Chiefly "meh"

 Your world famous Kansas City Chiefs lost by a hair again yesterday, this time on Thanksgiving to the surging Dallas Cowboys. Who, don't look now, have won three in a row, came from 21-0 down to clip the division-leading Eagles last week, and now are GOING TO THE SUPER BOWL, DADGUM RIGHT, YOU BETTER BELIEVE IT, HOSS. HOW 'BOUT THEM COWBOYS??

Sorry. Some guy in a Stetson and a throwback Roger Staubach jersey just Linda Blair-ed me for a second. Demon possession can be such an ugly thing.

But back to the World Famous Chiefs.

If you're sick of them, you had one more thing to be thankful for yesterday, because Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce and the rest of 'em seem on the verge of going away, at least for now. And by "going away," I mean, "failing to make the playoffs."

Believe it or not, this could happen. And it's probably the latter -- not -- because it seems like every year for the last, I don't know, century or so, you're turning on your TV on Super Bowl Sunday and there that bleeping Mahomes and those bleeping Chiefs are again. They're like the Tom Brady Patriots only with more State Farm commercials.

Anyway, the Chiefs are 6-6 now, three games behind the Broncos in the AFC West and one game behind the Chargers. They've lost three of their last four, and would have lost the fourth had Shane Steichen not lost his nerve with the Colts up 11 in the fourth quarter in Arrowhead last week.

Now, it's true all of those six losses have been by a touchdown or less. But except for a win over the Lions on Sunday night six weeks ago, the Chiefs haven't beaten a team with a winning record this season. And they're 1-6 in those touchdown-or-less games -- a revealing stat for a team that was 10-0 in one-score games last season.

So, these are no longer the World Famous Chiefs. These are the Just Kinda "Meh" Chiefs.

Sorry, Patrick. Sorry, Taylor Swift's fiance. And, mostly, sorry, Chiefs fans.

You treated me right that time I covered a game in Arrowhead years ago, and I've had a soft spot for you since. But your guys are not going anywhere this year.

Your one bright spot: I'm almost always wrong when I say stuff like that. So there you go.

A few brief Thanksgiving thoughts

 Happy Turkeycide Day, Blobophiles -- aka I Couldn't Eat Another Bi-Wait There's Pie? Day, aka Omigod What Did Aunt Myrtle Put In Her Jell-O Mold This Year? Day. May you stuff your faces and then drift off to Tryptophan Land on third-and-11 at the Lions 34.

You might also, because the very day has the word "thanks" in it, make a show of gratitude for the bounty the Lord has provided you. Like, I don't know, FanDuel's cool new "Prison Or Probation?" app for those who've embezzled funds from the company to pay off their Thanksgiving Day FanDuel debts.

What I mean to say is, it's a wonderful life ("Hey! That's a Christmas thing! Wait your turn, you sneaky bastard!" -- Thanksgiving). And so, in that spirit, here are a few things the Blob is thankful for this day:

1. Pie.

2. Pie.

3. MORE PIE.

Oh, and also ...

4. The glory and wonder of NFL officiating.

5. The cleansing endorphins that come from yelling at the glory and wonder of NFL officiating because DAMMIT THAT WAS HOLDING THROW THE FLAG.

6. All the TV commercials that do NOT feature A) Patrick Mahomes; B) Travis Kelce; C) Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce; D) Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce and Jason Kelce.

7. Stuff that makes me laugh.*

8. (*Such as the unintentional comedy of a convicted felon -- aka our glorious Fearless Leader -- pardoning a turkey.)

9. (*Also all the other unintentional comedy emanating from Glorious Fearless Leader's three-ring circus.)

10. (*Also all those College Football Playoff arguments -- especially ones that begin, "Notre Dame is a joke (because I hate Notre Dame"); "The SEC should get nine bids (because my name is Paul Finebaum)"; and "Who has Indiana beaten, anyway? (because my name is Paul Finebaum)." To amend Mr. Carlson from "WKRP In Cincinnati": No one ever thought THOSE turkeys could fly.)

Hall of memories

 Funny, sometimes, how a name will take you right back. All of a sudden you're no longer 70 years old, and you don't creak when you walk. All your joints are well-oiled. And the warranty on your various mechanics of nature has years to run yet.

Which is to say, I was looking at the list of 2025 Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame inductees the other day, and saw Jerry Bomholt's name on it.

