Today in E(ating)-sports

You've moved past boredom now. Come on, you know it's true.

Yes, boredom is a receding speck in your rearview mirror, and what lies ahead is a boundless void that seems to stretch into eternity. It's like North Dakota, only emptier. It's like Our Only Available Impeached President's daily coronavirus briefings, which become more bizarre with every day.

Yesterday he brought in the MyPillow Guy to talk about how OOAIP is a blessing from God, so all bets are off now. At this rate, by the end of the week Joe Exotic will be showing up with tigers, claiming they have magical healing powers.

But I digress.

What I mean to say is, you're so bored now your boredom is bored. You've burned through every hour of Ken Burns' 967-hour "Baseball." You've been astounded, speaking of Joe Exotic, by the notion that crazy hillbillies are, you know, crazy (Who knew?). You've watched Keith Smart make The Shot a dozen times, watched Lorenzo Charles convert Dereck Whittenburg's airball, watched Gordon Hayward's last heave cha-cha around the iron and kick away.

But ...

But you haven't seen this.

Yes, live from a Scottish BBC play-by-play broadcaster as bored as you are, it's the World Dog Supper Eating Championship. Of course, just the fact it's a Scottish broadcaster automatically makes it funnier. And those what-ifs!

What if Mabel hadn't taken that worm medicine the night before? What if she hadn't wasted so much energy on tail-wagging?

On such seemingly inconsequential factors championships are lost. Or won.

Meanwhile, in the Blob household, the World Dog Sleeping Championships continue apace:

Quit hollern' at us

This bastard plague. Now it's gone and done it.

It's got John Prine. And he's intubated and in critical condition and it doesn't look good.

Apologies in advance, Blobophiles. No, I take that back. This is my Blob and it's my rules and so sorry, not sorry for deviating from the usual Sportsball script today. It's not like there are games to write about anyway, now that the bastard plague has taken those away, too.

But back to John Prine.

See, he was the soundtrack to our honeymoon, back in the day. We spent a few days on Mackinac Island filling up on fudge and watching horses pee in the street, and then we drove down through Charlevoix and Petoskey and Traverse City and over to Sleeping Bear, while "Jesus, The Missing Years" and "Muhlenberg County" issued from the tape deck. Linda went to Mars, Sabu the Elephant Boy visited the Twin Cities alone and we talked dirty in Hawaiian while angels from Montgomery sat on our shoulders cruising down M-22, one of the prettiest stretches of road in America.

Now, if you don't know who John Prine is, the previous sentence will make no sense to you. Also I feel sorry for you, because he's a country/folk songwriting legend, and, damn, I can't believe COVID-19 has him, even though we're finding out COVID-19 is no respecter of persons.

Here's the thing about John Prine: He's written some of the best ballads, with some of the best lyrics, ever. If you haven't heard "Jesus, The Missing Years," then you don't know about how "the years went by like sweet little days/With babies crying pork chops and Beaujolais." You don't know about "Christmas in Prison," when "the food was real good/We had turkey and pistols, carved out of wood."
And you don't know about "Quit Hollerin' At Me," which includes maybe my favorite lyric of all time:

You don't have to tell the neighbors
A little silence ain't no sin
They already think my name is
Where in the hell you been?

I actually met the man, years ago. He was standing in the dark scouting a guitar player in Columbia Street West in Fort Wayne, and of course we all recognized him. Finally, because no one else would, I got up, walked past him on the pretext of going to the restroom and stuck out my hand.

"Love your music," is all I said.

"Thanks, man," he replied.

That's my John Prine story, such as it is. I wish I had more.

But I guess That's The Way That The World Goes 'Round.

Your Virtual NASCAR tale for today

You know what I miss, after a week of Netflix and Hulu and grinding on the treadmill, which is nothing more than a metaphor for life right now?

I miss Pole Position.

Remember that? Man, it was like the origin of the virtual motorsports species. It was the cave drawing of video racing games. And I was good at it. I was freaking Ayrton Senna, is who I was.

Fast forward now several millennia on the virtual gaming timeline, and here's what we have: A bunch of NASCAR drivers with virtually nothing to do virtually maintaining the racing schedule through the first-ever iRacing Pro Series, which is conducted on the racing simulators drivers use to keep their skills sharp. Denny Hamlin won the first simulator race last week at Homestead, Fla. Today everyone goes to Texas, where NASCAR was supposed to race for real today.

The best part of this?

In iRacing, you run into issues you don't often run into in actual racing.

For instance: Last week, in his first crack at it, Chase Elliott didn't do so well. Part of this might have had to do with the fact he was racing in house slippers and perhaps wasn't in the optimum mindset. But part of it he blamed on his crew chief, who was fellow NASCAR driver Ryan Blaney.

It seems Blaney wasn't treating his duties with the proper, um, seriousness.

"He was in and out of the room refilling beers," Elliott revealed to Sporting News.

Imagine Ray Evernham doing that to a young Jeff Gordon back in the day.

"This thing is all kinds of loose. I need to come in," Jeff barks into his mic.

"Stay with it. I gotta go pick up a sixer," Evernham replies.

Now that would be entertaining. And can't you imagine this exchange between Chad Knaus and Jimmie Johnson?

J.J.: "Hey, Chad, did you do that thing you said you were gonna do to the car today?"

CHAD (taking a swig of beer, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand): "I'm sorry, what was that?"

J.J.: "That thing. That thing you were gonna do."

CHAD (taking another swig): "Aw, hell, I forgot."

J.J. "What?! Chad!"

CHAD: "Oh, relax, Jimmie. In fact bring 'er on in. You sound like you could use a cold one."

Man. More fun than Pole Position, that would be.

Dislocation, envisioned

The prophet is never the guy you invite to parties. No one really wants to hear him harsh the mellow by prattling on, over drinks and hors d'oeuvres, about how the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are coming, and so you'd best lay in a stock of booze and toilet paper.

So you can understand why a lot of folks probably think ESPN college football analyst Kirk Herbstreit is a big poopyhead right now.

It's because Herbstreit hauled off and said he'd be shocked if there were any NFL or college football seasons this fall, and then laid out the reasons why. Pro and college football, he said in so many words, are the literal antithesis of social distancing. Not only do you have thousands of people crammed cheek-by-germ in the stands, you have thousands of them hanging out together in the parking lots, football being the unique American social event it is.

Absent the development of a COVID-19 vaccine, Herbie says, NFL teams and universities simply aren't going to want to assume liability if players or fans get sick after games.

He has a point. I just think he's getting a bit ahead of developments here.

On the other hand, I also think this: I don't really know.

I don't really know because none of us really know what next fall is going to look like, in the new reality of COVID-19. Will the curve, as they say, flatten by then? Will the pandemic burn itself out, as most pandemics have before? Will it go away for awhile and then come back with a vengeance, as so many also have throughout history?

The bubonic plague that first reached Europe in the early 1300s kept recurring for centuries, remember. Ditto the 1918 flu pandemic that killed half-a-million Americans and hundreds of millions worldwide. It first surfaced in Kansas in the spring of 1918, subsided for awhile, then came back in a far more deadly form in the late summer and fall.

Hard to say right now if COVID-19 is going to do that, or if it will be anything remotely comparable. Hard to say anything at this point, especially given that the United States is still in the early stages of this outbreak and already has exceeded every other country in the world in confirmed cases. And that with testing which remains far less available than in all those other countries.

Which  is why Herbstreit can't simply be dismissed as a Chicken Little running in circles dodging pieces of sky. Or why we can't say when the baseball season will begin, or if it does. Or if moving the Indianapolis 500 to the third week of August is just delaying its inevitable cancellation.

Right now, on March 28, we can't say anything. Especially in a nation where kids are holding coronavirus parties and a significant portion of the population still believes the whole thing is a hoax pumped up by the Evil Media to make our Glorious Leader look bad.

One of those people, an itinerant pastor and musician in Virginia, just died from that hoax.

Kirk Herbstreit doesn't sound so crazy, next to that. Not so crazy at all.

Dislocation, continued

So now they're moving the Indianapolis 500 out of May, and this is where it gets weird.

(OK. So this is already plenty weird, and awful, and has the feel not of real life but of being trapped inside a bad Michael Bay film -- is there any other kind? -- about the end times. But this is weird-weird.)

Anyway, they are moving the 500 to August 23, hopefully, and here is where all this hits me where I live. I covered the 500 for almost 40 years as a professional journalist, and before that I was a kid watching the Day-Glo gleam of the STP turbine pierce the gloom of a certain gray Saturday, and getting soaked to the skin by a cloudburst on another day when Bobby Unser won a rain-shortened 500.

Half my life is measured by months of May. But ... August?

August is for sweating out the equatorial heat of an Indiana summer, and watching your grass turn to shredded wheat, and NFL training camps. It's for the dog days of the baseball season, with my cruddy Pittsburgh Pirates already well out of it (again!). It's for back-to-school sales and last days at the lake and the realization that, come Labor Day, the fun is over and it's back to breathing chalk dust in some musty classroom.

