Clemsons' turn. I think Alabama is the better team by a scosche, and they have a slight edge at quarterback with Tua Tagovailoa, but Trevor Lawrence has a vibe I really like. Plus he looks like Ronnie "Sunshine" Bass from "Remember the Titans," and Ronnie Bass never lost.

So I'm going with Clemson. Or Alabama. Same difference.

The Reich stuff

Look at this crazy old man, coolin' out in the locker room while the kids egg him on. Don't sweat it, Frank Reich, they're laughing with you, not at you. Keep cuttin' that rug. Keep showin' off those old-school moves. Keep feelin' it while the media squares overthink it.

Because you know what?

Feelin' it's waaaay more fun.

So, yeah, there was Frank Reich, Rookie Head Coach, dancing into the divisional round of a playoff he and his Indianapolis Colts were never supposed to see. Remember that? Remember the media squares saying, yeah, these Colts, they've got some talent now, but it's greener than April grass, so don't expect much. They're still a year or two or three away.

This year?

Why, this year's a long look down the barrel of 6-10. Or 5-11. Hell, maybe 4-12, come to think of it.

And now?

Now you don't want to see them coming, if you're the Kansas City Chiefs.

Yes, the Chiefs, are the top seed in the AFC, and, yes, they've got Patrick Mahomes and Tyreek Hill and a bunch of other scary dudes. And, yes, they get these young rambunctious Colts in the red-mad caldron of Arrowhead Stadium, one of the great home fields in pro football.

But did you see what the Young Rambunctions did in Houston yesterday?

Shut the Texans right up, is what they did. Sacked and harassed and hurried Deshaun Watson, allowed the home team into the red zone just twice, beat 'em up physically on the offensive side of the football, where Marlon Mack rumbled for 148 yards and Andrew Luck did his usual Andrew Luck things. Shut out a football team that had won 11 of its last 13 games for better than three quarters, in that football team's home yard.

The final was 21-7, and cut to Reich, a literal graybeard, dancing with his guys in the locker room. A lot of pieces coalesced this season to lead to that moment, but it begins with Reich. Everyone talks all the time about how important instilling a definable culture is to a team's success, and Reich has instilled one. Trite as it is to say, it's mostly about making football fun again. And if that is anathema in what is accurately described as the No Fun League, it is undeniably working.

Even when, you know, it doesn't.

This wild-card game with the Texans last night, for instance: You couldn't help but cast back to the first meeting between these two teams in Indianapolis, when Reich went for it on fourth down, failed and opened the door for the Texans to win in overtime. The media squares shook their heads mournfully and said, rookie mistake. Shoulda played it safe. Could have cost the Colts a shot at the playoffs, because every win is precious in the NFL and you don't just throw one away with reckless bravado.

And yet ...

And yet, that was the moment when Reich put his stamp on this team. That was the moment that defined the culture he was trying to create. And so cut to Saturday night, when the Colts who are now firmly and absolutely Frank Reich's Colts put their stamp on the game with the Texans.

No, it wasn't when they lined up on the goal line, hit the Texans in the mouth and threw Marlon Mack at them like a rock from a slingshot.

No, it wasn't when Luck found T.Y. Hilton between two defenders way, way downfield to set up a score.

No, it wasn't when the Colts sacked Watson, and then hurried him into a couple of atrociously off-target throws at critical times.

It was none of that. It was, rather, when the Colts got the ball back with 37 seconds to go in the first half after Watson missed DeAndre Hopkins in the end zone.

The Horsies were already up 21-0, on the road. The smart play, therefore, would have been to take a couple knees and take that lead into the locker room. That would have been the safe play.

Instead, the Frank Reich Colts said this: Pffft.

They came out throwing. They came out trying to move the chains. And if Dontrelle Inman had managed to get out bounds as the clock ran out of seconds, the Colts likely would have been able to cash an Adam Vinatieri field goal and go to halftime up 24-0.

Alas, Inman was corralled before he could get to the sideline, and the clock hit zeroes. But it was the thought that counted, and that thought defined who these Colts are now, and why they are still playing in January.

Dance, you old graybeard. Dance.

Predict this

I've got the jitters now, if I'm a certain professional football team. The die is cast, according to the wise guys. They've got it figured. Assumptions have not just been made, but tied down and cemented in place.

Yep. I'm quaking in my cleats, if I'm a certain professional football team.

No, not the Houston Texans, silly.

The Indianapolis Colts.