Bunch of others, too, all of them firing little back-in-the-day synapses. Jay Edwards, who should have been in a long time ago except, apparently, for people who couldn't get past the missteps of his youth (and we all make them). Rick Fox, who went from Warsaw High to North Carolina to the NBA to Hollywood.  

And more: Cliff Hawkins, who I got to know as Luke Recker's high school coach at DeKalb. Marty Johnson, who coached rival East Noble, and who I got to know as a young coach at Pendleton Heights with a wry sense of humor and a gift for deflating the pompous -- including himself. 

And then there was Jerry Bomholt.

Who I still see, for some reason, kneeling on some sideline with his head down. His hand is on his forehead, shielding his eyes. An invisible weight seems to press down on him, and he looks  impossibly young -- even younger, perhaps, than the 26 years he was lugging around at the time.

I can't say for sure if this is a photo I'm remembering, or if such a photo even exists. I'm thinking it must, because the image is so clear in my mind. But 45 years have passed since that time, and the years are vandals and thieves, defacing what they don't outright steal.

What I do know is this: Whatever invisible weight I imagined Jerry Bomholt carrying in the late winter of 1980 was very real.

He was the assistant basketball coach at Anderson Highland High School at the time, a young kid learning his craft from one of the masters, an intensely driven  zone defense wizard named Bob Fuller. The night they rolled into tiny Lapel to take on Dally Hunter's Bulldogs, the Scots were undefeated. Fuller had been battling a heavy chest cold all week, but, being Fuller, insisted he could soldier on.

And he did. For one half.

At halftime, with the Scots leading big, his soldiering on ended in full cardiac arrest. He was rushed out of the gym by emergency personnel, and died later that night.

That left Jerry Bomholt, all of 26, to do the impossible: Soldier on.

And he did.

To this day, I don't know how he did it. Fuller's loss should have destroyed Highland's season, but somehow the kid held it together. And Highland's season was not destroyed, but merely re-defined.

The Scots, see, went on to win their first game after Fuller's death.  Then they won another. Then they won another and another, and pretty soon they were heading into the meatgrinder Anderson sectional still undefeated, and ranked No. 1 in the state.

And then they won the sectional, too.

Exhausted emotionally and physically, the Scots lost the next week at the regional. But the kid coach was on his way, having survived an inaugural stint as a head coach that almost surely was unlike any other.

And now it is all these years later, and here is Jerry Bomholt's name on the list of 2025 Indiana Hall of Fame inductees.

The accompanying bio says he retired this year after coaching 44 seasons at nine schools, compiling a 602-393 record. His teams won 20 conference championships and 13 sectionals, and, in 1998, his Southwestern (Hanover) team was the Class 2A state runnerup in the first year of class basketball in Indiana.

But that is not what I saw, of course, when I saw his name.

What I saw was a newby coach, impossibly young, kneeling with his hand over his eyes. Carrying an impossible weight. And somehow not buckling beneath it.

Apocalypse unbound

 Giant globe-rending news out of Ohio this week, and as so often is the case, you could fit it into one quiet sentence. In this instance, one quiet sentence in the Dayton Daily News:

Ohio High School Athletic Association member schools officially approved the NIL language proposed by the organization ...

One sentence. Sixteen words. Aaaand here ... we ... go, as the Joker would say.

Name, Image and Likeness comes to high school.  Filtering down from the colleges, as all things eventually seem to.

First reaction: Welcome to the apocalypse.

Second reaction: Wish I'd been born later. Like, a lot later.

See, I, too, was a high school athlete (kinda, and just for a year), which means I could have tapped into some of that sweet NIL loot. Unfortunately, right on the heels of that I remember two things:

1. I was not a football or basketball player. I was only a lowly cross country/distance runner.

2. And I really sucked.

3. I mean, really sucked.

OK, so that's three things. But you get the point.

In any case, the floodgates are open over in Ohio, and, no, I don't know exactly how that's going to work. I'm sure a whole set of guidelines (guardrails?) are in the OHSAA proposal, because surely those folks are not as mutton-headed as the folks at the NCAA -- whose NIL guidelines were essentially "Ah, hell, do what you want."

I'm sure that won't be the case in Ohio. Although four decades as a Sportsball journalist have taught me never to assume anything.