May?

May is Indy. Forever and ever.

Here's how far back forever goes: The first 500 went off on May 30, 1911. And how far back is that?

Well ... William Howard Taft was president.

The Titanic was under construction in Belfast, and was still 11 months away from its appointment with the iceberg.

Wrigley Field, Fenway Park, Ebbets Field and Yankee Stadium didn't exist.

Ty Cobb was 24 years old. Babe Ruth was 16. Jackie Robinson, Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams had yet to be born. And Satchel Paige, forever ageless, was all of four years old.

In all the years from then to now, 109 of them, the Indianapolis 500 was run in May. Preparations for it occupied the entire month, which is how the Month of May came to be its trademark term. The place went from Ray Harroun tearing around the bricks at 75 mph to Simon Pagenaud tearing around asphalt at 230, and yet it was always in May, always that turbulent month when you could feel summer coming one day, and March making a late rally the next.

Radio, TV, commercial air flight and the worldwide web happened, as all those Mays fluttered past. Two world wars, Korea, Vietnam, the war(s) in Iraq and Afghanistan happened. December 7 and September 11 became more than dates on a calendar. We made it through a Great Depression, a Cold War, the '60s and disco.

And every year, there was the Month of May. Every year, there was Harroun and Billy Arnold and Louis Meyer and Wilbur Shaw, Bill Vukovich and A.J. and Parnelli and Mario. And Miller-Fords and Deusenbergs and Offies and Novis and Lotus-Fords -- and, yes, Pratt-and-Whitney turbines, too.

And now, all of that moves to August, hopefully, for the first time ever. And May has a hole in it nothing can fill, as so much else about our lives has a hole in it these days.

So weird. So very, very weird.

Out of sight ...

I passed a baseball diamond this morning, on my lengthy walk. I was hardly alone.

No, sir. The sun was third-week-of-March warm, the breezes were soft, and so we all emerged, blinking, from our isolation. There were parents with strollers and couples and kids on bikes with oversized helmets wobbling atop their heads like bowling balls on pencils. There were schoolgirls playing hooky from e-learning, presumably.

At one point, a pint-sized boy wearing a coonskin cap pedaled madly past me, as if I had been transported to 1955 and it was polio we still feared, and not some baroque strain of virus.

But back to the ball diamond.

It was deserted on this morning, and fringed with overgrowth, and garnished with standing water here and there. And it nagged at me. It whispered that there was something I was forgetting, something important, something that had eluded me here in the grim new world of COVID-19.

Then I got home and opened one of my sports websites, and there it was.

Today would have been Opening Day in Major League Baseball, in a different reality. And I had completely forgotten about it.

Forgot about the Cubs and the Yankees and the Dodgers and my cruddy Pittsburgh Pirates. Forgot about Fenway Park and Yankee Stadium and Chavez Ravine. Forgot about the Astros, those cheatin' no-goodniks, and the Washington Nationals, your World Series champions, and that one Opening Day in Wrigley Field when it was 45 degrees and a wind like flung razor blades was howling straight in off Lake Michigan, which was crashing ashore along Lakeshore Drive in monstrous breakers.

Strange how much goes out of your mind, when it's out of your sight for even a short while. Two weeks or less since everything in sports went dark, and already I don't even think about it anymore.

I don't think about this being Opening Day. Don't think about this being Sweet Sixteen weekend in the NCAA Tournament. Don't think about this being the weekend of the state finals in boys basketball in Indiana, a grand a totem as there is in this basketball state.

Two weeks since it all went dark, not even, and already I've forgotten that NASCAR would have been in Texas this week, in that other world. I've forgotten that LeBron would have been back home in Cleveland with the Lakers today. I've forgotten that our hometown hockey team, the Fort Wayne Komets, would be in the stretch run to the playoffs right now.

It's like the shift of a moon's orbit, all of this. We've been blown loose from our trajectory into a new one, where Opening Day and the Sweet Sixteen have become binging on Netflix and hanging with the fam and going for long walks when the sun turns third-week-of-March warm.

Kids on bikes, that's our NCAA bracket now, with Coonskin Cap as the overall No. 1 seed. Two young boys heaving a globe-sized basketball at a rim, that's LeBron in Cleveland. And Opening Day?

A deserted baseball diamond.

Fringed with overgrowth. Garnished with standing water. Evoking something barely, if at all, remembered.

Virtual unreality

Look, I get it. We're all stir crazy here in this season of our national weirdness.

And so I cruise the sports websites and see that Denny Hamlin won the NASCAR race last weekend, only not really. He won a virtual NASCAR race, holding off Dale Earnhardt Jr., who isn't even racing-racing anymore. Also, down in Florida, the weirdness capital of America that isn't spelled "Texas," the state lege officially declared Florida State the NCAA Tournament champs, on account of they finished 26-5 in the regular season and were ranked No. 4 in the last Associated Press poll.

Well, phooey on that. If the Florida lege can do that, I can do this:

I can declare the Coastal Carolina Chanticleers national champs, on account of they have a great nickname and Chauncey, the most awesome mascot in college sports.

I can declare Seabiscuit the winner of the virtual Kentucky Derby, even though Seabiscuit is dead.

I can, virtually speaking, take Scott Dixon or Alexander Rossi or Josef Newgarden, put him in one of  those glorious old front-engine Novis from the 1950s, and declare him the winner of the 2020 Indianapolis 500. In this way one of history's great wrongs will be righted, and a Novi will finally win the 500.

I can pit the 1966 Packers against the 2019 Chiefs and make them replay Super Bowl I. I can pit J.D. McCoy against the 1970s Steel Curtain just so I can watch the little goober get crushed. Then I can bring in Matt Saracen to save the day.

(Gratuitous, and also obligatory, reference to "Friday Night Lights," the greatest TV show in history.)

I can make Jimmy Connors win Wimbledon again with that horse(bleep) Wilson T-2000 racquet. I can make Tiger Woods lose the Masters to Burt the insurance adjuster. I can stick Lance Armstrong on a Sting-Ray bike with a banana seat and make him do the entire Tour de France on it. Let's see you claim the yellow shirt on that, Steroid Boy.

I can go back in time and make it so the 1971 Pittsburgh Pirates win the World Series every single year. I can also go back in time and make it so I never, ever blow a deadline.

Well. OK. So I can't do that.

Ringless summer

At least there will be an Olympics, some summer. So COVID-19 has not precisely hurled us backward 40 years, among its other dubious achievements.

Forty years ago, see, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, and an American president again injected politics into an enterprise that had always been a political instrument, despite all the willful obliviousness of crusty old Avery Brundage and others.  Jimmy Carter decreed that the United States would boycott the Moscow Olympics, and an entire army of young athletes who had dreamed of marching into some ringing stadium under a five-ringed banner was told to cool its jets.

Some people hated that. Some thought it was a shame, but sport is only sport, and there were greater moral imperatives for a nation that still had some. Opinions varied.

In the end, of course, the boycott only led to a Soviet boycott of the Los Angeles Olympics four years later. It did not chase the Soviets out of Afghanistan; the forerunners of al Qaeda, armed by America and then abandoned by her, did that. In so doing, they hastened the end of the Soviet regime the American boycott was protesting to begin with.

This is not that. This is merely a date on a calendar. The 2020 Tokyo Olympics will now become the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, and the Games will go on.

And yet ...

And yet, it's one more piece of the normal we will miss.

Already the Masters and the Kentucky Derby and the baseball season have been displaced, and the rest of hockey and basketball have vanished entirely. The Indianapolis 500, which annually puts 250,000 souls in a confined, if sprawling, place, will likely be next. We'll have to see. This is an undiscovered country we are in, and there are no signposts.

In the meantime, we'll wait for 2021, and the resumption of running and jumping and throwing and throwing hands, of another 500 broken swimming records, of the U.S. taking on the world in a game it invented (basketball) but which the world has made its own, And, of course, of tiny waifs tumbling and rowers rowing and archers archer-ing, and everything else we've come to love about the Olympics.

We'll wait for 2021, and better days than these.

Tampa Tommy

Now that has a ring to it, right?

("Bite me hahd," Boston Sully replies.)

Still: Tampa Tommy. (Tip of the hat to the Pat McAfee Show for that.) It flows. It alliterates like a boss. It rolls off the tongue like a marble on, well, marble.

Look, don't mind me. I'm just cogitating here. Just focusing the future, on the far side of our National Outbreak -- which, with every passing day, feels more and more like we're all trapped in the early chapters of a Stephen King novel.

("Hey! Leave me out of this," Mr. King replies.)

Anyway ... I'm looking at next February. I'm looking at Super Bowl LV. and the possibility that Tampa Tommy Brady has led the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to it.

I know. It seems far-fetched, sort of. The Buccaneers, after all, were a pedestrian 7-9 last season. They had the fourth-worst scoring defense in the league. A 42-going-on-43-year-old Tom Brady is going to come in and fix all that?

Well ... maybe.

