Coachin' 'em up

 Caleb Williams came thisclose to beating the surging 49ers on the coast the other night, in one of those who-has-the-ball-last 42-38 shootouts. That he, and the Chicago Bears, failed on an incompletion into the end zone from the 2-yard line is no discredit to them, however.

The 49ers, after all, are on track to be the top seed in the NFC, unless it's the Seattle Seahawks. And the Bears just clinched the NFC North title for the first time in seven years.

And, yes, one of the big reasons they've done -- gone from 5-12 a year ago to 11-5 with one game left in the season -- because Caleb Williams has become an elite QB virtually overnight.

Checked all the boxes, the second-year pro has. Thrown for 3,730 yards and 25 touchdowns for a team built on defense and the run game. Turned it over just eight times in 16 games -- six picks and two lost fumbles. Been Mr. Clutch in the fourth quarter, leading the Bears to six come-from-behind wins in the last two minutes.

Know what else?

He's only been sacked 23 times. That's a whopping 45 fewer sacks than he took last year.

You can put that down to a number of factors, not the least of which are improved maturity and an improved offensive line. But mainly you can put it down to two words: Ben Johnson.

The first-year head coach has retooled a Bears offense that last year ranked 28th in the league in points and dead last in total yards. This year? With one game left to play, it ranks  ranks 10th in the former (26.6 ppg) and third in the latter (377.75 ypg). 

A lot of that unquestionably is because of the way Johnson, a noted quarterback whisperer, has coached up Williams.  If that suggests the right coach can work wonders with an NFL quarterback -- especially a young one -- well, you're damn right he can. Numerous examples exist.

Baker Mayfield, for instance, was a bust in Cleveland but, once released from captivity, became a solid citizen in Tampa Bay. Sam Darnold found new life in Minnesota after escaping the crash site that is the New York Jets. And Drake Maye, Bo Nix and Brock Purdy landed in exactly the right situation when they wound up in, respectively, New England with Mike Vrabel, Denver with Sean Payton and San Fran with Kyle Shanahan. 

All of them are thriving. As is Caleb Williams -- whom at times last year you could be forgiven for thinking was just another bust in a seemingly infinite congo line of Bears QB busts.

And then ...

And then Ben Johnson arrived. And suddenly Caleb Williams went from being the next Peter Tom Willis to being ... well, to being the Caleb Williams the Bears saw when they took him with the No. 1 pick in 2024.

Amazing. 

Or, you know, not.

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 17

 And now this week's edition of The NFL In So Many Words -- the turning-over-a-new-leaf Blob feature which throws out the old and welcomes in the new, and of which critics have said "Throwing out! What a great idea!", and also, "You wanna see throwing out? Come up to the 52nd floor and I'll throw you outta this window!":

1. "No Chiefs? Woo-hoo, it's finally out with the old and in with OUR YEAR!" (Bills fans)

2. "Twelve points? Whatta you mean we only scored 12 points?" (Also Bills fans, after the Eagles marched into Buffalo and beat Josh Allen 'n' them 13-12)

3. Meanwhile, the Colts!

4. Lost their sixth straight game and seventh in the last eight as Philip Rivers remembered he was 44 years old. Eliminated from the playoffs after starting 8-2, leading the division and seemingly turning over a new leaf after years of late-season collapse and failure. 

5. "Geez, it only seems like yesterday that we were 8-2, leading the division and were seemingly turning over a new leaf after years of late-season collapse and failure." (The Colts).

6. "Geez, same old Colts." (Colts fans, sighing, shaking their heads and shucking off their game-worn Mike Vanderjagt jerseys)

7.  In other news, the Giants crushed the Raiders in Vegas to (seemingly) lock up the No. 1 pick in the draft for the home team; the Patriots crushed the Jets in New York to lock up the AFC East title; the Seahawks crushed the Panthers in Charlotte; and -- wait, what's this? The Browns beat the Steelers in Cleveland, 13-6? 

8. "Ha! We won! Suck on that, Rodgers! Also Big Ben, and  Mason Rudolph, and, I don't know, the 2,000 or so other Steelers who've beaten us like a throw rug for entire eons!" (Browns fans)

9. "Ha! We won! Suck on that, America!" (The Patriots)

10. "Ha! We won! Suck on that, NFL Draft!" (The Giants)

A labor of shenanigans

 Well, that didn't take long. Surprise, surprise.

Two days after the Fort Wayne Komets and the rest of the ECHL's workforce went on strike, the supposedly unresolvable conflict between the league and the Professional Hockey Players Association was resolved. It was magic, I tell you, magic!

Or, you know, not.

Actually it was your typical labor/management shenanigans, which have a long and splendidly phony history. The players demand changes. The owners plead poverty. The players say, bullpucky, you're sitting on more dough than the GNP of Luxembourg, and we're not getting our cut. The owners say the players aren't bargaining in good faith; the players says, nuh-uh, it's the owners who aren't bargaining in good faith,.

And yada-yada, bluster-bluster, everyone follows the well-trodden path. 

The players go on strike.

The owners say it's a damn shame, especially for the fans -- whom they've been sticking it to for years with their king's ransom parking, $200 nosebleeds and $15 Bud Lights, but never mind that now. The fans are getting screwed! By those greedy players!

And then ...

And then, after awhile (or after two days, in this case), everyone sits down and hammers out the deal they likely could have hammered out months ago had everyone not been play-acting for the public and the media.

Now, I don't know if that's exactly how it all went down here. I'm just blue-skyin' it, to be perfectly honest. And so I also don't know if perhaps it only took two days to resolve everything because a few of the players publicly criticized the PHPA -- suggesting there were many more players who weren't happy with the union, either, but just weren't saying so.

Be that as it may, if it only took two days to settle this dispute once the players walked, how much of a dispute could it actually have been? And why couldn't they have settled it before the players walked?

One man's conclusion: They could have. As usual. 

Surprise, surprise.

Missin' out

 BYU beat Georgia Tech 25-21 last night in the Blob's new favorite irrelevant bowl game, the Pop-Tarts Bowl, and too bad for you, Notre Dame. You decided the Pop-Tarts Bowl wasn't worth the net loss, which it probably wasn't. But, hey, man: Sprinkles!

Sprinkles in the end zones. Sprinkles on the sidelines. Sprinkles on the players' helmets.

But no sprinkles for you, Irish!

You missed out, if I may be so bold. You missed out on a Pop-Tart mascot grilling Pop-Tarts on the sideline. You missed out on a chance to hoist the Pop-Tarts Bowl trophy, which, no lie, is an actual working toaster. You missed out on the ritual postgame sacrifice of a couple of Pop-Tarts mascots, who disappeared into a giant toaster and emerged at the bottom (as if by magic!) as a couple of for-real giant Pop-Tarts for the victorious Cougars to feast upon.

What did you feast upon last night, you sons of Erin? I bet it wasn't as good as a giant Frosted Cherry or Frosted Cookies-&-Creme Pop-Tart, which were the two sacrifice-ees to BYU's prodigious appetite.

(Know what else? There was actually a THIRD Pop-Tart scheduled to be sacrificed. But at the last second the Protein Slammin' Strawberry Pop-Tart jumped off the giant toaster and escaped his grisly fate.)

Anyway, too bad for you, Irish. You likely would have smoked BYU had you accepted the expected Pop-Tarts Bowl invite, and that would have been you chowin' down on six feet or so of pure deliciousness. Instead you settled for, I don't know, maybe Arby's instead. 

They have the meats, after all.

But the Pop-Tarts Bowl had the sweets. 

Your loss.

The Eighth-Rate Bowl. Or not.

 Your Minnesota Golden Gophers won the Rate Bowl last night on a walk-off touchdown pass in overtime, but that's not what we're going to talk about this morning. What we're going to talk about is tradition, and what a malleable and sometimes illusory thing it is.

What we're going to talk about is a clip ESPN put up of Damon Bankston of New Mexico (Minny's opponent) returning a kickoff 100 yards for a touchdown, one of the evening's highlights. The giddy tagline attached noted it was the first 100-yard kickoff return in Rate Bowl history! (Italics mine).

This prompted me to ask, not unreasonably, if the Rate Bowl actually HAD a history.

Well. Turns out it does, sort of. 

Also, not really.

I say this because the Rate Bowl traces its ancestry back to 1989, when it was born as the Copper Bowl. Then, after a few years, it became the Insight.com Bowl. Then the Insight Bowl. Then -- let's see -- the Buffalo Wild Wings Bowl, the Cactus Bowl, the Cheez-it Bowl, and the Guaranteed Rate Bowl.

That was shortened this year to simply the Rate Bowl, which over the years has moved around Arizona four times. So it's actually the Eighth-Rate Travelin' Bowl  if you want to get technical about it.

Let's do.

Let's say Damon Bankston's return was technically quite the historical achievement, if you consider the Eighth-Rate Travelin' Bowl the Copper Bowl's direct lineal descendant. Or it wasn't, technically, if you think of it not as the 37th Copper Bowl but the very first Rate Bowl -- so far removed geographically and otherwise it's become its own distinct entity.

 I know. It's confusing.

Not as confusing as why Guaranteed Rate changed its branding to just Rate, which prompted the latest name change to its bowl game. But close.

Sitdown season

 Watched some dude named Max Brosmer knock the back-to-being-the-Detroit-Lions out of the playoffs on Christmas Day, and it reminded me why the last couple weeks of the NFL season are so entertaining.

Nah, I'm just kidding. They're not entertaining at all, just weird and silly.

This is because it's officially the League's Sitdown Season, whose goal seems to be to display more spare parts than an episode of "American Pickers." Brosmer at quarterback for the Vikings and some rando named Chris Oladokun for the Chiefs on Christmas Day; Malik Willis vs. Tyler Huntley today for Packers vs. the Ravens. Everyone else is either in the ICU or the RUFTPU (Resting Up For The Playoffs Unit).

This is what happens when you get greedy and keep adding games to a season that was already over-long before the owners stretched it to 18 weeks. We're now in Week 17 of that run, and everyone who isn't hurt is sitting out for other reasons -- such as, "We're already in the playoffs so who cares if the Cardinals beat us this week?" 

Or how about this: "Were a dog-ass team with a shot at the top pick in the draft and we're playing another dog-ass team with a shot at the top pick in the draft, so who cares if we lose to 'em? WE DO. Because losing to 'em is bigly important."

That's the state of affairs out in Oakland (oops, sorry, Las Vegas) this week, where Raiders head coach Pete Carroll announced that he's shutting down beat-up All-Pro defensive end Maxx Crosby for the year. Crosby, in fact, has already cleared out of the Raiders facility, with Carroll's blessing.

