A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 12

 And now this week's edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the pass-happy Blob feature of which critics have said "Enough passing! Run the ball, dummy!", and also "I'll turn this car right around if you don't start running the ball! I mean it!":

1. "Run the ball, dummy!" (Everyone in America who watched the Colts throw the ball 26 straight times in a 38-31 loss to the Buccaneers, while the best running back in the league, Jonathan Taylor, stood around going "Uh ... guys?")

2. "Hey, look! The Patriots won again!" (People in New England)

3. "Oh, no! The Patriots won again!" (People everywhere else)

4. Meanwhile, the Jets and Texans.

5. Played a football game the Jets won 21-14, in case you were wondering.

6. "We weren't." (People everywhere but Houston and New York)

7. "Can't anybody beat these guys? Rodgers has a busted toe, for God's sake!" (People everywhere but Green Bay)

8. "Hey, don't look at us!" (The once Super Bowl-bound Rams, 36-28 losers to the Pack)

9. "Dammit! Lincoln Riley beat me to it!" (Pete Carroll, after the Seahawks lost again, and Riley landed his old job at USC)

10. "Suck it, Petey!" (Lincoln Riley, presumably)

Irish 'byes

Welp. There goes Brian Kelly's statue.

Or, maybe not, given Notre Dame's irresistible urge to scratch the itch of its own history. Kelly stayed in South Bend for 12 years, long enough for N.D. to confer a certain permanence on the relationship, even if he is running off with some floozy from Baton Rouge. He stayed long enough to knock Rockne off his perch as Notre Dame's winningest coach, and to become the most successful Irish coach since Saint Lou of Holtz, and to get Notre Dame as close to another national title as a man was likely to get it.

Which goes to the relevant point here, as Kelly takes LSU's money and runs: Times have changed.

The landscape is all different now, less forgiving, more nakedly predatory. What passed for civilized behavior in college football, if such a thing existed, is impossibly quaint now, like cold bottles of milk left on your doorstep at dawn. 

Schools that used to honor a kid's commitment now keep recruiting him, if he's desirable enough. Conferences that used to honor one another's borders now routinely stage daylight raids across them, poaching lucrative programs who are all too willing to be poached, conference ties meaning less than nothing now. And it isn't just the starter schools coaches are leaving for the big money.

In the last two days, see, another earthquake again has jumbled the topography. Sportsball World had barely finished processing Lincoln Riley's revolutionary act -- Leaving one historically un-leaveable program for another? Who does that? -- when the news broke that it was happening again. 

Brian Kelly forsaking Notre Dame for LSU? What madness be this?

Rockne and Leahy and Ara and even Saint Lou never did this; in all the spangled history of football at Notre Dame, no coach ever left the Irish until he either lost too many games or got ground to dust by the job. Ditto Bud Wilkinson and Chuck Fairbanks and Barry Switzer at Oklahoma -- one of whom retired to try his hand at politics, the other two to give the NFL a whirl.

No one ever left Notre Dame or Oklahoma for some other school. The very idea was preposterous.

But Riley saw something at USC he couldn't achieve even at Oklahoma, and Kelly perhaps sees the same thing at LSU. Impossible to say, until he tells us, what exactly Kelly's motivation is, outside of the number of zeroes on a paycheck. But perhaps he figured he'd done as much as he was going to do in South Bend, and it was time, at 60, to take one last crack at the only thing he hasn't done.

Which is win a national title.

And which maybe he began to see as far back as 2012 was going to be a bridge too far at Notre Dame.

That's the year the Irish went 12-0 and came to the BCS championship game ranked No. 1, only to get curb-stomped by Alabama 42-14. Subsequent losses in the College Football Playoff -- 30-3 to Clemson in 2019 and 31-14 to Alabama last year -- perhaps signaled that Notre Dame had gained entrance once more to the elite, but not to THE elite.

Perhaps, after 12 years, Kelly realized that was as good as it was going to get. In any event, he's off to LSU, where the competition will be stiffer but the rewards -- LSU has won three national titles since Notre Dame won its last 32 years ago -- conceivably greater.

The SEC, after all, has produced the last two national champions, and four of the last six. 

Notre Dame?

Zero since 1989, when Tone Loc was still a thing.

And when the world was all different, in more ways than one.

A changing of address

 The big news out of college football Sunday was not that Indiana coach Tom Allen didn't even wait 24 hours before firing his offensive coordinator, Nick Sheridan, or that he wanted him gone so badly he's apparently paying some of the buyout from his own pocket.

No, the big news came out of Norman, Okla., where Oklahoma football coach Lincoln Riley decided to follow the Joads to California.*

(* - Cheap, lazy "Grapes of Wrath" reference)

Anyway, Riley, one of the rising young mega-coaches in college football, is going from Oklahoma to USC, which apparently is a seismic event that could potentially alter the entire landscape of the college game. OK, so that is not exactly what the interwhatsis was saying, but it was treating this like a  BIG HUGE DEAL. 

The Blob, of course, just sees this as another really rich guy changing addresses.

This assumes USC will throw money at Riley like confetti, which undoubtedly it will. The Trojans haven't really been the Trojans since Pete Carroll blew town, but there still is a certain amount of prestige that attaches to the program, and Riley likely will be compensated accordingly.

He also will get to live in sunny SoCal, and get to use that as a recruiting selling point, and maybe get to pal around with some movie stars. A few of them might even ditch their currently-chic UCLA gear for a throwback Marcus Allen or Anthony Davis or Reggie Bush jersey.

Those sorts of things aren't going to happen in Norman, which can't even say it's L.A. without the traffic. How do you compete when the best tout you've got is you're, I don't know, The Cooler Omaha?

Other than that, though, Riley-to-USC doesn't seem so much seismic to me as simply swapping one prestigious program for another used-to-be prestigious program (which, granted, rarely happens). Football-wise, it seems like a lateral move at best; you can say Riley will be able to land the choicest recruits in glittery L.A., but he was already doing that in decidedly un-glittery Norman. 

 Of course, if Riley can at least make USC competitive again, that demonstrably would be good for the college game. It loses some shine when USC becomes a semi-automatic W for, say, Notre Dame; page back through history, and you can still hear the thunder of all those epic collisions between USC and the Irish or USC and UCLA or USC and Michigan or Ohio State in the Rose Bowl.

Maybe Riley can restore some of that thunder. Or at least find a way to beat Oregon, the Pac-12's new USC. 

A big, huge deal that might not be. But big enough, surely.

 

Party crashers, Part Deux

Old Bo, he would have loved this business. The Big House, snow coming down all squall-y on an iron gray afternoon. Michigan vs. Ohio State. The Wolverines hitting the Buckeyes in the mouth like this were, say, 1970, and not 2021.

Beautiful stuff, if you were old Bo. You watched the Wolverines line up and fire off the line ... you watched Hassan Haskell take it straight through the Buckeyes' grill time after time ... and you knew a spectral Bo was in Jim Harbaugh's ear, saying "Here, dummy. THIS is how you beat Ohio State."

And so Michigan 42, Ohio State 29 -- first win over the Buckeyes in a decade, and the first win for Harbaugh against them in six tries. Apparently you really can't lose 'em all.

This one they won, finally, without bells, without whistles, without a lot of winking chrome or spinner hubcaps. No, sir. Michigan's stat line for this one was your daddy's sensible Buick: 297 rushing yards on 39 attempts, with Haskins lugging it 28 times for169 yards and five touchdowns. Haskins gashed the Buckeyes for six yards a tote; the Wolverines averaged a gluttonous 7.6 yards per rush as a team.

It doesn't get much more elemental than that. And it again reminded us what a wonderful, crazy thing college football is, because every week's a new page and what happened on the previous page regularly don't mean nuttin'.

I mean, how many of us geniuses out here were saying, after Ohio State turned Michigan State into a smoking crater last week, that it was going to be the Buckeyes and Georgia for the national title, no question about it?

("You?"  you're saying)

Well, yes. Me. Just the other day.

