So, remember just the other day, when the Blob was saying stuff about Your Indiana Hoosiers like they've finally found an identity, and they're prolly almost for sure a 20-win team (Hey, they're 15-4 and tied for second in the Big Ten!), and how living down low with their bigs was going to define them from here on out?
Well ... um ...
The Blob was partly right about that.
Wednesday night at Penn State, the Hoosiers did live down low, getting a combined 33 points and 20 rebounds from Joey Brunk, Justin Smith and Trayce Jackson-Davis. And they did outrebound the Nittany Lions 44-38. And, well, everything was cool, right?
Well ... um ...
That's if you don't mention the 64-49 tattooing they got, on top of the splendid gag-aroo at home against Maryland -- six-point lead with 68 seconds to play; outscored 7-0 the rest of the way. That's if you don't mention that they still die of thirst outside the paint, even if periodically they give the faithful hope by managing to hit the ocean from the beach once in awhile.
Not Wednesday night, though. Nope, nuh-uh, no sir, negatory.
Here, for instance, were the numbers for starting guards Robert Phinisee and Al Durham: Five points, 1-of-13 shooting, four turnovers. Combined.
Here were the numbers for the guards who also played, Armaan Franklin and Devonte Green: Five points, 2-of-13 shooting, three turnovers. Combined.
That's 3-of-26 from the floor from Indiana's backcourt, if you're keeping score at home. You could make 3-of-26 just blindly heaving the ball at the rim. The Aflac duck could make more than 3-of-26, and he doesn't even have hands.
And I know what you're asking now: "Where does Archie Miller find these guys who can't shoot?"
That is an excellent question. And I don't have an answer. I don't know if Archie has a special Guys Who Can't Shoot app on his phone, or if he just happens to catch them on the one night in high school when they can find their hindparts with search planes. Or if they can find their hindparts with search planes, but magically forget how as soon as they slip on that jersey with "Indiana" on the front.
And, yes, I know, the Big Ten isn't high school. But no defense in the history of man has ever been good enough to make a team shoot 3-of-26 without getting a big assist from the shooters. So, there's that.
There's also this: Apparently Indiana's identity is not just to live down low with their bigs, but to be inconsistent. In which case the Hoosiers appear to be no different than anyone else in college basketball this winter.
A ray of sunshine at last.
Friday, January 31, 2020
Wednesday, January 29, 2020
Your Old Man Shouting moment for today
The Blob keeps a chamber warm in its heart for geezers who shake their bony fists and shout at clouds, because more and more the Blob is one of them. So here's to Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski this morning, that tottery old buzzard.
He's 72 now, and last night he acted his age in that den of iniquity known as Cameron Indoor Arena. Suddenly he started shouting at the Cameron Crazies, telling all those trust-fund Colbys and Wheaton IVs to "Shut up!" That's because, geezer-like, he thought he heard them chanting something they weren't.
What they were chanting was "Jeff Capel, sit with us," which was directed at the Pittsburgh coach (and former Dukie player and assistant), and was actually sort of sweet when you consider the verbal abuse the Cameron Crazies usually shower on opponents.
Alas, tottery old Coach K apparently heard something else. So he started yelling "Shut up!" and "He is one of us!" and shaking his bony fist at his own student section, at least symbolically.
Later, a bit sheepishly, he admitted he, uh, might not have heard right.
"I don't know if I made a mistake on that," he said.
And also: "We got a different look at what the hell was going on. I thought it was something personal ... I apologize to the students for that."
Of course, then he went on to grump, in splendid old-coot fashion: "You shouldn't say that ... in the middle of the first half and an ACC game, this isn't a cutesy little thing. Let's think of a different cheer -- like 'Defense!'"
Well, sure. In his day, dammit, students chanted stuff like "Defense!" and "RE-bound that bas-ket-ball!" and "Two bits, four bits, six bits, a dollar! All for Coach K, stand up and holler!" They didn't chant cutesy little things, not in the middle of a game, for heaven's sake, even if that's what the Crazies are famous for doing.
Consarn those dang kids, anyway. Next thing you know, they'll be traipsing right across his lawn.
He's 72 now, and last night he acted his age in that den of iniquity known as Cameron Indoor Arena. Suddenly he started shouting at the Cameron Crazies, telling all those trust-fund Colbys and Wheaton IVs to "Shut up!" That's because, geezer-like, he thought he heard them chanting something they weren't.
What they were chanting was "Jeff Capel, sit with us," which was directed at the Pittsburgh coach (and former Dukie player and assistant), and was actually sort of sweet when you consider the verbal abuse the Cameron Crazies usually shower on opponents.
Alas, tottery old Coach K apparently heard something else. So he started yelling "Shut up!" and "He is one of us!" and shaking his bony fist at his own student section, at least symbolically.
Later, a bit sheepishly, he admitted he, uh, might not have heard right.
"I don't know if I made a mistake on that," he said.
And also: "We got a different look at what the hell was going on. I thought it was something personal ... I apologize to the students for that."
Of course, then he went on to grump, in splendid old-coot fashion: "You shouldn't say that ... in the middle of the first half and an ACC game, this isn't a cutesy little thing. Let's think of a different cheer -- like 'Defense!'"
Well, sure. In his day, dammit, students chanted stuff like "Defense!" and "RE-bound that bas-ket-ball!" and "Two bits, four bits, six bits, a dollar! All for Coach K, stand up and holler!" They didn't chant cutesy little things, not in the middle of a game, for heaven's sake, even if that's what the Crazies are famous for doing.
Consarn those dang kids, anyway. Next thing you know, they'll be traipsing right across his lawn.
Oh, Super
So I see here on my magic wizard phone that eBay has MANY, MANY BOXES available of Mahomes Magic Crunch cereal (a HyVee product!), and so get on there and START BIDDING NOW.
I mean, who needs wings and pizza at your Super Bowl party when you can serve heaping bowls of glorified sugar frosted flakes?
Thus we have officially entered the Echo Chamber O' Hype that is Super Bowl Week, which always begins with that tasteful display of gang "journalism" (pronounced, "Hey, Bill Belichick, put on this red plastic tricorn hat!") known as Super Bowl Media Day. Or, as it's known now, Super Bowl Opening Night.
Super Bowl Opening Night was a much more somber affair than usual last night, because the sudden death of Kobe Bryant cast a shadow over everything. Everyone asked Kobe questions; everyone answered with stories about having a Kobe poster on his bedroom wall growing up, or drawing inspiration from the Mamba Mentality that was Kobe's warrior code, or becoming Lakers fans because of Kobe. It was a remarkable display of just how much influence Kobe wielded on an entire generation, influence that transcended a particular sport or even sports in general.
So there was that. And there will be five more days of learning everything there is to know about every significant player involved in Super LIV, and endless jabbering about whether or not the 49ers fearsome defense can slow down the incandescent Patrick Mahomes, and finally the Detailed Breakdown Of Who Will Win And Why.
Me, I prefer non-detailed breakdowns. Which is why, sitting next to my laptop right now, looking exceptionally fierce considering they're only an inch tall and mostly head, are a tiny Patrick Mahomes figurine and a tiny Nick Bosa figurine.
They were given to me by a kindly bartender at Casa's, who was in turn given them by a couple of kindly diners. Knowing her regulars, she made me promise not to put them in my mouth. I upped the ante by also promising not to stick them up my nose or in my ear.
(Although who wouldn't want to see that visit to the emergency room? "Hey, doc, come 'ere! We need a Patrick Mahomes extraction, stat!")
Anyway, my Detailed Breakdown, at least five days out from the Big Roman Numeral, is this: When I opened the package Bosa and Mahomes were riding in, Bosa fell out first.
So, there ya go. Looks like it's the 49ers.
And you thought you could get analysis like that just anywhere.
I mean, who needs wings and pizza at your Super Bowl party when you can serve heaping bowls of glorified sugar frosted flakes?
Thus we have officially entered the Echo Chamber O' Hype that is Super Bowl Week, which always begins with that tasteful display of gang "journalism" (pronounced, "Hey, Bill Belichick, put on this red plastic tricorn hat!") known as Super Bowl Media Day. Or, as it's known now, Super Bowl Opening Night.
Super Bowl Opening Night was a much more somber affair than usual last night, because the sudden death of Kobe Bryant cast a shadow over everything. Everyone asked Kobe questions; everyone answered with stories about having a Kobe poster on his bedroom wall growing up, or drawing inspiration from the Mamba Mentality that was Kobe's warrior code, or becoming Lakers fans because of Kobe. It was a remarkable display of just how much influence Kobe wielded on an entire generation, influence that transcended a particular sport or even sports in general.
So there was that. And there will be five more days of learning everything there is to know about every significant player involved in Super LIV, and endless jabbering about whether or not the 49ers fearsome defense can slow down the incandescent Patrick Mahomes, and finally the Detailed Breakdown Of Who Will Win And Why.
Me, I prefer non-detailed breakdowns. Which is why, sitting next to my laptop right now, looking exceptionally fierce considering they're only an inch tall and mostly head, are a tiny Patrick Mahomes figurine and a tiny Nick Bosa figurine.
They were given to me by a kindly bartender at Casa's, who was in turn given them by a couple of kindly diners. Knowing her regulars, she made me promise not to put them in my mouth. I upped the ante by also promising not to stick them up my nose or in my ear.
(Although who wouldn't want to see that visit to the emergency room? "Hey, doc, come 'ere! We need a Patrick Mahomes extraction, stat!")
Anyway, my Detailed Breakdown, at least five days out from the Big Roman Numeral, is this: When I opened the package Bosa and Mahomes were riding in, Bosa fell out first.
So, there ya go. Looks like it's the 49ers.
And you thought you could get analysis like that just anywhere.
Legacies
Tears, so many tears, spreading out and out in concentric circles Sunday afternoon. Spreading out and out across the country and around the world from that fogbound hillside north of Los Angeles, where the Sikorsky S-76 helicopter augured in at 184 mph and nine souls departed this earth in an eyeblink.
Tears in L.A., of course, where Kobe Bryant was an icon among icons in a city of icons.
Tears across the width and breadth of the NBA, where every team playing Sunday honored the Mamba by standing and letting the 24-second clock run dry on their first possessions -- 24 seconds, of course, for Kobe's No. 24, which hangs in the Staples Center rafters along with his No. 8, the two numbers he wore for the Lakers.
Tears in Bloomington, In., where Indiana gagged away a win over Maryland and Archie Miller's eyes were red for another reason entirely. Tears from Dwyane Wade and Doc Rivers and so many, many others.
Tears on a basketball floor in Corvallis, Ore., where the best player in women's college buckets, Oregon's Sabrina Ionescu, wept openly because like so many others she had lost a friend and a mentor.
Ionescu went on to lead No. 4 Oregon to a road win against No. 7 Oregon State, on any other day a cause for celebration because it was the first time Oregon had beaten its in-state rival at Corvallis since Ionescu arrived four years ago. But not on this day.
On this day, the day Kobe Bryant died, Sabrina Ionescu wept and dedicated the rest of her season to the Mamba. On this day, Oregon coach Kelly Graves explained that Bryant and his family had been close to Ionescu, that he and his basketball-playing daughter Gianna had been to see her play at USC last year and struck up a friendship, and that Kobe had communicated with her several times a week.
Gianna was on the helicopter with her father yesterday, and so she is gone now, too. Also John Altobelli, a legend in his own right as the baseball coach at Orange Coast College, and his wife and their daughter. Also four others.
So much loss. So much achievement and promise and bond of family erased like that, poof, in one freighted instant.
Today will be all about Kobe's impact on the game, on his 20 years with the Lakers and his standing as the fourth-leading scorer in NBA history -- LeBron James passed him for third on the list just 16 hours before Kobe died -- and as the man who holds almost every significant career mark the Lakers have. It will be about his impact on the current generation of players, on LeBron and Joel Embiid and Trae Young and everyone who tweeted yesterday that they grew up wanting to be Kobe Bryant.
That is how it should be.
And yet the image you keep coming back to is all those young women in Corvallis standing together at center court with their arms around each other, weeping. And of a father and his daughter heading off to the daughter's travel basketball game.
There is irony to this, fate or coincidence coming back around on a man and giving him exactly the path he needed. Because the thing that will not come up often today, the part of Kobe Bryant's resume we're not supposed to mention, is what happened in a hotel room in Colorado.
Where a young Kobe Bryant, once upon a time now 17 years gone, was accused of rape.
Where it went away because the alleged victim decided not to pursue the complaint.
Where Kobe Bryant, presumably, learned something, because no such allegations ever darkened his life again.
He went on and time went on and one day he woke up as the father of four daughters, and maybe that's a cosmic balancing of the scales and maybe it isn't. What I do know is being the father of four daughters surely must give a man certain sensibilities he might not otherwise have. Which is how Kobe Bryant wound up an icon not just to young men but to young women, too.
Tears, so many tears, spreading out and out in concentric circles.
Tears in L.A. Tears across the width and breadth of the NBA. Tears from grown men everywhere.
And from young women in Corvallis, Ore., too. Oh, yes.
Tears in L.A., of course, where Kobe Bryant was an icon among icons in a city of icons.
Tears across the width and breadth of the NBA, where every team playing Sunday honored the Mamba by standing and letting the 24-second clock run dry on their first possessions -- 24 seconds, of course, for Kobe's No. 24, which hangs in the Staples Center rafters along with his No. 8, the two numbers he wore for the Lakers.
Tears in Bloomington, In., where Indiana gagged away a win over Maryland and Archie Miller's eyes were red for another reason entirely. Tears from Dwyane Wade and Doc Rivers and so many, many others.
Tears on a basketball floor in Corvallis, Ore., where the best player in women's college buckets, Oregon's Sabrina Ionescu, wept openly because like so many others she had lost a friend and a mentor.
Ionescu went on to lead No. 4 Oregon to a road win against No. 7 Oregon State, on any other day a cause for celebration because it was the first time Oregon had beaten its in-state rival at Corvallis since Ionescu arrived four years ago. But not on this day.
On this day, the day Kobe Bryant died, Sabrina Ionescu wept and dedicated the rest of her season to the Mamba. On this day, Oregon coach Kelly Graves explained that Bryant and his family had been close to Ionescu, that he and his basketball-playing daughter Gianna had been to see her play at USC last year and struck up a friendship, and that Kobe had communicated with her several times a week.
Gianna was on the helicopter with her father yesterday, and so she is gone now, too. Also John Altobelli, a legend in his own right as the baseball coach at Orange Coast College, and his wife and their daughter. Also four others.
So much loss. So much achievement and promise and bond of family erased like that, poof, in one freighted instant.
Today will be all about Kobe's impact on the game, on his 20 years with the Lakers and his standing as the fourth-leading scorer in NBA history -- LeBron James passed him for third on the list just 16 hours before Kobe died -- and as the man who holds almost every significant career mark the Lakers have. It will be about his impact on the current generation of players, on LeBron and Joel Embiid and Trae Young and everyone who tweeted yesterday that they grew up wanting to be Kobe Bryant.
That is how it should be.
And yet the image you keep coming back to is all those young women in Corvallis standing together at center court with their arms around each other, weeping. And of a father and his daughter heading off to the daughter's travel basketball game.
There is irony to this, fate or coincidence coming back around on a man and giving him exactly the path he needed. Because the thing that will not come up often today, the part of Kobe Bryant's resume we're not supposed to mention, is what happened in a hotel room in Colorado.
Where a young Kobe Bryant, once upon a time now 17 years gone, was accused of rape.
Where it went away because the alleged victim decided not to pursue the complaint.
Where Kobe Bryant, presumably, learned something, because no such allegations ever darkened his life again.
He went on and time went on and one day he woke up as the father of four daughters, and maybe that's a cosmic balancing of the scales and maybe it isn't. What I do know is being the father of four daughters surely must give a man certain sensibilities he might not otherwise have. Which is how Kobe Bryant wound up an icon not just to young men but to young women, too.
Tears, so many tears, spreading out and out in concentric circles.
Tears in L.A. Tears across the width and breadth of the NBA. Tears from grown men everywhere.
And from young women in Corvallis, Ore., too. Oh, yes.
Sunday, January 26, 2020
Hand-me-down turn-down
Raise a glass this morning to the Los Angeles Dodgers, who proved this week that if there's no honor among thieves, there is among their victims. They don't want your stinkin' charity, dammit. And you know what you can do with your pity.
Since it got out a couple of weeks ago that the Houston Astros are a bunch of cheating louts who conned their way to the 2017 World Series title, lots of folks have wondered if Major League Baseball's response was enough. To be sure, commissioner Rob Manfred landed on the Astros like a grand piano, meting out punishments that were unprecedented. But shouldn't he have gone further?
Shouldn't he have stripped the Astros of their title? And given it to the Dodgers?
That was the Los Angeles' City Council's idea, and as with most intersections of politicians and sports, it's as hare-brained as hare-brained gets. The council, see, decided to pass a resolution maintaining that the Dodgers should be awarded the title. It's not worth the paper it's written on, of course, but its political suck-up quotient is high. How better to get pissed-off Angelenos to vote for you next election cycle?
To their credit, the Dodgers themselves ain't playin'.
"We don't want a trophy," third baseman Justin Turner scoffed. "We don't want a fake banner hanging in our stadium. We didn't earn that. We didn't catch that final out to win a championship. We don't want that."
He is, of course, absolutely right. They didn't earn it, even if the Astros didn't either. None of them are happy about the latter, but there's a difference between winning and not losing.