In the meantime, being a human being of the codger persuasion, I'm trying to wrap my head around the idea of some local high school wideout popping up on my TV screen saying "When I need a cool-down after practice, I head for Zesto." Or some 3-ball prodigy who can't drive yet telling me about the sweet ride that could be mine if I'd only visit, say, Glenbrook Dodge Chrysler Jeep Ram, Don Ayres Honda or Land Rover Fort Wayne.

Don't think it won't happen. If Ohio's approved it, Indiana can't be far behind.

All it will take is losing a lawsuit, which is what happened to our next-door neighbors. After that, Ohio really had no choice, as OHSAA Executive Director Doug Ute explained.

"Whether our schools or individuals agree with NIL at the high school level or not," Ute said in a statement, "the courts have spoken on this issue across the country that the NCAA and high school athletic associations cannot prevent a student-athlete from making money on their NIL."

In other words, the genie is out of the bottle, and there's no putting him back. And all I can say about that is, I'm glad I'm not a high school coach right now.

His or her task has always been as much about helping kids that age to grow and mature as it is teaching, say, the mysteries of the 1-3-1 zone. Now imagine trying to teach those mysteries to a16-year-old point guard who's pulling down coin from some area business and/or collective.

No potential for exploitation there, no, sirree. Or for warping a young person's still-developing sense of self -- which is already prone to the warping influence of friends, family and delusional parents who think their Johnny or Janey is WAY better than that lame-o who's starting at Johnny/Janey's position.

That's choppy enough waters for a coach to negotiate. Now he's gonna have to deal with kids whose egos have been pumped all out of round because they're getting paid for their exploits on the field or court?

QB1: Hey, Coach, any chance you could put in some more designed runs to showcase my skills? Myrtle's Chowdown Diner ain't payin' me to hand the ball off, ya know.

RB1: Whoa, whoa, whoa, Joe Fraudtana. You want to cut into MY carries? No way, Jose. I drop 200 yards and three sixes on those punks from Hog Wallow High this week, I get a nice little bump from Myrna's Biscuits-R-Us. You're messin' with my bottom line, dude.

QB1: Who cares about your deal?

RB1: Yeah, well, who cares about yours?

Nightmare City. The only enjoyment the Blob gets out of it is imagining how some of the superb high school coaches I was lucky enough to cover over the years would have handled this brave new world.

Phil Buck, for instance, the old Anderson Madison Heights basketball legend. Russ Isaacs or Chris Svarczkopf or Matt Lindsay or Rick Minnich or any of a truckload of old-school football warriors. 

I figure if they'd had to deal with QB1 and RB1 squabbling over money, two things would happen:

1. QB1 and RB1 would no longer be QB1 and RB1.

2. QB1 and RB1 would then transfer.

Me?

I hear Hog Wallow High's mighty nice.

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 12

 And now this week's Thanksgiving edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the thankful Blob feature of which critics have said "I'm thankful this is Week 12 and not Week 1," and also "I'm thankful this is Week 12 because I've still got five more weeks to punch you in the face":

1. "What are we thankful for? We're thankful we got Brock Purdy bac- Oh, crap!" (The 49ers, after Purdy threw three picks against the Panthers)

2. "OK, so we're thankful it was only the Panthers, then." (Also the 49ers, after the Panthers only generated a field goal from those three picks in the Niners' 20-9 win)

3. "Up yours, haters!" (Shedeur Sanders, who quarterbacked the Browns to a win over the Raiders in his first career start, and looked way better doing it than he did a week ago in his relief stint)

4. "I mean, I'm thankful it was only the Raiders." (Also Shedeur, probably)

5. In other news, the Seahawks beat the woeful Titans; the Ravens beat the crudbucket Jets; the Lions survived the sorry-ass Giants; and the Falcons -- the Falcons! --  beat the landfill-enriched Saints to snap a five-game skid.