He's the third starter the Raiders will be without this weekend, after tight end Brock Bowers and safety Jeremy Chinn went on injured reserve. Are they actually injured? Probably, because virtually everyone is at this point. Could they have played in a pinch anyway? Wellll ...

Who knows?

See, the Raiders, who at 2-13 are the worst team in the AFC, are playing the New York Football Giants, who at 2-13 are the worst team in the NFC. The winner gets the inside track to the No. 2 (or 3, or 4) pick in the 2026 NFL Draft; the loser gets the inside track to the No. 1 pick. So, in this case at least, to the loser go the spoils.

That makes Raiders-Giants must-see viewing by the Blob's lights, and not just because it's Week 17 and nothing else is. I mean, how often do you get to see two En Eff Ell teams desperately trying to lose (or at least not trying all that hard to win)? It's the Sitdown Season Super Bowl, is what it is -- without the Bad Bunny halftime show all the bigots will be boycotting.

Why, already the Raiders and Giants have battling to see who can sit the most starters. The Raiders came out strong with Crosby, Bowers and Chinn; the Giants will counter with wide receiver Beaux Collins, offensive linemen Evan Neal and Andrew Thomas, defensive lineman D.J. Davidson and safety Tyler Nubin sidelined with various owies.

On the other hand, both starting QBs -- Jaxson Dart for the Giants and Geno Smith for the Raiders -- will be present for duty. So they've got that going for them.

Or not, as the case may be.

Silent night

 Still unsure if the Fort Wayne Komets will be playing hockey tonight, but if they don't it will be an odd feeling indeed. Sort of like showing up to an old friend's annual Christmas party and finding his house dark and all the familiar faces nowhere to be found.

Or  to put it another way: Komet Hockey on strike. Now there's a new one.

The Professional Hockey Players' Association's work stoppage against the ECHL is scheduled to begin today, although as of last night no strike notice had been issued. But the league and its players association are so far apart, and negotiations have so all but stopped, that it seems inevitable.

Komet Hockey on strike. 

The Allen County War Memorial Coliseum dark. All those fans in their orange-and-black throwbacks off somewhere else. Icy banging on his drum and getting nothing back but echoes of echoes.

A silent night, one day after the silent night.

And, look, I'm not going to get into why that's happening, or whether or not what the league has offered is a fair shake and the PHPA is just being pig-headed. All I know is, minor-league hockey is a grind for both owners and players, but it's the players who generally bear the front end of it. The ECHL isn't the Federal League of "Slapshot" fame, but the bus rides through all those bleak winter landscapes -- and everything else about second-tier minor-league hockey -- is real.

And so, as the fictional Private Bucklin of the rebellious 2nd Maine says in the film "Gettysburg," the workforce has grievances. The ECHL has either addressed them (the league's version), or whizzed on the players and told them it's raining (the PHPA's version). 

Me?

I just see the whole business as the world doing what it does -- spinning along as the days and years and decades flutter past -- no matter how much we wish it wouldn't.

We can all long for the days of the Des Moines Oak Leafs and Port Huron Flags and the rest of the dead-and-gone IHL, but they're not coming back and there's nothing for it. The NHL was a half-dozen or dozen teams back then, and there was no true farm system. The same training camp cuts wound up playing ever year for the same teams in the "I", and it all felt as comfortable as an old couch with the hip hollows broken in.

Same favorites wearing the same home sweaters every year. Same villains wearing the same visitors' sweaters. And the only people going on strike were those bleeping-blank baseball players.

Now, of course, hockey is like every other sport, with affiliations and two-way deals and a structured developmental system. Players get called up; players get sent down. Managing a roster has become an art form in itself.

A lot of folks in my advanced age bracket hate this. I tend to see it merely as the inevitability of change. Whether I like it or not (and I don't, particularly) is irrelevant.

All hope for at this point is that the possibility Komets general manager David Franke floated in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette this morning doesn't happen: That the league might consider bringing in replacement players. This was a terrible idea when the NFL did it 38 years ago, even if Hollywood did get a movie out of it ("The Replacements", starring Keanu Reeves as the immortal Shane Falco). It remains a terrible idea -- especially for a league like the ECHL.

This is because, while I'll make no blind assumptions about the demography of the league's fan base, I'm guessing at least a fair percentage of it is composed of union men and women. And union men and women don't generally cotton to scab labor.

(And, yes, I'll use that term, because I grew up working class myself. My people were factory workers and mechanics and farmers and schoolteachers. I get it honest, in other words.)

Anyway, on we go. We're a handful of hours from Friday night, and Komet Hockey most likely will not be on the air. Strange times.

These times, though.

The annual message

 (Re-posted from last year. And the year before that. And, I don't know, every year)

It's Christmas season again, and you know what that means, Blobophiles. 

"Blood sugar spikes? Marauding, over-stimulated toddlers? Aunt Wilhelmina's festive Jell-O Mold From Beyond Space And Time?" you're saying. 

Uh, not where I was going.

No, where I was going was, it's Christmas season again, and that means a brief pause in the clamor of our days. It means, for those of us who observe, a chance to celebrate the birth of a Prince of Peace whose grace transcends the madness of kings and wanna-be kings, and every other madness besides.

Which is to say: Happy Merry Christmas Holidays, everyone. Health and good fortune and every other blessing to you and yours from the Blob, which really, really means it despite your suspicion I'm just joking around like usual.

I'm not. And to prove it, here's the Blob's annual message, courtesy of Charles Dickens, a crotchety geezer and a few not-quite-random spirits:

"Again the Ghost sped on, above the black and heaving sea—on, on—until, being far away, as he told Scrooge, from any shore, they lighted on a ship. They stood beside the helmsman at the wheel, the look-out in the bow, the officers who had the watch; dark, ghostly figures in their several stations; but every man among them hummed a Christmas tune, or had a Christmas thought, or spoke below his breath to his companion of some bygone Christmas Day, with homeward hopes belonging to it. And every man on board, waking or sleeping, good or bad, had had a kinder word for another on that day than on any day in the year; and had shared to some extent in its festivities; and had remembered those he cared for at a distance, and had known that they delighted to remember him."

Merry Christmas, everyone.

A lesson in engagement

 Pittsburgh wideout DK Metcalf spread his own particular brand of Christmas cheer in Detroit Sunday, and now he'll get a two-game sitdown for it from Roger "The Hammer" Goodell and the En Eff Ell. And you can't say he didn't have it coming.

However ...

However, so did the fan to whom he spread Christmas cheer, via his fist.

What happened was, some guy in a blue wig started chirping at Metcalf on the sideline, waving a yellow Steelers T-shirt at him. So Metcalf strolled over to him. The guy then apparently called Metcalf something you never call a black man, and said something nasty about his mother on top of it. 

After which Metcalf grabbed him, pulled him close and punched him in the head.

Now, you can't do that sort of thing if you're an NFL player or coach. You cannot. And so the two-game suspension the league handed down was fully justified. Because even if the guy said what witnesses say he said, Metcalf still shouldn't have throw a punch.

No, sir. It says here he should have thrown two.

A right to the head. A left to the jaw. Or vice-versa.

I say this because, as a friend of frequently reminds, fans are asshats (although he uses the R-rated version of that word). But it takes a special kind of asshat to drag Mom into it. And it takes a REALLY special kind of asshat to follow a player around the country dragging Mom into it.

Reportedly, that's what this particular asshat does. Started harassing Metcalf when he was with Seattle, and followed him to Pittsburgh, apparently. So the two of them have history, allegedly.

Which means it was even more incumbent upon Metcalf not to walk over and engage this clown. That's on him -- and also on security for not clearing out said clown.

(Where was security, by the way? Beats me. Hanging out in a little joint called Nowhere To Be Found, perhaps. It's apparently where they were Sunday, and it's apparently where they were 21 years ago when some drunk in the stands touched off the Malice in the Palace by throwing a beer at that crazy Ron Artest. It's a Detroit thing, I guess.)

Still, it's on Metcalf not to engage, especially if he knew the clown in the blue wig. Engagement is what asshat fans crave, after all. It's why they go to the Mom well, the N-word well, and wells similarly vile. Ignoring them is a player or coach's best defense -- not to mention the ultimate comeback, because there's nothing that drives an asshat fan crazier than ignoring him (or her).

So there's the lesson. Unfortunately, it's too late for Metcalf. Not only did he get suspended, but you just know the asshat he punched is even now chasing fame on the internet, and fortune via some sort of lame civil suit.

Justice is swift in the NFL. But in this case, it's also incomplete.

 

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 16

 And now a special day-before-the-day-before Christmas edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the holly-jolly Blob feature of which critics have said, "Bah (expletive deleted)", and also "You ain't gonna be so jolly when I put my foot up your holly":

1. And what to my wondering eyes should appear ...

2. ... but old Philip Rivers (23-of-35, 277 yards, two touchdowns and a 97.0 rating against the 49ers) still alive and quite well.

3. "Although not as alive and quite well as me!" (49ers quarterback Brock Purdy, who decked the halls with boughs of Colts defensive backs, throwing five touchdown passes in the Niners' 48-27 rout)

4. Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that ...

5. "Oh, sure! Rub it in why doncha!" (The Chiefs, who lost Patrick Mahomes to an ACL tear, then lost Gardner Minshew to an ACL tear, and wound up playing the immortal Some Guy at quarterback in a dispiriting 28-9 loss to the sorry Tennessee Titans)

6. Oh, there's no place like home for the holidays ...

7. "Bite me." (The Broncos, the Ravens, the Cowboys, the Browns, the Dolphins and the Lions, who got beat at home by the Jaguars, the Patriots, the Chargers, the Bills, the Bengals and the Steelers)

8. God rest ye merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay ...

9. "We won't!" (The Jags, the Pats, the Bolts, the Texans, the Niners, the Bears, the Seahawks, who just keep winning to the dismay of their victims)

10. "Hey, what about us? We've been resting all season! Ain't too merry about it, though." (The Giants, the Jets, the Cardinals, the Raiders and the Browns, who lost again because ... well, because it's what they do)

Wait ... what?

 Some odd stuff happened over the weekend in Sportsball World, and personally, given that it's the holiday season, I think it's because someone slipped something funny in the celestial egg nog.

(I strongly suspect Buddy the Elf. You can't tell me syrup is one of the four food groups unless Buddy jazzed it up somehow.)

Anyway, it was a definite "Wait ... what?" sort of weekend. So let's review, shall we?

* The Bears beat the Packers in overtime, which was bizarre enough, but they walked it off on a perfect Caleb Williams deep ball to DJ Moore from 47 yards away. Best throw of the NFL season, and it came from a guy who supposedly doesn't have the deep ball in his toolbox.