Consider: While the Buccaneers were 7-9, six of their nine losses were by a touchdown or less. And, statistically, they had the best run defense in the NFL. And the other day, without warning, the Rams released three-time All-Pro running back Todd Gurley, who's still only 25 and likely still has some juice left in him ...

You see where I'm going here.

What if Gurley, intrigued by playing with Brady, signs with the Bucs? And what if Antonio Brown finally gets his life together and decides he, too, might like to play with Brady again after briefly doing so in New England?

Brown, after all, grew up in Miami. Returning to his home state might appeal. And if anyone can keep him in line, it would be Brady.

To be sure, that's a lot of ifs. But imagine Brady throwing to A.B. and utilizing Gurley as both a running back and pass-catcher out of the backfield.

In 2017 and 2018, remember, Gurley caught 123 passes for a combined 1,368 yards and 10 touchdowns. And he caught 31 more for 207 yards and two scores last season. Think even AARP Brady couldn't do something with that?

I'm not sayin', mind you. I'm just sayin'.

Alternative programming

You can still watch Aussie Rules Football, if you can sort out the rules. Best I can tell, it's what American football would be if every player were a 'roided-up Adam Vinatieri, dropped the ball a lot and flung it around like a farmhand flinging bales of hay.

Or you can just turn on CBS, which has nothin' right now, and watch Christian Laettner step on that guy again.

Yes, that's right, America. It's not bad enough that we're all cooped up with our family units, getting on one another's last nerve. Now CBS has to torture us by replaying the 1992 Duke-Kentucky regional final in which, yes, Laettner stepped on that guy and then hit the most-replayed shot in NCAA Tournament history because Pitino didn't guard the inbounds pass.

Please, God. Not again.

But, yeah, that's what they were giving us yesterday afternoon, deepening our already depthless sense of loss. Nobody wants to see that. We want to see -- OK, so I want to see -- something else.

As a Ball State grad and confirmed masochist, I want to see my alma mater almost take down UNLV the year UNLV won it all. I want to swear at the TV again when Mike Spicer, instead of taking the shot, tries to force it down low to Paris McCurdy.

Dammit, Spicer ...

I want to see the 2002 Duke-Indiana regional game on the off chance the camera will pan press row and I'll get to see my 18-years-younger self. Or, even weirder, I want to see some IU game in the '80s on the off chance I'll see myself half a lifetime ago, when I was 32 or 33.

You poor sap. You' have NO idea what's coming. Word to the wise: Don't trust the word of a certain high school athletic director on a certain autumn night far in the future. He's going to forget and lock you in the stadium, and your fat 50-something ass is going to have to climb the fence to get out.

I want to see the Chair Game again, on the off chance there'll be a crowd shot and my wife, Julie, will be in it. She was there, you see. So was I, just a few rows down and over on press row. We didn't know each other then. In fact we wouldn't meet for five more years.

I want to see, come May, someone replay the 1989 Indianapolis 500, so I can relive the moment when the backspace key got stuck on my ancient-as-runes Teleram Portabubble, and my column started disappearing off the screen, line-by-line. That was so awesome.

I want to see the 1982 state title game again, to see if the ball really curved when Scott Skiles put up that shot. I want to see Ray Tolbert dunk again when he was just an exuberant kid at Anderson Madison Heights. I want to see Troy Lewis shoot and Steve Alford go socks-shorts-swish on the stripe, and Gene Keady with that bulldog jaw of his jutting out a mile.

I want to see a replay of some Purdue-Illinois game in the '80s, so we can relive again the epic clash between the two worst hairlines in basketball (Keady and Lou Henson.)

What I don't want to see, ever again, is Christian Laettner hitting that shot.

Dammit, Pitino ...

Competitive itches

I know, I know. I miss dropping a bundle on Eastern Southwestern Tech State to reach the Sweet 16, too.

Even the Kentucky Derby has been pushed back to God knows when, for crying out loud. Which means no Kentucky Colonels, no ladies wearing  hats the size of condos, no putting two dollars on the nose of a 35-1 shot because his trainer is a tweed-wearing Englishman named Rupert Asquith-Cheddarbottom.

You miss the action. I miss the action. That's because we as human creatures crave competition, even if it's only Monmouth vs. Quinnipiac on a Thursday night.

Here's the good news: Vegas feels your pain.

Which is why, in the absence of virtually any sports anywhere unless you count mixed martial arts, you can now bet on the weather, which is even more a sucker bet than betting on horses and college kids. That's right, boys and girls! Sportsbooks are offering daily wagering on the high temperature for select cities!

Now you, too, can score big by betting that cold front hits Chicago just when Jim Cantore said it would. Let the whales and easy marks drop coin on 59 for the high in Chi. You know in your bones it ain't gonna clear 45.

And, hey, it's not like Vegas needs to stop with the weather. Since we're all self-quarantining, here's a short list of other prop bets the smart guys could come up with to scratch that competitive itch:

1.  Over/under on how long your kids can occupy the kitchen at the same time without fighting over who gets to use the microwave first.

I've got 5.8 seconds. That's what our family counselor says, anyway.

2. Who will move first? You or your dog?

I've got me. My beer glass is empty.

3. Over/under on how many times immunologist Anthony Fauci will fight to keep from laughing at Our Only Available Impeached President's next news briefing/standup act?

Doesn't matter The one time was priceless.

4. Over/under on how many times you watch "Hoosiers" before either A) the end of March, or B) you go completely mad and start yelling at Jimmy Chitwood because you had major coin riding on Boyle and South Bend Central.

How many days in March? Thirty-one? OK, I've got 62, then.

And last but not least ...

5. Who gets the race car in your 51st game of Monopoly?

I've got "No one." Because if everyone's going to fight over it, no one's going to get it.

Also, the next time you cheat the count and skip over Boardwalk and Park Place because I've got hotels on both of them, you're going to your room.

One more farewell

The damn thing was always in the air, in my memory. Strange how it works when someone you know passes from this earth.

The damn thing was a folded towel, and it was prop and cushion and instrument of displeasure for the man who gripped it. His name was Norm Held, and you can find him in the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame now. In 31 seasons as a high school basketball coach, he won more than 500 games, coached the Indiana All-Stars, won 343 games at Anderson High School, where he roamed the sidelines, towel in hand, from 1975 to 1993.

He died Thursday in Florida, his winter home, at the age of 85.

But back to the towel.

Norm used it to cushion his knee from the hardwood where he spent so much time kneeling, because he was never one for sitting still. He was an antic coach who was the perfect fit for an antic program at Anderson, where they began every home game with an elaborate ritual that involved a darkened gym, a spotlight and the Indians' mascot doing some sort of fertility dance around a kneeling Indian maiden.

It was just about as politically incorrect as a thing could be, and of course it always whipped the 8,000 fanatics cramming the iconic Wigwam into an absolute frenzy. And then the lights would come up, and the Indians would take the floor, and Norm would indulge in his own brand of theatrics -- most of which involved railing at the injustices being done his Indians by the men wearing whistles around their necks.

He was the king of the ref baiters, Norm was. And every once in awhile, when baiting wasn't enough, Norm would fling that towel of his skyward over some particularly egregious wrongdoing.

Which is why it's always in the air, in my memory.

I spent the first 10 years of my sportswriting career in Anderson, showing up at the dear departed Daily Bulletin two years after Norm showed up at Anderson High School. Somehow we always got along pretty well, Norm the already-veteran coach and me the kid sportswriter. And lord knows he took all of us on some great rides in those 10 years: Four state championship games between 1979 and 1986, epic battles with Marion and New Castle and city rivals Madison Heights and Highland, and of course the most epic battles of all against Muncie Central was across the floor.

It was Norm against Bill Harrell, and the best way I can encapsulate how it was between them is to bring up two back-to-back years.

The first year, Anderson traveled to Muncie Central, the Bearcats won and Norm was ejected.

The next year, Muncie Central came to Anderson, the Indians won and Harrell was ejected.

So it went.

So, too, did it go this way for Norm: He was forever close, but he never got the cigar.

There is something entirely proper about Norm passing in the month of March, because he always pointed his teams toward that month. On more than one occasion, he said publicly he didn't give a hang (never "damn," because Norm, for all his passion, didn't swear) about games in December. He cared about the games in March.

This didn't always endear him to the Indians faithful, the fiercest group of true believers anywhere. But it worked, to a degree. The Indians were always ready in March.

Unfortunately for Norm, they never were quite ready enough to take the final step.

Those four championship games, for instance: The Indians lost three of them by a total of seven points. Harrell and Ray McCallum and Muncie Central got them 64-60 in 1979. Gunner Wyman and Doug Crook and Vincennes got them 54-52 in 1981. And Basil Mawbey, the Heineman brothers and Connersville got them 63-62 in 1983.

In that one, Troy Lewis had an 8-footer to win in the dying seconds. Troy Lewis never missed 8-footers, at least that I can recall. But this one spun out.