("Try yesterday," you're saying)

OK, so yesterday, then. When I wrote I didn't think the Buckeyes were "beatable by anyone but Georgia right now."

That sound you hear is 111,156 people in Michigan Stadium saying "Ahem."

And now it's Michigan vs. Iowa for the Big Ten title, and if the Wolverines win they're in the CFP. And Ohio State, with two losses, suddenly not only will not be playing Georgia in the national title game, they won't be in the playoff at all. 

Cincinnati will, if it beats Houston next week. Notre Dame -- 11-1 after putting away Stanford 45-14 last night -- might, if Oklahoma State loses to Baylor in the Big 12 title game and Alabama loses to Georgia in the SEC title game.

That would make both the Cowboys and the Crimson Tide two-loss teams. And considering the Crimson Tide almost became a two-loss team yesterday, rallying from 10 points down in the second half and needing four overtimes to beat Auburn in the Iron Bowl ...

No. The Blob will not go there. It will not make that mistake again, assuming one page holds the key to what happens on the next page.

Lesson learned.

Party crashers

 You know who the usual suspects really like right now, in college football? 

They like the Houston Cougars.

The Notre Dames and Oklahomas and Michigans and Oklahoma States, they're all about the Coogs. They're buying the gear and waving the pennants and saying please-please-please-please, Houston, beat Cincinnati next week in the American Athletic Conference championship. Laminate 'em, flambe 'em, beat 'em on a bank-shot field goal off the post, but just beat 'em. The how doesn't matter.

Cincinnati, you see, is unbeaten and un-liked by college football's old money, because they're crashing the Members Only party. They're that annoying guest who somehow got through the door and is underdressed and oh my God, look what he's doing now, Martha, he's eating the foie gras WITH HIS FINGERS! 

Plus he just won't leave.

No, sir. The Bearcats keep winning and keep hogging the fourth and final College Football Playoff spot, and the only way to evict them is for Houston to beat them next Saturday. Houston is pretty darn good itself, 10-1 and about to be 11-1 after the Coogs flatten 1-10 UConn today. It's whomped its A AC foes about as badly as Cincy has, and its only loss was to Texas Tech by 17. 

But it hasn't handed Notre Dame its only loss, like Cincy has, and it needed overtime to beat East Carolina while Cincy cruised past the Pirates 34-13 yesterday. So, there's that.

There's also this: The old money's chances to evict the party-crashers at this point are pretty much zero if what happens today likely happens.

What happens is Michigan (No. 5 in the CFP) will get beat again by Ohio State today -- I know, everyone's making this the Big Game of the season, but I don't think the Buckeyes are beatable by anyone but Georgia right now -- and that will take the Wolverines out of it. Notre Dame (No. 6), after it flattens Stanford tonight, will be finished at 11-1 and can only sit and wait.  And of course Oklahoma will do what Oklahoma does in its annual rivalry game with Oklahoma State, which is beat the Cowboys (No. 7) and knock them out of it.

This means if Cincinnati takes care of its business next week against Houston, it's in. It's hard to see any scenario where the committee jumps Notre Dame or Oklahoma over an unbeaten Cincinnati team without revealing that the whole system is as rigged as everyone thinks it is.

Especially if Alabama loses to either Auburn or Georgia and still stays in the club as a two-loss team.

Logic says that shouldn't be likely, which opens a spot for the Irish or the Sooners and keeps the Bearcats around. But logic and college football rarely run in the same social circles, so who knows. 

In the meantime, in South Bend and Ann Arbor and Stillwater and maybe Norman and Tuscaloosa, the watchword is this: Go Cougars.

Today's Rabbit Ears alert

 Look, I get it. You get old, you get cranky.

And so here the other night was the aging LeBron James, leader of the rest-home Lakers, going into full Get Off  My Lawn mode. In the middle of a Lakers win in Indianapolis, he called over the game officials to have a couple of fans in the courtside seats ejected because they were being big ol' pottymouths, which hurt LeBron's feelings.

Now, the Blob is generally a LeBron-friendly precinct. But ... for God's sake, LeBron.

One wonders how the man managed to find time to strap 39 on the Pacers that night, given his decorum-monitoring duties. It's not the first he's assigned such duties to himself, either; he also got some fans kicked out in Atlanta on another occasion.

Here's what the Blob thinks about that: Lebron, you need to put away the rabbit ears. It's not a good look.

And listen: This is not the Blob holding a brief for the fans here. Fans are frequently douchenozzles, particularly the entitled asshats who sit in the courtside seats. The more money you make, the more you think the sun hunkers down for the night on your hindparts, in a lot of cases. The bigger the bank account, the less some folks think the rules, or even behavioral norms, apply to them.

However.

However, someone with the appreciation for the game's history LeBron has should do some digging. 

If he does, he'll come across Reggie Miller, whose by play with celebrity Knicks taunter Spike Lee became legendary. Spike would say something; Reggie would bury another three and then make the choke sign at him. At no time did he ever consider having Spike ejected for saying hurtful stuff about him.

And if LeBron wants to go back further, perhaps he should travel to Fort Wayne in the 1950s, where the Pistons used to play in the old North Side gym and old ladies in the courtside seats used to stick opposing players with hatpins. As far as I know, none of the opponents demanded the old ladies be removed. They just considered it part of playing a game in Fort Wayne.

Imagine if someone today jabbed LeBron with a hatpin.

He'd have that someone arrested for assault, probably. Because, well, it ain't just the courtside fans who feel entitled these days. 

Defining success down

 I can't tell you how much the win means today to me.

-- Bears coach Matt Nagy

Well, sure. After all, the Bears did shake off all the "distractions" surrounding Nagy's job status to BEAT THE DEFENDING SUPER BOWL CHAMPIONS.

Wait ... they didn't?

OK, so they shook off the distractions to BEAT THE DIVISION LEADERS.

Wait ... so that's a no, too?

OK, OK. So they, um, beat the Lions.

The 0-10-1 Lions.

The doomstruck Lions.

The snakebit, God Hates Us, Bleepity-Bleep It, How Many Times Do We Have To Get Beat On a Last-Second Field Goal Lions.

Because, yeah, it happened again on Thanksgiving Day, because, yeah, the Lions. They trailed 13-7, then they wandered downfield to score a touchdown (It's a Thanksgiving miracle!) and take a 14-13 lead.

And then, of course, as morning follows night, they lost (It's the same old crap!) when the Bears' Cairo Santos kicked a game-winning, 28-yard field goal as the clock hit zeroes.

In Nagyland, this counts as a momentous victory. 

In Nagyland, you can be worse than the only winless team in the league until the very last second, then WIN THE FREAKING SUPER BOWL because your kicker didn't fail on a chippie.

Aye-yi-yi. If this isn't an indictment of what a sorry franchise the Bears have become under Nagy's hand, what is?

Yeah, at 4-7 they're not as bad as the Lions or the Jaguars or the Jets, although maybe they are. Nagy rushed a rookie quarterback into the fray without the tools he needed to succeed, stubbornly provided him with an offense that didn't give him a chance to succeed, and brought a team to Detroit that hadn't won since the middle of October. But, hey, they beat the team everybody beats, so it's all good!

Right?

Um ... right?

Thankful for ... suits

 Today is America's day to commit turkeycide, and to fall asleep watching wretched NFL football, and to recognize, as we should on all days, that most of us have it pretty damn good in spite of all the madness in our midst. And so allow the Blob to join in.

I am thankful, today, for my health and my family and my parents, God bless their memory, and a life far too blessed than I deserve. This year in particular, I'm thankful I married the daughter of a great soul named Dr. Jean Arthur Creek, who passed last week at the full and fruitful age of 93, and whose obituary filled half a page in his hometown paper in Bloomington, In. -- as befits a man who was the personal physician for four presidents of Indiana University, and whose insatiably questing mind was matched by an insatiably compassionate heart, and who was a trumpet player and a lover of Mozart and Jefferson and traveling the world, and also of photography and fishing and the outdoors.

Rest well, Jean. I've known few others, nor will I ever, whose life was so full to the top.

