Happy the day before a new decade, the science-fictiony 2020s, in which exploding technology will violently explode in colorful exploding geysers of exploding flame and fresh idiocy.
Kind of like Our Only Available Exploding Impeached President, last seen drooling in his soup and muttering something about dangerous windy wind and how it will kill America if we don't stop it.
But enough about 2019.
2020 is fresh, it's new, it's What's Happenin' Now. And so the Blob is here to do its annual Blob thing, which is rip off shopworn New Year's bits about what's going to happen in the year ahead, only turn them upside-down, sorta.
In other words: Welcome to What Won't Happen In 2020.
In January, the New England Patriots will not get to the Super Bowl again, a shocking development that leaves much of America bereaved. Or not.
"Gee, it won't seem like the Super Bowl without the Patriots in it," America will say (or not). And also, "Golly, I guess there's no reason to watch if there's no chance to see Tom Brady get squashed like a bug and Bill Belichick's scowl grow even more scowl-y. Well, except for that new Geico ad."
In other news, the NBA season will not end, even though it seems like it should have ended ages ago -- like, say, in 1625.
In February, the Super Bowl will not fail to disappoint again, even though the Ravens find new and exciting ways to use Lamar Jackson as a placekicker. L-Jack outscores Aaron Rodgers five field goals to four, and the Ravens beat the Packers 15-12 in the worst Super Bowl ever played until next year's Super Bowl.
In other news, the NBA season again will not end, even though we're up to 1777 now and LeBron James surprised the Hessians by crossing Wilshire Boulevard in a stretch Hummer.
Speaking of the NBA ... in March, Zion Williamson, the guy everyone has been waiting to see play since that long-ago day in 1625, will not return to the New Orleans Pelicans' lineup. The Pelicans will not issue a statement saying "Zion will be back any day now," and "He continues to make great progress," because that would just be cruel.
In other news, the NBA season will not ... well, you know. The league will not issue a mildly petulant statement to the effect that "Look, we're hurrying this along as best we can," and also "Come on, it's only 1825 and Zion isn't even back yet! Quit whining!"
In April, Duke will not win the NCAA basketball title, and neither will Kentucky, Kansas, Gonzaga, Michigan State, Ohio State or any of them others. This is because the NCAA will not allow them to play in the tournament, a fit of pique triggered by that (expletive) (expletive) law in California that forbids member schools from exploiting their athletes just to make money.
"Fine! We'll let Directional Hyphen Tech State win the title, then! See if we care!" the NCAA will not say in a statement, although it wants to.
In other news, the NHL will not say "Hey! Our season goes on forever, too! What about us?"
Although it wants to.
In May, Zion Williamson again will not return to the Pelicans lineup. The Pelicans will not release a statement that says "Any day now! Really!" because people would just laugh.
In other news, the NBA and NHL will not engage in hand-to-hand combat to see which league's season can last the longest. This is because they're only up to 1905 now and everyone has moved on to baseball and NASCAR -- both of which last forever, too, but haven't started to congeal yet.
Also, the Indianapolis 500.
In June and July, Tiger Woods, after not winning the Masters and the PGA Championship, will not win the U.S. and British Opens. Instead, "Tiger Woods," an exact animatronic duplicate of Tiger Woods that first appeared at last year's Masters, will win them.
The appropriate ruling bodies of golf, however, will declare "Tiger Woods" victories invalid, citing some arcane golf rule about outfit coordination. Charl Swartzel will be awarded the titles instead, on account of "Charl Swartzel" is fun to say.
In other news, the NBA and the NHL, locked in a fight to the death, will not end their seasons even though the Sacramento Kings and Quebec Nordiques have won their respective titles. Instead, they'll both immediately begin their seasons again. The league offices will not issue matching statements that say "Neener-neener-neener," although they want to.
In August, Zion Williamson will not return to the Pelicans' lineup. The Pelicans will not release a statement, only video of a Pelicans' executive whistling tunelessly and looking at the ceiling.
In other news ... oh, forget it.
In October, the Cubs will not make the World Series again. The baseball gods will not release a statement to the effect that "You must be this tall to ride this ride," and also "Besides, we let you win in 2016. Quit yer bellyachin' and go home."
Although they want to.
In November, Our Only Available Exploding Impeached President, now raving about "tiny invisible liberals from the Ukraine" who've clandestinely "injected socialism into our drinking water," is not re-elected. This is because he's simply claimed victory, declaring that elections are "fake news."
Amazingly, almost half of America will not say "This guy is bats**t!", instead opting for "Well, that all makes sense to me."
And last but not least ...
In December, Alabama, Clemson, Ohio State and some other SEC school will not make the College Football Playoff. This is because the NCAA, still mad about the California thing, will not allow it to happen even though they're all undefeated. Instead, just for spite, they put Notre Dame and Sarah Lawrence -- a college that doesn't have a football program -- in the title game.
"Neener-neener-neener," the NCAA will not say in a statement.
"Finally! Another national title!" Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick will also not say.
"Sarah Lawrence? That's not even a real school! Fake news!" OOAEIP will also not say.
Nah. He'll say it.
Tuesday, December 31, 2019
Monday, December 30, 2019
Put him in, Coach
The dream lives, America. Or maybe you're the only person in these United States who wouldn't want to see Jerry Jones line up at wide receiver for the Cowboys.
Or how about Robert Kraft? Yeah, that's ticket. Robert Kraft running one of Gronk's old seam routes, huffing and puffing, old-man legs shaking, wishing he hadn't misspent his youth trolling seedy massage parlors in Florida strip malls.
Yes, the world would be a better place, or at least yea more hilarious, if NFL owners would do what that hockey guy did the other night. Because who wouldn't want to see his or her team's owner suit up and say "Put me in, Coach"?
That's what Robbie Nichols did in a Federal Prospects Hockey League game, because the team he owns, the Elmira (N.Y.) Enforcers, was down to about five players because of injuries and so forth. So Nichols literally took one for his team, lacing on the skates and lengthening the bench for the Enforcers as they took on the Danbury (Ct.) Hat Tricks.
Now, Nichols is 55 years old, but it's not like he never played the game. A former Philadelphia Flyers draft pick back when dinosaurs strode the earth, he played a pile of years in the American Hockey League and the old International Hockey League. Alert Fort Wayne Komets fans will recall him skating against their team with the hated Kalamazoo Wings, and also with the San Diego Gulls.
In fact, Nichols was one of the big guns on the Gulls team that, 27 years ago, won 62 games and then got swept by the Komets in the IHL Turner Cup finals.
That was 1992-93. And Nichols was already 29 years old then.
Now, he's, well, not 29 anymore. But by God he can still go top shelf on you. Or hit you in stride tape-to-tape. Or skate his wing like ... like ...
Well. Like a 55-year-old exec, presumably.
I mean, let's not get carried away here. It's not like Nichols is or ever was Gretzky, after all. Just like, if you suit up Jerry and split him out wide down there in Dallas, it's not like he's going to beat the corner on a go route.
Nah. More likely, he'd wait until the game was over, seek out the nearest available TV camera (because there's nothing Jerry likes better than an available TV camera) and talk about how, by golly, Jason Garrett's all right by him.
Just like normal, in other words.
Or how about Robert Kraft? Yeah, that's ticket. Robert Kraft running one of Gronk's old seam routes, huffing and puffing, old-man legs shaking, wishing he hadn't misspent his youth trolling seedy massage parlors in Florida strip malls.
Yes, the world would be a better place, or at least yea more hilarious, if NFL owners would do what that hockey guy did the other night. Because who wouldn't want to see his or her team's owner suit up and say "Put me in, Coach"?
That's what Robbie Nichols did in a Federal Prospects Hockey League game, because the team he owns, the Elmira (N.Y.) Enforcers, was down to about five players because of injuries and so forth. So Nichols literally took one for his team, lacing on the skates and lengthening the bench for the Enforcers as they took on the Danbury (Ct.) Hat Tricks.
Now, Nichols is 55 years old, but it's not like he never played the game. A former Philadelphia Flyers draft pick back when dinosaurs strode the earth, he played a pile of years in the American Hockey League and the old International Hockey League. Alert Fort Wayne Komets fans will recall him skating against their team with the hated Kalamazoo Wings, and also with the San Diego Gulls.
In fact, Nichols was one of the big guns on the Gulls team that, 27 years ago, won 62 games and then got swept by the Komets in the IHL Turner Cup finals.
That was 1992-93. And Nichols was already 29 years old then.
Now, he's, well, not 29 anymore. But by God he can still go top shelf on you. Or hit you in stride tape-to-tape. Or skate his wing like ... like ...
Well. Like a 55-year-old exec, presumably.
I mean, let's not get carried away here. It's not like Nichols is or ever was Gretzky, after all. Just like, if you suit up Jerry and split him out wide down there in Dallas, it's not like he's going to beat the corner on a go route.
Nah. More likely, he'd wait until the game was over, seek out the nearest available TV camera (because there's nothing Jerry likes better than an available TV camera) and talk about how, by golly, Jason Garrett's all right by him.
Just like normal, in other words.
A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 17
And now, this season's final edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the nutrient-packed, vitamin-fortified Blob feature of which critics have said "Look at all those nutrients and vitamins!", and also "Now take them out of here as quickly as you can!":
1. It's Monday morning and the Patriots have locked up the No. 2 seed in the playo--
2. Wait ... what?
3. The Dolphins?
4. In FOXBOROUGH??
5. "Finally! Our long national nightmare is over!" (Detroit fans)
6. "Heh." (The Pistons, the Red Wings, the Tigers)
7. In other news, the Super Bowl bound Browns!
8. Also, the Super Bowl bound Cowboys!
9. "Hooray! My job is safe now!" (Freddie Kitchens, Jason Garrett)
10. "Heh." (Browns, Cowboys)
1. It's Monday morning and the Patriots have locked up the No. 2 seed in the playo--
2. Wait ... what?
3. The Dolphins?
4. In FOXBOROUGH??
5. "Finally! Our long national nightmare is over!" (Detroit fans)
6. "Heh." (The Pistons, the Red Wings, the Tigers)
7. In other news, the Super Bowl bound Browns!
8. Also, the Super Bowl bound Cowboys!
9. "Hooray! My job is safe now!" (Freddie Kitchens, Jason Garrett)
10. "Heh." (Browns, Cowboys)
Sunday, December 29, 2019
(L)ooking (S)orta (U)nbeatable
So it's Sunday morning now an-- ooh, look! Joe Burrow just threw another touchdown pass!
Anyway ... it's Sunday morning and the national semifinals are don-- ooh! Another one!
... the national semifinals are done, and we've got our matchu-- dammit, Joe! Stop throwing touchdown passes long enough for me to complete a sentence, will y--
Well, shoot. He just threw another one.
Which is to say, LSU's first Heisman Trophy winner since Billy Cannon threw touchdown passes all day, or at least all of the first half. LSU came one point short of dropping a five-spot on poor Oklahoma in that first half, and that was because Burrow threw seven touchdown passes before the marching bands took the field.
Seven touchdown passes! In one half! And then he ran for another six in the second half, just, you know, for kicks.
I guess that was Burrow's way of saying "Heisman jinx? Pffft. I got your Heisman jinx right here, pal."
I also guess LSU's 63-28 lamination of the Sooners means the Tigers are on a different level from most folks, which might also include the 29-23 survivor of the other semifinal, defending national champion Clemson. Everyone sort of forgot about the Other Tigers after they were nearly upset by North Carolina at the end of September, but then they went about crushing the life out of various Woffords and Wake Forests and Boston Colleges, and then atomized Virginia 62-17 in the ACC title game.
And, well ... here they are again.
Not that they looked particularly scary last night. In fact, for much of the game it was Ohio State that looked scary, going up and down the field on Clemson's vaunted defense like a man cutting his grass. Justin Fields threw for 320 yards and a touchdown on them. J.K. Dobbins gashed them for 174 yards, averaging just shy of 10 yards a carry. The Buckeyes piled up 516 total yards, lived in the red zone all day, and probably would have won had a fumble return for a score not been called back and a helmet-to-helmet hit on Clemson quarterback Trevor Lawrence not kept a key Clemson drive breathing.
Also, Lawrence, not really a runner, ran for 107 yards and hoofed it 67 yards for six in the dying moments of the first half, getting Clemson back to 16-14 after trailing 16-0.
Also, he connected with running back Travis Etienne on a short pass that Etienne turned into the go-ahead score with a minute or so to go.
Also, Clemson then ended Ohio State's last chance with an interception in the end zone after a Buckeyes receiver ran the wrong route.
If this all makes it sound like the football gods were inordinately affectionate toward Clemson, well ... they were. It's why the Other Tigers, unbeaten though they are, will be underdogs to the LSU Tigers in the national championship game.
Could be another 63-to-whatever dance party for LSU, given what Ohio State did to the Clemsons. But the Blob wouldn't put a lot of coin on that. As last night proved, strange things happen when you give Trevor Lawrence a football and let him jack around with it.
Stay tuned, in other words.
Anyway ... it's Sunday morning and the national semifinals are don-- ooh! Another one!
... the national semifinals are done, and we've got our matchu-- dammit, Joe! Stop throwing touchdown passes long enough for me to complete a sentence, will y--
Well, shoot. He just threw another one.
Which is to say, LSU's first Heisman Trophy winner since Billy Cannon threw touchdown passes all day, or at least all of the first half. LSU came one point short of dropping a five-spot on poor Oklahoma in that first half, and that was because Burrow threw seven touchdown passes before the marching bands took the field.
Seven touchdown passes! In one half! And then he ran for another six in the second half, just, you know, for kicks.
I guess that was Burrow's way of saying "Heisman jinx? Pffft. I got your Heisman jinx right here, pal."
I also guess LSU's 63-28 lamination of the Sooners means the Tigers are on a different level from most folks, which might also include the 29-23 survivor of the other semifinal, defending national champion Clemson. Everyone sort of forgot about the Other Tigers after they were nearly upset by North Carolina at the end of September, but then they went about crushing the life out of various Woffords and Wake Forests and Boston Colleges, and then atomized Virginia 62-17 in the ACC title game.
And, well ... here they are again.
Not that they looked particularly scary last night. In fact, for much of the game it was Ohio State that looked scary, going up and down the field on Clemson's vaunted defense like a man cutting his grass. Justin Fields threw for 320 yards and a touchdown on them. J.K. Dobbins gashed them for 174 yards, averaging just shy of 10 yards a carry. The Buckeyes piled up 516 total yards, lived in the red zone all day, and probably would have won had a fumble return for a score not been called back and a helmet-to-helmet hit on Clemson quarterback Trevor Lawrence not kept a key Clemson drive breathing.
Also, Lawrence, not really a runner, ran for 107 yards and hoofed it 67 yards for six in the dying moments of the first half, getting Clemson back to 16-14 after trailing 16-0.
Also, he connected with running back Travis Etienne on a short pass that Etienne turned into the go-ahead score with a minute or so to go.
Also, Clemson then ended Ohio State's last chance with an interception in the end zone after a Buckeyes receiver ran the wrong route.
If this all makes it sound like the football gods were inordinately affectionate toward Clemson, well ... they were. It's why the Other Tigers, unbeaten though they are, will be underdogs to the LSU Tigers in the national championship game.