6. "We're thankful for the Titans, the Jets, the Giants and the Saints." (The Seahawks, the Ravens, the Lions and the Falcons)

7. "Yeah, but we almost won! And in Detroit, too!" (The Giants)

8. "We're thankful a football game only lasts four quarters, or who knows how many points in a row we'd have given up to -- I can't believe I'm saying this -- the Cowboys." (The Eagles, after giving up 24 straight points to blow a 21-0 lead and lose to Dak Prescott and the 'Boys)

9.  "Gah! Time to get blackout drunk and throw snowballs at Santa again!" (Eagles fans)

10. "Gee, we sure are thankful we traded away Sam Darnold for THIS GUY." (Vikings fans, sarcastically, after J.J. McCarthy threw two more picks and put up a passer rating of 34.2 in a 23-6 loss to Green Bay)

Power outage

 A frosty Monday morning, and time now to think back on the palmy days, the gleaming days, the days when all the world was a juicy oyster for your Indianapolis Colts.

Remember that? Remember how the sun shone, with eight minutes and 40-something seconds to play Sunday afternoon? Remember the 20-9 lead, the unease settling over Arrowhead, Patrick Mahomes and the rest of that lot firmly and efficiently subdued?

Good times, Horsie Nation. Goood times.

Not at all like these times, when your Indianapolis Colts are FALLING APART,  and there is panic in the streets and along the trackless wastes of the interwhatsis.

That golden moment, see, did not last yesterday, because the Chiefs did Chiefs things and the Colts ... well, did not. Let the 20-9 lead slip away, Indy did. Lost in overtime, 23-20. Forgot who they were, and how they got there, and played not to lose instead of to win.

Here's what they did, across the fourth quarter and overtime: Possess the football for a grand total of five minutes and 21 seconds.

Go three-and-out four times in four possessions.

Hand the football to the best running back in the game this season -- Jonathan Taylor -- all of three times in a situation that virtually cried out for burning clock by handing the ball to the best running back in the league.

Instead, three-and-out, three-and-out, three-and-out and three-and-what-the-hell-Shane-Steichen.

However.

However, this does not mean utter ruin awaits Steichen's crew now, despite what you might be reading in the great social media hellscape this morning. 

Over-the-top hysteria is the meat and drink in that country of the damned, and it surely seemed to be in the wake of Chiefs 23, Colts 20. Words like "reeling" stuck their heads up. Words like "crumbling." And so on.

And, OK, so maybe that is a bit of over-the-top hysteria, because for all the doom-and-gloom, not even in the Hellscape was anyone saying the Colts should just pack it up and go home. They are, after all, still 8-3 and a game clear of the field in the AFC South, after barging out to an 8-1 start.

But it is true they've lost two of their last three games, and struggled to beat the sorry Falcons in the other game. Also true is the rest of the schedule is littered with potential Ls: Two games against the Houston Texans and their league-leading defense; two against surging Jacksonville; the Seahawks (8-3) and 49ers (7-4) back-to-back.

So the panic, if not actually in the streets, was at least pacing restlessly on the doorstep.

The Blob is not prepared to do that just yet.

The Blob prefers to see the power outage in the fourth quarter and overtime yesterday as just that, a power outage, and eventually the power comes back on. If Steichen unaccountably decided to crawl in a hole and pull it in after him across those last eight minutes and 40-something seconds, it doesn't change what his team did in the almost 52 minutes prior to that.

Daniel Jones, who finished the game 3-of-9 for 17 yards, completed 16-of-22, threw two touchdown passes, no picks, and did not take a sack.

Taylor lugged it 13 times for 57 yards.

The defense picked Mahomes once, sacked him four times and recovered a fumble.

That was the Colts team that started 8-1. Which means it's still there, power outage or no power outage.

"So you're saying they DON'T totally suck, Mr. Blob?" you're saying now.

Now you're gettin' it.

Rebuttal

 I suppose Notre Dame football coach  Marcus Freeman could have planned it this way, in retrospect. Drawn up a blueprint. Submitted it to the troops. Told them, in so many words: "Boys, it's time we boarded up a few mouths out there."

And then Notre Dame 70, Syracuse 7 happened. 

And the mouths, if not silenced (because you can't really board 'em up), were at least reduced to a little "Bu-bu-bu-but ..." blubbering.

Just the way Freeman sketched it out.

But ... nah.

I think Notre Dame 70, Syracuse 7 happened not according to some grand plan to answer its usual Greek chorus of critics, but because the circumstances presented themselves. Syracuse came to South Bend a crippled football team, and the Orange weren't very good to begin with. And stuff happened.

Like a pick-six, a blocked punt return six, and another pick-six 11 plays into the game.

Like Jeremiyah Love busting 45 yards to Six City on Notre Dame's second offensive play.