Norm got one last shot at it in 1986, coaching the Indians to the state title game against Bill Green and Marion. That was one of Green's Jay Edwards-Lyndon Jones teams, and the Giants won by 19. But that year they beat pretty much everyone by 19.

I don't know how much those near misses gnawed at Norm. But I suspect they did a bit.

The last time I saw him, oddly, was the calling for Phil Buck, his old coaching rival from Madison Heights. I introduced myself, since we hadn't seen each other in 30 years. A huge grin immediately split his features.

"Of course I remember you, Ben Smith," he said.

And, today, I remember you, Norm. And that damn towel. And, most of all, the splendid ride.

Intentions and consequence

March Madness begins today, in a different time and place. Sometime after noon I'll go to some chain joint with wall-to-wall TVs, and the bar will be wall-to-wall with folks playing hooky from work, and we'll all eat wings and drink tall beers and cheer for schools that, until this week, we barely knew existed.

Look, it's Wofford! It's Stephen F. Austin! It's that's school with the name like a color (Siena)! Man, who knew these guys could play?

March Madness begins today, in a different time and place. In this time and place, however ...

Well. You know.

No Madness. No One Shining Moment. No Moments at all for the kids who played all season for this, and especially for the seniors who'll never play for it again.

And even if there are much larger considerations in the nation these days, it's entirely appropriate to feel for those kids. The NCAA poobahs say it's those kids who made it such a tough decision to close it all down, and there is no reason to doubt them. On some level they actually do care for the welfare of the "student-athlete", even if they so often act directly against that welfare.

And so the narrative, in this last week, has become some version of this: We should grant our seniors another year eligibility to make up for this. Because what if you're a senior who's never gotten to play in the tournament, and you worked four years and finally earned a spot in the field, and then this happens?

It's a heartfelt argument. To which the Blob would reply: But what about all the seniors who never got to go Dancin'? Who worked just as hard for four years as the aforementioned seniors, but whose teams just never were good enough?

And, sure, I get it, that's not quite the same thing. But missing out is still missing out, even if you don't miss out because of a literally unimaginable circumstance. It still hurts.

So there's that. There's also this: The unintended consequences that sometimes come with acting purely on emotion.

Because of if you grant your seniors another year of eligibility, that's two or three or however many scholarships you won't have for next season. And what if those schollys aren't available? Do you then change not only one rule but two, expanding the number of allowable scholarships?

The Blob didn't think this one up by itself, mind you. Lots of people have, in the last week. And no one lays it out more clearly than the estimable Gregg Doyel of the Indianapolis Star does here.

All those seniors who won't get to Dance?

Sucks.

Not being able to make it not suck without unintended consequences?

Sucks even worse.

The broadcaster's Art

Once upon an eon your Indiana Hoosiers used to play in Final Fours. Let's begin there this evening.

Once upon a time they had a couple of kids named Graham (Pat and Greg), and a Damon (Bailey) and a Calbert (Cheaney), and one Saturday night they played Duke in a national semifinal. They lost, of course. Everyone thought it was a crying shame -- especially Indiana fans of a particularly grassy-knoll bent.

Which brings us to a local radio show called SportsTalk, and to a lovely man named Art Saltsberg.

You know who Art Saltsberg is, even if you don't know who Art Saltsberg is. If you've listened WOWO 1190 AM anytime in the last 50 years, you've heard his voice coming out of your radio. He's the voice of a million ads for insurance and auto repair and lord knows how many other local businesses, and he knew all the people you did know, like Bob Sievers and Jack Underwood and Jay Gould, and of course Bob Chase, too. And of course you heard him on SportsTalk for two hours every weekday night, sidekicking with Dean Pantazi of WPTA 21Alive.

But back to those Hoosiers fans of a particularly grassy-knoll bent.

On a Monday night in 1992, two days after Duke dispatched Indiana in the national semifinal, Art found himself sidekicking with a certain local sports guy of lesser renown. That would be me, filling in for Dean as best I could for someone who was better at writing words than speaking them.

Anyway ... Art opened the phone lines, and here came Noah's flood.

IU fans practically crawled out of the woodwork that night, all of them equipped with dark conspiracy theories. The game officials hosed the poor Hoosiers, and the reason they hosed the poor Hoosiers is because they were in on the deal. CBS, you see, wanted Duke to win. It wanted Duke to win because it figured Coach K and the boys, being college hoops royalty and all, would pump more air in the championship game ratings than Indiana would. So they slipped the Whistles a little cash under the table to make sure it happened.

Or, you know, something like that.

On and on it went, through one and hour and then into two. And finally Art had heard enough.

The umpteenth guy started in on CBS and the refs and the evil machinations of (bleeping) Duke, and Art cut him off. Told him what he was saying was ridiculous, or words to that effect. Told the man he was flat crazy ... or words to that effect.

I mention this because it was the first, and maybe the only time, I ever heard Art Saltsberg semi-lose it on the air.

I also mention it because Art Saltsberg is retiring after 50 years at WOWO as a salesman and broadcaster. So it seemed like the right time.

Here's what you should know about Art Saltsberg: He was the professional's professional, and an utterly decent guy besides. There may be nicer people in the business, but I've never run across one. He was also one of the more prepared people I ever ran across. Sharing a broadcast desk with Art on SportsTalk meant you also shared a desk piled high with of printouts and stats and various and sundry items of interest. You were never going to run out of things to talk about when you went on the air with Art.

His easygoing nature, and the way he and Dean played so well off one another, was also why SportsTalk drew such a loyal and regular audience of callers. There was Jerry from Philly and Vaughn and of course Basil from Reiffsburg, who figured in perhaps Art and Dean's finest moment.

Basil, you see, was a teenager whose full handle was Basil Rhodes, and therein hangs a tale. Basil was born with a condition called osteogenesis impertecta, or brittle bone disease. It meant Basil could break bones simply by rolling over, and left him, as a high school student, bedridden and the size of an infant.

But he was smart and funny and loved to give Dean what-for about his Cubs, because Basil was a diehard Mets fan. No one who ever met him, before he died at 18, came away without marveling at him.

And so, one night, Art and Dean drove down to Basil's home in Reiffsburg, and broadcast SportsTalk from his living room. Even had Basil sign off for them at the end of the show.

I don't know who got more out of the whole thing, Basil or Art and Dean. Call it a dead heat.

Ask Art Saltsberg today, and I guarantee you he'd tell you it was a night he'll never forget. I know I sure won't.

Nor will I forget the Night of the Grassy Knoll People. And the man on the other mic who made it, and everything, so very enjoyable.

The QB shuffle

These are the dark days for the sons of Sam Adams. Why, Boston hasn't been picked on like this since General Gage blockaded the city for dumping all that tea in the harbor.

Tom Brady?

Gone.

On St. Paddy's Day, no less.

With all the bars closed because of the damn bug, no less.

To the freaking Buccaneers, no less.

The Buccaneers, for God's sake? What, the Pats are chopped liver all of sudden?

Apparently so.

Apparently, because Brady is apparently headed to Tampa Bay,  proving once again that nothing lasts forever. The Colts booted John Unitas out of Baltimore. They booted Peyton Manning out of Indianapolis. Joe Namath finished his career not in Jets' green, but in the blue-and-yellow of the Los Angeles Rams.

And now Brady will finish his, presumably, in whatever color that is the Buccaneers wear. And, speaking of the Colts ...

Here comes Philip Rivers.

He's a 38-year-old quarterback who's spent his entire career with the San Diego/Los Angeles Chargers, but now he's coming to Indianapolis. He was a turnover machine for the Chargers last season, and there's legitimate skepticism as to just how much he's got left in the tank. And whether or not he'll actually be much of an upgrade over Jacoby Brissett.

Rivers' numbers last year: 4,615 yards, 23 touchdowns, 20 interceptions, an 88.5 QBR. Brissett's numbers: 2,942 yards, 18 touchdowns, six picks, an 88.0 QBR.

The difference is, Brissett put up those numbers behind one of the league's better offensive lines, although they didn't always play like it last season. Rivers put up his behind the Seven Blocks of Government Cheese on a 5-11 team.  You've got to figure his numbers will be more in line with 2018 (4,308 yards, 32 touchdowns, 12 picks, a 105.5 QBR) than with 2019.

That's obviously what the Colts are figuring. But we'll see.

And we'll see what Tom Brady looks like in pewter or whatever.

At 42. Playing for the anti-Belichick, Bruce Arians. And playing for a team that finished 7-9 last season behind Jameis Winston and the league's fourth-worst scoring defense.

In the meantime, take heart, all you sons of Sam Adams.

After all, you've still got Cody Kessler.

Some things to still see here

Slowly, now, we adjust to the light, here in this new American dimness. We pick up a book. We stream Netflix or Hulu or Amazon Prime. We order carryout and sit around the kitchen table at dinner, congratulating ourselves for supporting our local restaurants.

It is not the same as going out, but we can't go out now. The other day we were still hoisting a few and watching college buckets and spring training games at the local watering hole, but the other day was light years ago. Now the bars and restaurants are closed, and sports have gone dark.