Could be another 63-to-whatever dance party for LSU, given what Ohio State did to the Clemsons. But the Blob wouldn't put a lot of coin on that. As last night proved, strange things happen when you give Trevor Lawrence a football and let him jack around with it.
Stay tuned, in other words.
Saturday, December 28, 2019
List-ing to port
It's List Season again here on the celestial calendar, as the closing-time lights come up and 2019, drunk as a lord on his year's high-octane crazy, starts to warble "Show Me The Way To Go Home."
This means a couple of things.
One, it means an endless stream The 50 Greatest Movies Of All Time lists, and The 50 Worst Movies Of All-Time lists, and The 50 Worst Star Wars Movies Of All Time lists, Which Is Every Single One Except For The Original Star Wars According To Every Crashing Star Wars Bore In America.
(I mean, come on. These people actually talk about the Star Wars "canon." As if it's ecclesiastical or something, and not what it is, which is a science-fiction movie franchise that has made George Lucas an immense wad of cash.)
And two?
It means the Blob feels compelled to jump fully clothed into the madness with a List of its own. It will call this list "The 10 Dumbest Things In Sports In 2019":
10. Everyone saying "Tiger Woods is 23 years old again!" after he won the Masters, then realizing he was not, in fact, 23 again, when he went on to miss the cut in the PGA Championship, miss the cut in the British Open and finish 21st in the U.S. Open..
9. Antonio Brown being so annoying the Steelers didn't want him anymore, even though he was the best receiver in football.
8. Antonio Brown signing with the Raiders for goo-gobs of money, then being so annoying the Raiders cut him before he'd even played a game for them.
7. Antonio Brown, etc., etc.
6. Conor McGregor, etc., etc.
5. The Colts saying "We stand behind our 46-year-old kicker who can't kick anymore, because he's still better than Cody Parkey, dammit."
4. The NBA's 19-year-old rule, because everyone knows 18-year-olds are too immature to play in the NBA, even if they're LeBron James-level good. This is on account of they haven't achieved that magical Wisdom Growth Spurt that happens when they turn 19.
3. (tie) The world chess championship, in which neither combatant (Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana) managed to win a single game in regulation, namby-pambying through 12 straight draws. And, the National Spelling Bee, in which the judges finally said "Screw this, nobody's gonna miss a word" and declared an eight-way tie for the title.
2. NFL officiating.
1. NFL officiating. (Because it's worth repeating.)
This means a couple of things.
One, it means an endless stream The 50 Greatest Movies Of All Time lists, and The 50 Worst Movies Of All-Time lists, and The 50 Worst Star Wars Movies Of All Time lists, Which Is Every Single One Except For The Original Star Wars According To Every Crashing Star Wars Bore In America.
(I mean, come on. These people actually talk about the Star Wars "canon." As if it's ecclesiastical or something, and not what it is, which is a science-fiction movie franchise that has made George Lucas an immense wad of cash.)
And two?
It means the Blob feels compelled to jump fully clothed into the madness with a List of its own. It will call this list "The 10 Dumbest Things In Sports In 2019":
10. Everyone saying "Tiger Woods is 23 years old again!" after he won the Masters, then realizing he was not, in fact, 23 again, when he went on to miss the cut in the PGA Championship, miss the cut in the British Open and finish 21st in the U.S. Open..
9. Antonio Brown being so annoying the Steelers didn't want him anymore, even though he was the best receiver in football.
8. Antonio Brown signing with the Raiders for goo-gobs of money, then being so annoying the Raiders cut him before he'd even played a game for them.
7. Antonio Brown, etc., etc.
6. Conor McGregor, etc., etc.
5. The Colts saying "We stand behind our 46-year-old kicker who can't kick anymore, because he's still better than Cody Parkey, dammit."
4. The NBA's 19-year-old rule, because everyone knows 18-year-olds are too immature to play in the NBA, even if they're LeBron James-level good. This is on account of they haven't achieved that magical Wisdom Growth Spurt that happens when they turn 19.
3. (tie) The world chess championship, in which neither combatant (Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana) managed to win a single game in regulation, namby-pambying through 12 straight draws. And, the National Spelling Bee, in which the judges finally said "Screw this, nobody's gonna miss a word" and declared an eight-way tie for the title.
2. NFL officiating.
1. NFL officiating. (Because it's worth repeating.)
New Year's eclipse
So a whole pile of Some Bowls have been played the last couple of days, and if you were paying attention maybe you caught snippets of North Carolina and Temple in the What's That Bowl, or Wake Forest and Michigan State in the Hey, You Bowl, or somebody and somebody in the Bad Boys Mowers Gasparilla Bowl (an actual bowl actually played.)
And now on to today's festivities, when something called the Camping World Bowl will be played in, um, Florida, I think.
This bowl has even less chance to blip the radar than the Bad Boys Mowers bowl, because later in the day Clemson plays Ohio State and LSU plays Oklahoma in the two national semifinal games, which are also bowls but I forget which ones. (Cotton and Peach, I believe. But don't hold me to it.) And that's significant because the Camping World Bowl involves a Notre Dame team that, unlike everyone else playing this weekend, is not 6-6 but 10-2.
Think about that for a second: The program with its own private TV deal, the program that can out-lore every other college football program in America, will be an afterthought today. Either the Fighting Irish will beat Iowa State or they won't -- it says here they will, and handily -- and, unless you're an officially licensed Domer, no one is going to notice. Most of America will flip past it the way it flipped past North Carolina-Temple or Michigan State-Wake Forest or Texas A&M and Oklahoma State in the Hi, My Name Is Bowl.
Notre Dame was never supposed to be this kind of warmup act, on account of it's spent a lot of years and money and Knute Rockne Leahys building the game's most enduring and far-reaching brand. When Zephraim Cochran finally invents the warp drive and human beings make first contact with the Vulcans, they'll all be wearing throwback Ron Powlus jerseys. Count on it.
(OK, so not Ron Powlus jerseys. Brady Quinn jerseys.)
In any case, this is a strange case, like a Broadway production playing dinner theater in Hay Bale, North Dakota. It's much more Twilight Zone-y than last year, when Notre Dame actually played in one of the two national semifinal games. And it's the most glaring example, perhaps, that while Brian Kelly has raised Notre Dame football to a level more commensurate with its brand, it still hasn't gotten to the Clemson/Alabama/LSU/Ohio State level -- or even the 1988 Notre Dame level.
In other words, there is more work to do, as everyone around the program acknowledges to their credit. In the meantime, sit back at noon today and enjoy the Whatchamacallit Bowl.
Sorry. I mean, the Camping World Bowl.
And now on to today's festivities, when something called the Camping World Bowl will be played in, um, Florida, I think.
This bowl has even less chance to blip the radar than the Bad Boys Mowers bowl, because later in the day Clemson plays Ohio State and LSU plays Oklahoma in the two national semifinal games, which are also bowls but I forget which ones. (Cotton and Peach, I believe. But don't hold me to it.) And that's significant because the Camping World Bowl involves a Notre Dame team that, unlike everyone else playing this weekend, is not 6-6 but 10-2.
Think about that for a second: The program with its own private TV deal, the program that can out-lore every other college football program in America, will be an afterthought today. Either the Fighting Irish will beat Iowa State or they won't -- it says here they will, and handily -- and, unless you're an officially licensed Domer, no one is going to notice. Most of America will flip past it the way it flipped past North Carolina-Temple or Michigan State-Wake Forest or Texas A&M and Oklahoma State in the Hi, My Name Is Bowl.
Notre Dame was never supposed to be this kind of warmup act, on account of it's spent a lot of years and money and Knute Rockne Leahys building the game's most enduring and far-reaching brand. When Zephraim Cochran finally invents the warp drive and human beings make first contact with the Vulcans, they'll all be wearing throwback Ron Powlus jerseys. Count on it.
(OK, so not Ron Powlus jerseys. Brady Quinn jerseys.)
In any case, this is a strange case, like a Broadway production playing dinner theater in Hay Bale, North Dakota. It's much more Twilight Zone-y than last year, when Notre Dame actually played in one of the two national semifinal games. And it's the most glaring example, perhaps, that while Brian Kelly has raised Notre Dame football to a level more commensurate with its brand, it still hasn't gotten to the Clemson/Alabama/LSU/Ohio State level -- or even the 1988 Notre Dame level.
In other words, there is more work to do, as everyone around the program acknowledges to their credit. In the meantime, sit back at noon today and enjoy the Whatchamacallit Bowl.
Sorry. I mean, the Camping World Bowl.
Friday, December 27, 2019
Resolution time!
And now, as we resume Blobbish activities after a couple of days of festive-ing ("I KNEW it couldn't last," you're moaning), it's time to look ahead to a new year, a new decade, a new chance to wipe the slate clean, turn the page, make solemn vows to be a better, thinner, more spiritually elevated you..
Or, you know, just say "Ah, crap, it's January again."
In any case, this is the time of year when those of us who love to set ourselves up for failure sit down to make New Year's resolutions.
New Year's resolutions are the best kind of resolutions, because they don't actually ever resolve anything (or hardly ever). Plus, if you break them, there's no real punishment. No one's going to clap you in irons or garnish your wages or make you run laps if you fudge on your New Year's resolution to run laps in 2020. There'll be a momentary twinge of remorse, and then it's on to the dessert you resolved to cut out in the new year.
In this spirit, the Blob presents, not its resolutions, but the resolutions some folks in the sporting world might make before shamelessly break them two or three days in:
"I resolve not to even LOOK at another quarterback, even though Tom's kinda gettin' up there and losing his looks and, you know, not really the Trophy Quarterback he used to be." (Bill Belichick)
"I resolve not to even LOOK at another team, even though Bill's eye is wondering and the magic is gone and I just know he's tomcatting around for his next Trophy Quarterback." (Tom Brady)
"I resolve to hire me a new, sexy flavor-of-the-month coach and then stay out of his busin-- ooh, look! A sexy flavor-of-the-month quarterback! Let's draft him!" (Jerry Jones)
"I resolve not to work for Jerry Jones ever, ever ev-- ooh, look! It's the Cowboys!" (Jerry's next hire)
"I resolve never to recruit another one-and-do-- ooh, look! It's the next LeBron James/Kevin Durant/Zion Williamson!" (Every upwardly-mobile college basketball coach in America)
And last but not least ...
"I resolve not to subject Blobophiles to more pointless posts about my crummy Pittsburgh Pir-- dammit! Why did they ever get rid of Gerrit Cole?" (The Blob)
Or, you know, just say "Ah, crap, it's January again."
In any case, this is the time of year when those of us who love to set ourselves up for failure sit down to make New Year's resolutions.
New Year's resolutions are the best kind of resolutions, because they don't actually ever resolve anything (or hardly ever). Plus, if you break them, there's no real punishment. No one's going to clap you in irons or garnish your wages or make you run laps if you fudge on your New Year's resolution to run laps in 2020. There'll be a momentary twinge of remorse, and then it's on to the dessert you resolved to cut out in the new year.
In this spirit, the Blob presents, not its resolutions, but the resolutions some folks in the sporting world might make before shamelessly break them two or three days in:
"I resolve not to even LOOK at another quarterback, even though Tom's kinda gettin' up there and losing his looks and, you know, not really the Trophy Quarterback he used to be." (Bill Belichick)
"I resolve not to even LOOK at another team, even though Bill's eye is wondering and the magic is gone and I just know he's tomcatting around for his next Trophy Quarterback." (Tom Brady)
"I resolve to hire me a new, sexy flavor-of-the-month coach and then stay out of his busin-- ooh, look! A sexy flavor-of-the-month quarterback! Let's draft him!" (Jerry Jones)
"I resolve not to work for Jerry Jones ever, ever ev-- ooh, look! It's the Cowboys!" (Jerry's next hire)
"I resolve never to recruit another one-and-do-- ooh, look! It's the next LeBron James/Kevin Durant/Zion Williamson!" (Every upwardly-mobile college basketball coach in America)
And last but not least ...
"I resolve not to subject Blobophiles to more pointless posts about my crummy Pittsburgh Pir-- dammit! Why did they ever get rid of Gerrit Cole?" (The Blob)
Tuesday, December 24, 2019
Eve of eves
Which is to say, Merry Happy Christmas Holidays to all who observe, and peace and all good things to everyone.
The Blob will take a day or two to observe. But for now, as you turn on the Christmas lights and settle in for the annual Christmas Eve viewing of "It's A Wonderful Life," the Blob leaves you with its own annual Christmas Eve tradition -- a snippet from Charles Dickens:
"Again the Ghost sped on, above the black and heaving sea—on, on—until, being far away, as he told Scrooge, from any shore, they lighted on a ship. They stood beside the helmsman at the wheel, the look-out in the bow, the officers who had the watch; dark, ghostly figures in their several stations; but every man among them hummed a Christmas tune, or had a Christmas thought, or spoke below his breath to his companion of some bygone Christmas Day, with homeward hopes belonging to it. And every man on board, waking or sleeping, good or bad, had had a kinder word for another on that day than on any day in the year; and had shared to some extent in its festivities; and had remembered those he cared for at a distance, and had known that they delighted to remember him."
The Blob will take a day or two to observe. But for now, as you turn on the Christmas lights and settle in for the annual Christmas Eve viewing of "It's A Wonderful Life," the Blob leaves you with its own annual Christmas Eve tradition -- a snippet from Charles Dickens:
"Again the Ghost sped on, above the black and heaving sea—on, on—until, being far away, as he told Scrooge, from any shore, they lighted on a ship. They stood beside the helmsman at the wheel, the look-out in the bow, the officers who had the watch; dark, ghostly figures in their several stations; but every man among them hummed a Christmas tune, or had a Christmas thought, or spoke below his breath to his companion of some bygone Christmas Day, with homeward hopes belonging to it. And every man on board, waking or sleeping, good or bad, had had a kinder word for another on that day than on any day in the year; and had shared to some extent in its festivities; and had remembered those he cared for at a distance, and had known that they delighted to remember him."
Merry Christmas, everyone.
A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 16
And now a festive Christmas Eve edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the Blob feature that will kiss you under the mistletoe, incurring a sexual harassment lawsuit and making him think "What the hell is mistletoe and WHY THE HELL DID I PUT IT UP??":
1. 'Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house ...
2. ... all the smart guys were saying "Lamar Jackson is STILL never ever ever infinity going to be a successful NFL quarterback!"
3. When what to my wondering eyes should appear ...
4. ... but Mitch and the Bears and three really small points.
5. The stockings were hung by the chimney with care ...
6. ... in hopes that the Lions would win a freaking game already.
7. And laying a finger aside of his nose ...
8. ... Tom Brady said "Dang, where's Gronkowski, this stuff really blows!"
9. And I heard him exclaim as he drove out of sight ...
10. ... "Merry Christmas to all, and, good god, did Drew Brees just throw ANOTHER touchdown pass?"
1. 'Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house ...
2. ... all the smart guys were saying "Lamar Jackson is STILL never ever ever infinity going to be a successful NFL quarterback!"
3. When what to my wondering eyes should appear ...
4. ... but Mitch and the Bears and three really small points.
5. The stockings were hung by the chimney with care ...
6. ... in hopes that the Lions would win a freaking game already.
7. And laying a finger aside of his nose ...
8. ... Tom Brady said "Dang, where's Gronkowski, this stuff really blows!"