You could say the Dodgers did the latter. But you can't say they did the former.
And so any 2017 World Series banner going up in Chavez Ravine would be constructed from whole cloth. It would be as empty as the wrapper of a Dodger Dog, post-consumption. And, in its own way, it would be as ludicrous as hanging a few other banners:
New Orleans Saints 2019 Wild-Card Champs Because Everyone Knows Kyle Rudolph Pushed Off On That Touchdown In Overtime.
Or:
Indiana Hoosiers 1992 NCAA Champions Because Everyone Knows The Officials Robbed Them In The Second Half Of The National Semifinal Against Those Cheating B******* From Duke.
Or:
Dirt Clod Middle School 2017 City Champs Because That Johnny Kid On The Other Team Traveled, Everybody Saw It, So That Basket Shouldn't Have Counted.
Good for the Dodgers for not playing along with such lunacy, and for saying they'd turn down the hand-me-down trophy. Because only winning is winning.
Since it got out a couple of weeks ago that the Houston Astros are a bunch of cheating louts who conned their way to the 2017 World Series title, lots of folks have wondered if Major League Baseball's response was enough. To be sure, commissioner Rob Manfred landed on the Astros like a grand piano, meting out punishments that were unprecedented. But shouldn't he have gone further?
Shouldn't he have stripped the Astros of their title? And given it to the Dodgers?
That was the Los Angeles' City Council's idea, and as with most intersections of politicians and sports, it's as hare-brained as hare-brained gets. The council, see, decided to pass a resolution maintaining that the Dodgers should be awarded the title. It's not worth the paper it's written on, of course, but its political suck-up quotient is high. How better to get pissed-off Angelenos to vote for you next election cycle?
To their credit, the Dodgers themselves ain't playin'.
"We don't want a trophy," third baseman Justin Turner scoffed. "We don't want a fake banner hanging in our stadium. We didn't earn that. We didn't catch that final out to win a championship. We don't want that."
He is, of course, absolutely right. They didn't earn it, even if the Astros didn't either. None of them are happy about the latter, but there's a difference between winning and not losing.
You could say the Dodgers did the latter. But you can't say they did the former.
And so any 2017 World Series banner going up in Chavez Ravine would be constructed from whole cloth. It would be as empty as the wrapper of a Dodger Dog, post-consumption. And, in its own way, it would be as ludicrous as hanging a few other banners:
New Orleans Saints 2019 Wild-Card Champs Because Everyone Knows Kyle Rudolph Pushed Off On That Touchdown In Overtime.
Or:
Indiana Hoosiers 1992 NCAA Champions Because Everyone Knows The Officials Robbed Them In The Second Half Of The National Semifinal Against Those Cheating B******* From Duke.
Or:
Dirt Clod Middle School 2017 City Champs Because That Johnny Kid On The Other Team Traveled, Everybody Saw It, So That Basket Shouldn't Have Counted.
Good for the Dodgers for not playing along with such lunacy, and for saying they'd turn down the hand-me-down trophy. Because only winning is winning.
Bleeding 'em dry
Say this about your venture capitalists, your daddy's trust-fund moguls, your hedge-fund destroyers of worlds: None of 'em ever met a last dime they didn't want to squeeze until all the juice was out of it.
Which brings us, naturally, to the Nash-unal FOOT-ball League, whose standing motto seems to be "We can always get more players. That's why we have a draft every year."
And so of course the owners want to add a 17th game to an already over-long season, because, well, MORE MONEY. Their brutal, chew-up-the-resources season already stretches from August until past Christmas, but, hey, look how much we're paying these guys. Gotta get some return on the investment, right?
Anyone who's ever plunged foolishly into the quagmire that is fantasy football knows what's wrong with that, because every week your quarterback goes on the shelf or your running back or two wide receivers or a tight end. The game eats its own like few others, which will happen when it involves ridiculously large human beings running into each other at the speed of light. The carnage is so bad these days more and more players are used up by the time they're 30, or decide they're tired of being used up and quit by that time.
Not that this matters a lick to the rich guys. They can always get more players, remember?
Problem is, the current ones have run their cost-benefit models, and a 17th game doesn't compute for them. And the owners will play hell at the bargaining table convincing them otherwise.
"When I talk to the guys, I don't think many people want to do it," defensive end and Jacksonville player rep Calais Campbell told ESPN this week. "Really, you talk to guys and I don't think anybody wants to do it. It's going to be very, very tough."
Translation: The owners better be prepared to give something up, and it better be a meaningful something. Eliminate the last preseason game, perhaps. Hell, eliminate all the preseason games, which are nothing but a vestige of that gone time when players used them to play themselves into shape.
That hasn't been the case for a long time, not in an era when there is no meaningful offseason. You've got your minicamps now and your OTAs and your supplemental mini-camps, and then training camp. No one spends his offseason anymore selling insurance or beer distributorships and spending the rest of his time eating anything that moves.
Rod Woodson, for instance, once told me he took all of two weeks off at the end of the season, then jumped right back into his workout program. Of course, Woodson was famous during his playing days for being the fittest man in the NFL. But the motivation is universal: Gotta protect the assets.
Odd that this would come up this week, considering it's the week of the Pro Bowl, the most glaring example of superfluous risk in the entire NFL empire. Campbell's comments originated in Orlando, where the game is being played today for reasons known only to the Shield. It's not like anyone cares, or that the players, no dummies, won't approach it as if it's the Tag You're It Bowl, the Don't Hurt Me Bowl or the Hey, Watch The Knee Bowl.
Of course, people will still watch. Which means the Shield will make money. Which means the most glaring example of superfluous risk will keep happening every year.
And the 17th game?
It's superfluous, too. Not that that matters.
Which brings us, naturally, to the Nash-unal FOOT-ball League, whose standing motto seems to be "We can always get more players. That's why we have a draft every year."
And so of course the owners want to add a 17th game to an already over-long season, because, well, MORE MONEY. Their brutal, chew-up-the-resources season already stretches from August until past Christmas, but, hey, look how much we're paying these guys. Gotta get some return on the investment, right?
Anyone who's ever plunged foolishly into the quagmire that is fantasy football knows what's wrong with that, because every week your quarterback goes on the shelf or your running back or two wide receivers or a tight end. The game eats its own like few others, which will happen when it involves ridiculously large human beings running into each other at the speed of light. The carnage is so bad these days more and more players are used up by the time they're 30, or decide they're tired of being used up and quit by that time.
Not that this matters a lick to the rich guys. They can always get more players, remember?
Problem is, the current ones have run their cost-benefit models, and a 17th game doesn't compute for them. And the owners will play hell at the bargaining table convincing them otherwise.
"When I talk to the guys, I don't think many people want to do it," defensive end and Jacksonville player rep Calais Campbell told ESPN this week. "Really, you talk to guys and I don't think anybody wants to do it. It's going to be very, very tough."
Translation: The owners better be prepared to give something up, and it better be a meaningful something. Eliminate the last preseason game, perhaps. Hell, eliminate all the preseason games, which are nothing but a vestige of that gone time when players used them to play themselves into shape.
That hasn't been the case for a long time, not in an era when there is no meaningful offseason. You've got your minicamps now and your OTAs and your supplemental mini-camps, and then training camp. No one spends his offseason anymore selling insurance or beer distributorships and spending the rest of his time eating anything that moves.
Rod Woodson, for instance, once told me he took all of two weeks off at the end of the season, then jumped right back into his workout program. Of course, Woodson was famous during his playing days for being the fittest man in the NFL. But the motivation is universal: Gotta protect the assets.
Odd that this would come up this week, considering it's the week of the Pro Bowl, the most glaring example of superfluous risk in the entire NFL empire. Campbell's comments originated in Orlando, where the game is being played today for reasons known only to the Shield. It's not like anyone cares, or that the players, no dummies, won't approach it as if it's the Tag You're It Bowl, the Don't Hurt Me Bowl or the Hey, Watch The Knee Bowl.
Of course, people will still watch. Which means the Shield will make money. Which means the most glaring example of superfluous risk will keep happening every year.
And the 17th game?
It's superfluous, too. Not that that matters.
Friday, January 24, 2020
Your mascot moment for today
In which a mascot is being accused of breaking the Mascot Code, which states mascots are duty-bound not to scare little kids or invoke fear and loathing, but only to prompt reactions such as "What the hell is that thing supposed to be, anyway?"
The miscreant in this case, we're sad to say, is one of the nation's newest rockstar mascots: Gritty, the Philadelphia Flyers mascot. It came out this week that Gritty is being investigated for allegedly punching a 13-year-old boy during a November photoshoot.
Here's Gritty's mugshot. Frankly I don't how anyone could believe he's guilty, even if he is wielding a weapon.
One hopes this is all a big misunderstanding, and Gritty was merely demonstrating to the kid how Dave Schultz used to throw hands back in the Broad Street Bullies days. Nonetheless, police are investigating, which raises the delicious possibility that they'll put Gritty in the box and bring in detectives Benson and Stabler to sweat him.
I'm guessing they'll play hell getting Gritty to talk, though. Another codicil of the Mascot Code, don't you know.
The miscreant in this case, we're sad to say, is one of the nation's newest rockstar mascots: Gritty, the Philadelphia Flyers mascot. It came out this week that Gritty is being investigated for allegedly punching a 13-year-old boy during a November photoshoot.
Here's Gritty's mugshot. Frankly I don't how anyone could believe he's guilty, even if he is wielding a weapon.
One hopes this is all a big misunderstanding, and Gritty was merely demonstrating to the kid how Dave Schultz used to throw hands back in the Broad Street Bullies days. Nonetheless, police are investigating, which raises the delicious possibility that they'll put Gritty in the box and bring in detectives Benson and Stabler to sweat him.
I'm guessing they'll play hell getting Gritty to talk, though. Another codicil of the Mascot Code, don't you know.
Ugly, the new pretty
OK, sooo ... maybe ya'll should hold off on firearchiemiller.com, perpetually disgruntled segment of Hoosier Nation. Whatta ya say?
Because, listen, something Archie Miller is doing is working. Last night was the second time this month that his Indiana Hoosiers jacked around and beat a team ranked 11th in the nation, in case you weren't paying attention. they've won four of their last five since the debacle in Maryland at the front of the month. And they've managed to flip their house so far this season, refurbishing Assembly Hall from the Fortress of Decrepitude to a domicile with teeth again.
So far they've only lost one game in the Hall this season, and that was to a more-than-respectable Arkansas team. And if last night's 67-63 win over No. 11 Michigan State again was not an artistic success, the more astute segment of the Indiana fan base seems to have figured out that their guys have at least finally figured out who they are.
Which is to say, they've found an identity. And the identity is go big, live low in the paint and make people uncomfortable on the other end.
It ain't pretty, but this ain't a pretty team and never will be. Like last night: There were swatches where the Hoosiers couldn't hit sand with a beach ball. And they still can't shoot 3s worth a bucket of spit.
But Miller's now-preferred big lineup beat the Spartans on the glass, 31 boards to 29. The Hoosiers turned the ball over just eight times to the Spartans 13. And they got to the line six more times than Michigan State did, a season-long trend.
And, OK, so they still can't hit anything when they get there, also a season-long trend. Last night they missed nine of their 20 attempts at the stripe. You can't have everything.
In short, this is a flawed team, just like every other team in the country this season. But the Hoo-Hoo-Hoosiers are also 15-4 now, and one game off the lead in the Big Ten. And if they find a way to torture Maryland in the Hall this week the way Maryland tortured them back East, well ... this is almost certainly a 20-win team we're looking at.
Not a pretty 20-win team. Not a 20-win team of which anyone will ever say things like "Gosh, that's a pretty team," or "Golly, they play lovely basketball," or "Gee willickers, it's like a symphony come to life, watching them play basketball."
No, sir. It's more like a heavy metal band come to life, watching them play basketball. Occasionally it's like a garage band come to life. But so what?
It's not how you get there that matters, after all. It's just getting there that does.
Because, listen, something Archie Miller is doing is working. Last night was the second time this month that his Indiana Hoosiers jacked around and beat a team ranked 11th in the nation, in case you weren't paying attention. they've won four of their last five since the debacle in Maryland at the front of the month. And they've managed to flip their house so far this season, refurbishing Assembly Hall from the Fortress of Decrepitude to a domicile with teeth again.
So far they've only lost one game in the Hall this season, and that was to a more-than-respectable Arkansas team. And if last night's 67-63 win over No. 11 Michigan State again was not an artistic success, the more astute segment of the Indiana fan base seems to have figured out that their guys have at least finally figured out who they are.
Which is to say, they've found an identity. And the identity is go big, live low in the paint and make people uncomfortable on the other end.
It ain't pretty, but this ain't a pretty team and never will be. Like last night: There were swatches where the Hoosiers couldn't hit sand with a beach ball. And they still can't shoot 3s worth a bucket of spit.
But Miller's now-preferred big lineup beat the Spartans on the glass, 31 boards to 29. The Hoosiers turned the ball over just eight times to the Spartans 13. And they got to the line six more times than Michigan State did, a season-long trend.
And, OK, so they still can't hit anything when they get there, also a season-long trend. Last night they missed nine of their 20 attempts at the stripe. You can't have everything.
In short, this is a flawed team, just like every other team in the country this season. But the Hoo-Hoo-Hoosiers are also 15-4 now, and one game off the lead in the Big Ten. And if they find a way to torture Maryland in the Hall this week the way Maryland tortured them back East, well ... this is almost certainly a 20-win team we're looking at.
Not a pretty 20-win team. Not a 20-win team of which anyone will ever say things like "Gosh, that's a pretty team," or "Golly, they play lovely basketball," or "Gee willickers, it's like a symphony come to life, watching them play basketball."
No, sir. It's more like a heavy metal band come to life, watching them play basketball. Occasionally it's like a garage band come to life. But so what?
It's not how you get there that matters, after all. It's just getting there that does.
Thursday, January 23, 2020
The staying power of madness
For a couple of breathless seconds, as the kid raised the stool over his head, it was a winter's night in Minneapolis again. That night has been gone for 48 years, but its echoes, and its stain, remain. Six or seven names are attached to it, and always will be.
The names are Ron Behagen, and Corky Taylor, and Jim Brewer, and Dave Winfield, who committed assault and battery that long-ago night in Minneapolis.
The names are Luke Witte, and Dave Merchant, and Mark Wagar, upon whom the assault and battery was committed.
Witte, a 7-foot center for Ohio State, wound up in intensive care that night after being curb-stomped by Taylor and Behagen, a couple of Minnesota Golden Gophers forwards. Merchant and Wagar, the other two Ohio State players, also went to the hospital after being assaulted by Gopher players Jim Brewer and Dave Winfield.
Forty-eight years later Luke Witte is a minister in North Carolina, so I don't know if he saw the kid raise the stool the other night. Probably, because ESPN has it on its usual continual loop now. If so, I can imagine he must have shuddered, because of all our moments on this earth it is the mad moments, regrettably, that have the most staying power.
And what happened the other night in Lawrence, Kansas, was as mad as mad gets.
What happened was an ugly brawl that spilled into the seats at the end of the floor, as the final seconds disappeared in No. 3 Kansas' 81-60 rout of Kansas State. The kid who grabbed the stool and raised it over his head, Silvio De Sousa, also exchanged punches with a couple of Kansas State players who left the bench to initiate the brawl. A Kansas assistant snatched the stool away from him.
Otherwise, Silvio De Sousa's name might have gone right up there with those of Taylor and Behagen and the rest.
As it is, he'll sit for 12 games as decreed by the Big 12. Kansas State players James Love and Antonio Gordon will miss eight games and three, respectively. And Kansas' David McCormack will sit two games.
It's not nearly enough.
No, for this kind of ugliness, the principals should get the rest of the season to sit home and think about it. Because, yes, this kind of ugliness lingers. It has a hang time that far exceeds the briefness of its life. Luke Witte's obit will mention that winter's night in Minneapolis, when he passes. So will Behagen's. And when Taylor died of lung cancer in 2012, everyone cued up the tape of those few seconds of madness -- even though he had done good work for the city of Minneapolis for 30 years as a youth coach and mentor.
"Oh, my gosh, it hurts," one contemporary said when he passed. "I considered him my friend."
That contemporary was Luke Witte.
Someday, when De Sousa and Love and Gordon and the rest have hopefully gone out into life and done their own good works, this kind of redemptive moment will happen for them, too. Hopefully one moment of madness in Kansas will not define them.
But it will stay with them, to one degree or another. Would that the world worked otherwise.
The names are Ron Behagen, and Corky Taylor, and Jim Brewer, and Dave Winfield, who committed assault and battery that long-ago night in Minneapolis.
The names are Luke Witte, and Dave Merchant, and Mark Wagar, upon whom the assault and battery was committed.
Witte, a 7-foot center for Ohio State, wound up in intensive care that night after being curb-stomped by Taylor and Behagen, a couple of Minnesota Golden Gophers forwards. Merchant and Wagar, the other two Ohio State players, also went to the hospital after being assaulted by Gopher players Jim Brewer and Dave Winfield.
Forty-eight years later Luke Witte is a minister in North Carolina, so I don't know if he saw the kid raise the stool the other night. Probably, because ESPN has it on its usual continual loop now. If so, I can imagine he must have shuddered, because of all our moments on this earth it is the mad moments, regrettably, that have the most staying power.
And what happened the other night in Lawrence, Kansas, was as mad as mad gets.