This is because the wise guys are all just assuming they're going to go to Houston tomorrow and knock out the Texans, champions of the AFC South. The Colts are the hottest team in the NFL, having won 10 of their last 11 games after a 1-5 start. Andrew Luck is having the best season of his career because he's no longer flat on his back looking up at the sky after every throw. The offensive line that's ensuring this has morphed from one of the worst to one of the best in football. The defense is young, hungry and aggressive, and Marlon Mack (again, because of that born-again O-line) has given the Colts something they haven't had since the days of Joseph Addai: A run game.

So they've won nine of their last 10, these Colts, including a 24-21 win at Houston. From 1-5, they've become 10-6, finishing one game behind the Texans. They're good. They're confident. Luck has answered the question everyone has been asking for four or five years -- "How good would Andrew Luck be if he had an O-line that could block a doorway?" -- with a resounding "Pretty damn good."

Here's the problem with that: Jaguars 6, Colts 0.

It's the only blemish on the Colts' record in the last 10 weeks, and it was utterly inexplicable. On that day in Jacksonville, everything that had been working for them failed to work. The entire game looked like a remake of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers": Luck and Darius Leonard and Quentin Nelson and all the others looked like Luck and Darius Leonard and Quentin Nelson and all the others, but they played like pod people.

And it all happened against a Jacksonville team that was 4-8 at the time and couldn't get out of its own way.

Which illustrates the salient point here: This is the NFL, and you can't figure it.

The wise guys all think they can, but nobody can. It is notoriously unpredictable, the NFL. The cratering Jaguars shut out one of the hottest teams in the league. The Colts then turned around and shut out the Dallas Cowboys, also one of the hottest teams in the league at the time. The Cowboys in turn beat Drew Brees and the Saints' ridiculous scoring machine by the ridiculous score of 13-10. The Lions lost by 31 at home to the perpetually comatose Jets, and two weeks later beat the perpetually peerless Patriots at home by 16.

You can't figure it. You just can't.

And so, yes, the Colts are a scary team right now. They're hitting all their marks. They're hitting on all cylinders. They're a whole bunch of other clichés involving the word "hitting." And if I were the Houston Texans, I wouldn't want to see them coming tomorrow, either.

On the other hand ...

On the other hand, the Texans did win the division. And they've won 11 of their last 13 themselves. And maybe they're going to use as fuel the way everyone's talking up the Colts right now while ignoring what they've done.

Everybody likes to play the lack-of-respect card, even though 90 percent of the time it's completely absurd. This might be one of the rare times it's not.

I still think the Colts are going to win. Call it, I don't know, 31-28.

But don't be surprised if it's the Texans who wind up with the 31. Because, NFL.

Question of the day. With answer.

So, let's say you, Joe Average Worker Bee, got mad at a co-worker in the middle of last week and threw something at him.

Then you  stormed out of the office and didn't show up for work for the next three days.

You also refused to answer repeated calls from your boss.

On Monday your boss fired you and told you not to let the door hit you on the ass on the way out.

OK. So none of that happened to you.

 It did, however, happen to Pittsburgh Steelers all-pro wide receiver Antonio Brown, except for the last part. And only in the unofficial version of events.

The official version was that Brown suffered an owie that kept him out of the game Sunday against the Bengals, even though he really wanted to play. And not showing up for practice after Wednesday was just a big ol' misunderstanding on the part of everyone.

Inquiring minds, however, insist that the Joe Average Worker Bee scenario is what really happened, and that everyone involved is just trying to cover up the whole ridiculous mess. If true, this prompts today's Question of the Day (with answer):

Q: Why was Antonio Brown not fired and told not to let the door hit him in the ass on the way out?

A:  In nine seasons, Brown has averaged 93 receptions and more than eight touchdowns a season, led the league in receptions twice and made the Pro Bowl seven times. He's been a first-team All-Pro four times. Oh, and the Steelers have gone 94-49-1 in his nine seasons.

One more example of how the National Football League is a magical place that does not exist in the real world.

The ringmaster passes

Word comes down this day that "Mean" Gene Okerlund has died, and the big top will never be the same henceforth. Which is not to say all Mean Gene ever needed was a top hat, shiny black boots and a whip to achieve his desired effect.

No, the circus never was graced by Mean Gene's presence, or at least the circus in its traditional form. Mean Gene presided over another kind of circus -- professional wrestling -- in which the exotic creatures on display were not lions and tigers and bears (oh, my!), but living cartoon characters with cartoon muscles.