Know what else I'm thankful for, on this day?

Lawyers. 

Wait, before you exit laughing ... let me expand on that.

Let me add that the suits I'm thankful for in particular are the suits who kicked some fairly notorious bullies in the teeth this week, and it was about damn time. They were the attorneys who brought suit against a pair of vandals, Rams owner Stan Kroenke and the National Football League, on behalf of the city of St. Louis.

It was Kroenke, remember -- and his accomplice, the NFL -- who decided St. Louis didn't deserve a franchise in their precious league, and stole it at gunpoint or something like it. They did this because the NFL desperately wanted to tap the lucrative Los Angeles market, and was too lazy to do it through expansion. So the league allowed Kroenke to move the Rams to L.A., adding insult to injury by trashing St. Louis on the way out the door.

Well. On Wednesday, St. Louis got a measure of justice for all of that.

Kroenke and the NFL settled the city's lawsuit for $790 million, which is couch cushion money for both but at least an acknowledgment that they did St. Louis dirty. A more equitable settlement would have contained 10 or 11 figures in it, not just nine, but something's better than nothing in these deals.

So thanks to the suits, at least in this case. But be wary of the check bouncing.

After all, remember who you're dealing with. 

Your turkey of the week

 I know what this is, this epic clash between the winless Lions and the playing-like-they're-winless Bears. This is NFL Tryptophan.

On Turkeycide Day, see, we're going to get Andy Dalton vs. either Jared Goff or, more likely, someone named Tim Boyce. We're going to get a team that can't win for losing (the Bears) vs. a team that can't win, period (the Lions). If this turkey were your Thanksgiving dinner, it would look like this.

NFL Tryptophan, yes, sirree. Start of the second quarter, everyone in the house is going to be stacking zzzz's higher than an elephant's eye.

I don't know why the NFL insists on punishing like this on a day we're supposed to be thankful, except that it's a combination of inertia and tradition. They've been foisting the Lions on us on Thanksgiving for decades now, and, because it's the Lions, it's mostly been six flavors of ugly. I guess it's the NFL's way of making us thankful for college football, and also that it's now hockey and college basketball season as well.

Me, I don't exactly mark my Thanksgivings by the Lions vs. whoever, but I do remember the greatest Lions Thanksgiving ever. And by "greatest" I mean "maybe the worst NFL game ever played, unless you're of the firm belief that the elements make football what it is."

The year was 1968, I was 13 years old, and the 3-7-1 Lions were playing the winless Eagles in 100 yards of goulash. They called it the Mud Bowl, because that's what it was. The field conditions were so horrible no one could do much of anything, both teams mucking around like hogs in a wallow, wearing the same shade of brown. It was like watching a knife fight between troglodytes far beneath the earth's surface.

The Eagles eventually won this travesty 12-0 on four field goals by Sam Baker. The only offensive player who did anything of significance was Eagles running back Tom Woodeshick, who slogged his way to 79 yards on 37 muck-encrusted carries. The quarterbacks, Norm Snead for the Eagles and Greg Landry for the Lions, completed just 13-of-30 passes for 115 yards between them. Together, the Lions and Eagles scratched out just 20 first downs.

It was wretched football. But it made for some arresting visuals.

Tomorrow?

Well, the game in Ford Field will be indoors, of course, because the NFL no longer thinks the elements should be part of the game. So it won't be a Mud Bowl.

A Dud Bowl, however ...

Well. That's a lock,

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 11

 And now this week's special Thanksgiving edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the Blob's turkey of a feature of which critics have said "What? No cranberry sauce with this?", and also "Well, at least we know what THIS has been stuffed with":

1. "What do you call it when an undrafted rookie quarterback takes his team three-quarters of the field in four plays, on the road, to turn a sure loss into a win?" (The Blob)

2. "A Thanksgiving blessing?" (Baltimore Ravens fan)

3. "The bleeping Bears throwing another bleeping game away in the most bleeped-up way possible?" (Chicago Bears fans)

4. "Correct, Chicago Bears fans!" (The Blob)

5. "The Patriots look like a Super Bowl team! Huzzah!" (Patriots fans)

6. "The bleeping Patriots look like a bleeping Super Bowl team! Bleep!" (Everyone else in the NFL)

7. "We have so much to be thankful for!" (The Texans, the Vikings, the Colts, the Cardinals)

8. "Bleep Thanksgiving!" (The Titans, the Packers, the Bills, the Seahawks)

9. "We're just thankful for the Jets." (Dolphins fan)

10. "We're just thankful we only have to watch this crap-a** team for another six weeks." (Jets fans)

Today in mollycoddling news

 God bless the Women's Tennis Association. They've got their jaws clamped around China's ankle and they're not letting go.

The Chinese and their willing enablers, the International Olympic Committee, have finally produced missing tennis player Peng Shuai, sort of, with video of her at a couple of public events and a 30-minute video call with IOC president Thomas Bach in which the IOC says Peng assured them she was safe and well at home in Beijing.

Now, I don't know if that call actually happened, or if Peng said what the IOC said she said. And I don't find that skepticism misplaced.

This is because the WTA remains skeptical itself, if not of the call at least of the entire affair. The Chinese government, after all, certainly seems to have muzzled Peng after she went public with allegations of sexual abuse against a former government official. Her social media post was immediately scrubbed from the interwhatsis, and Peng vanished for three weeks.

The WTA says Peng apparently turning up does not change its call for "full, fair and transparent" investigation into the Peng situation. Again, God bless 'em.

At least they're no mollycoddles -- unlike the IOC, who have willing knuckled to the Chinese out of craven self-interest. There's simply no other way to see the IOC's statement about the alleged video call, given that the Peng situation has cranked up the volume on calls to boycott the Beijing Winter Olympics.

The IOC must be terrified of that. And so they've joined hands with a repressive regime in a campaign of state-sponsored propaganda aimed at easing international condemnation. Their mothers must be so proud.

Unlike the mothers of the WTA members, who actually should be.

A Horsey resurgence

 Well, OK. So nobody saw this coming.

Nobody saw Jonathan Taylor, suddenly the next best thing to the injured Derrick Henry, going into Orchard Park, N.Y. and leaving tread marks all over the Buffalo Bills, once the Super Bowl-bound Buffalo Bills. No one saw the Indianapolis Colts handle the Bills like a dog handles a pork chop. No one saw Colts 41, Bills 17 -- now there's someone else in the ever-shifting AFC to whom everyone might want to pay attention.

Remember when we were all yelling at Frank Reich to RUN THE FOOTBALL, DAMMIT? Remember when Carson Wentz was, yep, the same broken flash-in-the-pan l he was in the last days in Philly? Remember when the Colts were 1-4 and the season was circling the drain?

Prisoner-of-the-moment stuff. All of it.

Because, listen, it was never that bad, ever. Those who kept their wits about them looked at the Colts schedule and noticed they started the season with the Seahawks, the Rams, the Titans and the Ravens in their first five games. None of them have turned out to be as good as they were supposed to be, and the Seahawks are godawful right now. But they weren't then.

Those who kept their wits about them also noticed a pile of Colts were inoperative at the time. And so they looked at that, and looked at the opening acts of the sked, and said "It'll get better."

And it has.

People have healed. Reich is turning the ball over to Taylor and the run game and letting Wentz pick his spots against defenses grown weary from the battering. And now the Horsies are 6-5 and have won five of their last six, ahead lies the Buccaneers, Patriots and Cardinals, but also the 2-8 Texans, the 2-8 Jaguars and the 5-5 Raiders. who've lost their last three and, in the last two, have been outscored 73-27 by the Chiefs and the Bengals.

And the Colts?

Yesterday, Taylor lugged it 32 times for 185 yards and four touchdowns, and caught a pass for a fifth score. The offensive line blew the Bills off the ball the way an offensive line some call the best in the league is supposed to. And the defense picked Josh Allen twice and recovered a fumble.

So, see? It's all working out, just like the cooler heads said it would.

Well. For now, anyway.