Also, it was the sixth W the Bears have put up this season after trailing with fewer than two minutes to play. This time a Carlos Santo field goal with 1:59 left in regulation and Williams' off-balance throw to Jahdae Walker with 24 seconds left erased a 10-point deficit and forced overtime.

Some weird stuff goin' on in Chi. 

* The Seattle Seahawks beat the Los Angeles Rams on a play that, had it worked, wouldn't have worked.

Allow me to explain.

See, the Seattles were doing for a two-point conversion and the win, and decided a bubble screen was the way to do that. Now, it's a law of nature that the bubble screen hardly ever works, and especially in the NFL, where the speed of defenses simply gobble up attempts to string them out.

But, the Seahawks gave it a shot anyway. Sam Darnold turned and threw. Had he completed the pass, the play would have failed, because the Rams of course had it covered. 

But what's this?

Here came a Rams defender, leaping high to bat Darnold's throw into the air. The ball sailed up and into the end zone, where, after a mad scramble (because the throw was behind the line of scrimmage, and therefore a lateral), a Seahawk picked it up. Conversion good, Seahawks win.

You know what they say: Man plans, God laughs.

Only in this case, God was wearing a throwback Steve Largent jersey. Must have been.

* Speaking of God laughing, the shine is apparently off his bromance with the Detroit Lions. This is because the Lions scored a touchdown on the last play of the game to beat the Pittsburgh Steelers, only to find out they didn't really beat the Steelers.

Here's what happened: Trailing by 12 with less than four minutes to play, the Lions mounted a stirring comeback, only to get not one but two touchdowns called back for offensive pass interference. And both were legit calls.

The second happened on the last play of the game, after Jared Goff completed a pass to Amon-Ra St. Brown at the goal line. St. Brown was wrapped up before breaking the plane, but he alertly lateraled back to Goff, who ran it in for the score that turned a 29-24 loss into a 30-29 victory.'

Except it didn't.

Because earlier in the play, St. Brown pushed off on his defender to get open. Shoved the guy right down to the ground. Blatant as blatant gets.

So, yes, the play ended in a Detroit touchdown. But the infraction occurred before the touchdown, so the touchdown didn't count.

Some weird stuff goin' on in Motown, too.

* And last but not least ...

Your Purdue-Fort Wayne Mastodons did it again.

Head coach Jon Coffman, Corey Hadnot II and the gang went up to South Bend yesterday, and by gumphrey they brought Upset City with them. Again.

Knocked off Notre Dame on its home floor, the Dons did, 72-69. Hadnot scorched the Irish for 29 points, Mikale Stevenson added 18, and for the second time in two years, PFW put a Big East notch in its belt.

In 2023, the Dons took out DePaul. And let's not forget 2016 and 2017, when Coffman's guys upset Indiana in back-to-back years. 

Man's just got a knack for ruining a big boy's day, it seems.

Time warp

Idly scrolling through a few social media sites the other day (because "idly" is the only way I scroll), and I came across this photo on some Indiana Basketball Memories site. It was from Assembly Hall on Feb. 23, 1985, the day Bob Knight introduced the Chair Fling to college basketball.

The vantage point is the baseline, and the photo was taken right after the Fling happened. Knight's out on the floor, about to exit stage left. In the background, behind him, is what was then the media seating.

And it dawned on me: Hey. I might be in this photo.

I was there that day, see, covering IU-Purdue for the late, great Anderson Daily Bulletin. I was 29 years old at the time; I'm 70 now. And I remember where I was sitting: Third tier, above and to the right of the Indiana bench.

So I magnified the photo. Looked. And there I was, fuzzy but clear enough: Above Knight's left shoulder, wearing a white shirt, hand over my mouth.

Weird City.

Weird City, because how often do you see yourself in the crowd on a day that's been dead and gone almost 41 years? Witnessing, in real time, an incident that's been described/referenced/anthologized six ways from Sunday since?

Oh, what I could tell that kid with his hand over his mouth, all these years later.

I could tell him that in a bit more than two years he'd lose his beloved nephew, all of  five years old, to leukemia. If I could stand to, that is.

I could tell him in two years he wouldn't be in Anderson anymore, but in his hometown of Fort Wayne, where he'd work 28 years for the newspaper he grew up reading.

I could tell him if the prehistoric Teleram Portabubble he was typing his Indy 500 column on got stuck and started backspace-eating his words, it was just a glitch and not an editorial comment. And the technological caveman fix was to give it a good smack.

I could tell him that, on the day in the photo, his future wife was sitting somewhere several rows up and off to the left of him, and that he wouldn't meet her for six more years.  I could tell him about the children they would have, one of whom just turned 30. I could tell him about the time, years in his future, when I got locked in a high-school football stadium one night and had to scale an eight-foot fence to get out.

I was in my 50s by then. And what I was thinking, wobbling atop the fence, was this: I am too old for this (expletive depleted).

I could tell my 29-year-old self that, within three years, the newspaper he worked for would no longer exist. And that someday there would be this thing called the internet that would kill the newspaper industry as he knew it and transform it into an entity both more expansive and less professional. And that he would come to pine for the days when a guy could fix a stuck backspace key by physically assaulting his expletive-deleted portable computer.

I could tell my 29-year-old self do not, under any circumstances, enter the locker room of a hockey team that had just won a championship unless you wanted a beer poured on your head. I could tell him do not, under any circumstances, attempt to close his laptop with the power cord lying across the keyboard, unless he wanted to wind up dictating his gamer over the phone on deadline. 

I could also tell him to keep his head on a swivel when covering a Purdue-IU basketball game, because, years after the day he watched Knight fling the chair, a Purdue player named Brian Cardinal would come flying into press row and land on his chest.

What else could I tell 29-year-old me?

Well, I could tell him that someday he would cover a high school basketball game whose final score was 16-14 (no, really!). That he would see the Indianapolis Colts win a Super Bowl (really, really!). That the friends he'd made in the business would still be his friends 41 years later, and that he would make many more in the meantime.

Mostly, though, I would tell him this: Oh, you kid. You're in for a hell of a ride.

The real Cinderella

 Goodness gracious. All this time, and Cinderella was hiding out somewhere else.

No, not in the College Football Playoff, where yesterday Tulane and James Madison mounted a convincing argument for a separate Group of Five CFP. The Tulanes went down to Ole Miss, 41-10. JMU trailed Oregon 34-7 at halftime before the Ducks lost interest and coasted to a 51-34 win. 

Football, it turns out, is not basketball, and Tulane and JMU were not George Mason or Florida Atlantic. If the CFP selectors were hoping for some sort of December Madness, they didn't get it. 

So who were the real Cinderellas?

Well, they hail from Normal, Ill., where things definitely are not normal these days. Instead, the Illinois State Redbirds of the Missouri Valley Conference are getting ready to play in the FCS national title game after one of the more improbable runs in that playoff's history.

The unseeded Redbirds made the playoffs after finishing third in the MVC with an 8-4 record. They took out 16th-seed Southeastern Louisiana in the first round, then journeyed up to MVC champion, defending national champion and top-ranked North Dakota State for round two.

The Redbirds lost to the Bison 33-16 back in October. This time, though ...

Well. This time, they jacked around and won, 29-28, knocking out the most dominant program in FCS. The Bison, after all, had won 10 national titles since 2011, including five of the last eight. They weren't supposed to lose to the likes of Illinois State.

But they did.

And then the Redbirds beat 8-seed UC-Davis 42-31 in the quarterfinals.

And yesterday they beat 12-seed Villanova 30-14, snapping 'Nova's FCS-leading 22-game home winning streak.

Four games. Four wins. All on the road.

Now the Redbirds get 2-seed Montana State in the national title game. Montana State will be favored, of course. This will mean nothing, of course -- or at least it has so far.

Cinderella gonna Cinderella, after all. At least in some precincts of college football.

Crimson all over

 Well, alrighty, then. Alabama it is.

Alabama, which erased a 17-0 deficit to Oklahoma in Norman last night, outscoring the Sooners 34-7 the rest of the way in a 34-24 win.

Alabama, losers of three games (including to Oklahoma a little over a month ago), and last seen getting squashed by Georgia in the SEC title game.

Alabama ... whom a lot of folks un-doctrinated by the SEC thought was an absolute imposter in the College Football Playoff, and who only got in because the selection committee knew Tuscaloosa's zip code by heart.

Well. I guess the Crimson Tide and their more-insane-than-most fan base have earned the right to gloat a bit this morning.

They are, after all, headed to the Rose Bowl on New Year's Day to play No. 1 Indiana, and what a weird sentence that is to write. It sounds hella more normal to write "No. 1 Alabama is headed to the Rose Bowl to play Indiana," but these are not normal times. These are the times when Indiana goes 12-0, beats No. 1 Ohio State to go to 13-0 and win the Big Ten championship, and heads off to Pasadena for the first time in 58 years.

You can expect those Harry Gonso retrospectives any day now. Or perhaps a Dave Koronowa retrospectives, given that the IU kicker scored the only points for the Hoosiers in a 14-3 Rose Bowl loss to O.J. and USC.

More likely we'll see a feature or two on Alabama head coach Kalen DeBoer, because he was Indiana's offensive coordinator in 2019. People love that cross-pollination stuff. 

(He was also the head coach on the other sideline when the Fort's very own Saint Francis Cougars lost to Sioux Falls in the 2006 NAIA national championship game. Just sayin'.)

Anyway, it's gonna be the Crimson Tide vs. the Cream and Crimson in the Rose Bowl, which is a lot of crimson for any bowl. The Blob thinks Indiana's the better Crimson -- hell, I think Notre Dame's better than the Tide, though we'll never know -- and will move on to the CFP semifinals.

If not, we'll all just have to endure more gloating from Paul Finebaum and the rest of the snooty SEC shills. And if that's not motivation enough for the Hoosiers to bring their "A" game, I don't know what is.

And so as odd as it feels to take a rooting interest after all my years as a professional sports scribbler, I say this: Go, Indiana. Please.

Influencer paddling

 So, Jake Paul at last found out where the other half lives, and -- surprise, surprise -- it was at the intersection of Right Fist Boulevard and Glass Jaw Way. 

In other words, former world champion Anthony Joshua hit the Jakester with his right fist once, and then again, and then a bunch of other times last night, and finally ol' Jake babied up to the canvas. In the sixth round, Joshua hit the social media influencer (as Paul is sometimes described) one last time, and Paul folded like a Vegas sharpie holding a handful of nothing.

KO in the sixth. Broken jaw in two places for Paul. And the only reason it happened in the sixth round and not, say, the second or third, is because Paul spent the first three or four rounds running like Usain Bolt.

This is what happens to social media influencers when they fight someone who isn't a tomato can or 58 years old like Mike Tyson. It becomes not influence peddling but an influence paddling, if you'll excuse the pun.