Like a 35-0 Irish lead after a quarter, and a 49-0 lead at the half.

Like, yes, a 70-7 final that came within seven seconds of being a 70-0 shutout, the Irish D having squashed the Orange run game (2.2 yards per rush), and also its passing game (3.2 yards per pass), and turned three turnovers and that blocked punt into 21 points before the Notre Dame O ever stepped on the field.

Stuff happens. And, again, I suppose Freeman could have planned all this as a big ol' Up Yours rebuttal to the critics, but I suspect he wastes a miniscule amount of energy -- like, say, zero -- fretting over what a bunch of yammerheads on the interwhatsis have to say.

They've been pounding away with increasing indignation the past few weeks, as Notre Dame's win streak went from three games to four to seven to nine. The Irish were unbeaten and untried in those games, the narrative has gone. Being an independent (kinda-sorta) gives them a huge advantage because they don't have to play a conference championship game. They're only ranked ahead of Miami -- who beat the Irish by three way back in August, and has the same record playing a pretty identical schedule -- because they're Notre Dame.

Which means they're  a guaranteed mega-draw. Which means more money for a professional enterprise whose primary goal (as with any professional enterprise) is to stack it as high as it can. Notre Dame in the College Football Playoff?

The Irish are a friggin' ATM. And that's why the Irish are so tragically overrated.

"Yeah, they've won nine straight," the narrative goes. "But four of those Ws have come against teams with a combined record of 8-36. Eight-and-36!"

To which the Blob says: True. Pretty much all of it.

Except the flip side is, because they are indeed Notre Dame, its critics reflexively undersell the Irish on occasion. In other words, when they're actually pretty good, the inclination is to conclude  they're not.  That, you know, they're just NOTRE DAME.

It's the Blob's considered and possibly deluded opinion that that's what's going on here.

Yes, the Irish have feasted on their share of pastry, with one more eclair -- 4-7 Stanford -- still to come. But they haven't exactly scraped past those four teams with a combined record of 8-36, which you figure would happen if they were the paper tiger their critics assume.

They beat 2-9 Purdue by 26 points, for instance.

Beat 2-9 Arkansas by 43.

Beat 1-10 Boston College by 15.

And, of course, beat Syracuse by 63.

Syracuse: Whose previous worst loss of the season was by 35 to Duke, 38-3.

Now, I don't know if that means Notre Dame should be in the CFP conversation. But it's not the resume of an outright fraud, either.

Yes, they lost to Miami and Texas A&M, by a total of four points, back at the dawn of the season. Which means they're probably not as bonafide as, say, A&M or Georgia, whose bonafides have never been questioned.

A&M and Georgia.

Who, respectively, pounded 1-10 Samford and 1-10 Charlotte yesterday. Speaking of pastry.

Lunacy unbound

 (In which the Blob again escapes the Sportsball compound for a time. You know the drill.)

"Mr. Vice-President ... Mr. Secretary ... the missiles are flying. Hallelujah. Hallelujah."

-- President Stillson, "The Dead Zone"

And, yes, I know: It was only a movie.

In real life, a madman like Greg Stillson could never reach the White House. He could never force his top general to put his hand on the palm reader that would activate the launching of nuclear weapons. He could never be that completely, stark raving, mad.

But look around now. Listen to what the President of the United States and his enablers are saying. Tell me we are not, as a nation, slowly working up to Greg Stillson level  lunacy.

You can call this melodrama, and maybe it is. Life rarely imitates art, and even when it does, it almost never does so exactly. So the likelihood that President Donald J. Trump will morph into Greg Stillson and instigate global annihilation is probably zero.

But look around. Listen to what he and his enablers are saying. Tell me we have not taken more than one step down that road.

I say this because the other day a group of Democratic congress critters, all of them veterans, issued a joint statement reminding service personnel of their duty as service personnel. Which is, they took an oath to the Constitution, not to any single person. Which is, they are therefore not obligated to obey an illegal order that comes from said person.

In fact, you can reasonably argue they are duty-bound not to.

Now, none of this is controversial, because it's merely stating a principle that has been part of American military tradition forever. And which has been followed on more than one occasion.

For instance: Almost 60 years ago, an American helicopter pilot went rogue in the most blatant way possible. The date was March 16, 1968, the site was a hamlet designated My Lai4, and the pilot's name was Hugh Thompson Jr.

