Unraveling

I don't know how you know when the stitching has come too much undone. Is it when you can see through the fabric as if it were milky glass? Or is it not until the fabric at last begins to fall apart in your hands?

So many questions, here in the Year of the Bastard Plague. So few answers, because when has there been a year like this since before almost any of us were born?

A few items from Sportsball World, as we lean hard into the Season of Christmas Music Until You Want To Just Scream:

* Because of the Plague, the Denver Broncos have no roster quarterbacks available today for their game against the New Orleans Saints.

* Because of the Plague, the Ravens-Steelers game has been moved twice and will now be played Tuesday, maybe, although the Ravens now have 17 players or staff members who've tested positive.

* Partly because of the Plague, the Indianapolis Colts will be without five starters today.

* Because of a massive outbreak in Santa Clara County, Calif., officials have prohibited all contact sports, which means the San Francisco 49ers have to find another place to practice and play their next two home games.

* Because of a similar outbreak among the Ohio State Buckeyes, the best team in the Big Ten is now in danger of not playing enough games to be eligible for the Big Ten championship. They've already had two games canceled; one more and they're out.

On and on and on. And so the landscape shifts, subtly at first and then seismically. And so the Plague alters situation, and through that alters outcome.

And again, I don't know. How bad does it have to get before the NFL or the Big Ten just shut everything down, at least temporarily? How ludicrous must  the circumstance before someone finally just says "Ah, to hell with it, this is ridiculous"?

Where is the line? Or is there one?

I'd think an NFL team being forced to play with none of their roster quarterbacks might be a tipping point. I'd think another NFL team being forced to abandon its own stadium might be, or one of the four teams currently in line for the College Football Playoff being in peril of missing its own conference title game might be.

Instead, all I know is this: There should be a giant asterisk attached to all of it. Like, one so big you mistake it for the rising sun.

Because, listen, someone's going to win the CFP and the Super Bowl, and when they do it will be impossible to ignore the extenuating circumstances. It's all unraveled so much, and the unraveling has so unleashed a cascade of situations that never would have happened otherwise, that it's not just the elephant in the room but an entire herd of them. 

And so, the asterisk. Or maybe just the year itself, because "2020" has become an asterisk in its own right.

Thus you can say the Pittsburgh Steelers or whoever are "Super Bowl Champions*", or it can just read "Super Bowl Champions, 2020." Ditto with Alabama or Notre Dame or whoever wins the CFP.

In any case, you gotta do something to indicate this was not like any year, any season, ever. History demands its accounting, after all.

Or so says the Blob*.

(* Written in 2020)