Look. Anyone who knew the difference between a left hook and coat hook knew Paul was as phony as most stuff you see on the internet, so last night was entirely predictable. Mr. Social Media Influencer climbed into the ring with a legit fighter, and found out there's an ocean of difference between a legit fighter and one who just plays one on TV.

Or, you know, Instagram or TikToc or whatever.

Time to find another online schtick, Jake. I suggest pilates.

Echoing tragedy

 Awful things happen to good people in this world, which is why every human with a working soul occasionally shakes his or her fist at the heavens. "Life's not fair," after all, has never been an adequate response to the inexplicable.

And so we come, reluctantly, to a small plane burning on a runway in Statesville, N.C., yesterday, a week before Christmas.

The small plane, a Cessna C550, crashed on approach to Statesville Regional Airport, killing all seven people aboard. Among them were former NASCAR standout Greg Biffle, his wife, and their two children, ages 14 and 5.

An entire family, wiped out in one violent instant. A week before Christmas, and five days before Biffle's 56th birthday.

And, no, the fact one of those who died was moderately famous doesn't make it worse. 

For the non-NASCAR crowd out there, Biffle wheeled a stock car for Jack Roush most of his Cup career, which spanned 16 years. He came up in the truck series in 1998, eventually becoming the first driver ever to win both the truck series (2000) and what's now called the Xfiniti series (2002). His won 19 races for Roush, with his best season in Cup coming in 2005, when he finished second in the points.

All that got him selected as one of NASCAR's all-time top 75 drivers.

What didn't get him selected, but should have gotten him onto a different, more prestigious list, was what he did just last year.

A registered helicopter and small plane pilot, Biffle flew his own copter to rescue those trapped by the catastrophic floodwaters that hit North Carolina during hurricane Helene. He spent the next several weeks flying in supplies and flying out the stranded.

And then came yesterday. And, no, life isn't fair, and, yes, I'm going to say, "That's not good enough," and what the hell, besides.

I guess the best answer I can come up with is what happened yesterday is part of a legacy of tragedy that echoes long down the years. Whatever it is that gets inside a man (or woman) and makes him want to go fast also makes him want to take to the skies -- and with too often numbing finality.

Biffle, see, is only the latest racer to die in a flying machine. There was Davey Allison, who died in a helicopter crash at Talladega almost 33 years ago. Alan Kulwicki, another NASCAR star who died in a plane crash the same year. Formula One icon Graham Hill, killed when the plane he was flying crashed on approach in 1975.

And yet another NASCAR star, Curtis Turner, who crashed his plane and died in 1970.

 Echoes upon echoes. And, again, still no answer why.

Attention not paid

 I wouldn't know Rex Elliott if he worked for 1-800-555-HURT, but I do know he has the attention span of a gnat. The reason I know is this what he said the other day about his client, a gentleman named Brian Smith.

Smith was the head football coach at Ohio University, until he wasn't. OU fired him after one season not long ago, in which the Bobcats went a respectable 8-4. Based on what OU officials said when they dropkicked him to the curb, it was a hell of a one season.

During it, OU alleges, Smith carried on multiple extramarital affairs, including one with an undergraduate student. He eventually, also allegedly, dumped the the student for a 41-year-old woman. And somewhere in there he (again, allegedly) showed up drunk at a university function.

Elliott, of course, denies all of this. In a sharp fire-back at OU president Lori Stewart Gonzalez, he said Smith "didn't participate in an extramarital affair and you know it," noting that Smith and his wife separated earlier this year. He also said Smith never showed up drunk at any university affair. And then ...

And then Elliott screwed up bigly, as a certain notable reprobate allegedly once said.

In his letter to Gonzalez, he wrote that Ohio University had no policy stating employees couldn't date students, and thus his relationship with the aforementioned student was a "perfectly appropriate consensual adult relationship" that lasted four months. The student, Elliott added, worked in the athletic department and she and Smith dated for about four months until he dumped her for the 41-year-old. 

(And, OK, so he didn't put it in exactly those words. That was me.)

Smith, by the way, is 45 years old. Which would make him roughly twice as old as your average undergrad. Not illegal, perhaps, but definitely "Ewww" as hell.

In which case, this is where an invisible arm reaches down from Ann Arbor, Mich., and smacks Rex Elliott upside the head.

"'Perfectly appropriate consensual adult relationship'?" the invisible body attached to the invisible arm says. "Son, have you NOT been paying attention?"

Because, listen, up there in Ann Arbor, the University of Michigan just fired its head football coach for almost exactly the same Perfectly Appropriate Consensual Adult Relationship. This one involved the coach, Sherrone Moore, and a 24-year-old woman. She wasn't a student, but she also worked in the athletic department. In fact she was Moore's top assistant.

The entire sordid situation, of course, blew up into a huge national story. Which apparently never filtered down to the space between Rex Elliott's ears, because there he was this week, protesting OU firing its football coach for behavior remarkably similar to the behavior for which UM fired its football coach.

To reiterate: Son, have you NOT been paying attention?

It seems not.

Stealin' Chicago

 Somewhere today George Halas is running laps in his grave, or perhaps he's making Nagurski do it. Dick Butkus is fixin' to clothesline someone. Sayers, Sweetness, Sid Luckman, Douglas John Buffone: They're all madder than steroid-packin' hornets.

Why, the very idea of their beloved Chicago Bears making Indiana their home base. Indi-freaking-ana.

This upon the news that the Bears have resumed exploring fresh options to relocate -- including, yes, northwest Indiana. The Hammond, In., Bears. The Gary, In., Bears. The East Chicago Bears, the Griffith Bears, the Hobart Bears, the Merrillville Bears.

Or how about this gem from my sharp-witted friend Jim Saturday, who grew up in northwest Indiana: The Munsters of the Midway.

Half of Chicago just ralphed up its Lou Malnati's, hearing that.

Now, right here is the part where we admit that none of the above might actually happen, or even is likely to. This may just be another power play by the Bears to squeeze the city of Chicago for even fancier digs than the city of Chicago already proposed. It is, however, either horrifying to think about (if you live and work in the Windy City), or pretty damn hilarious (if you live in Indiana or anywhere else).

Me, I'm thinking of that time the Bears played the Indianapolis Colts in the Super Bowl, and Colts coach Tony Dungy joked that maybe they just split the difference and play the game in Fort Wayne. This got folks in my hometown inordinately excited, to the extent that Steve Rushin wrote a whole column in Sports Illustrated chronicling the reaction of such Fort Wayne luminaries as pro football HOFer Rod Woodson and Eric Wedge, then the manager of the Cleveland Indians.

I imagine the good citizens of the Region, which is what we call the northwest part of the state here in Indiana, are similarly excited. Or maybe not, considering Region inhabitants tend to be made of sterner, less-giddy stuff.

At any rate, moving the Bears to Indiana would not be unprecedented, no matter how much the thought of it surely would drive Bears old-schoolers -- people who remember guys like Jack Concannon and Ralph Kurek and Ronnie Bull -- to imbibe mass quantities of Old Style.  The Dallas Cowboys, after all, don't play in Dallas but in Arlington, a suburb. The Miami Dolphins home base is Hard Rock Stadium, which is almost closer to Fort Lauderdale than Miami.

The 49ers play in Santa Clara, not San Francisco. The Washington Commanders play in Maryland, not D.C. And of course there are the New York teams, the Jets and Giants, who don't play in New York, either.

They play in New Jersey, on top of Jimmy Hoffa's grave (or so some people say). And New Jersey is just Indiana with better pizza and more wise guys.

Also fewer Hoosiers, whatever you think a Hoosier is. And don't ask us, because we don't know, either.

Anyway ...

Anyway, so, yeah. Bring on the Munsters of the Midway. Put 'em in brand new, state-of-the-art Lily/Cargill/Pete's Pride Pork Fritters Stadium. And rev up an old Indiana promotional slogan -- because, yes, there is more than corn in Indiana.

There are Colts. There are Bears, maybe. There are the restless ghosts of Halas and Butkus and Luckman and all the rest, wondering how the hell their football team got mixed up with a bunch of Indiana hilljacks.

Oh, the stompin' and cussin', out there in the celestial expanse. The stompin' and cussin'.

An A-list fumble

 I don't know what Diego Pavia is majoring in at Vanderbilt University, other than NFL Prep with a minor in Show Me The NIL Money. But I do know Vandy is a high-gloss academic institution -- the Ivy of the South, some folks call it -- so I assume the kid's got a few healthy brain cells rattling around up there.

If so, they were apparently sleeping off a post-finals toot last weekend.

That's when Indiana's Fernando Mendoza won the Heisman Trophy and Pavia did not, which led Pavia -- who is 24 and  goes to Vandy and thus should know better -- to commi an A-list fumble. Like a pissed-off 15-year-old, he fired off a "F*** the voters!" social media post. Then he went out on the town and a photo turned up of him in close proximity to a sign that read "F*** Indiana."

Oopsie. 

A day or so later, when he'd come to what passes for his senses, Pavia posted a heartfelt apology that hit all the right atonement notes. He might have actually written it himself. The Blob, however, is putting his money on Pavia's agent, who must have been pissed off himself at his blockhead of a client.

"The hell is wrong with you, son?" is one thing you can imagine him saying.

Pavia, after all, is a quarterback headed for the NFL Draft in four months, and the execs who study potential draftees with sometimes disturbing intensity don't like it when a potential draftee throws a tantrum because he didn't win the Heisman. This is especially true if the potential draftee is a quarterback, the most important position on the field and one in which teams traditionally invest vast goo-gobs of capital.

You blow it with an offensive lineman, there's always another out there. You blow it with a franchise QB, you cost your team millions and usually wind up looking for a new job on top of it.

Everyone remembers a Peyton Manning, a Dan Marino, a John Elway. But they also remember a Ryan Leaf, a Jamarcus Russell, a Johnny Manziel.

Right now Diego Pavia looks more like the latter than the former. 

Right now he's likely being judged in NFL front offices the way an acquaintance of mine judged him the other day.

"He's a punk," the acquaintance said.

Now, I'm not sure an NFL GM would say that out loud. But you know more than a few are thinking it.

In other words: Welcome to the sixth round, Diego. Or seventh.

A Knick, in time

 You may have missed in all the hoo-ha surrounding the IS4S Salute to Veterans Bowl (just kidding, although congratulations, Jacksonville State), but your New York Knickerbockers actually won something last night. 

OK, so it wasn't an NBA championship, but it was a kinda-sorta championship nonetheless, and that's something at least. The Knicks, see, defeated the San Antonio spurs 124-113 to win the NBA Cup, the Association's in-season tournament.