Mean Gene was the WWE interviewer/master of ceremonies/voice of reason who provided the gravitas in a world populated by the likes of Randy "Macho Man" Savage, Hulk Hogan and Jesse "The Body" Ventura, who gave Mean Gene his nickname before going on to become governor of Minnesota -- a reality far more outlandish than any WWE storyline.

Ventura, of course, was going for irony with the "Mean Gene" tag. Okerlund was the polar opposite of mean. He was a suave counterpoint to all the WWE absurdity, the man with the pocket handkerchief performing quasi-serious Q-and-As with profoundly un-serious subjects. As to whether that persona was just another WWE put-on, we'll never really know.

I do know this: If it was an act, it worked for me.

I say this because one sweltering summer afternoon at Orchard Ridge Country Club, I managed to corral Mean Gene for interview. He was one of the celebrities in the Mad Anthonys Hoosier Celebrities golf tournament, and, as a columnist who was continually looking for something off-road to write about at what was essentially a non-news event, Mean Gene was right in my wheelhouse.

I couldn't have asked for a better interview subject. Whether he was playing himself or a persona, he was absolutely delightful -- especially when I asked if he'd ever been a wrestler himself.

Mean Gene looked offended.

"Moi?" he answered, touching his chest with spread fingers. "I am a cultured man. Violence is the tool of the ignorant."

Best. Quote. Ever.

Schtick or no schtick.

What sports does

Even the kid himself knew the ending. That is the remarkable thing here.

And so the magic spread out and out that glorious October night in Ross-Ade Stadium, and then its focus narrowed, tighter and tighter. Eventually one wan, bald, bespectacled young man filled up the lens, became the living avatar for Purdue 49, Ohio State 20 -- and of course much else.

Indiana and America and, yes, even the world, eventually, was introduced that night to 20-year-old Tyler Trent, who had predicted this great thing. And who was commencing to die on that night, and knew it.

Bone cancer came for him when he was 15 and then came for him again, and it had him this time. Two days before Purdue 49, Ohio State 20, he'd been ralphing up his guts from the latest round of chemo; for the next two-plus months after that night, as he became an inspiration and example for living your life until you had no more life to live, he gradually slipped away from this expanding circle of friends, famous and not so, that had its birth that night in Ross-Ade.

Everyone knew the ending, even Tyler Trent himself. But by the time he died on the first day of 2019, it didn't feel like an ending, somehow. It felt more like the end of a beginning.

This is because, even as he was commencing to die, Tyler Trent's focus was on those still living with the cancer that was killing him. As his story spread, football fans all over the Big Ten began chanting "Cancer sucks!" Riley Hospital for Children and the V Foundation received generous donations in his name; Purdue initiated several scholarships bearing his name. He donated a line of cancer cells to assist researchers.

And does any of this happen without that night in Ross-Ade Stadium? Does anyone outside the Purdue community know Tyler Trent's story, and do celebrities and media figures and ordinary people all over the world keep the spotlight on him -- and, more importantly, on the research that one day will keep other Tyler Trents from commencing to die?

I don't know. I don't know how anyone could know for a certainty.

I do, however, know that hardly anything can bring people and causes into sharper focus than sports. And that through its prism we see things that have nothing to do with the mundane business of touchdowns or 3-pointers or home runs, or whether or not the College Football Playoff should be expanded.

All of that is nothing, and yet it is everything. Because all of it is a stage as spotlit as any.

Yes, there are people who don't care about sports, who don't follow them, but that doesn't mean they can entirely escape them. People who don't follow basketball still know who LeBron James is. People who don't follow football know who Peyton Manning is. This is because the stage is bright and it is vast and it seeps past the boundaries of the football field and the basketball floor into popular culture, and into the ubiquity of social media that makes popular culture inescapable. And if that stage elevates much that is dopey and inconsequential and sometimes awful, it also elevates much that is sublime.

And so, Purdue 49, Ohio State 20. And so, Tyler Trent, the kid who knew the ending, and who because of that stage and that spotlight was gifted with an influence he might never have known otherwise, and exerted that influence to its fullest good.

And in so doing, reminded us what all these silly games we follow can do.

The Year in Preview

Merry Happy New Year, everyone, and here's hoping you bid farewell to 2018 in the appropriate manner -- which is to say, tying its diseased carcass to the bumper of your car and dragging it around the neighborhood until it fell apart.