9. And I heard him exclaim as he drove out of sight ...
10. ... "Merry Christmas to all, and, good god, did Drew Brees just throw ANOTHER touchdown pass?"
Monday, December 23, 2019
Told ya
It was just a few days ago -- a mere eyeblink in the vast march of millennia -- that the Blob wrote this about the zany madcappery that is college hoops so far this year:
Your new No. 1 team, by the way, is Kansas. The Jayhawks haven't lost since Nov. 5, when Duke beat them by two in the first game of the season. Saturday they're at No. 18 Villanova; their next home game is against unranked Stanford on Dec. 29.
Can't be sure, because the Blob's hearing isn't what it used to be. But I think the basketball gods just chuckled.
Well ... cue the chuckling. This just in from Saturday afternoon: Villanova 56, Kansas 55.
To quote Old Lodgeskins in "Little Big Man", vis-à-vis the Blob's powers of second sight: Sometimes the magic works. Sometimes it doesn't.
Your new No. 1 team, by the way, is Kansas. The Jayhawks haven't lost since Nov. 5, when Duke beat them by two in the first game of the season. Saturday they're at No. 18 Villanova; their next home game is against unranked Stanford on Dec. 29.
Can't be sure, because the Blob's hearing isn't what it used to be. But I think the basketball gods just chuckled.
Well ... cue the chuckling. This just in from Saturday afternoon: Villanova 56, Kansas 55.
To quote Old Lodgeskins in "Little Big Man", vis-à-vis the Blob's powers of second sight: Sometimes the magic works. Sometimes it doesn't.
Sunday, December 22, 2019
Asphalt ghosts
Little by little, the old thunder fades now. In too many places across America, only the ghosts of ghosts remain, and sometimes if you listen hard enough you can hear them in the wind that moans through the abandoned bleachers and faded soft drink signs and aging ovals of asphalt, darkened by years of oil and the black ribbon of rubber that marks the old racing line.
Which is to say, the owners of Baer Field Motorsports Park are closing the place down and putting the property up for sale.
Also, Junior Johnson died the other day.
Those two are somewhat related. As we shall see.
Junior Johnson, to start with, passed Friday at 88, and if you've never heard of him, you've surely heard of NASCAR. If so, Junior Johnson is a big chunk of why, because so much of what NASCAR has become is because Junior Johnson, with his eighth-grade education, was smarter and more visionary (and, yes, sometimes craftier) than a lot more people with a lot more letters behind their names.
.
He came up in NASCAR's squalling, scruffy infancy, when the best drivers ran 'shine through the piney woods during the week to pay for racing on the weekends. Junior Johnson was the most notorious of those bootlegger hotshoes, the man the revenuers never came close to catching on wheels but finally nabbed one night when he was traipsing through the woods on foot.
And so off Junior went for a stretch in the big house, and when he came out he gave us a lot of what you see now on Sunday afternoons and the occasional Saturday evening. When you tune in to see the boys drafting at Daytona and Talladega, for instance, you're tuning in to see what Junior Johnson first discovered. When you tune in to see the massive corporate selling machine NASCAR has become in the new millennium, you're tuning in to see what Junior Johnson got rolling way 50 years ago, when he was the go-between that put NASCAR and Winston together.
That gave birth to the sport's first mega-sponsor, and launched what is commonly known as NASCAR's modern era.
So what does all this have to do with Baer Field going up for sale?
It has to do with a particular time and a particular breed of individual who gave American motorsports its lifeblood, and did so in places such as Baer Field and, say, North Wilkesboro, N.C. That's the thread that runs between Baer Field and the passing of Junior Johnson, because North Wilkesboro Speedway sits almost literally in his backyard, and it's the kind of place that birthed the generation that saw NASCAR through its growing pains.
NASCAR got too big for North Wilkesboro almost 25 years ago, and now it's one of those places where the wind moans and the ghosts of Saturday night features are the only inhabitants. Just weather-warped stands and fading paint and a scoche over a half-mile of sun-bleached asphalt, that's all that's left. There are places like it all over America now, their abandonment as ancient-feeling as Aztec ruins.
There are also, it should be noted, enough local bullrings that still thrive to hope Baer Field will never be one of those ruins.
So much history clings to the place, after all. Bobby Unser once held the track record there. Over the years, the likes of Johnny Rutherford and Gary Bettenhausen and Mel Kenyon ran there, and a whole pile of NASCAR guys: David Pearson, Bobby Allison, Buddy Baker, Darrell Waltrip, Tiny Lund, Dick Trickle.
Mostly, though, Baer Field was a wellspring for local legends, your Moose Myers', Tom Wibles, Larry Zents and Steve Christmans. And, of course, generations of Coes and Stovalls and Cooks, Minichs and Setsers and Wallaces.
It was a place where racing and family finished in a dead heat every Saturday night -- a place where, beneath the smoke that hazed the lights and the blatting rumble of muscled-up engines, mothers and grandmothers kept order while children and grandchildren went looking for mischief.
It's all too special to just go away as it so often has, to become a place of ghosts and depthless silence. And yet, as with North Wilkesboro and places like it, it looks like it has.
A handful of miles north of Baer Field, for instance, there used to be another oval of asphalt. It was called South Anthony Speedway, and a lot of the same names that ran Baer Field ran there, too. It stood a mile or so west of where I grew up, and on summer nights, with the windows flung open, I used to lie in bed and listen to its blare, waxing and waning as the leadfoots got hard on the gas coming off one corner and then lifted slightly as they barreled into the next.
And then one year it, too, was shuttered. Not long after, with my cousin and uncle, I hiked through the woods to the old site. Nothing was left of it but cracked pavement and brown patchy grass and an abandoned, sagging grandstand. And, of course, the ghosts of raucous, long-dead Saturday nights.
Another Aztec ruin, in other words.
In time, naturally, they tore the place down and built something over it. Today, not a trace of it remains. Even the ghosts have departed.
Like Junior Johnson. And Junior Johnson's time.
Which is to say, the owners of Baer Field Motorsports Park are closing the place down and putting the property up for sale.
Also, Junior Johnson died the other day.
Those two are somewhat related. As we shall see.
Junior Johnson, to start with, passed Friday at 88, and if you've never heard of him, you've surely heard of NASCAR. If so, Junior Johnson is a big chunk of why, because so much of what NASCAR has become is because Junior Johnson, with his eighth-grade education, was smarter and more visionary (and, yes, sometimes craftier) than a lot more people with a lot more letters behind their names.
.
He came up in NASCAR's squalling, scruffy infancy, when the best drivers ran 'shine through the piney woods during the week to pay for racing on the weekends. Junior Johnson was the most notorious of those bootlegger hotshoes, the man the revenuers never came close to catching on wheels but finally nabbed one night when he was traipsing through the woods on foot.
And so off Junior went for a stretch in the big house, and when he came out he gave us a lot of what you see now on Sunday afternoons and the occasional Saturday evening. When you tune in to see the boys drafting at Daytona and Talladega, for instance, you're tuning in to see what Junior Johnson first discovered. When you tune in to see the massive corporate selling machine NASCAR has become in the new millennium, you're tuning in to see what Junior Johnson got rolling way 50 years ago, when he was the go-between that put NASCAR and Winston together.
That gave birth to the sport's first mega-sponsor, and launched what is commonly known as NASCAR's modern era.
So what does all this have to do with Baer Field going up for sale?
It has to do with a particular time and a particular breed of individual who gave American motorsports its lifeblood, and did so in places such as Baer Field and, say, North Wilkesboro, N.C. That's the thread that runs between Baer Field and the passing of Junior Johnson, because North Wilkesboro Speedway sits almost literally in his backyard, and it's the kind of place that birthed the generation that saw NASCAR through its growing pains.
NASCAR got too big for North Wilkesboro almost 25 years ago, and now it's one of those places where the wind moans and the ghosts of Saturday night features are the only inhabitants. Just weather-warped stands and fading paint and a scoche over a half-mile of sun-bleached asphalt, that's all that's left. There are places like it all over America now, their abandonment as ancient-feeling as Aztec ruins.
There are also, it should be noted, enough local bullrings that still thrive to hope Baer Field will never be one of those ruins.
So much history clings to the place, after all. Bobby Unser once held the track record there. Over the years, the likes of Johnny Rutherford and Gary Bettenhausen and Mel Kenyon ran there, and a whole pile of NASCAR guys: David Pearson, Bobby Allison, Buddy Baker, Darrell Waltrip, Tiny Lund, Dick Trickle.
Mostly, though, Baer Field was a wellspring for local legends, your Moose Myers', Tom Wibles, Larry Zents and Steve Christmans. And, of course, generations of Coes and Stovalls and Cooks, Minichs and Setsers and Wallaces.
It was a place where racing and family finished in a dead heat every Saturday night -- a place where, beneath the smoke that hazed the lights and the blatting rumble of muscled-up engines, mothers and grandmothers kept order while children and grandchildren went looking for mischief.
It's all too special to just go away as it so often has, to become a place of ghosts and depthless silence. And yet, as with North Wilkesboro and places like it, it looks like it has.
A handful of miles north of Baer Field, for instance, there used to be another oval of asphalt. It was called South Anthony Speedway, and a lot of the same names that ran Baer Field ran there, too. It stood a mile or so west of where I grew up, and on summer nights, with the windows flung open, I used to lie in bed and listen to its blare, waxing and waning as the leadfoots got hard on the gas coming off one corner and then lifted slightly as they barreled into the next.
And then one year it, too, was shuttered. Not long after, with my cousin and uncle, I hiked through the woods to the old site. Nothing was left of it but cracked pavement and brown patchy grass and an abandoned, sagging grandstand. And, of course, the ghosts of raucous, long-dead Saturday nights.
Another Aztec ruin, in other words.
In time, naturally, they tore the place down and built something over it. Today, not a trace of it remains. Even the ghosts have departed.
Like Junior Johnson. And Junior Johnson's time.
Saturday, December 21, 2019
None-and-done
And now for today's surgical tutorial, conducted with its usual lack of awareness by the NCAA, whose skill in one particular form of surgery is known to all.
On with How To Perform A Nose-ectomy, boys and girls!
In which this outrageously talented 7-1, 240-pound basketball player, James Wiseman, has surveyed the NCAA's college basketball landscape and decided "What do I need that for?" And so he's announced he's leaving Penny Hardaway's Memphis program to prepare for the 2020 NBA draft, after playing in just three games.
Hard to say if this career move was influenced by the NCAA's decision to declare him ineligible over something that happened before he was even in high school. But having to obtain a court injunction just to play in the three games he played could not have been a compelling argument to stick around. And so instead of being a one-and-done, Wiseman chose to be a none-and-done.
And once again the NCAA performs another successful nose-ectomy. cutting off its nose to spite its face.
Now, it's understandable why the generalissimos of college buckets get their shorts in a knot over the whole one-and-done phenomenon. No one, after all, enjoys having a lucrative product treated like some bus station waiting room. That's hardly the college game's fault, either; this one's on the NBA, which kicked college basketball in the twigs and berries 13 years ago with its absurd 19-year-old rule.
This meant that a kid with the skill set of a Zion Williamson or James Wiseman couldn't just enter the NBA draft right out of high school, as would happen in a saner world. They had to bide their time somewhere until they turned 19 -- and that somewhere naturally figured to be dear old State U.
Here's the thing though: If doing that treated the college product with something less than respect, it's also benefited it.
Hard to quantify how many extra eyeballs tuned in last winter to watch Zion Williamson ruin rims at Duke, but his presence couldn't have hurt the bottom line. Even if it was only for one season, he gave the college game one more thing to sell. And what's wrong with that?
Now, however, the college game has a new problem: More and more of those one-and-dones are deciding, like James Wiseman, that one-and-done-ing is a waste of time.
It's why you'll find former top college prospects LaMelo Ball and RJ Hampton biding their time, not at State U., but in Australia, where both are playing professionally until they turn 19. Why spend a season playing de facto pro ball, after all, when you can play the real thing? Why go through the whole charade of being a "student-athlete" when you can just be honest about it all?
And so how does the NCAA respond to that?
By treating the latest one-and-done like a criminal instead of a revenue stream. Brilliant.
Somebody take the scalpel away from these people. Please, for their sake.
On with How To Perform A Nose-ectomy, boys and girls!
In which this outrageously talented 7-1, 240-pound basketball player, James Wiseman, has surveyed the NCAA's college basketball landscape and decided "What do I need that for?" And so he's announced he's leaving Penny Hardaway's Memphis program to prepare for the 2020 NBA draft, after playing in just three games.
Hard to say if this career move was influenced by the NCAA's decision to declare him ineligible over something that happened before he was even in high school. But having to obtain a court injunction just to play in the three games he played could not have been a compelling argument to stick around. And so instead of being a one-and-done, Wiseman chose to be a none-and-done.
And once again the NCAA performs another successful nose-ectomy. cutting off its nose to spite its face.
Now, it's understandable why the generalissimos of college buckets get their shorts in a knot over the whole one-and-done phenomenon. No one, after all, enjoys having a lucrative product treated like some bus station waiting room. That's hardly the college game's fault, either; this one's on the NBA, which kicked college basketball in the twigs and berries 13 years ago with its absurd 19-year-old rule.
This meant that a kid with the skill set of a Zion Williamson or James Wiseman couldn't just enter the NBA draft right out of high school, as would happen in a saner world. They had to bide their time somewhere until they turned 19 -- and that somewhere naturally figured to be dear old State U.
Here's the thing though: If doing that treated the college product with something less than respect, it's also benefited it.
Hard to quantify how many extra eyeballs tuned in last winter to watch Zion Williamson ruin rims at Duke, but his presence couldn't have hurt the bottom line. Even if it was only for one season, he gave the college game one more thing to sell. And what's wrong with that?
Now, however, the college game has a new problem: More and more of those one-and-dones are deciding, like James Wiseman, that one-and-done-ing is a waste of time.
It's why you'll find former top college prospects LaMelo Ball and RJ Hampton biding their time, not at State U., but in Australia, where both are playing professionally until they turn 19. Why spend a season playing de facto pro ball, after all, when you can play the real thing? Why go through the whole charade of being a "student-athlete" when you can just be honest about it all?
And so how does the NCAA respond to that?
By treating the latest one-and-done like a criminal instead of a revenue stream. Brilliant.
Somebody take the scalpel away from these people. Please, for their sake.
Friday, December 20, 2019
And speaking of film, Part Deux
In which the Blob, as promised, goes to see "Richard Jewell," and discovers that two diametrically opposed truths can indeed exist on the same plane, as the philosophers or perhaps Jim Morrison once said.
Truth No. 1: "Richard Jewell" is actually a very good film, and if there is not an Oscar nommy coming for the actor in the title role, Paul Walter Hauser, a full investigation by the appropriate agencies should ensue.
Truth No. 2: "Richard Jewell' is also a cartoon for the paranoid loonies who inhabit the campaign rallies of Our Only Available Impeached President,
This is because there is nuance and texture to Hauser's role and those of Kathy Bates (Jewell's mom) and Sam Rockwell (Jewell's attorney), and none at all to those who made Jewell's life a living hell. They're just the Evil Media and the Evil Gummint, cardboard cutouts who will affirm every dark fantasy the acolytes of OOAIP have about their favorite boogeymen. There's even a quick shot of Bill Clinton on the TV in the background of one scene, just to complete the Boogeyman Trifecta.