Score of the weekend

 So, remember the other day, when the Blob Blobbed about reports that Michigan State was about to hand football coach Mel Tucker a 10-year choke-a-horse extension deal, and how everyone there had apparently forgotten the Charlie Weis Lesson, which is that you never jump the gun on handing10-year choke-a-horse deals to guys?

Your score from Columbus, Ohio, Saturday: Ohio State (9-1) 56, Michigan State (9-1) 7.

Ahem.

Paying forward

 You know what the investment suits like to say: Past performance does not guarantee future results.

What the Blob likes to say is more succinct, but along the same lines.

Charlie Weis, people. Charlie Weis.

Which is to say, Michigan State apparently is about to hand head football coach Mel Tucker a horse-choking 10-year, $95 million extension based primarily on 10 games. OK, so nine games, plus a double-digit loss to Purdue.

State presumably is going to do this mainly because some juicy positions (USC, LSU, etc.) now have Help Wanted signs out, and MSU doesn't want any of those schools poaching their guy. So they'll lock Tucker in, presumably, based on his 9-1 record so far this year and not on the 2-5 mark he put up in his first season in East Lansing, or the 5-7 he produced in his only season at Colorado in 2019. 

Tucker responded the way you figure a guy would who's about out to have a Brink's truck back up to his door. He said on Draymond Green's radio show that Michigan State is a "destination" job.

I suppose it is, sort of.

I also suppose, if MSU closes this deal, it will enjoy continuing to pay Tucker large chunks of cash long after he's moved on to his next destination -- or after Michigan State tells him it's time he found another destination.

I say this because, again, Charlie Weis.

Who, you might recall, got handed his own horse-choking 10-year deal by Notre Dame, and not because of nine wins or even a signature win. He got his deal after a signature defeat, the epic 2005 loss to No. 1 USC in which the Trojans narrowly escaped with the "W." That was apparently enough of a convincer for ND to open its checkbook.

We know what happened next, of course. Weis went 10-3 in 2006 and then ran out of his predecessor Tyrone Willingham's recruits, going 3-9, 7-6 and 6-6 the next three seasons before Notre Dame showed him the road.

But because of that gargantuan deal, up until a short time ago Notre Dame was still paying Weis more per year than Brian Kelly, Muffet McGraw and Mike Brey -- all of whom are still gainfully employed by ND, and all of whom have been far more successful there than Weis ever was.

I hope such an absurd state of affairs is not coming for Michigan State. But, well ...

Well, the Spartans get Ohio State this weekend. Then they get Penn State. Based on past performance, future results suggest Sparty's going to get laminated by the Buckeyes and possibly lose to Penn State, which is far better than its 6-4 record indicates.

Of course, we know what the investment suits say about that.

But what do they know?

What's in a name

Something called Crypto.com bought an arena's naming rights this week from an office supply company, and  now folks in Los Angeles are bemoaning the passing of the office supply company name.

I find this fascinating.

On the one hand, I get that the Staples Center, across 22 years, has seen a whole lot of memorable stuff happen, like Shaq and Kobe and then Kobe and whoever. I also get that, as a consequence, a lot of people will continue to say "I'm goin' to Staples tonight" even after it becomes Crypto.com Arena.

This is perfectly OK with the Blob, especially because I have no idea what Crypto.com actually is, other than a website where you can invest in virtual money (however that works). I envision stacks of Monopoly money strewn around the site, although that's probably not what the virtual money looks like (if it looks like anything).  

In any case, what I find fascinating about all this is how people can become attached to even soulless corporate branding if it's tied to a particular set of memories or experiences.  It becomes "iconic," even if corporate branding is exactly the opposite for the most part.

A Comiskey Park or Jacobs Field or Lambeau Field is iconic, on the other hand, because they were all named for breathing humans who were iconic. You can change Comiskey to Guaranteed Rate Field or Jacobs Field to Progressive Field, but they're always going to be Comiskey or the Jake in the hearts and minds of the faithful.

The corporate suits who've absconded with those names hate that, of course, because they didn't shell out millions for the naming rights so people could ignore the name, no matter how silly. (And let's face it, "Guaranteed Rate Field" is about as silly as it gets unless the Yum Center in Louisville enters the conversation.)  They also hate it when people start calling, say, Lucas Oil Stadium "The Luke," even going so far as to send out sternly worded warnings against it.

As if that's gonna stop anyone. The suits know it, and they hate that, too.

In any event, the worst thing about corporations slapping their names on sporting venues is that, by their very nature, they're transitory. Thus Conseco Fieldhouse in Indy becomes Bankers Life Fieldhouse becomes, now, Gainbridge Fieldhouse. 

Somewhere down the road, of course, it will become something else. All Indy can hope for is it's not something as dumb as Guaranteed Rate Field, like Butterfinger Fieldhouse or the Craftsman Weedwacker String Trimmer & Blower Combo Kit Center.

And God help us all if the crazy MyPillow guy takes a shine to the facility. Yikes.

Wintry nix

 The Blob loves him some Winter Olympics.

Downhill skiing, aka Falling With Style. Short-track speedskating, aka NASCAR With Switchblades. Skeleton, aka Concussion Protocol Alert.

And then, of course, there's ski jumping (more Falling With Style), the biathlon (Guns And Oxygen Debt) and curling (This Is Boring But Why Am I Still Watching It 45 Minutes Later?).

Love it all. Love it.

But when the Winter Games fire up again in February, I may not watch. I even hope there's nothing to watch.

This year's Games are in Beijing, China, see. And right now China is doing what repressive regimes always do when challenged, which is make those who challenge the regime disappear.

Vladimir Putin in Russia is famous for making media critics and political opponents turn up dead, and the Chinese are perhaps even more adept at it. And this time it involves an athlete.

Her name is Peng Shuai, and she's a top-ranked Chinese tennis player who recently accused former Chinese official Zhang Gaoli of sexual abuse. Her post about it on social media subsequently vanished, and now she's gone missing, too.

Beijing's Winter Games have therefore lost some appeal for me. And I would hope it would for the athletes involved, too, though that's likely a fantasy more suited to Disney than reality.

You might hope the world's athletes would tell the Chinese "Produce Shuai unhurt or we bail on your Games," but that's not going to happen. Solidarity among elite athletes is almost always trumped by self-interest, even in times when so many athletes have grown a social conscience. About the only thing that might happen, therefore, are a few scattered protests by the participants.

Even that might be a bridge too far.

In the meantime, here's hoping Shuai turns up alive and unhurt. And that the Chinese government decides to take her charges seriously.

I know. More Disney fantasy.

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 10

 And now this week's edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the Blob's sentimental walk dow short-term memory lane of which critics have said "Remember when we could just forget this?", and also "A feature sure to make you long for traumatic amnesia":

1. "Remember when we were a Super Bowl team?" (The Rams, after getting smoked like a Virginia ham by the Titans and the 49ers)

2. "Remember when the Rams were supposed to smoke us like a Virginia ham?" (The 49ers)

3. "Remember when we had a 20-9 lead over the Jaguars and were just cruising along?" (The Colts, after hanging on to beat the Jags 23-17)

4. "Remember when everyone said we were trash now, and Patrick Mahomes couldn't play anymore?" (The Chiefs, and Patrick Mahomes, after Mahomes threw five touchdown passes in the Chiefs' 41-14 dismantling of the Raiders)

5. "Remember when we were good? Like, last week?" (The Browns, the Steelers, the Broncos, the Buccaneers)

6. "Remember when we were bad? Like, last week?" (The Cowboys, the Bills, the Dolphins)

7. "Remember when I was the legendary Mike White, media darling?" (Jets quarterback Mike White, who threw four picks and had a QBR of 27.7 in the Jets' doleful 45-17 loss to the Bills)

8. "Remember when we were winless, and the worst team in the history of football?" (The Lions, after tying the Steelers in overtime)

9. "Yeah, well, at least we won't lose every game now. And I bet we could beat the Jets like a dozen egg whites if we played 'em." (The Lions, upon being reminded they're still winless)

10. "Remember when there was no way the Lions could beat us like a dozen egg whites?" (The Jets)

Football is dumb

 And, no, not just because Kansas, a 31-point dog, beat Texas in overtime Saturday, 57-56, to win a Big 12 roadie for the first time in 13 years and send the Longhorns to their fifth straight loss, which hasn't happened since the Van Buren administration.