Not the same or not, it was the first trophy the Knicks had raised since 1973, when Willis Reed, Walt Frazier and that whole crowd were doing their thing. Just for context, Reed is dead and Frazier is 80 years old now.

In other words, it's been awhile.

But in time, there will eventually be a Knick, or so it seems. And last night was the Knicks' time. 

It's a different crew now, of course. Instead of Willis Reed, there is Karl Anthony-Towns, who went for a 16-11 double-double last night. Instead of Frazier, there is Jalen Brunson, who dropped 25 and dished eight assists. And instead of, say, Dave DeBusschere or Bill Bradley, there is OG Anunoby -- remember him, Indiana Hoosiers fans? -- who led seven Knicks in double figures with 28 points and nine boards.

All five of the Knickerbocker starters scored in double figures, and seven Knicks in all did so. Together they put up 105 shots and made 49 of them. Forty of the 105 shots came from the 3-point arc, of which the Knicks made 15.

In other words, they were jacking up the rock. Norman Dale would have benched 'em all for not making four passes before they shot.

No matter. It's a week before Christmas, and the Knicks are champions again. -- not the champions, mind you, but still champions. And that's a very big deal for the NBA, which for all its success would still like a New York team to make a splash once in awhile.

Consider it done.

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 15

 And now this week's edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the redemptive, not-dead-yet Blob feature of which critics have said, "From the smell, I thought this thing died weeks ago," and also, "How 'bout I redeem your face for a six-pack of Natty Light?":

1. "Old? Old? I'll show you old, ya whippersnappers!" (Philip Rivers, Aaron Rodgers)

2. "And I'm not either weird!" (Also Aaron Rodgers, after his Steelers whupped the formerly resurgent Dolphins)

3. "Dead? Dead? Ha! We're not dead! We were just feelin' sickly for awhile!" (The Bills, after taking down the division-leading Patriots in Foxboro to remain not dead, or maybe even not sickly, for another week)

4. "Hey, look over here! We're not dead, either!" (The Vikings, after beating the Cowboys in Dallas as J.J. McCarthy, who previously sucked, threw for 250 yards and two touchdowns)

5. "Hey! What's this 'previously sucked' crap? I do not either suck!" (J.J. McCarthy)

6. "Neither do I!" (Jalen Hurts, who, a week after throwing four picks in a loss to the Chargers, threw for three touchdowns as the Eagles washed the Raiders 31-0)

7. "Neither do-- oh, wait" (Shedeur Sanders, who, a week after throwing for 364 yards and three scores in the Cleveland Browns' 31-29 loss to the Titans, threw three picks, was sacked five times and put up a subterranean 30.3 passer rating in the Browns' 31-3 loss to the Bears)

8. In other news, the Rams outscored the Lions, Detroit's third loss in its last five games; the  Buccaneers went down to the Falcons -- the Falcons! -- the Bucs' fifth loss in their last six games; and the Commanders -- the Commanders! -- beat the Giants to snap an eight-game losing streak.

9. "Yeah, but it was only us." (The Giants)

10. "We're not dead ye- OK, so maybe we are." (The Lions and Buccaneers)

Chiefs sunset

 It ended perhaps the only way it could have, with the face of the franchise rolling around on the ground, clutching his faithless left knee. With Patrick Mahomes down and, finally, out, just as his Kansas City Chiefs were down and, finally, out.

Call that harmonic convergence, if you like. Or a symbolic ride into the sunset, except Mahomes wasn't riding but limping gingerly down the tunnel toward the locker room, supported on either side by Chiefs personnel.

Just as his Chiefs were, symbolically.

Back out on the field, see, Gardner Minshew stepped in and threw a couple of passes to Travis Kelce, and then threw another to Kelce that had nowhere near enough air under it. Derwin James intercepted it for the Los Angeles Chargers, sealing the Bolts' 16-13 win and making it official.

For the first time since 2014, the Chiefs -- Mahomes and Kelce and Chris Jones and all the rest -- were eliminated from the playoffs.

At 6-8, they've now lost five of their last six games, including two straight at home, and if they're riding into the sunset, that sunset has come quickly -- as it tends to do whenever a great run comes to an end. A team that has played in five of the last six Super Bowls, winning three of them, got old and washed in a hurry. That sometimes is as much perception than reality, but nonetheless.

Travis Kelce, for instance?

He's almost 37, thinking about retirement and looking like it; this season he's dropped balls he used to catch in his sleep. Defensive line anchor Chris Jones? He's only 31, but it's an old 31; he's not the force he once was. And Mahomes?

He's just 30, but it's a battered 30. He's playing behind a spit-and-baling-wire offensive line that's starting two rookies, his left knee was hindering him long before he tore the ACL Sunday, and his wide receivers are mid. He's not the same Mahomes right now, and the Chiefs are not the Chiefs.

Lots of people will celebrate this, having grown weary of the whole Kelce-Tayor Swift thing, or of seeing Kelce or Mahomes in every freaking commercial on the tube these days, or so it seems.

Over-exposure breeds contempt. Too much success breeds contempt. It's why everyone outside New England got sick of Tom Brady and Bill Belichick and the Patriots during their incredible 20-year run, and why some folks undoubtedly got sick of the Bill Walsh/Joe Montana 49ers and the Chuck Noll/Terry Bradshaw Steelers and, hell, maybe even the Lombardi/Starr Packers. 

And so, yes, half of America likely watched Mahomes go down and Minshew throw the pick and thought, "Thank God we won't have to watch the Chiefs in the playoffs again." 

Which is understandable, I suppose, given that it's been 11 years since we weren't watching the Chiefs in the playoffs. Or since the last time we saw them win fewer than 10 games was 2014 -- when they won nine. Or since the only time in the last six years we haven't seen them in the Super Bowl was 2021. 

In fact, you have to go back 13 years to find a time when the Chiefs were truly awful. That was 2012, when they finished 2-14. Romeo Crennel was the head coach then. He's been retired since 2022.

Rode off into the sunset, in other words. Just as the Chiefs, so horrible then and so sublime since, perhaps rode off with their quarterback yesterday.

Excuse me. Limped off.

A Rivers Runs Through It, Part Deux*

 (*Not a play this time)

And now the Blob alert you've all been eagerly awaiting, the Fat Old Guy Update, in which the Indianapolis Colts experiment with a 44-year-old, kinda out-of-shape Philip Rivers as their starting quarterback, at least for one game:

1. The Colts lost, 18-16, but it took a 56-yard field goal with 29 seconds left for the 11-3  Seahawks to beat them in Seattle.

2. Philip Rivers got through the game without pieces of him falling off ... without saying "OK, kids, you've worn Grandpa out" and heading for the couch ... and without filing a Medicare claim.

3. Rivers, in fact, threw a touchdown pass. And was sacked only once. And completed 18-of-27 passes for a modest 120 yards -- a 73.1 passer rating. 

Think about that for a minute.

Philip Rivers, 44 years old and gone from the NFL for five years, stepped into the Colts lineup after just a week to shake off the rust and played as well or better than a lot of guys 15 or 20 years younger who do this every week.

That touchdown pass he threw, for instance, happened against one of the best defenses in the NFL. Same deal with the one sack he took. And this after five years of chucking the ball around in the backyard with his kids.

I don't know about you, but that just elevated Philip Rivers -- who actually became eligible for the Pro Football Hall of Fame this year -- from HOFer to first-ballot HOFer.

I mean, do you understand how ridiculous it is, what Rivers just did? How damn near impossible?

Do you know who had worse passer ratings than he did Sunday?

Patrick Mahomes, for one.

Joe Burrow, for another.

Drake Maye, who went into Sunday as perhaps the frontrunner for league MVP.

Ridiculous. Impossible.

And if you're still laughing at the Colts for bringing him as a stopgap (guilty) ... if you're still turning him into a one-act comedy (guilty, again) ... it's time to apologize.

So, OK. I apologize, Philip Rivers. 

You da man. You are most definitely Da Man.

A WHAT school?

 Two things happened yesterday that, if not a sea change, was at least the latest evidence in Bizarre-oville vs. Normal, an ongoing proceeding that Bizarre-oville seems to be winning.

Which is to say, an Indiana University football player won the Heisman Trophy last night. Or to punctuate it more correctly: An Indiana. University. Football player. Won. The Heisman Trophy.

Meanwhile, in Lexington, Ky. ...

Indiana and Kentucky resumed their longstanding basketball rivalry after a completely stupid nine-year break.

Kentucky, a rather un-Kentucky 7-4 outfit whom Gonzaga recently floor-waxed by 25 points, erased a seven-point halftime deficit to beat Indiana 72-60.

Outscored the basketball Hoosiers 40-21 in the second half. Forced 18 turnovers. Held them to 34 percent shooting (15-of-44) and a hideous17 percent (4-of-24) from the 3-point arc.

All of which revealed once again how it's like to go for Indiana basketball this season.

To wit, when the threes are droppin', the Hoosiers are going to drown people. When they're not, they're going to drown themselves.

It's how, in the space of 72 hours or so, they can go from annihilating Penn State by 41 points (113-72) to losing to Kentucky by 12. It's how they can drop 17 threes on the Nittany Lions, getting 44 points and a school-record 10 triples from Lamar Wilkerson, and then couldn't hit a barn door with a bass fiddle against UK.

Four of 24? You could blindfold a 10-year-old and spin him around ten times and he'd hit more than 4-of-24. Not to belabor the point.

But back to football.

Which, as everyone knows, is 13-0 and ranked No. 1 for the first time in history, and whose quarterback, an irredeemably lovable assassin named Fernando Mendoza tearfully accepted the Heisman last night. 

Given that Indiana has a football tradition that ranges from "We suck" to "We once played in the Copper Bowl," you'll be unsurprised to learn no Indiana player had ever won the Heisman before last night. Not even Harry Gonso or John Isenbarger or that whole crowd.

That, and the No. 1 ranking, makes Indiana what it has never been: A football school. Which sounds weird to say, and even weirder to conceptualize.

After all, this is a football program that has lost 719 games dating back to 1887, when Grover Cleveland was in the White House. It has had 89 losing seasons. Indiana basketball, on the other hand, has won 1,955 games -- and five national titles -- in 125 seasons.

In other words, until it starts raining threes in Assembly Hall again, this will take some getting used to. Football used to be two things at Indiana: One, an excuse to sit out in the parking lot and tailgate until halftime; and, two, something to do on Saturdays until it was time for Bob Knight to roll out the basketballs and resume winning Big Ten championships.

Well. You know the last time Indiana was ranked No. 1 in basketball?

A dozen years ago, in 2013.

And the last time Indiana was ranked No. 1 in football?

Today.