Who went off script that day by landing his chopper between Vietnamese villagers and American troops commanded by a psychopath named Lt. William Calley.

Calley's men, in an unalloyed frenzy, were mowing down the old men, women and children who inhabited MyLai4 and throwing the bodies in a ditch. Even in a war whose lines were as blurred as Vietnam's, this was a singular act of barbarity.

So Thompson landed his chopper between Calley's men and the surviving villagers, and announced he'd open fire on any soldier who tried to resume the killing. 

He could have been court-martialed. He wasn't. In fact, several years later, he was decorated for his actions that day -- and, indirectly, for following the oath the Democratic veterans were reminding everyone of.

And yet you'd have thought they'd taken up with Benedict Arnold the way our Fearless Leader and all of those still in his thrall carried on.

The President, with his usual restraint, called it "sedition" and "treason", and said America used to hang people who said such things. His handlers and acolytes took up that cry. And it really did sound like lunacy unbound.

A movie script come to life?

Again, no. But look around, listen, and start counting all the realities rational Americans could scarcely have imagined ten months ago.

The President and Department of Defense, on the thinnest of pretexts, authorizing the murder of civilians in the Caribbean in violation of national sovereignty and international law. 

Sending U.S. military reservists to "restore order" in American cities (and their states) the President regards as politically hostile to his regime.

Empowering a rogue paramilitary force to drag people out of their homes, workplaces and even courthouses without due process, shipping them off to foreign gulags under the fig leaf that they're "dangerous illegal criminals" -- even though most of them are not, and some are American citizens or decorated service personnel whose only crime was the misdemeanor of crossing the border without proper documentation.

We live in a country now where these things happen. 

We live in a country now where the President of the United States can behave like a third-grade bully to a journalist doing her job ("Quiet, piggy"), and his handlers say, why, that's just the Prez being "frank and honest." And the White House press corps doesn't turn a hair because such Kafkaesque absurdities have become routine from a regime that tells us up is down, black is white and one-plus-one equals whatever the Regime says it does.

We live in a country now where the President's disjointed rambles and lapses into narcissistic fantasy seem to grow more numerous by the day, and whose disconnection from reality seems to grow with them. And which seem clear markers of a mental decline his inner circle denies as zealously as did Joe Biden's.

Who knows what lunatic notion will spring to such a mind next? And if it does, how would it be treason to say, "No, Mr. President. I can't do that"?

How would it not simply be a military man keeping true to his duty, and to his oath?

When you're right ...

 At this moment, somewhere, the sky is cracking. Rivers are running backwards. Dogs and cats are living together.

All this because of five words I never in a million millenia thought I'd say: I agree with Fearless Leader, aka President Donald John "Where's My Tapioca?" Trump.

He was on the air with Pat McAfee awhile back, see, being as babbl-y and Crazy Uncle Herb as usual. And then, like a bolt of revealed wisdom from the dementia gods, he actually said something that made sense.

He said he hated the new NFL kickoff rule.

Said it was "terrible." Said it was "demeaning." Said a bunch of other stuff about "pageantry" and what-not, but frankly I stopped paying attention the way everyone stops paying attention to Crazy Uncle Herb after ten seconds or so.

In any event, Fearless Leader hated on the kickoff rule, and I was, "Oh my God! I agree with this nutjob!"  Which was not a comforting thought, but, hey: When you're right you're right.

And he is. The kickoff rule is terrible. It's also stupid and weird-looking. The kicker's on one yard line, the rest of his guys are on a different yard line, and when he kicks the ball they stand there like a stone wall ("Hey! That's my gig!" the ghost of Stonewall Jackson just said) until the kick returner touches the ball. 

Then they go tearing off after him, as if released from suspended animation.

Now, allegedly, the new rule is supposed to promote more kick returns, while at the same time minimizing the injuries that come from large men getting a running start and crashing into each other. Thing is, the large men still get a running start and crash into each other. They just do it on tape delay or something.

It wasn't long, of course, before NFL people leaped to the rule's defense. One of the people was Chiefs special-teams coordinator Dave Toub, who basically said Crazy Uncle Herb needed to go back to his attic.

"He doesn't even know what he's looking at. He has no idea what's going on with the kickoff rule," Toub said, according to the website Awful Announcing. "So take that for what it's worth. And I hope he hears it."