Time now to look ahead to 2019, which will be the best of all years unless it's not. And because the Blob is all about tradition when it suits its purpose, here's the Blob's 2019 edition of the Year in Preview, in which the Blob predicts what's NOT going to happen this year:

In January, Andrew Luck's arm does not fall off, disappointing all the know-it-alls who say "Rats! I had January in the pool," and also, "Come on! Haven't we been wrong enough about the Colts?"

In other news, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Jacksonville Jaguars and Green Bay Packers will not turn down the chance to poach Jon "Career .500 Coach" Gruden, saying, "Hey, it's Jon 'Career .500 Coach' Gruden! People say he's really good!"

In February, Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Carl Edwards will not win the Daytona 500, on account of they all remain retired. Also, no one else wins the 500, either, on account of the Big One happens on lap 198, wiping out the entire 43-car field. After an hour closed-door meeting, NASCAR officials declare Earnhardt Jr. the winner, retired or not, saying, "Yeah, but it's Dale Jr."

In other news, President Donald J. "Donny" Trump does not avoid trying to poach Jon "I Won A Super Bowl With Tony Dungy's Players" Gruden for his 12th Chief of Staff, saying "Hey, it's Jon 'I Won A Super Bowl With Tony Dungy's Players' Gruden! People say he's really good. Also, this bowl of Fruit Loops over here turned me down."

In March, Virginia does not lose to Maryland Baltimore County again in the NCAA Tournament. This is because Maryland Baltimore County fails to make the NCAA Tournament. Maryland Eastern Shore, does, however, and stuns the Cavaliers 112-35, prompting Virginia fans to say "Dammit! How many of these Marylands are there?"

In other news, UCLA does not avoid trying to poach Jon "Did I Tell You I Won A Super Bowl With Tony Dungy's Players?" Gruden as its new basketball coach, saying, "Oh, Jon Gruden. We thought you said John Wooden. Never mind."

In April, Maryland Eastern Shore does not win the NCAA title. Neither do Duke, Kentucky, Kansas, Michigan, Michigan State or North Carolina. Maryland Institute of Maryland wins the title, prompting critics to say "Come on, that's not a real school," and also "Besides, they didn't even beat Virginia!"

In other news, Maryland Institute of Maryland does not respond by trying to poach Jon "Come On, My Resume Isn't THAT Unimpressive" Gruden, who does not say "Good, I'm happy here in Oakland" without winking.

In May, Helio Castroneves, Will Power, Scott Dixon, Graham Rahal, Tony Kanaan, Josef Newgarden and Ryan Hunter-Reay do not win the Indianapolis 500. This is because the Big One happens on lap 198, wiping out the entire 33-car field. After an hour closed-door meeting, IMS and IndyCar officials declare Lloyd Ruby the winner, saying "What the hell, the guy never had any luck here. Besides, Jon Gruden said he was happy in Oakland."

In other news, the Blob does not continue the Jon "Hey, People Say I'm Good! They Do!" Gruden meme because, frankly, it's boring and too easy to make fun of Jon "No, Really! I'm Good!" Gruden.

In June, July and August, the NBA Finals, Stanley Cup Final, Wimbledon and Tiger Jordan Rory Spieth McIlroy Woods do not capture the imagination of the sporting public. This is because the sporting public is riveted to the battle in the NL Central, where the Cubs are not running away with the title because the Cardinals, Brewers and Reds did not fail to get better in the offseason.

In other news, Cubs manager Joe Maddon does not say, "No fair! The Cardinals, Brewers and Reds did not fail to get better!" Instead, he says "No fair! That Blob guy did not continue with the Jon Gruden meme! We coulda hired him! People say he's really good!"

In October and November, the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame wallop Navy, Stanford, USC and some Wake Forests, but are not overrated again by the college football pollsters.

In other news, of course they are.

In December, the Duke Blue Devils, fortified by blue-chip freshman LeBron James, do not fail to crush Maryland Baltimore County, Maryland Eastern Shore and Maryland Institute of Maryland in the Someplace Warm And Palm Tree-y Classic. They would have destroyed Virginia, too, but the Cavaliers opted out of the Classic at the last minute, saying, "We're not playing anymore of those damn Marylands. Especially the one that doesn't exist."

In other news, LeBron does not fail to announce he's moving back to Cleveland again to enroll at Cleveland State, or "maybe Oakland because Jon Gruden's there and people say he's really good."

"Yeah, I've heard that," says Duke coach Mike "One-and-Done" Krzyzewski.