Just last week we were gearing up for the conference tournaments and the Madness beyond; now we look up, and here's ESPN airing the 1983 ACC championship game to fill its empty hours. Wow, was Dick Vitale ever that young? And speaking of young ... Look! There's Jim Valvano!

The cancer hasn't come for him yet. He's still young and antic and bursting with life. It is all unbearably poignant.

And yet we watch, and we think about all that won't happen this week or for however many weeks beyond, and we shake our heads at what still seems unimaginable. And those of us who were in the sportswriting biz before we became retired old farts wonder what it must be like these days, trying to fill a daily section.

"It's like Christmas Eve on steroids," answers my former sports editor, when I ask him.

Christmas Eve being the deadest day of the year in the sports world, in the days before COVID-19.

Now every day is Christmas Eve, and only the business of sports goes on. So at least there's that.

At least there's this: The Colts just plucked  stickout defensive tackle DeForrest Buckner from that scary 49ers defense, giving up the 13th pick in the draft for him. Well, here's some meat to gnaw on from that mostly naked bone. Giving up the 13th pick? Does this mean they won't be drafting a quarterback after all? Does it mean the rumors are true about Philip Rivers, or have they decided to cast their lot with Jacoby Brissett after all?

The Blob's betting it's the former, although it's hard to say if a 38-year-old who's been in the league since Dubya's first term is an upgrade over Brissett. Sounds like we're about to find out, though.

And speaking of about to find out ... hey, look who's back! It's Rick Pitino!

Yes, Mr. I-See-Nothing has re-emerged in college basketball, proving once again that no transgression is transgressive enough to deny a man a second act in American life. There are simply too many people too hungry for Ws out there.

And so Kelvin Sampson is at Houston now and Bruce Pearl is at Auburn, and now Iona has hired Rick Pitino, who left a program at Louisville that was crawling with sleaze. One assistant was running what amounted to a cathouse out of the very building where Pitino worked every day. Another got caught in the FBI probe allegedly paying $100,000 to the family of a recruit, which is what got Pitino fired.

Pitino, of course, claimed he knew nothing about any of it. Almost no one believed him, nor should have. Now he's issued the standard mea culpa, saying he was the head coach and the responsibility was his, and he should never have said otherwise.

"I deserved to be fired," he says now.

Which all sounds good, even if it's what a guy tends to say when he's been handed a second chance he probably doesn't deserve. Iona thinks he does, clearly. And of course that has nothing to do with the fact Iona has gotten past the first round of the NCAA Tournament just once in the last 40 years, and went 29-33 the last two seasons.

Iona, by the way, was where Jim Valvano got his start, where he first came to college basketball's attention.

A few years later, it was 1983, and there he was at North Carolina State, young and antic and full of life. And now, in this new dimness, we turn on our TVs, and we can see 1983 again, see a young Dicky V. and a young Jim Valvano, the cancer that would kill him still a long way off

Strange times. Such strange, strange times.

Diary of a bored Sportsball guy

So I dropped in on the local Italian joint (Thanks, Casa!) to pick up dinner for the fam last night, and on both of the TVs over the bar were two half-naked men wallowing around on the floor and punching each other in the head.

"UFC?" I said. "Really?"

"Only sports we could find," Bartender Rebecca replied. "The women were on earlier."

And this is America in the time of COVID-19. And, yes, it is all flavors of different. And if, like the Blob, you made your living for 38 years writing about round balls and oblong balls and people driving really fast in a circle, that is especially true. It was a Saturday unlike any other, to steal from the postponed Masters.

Here's how I spent it ...

8:15 a.m. (or so): Got up. Put the coffee on. Wrote a fretful Blob post about the postponed Masters and other fretful stuff.

10-11: Watched Olivia Benson chase down dirtbags.

11-12: Watched Olivia chase down some more dirtbags.

12-1 p.m.: Ate lunch. Went to liquor store. Guinness, check. Bushmills, check. Yep, ready for St. Paddy's.

1-3: Got tired of watching Olivia chase down dirtbags. Picked up "The Stand" and started re-reading it, because nothing is more symmetrical than living in a time of pandemic while reading about an imaginary, way-worse pandemic. And I find symmetry oddly soothing.

3-3:15: Wondered when Randall Flagg was going to show up. I've got mid-April in the office pool.

3:15-3:30: Thought about the office NCAA Tournament pool, and how I won't miss losing to A) my wife, B) my sister, and C) that one guy who lets his cat pick a bracket.

3:30-3:31: Thought about how this was the year when I could pick my alma mater (Ball State) to win it all and no one could say I was wrong.

4: Fell asleep reading about Randall Flagg.

5: Woke up. Looked outside. Said, "Hey, look, it's snowing." Watched it snow for awhile.

5:30: Still watching it snow.

6: Stopped watching it snow, got up, went to pick up dinner.

8: Cued up "Ford vs. Ferrari" and watched it again. No sports, huh? Well, neener-neener-neener.

10:15: "Ford vs. Ferrari" ends. Picked up phone and Googled "LeMans." Also "Ken Miles." Also "Carroll Shelby." Wondered if I could still buy a 1966 Ferrari 330 P3 somewhere, because those babies were sweet.

11 p.m.: Went to bed. Fell asleep thinking about Selection Sunday, and how I'll miss that moment when the committee sends IU (or Purdue) to Micronesia as a 10 seed.

Good times, man. Gooood times.

Gentlemen, start your fretting

The azaleas, man. Now we don't even get the azaleas.

This upon the news that Augusta National has postponed the Masters, as the sports world continues to go dark in an America getting cozy with terms such as "social distancing." It's the proven best way to slow the spread of COVID-19, whose confirmed cases in the U.S. have breached the 2,000 mark in less than two months -- and whose unconfirmed cases are likely several magnitudes above that, given the shortage of available tests in this country.

On the other hand ... "social distancing" is a much more polite way of saying "Get the hell away from me." So maybe COVID-19 has at least introduced a measure of civility to our national discourse.

But back to the azaleas, and other stuff.

It's just not going to be the same, whenever (if ever) they get around to playing the Masters now, because part of its charm has always been its juxtaposition of beauty and lethality. Nothing like watching Amen Corner torture rich dudes in logo caps as they tramp around a transplanted English garden. All those chirping birds and tinkly piano music and A Tradition Unlike Any Other, and then the sheer horror of seeing it all unravel with the plop of a golf ball in Rae's Creek?

Chilling. But ain't the azaleas purty?

Now, of course, the azaleas will be long gone, and Augusta National will just be a golf course again. Which sets the mind to wandering toward other changed realities, and this mind in particular to one changed reality in particular.

Along with the announcement of the Masters postponement, see, came others. and here's the one that caught my eye: IndyCar pulling the plug on its season until the Grand Prix of Indianapolis in early May. And that got me wondering (fretting?) about what happens if COVID-19 is still spiraling then, and what a catastrophic incubator 250,000 people jammed into one place would be on the Sunday before Memorial Day.

I'm talking about the Indianapolis 500, of course. Speaking of iconic American sporting events.

I'm talking about the 500 because it's where my mind goes in May, and always has. It goes to that square-jawed 2.5 miles of asphalt that sprawls north and east from the corner of Georgetown Road and 16th Street in Indianapolis. It goes to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, which once was a Brickyard and now, after a century and 11 years, is a sort of living museum crowded with ghosts and the remembered echoes of Deusenbergs and Millers and Novis and Offies and Lotus-Fords -- and, of course, the ruffling whisper of those Day-Glo STP turbines.

I caught Parnelli Jones in the first STP turbine in 1967, winging around the place in a gleaming neon blur on a gloomy Saturday in 1967. It was my first visit to Indy, and the place had its hooks in me thereafter. Now it's 53 years later and it still has its hooks in me, still is the one place I want to be on a certain Sunday in May even after 40 years of covering the 500 as a sportswriter.

The start of the 500, I always say, is one of the two or three greatest moments in all of sports. And if you're any sort of sports fan at all, it's a bucket list deal.

And so, yeah, I look ahead to that certain Sunday, and I fret. Probably it's for naught; this morning that certain Sunday is almost 2 1/2 months off, and with enough "social distancing" COVID-19 should be under control by then.

 But no one really knows, of course. As with any new strain of virus we are still in a learning mode, still trying to figure out how and if it will mutate. After the initial outbreak of the Spanish flu in 1918, for instance, the virus mutated into something far more deadly. This may not, but, again, no one really knows.

They didn't run the 500 in 1918, by the way. But that was because of the Great War, not the flu. Had the war never happened, though, the flu would surely have shuttered the place, as it shuttered so much else in America that summer and fall.

In which case, there would be precedent to follow.

God help  us if we have to.

Adjustments and such

So now you have this black hole in your life. March yawns emptily. The weekend is suddenly a Cone of Silence. The hours march away from you until they appear, in perspective, as tiny microseconds on some distant horizon.

You know what's happening here, right?