A very bad day, Part Deux

 I know what I'm supposed to say now, with the full extent of Sherrone Moore's unraveling becoming clearer. It's right here in my Officially Approved Outrage Script, the one that's routinely handed out when public figures are deemed to have gotten what was coming to them.

The first line is always this: I don't feel a bit sorry for (public figure name here) ...

Let me begin by saying I don't feel especially sorry for Sherrone Moore. He made his bed with a 24-year-old subordinate and willingly climbed into it -- taking advantage of a power dynamic that should never be taken advantage of, and betraying his wife and three children in the process. It cost him his job, and it should have cost him his job.

However ...

However, this doesn't mean there isn't an element of Greek tragedy to this tale, man being brought down by his own hand. And as with all such tales, a measure of sadness goes with it.

In other words, there should be nothing enjoyable in watching a man's life explode before the whole world, self-inflicted or not. And few lives have exploded more spectacularly -- and in a shorter window -- than Moore's did Wednesday.

After he was fired, we know now, Moore went home, was confronted by his wife (as he should have been), and responded by threatening to kill himself -- a last desperate shot, perhaps, at preserving the control he'd so abused and that was now gone. Then, armed with a knife, he reportedly went to his mistress's house, broke in, and threatened to kill both himself and her.

Another last desperate shot.

Eventually, with his wife's help, police tracked him down at a local church, and he was placed under arrest. He's been in jail since, under protective custody.

Perhaps you can turn a cold eye on all of that. I cannot. It just makes me sad.

This is not to say I lay any blame on the shoulders of the 24-year-old subordinate, as more than one internet chowderhead has. She's a kid not long out of college who landed a job at the University of Michigan, did the job well enough to get promoted, and wound up sleeping with her boss.

He had one of the two or three highest profile jobs at a major American university. She, um, did not. It takes no great insight to guess who was driving the bus in that situation.

In any event, her life will never be the same, either. And that you can and should feel sorry about.

As for the rest, there is only that sadness. And amazement at how often, how easily, and how stupidly human beings bring about their own fall.

Irish 'byes, Part Deux

 Four days along now and everyone's still on Notre Dame's case, partly because some folks live to jump on Notre Dame's case and partly because ... well, let's face it. Notre Dame sometimes brings on the case-jumping itself.

In a sense it did that Sunday, when, after being told no soup for you by the College Football Playoff, the Irish immediately voted to turn down a berth in what was expected to be a Pop-Tarts Bowl showdown with BYU, the other first-out CFP snub. The optics of this, which apparently didn't occur to anyone at ND, could not have been worse -- to the delight of all the internet trolls who immediately leaped to their trolling ramparts.

The Cryin' Irish, the trolls called 'em. Cowards.  Buncha ungrateful, snot-nosed whiners who got all honked off at the ACC because the ACC was favoring Miami to make the CFP field and wouldn't admit it.

On the last count, Notre Dame had a right to be honked off, at last partially. ACC commissioner Jim Phillips did fib like a boss by saying, gosh, no, we weren't promoting Miami over Notre Dame. The ACC Network repeatedly re-airing ND's 24-21 loss to the Hurricanes back in August was just, you know, an unfortunate coincidence.

On the other hand ...

 On the other hand, Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua came off as high-handed as ND's critics are always saying, pointing out how lucky the ACC was that the Irish favored it with their presence and all but threatening to pull out of the conference. In so doing, of course, he failed to mention the exclusive, mutually beneficial deal the ACC allows ND football -- which maintains its independence while plumping up the ACC's bottom line (and filling out the Irish schedule) by playing five or six conference opponents every year.

Denials aside, why wouldn't Phillips and the ACC honchos favor a full-fledged, revenue-sharing member (Miami) over a quasi-member that's a quasi-member expressly to keep all its dough? Even if Notre Dame is, by miles and miles, the ACC's top draw?

Just sayin'.

Just sayin', too, that it's only the optics that make Notre Dame look like a bunch of snifflin' pansies for refusing to play a bowl game. The rest is simple economics. Because by saying "Nah, we're good", ND was only acknowledging what everyone already knows: The bowl system is an over-saturated market rendered all but valueless by the CFP and the changed landscape of college football.

There are now 41 bowl games on the yearly docket, a ridiculous supply that far outstrips the demand. Most of them exist only to fill out network TV schedules, and which are sustained by what the networks pay out to do so. It's how we've gone from nine-or-ten-win teams squaring off, in say, the Gator Bowl, to 6-6 Whatsamatta U. vs. 6-6 Moon Pie Tech  in the Uncle Cletus' Pickled Pig Feet Bowl.

Notre Dame turning down the Pop-Tarts Bowl, therefore, was a money decision, a matter of cost-vs.-benefit. And, increasingly, there is no benefit -- especially when these bowl games' payouts don't come close to offsetting the participants' cost, and when even the richest athletic programs already run an annual deficit.

 It's why half-a-dozen or so other schools are following ND's lead and opting out of bowl games, and why for some time high-end players have chosen to sit out the Uncle Cletus bowls. There is, frankly, no upside to playing in what have become meaningless made-for-TV exhibitions, for either NIL-bankrolled players or major programs like Notre Dame.

The bottom line is the bottom line, in other words. Shocker.

A very bad day

 There have been other Wednesdays in Sherrone Moore's life, a lot of them,  but yesterday had to be an all-timer. And not in a Best-Actor-Oscar, I-just-hit-the-Powerball kind of way.

First, the University of Michigan fired Moore as its head football coach, not for lack of success on the field -- Moore guided the Wolverines to a 9-3 record this year with a true freshman quarterback -- but for an "inappropriate relationship" with a staffer.

Then, he wound up in the county jail after being arrested as a suspect in an assault.

That's a full day. And, again, not in a good way.

The "inappropriate relationship" apparently involved Moore's extramarital affair with a female staff member who, rumor has it, subsequently became pregnant. At about the same time, rumor also has it, Moore doubled her salary -- kind of like Scrooge did for Bob Cratchit at the end of "A Christmas Carol," except for less noble reasons.

Rumors being what they are, this may or may not be true. You can't believe everything you read on the internet, after all, no matter how much bedrock faith some people have in the truthiness of social "media".

The fact that Moore wound up in jail yesterday, however, is verifiable. Absent additional details, it's unclear whether the alleged assault that landed him there was in some way connected to the circumstances of his firing.

And while there is always the tendency -- amplified, again, by that demon social "media" -- to make light of the fall of public figures, the Blob chooses to refrain in this case (although not, mea culpa, in every case). Whatever bad choices led Sherrone Moore to his very bad day, I'm not going to join in just yet. Not until we know more.

Although "Hail to the Victors" would likely not be the right background music for this tale. Just a thought.

A Rivers Runs Through It*

 (*A play in one act)

Morning. The head coach's office at the Indianapolis Colts complex. In a panicked frenzy, Shane Steichen is tearing open drawers, rummaging through cabinets, flinging clipboards and tablets and tattered  copies of "Football For Dummies" out of the storage closet onto the office's blue-and-white carpet.

Steichen: Dammit! Where is he? He's got to be SOMEWHERE!

Offensive coordinator Jim Bob Cooter: Who, Coach?

Steichen: Our other quarterback! You know, what's-his-name!

Cooter: Um, Coach, we don't have a what's-his-name.

Steichen: You mean ...

Cooter: Yup. We're fresh out of quarterbacks.

Wide receivers coach Reggie Wayne: Fresh out.

Linebackers coach Cato June: Cupboard's bare, boss.

(Steichen bends over in anguish, presses his hands to his head, utters a sound halfway between a moan and a growl)

Steichen: Gaaah! You mean we've got NO ONE? Danny's out for the year, AR's on the IR with the eye thing, and now O'Riley Leonard's hurt, TOO?

Cooter: Um, that's Riley Leonard, Coach.

Steichen: Oh, yeah. Right. Anyway, he's hurt, too? So what do we do now?

(Cooter, Wayne, June and the rest of the coaching staff shuffle their feet, clear their throats, stare at the carpet)

Cooter: Well ...

Wayne: Well ...

June: There's always ...

Steichen: You mean Peyton? Come on, he's too busy making many commercials and yukking it up with Eli on Monday nights. 

Cooter: No, not Peyton.

Steichen: Jeff George? I mean, he still lives in town, but he's so ancient there are drawings of him on cave walls.

Cooter: No.

Steichen: Who, then?

Cooter: Well ... we could give Philip Rivers a call.

Steichen: PHILIP RIVERS?? Hey, we're best buds, I love the guy, but, man, he hasn't played in five years, and he was old then. What is he now, 75? Hell, he's got grandkids, for cryin' out loud!

Cooter: Now, wait a minute, he's only 44. And, yes, he hasn't taken a snap in five years, which in NFL years is more like 30. But he knows the organization. And some of the guys he played with are still here -- one or two, anyway. And it's not like he's got anything better to do.

Steichen: Well, hell, neither does Cam Newton. I mean, have you seen him on TV?

Cooter:  Have YOU? The other day he showed up dressed as William Tecumseh Sherman, only with a pith helmet and a riding crop. I think he might have been sporting a monocle, too. We sign him, the clothing allowance alone would break us.

(Steichen sighs)

Steichen: Well ... I guess it's Gramps or nobody, then. Unless we can figure out a way to raise Unitas from the dead, that is.

(Pause)

We can't do that, can we?

(The next day, the Colts announce they're adding Philip Rivers to the practice squad. America reacts with a chorus of "What th-?" Occasionally someone is heard to say, "Philip Rivers? You mean he's still alive?")

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 14

And now this week's edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the Blob feature in which reality dawns and critics say, "The reality is, I wish it were sunset for this and not dawn", and also "It dawns on me I got your reality right here, pal":

1. "Wait, you mean we're NOT going to the Super Bowl this year?" (The Chiefs, who were smothered by the Texans and are now 6-7)

2. (Also the Colts, who lost Daniel Jones for the season in a loss to the Jaguars, and whose quarterback room is now Riley Leonard, an injured Anthony Richardson and perhaps retired 44-year-old Philip Rivers, whom Indy is bringing in for a tryout)

3. (And, no, I am not making up that last)

4. In other news, the Buccaneers lost at home to the dog-poo Saints; the Browns lost to the Titans but Shedeur Sanders threw for 364 yards and three scores and ran for another; the Super Bowl champion Eagles lost (again!), this time to the Chargers as Super Bowl MVP Jalen Hurts threw four picks; and the Bears lost (again!) to the Packers.