Look. There's no question Jewell was treated horribly by all parties, and that his is a compelling story that deserves telling. But what keeps a very good film from being an excellent film is the absurd, and indeed openly slanderous, manner in which those who put Jewell through the ringer are portrayed as simply one-dimensional Evil People who decided to thoughtlessly torture a decent if naïve man.
The reporter who (accurately) broke the initial story, for instance, is characterized as such a ridiculously over-the-top Evil the Blob nearly laughed out loud at some of the scenes she's in. Olivia Wilde's character is, after all, everything OOAIP's legions imagine journalists to be: A foul-mouthed, hard-drinking hussy who sleeps with sources to get her stories and displays not an ounce of character or humanity.
That the reporter in question has been dead for 17 years and can't defend herself makes this deliberate defamation especially contemptible. It's hard to miss the irony, too: That in defaming her, Clint Eastwood does exactly to her what he shows the media and the FBI doing to Richard Jewell.
A much better film would have portrayed the reporter who broke the story doing so the way the real-life reporter actually did, by working her sources and not sleeping with them (a complete fabrication, according to those who knew her). It would have portrayed the media and the FBI as who they are -- human beings who, like any human beings, have lives and families and sometimes make mistakes and jump to conclusions.
A better film would have portrayed the Richard Jewell saga for what it was: Well-intentioned people simply trying to do their jobs, only with unintended and cruel consequences.
The FBI, for instance, focused on Jewell not because it was trying to destroy him, but because he did indeed fit to a T an established profile. And if the Atlanta Journal Constitution broke the story (again, accurately) that set the media frenzy in motion, it was also a different AJC reporter who discovered, through literal legwork, that Jewell could not possibly have gotten to the pay phone that was used by Eric Rudolph to call in the bomb threat.
That reporter's story was the first public acknowledgment that the FBI might have the wrong man.
Of course, in the film, it's Jewell's attorney who discovers this. And that's because to portray it the way it actually happened would have disrupted Eastwood's simplistic and ultimately dishonest narrative.
That's a shame. Because, told honestly, "Richard Jewell" could have been a great film.
Too bad it's not.
Truth No. 1: "Richard Jewell" is actually a very good film, and if there is not an Oscar nommy coming for the actor in the title role, Paul Walter Hauser, a full investigation by the appropriate agencies should ensue.
Truth No. 2: "Richard Jewell' is also a cartoon for the paranoid loonies who inhabit the campaign rallies of Our Only Available Impeached President,
This is because there is nuance and texture to Hauser's role and those of Kathy Bates (Jewell's mom) and Sam Rockwell (Jewell's attorney), and none at all to those who made Jewell's life a living hell. They're just the Evil Media and the Evil Gummint, cardboard cutouts who will affirm every dark fantasy the acolytes of OOAIP have about their favorite boogeymen. There's even a quick shot of Bill Clinton on the TV in the background of one scene, just to complete the Boogeyman Trifecta.
Look. There's no question Jewell was treated horribly by all parties, and that his is a compelling story that deserves telling. But what keeps a very good film from being an excellent film is the absurd, and indeed openly slanderous, manner in which those who put Jewell through the ringer are portrayed as simply one-dimensional Evil People who decided to thoughtlessly torture a decent if naïve man.
The reporter who (accurately) broke the initial story, for instance, is characterized as such a ridiculously over-the-top Evil the Blob nearly laughed out loud at some of the scenes she's in. Olivia Wilde's character is, after all, everything OOAIP's legions imagine journalists to be: A foul-mouthed, hard-drinking hussy who sleeps with sources to get her stories and displays not an ounce of character or humanity.
That the reporter in question has been dead for 17 years and can't defend herself makes this deliberate defamation especially contemptible. It's hard to miss the irony, too: That in defaming her, Clint Eastwood does exactly to her what he shows the media and the FBI doing to Richard Jewell.
A much better film would have portrayed the reporter who broke the story doing so the way the real-life reporter actually did, by working her sources and not sleeping with them (a complete fabrication, according to those who knew her). It would have portrayed the media and the FBI as who they are -- human beings who, like any human beings, have lives and families and sometimes make mistakes and jump to conclusions.
A better film would have portrayed the Richard Jewell saga for what it was: Well-intentioned people simply trying to do their jobs, only with unintended and cruel consequences.
The FBI, for instance, focused on Jewell not because it was trying to destroy him, but because he did indeed fit to a T an established profile. And if the Atlanta Journal Constitution broke the story (again, accurately) that set the media frenzy in motion, it was also a different AJC reporter who discovered, through literal legwork, that Jewell could not possibly have gotten to the pay phone that was used by Eric Rudolph to call in the bomb threat.
That reporter's story was the first public acknowledgment that the FBI might have the wrong man.
Of course, in the film, it's Jewell's attorney who discovers this. And that's because to portray it the way it actually happened would have disrupted Eastwood's simplistic and ultimately dishonest narrative.
That's a shame. Because, told honestly, "Richard Jewell" could have been a great film.
Too bad it's not.
Thursday, December 19, 2019
Glorious craziness
And, no, we're not talking here about the raving of the Great Unhinged Party yesterday in defense of its corrupt divine. That was simply what Hunter Thompson used to call "bad craziness," a wonderfully apt term for what frequently breaks out in certain corners of the republic.
Glorious craziness, on the other hand, is what broke out again in Lexington, Ky., last night. And really all over the landscape of college buckets these days.
What happened was the sixth-ranked, homestanding Kentucky Wildcats lost again in the sanctuary of Rupp Arena, and again to an unranked team. This time it was Utah who made Big Blue blue, barely a month after Evansville shocked the Kats.
So chaos continues to roil college basketball's waters, and nothing could lovelier in an era when the sport has become little more than an anteroom for NBA-bound lottery picks. Kentucky is now 8-2, and both losses have come in Rupp. Duke lost in Cameron Indoor to Stephen F. Austin, a 27-point underdog. A Purdue team that's 7-4 now and has already lost badly to a puny Nebraska outfit beat defending national champion Virginia by 29. An Ohio State team that was unbeaten and ranked second at the time lost by 13 to 4-5 Minnesota.
And so it goes, and so it goes.
And if this does not bode well for stability, it does bode well for college buckets as a whole. Stability, as it applies here, is both boring and overrated. It's why chalk on the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament is the worst thing that can possibly happen for everyone who profits from it; March Madness isn't, after all, if there's no madness.
Conversely, nothing rivets the attention like the idea that anyone can lose at any time to anyone anywhere. That's what we've got right now, as the season heads toward January and conference play heats up. So, yes, lovely chaos, and glorious craziness.
Your new No. 1 team, by the way, is Kansas. The Jayhawks haven't lost since Nov. 5, when Duke beat them by two in the first game of the season. Saturday they're at No. 18 Villanova; their next home game is against unranked Stanford on Dec. 29.
Can't be sure, because the Blob's hearing isn't what it used to be. But I think the basketball gods just chuckled.
Glorious craziness, on the other hand, is what broke out again in Lexington, Ky., last night. And really all over the landscape of college buckets these days.
What happened was the sixth-ranked, homestanding Kentucky Wildcats lost again in the sanctuary of Rupp Arena, and again to an unranked team. This time it was Utah who made Big Blue blue, barely a month after Evansville shocked the Kats.
So chaos continues to roil college basketball's waters, and nothing could lovelier in an era when the sport has become little more than an anteroom for NBA-bound lottery picks. Kentucky is now 8-2, and both losses have come in Rupp. Duke lost in Cameron Indoor to Stephen F. Austin, a 27-point underdog. A Purdue team that's 7-4 now and has already lost badly to a puny Nebraska outfit beat defending national champion Virginia by 29. An Ohio State team that was unbeaten and ranked second at the time lost by 13 to 4-5 Minnesota.
And so it goes, and so it goes.
And if this does not bode well for stability, it does bode well for college buckets as a whole. Stability, as it applies here, is both boring and overrated. It's why chalk on the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament is the worst thing that can possibly happen for everyone who profits from it; March Madness isn't, after all, if there's no madness.
Conversely, nothing rivets the attention like the idea that anyone can lose at any time to anyone anywhere. That's what we've got right now, as the season heads toward January and conference play heats up. So, yes, lovely chaos, and glorious craziness.
Your new No. 1 team, by the way, is Kansas. The Jayhawks haven't lost since Nov. 5, when Duke beat them by two in the first game of the season. Saturday they're at No. 18 Villanova; their next home game is against unranked Stanford on Dec. 29.
Can't be sure, because the Blob's hearing isn't what it used to be. But I think the basketball gods just chuckled.
Wednesday, December 18, 2019
Minor considerations
So here are a few things you might be hearing now, with The Season fully upon us:
"Peace on Earth, goodwill toward men."
"Merry Christmas!"
"Happy holidays!" ('Cause there really is more than just one)
"Did so!"
"Did not!"
Ah, sorry. Don't know how those last two snuck in there.
Don't know how a season of giving became a season of taking, because I haven't talked to the money-grubbers who run Major League Baseball. They are complaining, essentially, that the minor leagues are a pain in the butt that cost them too money. So they rolled out a grand plan in November to kick 42 minor-league teams (and their communities) out of the affiliate club, and the minor leagues have responded, essentially, by saying "Oh, HELL, no."
(An important sidenote: The Fort Wayne Tincaps are not one of the 42. This is because their home ballpark, Parkview Field, is one of the finest minor-league facilities in the country, and the TinCaps are one of the minors' best-run franchises. Which means they draw, and therefore obliquely give MLB a generous return on its investment.)
In any case ... 42 teams (and, don't forget, their communities) are almost a quarter of all minor league affiliates. This is not just pruning the tree, in other words. It's cutting the damn thing down and chopping it up for firewood.
It's also Major League Baseball that's doing this, which is hardly the charity case all of commissioner Rob Manfred's carrying on about the minor leagues might lead you to believe.
"We subsidize to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars every single year the operations of minor league baseball," Manfred whined at baseball's winter meetings last week, accusing MiLB's negotiations of being "unreasonable" and, essentially, no negotiations at all.
"A take-it-or-leave-it, status-quo approach," is how Manfred characterized it.
This is both "demonstrably inaccurate," according to MiLB, and aggravated poor-mouthing of the most egregious sort. Those "hundreds of millions of dollars," for instance, roughly can be translated as "all of our spare change, dammit."
This is because it's barely been a year since MLB hammered out a new TV package worth $5.1 billion. It's also barely been days since the Yankees bought the services of Gerrit Cole for $324 million over nine years, sand the Angels signed Anthony Rendon to a seven-year, $245-mill deal.
In other words: Major League Baseball is rolling in it like Scrooge McDuck.
And if you're saying here, "Mr. Blob, this sounds like that American thing of obscenely rich folk complaining about not being even more obscenely rich," you are an astute Blobophile. That's exactly what this is.
It's also disingenuous as all get out, given that Manfred's rationale for minor-league contraction was to benefit the players by providing them upgraded facilities, better pay and better travel situations. As Eric Stephen points out in the SB Nation piece, it's a curious position, given that two years ago MLB successfully lobbied Congress to include in its budget a provision that, among other things, would forbid minor leaguers from earning overtime pay no matter how many hours they worked.
Now, there is no doubt that a lot of the teams (and communities) MLB wants to axe have desperately sub-standard facilities. This is especially glaring in an era when more and more minor league facilities are going up that rival their MLB big brothers in style and ballpark amenities, albeit on a smaller scale. And, yes, you have to go no farther than the corner of Ewing and Brackenridge in downtown Fort Wayne to see that.
The place on Mount Pleasant Street in downtown Burlington, Iowa, is somewhat different.
That's where Community Ballpark sits, and a decade ago I was there to watch the TinCaps finish off the Burlington Bees to win the Midwest League championship. It was a small (capacity 3,200), spare place, if clean and neat and impeccably groomed. And when the game was over, the champagne dripped from the ancient ceiling in the tiny visitor's clubhouse.
That's about all I remember. And it comes back to me now because, as you might have guessed, Burlington is on the MLB's preliminary cut list, along with fellow Midwest League representatives Beloit, Wis. and Clinton, Ia.
Here are a few things about that, though.
The Burlington Bees have existed in some form or fashion for 130 years.
They've played in the Midwest League since 1962.
Small, neat Community Field has been their home since 1947.
I don't know what constitutes an institution these days. But 72 seasons in the same ballpark, and 57 in the same Class A league, would seem to qualify.
Also, this would seem to be the right time to remind everyone of how slavishly devoted to its history Major League Baseball has always been, often to its own detriment.
Well. Not so much anymore, apparently. Not so much anymore.
"Peace on Earth, goodwill toward men."
"Merry Christmas!"
"Happy holidays!" ('Cause there really is more than just one)
"Did so!"
"Did not!"
Ah, sorry. Don't know how those last two snuck in there.
Don't know how a season of giving became a season of taking, because I haven't talked to the money-grubbers who run Major League Baseball. They are complaining, essentially, that the minor leagues are a pain in the butt that cost them too money. So they rolled out a grand plan in November to kick 42 minor-league teams (and their communities) out of the affiliate club, and the minor leagues have responded, essentially, by saying "Oh, HELL, no."
(An important sidenote: The Fort Wayne Tincaps are not one of the 42. This is because their home ballpark, Parkview Field, is one of the finest minor-league facilities in the country, and the TinCaps are one of the minors' best-run franchises. Which means they draw, and therefore obliquely give MLB a generous return on its investment.)
In any case ... 42 teams (and, don't forget, their communities) are almost a quarter of all minor league affiliates. This is not just pruning the tree, in other words. It's cutting the damn thing down and chopping it up for firewood.
It's also Major League Baseball that's doing this, which is hardly the charity case all of commissioner Rob Manfred's carrying on about the minor leagues might lead you to believe.
"We subsidize to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars every single year the operations of minor league baseball," Manfred whined at baseball's winter meetings last week, accusing MiLB's negotiations of being "unreasonable" and, essentially, no negotiations at all.
"A take-it-or-leave-it, status-quo approach," is how Manfred characterized it.
This is both "demonstrably inaccurate," according to MiLB, and aggravated poor-mouthing of the most egregious sort. Those "hundreds of millions of dollars," for instance, roughly can be translated as "all of our spare change, dammit."
This is because it's barely been a year since MLB hammered out a new TV package worth $5.1 billion. It's also barely been days since the Yankees bought the services of Gerrit Cole for $324 million over nine years, sand the Angels signed Anthony Rendon to a seven-year, $245-mill deal.
In other words: Major League Baseball is rolling in it like Scrooge McDuck.
And if you're saying here, "Mr. Blob, this sounds like that American thing of obscenely rich folk complaining about not being even more obscenely rich," you are an astute Blobophile. That's exactly what this is.
It's also disingenuous as all get out, given that Manfred's rationale for minor-league contraction was to benefit the players by providing them upgraded facilities, better pay and better travel situations. As Eric Stephen points out in the SB Nation piece, it's a curious position, given that two years ago MLB successfully lobbied Congress to include in its budget a provision that, among other things, would forbid minor leaguers from earning overtime pay no matter how many hours they worked.