OK, so it's only been 65 years since the Hook 'Ems lost five straight. But you get the idea.

The idea being, football is dumb, especially this year. You can't count on anything or anyone to do what they're supposed to, on either Saturday or Sunday.

I mean, who picks the winless Lions to tie the Steelers, who'd just won four straight?

Who picks the Browns, who just got done crushing the Bengals, to get blown up by the Patriots, 45-7?

And how do you explain Taylor Heinicke winning a head-to-head with Tom Brady?

Dumb, all of it. The Cowboys get crushed by Denver, then turn around and crush Atlanta, 43-3. Denver crushes the Cowboys, then gets crushed by the Eagles, 30-13. Carolina dusts off cherished heirloom Cam Newton to wallop Arizona, 34-10.  The Vikings beat the Chargers in L.A. 

"But Mr. Blob," you're saying now. "Doesn't all this just mean the NFL has achieved escape-velocity parity? Isn't it a good thing when 'on any given Sunday' becomes more than just an old marketing slogan?"

Well ... maybe. But you know what it actually means?

It means the Patriots are prolly going to the Super Bowl again.

Hey, don't laugh (or shudder). The Pats have won four straight and their only loss since October 10 was 35-29 in overtime to the 7-2 Cowboys. And they're doing it with a rookie quarterback (Mac Jones) who gets better every week and a bunch of guys hardly anyone's heard of, like Kendrick Bourne and Jakobi Meyers and Damien Harris and Rhamondre Stevenson. 

So get ready, boys and girls. You can see it coming, can't you?

Super Bowl LVI. February 13.

Patriots vs. Buccaneers. Brady vs. Belichick.

I know. I just woke up screaming at the thought, too.

And now, another ill-fitting suit

 The Blob could never sit on a judicial bench, for any number of very good reasons. 

("Not smart enough?" I hear you saying).

Well, yes. That's one reason. 

Another is there would be too many times when I would violate courtroom protocol by laughing out loud.

Which brings us to the lawsuit filed the other day on behalf of Jon Gruden, the Oakland Raiders coach who lost his job because, well, he's just a dumb ol' football coach. One who likes to send e-mails that poke tired unfunny fun at black people's lips, and project dumb ol' football coach attitudes about gay people and women and black players who protest and the NFL commissioner, Roger Goodell, whom he referred to using the homophobe's favorite term, the "F" word.

All of this, and much more, got him fired, as well it should have. But of course, he's the victim here.

Or so his lawsuit against Goodell and the NFL maintains, charging that they leaked the aforementioned e-mails as part of a "malicious and organized campaign" to run him out of the league, doing so at mid-season to inflict "maximum damage" on Gruden and his team.

This is about the time Judge Blob would slap his knee and begin to howl.

Yes, Jon, and Jon's suits, I'm sure Roger Goodell was sitting in his office at NFL headquarters, scheming how to get rid of one of the league's coaches before,  I don't know, his team squeaked into the playoffs or something. By the time Gruden resigned, after all, his Raiders were 3-2 and had just lost by double digits to the Chargers and Bears. Prior to that, they'd needed overtime to beat the Dolphins.

Sounds like a Super Bowl team to me.

Gruden's lawsuit maintains that, when Gruden failed to resign after the first e-mails hit the papers, Goodell intentionally leaked a pile of others. All of them were collected during the league's investigation into the Washington Football Team, which was alleged to have created a misogynist corporate culture that, among other things, turned its cheerleaders into call girls. 

Thus did Gruden become the victim here.

And again I'm laughing.

Because whether or not Goodell actually leaked more e-mails, Gruden was already done. And he'd done it to himself. Goodell would not have had to lift a finger; with or without the additional published e-mails, Gruden would have been forced to resign in days. Anyone who's ever seen these scenarios unfold knows this.

Sorry, Coach. You want to spew a lot of next-level stupidity and knuckle-dragging ignorance, don't blame others for the consequences. You have the right to say and believe whatever you want to in this country -- look at the crazy shite some our elected representatives trot out there -- but your employer has no obligation to keep cutting you a paycheck if you do. 

In other words, Coach: Man up and take some responsibility. Because the only one who's victimized you is in the mirror.

Ouch

 So I guess this is not the morning where you say, "You know, we play some pretty good Big Ten football here in the Hoosier state."

Not when Purdue the Giant Killer turns up shoeless in the 'Shoe, and gets, well, killed.

Not when Indiana, media darling in August, becomes Just Indiana again in November, getting stovepiped in the Hoosiers' own house by a bunch of mopes from Jersey.

So Ohio State 59, Purdue 31 in the Horseshoe in Columbus.

So Rutgers -- Rutgers! -- 38, Indiana 3 in Memorial Stadium in Bloomington.

It was Purdue's fourth loss against six Ws this season, but maybe this one should count double. This was an avalanche from the hop, the Buckeyes turning 7-7 into 35-7 before the Boilers finally became fully conscious. By that time, early in the second quarter, the thing was done. Scoring 28 more points was no consolation at all for the Purdues, except to prove this wasn't a case of Purdue doing Purdue and showing up with a hangover after a big win.

No, this was just a better team taking the lesson of Purdue's upsets of Iowa and Michigan State, and applying it with sledgehammer. Freshman sensation C.J. Stroud was 31-of-38 for 351 yards and five touchdowns; Garrett Wilson, Jaxson Smith-Njigba and Chris Olave combined for 28 catches, 230 yards and all five scores, with Wilson adding a rushing TD; running back TreVeyon Henderson, another freshman, ran for two more scores.

Purdue?

Well, the Boilers did what they could. Aidan O'Connell went 40-of-52 for 390 yards and four touchdowns, and David Bell caught 11 of his throws for 103 yards. But Purdue's 480 total yards weren't nearly enough as Ohio State whipped the Big Ten West co-leaders like they were Directional Hyphen State Tech.

It was representative of how scary the Buckeyes can be, at least offensively. It wasn't representative of how good Purdue can also be, considering the Boilers are not, in fact, Directional Hyphen State Tech.

Indiana, however ...

Well, that's not another story. And not a pretty one.

The team everyone loved back when all this started hit rock bottom yesterday, never lifting a finger to keep fellow also-ran Rutgers from turning Memorial Stadium a private playground. Unlike Purdue, the injury-ravaged Hoosiers simply didn't show up; unlike Purdue, they're now 2-8 and still winless in the conference at 0-7.

To say no one saw this coming is simply to repeat what we've all been saying virtually every week since the season began.

To say very few people saw Ohio State 59, Purdue 31 coming is merely to acknowledge that Purdue is better than that score indicates, and Ohio State can't possibly be much better than it was yesterday.

And that it may not have to be.

Discovering the discovered

 You ride this rock of ours long enough, you see stuff. You see, for instance, stuff that people came up with years ago regarded as revolutionary.

And so to last night, and Lamar Jackson running for his life from a pocket clogged with Dolphins. The Dolphins brought everyone but the town drunk to beat Jackson and the Ravens -- a team they had no chance of beating unless they did something desperate -- and it all looked new and exciting and completely daring.

What the Dolphins did, basically, was say, "Ah, screw this, let's just blitz everybody and see what happens." And so they did.

Twenty-four times last night, according to ESPN's Jamison Hensley, they brought defensive back blitzes, sacking Jackson four times and pressuring him into the worst night of his career. Once in the fourth quarter, they even blitzed four DBs and got away with it.

Know what I was thinking, geezer that I am, when I read all that this morning?

I was thinking, Golly, it's the return of Larry Wilson.

Also, Gosh, the Bears' 46 defense just crawled out of Buddy Ryan's grave.

Because, yes, I'm that old.