What happened was an ugly brawl that spilled into the seats at the end of the floor, as the final seconds disappeared in No. 3 Kansas' 81-60 rout of Kansas State. The kid who grabbed the stool and raised it over his head, Silvio De Sousa, also exchanged punches with a couple of Kansas State players who left the bench to initiate the brawl. A Kansas assistant snatched the stool away from him.
Otherwise, Silvio De Sousa's name might have gone right up there with those of Taylor and Behagen and the rest.
As it is, he'll sit for 12 games as decreed by the Big 12. Kansas State players James Love and Antonio Gordon will miss eight games and three, respectively. And Kansas' David McCormack will sit two games.
It's not nearly enough.
No, for this kind of ugliness, the principals should get the rest of the season to sit home and think about it. Because, yes, this kind of ugliness lingers. It has a hang time that far exceeds the briefness of its life. Luke Witte's obit will mention that winter's night in Minneapolis, when he passes. So will Behagen's. And when Taylor died of lung cancer in 2012, everyone cued up the tape of those few seconds of madness -- even though he had done good work for the city of Minneapolis for 30 years as a youth coach and mentor.
"Oh, my gosh, it hurts," one contemporary said when he passed. "I considered him my friend."
That contemporary was Luke Witte.
Someday, when De Sousa and Love and Gordon and the rest have hopefully gone out into life and done their own good works, this kind of redemptive moment will happen for them, too. Hopefully one moment of madness in Kansas will not define them.
But it will stay with them, to one degree or another. Would that the world worked otherwise.
Wednesday, January 22, 2020
Receding infamy
OK, first of all, stop that laughing. I am not the guy.
I am not the guy -- the poor, misguided, musta-been-snorting-Drano guy -- who left Derek Jeter off his Hall of Fame ballot. I don't even have a Hall of Fame ballot. So you can't blame me for being the lone cementhead who decided the best shortstop of his generation wasn't a first-ballot HOFer, and deprived Jeter of being a unanimous selection.
Of course, Jeter got in easily anyway, and Larry Walker, too, and for once there should be none of those tedious seamhead debates about whether someone's WAR or BABIP or BLT was truly Hall-worthy. Jeter and Walker were HOFers from the moment they put the glove down, and anyone who tries to argue otherwise is not anyone you need to take seriously.
Neither is anyone who tries to deny that the more the Steroids Era recedes in memory, the less hold it has on the judgment of the voters.
There has always been a puritanical streak to the guardians of the Hall, a sort of Cotton Mather grimness to their belief that the path to baseball heaven should be narrower than a bolo tie. Certain voters have used their ballot to enforce this belief, at times to an absurd degree. This despite all the drunks, racists and full-bore sociopaths who inhabit Cooperstown.
Also cheaters. Yes, there are cheaters, too, in the Hall.
And so it doesn't take long to look at this year's HOF voting to reach Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds on the list.
This time around they finished fourth and fifth in the tally, with Clemens getting 61 percent of the vote and Bonds 60.7. That's still 14 or so points shy of the 75 percent needed for entry -- Clemens missed by 56 votes, Bonds by 57 -- but it's yet another uptick over last year.
Anecdotal and circumstantial evidence makes it virtually an article of faith that both Bonds and Clemens juiced as the sun got low in the sky in their careers. Nonetheless, both were also widely acknowledged by that time to be the best player and one of the two or three best pitchers of their generation, respectively. And so barring them from the Hall becomes an omission too glaring to ignore.
Apparently more and more voters are starting to accept this rationale, as the Steroids Era becomes an actual definable Era and takes its contextual place in baseball's long history of trying to get over on the other guy. It's a tradition that goes back almost to the dawn of the game itself -- and that includes experiments with various magic potions.
To be sure, you can be affronted at the skewed numbers the Steroids Era produced. But in doing so, you also have to recognize that the numbers have always been skewed to one degree or another.
Veterans of the deadball era scoffed at the numbers put up once the ball got livelier. African-Americans scoff at the numbers put up by players who never had to face Satchel Paige, or pitch to Josh Gibson and Oscar Charleston, or hold on base Cool Papa Bell. And the Steroids Era can't be put into proper context without acknowledging the unrestrained gobbling of amphetamines that helped the icons of the '60s, '70s and '80s get through those day games after night games.
Chemical enhancement is chemical enhancement, in other words.
And so as the Steroids Era becomes one with the deadball era and the segregation era and the bennies era, the likelihood that Bonds and Clemens will one day enter the Hall grows. It's only a matter of time.
Which is what all this is about in the first place.
I am not the guy -- the poor, misguided, musta-been-snorting-Drano guy -- who left Derek Jeter off his Hall of Fame ballot. I don't even have a Hall of Fame ballot. So you can't blame me for being the lone cementhead who decided the best shortstop of his generation wasn't a first-ballot HOFer, and deprived Jeter of being a unanimous selection.
Of course, Jeter got in easily anyway, and Larry Walker, too, and for once there should be none of those tedious seamhead debates about whether someone's WAR or BABIP or BLT was truly Hall-worthy. Jeter and Walker were HOFers from the moment they put the glove down, and anyone who tries to argue otherwise is not anyone you need to take seriously.
Neither is anyone who tries to deny that the more the Steroids Era recedes in memory, the less hold it has on the judgment of the voters.
There has always been a puritanical streak to the guardians of the Hall, a sort of Cotton Mather grimness to their belief that the path to baseball heaven should be narrower than a bolo tie. Certain voters have used their ballot to enforce this belief, at times to an absurd degree. This despite all the drunks, racists and full-bore sociopaths who inhabit Cooperstown.
Also cheaters. Yes, there are cheaters, too, in the Hall.
And so it doesn't take long to look at this year's HOF voting to reach Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds on the list.
This time around they finished fourth and fifth in the tally, with Clemens getting 61 percent of the vote and Bonds 60.7. That's still 14 or so points shy of the 75 percent needed for entry -- Clemens missed by 56 votes, Bonds by 57 -- but it's yet another uptick over last year.
Anecdotal and circumstantial evidence makes it virtually an article of faith that both Bonds and Clemens juiced as the sun got low in the sky in their careers. Nonetheless, both were also widely acknowledged by that time to be the best player and one of the two or three best pitchers of their generation, respectively. And so barring them from the Hall becomes an omission too glaring to ignore.
Apparently more and more voters are starting to accept this rationale, as the Steroids Era becomes an actual definable Era and takes its contextual place in baseball's long history of trying to get over on the other guy. It's a tradition that goes back almost to the dawn of the game itself -- and that includes experiments with various magic potions.
To be sure, you can be affronted at the skewed numbers the Steroids Era produced. But in doing so, you also have to recognize that the numbers have always been skewed to one degree or another.
Veterans of the deadball era scoffed at the numbers put up once the ball got livelier. African-Americans scoff at the numbers put up by players who never had to face Satchel Paige, or pitch to Josh Gibson and Oscar Charleston, or hold on base Cool Papa Bell. And the Steroids Era can't be put into proper context without acknowledging the unrestrained gobbling of amphetamines that helped the icons of the '60s, '70s and '80s get through those day games after night games.
Chemical enhancement is chemical enhancement, in other words.
And so as the Steroids Era becomes one with the deadball era and the segregation era and the bennies era, the likelihood that Bonds and Clemens will one day enter the Hall grows. It's only a matter of time.
Which is what all this is about in the first place.
Monday, January 20, 2020
Chiefly speaking
Cue up the video again of that strutting peacock, Hank Stram, with his crested blazer and his motormouth yap about 65 Toss Power Trap and matriculating the ball down the field. Haul out the photo of Lenny Dawson taking a drag on a cig at halftime of Super Bowl I. Blow half a century's dust off all those glorious names every Kansas City Chiefs' fan knows by heart.
Dawson and Mike Garrett and Otis Taylor. Bobby Bell and Willie Lanier and Emmitt Thomas. Buck Buchanan. Johnny Robinson. Sidewinding kicker Jan Stenerud, the Nordic Automatic, and the one-eyed end, Fred Arbanas.
Fifty years is a long thirsty stretch between Super Bowls, so some of those men are gone now. But their descendants are going back now, thanks to an old warhorse coach and a quarterback who matriculates the ball down the field in ways Hank Stram never could have conceived.
Andy Reid with his wizard's gift for offensive schemes. Patrick Mahomes with his magician's ability to turn those schemes into tangible results as the Matriculator of all matriculators. And Travis Kelce and Sammy Watkins and Damien Williams and Chris Jones and all the others.
They spotted the gritty, brutish Tennessee Titans leads of 10-0 and 17-7 yesterday in the AFC title game, then came roaring back again on the strength of Mahomes' arm and one dazzling touchdown jaunt you will now find in the dictionary next to the word "nifty." Twenty-eight straight points later, the Chiefs were up 35-17 and on their way to Miami for Supe LIV. And all the inhabitants of marvelous old Arrowhead Stadium were LIV-ing up, too.
Waiting for their Chiefs will be the San Francisco 49ers, who looked simply fearsome in grinding up Aaron Rodgers and the poor Green Bay Packers in the NFC championship. They did the way they've done it all season, with a vicious defense and a running game whose parts seem interchangeable.
For a lot of the season, it's been an Indiana Hoosier, Tevin Coleman, who's carried the load. Yesterday, with Coleman out, it was a Purdue Boilermaker, Raheem Mostert, who gashed the Pack for 220 yards and four touchdowns.
So the 49ers are riding to Miami in an Old Oaken Bucket. So to speak.
The Blob's heart leans toward the Matriculator, simply because watching the Matriculator play football is more fun than kittens on ether. The Blob's head, though, suspects the Bucketheads from San Francisco will get the silvery confetti shower in this one, because history says defense usually trumps offense in the Supe, and the 49ers' defense is unmatched.
This doesn't mean the Blob has any idea how the Niners slow down the Matriculator, if in fact anyone can at this point.
The Titans did their level best, switching up their coverages at halftime to briefly confound Mahomes. But he figured out what they were doing before too long, and Reid dialed up a few switches of his own, and pretty soon Mahomes was finding Watkins behind the defense from 60 yards out and it was all over.
So it'll be the Niners' D vs. Mahomes. And yet it might all come down to just how well the Chiefs' D can rise to the occasion the way it did yesterday, when it slowed the previously unstoppable Derrick Henry to at least a fast walk.
More on that later. For now, though, the Blob guarantees only one thing.
Your Super Bowl champion will be the team in red.
Dawson and Mike Garrett and Otis Taylor. Bobby Bell and Willie Lanier and Emmitt Thomas. Buck Buchanan. Johnny Robinson. Sidewinding kicker Jan Stenerud, the Nordic Automatic, and the one-eyed end, Fred Arbanas.
Fifty years is a long thirsty stretch between Super Bowls, so some of those men are gone now. But their descendants are going back now, thanks to an old warhorse coach and a quarterback who matriculates the ball down the field in ways Hank Stram never could have conceived.
Andy Reid with his wizard's gift for offensive schemes. Patrick Mahomes with his magician's ability to turn those schemes into tangible results as the Matriculator of all matriculators. And Travis Kelce and Sammy Watkins and Damien Williams and Chris Jones and all the others.
They spotted the gritty, brutish Tennessee Titans leads of 10-0 and 17-7 yesterday in the AFC title game, then came roaring back again on the strength of Mahomes' arm and one dazzling touchdown jaunt you will now find in the dictionary next to the word "nifty." Twenty-eight straight points later, the Chiefs were up 35-17 and on their way to Miami for Supe LIV. And all the inhabitants of marvelous old Arrowhead Stadium were LIV-ing up, too.
Waiting for their Chiefs will be the San Francisco 49ers, who looked simply fearsome in grinding up Aaron Rodgers and the poor Green Bay Packers in the NFC championship. They did the way they've done it all season, with a vicious defense and a running game whose parts seem interchangeable.
For a lot of the season, it's been an Indiana Hoosier, Tevin Coleman, who's carried the load. Yesterday, with Coleman out, it was a Purdue Boilermaker, Raheem Mostert, who gashed the Pack for 220 yards and four touchdowns.
So the 49ers are riding to Miami in an Old Oaken Bucket. So to speak.
The Blob's heart leans toward the Matriculator, simply because watching the Matriculator play football is more fun than kittens on ether. The Blob's head, though, suspects the Bucketheads from San Francisco will get the silvery confetti shower in this one, because history says defense usually trumps offense in the Supe, and the 49ers' defense is unmatched.
This doesn't mean the Blob has any idea how the Niners slow down the Matriculator, if in fact anyone can at this point.
The Titans did their level best, switching up their coverages at halftime to briefly confound Mahomes. But he figured out what they were doing before too long, and Reid dialed up a few switches of his own, and pretty soon Mahomes was finding Watkins behind the defense from 60 yards out and it was all over.
So it'll be the Niners' D vs. Mahomes. And yet it might all come down to just how well the Chiefs' D can rise to the occasion the way it did yesterday, when it slowed the previously unstoppable Derrick Henry to at least a fast walk.
More on that later. For now, though, the Blob guarantees only one thing.
Your Super Bowl champion will be the team in red.
Sunday, January 19, 2020
Comparative analysis
And now for a Blob feature the Blob just made up, You Could Be These Guys, in which the Blob turns the old saying "The grass is always greener" completely assbackwards and cattywampus.
In other words, sometimes the grass is browner. Or not grass at all, but a carpet of various exotic weeds that can't be killed by anything short of napalm.
For instance: You might have noticed that Indiana University's men's basketball team actually won a Big Ten road game last night, even though it was only Nebraska and Nebraska is 7-11 and one of the two worst teams in the conference.
You might also have noticed that the Hoosiers -- now 14-4 no matter what a certain portion of the Indiana fan base tries to tell you -- actually hit yon broad side of the barn for once, shooting 50 percent from the field and putting three players in double figures.
You might have also noticed that, despite that, the Indianas still couldn't hit Yon Broad Side from the 3-point arc, doinking 18 of their 26 attempts from there.
Enter the You Could Be These Guys portion of our program.
"These Guys," in this case, being the Vanderbilt Commodores, who are playing much below their rank this year. They're 8-9 overall and 0-4 in the SEC, tied for last in the conference with Ole Miss. So it's probably not surprising they lost by 21 yesterday to Tennessee, 66-45.
What's a tad more surprising is that, in doing so, they did something they hadn't done in 34 years.
They attempted 25 3-pointers. And they missed them all.
That hadn't happened to the Commodores in 1,080 games, which is pretty impressive if you think about it. One thousand eighty straight games hitting at least one triple. Not a bad little run.
Of course, perhaps even more impressive is the streak ended on a night when Vandy attempted 25 threes. Twenty-five. You'd think one would have gone in just by accident.
But, nah. Give 'em a big fat donut.
And Indiana?
Eight-of-26 doesn't look so bad, suddenly.
In other words, sometimes the grass is browner. Or not grass at all, but a carpet of various exotic weeds that can't be killed by anything short of napalm.
For instance: You might have noticed that Indiana University's men's basketball team actually won a Big Ten road game last night, even though it was only Nebraska and Nebraska is 7-11 and one of the two worst teams in the conference.
You might also have noticed that the Hoosiers -- now 14-4 no matter what a certain portion of the Indiana fan base tries to tell you -- actually hit yon broad side of the barn for once, shooting 50 percent from the field and putting three players in double figures.
You might have also noticed that, despite that, the Indianas still couldn't hit Yon Broad Side from the 3-point arc, doinking 18 of their 26 attempts from there.
Enter the You Could Be These Guys portion of our program.
"These Guys," in this case, being the Vanderbilt Commodores, who are playing much below their rank this year. They're 8-9 overall and 0-4 in the SEC, tied for last in the conference with Ole Miss. So it's probably not surprising they lost by 21 yesterday to Tennessee, 66-45.
What's a tad more surprising is that, in doing so, they did something they hadn't done in 34 years.
They attempted 25 3-pointers. And they missed them all.
That hadn't happened to the Commodores in 1,080 games, which is pretty impressive if you think about it. One thousand eighty straight games hitting at least one triple. Not a bad little run.
Of course, perhaps even more impressive is the streak ended on a night when Vandy attempted 25 threes. Twenty-five. You'd think one would have gone in just by accident.
But, nah. Give 'em a big fat donut.
And Indiana?
Eight-of-26 doesn't look so bad, suddenly.
Saturday, January 18, 2020
Stupid prognostication tricks
So maybe you, too, friend, have experienced the scientific phenomenon known as "strange feelings." It's a common phenomenon, especially among those of us who like to think we know more than we do.
It's also the road to ruin, depending on what those "strange feelings" entail.
Such as: I have a strange feeling I can go sprinting out the door onto this ice-glazed sidewalk and not fall down and break something crucial.
Or: I have a strange feeling this 80-1 shot, Glue Factory, is going to pay off big, so put me down for the deed to my house.
Or even: I have a strange feeling about the Tennessee Titans.
Which I do.
Just like I had a strange feeling about the Titans a couple of weeks ago, which was that the New England Patriots were just laying for them up there in Foxborough.
That one came out about how you'd expect, given my track record. But now I have a different strange feeling.
I have a feeling that somehow, some way, the Titans are going to break a lot of hearts in Arrowhead Stadium tomorrow afternoon.
I know, I know. I watched Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs go up and down the field like a man cutting his grass last week, too. And against a pretty stout defense.
And understand, I do not necessarily want the Titans to break a lot of hearts in Arrowhead tomorrow. This is because I have a certain fondness for Arrowhead, one of the NFL's great venues. And also for the three Chiefs fans who took a certain out-of-town sportswriter under their wing one night and whisked him off to dinner with them.