Now, there is no doubt that a lot of the teams (and communities) MLB wants to axe have desperately sub-standard facilities. This is especially glaring in an era when more and more minor league facilities are going up that rival their MLB big brothers in style and ballpark amenities, albeit on a smaller scale. And, yes, you have to go no farther than the corner of Ewing and Brackenridge in downtown Fort Wayne to see that.
The place on Mount Pleasant Street in downtown Burlington, Iowa, is somewhat different.
That's where Community Ballpark sits, and a decade ago I was there to watch the TinCaps finish off the Burlington Bees to win the Midwest League championship. It was a small (capacity 3,200), spare place, if clean and neat and impeccably groomed. And when the game was over, the champagne dripped from the ancient ceiling in the tiny visitor's clubhouse.
That's about all I remember. And it comes back to me now because, as you might have guessed, Burlington is on the MLB's preliminary cut list, along with fellow Midwest League representatives Beloit, Wis. and Clinton, Ia.
Here are a few things about that, though.
The Burlington Bees have existed in some form or fashion for 130 years.
They've played in the Midwest League since 1962.
Small, neat Community Field has been their home since 1947.
I don't know what constitutes an institution these days. But 72 seasons in the same ballpark, and 57 in the same Class A league, would seem to qualify.
Also, this would seem to be the right time to remind everyone of how slavishly devoted to its history Major League Baseball has always been, often to its own detriment.
Well. Not so much anymore, apparently. Not so much anymore.
Tuesday, December 17, 2019
A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 15
And now this week's edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the eponymous Blob feature of which critics have said "Ooh, look at that big word!", and "What does a hippopotamus have to do with this Blob?":
1. It's Tuesday morning and Lamar Jackson still will never, ever, ever, ever be a successful NFL quarterback.
2. It's Tuesday morning and the Super Bowl-bound Browns continue Brownsing in the most Brownsing way ever.
3. Also, the Super Bowl-bound Bears, Bears-ing.
4. "Heh." https://pmchollywoodlife.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/aaron-rodgers-5-things-to-know-ftr.jpg
5. Meanwhile, the Colts!
6. Successfully kept Drew Brees from completing TWO of his' 30 passes.
7. So they've got that going for them.
8. "The Falcons? The Falcons?!" (Every 49ers fan in America)
9. "The Cowboys? The Cowboys?! (Every Rams fan in America)
10. Never, Lamar. Never, ever, ever, ever.
1. It's Tuesday morning and Lamar Jackson still will never, ever, ever, ever be a successful NFL quarterback.
2. It's Tuesday morning and the Super Bowl-bound Browns continue Brownsing in the most Brownsing way ever.
3. Also, the Super Bowl-bound Bears, Bears-ing.
4. "Heh." https://pmchollywoodlife.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/aaron-rodgers-5-things-to-know-ftr.jpg
5. Meanwhile, the Colts!
6. Successfully kept Drew Brees from completing TWO of his' 30 passes.
7. So they've got that going for them.
8. "The Falcons? The Falcons?!" (Every 49ers fan in America)
9. "The Cowboys? The Cowboys?! (Every Rams fan in America)
10. Never, Lamar. Never, ever, ever, ever.
Monday, December 16, 2019
Goodbye to By, and all that
Memory plays you like a carnival huckster sometimes. You know how things went down back in the day as surely as you know the pea is under that shell on the right -- except somehow it turns up under the shell in the middle, and damned if you know how it got there.
And so let's begin this morning by saying By Hey did not wear the black hat we always imagined him wearing.
This is to say Hey's mighty North Side legions did not always knock our New Haven Bulldogs out of the sectional each year, even if it seemed that way. Come March we'd put on our little paper bowlers and our purple-and-gold and traipse off to Allen County War Memorial Coliseum, and there By would be waiting with Doug Brown or John Ankenbruck or Dave Moser, and, dagnabit, guess it's time for track and baseball.
And so By was the bad guy, always. That we were no more right about that than some rube about the pea under the shell is worth acknowledging today, as word comes down that By has passed at the full and generous age of 91.
Few better embodied what Indiana high school basketball was in its full flower, when there were hundreds of teams in hundreds of tiny dots on the map, and come March they all went into the same hopper. By was the quintessential product of that era, a Fort Wayne boy who played at Concordia and then came back to town as an assistant at Central and then head coach at his alma mater, and then went on to spend 31 decorated years at North Side.
By the time he gave up the whistle, he'd won 550 games across 34 seasons and took Moser and North to the state finals in 1965, where they lost to Billy Keller and Indianapolis Washington in the state championship game.
But somewhere in all of that, there was more.
Somewhere in those 550 wins were cold winter nights in warm well-lit places, and the thick perfume of popcorn. There was the adolescent chanting of cheerleaders, the gleam of a hardwood floor, rippling nylon on an orange rim. There was the shriek of a whistle, the shriek of outrage that attended it, and then Boy, look at Coach Hey, he's really giving that ref what-for.
By was a thread that led us back to those days, and to imagine that they no longer exist even though they do. Everything we remember about what Indiana high school basketball was in that era still exists, even though every geezer lighting a candle to Bobby Plump 'n' them refuses to believe it.
If there are four classes now, and girls basketball, too, there are still cold winter nights and warm well-lit places. If there is no longer a sectional in Fort Wayne, or Hilliard Gates and Peter Eckrich bringing you the action live from the BEAUTIFUL War Memorial Coliseum, there remains the shriek of whistles in the background -- eliciting, of course, the same timeless shrieks of outrage.
There is also an acknowledgment that memory is imperfect. Which gets us back to By Hey and black hats.
In later years, see, this New Haven grad got to know By, and a more gracious and effervescent man never breathed air. A coach to his bones, he always wanted to talk basketball when I'd bump into him in some warm well-lit place. and his enthusiasm in doing so always lit it further. It was simply impossible not to like the man.
And so, goodbye to By, and to all that. An era doesn't die with him, but it perhaps grows a bit dimmer.
But like his enthusiasm, and his passion, its essence never does.
And so let's begin this morning by saying By Hey did not wear the black hat we always imagined him wearing.
This is to say Hey's mighty North Side legions did not always knock our New Haven Bulldogs out of the sectional each year, even if it seemed that way. Come March we'd put on our little paper bowlers and our purple-and-gold and traipse off to Allen County War Memorial Coliseum, and there By would be waiting with Doug Brown or John Ankenbruck or Dave Moser, and, dagnabit, guess it's time for track and baseball.
And so By was the bad guy, always. That we were no more right about that than some rube about the pea under the shell is worth acknowledging today, as word comes down that By has passed at the full and generous age of 91.
Few better embodied what Indiana high school basketball was in its full flower, when there were hundreds of teams in hundreds of tiny dots on the map, and come March they all went into the same hopper. By was the quintessential product of that era, a Fort Wayne boy who played at Concordia and then came back to town as an assistant at Central and then head coach at his alma mater, and then went on to spend 31 decorated years at North Side.
By the time he gave up the whistle, he'd won 550 games across 34 seasons and took Moser and North to the state finals in 1965, where they lost to Billy Keller and Indianapolis Washington in the state championship game.
But somewhere in all of that, there was more.
Somewhere in those 550 wins were cold winter nights in warm well-lit places, and the thick perfume of popcorn. There was the adolescent chanting of cheerleaders, the gleam of a hardwood floor, rippling nylon on an orange rim. There was the shriek of a whistle, the shriek of outrage that attended it, and then Boy, look at Coach Hey, he's really giving that ref what-for.
By was a thread that led us back to those days, and to imagine that they no longer exist even though they do. Everything we remember about what Indiana high school basketball was in that era still exists, even though every geezer lighting a candle to Bobby Plump 'n' them refuses to believe it.
If there are four classes now, and girls basketball, too, there are still cold winter nights and warm well-lit places. If there is no longer a sectional in Fort Wayne, or Hilliard Gates and Peter Eckrich bringing you the action live from the BEAUTIFUL War Memorial Coliseum, there remains the shriek of whistles in the background -- eliciting, of course, the same timeless shrieks of outrage.
There is also an acknowledgment that memory is imperfect. Which gets us back to By Hey and black hats.
In later years, see, this New Haven grad got to know By, and a more gracious and effervescent man never breathed air. A coach to his bones, he always wanted to talk basketball when I'd bump into him in some warm well-lit place. and his enthusiasm in doing so always lit it further. It was simply impossible not to like the man.
And so, goodbye to By, and to all that. An era doesn't die with him, but it perhaps grows a bit dimmer.
But like his enthusiasm, and his passion, its essence never does.
Sunday, December 15, 2019
Fate accompli
And then, sometimes, karma just ... happens.
Fate or a benevolent God or just muscled-up happenstance smiles on a football spinning across a foggy night in Connecticut, and when it comes down a certain American town whose name you know has won the Connecticut Class LL football title.
The name of the town is Newtown.
Their boys won the title on a 36-yard touchdown pass, a by-God Hail Mary, on the last play of the game.
It happened on Dec. 14, which is a date you know because on that date seven years a young American man took a military grade weapon into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown and slaughtered 20 children between the ages of 6 and 7 with it. He also killed six teachers.
Then he turned the gun on himself, the coward.
Seven years later, to the very day, Newtown High School won the state football championship in the most dramatic fashion possible.
Fate or a benevolent God or muscled-up happenstance. Take your pick.
And, no, winning a silly football game hardly balances the scales, hardly makes up for what the coward stole from Newtown seven years ago yesterday. That left a darkness that will probably always cling to it in some form or fashion. It left broken hearts and broken families, and trauma that to this day no doubt continues to manifest itself in ways its victims can never anticipate.
But seven years after, something good happened to Newtown on Dec. 14. A football went spinning across the night 11 days before Christmas, and when it came down something of the season came with it. And a bunch of kids in blue jerseys and white helmets began jumping around and hugging and screaming their joy.
One of them, a linebacker, was Ben Pinto.
Seven years ago on the very date, his brother, Jack, was one of the 20 schoolchildren murdered by a coward with a gun.
I imagine there were some tears from Ben Pinto, as he jumped and hugged and screamed. I imagine there were tears from a lot of folks.
Tears of joy. And just tears, of course.
Fate or a benevolent God or just muscled-up happenstance smiles on a football spinning across a foggy night in Connecticut, and when it comes down a certain American town whose name you know has won the Connecticut Class LL football title.
The name of the town is Newtown.
Their boys won the title on a 36-yard touchdown pass, a by-God Hail Mary, on the last play of the game.
It happened on Dec. 14, which is a date you know because on that date seven years a young American man took a military grade weapon into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown and slaughtered 20 children between the ages of 6 and 7 with it. He also killed six teachers.
Then he turned the gun on himself, the coward.
Seven years later, to the very day, Newtown High School won the state football championship in the most dramatic fashion possible.
Fate or a benevolent God or muscled-up happenstance. Take your pick.
And, no, winning a silly football game hardly balances the scales, hardly makes up for what the coward stole from Newtown seven years ago yesterday. That left a darkness that will probably always cling to it in some form or fashion. It left broken hearts and broken families, and trauma that to this day no doubt continues to manifest itself in ways its victims can never anticipate.
But seven years after, something good happened to Newtown on Dec. 14. A football went spinning across the night 11 days before Christmas, and when it came down something of the season came with it. And a bunch of kids in blue jerseys and white helmets began jumping around and hugging and screaming their joy.
One of them, a linebacker, was Ben Pinto.
Seven years ago on the very date, his brother, Jack, was one of the 20 schoolchildren murdered by a coward with a gun.
I imagine there were some tears from Ben Pinto, as he jumped and hugged and screamed. I imagine there were tears from a lot of folks.
Tears of joy. And just tears, of course.
Saturday, December 14, 2019
Command performance
This is not the Breakfast Food Auto Parts Processed Meat Product Bowl they'll be playing today, out there in Philadelphia. The championship of multi-national conglomerate football will not be on the line. Clemson University Inc. and OhioStateBuckeyesCorp will not be involved, and their employees will not be vying for that next step up the corporate ladder.
A corner office on an NFL roster! That's the ticket -- and, oh, yeah, the glory or whatever of dear old Something-Something U.
No one today is playing for any of that. And they damn sure know who it is for whom they're playing.
They know because this is Army-Navy, and what they're playing for is not some trophy named after the cereal aisle at your local Megalomart. They're playing for everything college football was always supposed to be but often no longer is, playing for pride and honor and whatever was lost when corporate America discovered they could make piles of money by sticking its logos on college kids and not have to pay 'em for it.
Captain Crunch never played in this game, see, but General Dwight Eisenhower did. General Omar Bradley, too. Admiral William "Bull" Halsey. And Captain Slade Cutter, who as a submarine commander in World War II sent 19 Japanese ships to the bottom.
A lot of future generals and admirals and (in Eisenhower's case) presidents will be playing this afternoon in Lincoln Financial Field, and if NFL jobs won't be on the line something far more meaningful will be. If premier athletes won't be playing today, premier people will be. That they've been doing it since 1890 only adds to the depth and texture of its tapestry.
Once upon a time, of course, Army-Navy was a clash of legitimate football titans, back in the day when Doc Blanchard and Glenn Davis and Roger Staubach and Joe Bellino were doing their thing. That it no longer is hardly diminishes its significance. The very weight of its history -- and the weight of what its participants portend for the future of the nation -- ensure as much.
Navy comes into today with a 9-2 record, a bowl date and a No. 23 ranking. Army comes in 5-7, and this is its bowl game. None of that is relevant, of course. Neither is the fact Army has won the last three meetings, twice as an underdog, after losing 14 in a row to Navy between 2002 and 2015.
What matters is the Army Corps of Cadets, marching into the stadium in that long gray line. What matter is the Navy Brigade of Midshipmen, marching into the stadium beneath that sea of white caps. What matters is the vast gulf between a certain November day in 1890 and this December day in 2019 -- and how, when foot first meets ball, that gulf will vanish like smoke.
A corner office on an NFL roster! That's the ticket -- and, oh, yeah, the glory or whatever of dear old Something-Something U.
No one today is playing for any of that. And they damn sure know who it is for whom they're playing.
They know because this is Army-Navy, and what they're playing for is not some trophy named after the cereal aisle at your local Megalomart. They're playing for everything college football was always supposed to be but often no longer is, playing for pride and honor and whatever was lost when corporate America discovered they could make piles of money by sticking its logos on college kids and not have to pay 'em for it.
Captain Crunch never played in this game, see, but General Dwight Eisenhower did. General Omar Bradley, too. Admiral William "Bull" Halsey. And Captain Slade Cutter, who as a submarine commander in World War II sent 19 Japanese ships to the bottom.
A lot of future generals and admirals and (in Eisenhower's case) presidents will be playing this afternoon in Lincoln Financial Field, and if NFL jobs won't be on the line something far more meaningful will be. If premier athletes won't be playing today, premier people will be. That they've been doing it since 1890 only adds to the depth and texture of its tapestry.
Once upon a time, of course, Army-Navy was a clash of legitimate football titans, back in the day when Doc Blanchard and Glenn Davis and Roger Staubach and Joe Bellino were doing their thing. That it no longer is hardly diminishes its significance. The very weight of its history -- and the weight of what its participants portend for the future of the nation -- ensure as much.