Larry Wilson, for those born too late, was a Hall of Fame safety for the St. Louis Cardinals who blitzed ALL THE TIME back in the 1960s, because that's what you did when you played for the Cardinals in those days. They had the ageless Jim Hart at quarterback and Johnny Roland at running back and a tight end named Jackie Smith, and that was about it. They were pretty so-so otherwise, which meant Larry Wilson had to blitz his maniacal heart out just keep opponents off-balance.

So there's that.

There's also the Bears 46, Buddy Ryan's brainchild, which was the most dominant defense in NFL history in 1985, when the Bears won their only Super Bowl. They called it the 46 because of safety Doug Plank, who did a lot of Larry Wilsoning and set the tone for a pretty simple concept: When in doubt, bring everyone.

Ironically, only the Dolphins figured it out that season. Everyone else was as overwhelmed as ...

Well. As overwhelmed as Lamar Jackson and the Ravens were last night.

When something long ago discovered was re-discovered.

The humility of service

(I wrote this today for the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, my old hang, because it's Veteran's Day and therefore the right time to take a timeout from Sportsball World for saner matters. Please pick up a copy or go the online version today, because local journalism matters more than ever in these unhinged times, and if it goes away no one will be left to keep tabs on the rascals among us. Here's the link to subscribe. Do it today.) 

Every year on Veteran's Day I go back there, in my mind. It's been 16 years now since I toured the American sector of the Western Front in France, but on this day it always feels like I can reach out and touch it. It feels as near as my next breath.

These days, in that place where American boys fought and died in the autumn of 1918, there are neat green cemeteries from the Argonne to Thiaucourt, row upon row of white crosses arrayed in the geometry of remembrance. And, amid fields of wheat and the crumbling remains of ancient pillboxes, there is an immense dome of gleaming white marble.

Built in 1931 atop an escarpment called Montsec, it commands what was the old St. Mihiel salient, and now is just quiet French farmland. But though it commemorates the first major American operation of the Great War, hardly any Americans ever visit, or perhaps know it exists.

I always wonder why that is so, when I think of that place on Veteran's Day. And I always will.

It's an old bromide that we can never thank our veterans enough for their service, and yet somehow we always fall short. If we remember what they did for us in Normandy or Fallujah or on Iwo Jima or Okinawa, we just as readily forget sometimes what they did in Belleau Wood or Frozen Chosin or the killing fields of the Ia Drang Valley. And, more shamefully, we especially forget when they return home.

I met my share of veterans, in my four decades as a journalist. I met Korean veterans and Vietnam veterans and, once, 26 years ago in the living room of a modest home near Georgetown Square, a vet who survived both Tarawa and Okinawa in World War II. 

I also met a man who, when he was 23 years old, was shooting down Nazi jets over Europe in a P-51 Mustang. His name was Chuck Yeager, and perhaps you've heard about what he did later on, something involving the sound barrier. 

In all cases, they are men who've seen and done things no human being should ever see or do, and they talked about those things only with the greatest reluctance. It is not that they didn't remember. It's that they were unfailingly polite, and didn't wish to burden us with old fantastical tales. 

I guess it felt too much to them like bragging about things no one should ever brag about.

Everyone who has ever experienced war in closeup knows how true that is. They leave the bragging to fools and charlatans who, when it was their turn to serve, hid under their beds. One of them, a swaggering gasbag of no particular merit, famously mocked a decorated Vietnam War POW for being captured. 

I won't think about him today. I'll think instead about the no-big-deal humility of Chuck Yeager, and the quiet dignity of the Korean War vets I met a quarter century ago, and of so many other men and women of so much more quality and consequence.

Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you for you service, and for your example.

First impressions

 First impressions are very often the worst impressions. If they weren't you'd still be wearing that Homer Simpson Radioactive Green leisure suit about which you once thought this: "Man, I am stylin'."

Now, of course, you rightly consider it an unfortunate byproduct of the 1970s, aka The Decade When Style said "Man, I Ain't Down With This".

And so the wise person steps warily this morning when assessing the Mike Woodson model Indiana Hoosiers, who won their season opener over Eastern Michigan last night. The Blob, however, is not particularly wise, nor has any pretensions in that area -- which is why my very first first impression was this:

Gee. They still can't shoot.

And also: Gee. They still need to work on that killer instinct thing.

Oh, the Hoosiers took care of bidness, 68-62, but not before they futzed around enough to inject some unnecessary drama in the proceedings. Eastern Michigan built a ladder of 3-pointers and climbed out of a 20-point hole in the second half, closing from 48-28 to 59-58 with 2:46 to go before the Hoosiers found their dormant killer instinct and put the pesky MAC entree away.

It was an Archie Miller-esque stretch, to be distressingly honest. Also Archie Miller-esque was the Hoosiers' shooting, which played the Ironworkers Anthem on the rim just like always: 26-of-62 from everywhere (41.9 percent), and a familiar-looking 4-of-24 from the 3-point arc (16.7 percent).

However.

However, the Woodson Hoosiers are not the Miller Hoosiers, and that  you could  see too last night. They play a radically different, more aggressive offensive scheme, and, perhaps most significantly, they get in your shirt defensively. Woodson hasn't played for Bob Knight in 40 years, but once a Knight disciple, always a Knight disciple.

So, then. The final version of the first impression?

One, it's only November 10.

Two, it's only November 10.

Which is to say, the Woodson model Hoosiers are still very much an unfinished work, and they are going to better at everything as Woodson further molds them in his image. It's going to be fun to check back in with them in a month or two and see how much different they look than they did last night.

In other words: Stay tuned.

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 9

And now this week's edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the astonishing Blob feature of which critics have said "Gosh! I'm so astonished!", and also "Astonished? More like FLABBERGASTED!":

1. "Well, I'm just FLABBERGASTED!" (America, after the Jaguars beat the Bills 9-6)

2. "Hey, no fair! You mean they've got a Josh Allen, too?" (Bills fans, after Jacksonville's Josh Allen, a defensive end, sacked Bills' quarterback Josh Allen, pressured him into an interception and recovered a fumble in the Jags' win)

3. What do you mean Matt Nagy almost beat us?" (Steelers fans, after Pittsburgh blew a 20-6 lead and needed a field goal with 26 seconds left to beat Nagy's Bears, 29-27)

4. "Oh, wait, it was Justin Fields who almost beat us. Well, that's very different." (Steeler fans, channeling Emily Litella, after Bears rookie QB Fields led the Bears back to the brink of victory with a stirring fourth-quarter drive)

5. "THE COWBOYS ARE THE GREATEST TEAM IN THE HISTORY OF PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL!" (Cowboys fans, before the Cowboys played like goofs in a 30-16 loss to the Broncos)

6. "Hey, no fair!" (Cowboys fans, after the Broncos laminated their Boys)

7. "Remember a couple of weeks ago, when we were a lock for the Super Bowl? Yeah, those were good times. Gooood times." (The Bengals, after getting their hindparts handed to them for the second straight week, this time by the hated Browns)

8. (Even though the Browns were without Odell Beckham Jr., whom they finally cut loose after weeks of Wide Receiver Theater from the disgruntled OBJ)

9. "Hey, no fair!" (OBJ, after the Browns' 41-16 win without him)

10. 'Neener-neener-neener!" (The Browns, right back at him)

Meanwhile, in NASCAR ...

 (Alternate header: "Oh, no! Not another NASCAR post!")

Yes, another NASCAR post.

I promise, this is the last one for, um, about three months.

This post is simply a hat tip to everyone getting the script right, or karma behaving, or the stars aligning correctly. Because out in Phoenix yesterday, Kyle Larson, who dominated all season, won the 2021 Cup title the way he should have, winning the last race of the season and his tenth all told. 

He did it by holding off Martin Truex Jr. late, which was as it should have been even though Truex is a good dude and no one would have kicked up a fuss if he'd won the Super Bowl yesterday. But Truex won just four races, and only one after Darlington on May 9. And he came into the 10-race playoffs having finished 15th, 10th and 29th in the three previous races before turning it around enough to keep moving on in each round.