5. "Wait, you mean the Packers still own us?" (The Bears)

6. "Wait, you mean Jalen Hurts sucks now?" (America -- except for Philadelphia, which has already decided he sucks now)

7. "Wait, you mean I had Shedeur Sanders last on the depth chart all this time?" (Browns coach Kevin Stefanski)

8. "Wait, we lost to WHO? At our place?" (The Buccaneers)

9. "Wait, we beat WHO? At their place?" (The Saints)

10. "Wait, you mean the Packers still own us?" (The Bears, again, for good measure) 

Thanks for playing

 Been following all the memes/chortling/out-and-out guffaws attending the latest Monty Python skit starring our Fearless Leader, and I've gotta say, FIFA kinda weak-sistered its usual bribery. A cheapo medal? That's the best it could come up with?

At the very least a sporty automobile could have been involved. Or a golden calf. Or perhaps some choice oil leases in Qatar -- although that might have been a hard nut, considering Qatar already gave F.L. a plane and no doubt wouldn't have liked being hit up again.

But, no, FIFA went the Cracker Jacks route instead.

 Here Mr. President, since you are the grand poobah of peace, we present you the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize, which we just made up to make you feel better about being snubbed by those Nobel snots. Thanks for hosting the 2026 World Cup. And just look at the draw the U.S. got! America, the downtown YMCA and the DaffoDillies from the Little Kickers league, all in the same group! Why, you'd think we rigged it or something (wink-wink)!

Ay-yi-yi. Honestly, the whole business would be satire (or, yes, a Monty Python skit) had Fearless Leader and the rest of the clown show not killed off satire a long time ago. Now it's just another day in Donny World, where participation trophies are scorned except when they're being presented to you-know-who.

Can't wait 'til the U.S. loses to the DafoDillies, and FIFA digs into the Cracker Jacks box again to come up with another Major Award.

Thanks for playing, America. Tell 'em what they've won, Johnny Olson!

Why, it's the home version of "Hollywood Squares"! Includes BOTH Paul Lynde and Charles Nelson Reilly!

Ah, the madness. The madness.

Irish 'byes

 So Notre Dame got squeezed out of the College Football Playoff, which is either insufferable elitists finally getting theirs (the anti-Domer version), or (the Domer version), a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham.*

(*Woody Allen, "Bananas")

Me?

I blame Stanford.

If the Cardinal hadn't been such a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a football team, see, Notre Dame wouldn't have somehow skidded from ninth in the CFP poll to out of the CFP  without even playing last weekend. Which means Notre Dame 49, Stanford 20 nine days ago was  the last the CFP selectors got to see of Marcus Freeman's lads.

What that says to me is the Cardinal simply was not good enough for Notre Dame to impress anyone with a mere 29-point tool-up. Thus, it's all Stanford's fault.

But enough about that.

Enough about the Irish getting elbowed out of the CFP by a three-loss Alabama team, which got thoroughly paved by Georgia in the SEC championship game two days ago. Clearly rushing for minus-3 yards against the Bulldogs carried great weight with the selectors.

More shocking (and unsettling) than that is what the Irish did next: Turn down a projected Pop-Tarts Bowl bid to play BYU, the other first-team-out in the CFP voting yesterday. This followed on the heels of Kansas State and Iowa State declining to play in Big 12-affiliated bowls because both just lost their head coaches -- a move that prompted the conference to fine both schools half-a-million dollars.

In Notre Dame's case, the anti-Domer crowd immediately seized on this as proof Notre Dame is a hotbed of crybabyin' snots who, because they didn't get their way, decided to take their ball and go home. Hey, we're NOTRE DAME. We don't play in loser bowl games like the Pop-Tart Bowl (even though Pop-Tarts are delicious). If we can't play in the Big Show, we're not playin' in any show.

Or something like that.

What I think is the anti-Domers are missing the larger point, which is that the advent and expansion of the CFP has rendered moot every bowl game except those folded into the CFP. Really, what does a Kansas State or Iowa State, let alone Notre Dame, have to gain by playing in a Pop-Tarts Bowl? Or a Bad Boy Mowers Pinstripe Bowl, a Tony The Tiger Sun Bowl, a Scooter's Coffee Frisco Bowl or a Bucked Up LA Bowl?

(All of which are real bowl games, by the way. Come on, you think I could make up something called the Bucked Up LA Bowl?)

Every one of these bowls is not so much a reward for that glorious 6-6 season, but an occasion for Directional Hyphen State to spend a bunch of money it likely could use to build up its NIL war chest. And this is truth squared for a school like Notre Dame, which is both insulated and increasingly isolated by its independent status and the NBC contract that fuels it.

That status, and that longstanding deal, means Notre Dame does not have to revenue share like the Power 4 conference schools do. Notre Dame's loot is all Notre Dame's, and it's the main reason -- plus the cushy arrangement it has with the ACC -- football has never found it necessary to join a conference. Why split the take when you can keep it all and still kinda-sorta play a conference schedule?

But as yesterday's snub illustrates, circumstances are catching up with the Irish. They may still have the clout to carve out their own CFP status, but joining a conference now has advantages it didn't before. Had ND played in a conference championship game Saturday, for instance -- this team, playing the quality of football it's playing right now -- is there any doubt it would be one of the 12 CFP qualifiers, instead of looking on from outside the gates?

I mean, look what it did for Alabama. Even though the Tide got rolled.

Instead, the CFP said 'bye to the Irish -- and then the Irish said 'bye to the loss leader every bowl game outside the CFP has become.

A strange new world. And getting stranger.

Wrong again

 Well, I'll be bumfuzzled, to quote the late Bobby Bowden.

Sat in my TV room with friends last night and saw Ohio State take a 10-6 lead into halftime in the Big Ten championship game, and thought, yeah, that tracks. This was going the way I thought it would go. This was going to wind up something along the lines of Ohio State 24, Indiana 13, and I would be RIGHT, dammit, the Prognosticator of the Year, the Seer Without Peer in the realm of predictin' who wins a dadgum football game.

And then ...

Ah, yes. And then.

And then here was Fernando Mendoza making a perfect back-shoulder throw to Elijah Sarratt, who made a perfect catch even though he was perfectly covered, and suddenly Indiana led 13-10 and the game was down to the fourth quarter, and the Buckeyes hadn't dented the scoreboard in the second half.

And then Ohio State chewed up almost eight minutes on a 15-play, 81-yard drive that went on and on and finally ground to a halt within spitting distance of the Hoosier goal line, and the Buckeyes' placekicker came on to tie it up with a field goal that, had it been golf, would have been on the fringe, and OHMIGOD WHAT IS THIS HE YANKED IT LEFT ...

And Indiana still led 13-10. And now there was just 2:48 left on the clock, and here was Mendoza making another perfect throw, this time to Charlie Becker, for 33 yards and a first down.

After which Ohio State had to burn all its timeouts, and pretty soon there were just 24 seconds left and the Hoosiers were pooching a kick and the Buckeyes were downing it on the 14-yard line with 18 seconds left. Which meant they had to go 86 yards in the time it takes to, I don't know, warm up a cinnamon roll in the microwave or something.

They didn't, of course.

The Hoosiers knocked down a couple of throws and Jeremiah Smith caught a meaningless deep ball in traffic as the clock ran out, and No. 2 Indiana won the Big Ten title 13-10 over the No. 1, defending national champion Buckeyes. And like most of America. the Blob is still trying to process it.

I mean, come on, a year after Curt Cignetti showed up in Bloomington to take over one of the historically worst programs in major college football, the Hoosiers are 13-0 and conference champs for the first time in 58 years. They're also headed to the College Football Playoff as the No. 1 team in the nation for the first time ever.

And to do it, they held an Ohio State team that came in averaging a shade under 36 points per game to 10 points.

And all but silenced the Buckeyes' running game, which coughed out a miniscule 2.2 yards for rush and 58 yards against the Hoosiers' defensive front. 

And sacked Ohio State quarterback Julian Sayin five times and intercepted him once.

And, finally, snapped a 30-game losing streak to the Columbus behemoth. Last time the Hoosiers beat the Buckeyes was 1988, when Anthony Thompson gashed the Bucks for 190 yards and four scores in a 41-7 blowout. 

Anthony Thompson. Who is 58 years old now.

Me?

I'm 70. And I've never seen the like of it. 

Da Prediction*

 (*Sort of)

By which I mean, I don't know who's going to win the big monster mash between unbeaten, top-ranked Ohio State and unbeaten, second-ranked Indiana tonight in Lucas Oil Stadium. My gut tells me it'll be the Buckeyes, on account of no one in college football has more pure talent stacked up and down the depth chart.

So, sorry, Indiana. You can take solace in my track record in these matters, which is sort of like Germany's record in world wars (to shamelessly steal from the late, great Dan Jenkins).

Anyway, when I mean my prediction is only a sorta prediction, it's because predicting who wins is not what it's about. It's about predicting what happens if the Hoosiers actually do pull off the upset.

I figure two a number of things will happen:

1. The people who've been saying all season Indiana is a total fraud because, well, it's Indiana and Indiana can't possibly be this good at football, are going to say,"Well, they only really had to prepare for one game all season."

2. After which they'll say, "Well, Ohio State wasn't really that good. I mean, who did they play? Michigan? Please."

3. After which they'll also say, "So, you know, once again, Indiana hasn't really been tested. Why, just wait'll (choose one) Georgia/Ole Miss/Texas Tech/Texas A&M/Oregon gets hold of the Hoosiers. They'll come apart like the polyester Armani knockoff they are."

4. After which someone will surely say, "Um, the Hoosiers already beat Oregon. By 10. In Eugene."

5. After which the people who've been saying all season Indiana is a total fraud because, well, it's Indiana and Indiana can't possibly be this good at football will say, "Yeah, well, Oregon's overrated, too. And the Ducks had an off day. And ... and ... AND NOTRE DAME'S A FRAUD, TOO, HOW CAN MIAMI NOT BE RANKED AHEAD OF THE IRISH ON ACCOUNT OF THE 'CANES DESTROYED THEM BY THREE POINTS BACK IN AUGUST??"

Of course, should Indiana lose tonight -- especially if it loses big -- none of the above will apply, except the Notre Dame stuff. Although the gloating will surely be disgusting.

Please, God. Spare us.

The Chair 2 ...

 ... and, like most sequels, it wasn't as good as the original.

The original, of course, starred the late Robert Montgomery Knight in one of his most iconic roles, Angry Seating Dude. In that one, he sailed an orange molded plastic chair across the Assembly Hall floor in the middle of a game against archrival Purdue, prompting his immediate rejection and unleashing 40 years of chair jokes, memes and even a dependable laugh line from Knight himself, who puckishly said he was only trying to provide seating for a little old lady.

The sequel?

Well, it happened last night up in Wisconsin, where Green Bay lost another college basketball game to Robert Morris, and another basketball coach threw another chair. This time it was Doug Gottlieb, former ESPN yakker and now the head coach of Green Bay, which stands 4-6 on the season after going 4-28 in Gottlieb's first year.