Navy comes into today with a 9-2 record, a bowl date and a No. 23 ranking. Army comes in 5-7, and this is its bowl game. None of that is relevant, of course. Neither is the fact Army has won the last three meetings, twice as an underdog, after losing 14 in a row to Navy between 2002 and 2015.
What matters is the Army Corps of Cadets, marching into the stadium in that long gray line. What matter is the Navy Brigade of Midshipmen, marching into the stadium beneath that sea of white caps. What matters is the vast gulf between a certain November day in 1890 and this December day in 2019 -- and how, when foot first meets ball, that gulf will vanish like smoke.
Thursday, December 12, 2019
And speaking of film ...
This Blob is not like other Blobs ("No kidding," you're saying). It believes in modernity when it suits its purposes, and clings to anachronism when it doesn't.
Which is to say, in a world of Netflix and Hulu and watching the latest Hollywood blockbusters on the inside of your eyelids -- that's coming, trust me -- it still loves going to the movies.
It loves getting in the Blobmobile and driving to the local Whatsaplex, but only after stopping at a convenience store for illicit Junior Mints to smuggle in. It loves buying a ticket and finding a proper seat and silencing its phone as the lights go down and the sound comes up. It loves seeing a film the way it was intended to be seen, on the big screen, and making up its own mind whether it's any good or not.
That last is important. Because it explains why the Blob will probably go see "Richard Jewell," anyway, despite what the Atlanta Journal Constitution says.
The AJC has denounced the film and director Clint Eastwood, and not without reason. In presenting the story of Jewell, the security guard who was falsely accused of setting off a bomb at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, Eastwood apparently smears the reporter who ran with the story that Jewell was being fingered by the FBI as a suspect.
The reporter wasn't wrong. The FBI was investigating Jewell. But in the film, it's apparently strongly hinted that she slept with a source to get her tip. The AJC calls this a blatant invention, and it's made even more heinous by the fact the poor woman's been dead for almost 18 years. Artistic license is one thing; deliberate defamation of a dead person is quite another.
The word "gutless" comes to mind. Also, "a punk move."
That said ...
That said, I'll go anyway. I want to see if the film really does make a cardboard villain out of this reporter, so I can rip it for clumsy stereotyping from a position of informed opinion.
Look. There is no question Jewell was done a terrible wrong, and the media facilitated that process. The authorities jumped to conclusions, and the media used those conclusions to tear apart the poor man's life. If the entire episode isn't taught in J-school as a cautionary tale, it should be.
The problem here is "Richard Jewell" comes at a time when a disturbing segment of our nation has fallen under the spell of a ranting demagogue who regularly assails the free press as "the enemy of the people." If the film plays into that phony narrative -- if it makes you walk out of the theater cursing the free press as recklessly as the Ranting Demagogue does -- it does a disservice not only to all the good people with whom it was my honor to work for five decades, but to one of the pillars of our democracy as well.
I won't know if it does that unless I go see it. So I will.
Stay tuned.
Which is to say, in a world of Netflix and Hulu and watching the latest Hollywood blockbusters on the inside of your eyelids -- that's coming, trust me -- it still loves going to the movies.
It loves getting in the Blobmobile and driving to the local Whatsaplex, but only after stopping at a convenience store for illicit Junior Mints to smuggle in. It loves buying a ticket and finding a proper seat and silencing its phone as the lights go down and the sound comes up. It loves seeing a film the way it was intended to be seen, on the big screen, and making up its own mind whether it's any good or not.
That last is important. Because it explains why the Blob will probably go see "Richard Jewell," anyway, despite what the Atlanta Journal Constitution says.
The AJC has denounced the film and director Clint Eastwood, and not without reason. In presenting the story of Jewell, the security guard who was falsely accused of setting off a bomb at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, Eastwood apparently smears the reporter who ran with the story that Jewell was being fingered by the FBI as a suspect.
The reporter wasn't wrong. The FBI was investigating Jewell. But in the film, it's apparently strongly hinted that she slept with a source to get her tip. The AJC calls this a blatant invention, and it's made even more heinous by the fact the poor woman's been dead for almost 18 years. Artistic license is one thing; deliberate defamation of a dead person is quite another.
The word "gutless" comes to mind. Also, "a punk move."
That said ...
That said, I'll go anyway. I want to see if the film really does make a cardboard villain out of this reporter, so I can rip it for clumsy stereotyping from a position of informed opinion.
Look. There is no question Jewell was done a terrible wrong, and the media facilitated that process. The authorities jumped to conclusions, and the media used those conclusions to tear apart the poor man's life. If the entire episode isn't taught in J-school as a cautionary tale, it should be.
The problem here is "Richard Jewell" comes at a time when a disturbing segment of our nation has fallen under the spell of a ranting demagogue who regularly assails the free press as "the enemy of the people." If the film plays into that phony narrative -- if it makes you walk out of the theater cursing the free press as recklessly as the Ranting Demagogue does -- it does a disservice not only to all the good people with whom it was my honor to work for five decades, but to one of the pillars of our democracy as well.
I won't know if it does that unless I go see it. So I will.
Stay tuned.
Wednesday, December 11, 2019
Film schooled
I know who they are, these New England Patriots. They're the dumbest smart guys in America.
They're an organization that has won six Super Bowls and 16 division titles in 18 years, that has been the standard for professional sports excellence for a more sustained period than perhaps anyone in history -- and yet every time they enter the living room, they trip over the footstool like Dick Van Dyke.
They're 007, except when they're Maxwell Smart.
They're the guy who shouts "Catch me if you can!" and then runs into a blind alley that ends in a 20-foot brick wall.
They're the guy who steals the Mona Lisa in broad daylight in front of hundreds of witnesses and tries to walk out of the Louvre with it, saying "Nothing to see here!" They're the spy who blends into the scenery by going to a funeral dressed as a circus clown. They're the film crew who says "We're just here to ... shoot a documentary! Yeaaahhh, that's it!"
Yeesh. You'd think such a numbingly competent organization would be smart enough not to try to run the exact same scam that got them in trouble in Spygate a dozen years ago, but, nah. They did it again. And got caught again. And -- here's the kicker -- for the Bengals.
Which, again, mirrors Spygate almost exactly. The last time the Sneaktriots got caught pulling the old we're-just-shooting-a-documentary con, they were filming the Jets, who went 4-12 that season. And the Bengals?
The Bengals are, um, 1-12.
The Patriots could beat them if Tom Brady wore Depends and used a walker (which could happen any day now). They could beat them if Cindy Brady was their quarterback. Why bother spying on the Bengals, for God's sake?
And why make it so clumsily obvious by, in the midst of the "documentary" on a Patriots scout, training the cameras on the Bengals' sideline for a full ten minutes?
Don't know if that's plain stupidity or utter hubris. The two do, after all, frequently look a lot alike.
But either way?
Works out to the same thing. Dumb, shake hands with dumber.
They're an organization that has won six Super Bowls and 16 division titles in 18 years, that has been the standard for professional sports excellence for a more sustained period than perhaps anyone in history -- and yet every time they enter the living room, they trip over the footstool like Dick Van Dyke.
They're 007, except when they're Maxwell Smart.
They're the guy who shouts "Catch me if you can!" and then runs into a blind alley that ends in a 20-foot brick wall.
They're the guy who steals the Mona Lisa in broad daylight in front of hundreds of witnesses and tries to walk out of the Louvre with it, saying "Nothing to see here!" They're the spy who blends into the scenery by going to a funeral dressed as a circus clown. They're the film crew who says "We're just here to ... shoot a documentary! Yeaaahhh, that's it!"
Yeesh. You'd think such a numbingly competent organization would be smart enough not to try to run the exact same scam that got them in trouble in Spygate a dozen years ago, but, nah. They did it again. And got caught again. And -- here's the kicker -- for the Bengals.
Which, again, mirrors Spygate almost exactly. The last time the Sneaktriots got caught pulling the old we're-just-shooting-a-documentary con, they were filming the Jets, who went 4-12 that season. And the Bengals?
The Bengals are, um, 1-12.
The Patriots could beat them if Tom Brady wore Depends and used a walker (which could happen any day now). They could beat them if Cindy Brady was their quarterback. Why bother spying on the Bengals, for God's sake?
And why make it so clumsily obvious by, in the midst of the "documentary" on a Patriots scout, training the cameras on the Bengals' sideline for a full ten minutes?
Don't know if that's plain stupidity or utter hubris. The two do, after all, frequently look a lot alike.
But either way?
Works out to the same thing. Dumb, shake hands with dumber.
A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 14
And now this week's edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the toothsome Blob feature of which critics have said, "My, this is toothsome!", and also "Ow! I just broke a tooth on this feature!":
1. "Hey! We were just shooting a documentary, not spying on the Bengals, our next opponent!" (The New England Patriots)
2. "Yeah, surrrre." (Everyone else in America)
3. "Hey, quit calling us spoiled asshats! We were booing the refs, not our 10-2 football team that has given us six Super Bowl titles and 16 divisional titles in the last 18 years!" (Spoiled asshat New England Patriots fans)
4. "Yeah, surrrre." (Everyone else in America)
5. It's Tuesday morning and Jameis Winston just completed another pass.
6. Correction: It's Tuesday morning and the Colts secondary just let Jameis Winston complete another pass.
7. Bears win! Bears wi--
8. Ah, shoot. It's only the Cowboys.
9. In other NFC East news, the NFL has decided to ship the entire division to England.
10. "Oh, great! Another condemned property! You bloody Americans are never going to get over that taxation-without-representation thing, are you?" (England)
1. "Hey! We were just shooting a documentary, not spying on the Bengals, our next opponent!" (The New England Patriots)
2. "Yeah, surrrre." (Everyone else in America)
3. "Hey, quit calling us spoiled asshats! We were booing the refs, not our 10-2 football team that has given us six Super Bowl titles and 16 divisional titles in the last 18 years!" (Spoiled asshat New England Patriots fans)
4. "Yeah, surrrre." (Everyone else in America)
5. It's Tuesday morning and Jameis Winston just completed another pass.
6. Correction: It's Tuesday morning and the Colts secondary just let Jameis Winston complete another pass.
7. Bears win! Bears wi--
8. Ah, shoot. It's only the Cowboys.
9. In other NFC East news, the NFL has decided to ship the entire division to England.
10. "Oh, great! Another condemned property! You bloody Americans are never going to get over that taxation-without-representation thing, are you?" (England)
Monday, December 9, 2019
A big bowl of bizarre
Well, now. This is different.
And by "different" I mean, "Dang, the world sure looks different when you stand on your head," and also "Dang, Robert E. Lee riding naked to meet Grant at Appomattox? That's sure different than the history I was taught!"
Which is to say, all your minor bowl assignments were handed out yesterday.
Some folks drew a Radial Tire bowl, some drew a Chicken Sandwich bowl, and some drew a Plumbing Fixture/Lending Institution/Car Wash bowl.
And then there was Notre Dame and Indiana.
Indiana, after an 8-4 season that's its best since Bill Clinton was in the White House, will play Tennessee on Jan. 2 in the Gator Bowl, which used to be a minor bowl but now is a kinda/sorta big-boy bowl.
Notre Dame, meanwhile, will play Iowa State on Dec. 28 in something called the Camping World Bowl.
Don't know what sort of bowl swag the Fighting Irish will score from that one. Bug spray, perhaps. State-of-the-art pup tents with fine Corinthian leather interiors. Something.
In any event, whipping up the appropriate lore for this one figures to be a hard case even for the master lore-crafters from South Bend. Especially when Indiana, of all people, actually landed in a better bowl than Norte Dame did.
That is, yes, different. Like who-thought-we'd-ever-see-that different.
First of all, this is a Notre Dame team that actually won two more games than Indiana, even if seven of its ten wins came against unranked opponents. It's also Notre Dame. And Indiana is Indiana.
One has lore and tradition and straight-up mythology so deep you could drown in it. The other has Harry Gonso and John Isenbarger and Hey, remember that time we won the Copper Bowl?
Yet it's Indiana that got more respect from the bowl people, a clear indication that the bowl people thought rather highly of the Big Ten this season. And, well, not so highly of the ACC, of which Notre Dame football is a quasi-member no matter what it says.
Almost half its games, after all, were against ACC opponents. So it figures the Irish might have been tarred with the ACC brush when it came to handing out the bowl bids.
And yet ... it's Notre Dame. Who knew there'd ever be a day when the Fighting Irish would land in a less glamorous bowl game than Indiana?
Strange days. Strange days, indeed.
And by "different" I mean, "Dang, the world sure looks different when you stand on your head," and also "Dang, Robert E. Lee riding naked to meet Grant at Appomattox? That's sure different than the history I was taught!"
Which is to say, all your minor bowl assignments were handed out yesterday.
Some folks drew a Radial Tire bowl, some drew a Chicken Sandwich bowl, and some drew a Plumbing Fixture/Lending Institution/Car Wash bowl.
And then there was Notre Dame and Indiana.
Indiana, after an 8-4 season that's its best since Bill Clinton was in the White House, will play Tennessee on Jan. 2 in the Gator Bowl, which used to be a minor bowl but now is a kinda/sorta big-boy bowl.
Notre Dame, meanwhile, will play Iowa State on Dec. 28 in something called the Camping World Bowl.
Don't know what sort of bowl swag the Fighting Irish will score from that one. Bug spray, perhaps. State-of-the-art pup tents with fine Corinthian leather interiors. Something.
In any event, whipping up the appropriate lore for this one figures to be a hard case even for the master lore-crafters from South Bend. Especially when Indiana, of all people, actually landed in a better bowl than Norte Dame did.
That is, yes, different. Like who-thought-we'd-ever-see-that different.
First of all, this is a Notre Dame team that actually won two more games than Indiana, even if seven of its ten wins came against unranked opponents. It's also Notre Dame. And Indiana is Indiana.
One has lore and tradition and straight-up mythology so deep you could drown in it. The other has Harry Gonso and John Isenbarger and Hey, remember that time we won the Copper Bowl?
Yet it's Indiana that got more respect from the bowl people, a clear indication that the bowl people thought rather highly of the Big Ten this season. And, well, not so highly of the ACC, of which Notre Dame football is a quasi-member no matter what it says.
Almost half its games, after all, were against ACC opponents. So it figures the Irish might have been tarred with the ACC brush when it came to handing out the bowl bids.
And yet ... it's Notre Dame. Who knew there'd ever be a day when the Fighting Irish would land in a less glamorous bowl game than Indiana?
Strange days. Strange days, indeed.
Sunday, December 8, 2019
Creamed and crimsoned
So, remember just the other day, when the Blob said you could surmise a lot from Indiana's rump-roastin' of Florida State in Assembly Hall, but don't surmise everything, because, well, stuff happens in college buckets -- and most of it happened to IU last year?
Well ... here you go.
And so, no, let's not slot the Hoosiers at the top of the Big Ten just yet. There is still work to be done, it seems. If restoring the historical record in Assembly Hall is part of that work, so is taking a hammer to the historical record at Wisconsin, where Indiana hasn't won since Bob Knight was stalking the sideline like a living, fire-breathing bust from coaching's Mt. Rushmore.
Indiana never wins in Madison, but lots of folks were talking themselves into thinking "never" might have an expiration date after Florida State. And then they left the historical record-smashing hammer at home, along with a few other things.