I still think about those three guys sometimes, and how excited they must be now at the prospect of the Chiefs reaching the Super Bowl for the first time in 50 years. And how I kind of want that to happen, just for them.
But I watched what the Titans did to the NFL's most exciting player last week in Baltimore, and how they dismantled a team that had been running roughshod over everyone for most of the season. The final was 28-12, and it wasn't that close. It was 28-6 until the Ravens scored a touchdown in the fourth quarter -- the only one of the day for an offense that was averaging a league-high 33.2 points per game coming in.
The Titans did that by doing what they do, which is demonstrably un-fancy. They simply picked up their blunt object, Derrick Henry, and beat the Ravens bloody with him. Henry ran for 195 yards, threw a touchdown pass and basically kept Lamar Jackson -- the aforementioned most exciting player -- off the field.
I could see that happening again tomorrow.
I could see the Titans throwing Henry at the Chiefs over and over again, until the Chiefs finally cry uncle. It's happened before, you see; in week 10, the Chiefs lost to the Titans, 35-32, as Henry gashed them for 188 yards and two touchdowns while averaging 8.2 yards per carry.
Quarterback Ryan Tannehill, meanwhile, threw for 181 yards and two scores on 13-of-19 passing. So the Chiefs' D couldn't stop him, either.
And, sure, it's not week 10 anymore. And, sure, it's in Arrowhead and not Nashville this time. And, sure, the Titans didn't slow down Mahomes, either, last time; he threw for 446 yards and three touchdowns in the week 10 loss. So there's that.
But I have a strange feeling it's going to be a 49ers-Titans Super Bowl. Put your money down now.
On Packers-Chiefs, naturally.
It's also the road to ruin, depending on what those "strange feelings" entail.
Such as: I have a strange feeling I can go sprinting out the door onto this ice-glazed sidewalk and not fall down and break something crucial.
Or: I have a strange feeling this 80-1 shot, Glue Factory, is going to pay off big, so put me down for the deed to my house.
Or even: I have a strange feeling about the Tennessee Titans.
Which I do.
Just like I had a strange feeling about the Titans a couple of weeks ago, which was that the New England Patriots were just laying for them up there in Foxborough.
That one came out about how you'd expect, given my track record. But now I have a different strange feeling.
I have a feeling that somehow, some way, the Titans are going to break a lot of hearts in Arrowhead Stadium tomorrow afternoon.
I know, I know. I watched Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs go up and down the field like a man cutting his grass last week, too. And against a pretty stout defense.
And understand, I do not necessarily want the Titans to break a lot of hearts in Arrowhead tomorrow. This is because I have a certain fondness for Arrowhead, one of the NFL's great venues. And also for the three Chiefs fans who took a certain out-of-town sportswriter under their wing one night and whisked him off to dinner with them.
I still think about those three guys sometimes, and how excited they must be now at the prospect of the Chiefs reaching the Super Bowl for the first time in 50 years. And how I kind of want that to happen, just for them.
But I watched what the Titans did to the NFL's most exciting player last week in Baltimore, and how they dismantled a team that had been running roughshod over everyone for most of the season. The final was 28-12, and it wasn't that close. It was 28-6 until the Ravens scored a touchdown in the fourth quarter -- the only one of the day for an offense that was averaging a league-high 33.2 points per game coming in.
The Titans did that by doing what they do, which is demonstrably un-fancy. They simply picked up their blunt object, Derrick Henry, and beat the Ravens bloody with him. Henry ran for 195 yards, threw a touchdown pass and basically kept Lamar Jackson -- the aforementioned most exciting player -- off the field.
I could see that happening again tomorrow.
I could see the Titans throwing Henry at the Chiefs over and over again, until the Chiefs finally cry uncle. It's happened before, you see; in week 10, the Chiefs lost to the Titans, 35-32, as Henry gashed them for 188 yards and two touchdowns while averaging 8.2 yards per carry.
Quarterback Ryan Tannehill, meanwhile, threw for 181 yards and two scores on 13-of-19 passing. So the Chiefs' D couldn't stop him, either.
And, sure, it's not week 10 anymore. And, sure, it's in Arrowhead and not Nashville this time. And, sure, the Titans didn't slow down Mahomes, either, last time; he threw for 446 yards and three touchdowns in the week 10 loss. So there's that.
But I have a strange feeling it's going to be a 49ers-Titans Super Bowl. Put your money down now.
On Packers-Chiefs, naturally.
Friday, January 17, 2020
Concentric corruption
Wider and wider now it spreads outward, like ripples radiating from the splash of a stone in a quiet pond. A.J. Hinch and Jeff Luhnow begat Alex Cora begat Carlos Beltran, who got the gate as Mets manager yesterday without ever managing a game.
This is the way scandals work, pulling in more and more of those involved in concentric circles, implicating more and more of the bad actors who gave the scandal life. And raising more and more questions as it does.
The latest: Did or did not Houston Astros' stars Jose Altuve and Alex Bregman wear electronic devices under the right shoulder of their uniforms that buzzed when a certain pitch was coming?
Major League Baseball says there's no evidence of that, but all that means is they didn't find any. It won't stop the rumor mill now grinding away in one clubhouse after another that Altuve and Bregman did, in fact, wear such devices, using as fuel the fact that Altuve is heard on audio pointedly telling his teammates not to tear off his jersey after he hit the walkoff home run that knocked out the Yankees in the ALCS in 2019.
So, there's that. Or not.
In any case, as the scandal expands concentrically, the question becomes whether or not MLB's punishment for it will expand accordingly. Even discounting the Altuve/Bregman rumors, after all, it's incontrovertibly true that it was players who were banging on that trash can to tell their teammate at the plate what pitch was coming.
One of those players, in 2017, was Beltran. If he loses his job because he might have been involved in the sign-stealing scheme, shouldn't other involved players be disciplined for it as well?
To be sure, that may yet be coming. Anyone who, at this point, thinks those ripples aren't going to continue to expand isn't paying attention. And if they do, it makes little sense for Rob Manfred to swing his hammer as forcefully as he did and then just stop at the Astros' manager and GM.
If you're going to suspend those two for a full season, what about the players who actually carried out the scheme? How do you not start handing out suspensions for them, too?
In other words: Stay tuned. Those ripples are still spreading.
This is the way scandals work, pulling in more and more of those involved in concentric circles, implicating more and more of the bad actors who gave the scandal life. And raising more and more questions as it does.
The latest: Did or did not Houston Astros' stars Jose Altuve and Alex Bregman wear electronic devices under the right shoulder of their uniforms that buzzed when a certain pitch was coming?
Major League Baseball says there's no evidence of that, but all that means is they didn't find any. It won't stop the rumor mill now grinding away in one clubhouse after another that Altuve and Bregman did, in fact, wear such devices, using as fuel the fact that Altuve is heard on audio pointedly telling his teammates not to tear off his jersey after he hit the walkoff home run that knocked out the Yankees in the ALCS in 2019.
So, there's that. Or not.
In any case, as the scandal expands concentrically, the question becomes whether or not MLB's punishment for it will expand accordingly. Even discounting the Altuve/Bregman rumors, after all, it's incontrovertibly true that it was players who were banging on that trash can to tell their teammate at the plate what pitch was coming.
One of those players, in 2017, was Beltran. If he loses his job because he might have been involved in the sign-stealing scheme, shouldn't other involved players be disciplined for it as well?
To be sure, that may yet be coming. Anyone who, at this point, thinks those ripples aren't going to continue to expand isn't paying attention. And if they do, it makes little sense for Rob Manfred to swing his hammer as forcefully as he did and then just stop at the Astros' manager and GM.
If you're going to suspend those two for a full season, what about the players who actually carried out the scheme? How do you not start handing out suspensions for them, too?
In other words: Stay tuned. Those ripples are still spreading.
Thursday, January 16, 2020
Hitting the road at last
This is why you promote a Captain to a general, in case there was any remaining doubt.
You do it because he sees things the generals before him didn't see. You do it because even if it was right there in front of them -- if it was, in fact, staring them square in the mug for a whole pile of years -- they were completely oblivious no matter how many people were screaming at them to just open their damn eyes.
Enter the Captain. Enter Roger Penske, and the dropping of scales from those eyes.
Maybe you missed it, but mere days after officially assuming control of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the Captain made a change which has been a long time coming. For Brickyard 400 weekend this coming July, he announced the Speedway would be moving the Xfinity NASCAR race to the infield road course.
Granted, it's not what the Blob has been advocating for years, which is to move the 400 itself to the road course, at least in alternate years. That way maybe you'd have a fighting chance, at least every other year, not to bore people into a coma. Or to put more than echoes and small wilderness settlements in all those thousands of seats.
Still, it's a start. And it's a comforting indication that Penske does indeed see a whole lot of untapped potential others have missed.
At the very least, it will give what audience is left for NASCAR at the Speedway a different look that doesn't involve more country bands and some IMSA sports cars going around and around. And then the usual Tournament of Roses parade that the main event of the weekend inevitably turns into.
Bravo, Captain. Bravo.
You do it because he sees things the generals before him didn't see. You do it because even if it was right there in front of them -- if it was, in fact, staring them square in the mug for a whole pile of years -- they were completely oblivious no matter how many people were screaming at them to just open their damn eyes.
Enter the Captain. Enter Roger Penske, and the dropping of scales from those eyes.
Maybe you missed it, but mere days after officially assuming control of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the Captain made a change which has been a long time coming. For Brickyard 400 weekend this coming July, he announced the Speedway would be moving the Xfinity NASCAR race to the infield road course.
Granted, it's not what the Blob has been advocating for years, which is to move the 400 itself to the road course, at least in alternate years. That way maybe you'd have a fighting chance, at least every other year, not to bore people into a coma. Or to put more than echoes and small wilderness settlements in all those thousands of seats.
Still, it's a start. And it's a comforting indication that Penske does indeed see a whole lot of untapped potential others have missed.
At the very least, it will give what audience is left for NASCAR at the Speedway a different look that doesn't involve more country bands and some IMSA sports cars going around and around. And then the usual Tournament of Roses parade that the main event of the weekend inevitably turns into.
Bravo, Captain. Bravo.
Mortal love
I have seen the video now, of course. And the speculation that comes with it.
It's an evil thing, the speculation. You can't stop it, and you never request it, and yet like most speculation it is the enemy of fact. It is just guesswork, and guesswork lives next door to rumor, and rumor is a magic trick, a wisp of smoke that is somehow both weightless and maliciously weighty.
But I can't watch the video -- shot by the man himself -- of Antonio Brown repeatedly shouting at police officers to "get the (bleep) out of here," and not think this is just the latest episode in a man's sad public unraveling. And then to think if this is what the early stages of CTE looks like, if his unraveling is the price he's paying for loving football too much.
We've seen that price exacted too many times by now, and it is cruel and it is merciless and it is not something anyone can do very much about. The pashas who run football and makes billions off it have tied their rulebooks in knots trying, and yet Dave Duerson and Junior Seau and Andre Waters keep stepping off this world just to stop the pain.
Men in their 40s and 50s, or even younger, continue to forget where they live, forget their loved ones, forget their own names. They explode in rages that come out of nowhere and against which they are helpless. They climb in their cars and go careening down the wrong side of the freeway until a head-on collision ends their lives -- and stops the pain -- in a firestorm of shrieking metal and blossoming flame.
Football doesn't always do this. It doesn't always present this sort of terrible bill for loving it. But it does so often enough.
And so there is perhaps a direct thread that runs between Antonio Brown raving at police from his front step, and what Carolina Panthers' star Luke Kuechly did this week.
What Luke Kuechly did was, he walked away from a successful and lucrative NFL career.
Luke Kuechly is 28 years old.
Thus he became the latest NFL player to hang it up before his 30th birthday, on the notion that the game isn't worth the price it exacts, or possibly could exact. Kuechly suffered seven concussions, and maybe more, just between 2015 and 2017. A couple more, he figures, and his brain is squash. It may be already.
In any event, he's getting out. As Andrew Luck got out. As Chris Borland and Jason Worilds and Patrick Willis, beaten up physically or burned out emotionally, got out. As many more will get out going forward, because as easy as football is to love, it's not worth becoming the next Dave Duerson or Junior Seau or Justin Strzelczyk -- the former Pittsburgh Steeler who met his end on the wrong side of that aforementioned freeway.
It's not worth, perhaps, becoming the next Antonio Brown, who blew up his career as the NFL's top receiver in a series of increasingly unhinged episodes, the latest of which you can find on that video.
Again, I don't know if football has anything to do with that. Again, that is mere evil speculation. But you are helpless not to wonder.
As Luke Kuechly no doubt wondered this week, about those seven (or more) concussions. And acted accordingly.
It's an evil thing, the speculation. You can't stop it, and you never request it, and yet like most speculation it is the enemy of fact. It is just guesswork, and guesswork lives next door to rumor, and rumor is a magic trick, a wisp of smoke that is somehow both weightless and maliciously weighty.
But I can't watch the video -- shot by the man himself -- of Antonio Brown repeatedly shouting at police officers to "get the (bleep) out of here," and not think this is just the latest episode in a man's sad public unraveling. And then to think if this is what the early stages of CTE looks like, if his unraveling is the price he's paying for loving football too much.
We've seen that price exacted too many times by now, and it is cruel and it is merciless and it is not something anyone can do very much about. The pashas who run football and makes billions off it have tied their rulebooks in knots trying, and yet Dave Duerson and Junior Seau and Andre Waters keep stepping off this world just to stop the pain.
Men in their 40s and 50s, or even younger, continue to forget where they live, forget their loved ones, forget their own names. They explode in rages that come out of nowhere and against which they are helpless. They climb in their cars and go careening down the wrong side of the freeway until a head-on collision ends their lives -- and stops the pain -- in a firestorm of shrieking metal and blossoming flame.
Football doesn't always do this. It doesn't always present this sort of terrible bill for loving it. But it does so often enough.
And so there is perhaps a direct thread that runs between Antonio Brown raving at police from his front step, and what Carolina Panthers' star Luke Kuechly did this week.
What Luke Kuechly did was, he walked away from a successful and lucrative NFL career.
Luke Kuechly is 28 years old.
Thus he became the latest NFL player to hang it up before his 30th birthday, on the notion that the game isn't worth the price it exacts, or possibly could exact. Kuechly suffered seven concussions, and maybe more, just between 2015 and 2017. A couple more, he figures, and his brain is squash. It may be already.
In any event, he's getting out. As Andrew Luck got out. As Chris Borland and Jason Worilds and Patrick Willis, beaten up physically or burned out emotionally, got out. As many more will get out going forward, because as easy as football is to love, it's not worth becoming the next Dave Duerson or Junior Seau or Justin Strzelczyk -- the former Pittsburgh Steeler who met his end on the wrong side of that aforementioned freeway.
It's not worth, perhaps, becoming the next Antonio Brown, who blew up his career as the NFL's top receiver in a series of increasingly unhinged episodes, the latest of which you can find on that video.
Again, I don't know if football has anything to do with that. Again, that is mere evil speculation. But you are helpless not to wonder.
As Luke Kuechly no doubt wondered this week, about those seven (or more) concussions. And acted accordingly.
Tuesday, January 14, 2020
Channeling Judge Landis
This is how a commish commishes, Roger Goodell. I trust you took notes.
I trust you were paying close attention when Rob Manfred, stout of heart and steely of spine, brought Kenesaw Mountain Landis' spiritual hammer down on the cheaters in his game, even if it cast a shadow over his game's signature event. What Manfred did was, he asterisked the ethically bereft Houston Asterisk-os, and by extension the 2017 World Asterisk Series. Booted 'em right out there into outer darkness, and didn't bat an eye doing it.
By doing so, he differentiated Major League Baseball from the NFL, which by comparison goes weak in the knees when its most successful franchise gets caught breaking the rules. Throw a few fines at the miscreants who can well afford them, dock them a couple of draft picks (hardly ever first-round picks) and suspend a few people for a handful of games: That's the NFL way.
After which the New England Patriots, after a brief show of contrition, go right back to Spygating their opponents. Because that is also the NFL way.
But MLB?
Well, how about kicking out the Asterisk-os' manager and general manager for an entire season? How about the Asterisk-os' owner then taking all of five minutes to fire both of them? And how about Alex Cora, the architect of the Asterisk-os' brazen sign-stealing scheme, sitting by the phone now up in Boston, where he apparently ran the exact same scheme as manager of the World Series-winning Red Sox in 2018?
Eventually his phone is going to buzz, or chirp, or play a few bars of Metallica, and he'll be gone, too, Likely today.
Because, listen, even if baseball folk have been finding ways around the rules since the game was being played in cow pastures and the like, winking at it (or all but) still corrodes the game. Stealing signs may be a time-honored baseball tradition, but flaunting it as an institutional tenet is another matter entirely. Like Lance Armstrong bullying the riders on his team into juicing as a condition of employment, cheating as policy takes sport to a dark place it simply cannot go.
Then it's no longer vaguely charming, like Gaylord Perry hiding Vasoline beneath the bill of his cap. Then it's the sort of straight-up corruption that destroys a sport, as it nearly destroyed cycling.
And so raise a glass of the good stuff to Manfred, who clearly demonstrated that baseball won't abide that aforementioned dark place. And who showed a measure of restraint at the same time by not simply stripping the Asterisk-os of their 2017 World Series title.