You woke up this morning in a scene from "A Christmas Story," is what's happening here.You know the one: Where the Sonsabitchin' Bumpuses' dogs barge through the backdoor and eat the Old Man's turkey, leaving Ralphie's entire family bereft.

No turkey! No turkey sandwiches! No turkey salad! Turkey hash! Turkey ala king! Or gallons of turkey soup!

Except now it's:

No NBA! No NHL! No March Madness!  Selection Sunday! Brackets! Or Samsonite Tech wrecking yours by taking out Kansas!

What to do, what to do.

The Blob has a few suggestions ...

1. Make a nice cup of tea and settle in with a good book. Probably best to avoid "The Stand" or Albert Camus' "The Plague."

2. Go on YouTube and watch an endless loop of "One Shining Moment" while weeping quietly.

3. Go on YouTube and watch an endless loop of Bill Raftery shouting "Onions!" or Dick Vitale shouting "He's a Diaper Dandy, bay-bee!"

4. Hack YouTube and erase every video of Bill Raftery shouting "Onions!" or Dick Vitale shouting "He's a Diaper Dandy, bay-bee!"

5. Watch "Hoosiers" for the 1,347th time. Pretend you don't know how it ends.

6. Weep quietly when it does, like the big blubbering baby you are. Then watch it again.

7. Watch "Miracle" for the 1,347th time. See 5 and 6.

8. Spend some quiet time reminiscing fondly about the year you won the March Madness office pool with that daring pick of Duke.

9. Stream a high school basketball regional, because the IHSAA, unlike everyone else, still hasn't pulled the plug on what we used to call Hoosier Hysteria back in the before time.

10. Call the IHSAA and ask what the hell you people are thinking, given what we're seeing around the world about COVID-19 and how quickly and easily it's spreading.

Seriously, folks, No. 10. Despite everything, the IHSAA will carry on almost as usual. The state gymnastics meet will go off as scheduled today at Ball State, although no spectators will be allowed to watch it. And at 16 sites across Indiana, boys basketball regionals will be played in mostly empty arenas.

In other words, the IHSAA basketball tournament has become a noontime run at the Y. Which begs the question of why they're even bothering, because an Indiana high school basketball tournament without fans, face-painted student sections and cheerleaders is no Indiana high school basketball tournament at all. It's just going through the motions because you've got some trophies to hand out.

I'm sure the IHSAA is thinking there's a limited number of potential exposures, given there are only 64 teams still playing. So the risk is acceptable.

Of course, that's 64 teams going back to 64 communities. That's, what, 15 or so players and coaches, plus administrators, plus parents, going back to those 64 communities. Which works out, conservatively, to about 1,240 individuals who are traveling to regional sites from Washington and Loogootee in southern Indiana to Michigan City up by Chicago. stopping for gas or lunch on the way there or back ...

You get the picture.

And, no, it's no Monet.

The further emptying, and reality

Look, I don't know how bad this gets. Neither do you. Neither does the wise guy a few seats down at your local watering hole, scoffing that the whole thing is just Media Hype, and that all you've gotta do is wash your hands and cough into your elbow and all will be well.

Yeah, well. Italy thought so, too.

Read that. Read it again. Maybe reality will come knocking, finally.

Reality is Rudy Gobert of the Utah Jazz being the wise guy a few seats down the bar the other night, touching every mic on the postgame podium. Forty-eight hours later, he's got the very thing he was mocking, and now the NBA has suspended its season.

Reality is all those billionaire owners, who like every billionaire never met a dime they wouldn't stoop to pick up off the sidewalk, going along with this without a peep. Even though it's going to cost them a whole pile of dimes.

Reality is Our Only Available Impeached President, who thought he could run the whole show with amateur hacks and craven toadies, looking like a poleaxed steer as he announced a 30-day ban on travel from Europe. Just a few days ago he was boasting, from the depths of his great medical knowledge, that COVID-19 cases in the U.S. would be down to zero by the weekend. Now maybe even he gets that he can't soft-soap this to protect his corrupt presidency, that COVID-19 doesn't give a damn about his re-election campaign.

Reality?

Reality is the NCAA Tournament, that massive cashbox of "amateur" collegiate athletics, playing out now in empty arenas. It's every conference tournament doing the same thing. It's the Ivy League cancelling its tournament altogether.

(And, yes, that is the reverse lottery ticket of all time for the Allen County War Memorial Coliseum, which is scheduled to play host to both the NCAA Division III men's basketball semifinals and -- after years of trying -- an NCAA Division I women's regional in the coming weeks. Now they'll throw their long-awaited party, and no one will be there.)

In any case ... none of this is ridiculous. It is not insane. It is not media-generated panic or the Democrats or however else the scoffers and conspiracy kooks choose to explain it. It is simple common sense, like coming in out of the rain or heading for the basement when the sky outside turns black and wild.

Reality?

Reality is having to live in the basement for awhile, maybe. It's One Shining Moment going dark entirely the first time a player or coach or student manager tests positive for COVID-19.

That could happen. That probably will happen. And you can call that ridiculous or insane or whatever  you want.

But you'll be a damn fool if you do.

UPDATE: It did happen. All conference tournaments, and the NCAA basketball tournaments, have been cancelled. as of this afternoon. March now has an immense yawning hole in it.

The upside: No March Madness means you won't get burned by a 13-over-a-4, a 14-over-a-3 or a 15-over-a-2 in 2020. Also, no more speculating about whether or not Indiana or Purdue will get into the Big Show. So there's that.

The great emptying

Out in Washington, in Seattle, the governor has banned gatherings of 250 or more for the foreseeable future. Which will mean the Seattle Dragons of the XFL will play to echoes this Sunday, and the Seattle Mariners could do the same for their season opener March 26.

In the NBA, league officials are mulling moving some games. Which means that home game may now become a road game for certain teams.

And in college buckets?

Well, the Mid-American Conference just announced both its men's and women's conference basketball tournaments this week will be played in front of ghosts and empty seatbacks.

Welcome to life in COVID-19 America, people. Yes, it sucks. Yes, it tramples on Americans' inalienable right to do whatever the hell they want no matter who it affects. And, no, it's not the "media" Blowing This Out Of Proportion in order to Bring Down Our Brave And Noble President.

Nor is it public officials overreacting in response to said Blowing Out Of Proportion. It is simple common sense in the face of what now may accurately be termed a public health crisis.

In any case, in Cleveland this week, we will get a look at what college basketball looks like when it's played in a vacuum.

Oh, wait. We actually won't get a look at that, on account of spectators will not be allowed to look.

That this cuts the legs out from under why college basketball games are played to begin with is both abundantly obvious and irrelevant, because allowing the former to continue to sit in the front seat would be foolhardy at best and grossly irresponsible at worst.  Teams, and fans, from four states were scheduled to gather in Cleveland this week. That's a big chunk of the Midwest congregating in one building as COVID-19 continues to spread across the U.S.

Big question will be what happens a week from now when the Big Tournament is scheduled to begin, and fans from all over the country arrive at eight sites from Spokane, Wash. to Greensboro, N.C. Will the NCAA be following the MAC's lead, by that time? And just how stubbornly will NCAA officials insist on going on with Da Tournament, no matter how farcical it becomes, before shutting down their enormous cash cow?

A rapidly spreading pandemic vs. the irresistible march of commerce. Now there's a bracket-buster for you.

Locked down

I never really loved going into locker rooms. I don't know many ink-stained wretches -- or, in Ted Williams' famous words, "knights of the keyboard" -- who do.

I went into locker rooms for the same reason all of us did: Because it was part of the job, and also because sometimes detail revealed itself there that advanced whatever story you wanted to tell. Before Indiana University banished reporters from Bob Knight's locker room, for instance, nothing better conveyed a loss that particularly displeased Coach than walking in and seeing his players all sitting at their lockers with their heads down.

It was almost military in its aspect, the way they all sat there. And the pin-drop silence that attended it spoke volumes about the iron grip Knight held on his program.

That said, no one ever went in there, or into any other locker room, to linger. You got in, you jotted down a few quotes and details -- discarded balls of tape strewn around the Indianapolis Colts' locker room like the detritus of battle, for instance, or the framed photo of his child that occupied a prominent place in Pacers wild man Ron Artest's locker -- and you got out. Places to go, deadlines to meet and all that.

And so I have no particular reaction to the news that the NBA, NHL, Major League Baseball and Major League Soccer are closing their locker rooms and clubhouses for the time being in response to the spread of COVID-19. Seems like a prudent case of discretion being the better part of valor to me.

Here's what I wonder, though: What if those leagues, and others, decide they like keeping the locker rooms closed? That it's easier for their clubs to control media access in an era when controlling media access has become more and more a priority even down to the high school level?

Squeezing press freedoms has become accepted policy here in the Age of Trump, when the President himself has adopted the totalitarian mantra that a free press is the enemy of the people. On the sports side, this has manifested itself in the closure of locker rooms; it's now become standard procedure across major college athletics now.

Knight might have been the forerunner for that, or one of them, but his approach differed only in degree. Where most places take requests for certain players and bring them to the postgame conference room, Knight controlled whom he would send. And so you might get the guy who scored 25 points and made the winning shot, or you might get three seniors who barely played.