Defense, for one. Wisky, which hadn't been able to hit water from a boat coming in, got better in a hurry against the lax Hoosiers' D, riding a fistful of uncontested shots to shoot 54 percent and 40 percent from behind the arc.
The Badgers led 47-27 at halftime and it never got any better, mainly because Indiana shot as poorly as it defended. The Hoosiers shot 42 percent and 36 percent from the 3-point line, and its struggles were best illustrated by the ever-enigmatic Devonte Green: After dropping 30 points on Florida State on 10-of-15 shooting, he barely made a sound against the Badgers, missing five of his eight shots and finishing with 10 points.
It's absurd to say, of course, that as goes Green, so go the Hoosiers. But he makes a useful barometer for a team that, right now on December 8, has a few enigmas itself to work out.
Well ... here you go.
And so, no, let's not slot the Hoosiers at the top of the Big Ten just yet. There is still work to be done, it seems. If restoring the historical record in Assembly Hall is part of that work, so is taking a hammer to the historical record at Wisconsin, where Indiana hasn't won since Bob Knight was stalking the sideline like a living, fire-breathing bust from coaching's Mt. Rushmore.
Indiana never wins in Madison, but lots of folks were talking themselves into thinking "never" might have an expiration date after Florida State. And then they left the historical record-smashing hammer at home, along with a few other things.
Defense, for one. Wisky, which hadn't been able to hit water from a boat coming in, got better in a hurry against the lax Hoosiers' D, riding a fistful of uncontested shots to shoot 54 percent and 40 percent from behind the arc.
The Badgers led 47-27 at halftime and it never got any better, mainly because Indiana shot as poorly as it defended. The Hoosiers shot 42 percent and 36 percent from the 3-point line, and its struggles were best illustrated by the ever-enigmatic Devonte Green: After dropping 30 points on Florida State on 10-of-15 shooting, he barely made a sound against the Badgers, missing five of his eight shots and finishing with 10 points.
It's absurd to say, of course, that as goes Green, so go the Hoosiers. But he makes a useful barometer for a team that, right now on December 8, has a few enigmas itself to work out.
Saturday, December 7, 2019
Timeout for decency
Lots of folks have gotten served by LeBron James across the years, and a whole pile of them are getting served so far this season, with LeBron 'n' A.D. and the rest of the Lakers off to a 20-3 start that was widely predicted by, OK, not the Blob.
But it's taking it to another level when LeBron even serves the server.
Here is that moment from last night's blitzing of the Trail Blazers, in which LeBron, after dropping a three-ball, accidentally backs into a courtside server and knocks her down. Watch him make her night by turning back, helping to her feet and walking her upcourt with his arm around her to make sure she's OK.
Sometimes it's the smallest of gestures that reveal the character of a man. And so what we got here in those brief moments was the LeBron who sent 800 cupcakes to his neighbors when the media swarm disrupted their lives as he moved into his new house when he came back to Cleveland. It's the LeBron who came back to Cleveland, period, and whose foundation kicked in a couple of million dollars to resuscitate a struggling public school in his hometown of Akron.
We can argue all day about whether or not (gasp!) he wields too much power as a basketball player/business tycoon, and if he's been too ruthless in pursuing his own interests. But ultimately, in a nation where ruthlessly pursuing one's interests is pretty much the national pastime, all of that makes LeBron James no different than a gazillion other individuals of power and wealth -- individuals who somehow elude the criticism he gets.
So what matters is not that. What matters are moments like this one last night, in which LeBron once again shows there is a core of plain common decency beneath all the wealth, and power, and the points, assists and rebounds.
Everything else is stuff and nonsense. White noise, in a world increasingly crowded with it.
But it's taking it to another level when LeBron even serves the server.
Here is that moment from last night's blitzing of the Trail Blazers, in which LeBron, after dropping a three-ball, accidentally backs into a courtside server and knocks her down. Watch him make her night by turning back, helping to her feet and walking her upcourt with his arm around her to make sure she's OK.
Sometimes it's the smallest of gestures that reveal the character of a man. And so what we got here in those brief moments was the LeBron who sent 800 cupcakes to his neighbors when the media swarm disrupted their lives as he moved into his new house when he came back to Cleveland. It's the LeBron who came back to Cleveland, period, and whose foundation kicked in a couple of million dollars to resuscitate a struggling public school in his hometown of Akron.
We can argue all day about whether or not (gasp!) he wields too much power as a basketball player/business tycoon, and if he's been too ruthless in pursuing his own interests. But ultimately, in a nation where ruthlessly pursuing one's interests is pretty much the national pastime, all of that makes LeBron James no different than a gazillion other individuals of power and wealth -- individuals who somehow elude the criticism he gets.
So what matters is not that. What matters are moments like this one last night, in which LeBron once again shows there is a core of plain common decency beneath all the wealth, and power, and the points, assists and rebounds.
Everything else is stuff and nonsense. White noise, in a world increasingly crowded with it.
Friday, December 6, 2019
Cowboy in Limboland
Such a strange half-lit landscape he travels now, this Jason Garrett. His physical body still walks the Dallas Cowboys sideline, watching his football team get lit up by Mitchell Concannon Douglass Trubisky. The rest of him ...
Well. The rest of him, the dead-man-walking part of him, is already gone.
He's a ghost who just hasn't crossed over yet, the Former Coach of the Cowboys walking around in the Current Coach's body. He walks that sideline, and every day the voracious American media acts as if he doesn't. The media, and through it the country, has already moved on.
Jason Garrett may still be the Cowboys coach. But everyone talks about that in the past tense, as if he's already been fired and Ron Rivera or Jim Harbaugh or Josh McDaniels is the new head coach.
What an odd, excruciating existence this must be. The axe hasn't fallen, and the part of you that made you a football coach to begin with won't let you admit it's going to. Yet you can feel its cold steel on your neck virtually every waking hour.
How do you handle this, if you're Jason Garrett?
Do you admit what you won't admit, can't admit, and start shipping out resumes? Do you just wait for the phone call from Jerry? Do you draw the blinds, unplug the TV and all your other devices, and pretend no one is saying what they're all saying out there in the wired world?
To be sure, he shouldn't be the Cowboys coach anymore. He probably shouldn't have been for the last several years. The Cowboys have consistently under-performed for him, and never more so than this season.
But no one with a beating human heart in his or her chest would wish this bizarre situation on anyone. If the rewards from being at the top of your profession are great, so are the torments. And this is the torment part for Jason Garrett, this hellscape limbo in which he twists.
He walks the sideline, and with every step it recedes from him. He walks the sideline -- waiting, and waiting, and waiting some more, for the phone to finally ring.
Well. The rest of him, the dead-man-walking part of him, is already gone.
He's a ghost who just hasn't crossed over yet, the Former Coach of the Cowboys walking around in the Current Coach's body. He walks that sideline, and every day the voracious American media acts as if he doesn't. The media, and through it the country, has already moved on.
Jason Garrett may still be the Cowboys coach. But everyone talks about that in the past tense, as if he's already been fired and Ron Rivera or Jim Harbaugh or Josh McDaniels is the new head coach.
What an odd, excruciating existence this must be. The axe hasn't fallen, and the part of you that made you a football coach to begin with won't let you admit it's going to. Yet you can feel its cold steel on your neck virtually every waking hour.
How do you handle this, if you're Jason Garrett?
Do you admit what you won't admit, can't admit, and start shipping out resumes? Do you just wait for the phone call from Jerry? Do you draw the blinds, unplug the TV and all your other devices, and pretend no one is saying what they're all saying out there in the wired world?
To be sure, he shouldn't be the Cowboys coach anymore. He probably shouldn't have been for the last several years. The Cowboys have consistently under-performed for him, and never more so than this season.
But no one with a beating human heart in his or her chest would wish this bizarre situation on anyone. If the rewards from being at the top of your profession are great, so are the torments. And this is the torment part for Jason Garrett, this hellscape limbo in which he twists.
He walks the sideline, and with every step it recedes from him. He walks the sideline -- waiting, and waiting, and waiting some more, for the phone to finally ring.
Thursday, December 5, 2019
Boiled alive
Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus, but last night he was undercover. Last night he wore gold and black and a huge fake head with creepy lifeless eyes, and he was lugging around a big-ass hammer.
You know about the hammer, Virginia. Santa -- aka, Purdue Pete -- went right upside your head with it.
Purdue Pete got you down there in Mackey Arena with a whole pile of his gold-and-black pals, and they made the place loud like few places get loud -- kinda like being inside a big kettle drum when they get going, isn't it, Virginia? -- and they impressed upon you the value of clinging obsessively to bitter memories.
Now, some people would say that's not a healthy way to be, holding fast to a past that curdles your insides. And those people are probably right.
I mean, look how unhealthy it was for you, Virginia.
You came in 7-0, ranked fifth in one poll and second in another. And you left in sandwich bags.
The final was 69-40, and, no, that wasn't a misprint. That was Purdue doing to you, Virginia, what you usually do to other folks.
Which is, squeeze the life out of you.
The Boilermakers took away your outside game, took away your inside game, took "whatever they wanted away from us," according to your coach, Tony Bennett. You shot 37.2 percent, and missed 20 of your 24 3-point attempts. And you turned it over 16 times.
On the other end, meanwhile ...
Well, a benchie named Sasha Stefanovic lit you up for 20. Jahaad Proctor added 16, four rebounds and four steals. Matt Haarms, the big galoot in the middle, had 11 points, five rebounds, three assists and a clutch of altered shots on the defensive end.
It's only early December, so hard telling what any of this actually means. It could mean you, Virginia, are not what you were last year, which is demonstrably true. It could also mean Purdue is a work in progress that made a heck of a lot of progress in one night.
But what it definitely means?
It means these Purdue people don't forget easily, unhealthy or not.
Eight months later, Matt Painter and the rest of 'em still have nightmares about the way you knocked the Boilers out in the Elite Eight in March, because it was completely ridiculous. Purdue had this one in the bag when Ty Jerome missed a free throw with under six seconds left, but the miss ricocheted clear to midcourt. Virginia point guard Kehei Clark tracked it down there (four seconds ... three ... two ...), chucked it back upcourt to Mamadi Diakite (one ...), and Diakite flung up a prayer that beat the buzzer and somehow dropped down the well.
Overtime. Where, of course, you won, Virginia.
You've still got Kehei Clark and Mamadi Diakite, by the way.
Know what they did last night?
Clark finished with two points and three turnovers.
Diakite had 10 points and four turnovers.
Man. I bet that hammer really hurt, Virginia.
You know about the hammer, Virginia. Santa -- aka, Purdue Pete -- went right upside your head with it.
Purdue Pete got you down there in Mackey Arena with a whole pile of his gold-and-black pals, and they made the place loud like few places get loud -- kinda like being inside a big kettle drum when they get going, isn't it, Virginia? -- and they impressed upon you the value of clinging obsessively to bitter memories.
Now, some people would say that's not a healthy way to be, holding fast to a past that curdles your insides. And those people are probably right.
I mean, look how unhealthy it was for you, Virginia.
You came in 7-0, ranked fifth in one poll and second in another. And you left in sandwich bags.
The final was 69-40, and, no, that wasn't a misprint. That was Purdue doing to you, Virginia, what you usually do to other folks.
Which is, squeeze the life out of you.
The Boilermakers took away your outside game, took away your inside game, took "whatever they wanted away from us," according to your coach, Tony Bennett. You shot 37.2 percent, and missed 20 of your 24 3-point attempts. And you turned it over 16 times.
On the other end, meanwhile ...
Well, a benchie named Sasha Stefanovic lit you up for 20. Jahaad Proctor added 16, four rebounds and four steals. Matt Haarms, the big galoot in the middle, had 11 points, five rebounds, three assists and a clutch of altered shots on the defensive end.
It's only early December, so hard telling what any of this actually means. It could mean you, Virginia, are not what you were last year, which is demonstrably true. It could also mean Purdue is a work in progress that made a heck of a lot of progress in one night.
But what it definitely means?
It means these Purdue people don't forget easily, unhealthy or not.
Eight months later, Matt Painter and the rest of 'em still have nightmares about the way you knocked the Boilers out in the Elite Eight in March, because it was completely ridiculous. Purdue had this one in the bag when Ty Jerome missed a free throw with under six seconds left, but the miss ricocheted clear to midcourt. Virginia point guard Kehei Clark tracked it down there (four seconds ... three ... two ...), chucked it back upcourt to Mamadi Diakite (one ...), and Diakite flung up a prayer that beat the buzzer and somehow dropped down the well.
Overtime. Where, of course, you won, Virginia.
You've still got Kehei Clark and Mamadi Diakite, by the way.
Know what they did last night?
Clark finished with two points and three turnovers.
Diakite had 10 points and four turnovers.
Man. I bet that hammer really hurt, Virginia.
Wednesday, December 4, 2019
Hoo(sier) Day
Alrighty, then. So now we know ... something.
Now we know who these Indiana Hoosiers are, or at least we have an important piece of the evidence. We know they can get an actual live basketball team in Assembly Hall and subject it to a sheep-shearin', just like they used to. We know when Devonte Green's mind is right and Justin Smith is doing his Justin Smith things and Trayce Jackson-Davis is posterizing and rebounding and blocking shots, they can straight-up plain make folks look silly.
We know Armaan Franklin can man the point and Joey Brunk can handle the low blocks and, oh, yeah, the starting point guard (Rob Phinisee) wasn't even out there 'cause he's got a bum ankle, and, oh, yeah, don't forget Al Durham and Damezi Anderson and The Guy Who Didn't Play Last Year, Jerome Hunter.
Look. Beating 17th-ranked Florida State 80-64 at home isn't beating Duke in Cameron or Kentucky in Rupp or Kansas in Allen. But it's not beating Directional Hyphen Adjunct College Tech, either, which is what Indiana had been doing before last night.
In other words, the Hoosiers were 7-0 and we didn't know a damn thing about them. We knew they occasionally looked good in practice, which is essentially what their schedule was in November. But what did that tell us, actually?
No, they needed to get a ranked ACC team in the house, a team that was itself 7-1 and already had a couple of top 25 wins in its pocket. They needed to have Green go off on the Seminoles for 30 points, which is what he'll do on the nights he's not going 3-for-12 with five turnovers. They needed the freshmen, Jackson-Davis and Franklin, to continue to impress, and for Smith and Brunk and even Anderson to do what they can do.
All of that happened. And now you're allowed to think, if you bleed cream-and-crimson, just how high up might be for this bunch, instead of wondering why the Hall doesn't make visitors' knees turn to water the way it used to.
You never want to get too far ahead of the curve with a team, especially a young team and especially when it's a team with so many cautionary tales in its immediate past. So it's worth remembering last year, when Archie Miller's crew was 12-2 through December and entered January having won seven straight.
After that?
Well, after that, the Hoosiers lost 12 of their next 13, finished 17-15 and watched March Madness from their living rooms.
This does not look like a team that's structured to do that again. The bench is too long, the talent too varied, the chemistry yea different. Take from all that what you will.
For now, it's at least better than the alternative. And for now, that's enough.