He could have decreed that Vacated won the Series that year. But he didn't, because he no doubt understood that what he did do made that a practical reality, anyway.
Are you listening, Rog?
I trust you were paying close attention when Rob Manfred, stout of heart and steely of spine, brought Kenesaw Mountain Landis' spiritual hammer down on the cheaters in his game, even if it cast a shadow over his game's signature event. What Manfred did was, he asterisked the ethically bereft Houston Asterisk-os, and by extension the 2017 World Asterisk Series. Booted 'em right out there into outer darkness, and didn't bat an eye doing it.
By doing so, he differentiated Major League Baseball from the NFL, which by comparison goes weak in the knees when its most successful franchise gets caught breaking the rules. Throw a few fines at the miscreants who can well afford them, dock them a couple of draft picks (hardly ever first-round picks) and suspend a few people for a handful of games: That's the NFL way.
After which the New England Patriots, after a brief show of contrition, go right back to Spygating their opponents. Because that is also the NFL way.
But MLB?
Well, how about kicking out the Asterisk-os' manager and general manager for an entire season? How about the Asterisk-os' owner then taking all of five minutes to fire both of them? And how about Alex Cora, the architect of the Asterisk-os' brazen sign-stealing scheme, sitting by the phone now up in Boston, where he apparently ran the exact same scheme as manager of the World Series-winning Red Sox in 2018?
Eventually his phone is going to buzz, or chirp, or play a few bars of Metallica, and he'll be gone, too, Likely today.
Because, listen, even if baseball folk have been finding ways around the rules since the game was being played in cow pastures and the like, winking at it (or all but) still corrodes the game. Stealing signs may be a time-honored baseball tradition, but flaunting it as an institutional tenet is another matter entirely. Like Lance Armstrong bullying the riders on his team into juicing as a condition of employment, cheating as policy takes sport to a dark place it simply cannot go.
Then it's no longer vaguely charming, like Gaylord Perry hiding Vasoline beneath the bill of his cap. Then it's the sort of straight-up corruption that destroys a sport, as it nearly destroyed cycling.
And so raise a glass of the good stuff to Manfred, who clearly demonstrated that baseball won't abide that aforementioned dark place. And who showed a measure of restraint at the same time by not simply stripping the Asterisk-os of their 2017 World Series title.
He could have decreed that Vacated won the Series that year. But he didn't, because he no doubt understood that what he did do made that a practical reality, anyway.
Are you listening, Rog?
Monday, January 13, 2020
Boiler what?
So, remember the other day -- just yesterday, in fact -- when the Blob blobbed about how Big Ten basketball was completely outside its mind so far this season?
Well, um ... ahem.
I don't know in what dimension you can explain a Purdue team that came in 9-7 beating the No. 8 team in the country by 30 points (actually 29, but who's counting), except that this is just the way the Big Ten rolls this season. Also that Mackey Arena, always a scary place for visitors, is giving the Boilermakers even more magical powers than usual this season. Also that you'd better be alert and well-armed if you're going up against a Matt Painter defense.
For whatever reason, Michigan State was not on Sunday, and the result was gorier than the first 25 minutes of "Saving Private Ryan." The Spartans were never in it, falling behind 19-4 and trailing 37-20 at halftime. They shot 35 percent, missed their first 10 shots from beyond the arc and 14 of 16 total, and kicked it away 18 times against the relentless Purdue pressure.
It all added up to the Spartans' worst loss ever as a top-ten team. It was also their fourth straight loss in Mackey, where the Purdues have now won 15 straight Big Ten games and seem to be a completely different team than they are on the road -- ridiculously so.
Consider, for instance, that the Purdue team that held the No. 8 team in the country 39 points below its season average (42 points as opposed to 81) is the same Purdue team that managed only 37 points itself in a 26-point loss at unranked Illinois just a week ago. And that that Purdue team has now beaten two top-ten teams (Virginia and Michigan State) by a combined 58 points in Mackey.
Ridiculous. Completely, utterly ridiculous.
And so very Big Ten-ish, this season.
Well, um ... ahem.
I don't know in what dimension you can explain a Purdue team that came in 9-7 beating the No. 8 team in the country by 30 points (actually 29, but who's counting), except that this is just the way the Big Ten rolls this season. Also that Mackey Arena, always a scary place for visitors, is giving the Boilermakers even more magical powers than usual this season. Also that you'd better be alert and well-armed if you're going up against a Matt Painter defense.
For whatever reason, Michigan State was not on Sunday, and the result was gorier than the first 25 minutes of "Saving Private Ryan." The Spartans were never in it, falling behind 19-4 and trailing 37-20 at halftime. They shot 35 percent, missed their first 10 shots from beyond the arc and 14 of 16 total, and kicked it away 18 times against the relentless Purdue pressure.
It all added up to the Spartans' worst loss ever as a top-ten team. It was also their fourth straight loss in Mackey, where the Purdues have now won 15 straight Big Ten games and seem to be a completely different team than they are on the road -- ridiculously so.
Consider, for instance, that the Purdue team that held the No. 8 team in the country 39 points below its season average (42 points as opposed to 81) is the same Purdue team that managed only 37 points itself in a 26-point loss at unranked Illinois just a week ago. And that that Purdue team has now beaten two top-ten teams (Virginia and Michigan State) by a combined 58 points in Mackey.
Ridiculous. Completely, utterly ridiculous.
And so very Big Ten-ish, this season.
Three titans, plus Titans
The gooey sentimentalist, of course, must root for the Piano Recital Bowl now.
The Piano Recital Bowl is what the Blob will always call Super Bowl I, Green Bay vs. Kansas City, because the Blob was going head-to-head with Brahms while Bart Starr was throwing passes to a hungover Max McGee. See, my piano teacher -- a wonderfully quirky man with apparently little conception of the world outside of crisp arpeggios -- had scheduled our annual piano recital for the afternoon of Supe I. So ...
So, there I was, sweating it out with old Johannes. And there were a whole pile of dutiful fathers looking on, yanking at their too-tight collars and trying to not to look openly pained as we all plinked away and oh my God I wonder how bad the Packers are beating them.
Turned out to be 35-10. McGee caught a couple of touchdown passes. Donny Anderson took the hammer away from Fred "The Hammer" Williamson and knocked him cold with it. And I didn't desecrate Brahms badly enough to make him bellow German oaths from the grave.
Fifty-three years later we're down to San Francisco and Green Bay and Kansas City and Tennessee, which means a Packers-Chiefs reunion of sorts could definitely happen. Which would be way cool in a kind of retro/throwback way.
Plus, it would mean the State Farm quarterbacks -- Aaron Rodgers and Patrick Mahomes -- would be playing each other for the big silver Lombardi thingy. And what a glorious shootout that would be.
Except ...
Except the gooey sentimentalist also loves him some underdog. And so it's kind of hard not to have warm feelings for the plucky Tennessee Titans, too.
The Plucky Titans (a registered trademark) are the ones who are not like the others, because the others are all 1 or 2 seeds. The Plucky Titans, on the other hand, are a 6 seed that's somehow jacked around and gotten itself into the AFC title game behind a gritty defense, a journeyman quarterback (Ryan Tannehill) and a blunt-force object (Derrick Henry).
They beat the Patriots in Foxborough and then handled the seemingly invincible Ravens in Baltimore with alarming ease, and there was nothing fancy about how they did it. Basically they just kept throwing Derrick Henry at the Pats and Ravens until the Pats and Ravens said "OK! We give up! Now stop throwing Derrick Henry at us!"
So now it's on to Kansas City, which buried poor Houston 51-31 after giving the Texans a 24-0 head start just to make it fair. Then Mahomes started doing Mahomes things and Travis Kelce started doing Travis Kelce things, and the Chiefs outscored the Texans 51-7 the rest of the way.
It was, frankly, both awe-inspiring and scary to watch. Hard to imagine how the Titans are going to keep the Chiefs from setting the scoreboard on fire again next weekend.
But then, it was hard to imagine how they were going to stop Lamar Jackson and the Ravens from doing the same thing. And yet they did it.
So ... we could wind up with a Titans-49ers Super Bowl, too. Or a Packers-Titans Super Bowl. Or a 49ers-Chiefs Super Bowl.
Still rooting for the Piano Recital Bowl, though.
Hear that, Johannes?
The Piano Recital Bowl is what the Blob will always call Super Bowl I, Green Bay vs. Kansas City, because the Blob was going head-to-head with Brahms while Bart Starr was throwing passes to a hungover Max McGee. See, my piano teacher -- a wonderfully quirky man with apparently little conception of the world outside of crisp arpeggios -- had scheduled our annual piano recital for the afternoon of Supe I. So ...
So, there I was, sweating it out with old Johannes. And there were a whole pile of dutiful fathers looking on, yanking at their too-tight collars and trying to not to look openly pained as we all plinked away and oh my God I wonder how bad the Packers are beating them.
Turned out to be 35-10. McGee caught a couple of touchdown passes. Donny Anderson took the hammer away from Fred "The Hammer" Williamson and knocked him cold with it. And I didn't desecrate Brahms badly enough to make him bellow German oaths from the grave.
Fifty-three years later we're down to San Francisco and Green Bay and Kansas City and Tennessee, which means a Packers-Chiefs reunion of sorts could definitely happen. Which would be way cool in a kind of retro/throwback way.
Plus, it would mean the State Farm quarterbacks -- Aaron Rodgers and Patrick Mahomes -- would be playing each other for the big silver Lombardi thingy. And what a glorious shootout that would be.
Except ...
Except the gooey sentimentalist also loves him some underdog. And so it's kind of hard not to have warm feelings for the plucky Tennessee Titans, too.
The Plucky Titans (a registered trademark) are the ones who are not like the others, because the others are all 1 or 2 seeds. The Plucky Titans, on the other hand, are a 6 seed that's somehow jacked around and gotten itself into the AFC title game behind a gritty defense, a journeyman quarterback (Ryan Tannehill) and a blunt-force object (Derrick Henry).
They beat the Patriots in Foxborough and then handled the seemingly invincible Ravens in Baltimore with alarming ease, and there was nothing fancy about how they did it. Basically they just kept throwing Derrick Henry at the Pats and Ravens until the Pats and Ravens said "OK! We give up! Now stop throwing Derrick Henry at us!"
So now it's on to Kansas City, which buried poor Houston 51-31 after giving the Texans a 24-0 head start just to make it fair. Then Mahomes started doing Mahomes things and Travis Kelce started doing Travis Kelce things, and the Chiefs outscored the Texans 51-7 the rest of the way.
It was, frankly, both awe-inspiring and scary to watch. Hard to imagine how the Titans are going to keep the Chiefs from setting the scoreboard on fire again next weekend.
But then, it was hard to imagine how they were going to stop Lamar Jackson and the Ravens from doing the same thing. And yet they did it.
So ... we could wind up with a Titans-49ers Super Bowl, too. Or a Packers-Titans Super Bowl. Or a 49ers-Chiefs Super Bowl.
Still rooting for the Piano Recital Bowl, though.
Hear that, Johannes?
Sunday, January 12, 2020
The "ah-ha" moment
You are allowed to say it this morning, given the way the sky has supposedly been falling in big chunks on the unprotected heads of Archie Miller and his lads. So let's just get it out of the way, shall we?
Indiana 66, No. 11 Ohio State 54.
All together now: Wait ... what?
You mean Indiana, the gang that still can't shoot straight, manhandled a team that's made its bones this season manhandling almost everyone else?
You mean Indiana, which is 13-3 but has looked so bad in the "3" that it can't even get ranked, finally played like it was 13-3?
You mean Indiana -- which is 13-3, but which its perpetually disgruntled fan base is so unhappy with the birth of firearchiemiller.com seems imminent -- beat the life out of a team that was ranked No. 1 not all that long ago?
Wait ... what??
Only the next game will tell us if this was Indiana's "ah-ha" moment down there in Assembly Hall yesterday, but if there's such a thing as MapQuest directions for making 13-3 actually look like 13-3, yesterday was it. And those directions were brutally simple.
In short: Just play defense.
Defend the rim like the RAF defended Britain during the Blitz. When an opposing player shoots, act as though he just said "Your mother wears army boots." Stop the dribble. Attack the attacker. Ugly the thing up.
Do that, and there will be more days like Saturday. Don't do it, and ... there won't.
This is because Indiana saw the truth yesterday, and the truth is that this is not a team that's ever going to win on style points. That's because it still can't hit a bovine in the hindparts with a bass fiddle on the offensive end. So its only recourse is to turn every game into a knife fight in a closet.
Baryshnikov these Hoosiers ain't. Balboa they is.
Consider, for instance, that Indiana somehow won this deal despite failing to make a field goal for the last 10 minutes of the first half, and for five-and-a-half minutes in the second half. The Hoosiers missed 14 shots in a row to end the first half. They missed 29 of their 49 shots total. And they still won because they made Ohio State play even uglier than they did.
The Buckeyes were challenged, bodied and harassed into 32.7 percent shooting. They turned it over 14 times against just eight assists. They attempted 26 shots from beyond the arc and made just nine.
And, yes, to be sure, maybe a little of this was just the Big Ten's loopy zeitgeist manifesting itself again. League play so far has been, to put it mildly, insane. The Buckeyes, a top-five team for most of this season, are now 1-4 in league play. Ranked teams lose to unranked teams, who then become ranked and lose as well.
It's a madness that's afflicted much of the college basketball landscape this season; on Saturday, for instance, Baylor went into Allen Fieldhouse and knocked off the latest No. 1 (Kansas), and North Carolina drooped to 8-8 on the season after losing at home to Clemson for the first time in 59 meetings.
Last time it happened? 1926.
In any event, someone else will be No. 1 this week, and therefore ripe for the plucking. Indiana might actually be ranked, finally. And this week, they're at Rutgers and at Nebraska.
Maybe they'll win. Maybe they'll forget yesterday's "ah-ha" moment and lose again.
Stay tuned. Seems it's the only way to keep up these days.
Indiana 66, No. 11 Ohio State 54.
All together now: Wait ... what?
You mean Indiana, the gang that still can't shoot straight, manhandled a team that's made its bones this season manhandling almost everyone else?
You mean Indiana, which is 13-3 but has looked so bad in the "3" that it can't even get ranked, finally played like it was 13-3?
You mean Indiana -- which is 13-3, but which its perpetually disgruntled fan base is so unhappy with the birth of firearchiemiller.com seems imminent -- beat the life out of a team that was ranked No. 1 not all that long ago?
Wait ... what??
Only the next game will tell us if this was Indiana's "ah-ha" moment down there in Assembly Hall yesterday, but if there's such a thing as MapQuest directions for making 13-3 actually look like 13-3, yesterday was it. And those directions were brutally simple.
In short: Just play defense.
Defend the rim like the RAF defended Britain during the Blitz. When an opposing player shoots, act as though he just said "Your mother wears army boots." Stop the dribble. Attack the attacker. Ugly the thing up.
Do that, and there will be more days like Saturday. Don't do it, and ... there won't.
This is because Indiana saw the truth yesterday, and the truth is that this is not a team that's ever going to win on style points. That's because it still can't hit a bovine in the hindparts with a bass fiddle on the offensive end. So its only recourse is to turn every game into a knife fight in a closet.
Baryshnikov these Hoosiers ain't. Balboa they is.
Consider, for instance, that Indiana somehow won this deal despite failing to make a field goal for the last 10 minutes of the first half, and for five-and-a-half minutes in the second half. The Hoosiers missed 14 shots in a row to end the first half. They missed 29 of their 49 shots total. And they still won because they made Ohio State play even uglier than they did.
The Buckeyes were challenged, bodied and harassed into 32.7 percent shooting. They turned it over 14 times against just eight assists. They attempted 26 shots from beyond the arc and made just nine.
And, yes, to be sure, maybe a little of this was just the Big Ten's loopy zeitgeist manifesting itself again. League play so far has been, to put it mildly, insane. The Buckeyes, a top-five team for most of this season, are now 1-4 in league play. Ranked teams lose to unranked teams, who then become ranked and lose as well.
It's a madness that's afflicted much of the college basketball landscape this season; on Saturday, for instance, Baylor went into Allen Fieldhouse and knocked off the latest No. 1 (Kansas), and North Carolina drooped to 8-8 on the season after losing at home to Clemson for the first time in 59 meetings.
Last time it happened? 1926.
In any event, someone else will be No. 1 this week, and therefore ripe for the plucking. Indiana might actually be ranked, finally. And this week, they're at Rutgers and at Nebraska.
Maybe they'll win. Maybe they'll forget yesterday's "ah-ha" moment and lose again.
Stay tuned. Seems it's the only way to keep up these days.
Saturday, January 11, 2020
Sticks and stones
So, first, the letter, I suppose. Call it a pre-emptive strike.
Dear Patrick Reed's Lawyer:
Please do not threaten to sue me when I call your client a big ol' douchenozzle, and also suggest what Dale Earnhardt once suggested his critics do: Tie a kerosene rag around his ankles to keep the ants from crawling up and eating his candy ass.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
The Blob
Maybe you haven't heard of Patrick Reed and his little misadventure down there in the Bahamas, so here's the backstory: Patrick Reed is a professional golfer -- a pretty damn good one who won the Masters a couple of years back -- and he's also, well, kind of a douchenozzle. Which is to say, he's not a particularly likeable guy. The word "jerk" might even come into play.
Anyway, Patrick Reed was down in the Bahamas not long ago, playing in the Hero World Challenge. Apparently he swiped at some sand behind his golf ball taking a practice swing, which apparently is against the rules for some reason. And so he was assessed a two-stroke penalty.