In which case you hoped that at least one of those seniors was the rare free spirit who would say something interesting.

In any event, it's a different world now. And you can only hope it's not going to get even more different.

"I think it's a good idea for now," Texas Rangers pitcher Edinson Volquez said the other day in response to the MLB clubhouse closure. "Probably later, hopefully we can get back together again."

Probably later, the man says.

Yeah. We'll see.

The rhythm of March

They're just a bunch of kids from a small town, but this week they are March in Indiana. They're the kids who climb ladders on certain Saturdays that either fly with snow or arrive with spring on their breath, kids with scissors in hand. At the top of the ladder they reach out and snip tufts of nylon basketball net, and down below them everyone hoots and hollers.

They're just a bunch of kids from a small town. But this week, they are March in Indiana.

Their names are Bright and Farmer and Shirley and Walls; Thomas and Keasler and Tatlock and Helt. They come from a town of 1,500 souls hard by the interstate in southern Indiana, 15 miles south of Seymour and 10 miles north of Scottsboro. The high school they go to has an enrollment of 197, class sizes average a cozy 13 or so, and their school colors are red and white.

But all of that is just detail. And today there is only one detail that matters in Crothersville, In.

The Crothersville Tigers are sectional champs.

Saturday night Bright and Farmer and Shirley and the rest beat West Washington, 57-51, in the championship game of the 1A Edinburgh sectional. West Washington had beaten them just three weeks before, 55-51, but to heck with that. This time it was the Tigers' turn, and now they're 14-10 and headed to Loogootee, where this coming Saturday they will play Barr-Reeve in the first game of the Loogootee regional.

Here's what makes Bright and Farmer and Shirley and the rest different from Barr-Reeve and everyone else who won titles at 64 sectional sites across Indiana: They're the only ones who were doing it for the first time in 105 years.

That's how long Crothersville High School has been around, and in all that time, as the Indianapolis Star reported, the Tigers had never before won a sectional. The Great War had come and gone, the Great Depression had come and gone, World War II and Korea and Vietnam and 17 presidents had come and gone. And the boys from Crothersville had never gotten to climb a ladder in March, scissors in hand.

That's a pile of boys, from 1915 to now. That's a pile of boys who had gone off to two world wars and raised three or four generations of other boys who went to Crothersville High School and never climbed a ladder in March.

And then came March 7, 2020.

And up the ladder went Bright and Farmer and Shirley and Walls; Thomas and Keasler and Tatlock and Helt.

And now it's on to Loogootee, where 25-1 Barr-Reeve awaits.

On paper, it doesn't look good for the Tigers. But this is March. And this Indiana.

Where the snow flies one day, and there is a breath of spring the next, and kids go up ladders on a Saturday night 105 years in the making.

The un-madness of the Madness

And now -- as soon as a couple weeks, perhaps -- we get the answer to a question over which philosophers have puzzled since time immemorial.

In other words: If the NCAA Tournament falls in a forest and no one is there, does it make a sound?

Or, you know, something like that.

Something like that is the worst-case scenario, apparently, as March Madness looms in the shadow of COVID-19. Our Only Available Impeached President may be soft-soaping the looming coronavirus epidemic in the interests of political expediency (Sure, you vulnerable old folks, hop on that airplane, because heaven knows we can't have OOAIP's re-election, or the airline industry, jeopardized by some measly lil' bug), but if this thing spreads the way it has elsewhere, containment measures may be necessary.

In Italy, that has meant quarantining the entire north of the country. Here in the U.S., that could mean quarantining March Madness -- i.e., having Da Tournament play out in empty arenas and testing every member of the competing teams, assuming enough accurate tests are available.

This is the NCAA's worst-case scenario plan, according to a Wall Street Journal interview with the NCAA's chief medical officer Brian Hamline. That there is currently no contingency that would actually cancel the tournament should surprise no one, because no matter how bad this gets, there's simply too much money at stake. And college athletics are almost solely about the Benjamins, being as corporate an enterprise as the NFL or the NBA or Microsoft.

So full speed ahead with Da Tournament. Farcical as it would be.

That's because the Madness without full-on human-generated madness is no madness at all, as anyone with an ounce of common sense understands. What it is, is noon hoops at the Y. You can stay home and watch it on TV, and the TV suits would be fine with that because they're paying goo-gobs of dough to air it. It's why canceling the whole deal is not even a last resort.

To heck with that. Play on, you worker bees, and let 'em eat the esthetics.

After all, what's One Shining Moment against a whole pile of shining coinage?

Your Not Really A Prediction, Continued Again

Senior Day at Indiana and Purdue yesterday, and you know what that means. Purdue's coming off that huge road win at Iowa and needs only to beat Rutgers in Mackey to keep its gasping NCAA Tournament hopes alive. Indiana needs to beat Wisconsin in Assembly Hall because, well, it's Senior Day, and it would be nice to have some momentum going into the Big Ten tournament.

Again, you know what that means.

Come on, people. You do. This isn't that hard.

Final score: Wisconsin 60, Indiana 56, as the Hoosiers shot 34.5 percent and managed one field goal in the last 10 minutes.

Final score: Rutgers 71, Purdue 68, as Purdue shot 33.8 percent, missed 22 of 29 from the 3-point arc and lost to a team against which it was 11-2 alltime going in.

And the plot to drive IU coach Archie Miller, Purdue coach Matt Painter and both fan bases insane continues apace.

The madness of the Madness

So it's March now, and that means March Madness. and like many of you I can't wait for the moment when Directional Hyphen Sasquatch Tech knocks off Duke behind 38 points from some unknown phenom with a cool name, like Marcus Aurelius Jones or something. In fact, I so can't wait for it, I've jumped the gun and decided on my national champ pick already.

I pick Kansas.

I pick Kansas not because the Jayhawks are the No. 1 team this particular minute, or because they're 27-3, or because they haven't lost since January 11. I pick them because of this.

Yes, sir. I want to be in front of my TV that Monday night when a program the NCAA has declared to be dirty to the core lifts the NCAA's grandest college basketball prize to the heavens.

It will be the perfect distillation of everything big-top college athletics is, every contradiction and glaring hypocrisy laid bare for all to see. It will be the ultimate triumph of the unholy alliance between apparel companies and the universities whose interests they pay millions to serve, while the universities Sgt. Schultz their way past the unsavory elements of that alliance.

The feds called foul on those elements with their bribery probe a year-and-a-half ago, catching some of college buckets' most celebrated names red-handed in the act of looking the other way. The NCAA has been in backup mode since, desperately trying to police the very sort of undeniable corporate enterprise it has long denied college athletics to be.

Thus the landing-with-both-feet on Kansas, dispensing five Level I violations -- the most serious under NCAA rules -- on the Jayhawks for their partnership with Adidas, the primary target of the federal probe.

The Jayhawks signed a 14-year, $196 million extension with Adidas in April, maintaining its position as Adidas flagship program. Of course, we are expected to believe that $196 mill is solely for shoes and shirts, not for Adidas recruiting kids into its various AAU programs and then steering them to KU. Nuh-uh, no way, Kansas coach Bill Self and his program don't nothin' 'bout that.

That's the crux of Kansas' response to the NCAA allegations, a masterpiece of I-see-nothing  obliviousness. That anyone could possibly believe this is proof positive unicorns may indeed exist. Because if you think Self and Co. really had no clue Adidas was doing what the feds caught it doing, then you must also think that somewhere leprechauns are riding bucking unicorns in some great fairy-dust rodeo.

Of course, the NCAA itself created the culture for which it is now finding Kansas culpable. It has spent decades proclaiming that its athletic programs are nothing more than an extension of the academic mission of their universities, even as those universities turned their "student-athletes" into unpaid billboards for their various corporate deals. The federal probe stripped that illusion down to the axles, and now it's a rusted hulk sitting bare-boned on cement blocks in America's front yard.

And the night Kansas cuts down the nets?

The rusted hulk will be on full display. And like most rusted hulks, it won't be a pretty sight.

Ming vases and such

Zion Williamson played basketball last night, logging a season-high 35 minutes and scoring 21 points after a couple of days of one of those silly debates with which sports-talk radio sometimes occupies itself.

The debate: "Should Zion play in back-to-back games for the first time this season, given that he missed so much of the season because of knee surgery and his team (the New Orleans Pelicans) are 26-36 and unlikely to make the playoffs with or without him?"

Couple of items about that.

Item the first: Zion Williamson is 19 years old.

Item the second: The Pelicans are paying him a guaranteed $20 million over the next two years to, you know, play basketball.

Item the third: See item the first.

Which means the kid should be able to play back-to-back NBA games without drawing a labored breath. Also, $20 million. This may be the kind of money you pay to put a Ming vase on display, but Zion Williamson is not a Ming vase. He's an awesome physical specimen with an equally awesome skill set. You don't stand back and admire how pretty he looks in street clothes because, golly, if you actually play him more than every other game, something bad might happen.