Now, Toub's probably right about Fearless Leader not knowing what he's looking at. It's a sports thing, and he's a political figure, and generally speaking political figures don't know jack-all about sports things. 

I am not a political figure, however. I'm a former sports scribbler who's seen his share of football over four decades on the job. This means I've actually learned something about the game, if not nearly as much as a smarter sports scribbler would have.

And I hate the NFL kickoff rule, too. And halfway understand it, even though the first time I saw it in action I had the same thought most of America did: "The hell is this?"

Come to think of it, that's pretty much what I said the other day when I realized I was agreeing with Fearless Leader. Fist bump, Mr. President.

OK, so no.

The things left unsaid

 "I love it here."

-- Ole Miss football coach Lane Kiffin

(Also a bunch of other guys right before they left "here")

Lane Kiffin is saying all the right things at the moment, and if that isn't sending the good folks of Oxford, Mississippi, screaming into the streets, it ought to be. People who say all the right things frequently are fixing to beat feet, and that's just a home truth.

I say this not just because Rick Pitino once said all the right things to my face exactly one day before the news broke that he was leaving Kentucky to take the Boston Celtics job, which taught me a valuable lesson about, for starters, trusting Rick Pitino.  But mostly I'm saying it because right now there's a lot of smoke about Kiffin ditching Ole Miss for the somewhat brighter lights of LSU or Florida, since those somewhat sexier jobs now have vacancy signs out front.

Recently Kiffin's ex-wife and sons, who still live in Oxford, went house-hunting in both Baton Rouge and Gainesville, fueling speculation that Kiffin -- who's still very much a part of his sons' lives -- was house-hunting by proxy himself. Of course, he denies it. Of course, personal experience having taught me its requisite lessons, I don't believe him.

"I love it here and it's been amazing," ESPN quoted Kiffin as saying in the weekly SEC teleconference yesterday. "And we're in the season that's the greatest run in the history of Ole Miss at this point -- never been at this point. So I think it's really exciting, and so I'm just living in the moment that amazing."

Or as Pitino said 30 years ago, in so many words: "Why would I leave Kentucky?"

In other words: Why would I leave Kentucky? FOR THE BOSTON CELTICS, SILLY.

And in Kiffin's case: I'm just living in the moment that amazing. BUT I DIDN'T SAY ANYTHING ABOUT THE MOMENT AFTER THAT.

Which of course means any day LSU (or Florida) will be calling a press conference to announce Lane Kiffin as its new head football coach.

To be sure, it would be  horsepoop thing to do, given that Lane indeed has taken Ole Miss to heights unseen since the days of Johnny Vaught, whose name now graces the Ole Miss stadium. But it's not like Lane hasn't done horsepoop things before -- like, for instance, leaving Tennessee throw bales of cash at him and then leaving almost immediately because the USC job came open.

That was a horsepoop move. Legendarily so.

It tagged Lane Kiffin as a spoiled brat who couldn't be trusted, which is kind of how he wound up in Oxford to begin with. Ole Miss took a chance on him, and Kiffin, by all accounts, fell in love with Ole Miss and Oxford's small-town charms. Now he's got the Rebels at 10-1 and No. 6 in the College Football Playoff rankings -- which means if they  beat a less-than-stellar Mississippi State team in the annual Egg Bowl, they'll be a lock to make the CFP for the first time.

The Rebels haven't breathe such rarified air since ol' Johnny V. coached Ole Miss to its only national title in 1960. So just imagine what a kick in the twigs and berries it would be if word were to leak out -- say, right before the Rebels' first playoff game -- that ol' Lane had accepted the LSU/Florida job.

Owie.

On a much smaller scale, that's what happened in 2008 at my alma mater, Ball State University, right after the 12-0 Cardinals blew their perfect season with five turnovers in a 42-24 loss to Buffalo in the Mid-American Conference title game. A week or so later the architect of that season -- head coach Brady Hoke, a Ball State and former Cardinal player himself -- announced he was leaving for San Diego State. And when I say "leaving", I mean "immediately."

Which means he didn't stick around for Ball State's bowl game, which the Cardinals lost in a torrential rainstorm to Tulsa.