Now we know who these Indiana Hoosiers are, or at least we have an important piece of the evidence. We know they can get an actual live basketball team in Assembly Hall and subject it to a sheep-shearin', just like they used to. We know when Devonte Green's mind is right and Justin Smith is doing his Justin Smith things and Trayce Jackson-Davis is posterizing and rebounding and blocking shots, they can straight-up plain make folks look silly.
We know Armaan Franklin can man the point and Joey Brunk can handle the low blocks and, oh, yeah, the starting point guard (Rob Phinisee) wasn't even out there 'cause he's got a bum ankle, and, oh, yeah, don't forget Al Durham and Damezi Anderson and The Guy Who Didn't Play Last Year, Jerome Hunter.
Look. Beating 17th-ranked Florida State 80-64 at home isn't beating Duke in Cameron or Kentucky in Rupp or Kansas in Allen. But it's not beating Directional Hyphen Adjunct College Tech, either, which is what Indiana had been doing before last night.
In other words, the Hoosiers were 7-0 and we didn't know a damn thing about them. We knew they occasionally looked good in practice, which is essentially what their schedule was in November. But what did that tell us, actually?
No, they needed to get a ranked ACC team in the house, a team that was itself 7-1 and already had a couple of top 25 wins in its pocket. They needed to have Green go off on the Seminoles for 30 points, which is what he'll do on the nights he's not going 3-for-12 with five turnovers. They needed the freshmen, Jackson-Davis and Franklin, to continue to impress, and for Smith and Brunk and even Anderson to do what they can do.
All of that happened. And now you're allowed to think, if you bleed cream-and-crimson, just how high up might be for this bunch, instead of wondering why the Hall doesn't make visitors' knees turn to water the way it used to.
You never want to get too far ahead of the curve with a team, especially a young team and especially when it's a team with so many cautionary tales in its immediate past. So it's worth remembering last year, when Archie Miller's crew was 12-2 through December and entered January having won seven straight.
After that?
Well, after that, the Hoosiers lost 12 of their next 13, finished 17-15 and watched March Madness from their living rooms.
This does not look like a team that's structured to do that again. The bench is too long, the talent too varied, the chemistry yea different. Take from all that what you will.
For now, it's at least better than the alternative. And for now, that's enough.
Tuesday, December 3, 2019
A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 13
And now this week's edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the no ifs, ands or buts Blob of which critics have said "But what about ...", and also "Yeah, but ..."
1. But Lamar Jackson is still not an NFL quarterback. Nope, uh-uh, no way. Never, never, nev--
2. Oh, look. There he goes again.
3. But the Colts are GOING TO WIN THE AFC SOUTH! They are! No one can stop th--
4. Oh, look. It's the Titans.
5. But the Bears are 6-6! They're STILL IN THIS! Matt Nagy and Mitch Trubisky aren't as bad as all that after al--
6. Oh, look. It's just the Lions.
7. But Tom Brady is the GOAT! He's unstoppable! He's so good he can win without wide receivers, without a tight end, without a running game, witho--
8. Oh, look. It's Deshaun Watson.
9. But the Bengals are THE WORST! They're TERRIBLE! They're going for the reverse perfecto, and they're going to get i--
10. Oh, look. It's the J-E-T-S, Jets, Jets, Jets!
1. But Lamar Jackson is still not an NFL quarterback. Nope, uh-uh, no way. Never, never, nev--
2. Oh, look. There he goes again.
3. But the Colts are GOING TO WIN THE AFC SOUTH! They are! No one can stop th--
4. Oh, look. It's the Titans.
5. But the Bears are 6-6! They're STILL IN THIS! Matt Nagy and Mitch Trubisky aren't as bad as all that after al--
6. Oh, look. It's just the Lions.
7. But Tom Brady is the GOAT! He's unstoppable! He's so good he can win without wide receivers, without a tight end, without a running game, witho--
8. Oh, look. It's Deshaun Watson.
9. But the Bengals are THE WORST! They're TERRIBLE! They're going for the reverse perfecto, and they're going to get i--
10. Oh, look. It's the J-E-T-S, Jets, Jets, Jets!
Monday, December 2, 2019
Dog-ged by the past
So I have this screen saver on my phone.
It's your classic sleeping-dog photo of our 14-year-old black Labradoodle (who's mostly Lab and not much Doodle) curled up on a pillow by the hearth, dreaming her doggy dreams. Her muzzle, mostly gray now, rests on one front paw. The spot is her favorite one; the attitude of sleep, her natural state now in the sunset days of a well-loved life.
Which is to say, I get why people think the NFL is even more tone-deaf than usual, doing for Michael Vick what it's doing. And that is truly saying something about an organization with such advanced degrees in cluelessness.
What the NFL has done is name Vick as one of its four "legends" captains for the 2020 Pro Bowl, along with Darrell Green, Bruce Smith and Terrell Davis. The latter of the three are Hall of Famers. Vick is the only one who isn't, but that's not the only thing that sets him apart.
He's also the only one of the four who's served prison time for torturing dogs.
Few crimes, in a society of dog lovers, are more visceral, or provoke more blind rage, than drowning, hanging, shooting and electrocuting dogs, which is what the sick bastards who ran Vick's dog fighting ring did more than a dozen years ago. Vick got 18 months in the Graybar Hotel for that depravity. More than a few dog lovers thought he should have gotten the needle instead.
The Blob wasn't one of them. Well, except for every time I looked at our sweet sleeping dog, that is.
In any case, Vick did his time and was eventually welcomed back to the NFL. If what he was a party to will follow him for the rest of his days, and should, what he's done in the 12 years since he went off to prison should follow him to.
What he's done is become as passionate an advocate for animal rights as he once was for animal torture.
In the decade since Vick left prison, he's worked with the Humane Society to put a stop to dogfighting. He's traveled to schools on his own dime to talk to kids about the moral ruin of the dogfighting culture. He helped get the Animal Fighting Spectator Prohibition Act passed by Congress, and he made a trip to the Pennsylvania statehouse to support a bill that would make it easier for police to rescue dogs left in baking cars in the summertime.
You can argue, and many will, that he's done all this merely so he could play in the NFL again. But a lot of it has happened after he was reinstated, which cuts the legs out from under that argument. There is a possibility none of it is genuine; there is a greater possibility he sees it as a form of penance.
People do change, after all. They also gain wisdom as they grow older.
Vick was in his mid-20s when he was running his dogfighting ring. He's pushing 40 and retired from the NFL now. So maybe part of this is he's simply grown up.
This is not to say the NFL hasn't stepped in it again. It has. Reformed or not, older and wiser or not, Vick seems an odd choice at best as a "legend," given the company he'll be keeping. There are dozens upon dozens of other retired players the Shield could have chosen as a legend captain. Why Vick, who will always be stained by his past no matter how much he may have grown beyond it?
Yes, people do change. To deny that is to embrace the bleakest of ideologies, which is that human beings, once they've indulged their darkest impulses, are incapable of finding their way back to the light. If that's the case, we might just as well all pack it in now.
Thankfully, it is not the case. There are numerous examples to the contrary, and it's possible Michael Vick is one of them.
He at least deserves the benefit of our doubt, therefore.
Just not as much as the NFL seems willing to extend him.
It's your classic sleeping-dog photo of our 14-year-old black Labradoodle (who's mostly Lab and not much Doodle) curled up on a pillow by the hearth, dreaming her doggy dreams. Her muzzle, mostly gray now, rests on one front paw. The spot is her favorite one; the attitude of sleep, her natural state now in the sunset days of a well-loved life.
Which is to say, I get why people think the NFL is even more tone-deaf than usual, doing for Michael Vick what it's doing. And that is truly saying something about an organization with such advanced degrees in cluelessness.
What the NFL has done is name Vick as one of its four "legends" captains for the 2020 Pro Bowl, along with Darrell Green, Bruce Smith and Terrell Davis. The latter of the three are Hall of Famers. Vick is the only one who isn't, but that's not the only thing that sets him apart.
He's also the only one of the four who's served prison time for torturing dogs.
Few crimes, in a society of dog lovers, are more visceral, or provoke more blind rage, than drowning, hanging, shooting and electrocuting dogs, which is what the sick bastards who ran Vick's dog fighting ring did more than a dozen years ago. Vick got 18 months in the Graybar Hotel for that depravity. More than a few dog lovers thought he should have gotten the needle instead.
The Blob wasn't one of them. Well, except for every time I looked at our sweet sleeping dog, that is.
In any case, Vick did his time and was eventually welcomed back to the NFL. If what he was a party to will follow him for the rest of his days, and should, what he's done in the 12 years since he went off to prison should follow him to.
What he's done is become as passionate an advocate for animal rights as he once was for animal torture.
In the decade since Vick left prison, he's worked with the Humane Society to put a stop to dogfighting. He's traveled to schools on his own dime to talk to kids about the moral ruin of the dogfighting culture. He helped get the Animal Fighting Spectator Prohibition Act passed by Congress, and he made a trip to the Pennsylvania statehouse to support a bill that would make it easier for police to rescue dogs left in baking cars in the summertime.
You can argue, and many will, that he's done all this merely so he could play in the NFL again. But a lot of it has happened after he was reinstated, which cuts the legs out from under that argument. There is a possibility none of it is genuine; there is a greater possibility he sees it as a form of penance.
People do change, after all. They also gain wisdom as they grow older.
Vick was in his mid-20s when he was running his dogfighting ring. He's pushing 40 and retired from the NFL now. So maybe part of this is he's simply grown up.
This is not to say the NFL hasn't stepped in it again. It has. Reformed or not, older and wiser or not, Vick seems an odd choice at best as a "legend," given the company he'll be keeping. There are dozens upon dozens of other retired players the Shield could have chosen as a legend captain. Why Vick, who will always be stained by his past no matter how much he may have grown beyond it?
Yes, people do change. To deny that is to embrace the bleakest of ideologies, which is that human beings, once they've indulged their darkest impulses, are incapable of finding their way back to the light. If that's the case, we might just as well all pack it in now.
Thankfully, it is not the case. There are numerous examples to the contrary, and it's possible Michael Vick is one of them.
He at least deserves the benefit of our doubt, therefore.
Just not as much as the NFL seems willing to extend him.
Sunday, December 1, 2019
Rivalry weak, Part Deux
There were an armful of rivalry games in college football yesterday, and some of them were worth the name and some of them weren't, and some of them left you with the sort of nostalgic ache those of us with a few miles on the tires sometimes feel for 8-track tapes and that wonder of the age, the Video Display Terminal.
Ah, the VDT, spawn of a dozen seventh-grade-boy jokes involving sexually transmitted diseases. Who doesn't recall that with a sort of nerd fondness?
It's how we tend to look at rivalry games that just go through the motions these days, pretending they still matter or in any way retain even the faintest echoes of Back In The Day. Which is to say, who knew we'd see a day like Saturday, when the best rivalry game in the Big Ten happened in West Lafayette, Indiana, and not Ann Arbor, Michigan?
No one was playin' for anything but a beat-up old water bucket in West Lafayette, but my God did they play for it. Indiana was already locked into a bowl, Purdue was locked into getting ready for next season. But both of them kept pulling crazy heroics out of the cold damp November gray as if life itself depended on it.
Indiana, on its way to its best season in 26 years, went up 28-10. Then a cement block with feet named Zander Horvath started knocking over Hoosiers like tenpins, and a fourth-string walk-on named Aidan O'Connell start throwing and this winged sprite named David Bell started catching, and suddenly it was 31-31 and going to overtime.
Indiana finally won after one last burst of heroics from Peyton Ramsey, the more-than-a-backup backup QB, and both fan bases finally exhaled. People who'd been going to Bucket games for 60 years said it was the best one they'd ever seen, and no one was inclined to dispute that. If there was a better game played in college football Saturday outside of Auburn's insane 11-lead-change upset of Alabama -- another rivalry game worth the name -- no one stepped forward to claim it.
But back to the VDT and all that empty nostalgic longing. Back to Ann Arbor.
Where Ohio State beat Michigan like a dozen egg whites, 56-27, and we all paused to light a candle to Bo and Woody and the days when Ohio State-Michigan was an actual rivalry. It is not anymore, sadly, unless you think Ohio State-Akron is a rivalry. Or perhaps Alabama-Whatsamatta U., a regular feature these days on the Crimson Tide schedule.
In any case, the Buckeyes rolled the Wolverines again, and have outscored Jim Harbaugh's legions 118-37 in their last two meetings. Harbaugh is now 0-for-5 against the team Michigan most yearns to beat, and yet somehow retains an aura that escaped, say, Brady Hoke, who was 1-3 vs. the Buckeyes and lost the three by five, one and 14 points, respectively.
That one win, by the way, happened nine meetings ago, and is the only win for Michigan against the Buckeyes in the last 16 years. So, yes: Ohio State-Akron, 'Bama-Whatsamatta, Hammer-Nail.
But at least we've still got the Old Oaken Bucket, on Thanksgiving weekend. At least we've got that.
Ah, the VDT, spawn of a dozen seventh-grade-boy jokes involving sexually transmitted diseases. Who doesn't recall that with a sort of nerd fondness?
It's how we tend to look at rivalry games that just go through the motions these days, pretending they still matter or in any way retain even the faintest echoes of Back In The Day. Which is to say, who knew we'd see a day like Saturday, when the best rivalry game in the Big Ten happened in West Lafayette, Indiana, and not Ann Arbor, Michigan?
No one was playin' for anything but a beat-up old water bucket in West Lafayette, but my God did they play for it. Indiana was already locked into a bowl, Purdue was locked into getting ready for next season. But both of them kept pulling crazy heroics out of the cold damp November gray as if life itself depended on it.
Indiana, on its way to its best season in 26 years, went up 28-10. Then a cement block with feet named Zander Horvath started knocking over Hoosiers like tenpins, and a fourth-string walk-on named Aidan O'Connell start throwing and this winged sprite named David Bell started catching, and suddenly it was 31-31 and going to overtime.
Indiana finally won after one last burst of heroics from Peyton Ramsey, the more-than-a-backup backup QB, and both fan bases finally exhaled. People who'd been going to Bucket games for 60 years said it was the best one they'd ever seen, and no one was inclined to dispute that. If there was a better game played in college football Saturday outside of Auburn's insane 11-lead-change upset of Alabama -- another rivalry game worth the name -- no one stepped forward to claim it.
But back to the VDT and all that empty nostalgic longing. Back to Ann Arbor.
Where Ohio State beat Michigan like a dozen egg whites, 56-27, and we all paused to light a candle to Bo and Woody and the days when Ohio State-Michigan was an actual rivalry. It is not anymore, sadly, unless you think Ohio State-Akron is a rivalry. Or perhaps Alabama-Whatsamatta U., a regular feature these days on the Crimson Tide schedule.
In any case, the Buckeyes rolled the Wolverines again, and have outscored Jim Harbaugh's legions 118-37 in their last two meetings. Harbaugh is now 0-for-5 against the team Michigan most yearns to beat, and yet somehow retains an aura that escaped, say, Brady Hoke, who was 1-3 vs. the Buckeyes and lost the three by five, one and 14 points, respectively.
That one win, by the way, happened nine meetings ago, and is the only win for Michigan against the Buckeyes in the last 16 years. So, yes: Ohio State-Akron, 'Bama-Whatsamatta, Hammer-Nail.
But at least we've still got the Old Oaken Bucket, on Thanksgiving weekend. At least we've got that.