Last night, his Phoenix were sailing toward a W when, with a smidge fewer than four minutes to play, everything came part like wet single-ply. Down 11 with 3:54 left, Robert Morris rallied to cut the lead to two with 35.7 seconds left, forced a 10-second violation and splashed a three-ball to take the lead, then won it on a layup with 2.4 seconds showing after Green Bay tied the game with a free throw.

An understandably annoyed Gottlieb stalked off the floor, spied a blameless chair in the entryway and threw it against the wall.

Voila. "Chair 2."

And, look, even though it didn't have the dramatic je ne sais quoi of the original, it did raise awareness about an issue vital to ... well, at least a couple people, maybe: Furniture abuse in college basketball. 

Of course, you can say two incidents in four decades isn't much of an issue, but even one abused chair is too many. This is why Gottlieb needs to be severely punished for his actions, and Green Bay needs to institute a Chair Abuse Awareness Program with funding from, I don't know, Barcalounger or La-Z Boy or someone.

"OK, now you're just being silly, Mr. Blob," you're saying now.

Perhaps. But I bet that chair doesn't think so.

Green Bay was up by 11 with 3:54 left in the game before Robert Morris launched a late rally. With its lead cut to two with 35.7 seconds to go, Green Bay was called for a 10-second violation when it couldn't advance the ball past midcourt. After Robert Morris hit a go-ahead 3 and Green Bay went 1-of-2 from the free throw line to tie the score, Nikolaos Chitikoudis scored the winning layup for Robert Morris with 2.4 seconds to play.

A real boy after all

 Chatted the other night with an IU basketball fan about Zach Edey, who of course played for Purdue and would therefore seem to be, on general principle, an object of ridicule for said fan.

Surprisingly, he agreed that Edey was pretty damn good after all, and not just tall like his detractors always said.

"Yeah, he's a better Uwe Blab with better hands," the IU fan said at one point, after I mentioned that among Edey's skills was a pair of quality mitts.

Which of course got us reminiscing about Uwe's legendarily bad hands, which -- as the IU fan pointed out -- didn't keep him from playing in the NBA for several years.

Five years, to be exact. With the Dallas Mavericks, Golden State Warriors and San Antonio Spurs. Averaged 2.1 points and 1.8 rebounds. I looked it up.

Zach Edey, it must be said, is faring a bit better than that.

Twenty-two games into the season he's averaging a modest double-double for the Memphis Grizzlies -- 14.2 points and 11.6 rebounds per, on astounding 67.1 percent shooting. And in his last three games, he's quietly put together some sit-up-and-take-notice numbers.

Against San Antonio two nights ago: 19 points, 15 rebounds and a block.

Against Sacramento two nights before that: 32 points, 17 rebounds and five blocks.

Against the Clippers last Friday: Just five points, but 19 boards, a couple of assists and three more blocks.

He is, in other words, exactly what some of us (OK, so me) figured he would be: An effective, sneaky-mobile low-blocks presence in a league that still occasionally needs one.

No, he's never going to a big scorer, because it's not a back-to-the-basket league anymore. But neither the Grizzlies nor anyone else expected him to be. He is, rather, exactly what the Grizzlies were looking for when they took him with the ninth pick in the 2024 NBA draft, shocking the gurus who figured he'd be lucky to go in the first round:

A rebounder. A rim protector. A reliable inside option on those occasions when you need an inside option.

But of course, he's just tall.

And he has no skills.

And he's waaay too much the big galoot to ever make a ripple in the NBA.

Well. Look out there now, as Zach Edey one-hands a pass that's headed out of bounds and cashes the layup. What do you see?

Me, I see a ripple or two. And a real boy after all.

An oldie but oldie

 (In which the Blob again strays from the friendly confines of Sportsball World. You know the drill.)

I knew it was December again when I waded into the social media muck Monday, and there was President Donald John "Legbreaker" Trump standing in front of a Christmas tree in the White House. He was declaring victory in the War on Christmas.

OK, so that's not what he actually said. What he actually said was, "We're saying Merry Christmas again!"

This came as something of a surprise to normal humans (and also to me) who were unaware we'd ever stopped saying Merry Christmas. Or that a War on Christmas was being waged right under our noses amid all those public displays of Christmas trees and Christmas wreaths and lighted Nativity scenes, and Christmas carols playing softly over the sound system at your local Malls-R-Us.

Nonetheless, it's with an admirable bullheadedness that those of a certain ideological bent insist there is a War on Christmas in America, and by extension a war on Christianity. This is because somewhere in America someone won't let them put a Nativity scene on the courthouse lawn. Or that somewhere else in America someone is saying "Happy holidays!' at this very moment, recognizing that there are more religious observances this time of year than just Christmas.

This amounts to religious persecution, as far as those folks are concerned. It's the encroachment on American society (going on for years now!) of evil diversity -- even though the founders baked such diversity into our national tradition with a little something called the First Amendment.

It guarantees freedom of religion. It guarantees no particular religion will be instituted as the official religion of the state. It means, yes, Catholics and Protestants and Jews and Muslims and Sikhs and Buddhists have the same access to the same right.

Recognizing that is not persecution, no matter how badly a certain species of Christian wishes it were. And no matter how silly (and tiresome) the overwhelming dominance of Christianity in America renders their imagined War on Christmas.

It's an oldie but oldie, that stuff. Makes you want to ask the Certain Species when it's going to get some new material.

The Certain Species does, however, make up a sizeable chunk of Fearless Leader's base, and he's smart enough to pander to it. And so there he was, saying it was OK for a President to say Merry Christmas again -- the implication being his heathen Democratic predecessors refused to do so.

Well. Except for the dozens and dozens of times Barack and Michelle Obama, both Christians, said it every year at this time.

And except for the dozens and dozens of times Fearless Leader's predecessor Joe Biden -- a practicing Roman Catholic -- said it, too.

The stubborn notion that both routinely snubbed what Fearless Leader bravely does not was exposed years ago, when Slate magazine put out a one-minute video compilation of Obama saying "Merry Christmas" 17 times. Alas, this was offset by Joe Biden opening his remarks at last year's White House Christmas tree lighting by saying, "Happy holidays, everyone!"

Just kidding.

What he actually said was, "Merry Christmas, everyone! Merry Christmas."

Wow. Not once, but twice.

The War on Christmas never sounded more fanciful.

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 13

 And now this week's edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the Blob feature with a surprise prize inside just waiting to jump out and say "Surprise!", and of which critics have said "Sinking to new lows is never a surprise with you," and also, "You jump out and say 'Surprise!', Imma surprise you by jumping on your face":

1. "Surprise!" (The Carolina Panthers, who jumped out and surprised the Super Bowl-bound Los Angeles Rams, causing the previously un-surpriseable Matthew Stafford to throw two picks in a 31-28 loss)

2. "What th-?" (Rams fans who came up with "Super Bowl-bound Rams" thing)

3. "Surprise!" (Joe Burrow, who jumped out, back into the Bengals lineup, to surprise the  Ravens so much they turned it over five times in a 32-14 loss)

4. "What th-? We thought we were facing 80-year-old Joe Flacco again!" (The Ravens)

5. "Surpri- OK, so almost surprise!" (The Commanders, who surprised the high-riding Broncos enough to force overtime before losing 27-26)

6. "I'm surprised I didn't have a heart attack!" (The Broncos)

7. "Surpri- OK, so not really." (The surging Texans, who beat the spiraling Colts, who've now lost three of their last four games)

8. Meanwhile, the Bears took down the Eagles 24-15, their fifth straight win and ninth in their last 10 games.

9. "Surprise, bleeping bleepers!" (The Bears)

10. "Double surprise!" (Bears coach Ben Johnson, tearing off his shirt in the locker room afterward and dancing around bare-chested*)

(* - No, really. He did.)

Decisions, decisions, Part Deux

 The shoe finally dropped yesterday in Oxford, Miss., and, well, it went almost exactly the way everyone expected it would.

To wit:

1. Ole Miss football coach Lane Kiffin took the money and ran to LSU.

2. And, being Lane Kiffin, he was a total douchecanoe about it.

What he did was tell his staff if they wanted to follow him to LSU, they'd best be on the plane to Baton Rouge or he'd leave them behind. This was an attempt to carry out his rumored threat that if he wasn't allowed to coach the Rebels in the College Football Playoff, he'd take his entire staff with him and leave the team and community he professed to love high and dry.

Then he released an official statement that was a masterwork of obfuscation, blaming Ole Miss athletic director Keith Carter for not allowing him to stick around for the CFP. And making it sound like he, Lane Kiffin, was the hero in the whole deal for standing by his players.

"My request ... was denied by Keith Carter despite the team also asking him to allow me to keep coaching them so they could better maintain their high level of performance," the statement read.

In other words: I WANTED to stand by my guys for another minute or two, but the AD wouldn't let me. 

In further other words: Therefore I am throwing him under the bus, driving over him, then backing up to do it again. Even though he revived my faltering career by hiring me when a lot of others wouldn't.

There are words to describe such breathtaking ingratitude, but most I can't repeat here. This is a PG-13 Blob, after all.

Suffice it to say it was nuclear level self-absorption for Kiffin to think Ole Miss would allow him to coach the Rebels in the CFP after he'd already told them he was abandoning them. And not just abandoning them, but abandoning them for a conference rival.

(Somewhere in suburbia. A typical middle class neighorhood.)

Suburban Dad: "Honey, I'm home! And guess what? I'm leaving you for the 25-year-old stripper who lives next door!"

Suburban Mom: "Pack your bags and get out then, mister."

Dad: "Aw, come on. Don't be that way. Think about Junior. Can I still take him on our big fishing trip this weekend? The kid is really looking forward to it, and I'd like to be there for him one last time before I ditch his ass."

Mom: "What?? NO."

Dad: "Well, OK. But he'll be really disappointed when I tell him you wouldn't let him go."

Which of course makes Mom the bad guy.

Which of course means she has to patch things up with her son while Dad hits the bricks with Trudi Kazootie.

Which of course is precisely what Kiffin is doing to Ole Miss.

And, look, it's not as if we didn't know already that loyalty is as obsolete as the rotary phone in the age of NIL and ungoverned transfer portal. But somehow when people wring their hands over the perceived crumbling of college athletics, it's always the athletes who get tagged as faithless carpetbaggers. Yet all they're doing is exactly what Coach Slobberknocker has been doing for decades.

Jumping schools for a chunkier payday, or more exposure, or a better situation. Being a me-first guy even as he preaches teamwork and family and all-for-one, one-for-all. Being the rankest of hypocrites when he bemoans how the kids are just in it for themselves these days.  

I never want to hear that again from anyone. 

Especially if "anyone" is named Lane Kiffin.