But Larson was the man from Day One in '21. So it was only right that, on Day Last, he was the one hoisting the big trophy.

His year. His title.

Spoiler what?

 So maybe it's time to retire the word, as Boiler Up floods the Ross-Ade Stadium turf again like water from a burst main. Spoilermakers? Really?

Not anymore, perhaps. Maybe it's time to acknowledge the Purdue Boilermakers are just a pretty damn good football team when they've got their minds right, unranked though they may be.

Because here it is November again, when night comes down hard and fast in the late afternoon/early evening, and here again is the Sea O' Humanity, making the field disappear in Ross-Ade. And here again are numbers on a scoreboard sending shock waves through college football.

Purdue 40, No. 3 Michigan State 29.

Second time in a month the Purdues have knocked off a top-five team while unranked -- something they've now done 17 times in school history, more than any other college football team in the land.

They're 6-3 now and tied for first in the Big Ten West, and they're doing it with defense and a bionic-armed quarterback -- where have we heard that one before, in West Lafayette? -- and a crazy-good wide receiver. They're also doing it with a head coach who's occasionally a bit crazy himself, seeing as how he likes every to draw up a play in the dirt every so often just to see what happens.

Saturday afternoon, Jeff Brohm drew up some sort of baroque reverse/flea flicker/screen pass he said he stole from some high school somewhere. Jackson Anthrop took it 39 yards to the house, because of course he did.

The bionic-armed quarterback, Aidan O'Connell, meanwhile threw the football 54 times, completing an absurd 40 of them, for 536 yards and three touchdowns. The crazy-good receiver, David Bell, caught 11 of them for an equally absurd 217 yards and two scores.

And, sure, you can say the Boilers caught Michigan State in a trap game, considering the Spartans were coming off a giddy come-from-behind victory over Michigan, their most bitter rival. And you can say the win at then-No. 2 Iowa has paled a bit since, considering the Hawkeyes have gone on to lose big to Wisconsin and barely scrape past sadsack Northwestern, 17-12.

And, yes, there was that limp effort against the Badgers the week after the Iowa win, a 30-13 loss that might simply have been Purdue doing Purdue things -- i.e., ascending to the heights, and then inexplicably stepping in it, as if the view made them dizzy. And so the jury seems destined to be forever out on the Boilers.

But at some point, when do the Spoilers just become the Boilers? When do we acknowledge that, in some respects, they're having the season Indiana had last year, with everything breaking their way and the Boilermakers good enough to cash in on it?

I'd say now would be a good time. 

A flat earther grows in Green Bay

 In which Aaron Rodgers says he's not something, and then says a bunch of stuff that confirms he's exactly what he said he wasn't.

"I'm not an anti-vaxx flat-earther," declared Q-Aaron (hat tip: Grace McDermott of Deadspin) on Pat McAfee's radio show yesterday.

Then he said he's un-vaccinated in part because he's a-feared it will make him sterile, and said the "woke mob" (huh?)  will be after him now, and said -- oh, lord -- he did his own VERY THOROUGH research on the internet, and also got VALUABLE MEDICAL ADVICE from Joe Rogan, Ace Podcaster.

And, well, there it is: The whole flat-earther, anti-vaxx catechism, right down to whining about how the unvaccinated are being "canceled" (huh?) by the media, and questioning if  the vaccine even works because people are still getting the Bastard Plague anyway -- which only proves he doesn't know how vaccines work.

Why, he even quoted Martin Luther King Jr. Because, you know, there's nothing rich white guys like better than to pretend they're fighting for civil rights like MLK simply because they're being asked to follow the rules.

Well, Rodgers ain't havin' it. He'll keep treating himself with Ivermectin, even though there's zero evidence it's effective against the Bastard Plague, and is nothing but metaphoric kin to the snake oil Allardyce T. Merriweather hawked in "Little Big Man."

(I know, I reference "Little Big Man" a lot here on the Blob. This is because I like "Little Big Man", and believe it contains valuable life lessons, like don't go around bragging about how many men you've killed when all you can do is shoot three bottles throwed in the air.)

But back to Rodgers.

He'll keep taking Ivermectin, because he believes people hate it only because Donald Trump -- now there's a snake-oil salesman -- endorsed it. He'll remain unvaccinated no matter what the "woke mob" (again, huh?) has to say about it.

And that's fine.

That's fine, because it's a free country, and you're allowed to be as kooky as you want, which is pretty kooky these days. And if it's true Aaron Rodgers really is allergic to an element in the vaccine, then he shouldn't take it. 

But if that's true, why didn't he say so when he was asked point-blank about his vaccination status, instead offering a lame explanation yesterday for why he didn't? Why did he hide behind the deceptive word "immunized"? And why did he play the diva by ignoring league protocols for the unvaccinated, instead of complaining he's being persecuted because he's rightly been criticized for that?

You shouldn't have to tell a 37-year-old man to grow up. But, geez, Aaron, grow up.

If you want to don a tinfoil hat like the rest of the Trumpian nutbars, have at it. But don't quote MLK at us when people point at you and laugh.

This is some serious business here, this Bastard Plague. Almost a million Americans are dead because of it. Entertaining fringe lunacies and potentially exposing those around you to the bug is not behavior the rest of us should be compelled to indulge uncritically. 

So we won't. No matter how much Aaron Rodgers martyrs himself.

Hey, look, it's the NASCAR Super Bowl

And, yes, they're still racin'. 

"But why?" you're saying.

I don't know. They just are.

"In November?" you're saying.

Yes, in November.

"When do they stop?" you're saying.

Well ... they stop Sunday, when the final race of the season -- NASCAR's Super Bowl, as it were -- takes the green in Phoenix. Four drivers will decide who wins the Cup title for 2021 that day. They are defending champion Chase Elliott; former champion Martin Truex Jr.; the season's most dominant driver, Kyle Larson; and Denny Hamlin.

The Blob likes Larson, if only because he's won 10 times this year, including three of the last four races and four of the last seven. Or maybe Elliott, because if he wins he'd be the first back-to-back Cup champ since Jimmie Johnson won five straight titles between 2006 and 2010.

Also Elliott is a good dude. And his daddy, Bill, is a good dude.

"What about Truex?" you're saying.

Well, he's a good dude, too.

"What about Hamlin?" you're saying.

Well, the last we saw of Hamlin he was trying to interfere with Alex Bowman's burnout and saying some ugly things about him last week at Martinsville, because Bowman rooted Denny out of the groove on his way to the win. This happens all the time on short tracks like Martinsville, and you'd think Hamlin would know that by now, but, nah, guess not.

Of course, if he wins Sunday, he'll be all sweetness and light and we'll forget what a douche canoe he was last week.

"I won't," you're saying.

And why is that?

"Because the Packers are playing the Chiefs  at the same time," you're saying.

Ah.

A diva grows in Green Bay

 Well. Now we know something you can spell without "Aaron Rodgers."

You can spell "team player." Also, "team first." Also, "straight shooter."

You can spell all of those without Aaron Rodgers, because Aaron Rodgers is none of those. First he lies to the media about being vaccinated, or at the very least head-fakes the truth ("Yes, I've been immunized," he said, although he obviously wasn't). Then he traipses his unvaccinated self around without masking up, violating league rules and quite possibly exposing his teammates to the Bastard Plague.

Finally, of course, he tests positive for the BP -- who didn't see that coming? --and gets himself put into quarantine with the Packers at 7-1 and battling for supremacy in the NFC.

A team player he is not, in other words. Team first he is not.

He is, it seems, something of a diva after all, a guy who apparently thinks the rules that apply to everyone around him don't apply to him. And now he's sidelined because, I don't know, he believed it was his "personal choice"  or something not to do what he had to do to keep himself on the field.

For that, you can make him into some kind of principled freedom fighter if you want. The Blob prefers the more accurate description: Selfish.