After which Reed claimed it wasn't intentional, and that the camera angle made it look like he was cheating when he actually wasn't.
Enter suspect cover story. Also, enter Golf Channel analyst Brandel Chamblee, who took a break from explaining how he got his way-cool first name to repeat the allegations that Reed cheated.
In short order, a letter arrived from Reed's attorney demanding that Chamblee cease and desist from expressing this opinion. This was lawyer-speak for essentially saying "Hey! No fair!"
Alas, the horse had already fled the barn. Reed was mercilessly heckled during the President's Cup in Australia, to the extent that his caddie went after one of the hecklers and got what amounted to a game misconduct -- i.e., he wasn't allowed to caddie for Reed thereafter. And because lawyers haven't yet figured out how to threaten hecklers with lawsuits for expressing their opinions, Reed had to just stand there and take it.
(I suspect this gross injustice will eventually be corrected here in the land of the free and the home of the brave and the easily butt-hurt. Fortunately freedom of speech hasn't yet been completely obliterated by court filings, however.)
Here's the thing: The reason Reed was heckled, and the reason folks such as Brandel Way-Cool Name Chamblee didn't give him the benefit of the doubt and didn't believe his explanation, goes back to the kind-of-a-douchenozzle business. A man's reputation really does proceed him, and Reed's reputation is, yes, sort of jerk-ish. Throwing his lawyer at Brandel Chamblee certainly won't alter that perception; it just adds "crybabyin' wuss" to his resume.
In any event, he's made his own bed. And that's entirely on him.
Know how I know this?
Because once upon a time -- 46 years ago, to be exact -- Gary Player did almost exactly the same thing Patrick Reed did at the 1974 British Open. No one ever accused him of cheating. And that's because he was Gary Player, universally respected by everyone in the game.
Something Patrick Reed might consider, were he at all the introspective type.
Dear Patrick Reed's Lawyer:
Please do not threaten to sue me when I call your client a big ol' douchenozzle, and also suggest what Dale Earnhardt once suggested his critics do: Tie a kerosene rag around his ankles to keep the ants from crawling up and eating his candy ass.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
The Blob
Maybe you haven't heard of Patrick Reed and his little misadventure down there in the Bahamas, so here's the backstory: Patrick Reed is a professional golfer -- a pretty damn good one who won the Masters a couple of years back -- and he's also, well, kind of a douchenozzle. Which is to say, he's not a particularly likeable guy. The word "jerk" might even come into play.
Anyway, Patrick Reed was down in the Bahamas not long ago, playing in the Hero World Challenge. Apparently he swiped at some sand behind his golf ball taking a practice swing, which apparently is against the rules for some reason. And so he was assessed a two-stroke penalty.
After which Reed claimed it wasn't intentional, and that the camera angle made it look like he was cheating when he actually wasn't.
Enter suspect cover story. Also, enter Golf Channel analyst Brandel Chamblee, who took a break from explaining how he got his way-cool first name to repeat the allegations that Reed cheated.
In short order, a letter arrived from Reed's attorney demanding that Chamblee cease and desist from expressing this opinion. This was lawyer-speak for essentially saying "Hey! No fair!"
Alas, the horse had already fled the barn. Reed was mercilessly heckled during the President's Cup in Australia, to the extent that his caddie went after one of the hecklers and got what amounted to a game misconduct -- i.e., he wasn't allowed to caddie for Reed thereafter. And because lawyers haven't yet figured out how to threaten hecklers with lawsuits for expressing their opinions, Reed had to just stand there and take it.
(I suspect this gross injustice will eventually be corrected here in the land of the free and the home of the brave and the easily butt-hurt. Fortunately freedom of speech hasn't yet been completely obliterated by court filings, however.)
Here's the thing: The reason Reed was heckled, and the reason folks such as Brandel Way-Cool Name Chamblee didn't give him the benefit of the doubt and didn't believe his explanation, goes back to the kind-of-a-douchenozzle business. A man's reputation really does proceed him, and Reed's reputation is, yes, sort of jerk-ish. Throwing his lawyer at Brandel Chamblee certainly won't alter that perception; it just adds "crybabyin' wuss" to his resume.
In any event, he's made his own bed. And that's entirely on him.
Know how I know this?
Because once upon a time -- 46 years ago, to be exact -- Gary Player did almost exactly the same thing Patrick Reed did at the 1974 British Open. No one ever accused him of cheating. And that's because he was Gary Player, universally respected by everyone in the game.
Something Patrick Reed might consider, were he at all the introspective type.
Friday, January 10, 2020
Fans 1. Media 0.
Or, you know, less than zero. If that is indeed possible.
By now you may or may not have heard about the saga of Kyle Rudolph's gloves, which began in disgrace and ended happily because an alleged member of the media was a sleazebag and a Minnesota Vikings fan wasn't. But if you haven't heard the tale, here's the Reader's Digest condensed version:
It seems after Rudolph, the Vikings' tight end, scored the winning touchdown in the Vikes' overtime upset of the Saints in an NFC wild-card game last weekend, some alleged member of the media approached Rudolph in the postgame locker room. This individual asked for Rudolph's gloves to donate to charity, and Rudolph of course agreed, even signing them.
Not long after that, the gloves turned up for sale on eBay.
Enter Jason King.
King, a Vikings fan from New Jersey, bought the gloves for $375. Then he heard about the slimeball way they were acquired. And so he decided to donate the gloves, plus a good chunk of change, to Rudolph's favorite charity, the Minnesota Masonic Children's Hospital.
Naturally, of course, the gloves haven't turned up yet. But if and when they do, King says, he'd like them displayed at the hospital. And if they don't, King says he plans to match what he spent on them as a donation to Kyle Rudolph's End Zone, a 2,500-square-foot place for children and teenagers at the hospital. He also tweeted other fans to follow his lead.
So a scam turned into something good. Which ought to happen more often than it does, frankly.
This hardly lets the scammer off the hook, of course. Because if he or she was in fact a member of the media, he or she grossly violated the most inviolable rule of covering sports: Thou shalt not ask the athletes you cover for autographs, and other stuff.
Especially if you're going to turn around and sell it on eBay so you can pocket a few extra bucks.
Now, I have seen some things, in almost 40 years as a sportswriter. I once saw some TV guy cut a line of sick kids to get his picture taken with Muhammad Ali. I saw a drunk fan sneak into a Notre Dame football postgame only to get called out by Tim Prister, one of Notre Dame's most authoritative beat writers. And, yes, I've seen other media members, on numerous occasions, cross the line between chronicler and fanboy/girl.
To the credit of my colleagues, those people immediately became objects of ridicule. That's because the lamest thing you can do in the sportswriting gig is ask some athlete for an autograph or a picture. And so every time it happened, we rolled our eyes and laughed.
(Usually behind their backs. More fun that way.)
The point being, you just don't do that stuff, and almost everyone understands that. For one thing, it's the quickest way there is to get your credential yanked. For another, it's just damned nprofessional. And despite what Our Only Available Impeached President says, most of us in the media care a whole lot about being professional.
Me?
In 40 years I was only tempted to cross that line once, and it wasn't even an athlete I was interviewing. It was Chuck Yeager, the man who broke the sound barrier and who was made famous by Sam Shepard's depiction of him in "The Right Stuff." And I was a hopeless space program fanboy. And so, fleetingly, I thought about asking him for his autograph.
And then almost immediately realized what a pathetic loser that would make me. An unprofessional pathetic loser.
So there is no Chuck Yeager autograph anywhere my house. And I regret that sometimes.
OK, no. No, I don't.
By now you may or may not have heard about the saga of Kyle Rudolph's gloves, which began in disgrace and ended happily because an alleged member of the media was a sleazebag and a Minnesota Vikings fan wasn't. But if you haven't heard the tale, here's the Reader's Digest condensed version:
It seems after Rudolph, the Vikings' tight end, scored the winning touchdown in the Vikes' overtime upset of the Saints in an NFC wild-card game last weekend, some alleged member of the media approached Rudolph in the postgame locker room. This individual asked for Rudolph's gloves to donate to charity, and Rudolph of course agreed, even signing them.
Not long after that, the gloves turned up for sale on eBay.
Enter Jason King.
King, a Vikings fan from New Jersey, bought the gloves for $375. Then he heard about the slimeball way they were acquired. And so he decided to donate the gloves, plus a good chunk of change, to Rudolph's favorite charity, the Minnesota Masonic Children's Hospital.
Naturally, of course, the gloves haven't turned up yet. But if and when they do, King says, he'd like them displayed at the hospital. And if they don't, King says he plans to match what he spent on them as a donation to Kyle Rudolph's End Zone, a 2,500-square-foot place for children and teenagers at the hospital. He also tweeted other fans to follow his lead.
So a scam turned into something good. Which ought to happen more often than it does, frankly.
This hardly lets the scammer off the hook, of course. Because if he or she was in fact a member of the media, he or she grossly violated the most inviolable rule of covering sports: Thou shalt not ask the athletes you cover for autographs, and other stuff.
Especially if you're going to turn around and sell it on eBay so you can pocket a few extra bucks.
Now, I have seen some things, in almost 40 years as a sportswriter. I once saw some TV guy cut a line of sick kids to get his picture taken with Muhammad Ali. I saw a drunk fan sneak into a Notre Dame football postgame only to get called out by Tim Prister, one of Notre Dame's most authoritative beat writers. And, yes, I've seen other media members, on numerous occasions, cross the line between chronicler and fanboy/girl.
To the credit of my colleagues, those people immediately became objects of ridicule. That's because the lamest thing you can do in the sportswriting gig is ask some athlete for an autograph or a picture. And so every time it happened, we rolled our eyes and laughed.
(Usually behind their backs. More fun that way.)
The point being, you just don't do that stuff, and almost everyone understands that. For one thing, it's the quickest way there is to get your credential yanked. For another, it's just damned nprofessional. And despite what Our Only Available Impeached President says, most of us in the media care a whole lot about being professional.
Me?
In 40 years I was only tempted to cross that line once, and it wasn't even an athlete I was interviewing. It was Chuck Yeager, the man who broke the sound barrier and who was made famous by Sam Shepard's depiction of him in "The Right Stuff." And I was a hopeless space program fanboy. And so, fleetingly, I thought about asking him for his autograph.
And then almost immediately realized what a pathetic loser that would make me. An unprofessional pathetic loser.
So there is no Chuck Yeager autograph anywhere my house. And I regret that sometimes.
OK, no. No, I don't.
Thursday, January 9, 2020
Owner-itis
So the Dallas Cowboys have brought in Mr. Green Bay Packer to save the day, and if Lombardi isn't giving Landry the business about that somewhere in the Great Beyond, the Blob will eat one of its many gimme caps. 'Cause, you know, irony.
But Mike McCarthy won a Super Bowl in Green Bay and he was available and so, hey, why wouldn't you take a flyer on the guy? Especially when it's not a flyer?
And so the Cowboys rolled out McCarthy for his introductory news conference yesterday, and he said all the things a new NFL head coach is supposed to say in his introductory news conference. And all of that was fine and dandy, because McCarthy knows how to win in the NFL, so there's no reason he shouldn't in Dallas.
Except ...
Except here is the thing, exemplified by the headline ESPN slapped on the story: "Jerry Jones Believes Mike McCarthy Can Get The Cowboys Back To The Super Bowl."
Not Mike McCarthy believes. Jerry Jones believes.
And so once again the owner was the story in Dallas, and McCarthy was merely a sidebar. And that's how the owner likes it.
No owner in the NFL is more of an attention whore than Jerry Jones, and the media plays right along with his megalomania. The man can spot that little red light going on from 50 nautical miles, and he'll break both his legs getting to it. The consequence is every story about the Cowboys always turns into What Jerry Thinks -- and that's a problem.
It's a problem because Jerry's need to be The Guy bleeds over into the football operations, too. And there are toasters that know more about football than Jerry Jones does.
So the immediate challenge for McCarthy will be keeping Jerry out of his business, and good luck with that. The smartest owners in the game you hardly ever see, because they hire smart people and then get the hell out of their way. That's not how Jerry works; he's that particularly dangerous species of rich guy who thinks he knows more than he does.
Which is why it's no coincidence the Cowboys have barely made a sound since the Clinton administration. And why Jason Garrett, a face in the crowd when Jerry promoted him to head coach, lasted as long as he did.
Jason Garrett, after all, was never going to steal any headlines from the de facto head coach. Who of course was Jerry himself.
Now it's McCarthy's turn in the barrel. Again, good luck with that.
But Mike McCarthy won a Super Bowl in Green Bay and he was available and so, hey, why wouldn't you take a flyer on the guy? Especially when it's not a flyer?
And so the Cowboys rolled out McCarthy for his introductory news conference yesterday, and he said all the things a new NFL head coach is supposed to say in his introductory news conference. And all of that was fine and dandy, because McCarthy knows how to win in the NFL, so there's no reason he shouldn't in Dallas.
Except ...
Except here is the thing, exemplified by the headline ESPN slapped on the story: "Jerry Jones Believes Mike McCarthy Can Get The Cowboys Back To The Super Bowl."
Not Mike McCarthy believes. Jerry Jones believes.
And so once again the owner was the story in Dallas, and McCarthy was merely a sidebar. And that's how the owner likes it.
No owner in the NFL is more of an attention whore than Jerry Jones, and the media plays right along with his megalomania. The man can spot that little red light going on from 50 nautical miles, and he'll break both his legs getting to it. The consequence is every story about the Cowboys always turns into What Jerry Thinks -- and that's a problem.
It's a problem because Jerry's need to be The Guy bleeds over into the football operations, too. And there are toasters that know more about football than Jerry Jones does.
So the immediate challenge for McCarthy will be keeping Jerry out of his business, and good luck with that. The smartest owners in the game you hardly ever see, because they hire smart people and then get the hell out of their way. That's not how Jerry works; he's that particularly dangerous species of rich guy who thinks he knows more than he does.
Which is why it's no coincidence the Cowboys have barely made a sound since the Clinton administration. And why Jason Garrett, a face in the crowd when Jerry promoted him to head coach, lasted as long as he did.
Jason Garrett, after all, was never going to steal any headlines from the de facto head coach. Who of course was Jerry himself.
Now it's McCarthy's turn in the barrel. Again, good luck with that.
Wednesday, January 8, 2020
Cheaters, prospering
Welp. Guess we know where the prime suspect in Deflategate is going to land, the Blob's disturbing speculation of the other day not withstanding. And he won't even have to change zip codes.
Tom Brady to the Red Sox!
You heard it here first, America.
Tongue in cheek, of course, but where better for a notorious cheater to go than to the Red Sox, who are now on the griddle for cheating themselves? And, even more Patriots-like, doing so in the midst of outrageous prosperity, and not out of desperation?
The Red Sox, see, stand accused of stealing signs via video replay during their relentless march tot he 2018 World Series title. According to a report in The Athletic, how it worked was, Boston players would go to the replay room to study the signs between opposing pitchers and catchers, then relay what they found out to the dugout.
And again, as with the Patriots, it was cheating just for cheating's sake. The Red Sox won a franchise-record 108 games and ran away with the AL East in 2018, then swept the Yankees and beat the Astros in five games to reach the World Series, then beat the Dodgers in five games in the Series.
Of course, they did this under first-year manager Alex Cora, who ran the same sign-stealing scheme as a coach with the Astros the year prior. So you had the Cheatin' Red Sox vs. the Cheatin' Astros in the ALCS in 2018.
Yet another proud moment for the National Passed (Its) Time, in other words.
It's worth noting here that stealing signs has a long and colorful history in baseball, one that likely goes all the way back to the Burnsides stealing signs from the McClellans during the 1862 Army of the Potomac championships or some such thing. Baseball, in fact, has long been a staunch proponent of NASCAR's foundational axiom: If you ain't cheatin', you ain't tryin'.
Nonetheless, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred needs to land on this sort of thing with both feet. If nothing else, it would provide an appealing contrast to the NFL -- which fined the Patriots couch-cushion money ($1 million) for Deflategate, and suspended Brady for the first four games of the 2015 season.
The Patriots still went 12-4 and reached the AFC title game, where they lost to the Broncos. Oh, and Brady made the Pro Bowl again.
Some deterrent.
And an object lesson for Manfred going forward, one hopes.
Tom Brady to the Red Sox!
You heard it here first, America.
Tongue in cheek, of course, but where better for a notorious cheater to go than to the Red Sox, who are now on the griddle for cheating themselves? And, even more Patriots-like, doing so in the midst of outrageous prosperity, and not out of desperation?
The Red Sox, see, stand accused of stealing signs via video replay during their relentless march tot he 2018 World Series title. According to a report in The Athletic, how it worked was, Boston players would go to the replay room to study the signs between opposing pitchers and catchers, then relay what they found out to the dugout.
And again, as with the Patriots, it was cheating just for cheating's sake. The Red Sox won a franchise-record 108 games and ran away with the AL East in 2018, then swept the Yankees and beat the Astros in five games to reach the World Series, then beat the Dodgers in five games in the Series.
Of course, they did this under first-year manager Alex Cora, who ran the same sign-stealing scheme as a coach with the Astros the year prior. So you had the Cheatin' Red Sox vs. the Cheatin' Astros in the ALCS in 2018.
Yet another proud moment for the National Passed (Its) Time, in other words.