Well, of course it might. Zion might step in front of a bus. He might get hit on the head by a meteor. He might blow out the knee again in practice. So you might as well play him.

The whole deal reminds me of a conversation I had with legendary Anderson Madison Heights  coach Phil Buck back in Indiana high school basketball's before time. The Pirates were headed to the regional in those days when teams were compelled to play two games in one day three Saturdays in a row. So I asked Phil how tough this was on his kids.

It's been a long time, so I don't remember his reply word-for-word. But the gist was that these same kids spent all summer on the playground running it for eight hours a day sometimes -- and besides, they were 16, 17 years old. Two games in one day, separated by several hours, was nothing for those young legs.

Pretty much the same thing Pelicans coach Alvin Gentry said last night when asked about Zion playing back-to-back games.

"I think he's fine," he replied with barely concealed scorn. "We worry about him too freakin' much. OK? He's fine. He's 19 years old. He'll be fine."

Exactly.

Bradymania

I know why you come to this Blob. You come here for wisdom and insight you can't get anywhere else.

("No, we come here for the same reason people slow down to look at car wrecks," you're saying.)

("No, we come here to see what completely idiotic thing you're writing now," you're also saying.)

Anyway ...

I know why you come to this Blob.

You come to this Blob -- right now, at 6:58 in the morning on March 4, 2020 -- to get all the latest dope about what's going on with Tom Brady.

Well, here's something: Apparently last week his people met with the Colts people.

(Brief pause for horrified screeching from Indianapolis.)

Of course, this means nothing, we're told. Brady's a free agent, and this is what free agents do. Their people meet with other people. The Blob only mentions it because it wanted to hear horrified screeching from Indianapolis.

In any case, Brady has said enough to make people think he's actively looking for a new home, although how seriously remains to be seen. This has led to Rampant Speculation by all the usual Rampant Speculators.

Oh, the things the Blob hears these days ...

I hear Brady has been seen in Nashville, in Miami, in Oakland, in Azerbaijan. On the same day.

I hear Jimmy Garappolo and Jacoby Brissette have been seen weeping over photos of themselves on the bench in New England and mumbling, "Please, God, not again."

I hear the 49ers are interested, the Chargers are interested, the Broncos are interested. I hear Arsenal, Man U and West Ham United are interested. I hear General Mills, General Motors and Dollar General are interested.

I hear Our Only Available Impeached President wants to make him the head of Homeland Security. What the heck, he'd be as qualified as anyone else in OOAIP's administration.

In any case, I've heard a lot. Which of course makes me think this, as Bradymania continues to consume America, or at least ESPN:

I think when the dust settles, he'll still be a New England Patriot.

Or, you know, an Azerbaijan Fightin' Azimuth. I hear they could win it all this year.

Not dead yet

OK. So maybe that's not the new Purdue basketball team motto now.

Maybe it's more like, "Feeling much better."

And then:  "Well ... not much better. Still a bit sniffle-y. Still constructing impressive brick edifices from the 3-point arc. But better enough."

On second (or third thought), maybe the latter is all the motto Purdue needs.

Because, listen, last week, the Boilermakers were pretty awful, but still Better Enough to again take out their in-state "rival," Indiana, who was only horrendous. And last night, when everyone but everyone thought their guttering NCAA Tournament flame would finally be snuffed out, they somehow messed around and won a big roadie, beating 18th-ranked Iowa in Iowa City, 77-68.

As usual, no one remotely saw that coming. Especially the way they did it.

The way they did it was, they again shot the basketball like a blindfolded man throwing rocks at a squirrel. Missed 42 of their 67 attempts. Missed 19 of 27 from the arc. Kicked the ball away 15 times.

Of course, Iowa kicked it away 15 times, too.

And missed 22 of 30 from the arc, which is more like flinging the ball than shooting it. And made just 21 field goals in 56 attempts -- which was marginally better than Purdue (37.5 percent to 37.3 percent), but not enough to matter, especially when the Boilers had the Hawkeyes down 42-25 at halftime.

So once more Purdue wins ugly, and if this is what Matt Painter's guys have to do to get by, so be it. If they have to defend and defend and defend, and get career highs out of people (last night it was Eric Hunter's 19 points), and have Evan Boudreaux go for 14 points and 14 boards ... so be it.

All that matters, with one regular season game to go, is they're 16-14 and still alive for the Madness, which itself might be madness. All the Boilers have to do is beat Rutgers in Mackey Saturday, and then scrounge out a win in the Big Ten Tournament, and they're likely golden.

Of course, everyone now expects them to beat Rutgers in Mackey.

But of course, it's Purdue.

And so: Buyer beware.

Humanity fail

And now, because this is the world we live in and this is how some people move through it now, apparently ...

This just in from Los Angeles: The L.A. County sheriff confessed yesterday that eight deputies allegedly took and/or shared graphic cellphone photos of the Kobe Bryant helicopter crash scene.

"We identified the deputies involved, they came to the station on their own and had admitted they had taken them and they had deleted them," L.A. County Sheriff Alex Villanueva told NBA News. "And we're content that those involved did that."

And because this is the world we live in and this is how some people move through it now, the Blob's response to that is this: "Yeaaah, mayyy-be."

Because somehow I think some of those photos, or others, are going to show up on social media at some point, social media being the mindless, soulless beast it is.

I hope I'm wrong. I surely do.

But these things tend to have the half-life of plutonium 239, deleted but still drifting aimlessly somewhere in the Cloud or the Crab Nebula or some mystic Realm of 1,000 Likes. And people who have access to those Realms, some of them, possess the souls of dust mites.

Proof of this, of course, being those eight deputies. I'd like to say what they allegedly did speaks to something larger about how technology has desensitized us to our fellow humans' pain, and how our national leaders trade on that desensitization to advance soulless agendas. But instead I'll settle for this, and excuse the profanity:

What a bunch of assholes.

The demise of expertise

Once upon a time I thought "Anyone could do this."

OK, no. No, I didn't.

That's because, like every human being, I didn't want to think that what I did for a living for 38 years -- in my case, sportswriting -- was something you could train a three-toed sloth to do well. Was something that required no expertise,  no training, no special knack for producing quality under the pressure of sometimes absurd deadlines.

I liked to think not just anyone could crank out 20 column inches that actually had proper noun-verb agreement and didn't read like it was written in crayon. Call me arrogant or presumptuous or nose-in-the-air elitist, but I actually believed my job required a modicum of -- what do you call it? -- talent.

Imagine my surprise when Our Only Available Impeached President showed up and introduced the Age of Anybody Can Do This to America. And then filled his administration with hacks and toadies  whose only qualifications were A) donating a pile of money to OOAIP's campaign, or B) being particularly adept at smooching His Mightiness' hindparts.

Also, there was a three-toed sloth or two in there. (Lookin' at you, Stephen Miller.)

In such an environment, and knowing how hedge-fund vandals were part-stripping local American media these days, I guess I shouldn't have been surprised by what happened in Kentucky this week.

What happened was, four small papers in the central part of the state -- the Advocate-Messenger, Jessamine Journal, Interior Journal and Winchester Sun -- eliminated their sports departments. This amounted to letting one person go at each paper, because at each paper one person was responsible for reporting, editing, photography and section design. The savings must have been enormous.

(Brief pause for the sarcasm to stop dripping.)

As someone who, like a lot of my contemporaries, cut our newsroom teeth as one-or-two-man bands, I feel the pain. I got my start at the Anderson (In.) Daily Bulletin as the junior half of a two-man partnership with Mike Chappell, who went on to become one of the deans of NFL beat writers and who taught me everything I know about doing the job right. As such, we did everything but the photography part  -- where we were in the excellent hands of veteran shooter John Cleary, among others.  We covered the games, wrote the stories, then came in at 6 a.m. to edit and lay out the pages.

It was hectic, sleep-deprived and glorious. And something we presumed was both a profession and a public service.

Silly us.

Silly us, because the parent company/blood-sucking leech that owns the four papers, Boone Newspapers, Inc., has decided, like OOAIP, that professional expertise is unnecessary. And so one of the papers is already running advertisements calling for "citizen submissions."

I can't tell you how badly those two words make my head hurt. And my heart.

Yes, that's right, folks, the sports section will now be in the hands of "citizen-journalists." Who needs professionals when John Q. Parent from five rows up in the bleachers can tell you everything that happened at the big Pork Rind High basketball game last night? Especially the three minutes played by John Q.'s offspring, JimBob, during which he hit his first 3-pointer of the year?

Look! Here's a cellphone photo of that glorious moment!

Yeah, it's a trifle blurry. But, hey, what's quality but just an unnecessary expense? Anybody can take a picture, right?

I'm sorry. I am not usually prone to such bitterness. But it tends to happen when a bunch of soulless  corporate lizards tells you, in so many words, that the profession to which you devoted the majority of your working life was a waste of time. That no one will miss the quality you tried to bring to it.

To hell with 'em. To hell with 'em all.