I don't know exactly when this country lost its damn mind. Some say it was when we elected a self-aggrandizing circus clown president in 2016, although the brain fever that elected him clearly predates him. What I do know is at some point anti-vaxxers transformed from the fringe loonies they are into a voting bloc championed by some of our less-hinged elected officials. It is a wonder.

And so, as a pandemic continues to kill Americans at an alarming rate -- we're closing in on a million dead now -- there is a significant swath of Americans that refuses to get vaccinated against it, believing it's the vaccine that's actually killing us. Also, that it causes autism or the Heartbreak of Psoriasis or whatever.

And suddenly, common sense measures like requiring schoolkids to mask up are being treated like the Intolerable Acts by crazed mobs of alleged grownups -- whose example to their children is you don't have to obey the rules if you don't agree with them, and it's OK to shout down anyone who says otherwise. Some great parenting there, boy.

Now, I'm not saying Aaron Rodgers is the avatar for all that. But when he talks about how much "research" he's done, you can't help rolling your eyes. Because where have we heard that nonsense before?

In any case, the Packers will now be forced to start Jordan Love at quarterback against the Chiefs, thanks to all that "research" Rodgers has done. The Diva, meanwhile, will sit at home, secure in his principled stand or whatever this is. Bully for him.

It's his right not to get vaccinated if he chooses. But it's ours to regard him as being stubborn or a weenie or a giant douche because of it.

And so the Blob does.

Brav-o

 This guy out there on the bump, we've seen him before. He's mowing down the Houston Astros in the biggest start of his life -- six innings, four hits, six Ks, zero runs -- and, yeah, now we recognize him, now he's taking us right back to the summer of 2013, when he was out there on the bump in downtown Fort Wayne.

Max Fried went 6-7 that summer for the Fort Wayne TinCaps, with a 3.49 ERA. He was 19 years old. By the next summer, the San Diego Padres judged him the top pitching prospect in their system.

Last night, he became something else: A guy with a World Series ring.

Slapped a padlock on the muscular Astros' bat rack, Fried did, and Series MVP Jorge Soler gave him all the cushion he needed with a three-run bomb, and the Atlanta Braves, who were Nowheresville as late as the first of August, shut out the 'Stros 7-0 to win the World Series in six games.

It was a fairy-tale finish to a hell of a fairy tale, period, considering the Braves won only 88 games this season and lost their biggest star, Ronald Acuna Jr., to a season-ending injury in early July. But the rest of the young Braves' core picked up the slack, and GM Alex Anthopoulos swung some deals at the trade deadline that brought in Soler and Eddie Rosario, Adam Duvall and Joc Pederson, and the Braves wound up winning 36 of their last 55 games.

Then they knocked off the Brewers in the NLDS and the Dodgers in the NLCS -- a team that had won 18 more games during the regular season.

And then ... 

Well, then they took care of the favored Astros, behind Fried and Soler and veteran Freddie Freeman, and that gifted and exuberant young core. Oh, and also behind a 66-year-old manager who spent 40 years riding buses as a minor-league skipper before finally reaching the big chair in 2016.

Brian Snitker came to the Braves organization as a 22-year-old catcher/first baseman and never left, a baseball lifer well-versed in both dreams deferred and dreams come true. He hails from tiny Macon, Ill., where he was a sophomore on the Macon Ironmen team that made a miracle run to the 1971 Illinois state championship game -- a story later immortalized by author Chris Ballard in his book "One Shot at Forever." 

Snitker's shot at this forever took 45 years, but he got there. And if it wasn't quite as much a miracle as Macon in '71, it was surely close enough.

"I'm numb," he said late Tuesday night, as the Brav-os celebrated their first World Series title in 26 years, after a record 16 postseason failures since. "I'm numb."

No doubt a side effect of all those bus rides, rattling along between Where's This and Halfway To That. But you know what?

I'm guessing the numbness felt pretty good, all in all.

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 8

 And now this week's edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the irresponsibly unpredictable Blob feature of which critics have said "Wait, what?", and also "Wait ... WHAT??":

1. "Wait, what?" (Colts fans, upon watching Carson Wentz, after 830 attempts or whatever without an interception, throw the dumbest interception in the history of football)

2. "Wait ... WHAT??" (Titans defensive back Elijah Molden, after Wentz flooped the ball into the air and into Molden's arms for a walk-in pick six)

3. "Wait, what?" (Colts fans, after watching Frank Reich hand the ball to Jonathan Taylor, the NFL's second-leading rusher, just 16 times)

4. "Wait ... WHAT??" (Titans fans, after learning the league's leading rusher, Derrick Henry, could possibly be lost for the season after injuring his foot against the Colts)

5. "Wait, what?" ( Fans of the Super Bowl-bound Bengals, after watching their team lose to the Jets)

6. "Wait ... WHAT??" (Fans of the Super Bowl-bound Bengals, after watching their team lose to some guy named Mike White, this week's Jets quarterback)

7. "Wait, what?" (Tom Brady, after losing to Jameis Winston)

8. "Wait ... WHAT??" (Tom Brady after losing to Winston, then seeing Winston carted off with a knee injury, then losing to Trevor Siemian, who replaced Winston and threw for 159 yards and a touchdown with no turnovers despite America's reaction: "He's still in the league?")

9. "Wait, what?" (Vikings fans, after watching the Cowboys beat their team in the last 51 seconds behind 325 passing yards and two second-half touchdowns from some guy named Cooper Rush)

10. "Wait ... WHAT??" (America, after realizing the Cowboys are now 7-1 and -- oh my God! -- in the Super Bowl conversation)

That workin' life

 I don't know what's going on in Calvin Ridley's life right now. Neither do you.

That's because what's going on in his life is a personal matter, and that makes it none of our business. This is, of course, heresy in our TikTok/Instagram/Twitter-fied world. Nothing is a personal matter anymore, or so some presume; it's all sustenance for the public maw. And when you are moderately famous, as Calvin Ridley is, that goes double.

Well, to hell with that.

Ridley, the Atlanta Falcons' best wide receiver, is taking a break from wide receiving in the middle of the football season, and not because he's injured or hurting or otherwise incapacitated, at least not physically. What's broken or bruised or nicked up is on the inside.

So he's taking a break for awhile. Released a statement yesterday announcing it, explaining it was a mental health deal. His coaches and teammates and the ownership of the Falcons issued statements of support, and whatever judgment there is on the matter therefore should stop right there.

Of course, this being 2021, it probably won't. And so here is mine, as a member of the Just Rub Some Dirt On It generation: 

Damn. These people sound almost civilized.

Because, listen, my generation grew up in the shadow of the generations of our fathers and their fathers before them, who drilled into us that if you're paid to do a job, you do it, and no lily-livered excuses. So you went to work sick (because that was expected, no matter what the bosses said), and you worked weekends and holidays when the job required you to. And if the bosses were flaming sons of bitches, well ...

That was just life. It sucks, and then you die.

And your mental health?

Hell, that was just feelings. Real men and women didn't have 'em did they?

My judgment on that: Damn, were we stupid.

And also: Damn, did a lot of lives wind up broken on the reef because, unlike Calvin Ridley or Simone Biles or any number of others who've lately rejected the mantra of Just Tough It Out, mental health was something that never entered the conversation.

God knows that was the case when I came up. The mental and emotional state of us deadline grunts was never a consideration when there was a story to break. You broke it even if it broke you. And then you got up the next day and did it again.

It was almost a form of insanity sometimes, I recognize now, nurtured too often by the  belief that ours was as much a calling as a profession. And so there was a particular night when reporters wound up sobbing in the bathroom because they'd been ordered to beat the rival paper's six-month investigative project in a single day. And there was another particular night, early in the wee hours after a party, when I could almost see a colleague unraveling as she talked about a particularly horrific car accident on which she'd reported.

I often joke I still have deadline PTSD dreams, all these years away from newsrooms and pressboxes. But sometimes jokes are just truth tied up in a bow. 

And so Calvin Ridley stepping away at midseason to deal with a mental health issue?

You won't hear me sneering about it.

You'll hear me applauding instead.