It's worth noting here that stealing signs has a long and colorful history in baseball, one that likely goes all the way back to the Burnsides stealing signs from the McClellans during the 1862 Army of the Potomac championships or some such thing. Baseball, in fact, has long been a staunch proponent of NASCAR's foundational axiom: If you ain't cheatin', you ain't tryin'.
Nonetheless, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred needs to land on this sort of thing with both feet. If nothing else, it would provide an appealing contrast to the NFL -- which fined the Patriots couch-cushion money ($1 million) for Deflategate, and suspended Brady for the first four games of the 2015 season.
The Patriots still went 12-4 and reached the AFC title game, where they lost to the Broncos. Oh, and Brady made the Pro Bowl again.
Some deterrent.
And an object lesson for Manfred going forward, one hopes.
Tuesday, January 7, 2020
Stupid pet tricks
Or: Your Stupid Baseball Player Injury for today.
Some force in the cosmos seems to dictate that professional baseball players -- highly paid athletes capable of physical feats the rest of us only dream about -- hurt themselves in bizarre ways the rest of us, well, only dream about. If you fall in your driveway shoveling snow, for instance, you only get your clothes wet. But if former MLB pitcher Carl Pavano falls in his driveway shoveling snow ...
Well. A few years back, he did. And somehow hurt himself badly enough he had to have his spleen removed and nearly died.
He's hardly the only example. Professional baseball players have sliced tendons opening videos, messed up their backs stepping in gopher holes while running backward, scorched their faces in tanning beds, dislocated thumbs while putting on socks and wrenched knees falling off bikes/treadmills/down stairs.
To that proud lineage, we can now add this: Broke an ankle while running away from a wild boar.
That's what happened to the Mets' Yoenis Cepedes, who caught the boar in one of several traps he sets up around his ranch to keep them away from people. While letting the boar loose, it apparently charged him, causing Cespedes to step in a hole and fracture his ankle.
Boar 1, Outfielder 0.
And one more reason why Major League Baseball should never have an offseason. Unlike the boar, these guys just can't be trusted in the wild.
Some force in the cosmos seems to dictate that professional baseball players -- highly paid athletes capable of physical feats the rest of us only dream about -- hurt themselves in bizarre ways the rest of us, well, only dream about. If you fall in your driveway shoveling snow, for instance, you only get your clothes wet. But if former MLB pitcher Carl Pavano falls in his driveway shoveling snow ...
Well. A few years back, he did. And somehow hurt himself badly enough he had to have his spleen removed and nearly died.
He's hardly the only example. Professional baseball players have sliced tendons opening videos, messed up their backs stepping in gopher holes while running backward, scorched their faces in tanning beds, dislocated thumbs while putting on socks and wrenched knees falling off bikes/treadmills/down stairs.
To that proud lineage, we can now add this: Broke an ankle while running away from a wild boar.
That's what happened to the Mets' Yoenis Cepedes, who caught the boar in one of several traps he sets up around his ranch to keep them away from people. While letting the boar loose, it apparently charged him, causing Cespedes to step in a hole and fracture his ankle.
Boar 1, Outfielder 0.
And one more reason why Major League Baseball should never have an offseason. Unlike the boar, these guys just can't be trusted in the wild.
Monday, January 6, 2020
Kissing Cousins
We all like to see people we feel have been unfairly reviled get their day. It's part of our innate bent toward justice as human beings -- even if, being human beings, what we frequently see as justice is actually injustice, and we're way too stubborn to admit it.
Anyway ... this leads the Blob to its essential point this morning: Hooray for Kirk Cousins.
Who has to be the most maligned quarterback who ever had a lifetime QBR of 96.8 with more than 24,000 career passing yards and 84 more career touchdowns than interceptions.
You'd think this would have won him a little love from the armchair brigade over the years, but, nah. The skinny on Cousins is that he's a guy who'll give you some pretty numbers when it doesn't matter, but can't deliver when it does. And that refrain just got louder after the Vikings threw that immense wad of cash at him in 2018, when he signed a three-year deal worth $84 million.
Which meant that last season and all this season the talk around Cousins was that he wasn't coming close to earning his keep. And then ...
And then, Sunday happened.
To be more specific, one throw happened.
It was a 43-yard absolute dime that Adam Thielen took over his shoulder at the 2-yard line in overtime, and it led three plays later to Cousins' 2-yard pass to Kyle Rudolph that beat the New Orleans Saints 26-20. There hasn't been a better throw by anyone this season, given the circumstances and environment. And you won't see a better one from now through the Super Bowl.
It was, come to think of it, the kind of throw you expect the Saints' Drew Brees to make in that situation, but, nah. This time it was Cousins who did it, just like it was Cousins who completed 19-of-31 passes for 242 yards, a touchdown and no interceptions in the shrieking cauldron that is Drew Brees' peerless lair. And on the winning drive?
On the winning drive, he was 4-of-5 for 63 yards.
So, good for Cousins. You can say one throw and one playoff win still isn't worth $84 million, but the win was the Vikings' first road playoff W in 15 years. So you do the math.
The Vikings sure won't. They're too busy getting ready to play again next weekend.
Anyway ... this leads the Blob to its essential point this morning: Hooray for Kirk Cousins.
Who has to be the most maligned quarterback who ever had a lifetime QBR of 96.8 with more than 24,000 career passing yards and 84 more career touchdowns than interceptions.
You'd think this would have won him a little love from the armchair brigade over the years, but, nah. The skinny on Cousins is that he's a guy who'll give you some pretty numbers when it doesn't matter, but can't deliver when it does. And that refrain just got louder after the Vikings threw that immense wad of cash at him in 2018, when he signed a three-year deal worth $84 million.
Which meant that last season and all this season the talk around Cousins was that he wasn't coming close to earning his keep. And then ...
And then, Sunday happened.
To be more specific, one throw happened.
It was a 43-yard absolute dime that Adam Thielen took over his shoulder at the 2-yard line in overtime, and it led three plays later to Cousins' 2-yard pass to Kyle Rudolph that beat the New Orleans Saints 26-20. There hasn't been a better throw by anyone this season, given the circumstances and environment. And you won't see a better one from now through the Super Bowl.
It was, come to think of it, the kind of throw you expect the Saints' Drew Brees to make in that situation, but, nah. This time it was Cousins who did it, just like it was Cousins who completed 19-of-31 passes for 242 yards, a touchdown and no interceptions in the shrieking cauldron that is Drew Brees' peerless lair. And on the winning drive?
On the winning drive, he was 4-of-5 for 63 yards.
So, good for Cousins. You can say one throw and one playoff win still isn't worth $84 million, but the win was the Vikings' first road playoff W in 15 years. So you do the math.
The Vikings sure won't. They're too busy getting ready to play again next weekend.
And speaking of quarterbacks ...
So, the Blob (among others) had this thought the other day. It's a scary thought for a certain subset of individuals. It's the kind of thought that would bring that subset screaming up from sleep if it were a dream, because it's that legendary Nightmare You Can't Wake Up From Fast Enough.
The thought is this: What if Tom Brady ended his legendary career by getting his team to one last Super Bowl in front of thousands of wildly cheering fan?
And what if those wildly cheering fans were in Lucas Oil Stadium?
And what if that team was the Indianapolis Colts?
I know, I know, Horsie fans. Nightmare You Can't Wake Up From Fast Enough, for reals.
Now, to be sure, the Blob isn't saying it could happen. But ... it could happen.
See, Tom Brady is a free agent this offseason, and he's demonstrably in his sunset years. Which means he could simply re-sign with the Patriots and play out the string with his forever team. But he could also decide to go somewhere with a decent offensive line and a running game and some receivers who can actually get open, and which just so happens to have immense piles of cap dough to make it worth his while.
The latter sure sounds like Indianapolis, doesn't it?
The Colts, after all, are decidedly equivocal about their current quarterback situation. And suddenly, here's Tom Brady testing the waters. Yes, you're only going to get him for a year, two at the outside. And it would be weird beyond belief. But who better to bridge between Jacoby Brissett and whatever QB of the future you draft this year or next?
Please, Indianapolis. Please. Stop that damn screaming.
The thought is this: What if Tom Brady ended his legendary career by getting his team to one last Super Bowl in front of thousands of wildly cheering fan?
And what if those wildly cheering fans were in Lucas Oil Stadium?
And what if that team was the Indianapolis Colts?
I know, I know, Horsie fans. Nightmare You Can't Wake Up From Fast Enough, for reals.
Now, to be sure, the Blob isn't saying it could happen. But ... it could happen.
See, Tom Brady is a free agent this offseason, and he's demonstrably in his sunset years. Which means he could simply re-sign with the Patriots and play out the string with his forever team. But he could also decide to go somewhere with a decent offensive line and a running game and some receivers who can actually get open, and which just so happens to have immense piles of cap dough to make it worth his while.
The latter sure sounds like Indianapolis, doesn't it?
The Colts, after all, are decidedly equivocal about their current quarterback situation. And suddenly, here's Tom Brady testing the waters. Yes, you're only going to get him for a year, two at the outside. And it would be weird beyond belief. But who better to bridge between Jacoby Brissett and whatever QB of the future you draft this year or next?
Please, Indianapolis. Please. Stop that damn screaming.
Sunday, January 5, 2020
The cruelty of optics
Saturday was a very bad day in the mythical realm of Greener Pastures, where everything will immediately get better if we just get rid of This Guy, and then replace him with This Other Guy.
For one thing, This Guy was having himself a merry old time, because he was off beating the ninth-ranked team in the country on its home floor with his new team.
For another, This Other Guy was getting his head kicked in by the 15th-ranked team, albeit the 15th-ranked team was also home and plays in a league where the home team traditionally is very hard to beat.
Here were the scores: Georgia 65, Memphis 62, and Maryland 75, Indiana 59.
Georgia is coached by Tom Crean, who of course used to coach at Indiana before Indiana decided it could do better.
Indiana is now coached by Archie Miller, whom everyone assumed was the guy who could do better.
That might still happen. But so far (or at least Saturday), the optics are inescapable, and no doubt provokes this reaction from at least a portion of Hoosier Nation:
"Tell me why we got rid of Tom Crean again?"
It's a fair question this morning at least, because, again, the optics are inescapable. Crean's Bulldogs got the win over a Top 25 team they'd been building toward. Miller's Hoosiers continued to be what they were last year: A team that only intermittently can shoot worth a damn, and even more intermittently plays something that vaguely resembles defense.
A 16-point loss on the road to a ranked team in the Big Ten might not immediately look like an utter embarrassment, but look again. Maryland led by as many as 30 points in the second half, and only a 9-0 Hoosier run to finish the game kept a 16-point loss from being a 25-point loss. The Terrapins didn't score a point in the last two minutes and still won by 16, having closed the show with a ridiculous 35-8 second-half run that included mini-runs of 8-0, 11-0 and 12-0.
Indiana, meanwhile, shot 36 percent and missed 14 of 18 from behind the 3-point line. Devonte Green, who led the Hoosiers with 18, was by far Indiana's sharpest eye, and even he missed more than half his shots. The rest of IU's starters were a collective 11-of-27; the bench made just five field goals in 21 attempts.
In other words ... same-old, same-old.
And, yes, Indiana has also had games this season when it looked like the team Miller no doubt envisions. But until the Hoosiers start looking like that team consistently, Miller will not be what Indiana envisioned when it sent Tom Crean packing. He'll just be the guy who'll make you wonder why IU sent Crean packing in the first place.
That is perhaps a harsh assessment at this point. But, at this point, not an unreasonable one.
For one thing, This Guy was having himself a merry old time, because he was off beating the ninth-ranked team in the country on its home floor with his new team.
For another, This Other Guy was getting his head kicked in by the 15th-ranked team, albeit the 15th-ranked team was also home and plays in a league where the home team traditionally is very hard to beat.
Here were the scores: Georgia 65, Memphis 62, and Maryland 75, Indiana 59.
Georgia is coached by Tom Crean, who of course used to coach at Indiana before Indiana decided it could do better.
Indiana is now coached by Archie Miller, whom everyone assumed was the guy who could do better.
That might still happen. But so far (or at least Saturday), the optics are inescapable, and no doubt provokes this reaction from at least a portion of Hoosier Nation:
"Tell me why we got rid of Tom Crean again?"
It's a fair question this morning at least, because, again, the optics are inescapable. Crean's Bulldogs got the win over a Top 25 team they'd been building toward. Miller's Hoosiers continued to be what they were last year: A team that only intermittently can shoot worth a damn, and even more intermittently plays something that vaguely resembles defense.
A 16-point loss on the road to a ranked team in the Big Ten might not immediately look like an utter embarrassment, but look again. Maryland led by as many as 30 points in the second half, and only a 9-0 Hoosier run to finish the game kept a 16-point loss from being a 25-point loss. The Terrapins didn't score a point in the last two minutes and still won by 16, having closed the show with a ridiculous 35-8 second-half run that included mini-runs of 8-0, 11-0 and 12-0.
Indiana, meanwhile, shot 36 percent and missed 14 of 18 from behind the 3-point line. Devonte Green, who led the Hoosiers with 18, was by far Indiana's sharpest eye, and even he missed more than half his shots. The rest of IU's starters were a collective 11-of-27; the bench made just five field goals in 21 attempts.
In other words ... same-old, same-old.
And, yes, Indiana has also had games this season when it looked like the team Miller no doubt envisions. But until the Hoosiers start looking like that team consistently, Miller will not be what Indiana envisioned when it sent Tom Crean packing. He'll just be the guy who'll make you wonder why IU sent Crean packing in the first place.
That is perhaps a harsh assessment at this point. But, at this point, not an unreasonable one.
Titan(ic)s, meet iceberg, Part Deux
... in which the Titanic executes a smart nautical maneuver known as "hanging a left," and does not hit the iceberg, and sails merrily on to New York, where the passengers happily disembark, having had a lovely time that did not involve slowly turning into passengersicles in the North Atlantic.
And then they say this: "That Blob person is quite the bloody idiot, is he not?"
Well ... yes.
That Blob person is quite the bloody idiot.
Twenty-four hours ago he patiently explained all the reasons why the New England Patriots were just laying for the Tennessee Titans up there in Foxborough -- like how Tom Brady was mad and that's not a good thing if you're facing Tom Brady, and how Bill Belichick knew Ryan Tannehill like the back of his hand and that's not a good thing if you're Ryan Tannehill.
Uh, guess not.
Guess the Blob was wrong again, in the wake of Titans 20, Patriots 13.
Tom Brady might have been mad but the Titans never paid for it, because Brady threw no touchdown passes and a game-ending pick six.
Belichick might have known Ryan Tannehill like the back of his hand, but he missed the part where Tannehill handed off to Derrick Henry 34 times, and Henry gashed the Patriots for 182 yards and a touchdown.
Which is why Tannehill only completed 8-of-15 passes for 72 yards -- 1920 passing numbers, not 2020 -- and it didn't matter.
The Titans still took out the Patriots in Foxborough, just like a lot of smart guys thought.
And the Blob is a bloody idiot.
And then they say this: "That Blob person is quite the bloody idiot, is he not?"
Well ... yes.
That Blob person is quite the bloody idiot.
Twenty-four hours ago he patiently explained all the reasons why the New England Patriots were just laying for the Tennessee Titans up there in Foxborough -- like how Tom Brady was mad and that's not a good thing if you're facing Tom Brady, and how Bill Belichick knew Ryan Tannehill like the back of his hand and that's not a good thing if you're Ryan Tannehill.
Uh, guess not.
Guess the Blob was wrong again, in the wake of Titans 20, Patriots 13.
Tom Brady might have been mad but the Titans never paid for it, because Brady threw no touchdown passes and a game-ending pick six.
Belichick might have known Ryan Tannehill like the back of his hand, but he missed the part where Tannehill handed off to Derrick Henry 34 times, and Henry gashed the Patriots for 182 yards and a touchdown.
Which is why Tannehill only completed 8-of-15 passes for 72 yards -- 1920 passing numbers, not 2020 -- and it didn't matter.
The Titans still took out the Patriots in Foxborough, just like a lot of smart guys thought.
And the Blob is a bloody idiot.
Saturday, January 4, 2020
Titan(ic)s, meet iceberg
Uh-oh.
The Blob has its ear to the ground this fine morning ("No wonder your ears are filthy," you're saying), and it is hearing something ... faint harmonic tremors ... vaguely instrumental ... elemental, and familiar in a way more visceral than actual ...
Oh, no! It's the Music of Foreboding!
And it plays for thee, you poor Tennessee Titans.
Who go traipsing into Foxborough, Mass., today with a lot of allegedly smart people thinking they're going to take down the totterin' regime of the New England Patriots. These allegedly smart people have apparently forgotten that they don't call it FOX-borough for nothing. They have also apparently forgotten what happens when you make Tom Brady mad, which he almost always is anyway but not the way he likely is today.
This is because people are forgetting the Patriots went 12-4 on account of they jacked around and lost at home to the Dolphins last week, which apparently ruined everything. Also, the Titans have been getting stronger every week behind Derrick Henry and Ryan Tannehill. And so a whole lot of folks think the Pats (and Brady) are one-and-out in the playoffs today.
Finished. Over yon hill. Stuff like that.
That's why the Blob feels sorry for the Poor Titans. Because when you overlook the Patriots, you are coming right down their street. You are infusing Emperor Palpatine Belichick with unholy new life. You are handing the Patriots a baseball bat and saying "Hit me. Hard. Right here."
First of all, the Patriots did go 12-4, even if it was in a garbage division. Second of all, they're in Foxborough, where they lose playoff games about as often as Our Only Available Impeached President speaks a coherent sentence. And thirdly, Ryan Tannehill has been knocking around the Patriots' division as a Jet and a Dolphin forever.
You think Belichick doesn't know him better than he knows himself by now? You think he doesn't know exactly how to get in his head? You think Brady, who tends slights the way the English tend their gardens, doesn't burn to prove wrong everyone who's whispering that he just can't do it like he used to?
Oh, yes. I see pain coming for Tennessee. I see an iceberg on the horizon for the Titan(ic). I see the Blob actually being right about something for once, which is shocking, I know, and probably the best reason the Titans have for figuring this deal is a mortal lock today.
Still, the Blob hears that music. And so it's more sure about this one than it is about the other three wild-card games this weekend, which will probably go to the Texans, Saints and Seahawks, but maybe not.
Get your bets down accordingly, boys and girls. But mind the music.
The Blob has its ear to the ground this fine morning ("No wonder your ears are filthy," you're saying), and it is hearing something ... faint harmonic tremors ... vaguely instrumental ... elemental, and familiar in a way more visceral than actual ...
Oh, no! It's the Music of Foreboding!
And it plays for thee, you poor Tennessee Titans.
Who go traipsing into Foxborough, Mass., today with a lot of allegedly smart people thinking they're going to take down the totterin' regime of the New England Patriots. These allegedly smart people have apparently forgotten that they don't call it FOX-borough for nothing. They have also apparently forgotten what happens when you make Tom Brady mad, which he almost always is anyway but not the way he likely is today.
This is because people are forgetting the Patriots went 12-4 on account of they jacked around and lost at home to the Dolphins last week, which apparently ruined everything. Also, the Titans have been getting stronger every week behind Derrick Henry and Ryan Tannehill. And so a whole lot of folks think the Pats (and Brady) are one-and-out in the playoffs today.
Finished. Over yon hill. Stuff like that.
That's why the Blob feels sorry for the Poor Titans. Because when you overlook the Patriots, you are coming right down their street. You are infusing Emperor Palpatine Belichick with unholy new life. You are handing the Patriots a baseball bat and saying "Hit me. Hard. Right here."
First of all, the Patriots did go 12-4, even if it was in a garbage division. Second of all, they're in Foxborough, where they lose playoff games about as often as Our Only Available Impeached President speaks a coherent sentence. And thirdly, Ryan Tannehill has been knocking around the Patriots' division as a Jet and a Dolphin forever.
You think Belichick doesn't know him better than he knows himself by now? You think he doesn't know exactly how to get in his head? You think Brady, who tends slights the way the English tend their gardens, doesn't burn to prove wrong everyone who's whispering that he just can't do it like he used to?
Oh, yes. I see pain coming for Tennessee. I see an iceberg on the horizon for the Titan(ic). I see the Blob actually being right about something for once, which is shocking, I know, and probably the best reason the Titans have for figuring this deal is a mortal lock today.
Still, the Blob hears that music. And so it's more sure about this one than it is about the other three wild-card games this weekend, which will probably go to the Texans, Saints and Seahawks, but maybe not.
Get your bets down accordingly, boys and girls. But mind the music.
Friday, January 3, 2020
Fall down. Go boom.
They could see 1967, with five minutes left. Nine wins were on their racquet, and nine wins hadn't happened since the Rose Bowl season 53 years before, since Harry Gonso and John Isenbarger and all the familiar catechism of the most glorious of a modest crop of football glory days.
But Indiana cannot help being Indiana, speaking of that modest crop. Its legacy of trembling in the face of prosperity is simply too ingrained, too much a part of the DNA Tom Allen has worked so hard to alter. And so ...
And so, leading Tennessee 22-9 with five minutes left in the Gator Bowl last night, Indiana succumbed to its historic imperative. It Indiana-ed the thing up.
With 4:41 left it gave up a touchdown, then was immediately caught unawares by an onside kick even monks in the remotest regions of Tibet knew was coming. Thirty seconds later, the Volunteers were leading, 23-22.
After which Indiana, which had already missed a crucial extra point, missed a 52-yard field goal in a last desperate shot at avoiding an epic choke. And there was your ballgame, boys and girls.
Tennessee 23, Indiana 22.
Goodbye, nine-win season. Goodbye, Gonso and Isenbarger and Jade Butcher and 1967. The historic imperative is all, and it is one mean son of a bleep.
It waited until it could do the most damage to an Indiana team that put up the most wins seen around Bloomington and environs since 1993, and only time will tell us how much that damage will linger. It is certainly the sort of loss that can send a football team into the offseason haunted by vengeful might-have-beens, and it will be up to the relentlessly upbeat Allen to chase those haunts back into their dark corners.
In which case, he will earn the fatter paycheck athletic director Fred Glass so recently bestowed upon him.
He failed to do that last night. Making that failure a memory is now Job One.
But Indiana cannot help being Indiana, speaking of that modest crop. Its legacy of trembling in the face of prosperity is simply too ingrained, too much a part of the DNA Tom Allen has worked so hard to alter. And so ...
And so, leading Tennessee 22-9 with five minutes left in the Gator Bowl last night, Indiana succumbed to its historic imperative. It Indiana-ed the thing up.
With 4:41 left it gave up a touchdown, then was immediately caught unawares by an onside kick even monks in the remotest regions of Tibet knew was coming. Thirty seconds later, the Volunteers were leading, 23-22.
After which Indiana, which had already missed a crucial extra point, missed a 52-yard field goal in a last desperate shot at avoiding an epic choke. And there was your ballgame, boys and girls.
Tennessee 23, Indiana 22.
Goodbye, nine-win season. Goodbye, Gonso and Isenbarger and Jade Butcher and 1967. The historic imperative is all, and it is one mean son of a bleep.
It waited until it could do the most damage to an Indiana team that put up the most wins seen around Bloomington and environs since 1993, and only time will tell us how much that damage will linger. It is certainly the sort of loss that can send a football team into the offseason haunted by vengeful might-have-beens, and it will be up to the relentlessly upbeat Allen to chase those haunts back into their dark corners.
In which case, he will earn the fatter paycheck athletic director Fred Glass so recently bestowed upon him.
He failed to do that last night. Making that failure a memory is now Job One.
Globetrotter for the ages
The world's most powerful sports commissioner died on the first day of a new decade, so I suppose we should assign some symbolism to that. Something about how a fresh decade mirrors the fresh start that began 35 years ago. four years into a different decade -- the 1980s.
That's when David Stern walked into the mess that was the National Basketball Association, and commenced wielding an iron fist that only occasionally was cloaked in a velvet glove. You perhaps have to go back to the relentlessly grim Kenesaw Mountain Landis to find an overseer who consolidated and wielded power as ruthlessly as Stern, and was as feared by owners, players and management alike for doing so.
Along the way, of course, he grabbed a floundering concern by its ear and dragged it yowling into the future. If his sneer-and-snarl style of governance rendered him famously unlikeable at times, his vision for what an athletic league could be was the far more enduring legacy.
To begin with, he rebooted a league groping for an identity and overshadowed by the college game -- it wasn't all that long before Stern assumed command that NBA Finals games were aired on tape delay -- into a league driven by its stars. Recognizing what he had in the Larry Birds and Magic Johnsons and Michael Jordans of his domain, he turned the NBA into the Larry 'n' Magic 'n' MJ 'n' them show.
Then he took it global, selling inexpensive NBA highlight packages to places such as Argentina, where young boys such as Manu Ginobili saw them and began to dream of something besides soccer. Pretty soon Yao Ming arrived from China, and Dirk Nowitzki from Germany, and Toni Kukoc from Croatia. And then there was Vlade Divac from Serbia and Drazen Petrovic from Croatia and the game was everywhere, the game was in Rome and Paris and Split and Belgrade and Beijing and Rio de Janeiro.
But if all of that is David Stern's legacy, so, too, is this: Irony.
Because what the iron fist created was a world in which the iron fist couldn't rule anymore. The league went from top-down to down-top, with the players Stern used to sell his brand wielding the power that gave them to market their own brands and cut their own deals with their employers. And so there is a direct thread that leads from Larry 'n' Magic 'n' MJ 'n' them to LeBron arranging a bro-fest with Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade in Miami. And to Kevin Durant chasing rings with Golden State, and Paul George and Kawhi Leonard joining forces with the Clippers in L.A., and on and on.
Thanks to David Stern, all of that happened. And thanks to David Stern, the Autocrat Who Must Be Obeyed, we got that disgraceful episode in China a few months back, when the NBA Stern created was humiliated on its Chinese goodwill tour by a Beijing government miffed because an NBA general manager had expressed mild support for anti-China demonstrators in Hong Kong.
The league's craven submission to that -- led by LeBron -- is perhaps the greatest irony of all. It was, after all, trying desperately to expand its Chinese market, an instinct of which Stern not only would have approved but himself instilled.
And so the man who bowed to no one taught the league he ruled like a pasha how to bow. The world is full of wonders.
That's when David Stern walked into the mess that was the National Basketball Association, and commenced wielding an iron fist that only occasionally was cloaked in a velvet glove. You perhaps have to go back to the relentlessly grim Kenesaw Mountain Landis to find an overseer who consolidated and wielded power as ruthlessly as Stern, and was as feared by owners, players and management alike for doing so.
Along the way, of course, he grabbed a floundering concern by its ear and dragged it yowling into the future. If his sneer-and-snarl style of governance rendered him famously unlikeable at times, his vision for what an athletic league could be was the far more enduring legacy.
To begin with, he rebooted a league groping for an identity and overshadowed by the college game -- it wasn't all that long before Stern assumed command that NBA Finals games were aired on tape delay -- into a league driven by its stars. Recognizing what he had in the Larry Birds and Magic Johnsons and Michael Jordans of his domain, he turned the NBA into the Larry 'n' Magic 'n' MJ 'n' them show.
Then he took it global, selling inexpensive NBA highlight packages to places such as Argentina, where young boys such as Manu Ginobili saw them and began to dream of something besides soccer. Pretty soon Yao Ming arrived from China, and Dirk Nowitzki from Germany, and Toni Kukoc from Croatia. And then there was Vlade Divac from Serbia and Drazen Petrovic from Croatia and the game was everywhere, the game was in Rome and Paris and Split and Belgrade and Beijing and Rio de Janeiro.
But if all of that is David Stern's legacy, so, too, is this: Irony.
Because what the iron fist created was a world in which the iron fist couldn't rule anymore. The league went from top-down to down-top, with the players Stern used to sell his brand wielding the power that gave them to market their own brands and cut their own deals with their employers. And so there is a direct thread that leads from Larry 'n' Magic 'n' MJ 'n' them to LeBron arranging a bro-fest with Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade in Miami. And to Kevin Durant chasing rings with Golden State, and Paul George and Kawhi Leonard joining forces with the Clippers in L.A., and on and on.
Thanks to David Stern, all of that happened. And thanks to David Stern, the Autocrat Who Must Be Obeyed, we got that disgraceful episode in China a few months back, when the NBA Stern created was humiliated on its Chinese goodwill tour by a Beijing government miffed because an NBA general manager had expressed mild support for anti-China demonstrators in Hong Kong.
The league's craven submission to that -- led by LeBron -- is perhaps the greatest irony of all. It was, after all, trying desperately to expand its Chinese market, an instinct of which Stern not only would have approved but himself instilled.
And so the man who bowed to no one taught the league he ruled like a pasha how to bow. The world is full of wonders.
Wednesday, January 1, 2020
Not quite Classic
And so, welcome to 2020 -- and I must say, the Blob is disappointed. So far it looks just like 1920, only with the good parts cut out.
I got up this morning expecting to see George Jetson stuck in traffic in his flying car on his way to work at Spacely Sprockets, and instead it's just the same old Mister Coffee in the same old (for New Year's Day!) 1989 Fiesta Bowl mug. And no opportunity at all to yell at Jane to stop this crazy thing.
I suppose if I turn on the TV I'd see the same old President's Trophy float -- 10,000 impatiens in the shape of Joe Namath getting All The Benefits He Deserves! -- in the same old Tournament of Roses Parade, too. Maybe I'll even watch some football this afternoon, although it won't be the same because instead of the traditional Cotton-Sugar-Rose-Orange lineup, it'll be something called the Outback Bowl and something called the Vrbo Citrus Bowl and the Rose Bowl Presented By Northwestern Mutual. And of course the Allstate Sugar Bowl.
Also, three of the four games are on cable, which the Luddite Blob, no fan of extortion, ditched years ago. Also, the one bowl that isn't on cable is the Vrbo Citrus and not the Rose or Sugar, and what's up with that?
I know. Get off my lawn you damn kids, and all that.
But it's a little dismaying that 2020 doesn't feel all futuristic and science fiction-y, except in ways it shouldn't. Modernity and maximizing TV ratings have ruined the New Year's Day bowls for me, because half of them aren't played on New Year's Day anymore. Even my relatively recent New Year's Day tradition -- the NHL Winter Classic -- comes up short this year.
Understand, I love the Winter Classic. I love seeing NHL teams playing hockey outdoors in throwback unis, even if it's snowing to beat the band. I love seeing goaltenders wearing toques over their goalie masks. I love seeing NHL bench reporter Pierre McGuire standing outside freezing his butt off while he asks one of the coaches what was up with that power play.
This year, however, it is not the Boston Bruins playing the Montreal Canadiens in Fenway Park, or even the Chicago Blackhawks playing the Toronto Maple Leafs in Soldier Field. Oh, heavens no.
This year, it's the Dallas Stars -- a not-even-Original-Six franchise that's not even the original Minnesota North Stars anymore -- playing the Nashville Predators in the Cotton Bowl. In freaking Dallas, for God's sake.
This is not my idea of a Winter Classic, two southern cities playing in the south. First of all, Notre Dame should be playing Texas in the Cotton Bowl today, Joe Theismann and Tom Gatewood vs. James Street and Steve Worster 'n' them. Second of all, the Predators have only been around since 1998.
What are they going to wear for throwbacks? Something that harkens back to the golden era of 2010?
If the Blob ruled the world, only Original Six, Second Six or old WHA teams would be allowed to play in the Winter Classic, and in places like Boston or Buffalo or Detroit, where they actually get by-God winter. I mean, you know what the average high temperature is in Dallas on January 1?
It's 57.
Know what the forecast high today is?
It's 59.
Fifty-nine is not hockey weather. It's not even baseball weather in early April north of the Mason-Dixon line.
No chance today to see Pierre freezing his butt off, in other words. And what fun will that be?
I got up this morning expecting to see George Jetson stuck in traffic in his flying car on his way to work at Spacely Sprockets, and instead it's just the same old Mister Coffee in the same old (for New Year's Day!) 1989 Fiesta Bowl mug. And no opportunity at all to yell at Jane to stop this crazy thing.
I suppose if I turn on the TV I'd see the same old President's Trophy float -- 10,000 impatiens in the shape of Joe Namath getting All The Benefits He Deserves! -- in the same old Tournament of Roses Parade, too. Maybe I'll even watch some football this afternoon, although it won't be the same because instead of the traditional Cotton-Sugar-Rose-Orange lineup, it'll be something called the Outback Bowl and something called the Vrbo Citrus Bowl and the Rose Bowl Presented By Northwestern Mutual. And of course the Allstate Sugar Bowl.
Also, three of the four games are on cable, which the Luddite Blob, no fan of extortion, ditched years ago. Also, the one bowl that isn't on cable is the Vrbo Citrus and not the Rose or Sugar, and what's up with that?
I know. Get off my lawn you damn kids, and all that.
But it's a little dismaying that 2020 doesn't feel all futuristic and science fiction-y, except in ways it shouldn't. Modernity and maximizing TV ratings have ruined the New Year's Day bowls for me, because half of them aren't played on New Year's Day anymore. Even my relatively recent New Year's Day tradition -- the NHL Winter Classic -- comes up short this year.
Understand, I love the Winter Classic. I love seeing NHL teams playing hockey outdoors in throwback unis, even if it's snowing to beat the band. I love seeing goaltenders wearing toques over their goalie masks. I love seeing NHL bench reporter Pierre McGuire standing outside freezing his butt off while he asks one of the coaches what was up with that power play.
This year, however, it is not the Boston Bruins playing the Montreal Canadiens in Fenway Park, or even the Chicago Blackhawks playing the Toronto Maple Leafs in Soldier Field. Oh, heavens no.
This year, it's the Dallas Stars -- a not-even-Original-Six franchise that's not even the original Minnesota North Stars anymore -- playing the Nashville Predators in the Cotton Bowl. In freaking Dallas, for God's sake.
This is not my idea of a Winter Classic, two southern cities playing in the south. First of all, Notre Dame should be playing Texas in the Cotton Bowl today, Joe Theismann and Tom Gatewood vs. James Street and Steve Worster 'n' them. Second of all, the Predators have only been around since 1998.
What are they going to wear for throwbacks? Something that harkens back to the golden era of 2010?
If the Blob ruled the world, only Original Six, Second Six or old WHA teams would be allowed to play in the Winter Classic, and in places like Boston or Buffalo or Detroit, where they actually get by-God winter. I mean, you know what the average high temperature is in Dallas on January 1?
It's 57.
Know what the forecast high today is?
It's 59.
Fifty-nine is not hockey weather. It's not even baseball weather in early April north of the Mason-Dixon line.
No chance today to see Pierre freezing his butt off, in other words. And what fun will that be?
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