This was not quite the horsepoop move Lane Kiffin leaving Ole Miss would be, however. That's because Ball State pushed Hoke out the door by criminally underpaying him and dissing him in various other ways, like not even providing him an office. And it happened so quickly Hoke never even got the chance to say all the right things Lane Kiffin is saying now.

To which I say, thank God for small mercies. Because that would have been tough to take.

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 11

 And now this week's edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the on-second-thought Blob feature of which critics have said "You mean you actually had a first thought?", and also "On second thought, Imma take you to Fist City. punk": 

1. "On second thought, maybe we should have punted a time or two." (The Lions, who kept failing on fourth down and lost to the Eagles)

2. "Yeah, no s***, Sherlock." (Lions punter Jack Fox)

3. "On second thought, maybe I should have retired to start on the wedding plans." (Travis Kelce of the Chiefs, who caught nine balls for 91 yards and a touchdown and still lost to Denver)

3. "Count us in!" (The rest of the Chiefs, who are now 5-5, 1-4 on the road, 0-5 in one-score games and 3 1/2 games behind the 9-2 Broncos in the AFC West)

4. "Me, too!" (Steelers quarterback Aaron Rodgers -- who's, like, 85 now -- after leaving  a 34-12 win over the Bengals cradling a possibly broken wrist. Senior citizen abuse, it's such a plague on our great nation.)

5. "On second thought, maybe I shoulda kept my expectoration to myself." (Bengals wideout Ja'Marr Chase, who was suspended one game for spitting on Steelers cornerback Jalen Ramsay)

6. "Yeah, no s***, Sherlock! Who do you think you are, Vontaze Burfict?" (Bengals fans)

7. "Wait, how did I get dragged into this?" (Vontaze Burfict, the notorious Bengals cheap-shot artist who's been retired for six years) 

8. In other news, the Bears gave another L the slip, beating the Vikings on the road on a last-second field goal. The Jaguars came from, well, somewhere, to ball-peen the Chargers 35-6. The Packers tried hard to lose but finally accepted a 27-20 win over the hapless Giants, and Shedeur Sanders put up a 13.5 rating (4-of-16 passing, 47 yards, one pick) in his much-anticipated debut for the even hapless-er Browns.

9. "On second thought, maybe we should have taken him in the SEVENTH round." (Browns fans)

10. "On second thought ... thanks, I guess." (The Bears and Packers)*

(*"And on second thought, we'll just lie down here and take a nap on this fake grass." -- The Chargers)

Woman's worth

 Draymond Green of the Golden State Warriors teleported in the other night from the 1950s, when men were men and June Cleaver had supper on the table when Ward walked in the door. It wasn't a good look for him, but then it hardly ever is when Draymond gets his knickers in a twist.

This time it was because a New Orleans Pelicans fan kept calling him "Angel Reese," on account of Draymond missed a few shots and then rebounded his own misses. This has become something of a trademark for Reese, a not-so-great shooter but maybe the best  rebounder in the WNBA.

So the fan taunted Draymond by referring to him as another pretty good basketball player, which makes you think he wasn't trying very hard. You gotta have want-to in today's highly competitive trolling market, after all.

Then again, Pelicans Fan did achieve the desired goal: He got under Draymond's skin.

So much so that Draymond stalked over to said fan, and there was a tense moment or two as Draymond got in the dude's face. Fortunately security showed up before anything actually happened, and the fan was told to sit down and shut up or he'd be ejected.

Anyway, this gets us back to June and Ward and 1950s Draymond.

After the game, see, he was asked about the incident, and he said what upset him was being called by a woman's name.

"He just kept calling me a woman," Draymond explained/complained. "It was a good joke at first, but you can't keep calling me a woman. I got four kids, one on the way. You can't keep calling me a woman."

OK, first off: You don't have another child on the way, Draymond. That would be your wife who's handling that. All you have to do is stand there and say, "Breathe, honey," every so often

Secondly ... well, where to start?

I suppose as a human of the male persuasion myself (and someone who's been around male athletes most of my life), I could talk about testosterone and machismo and the warrior mentality, and how it encourages a certain worldview. Call it the Code Of Badass-ery, and it's a thing of the male blood that runs all the way from Achilles fileting Hector with a sword to Draymond Green fileting a guy's head with his elbow in pursuit of a free-range basketball.

In such a world, calling an opponent a woman remains an annoyingly persistent insult. Even if it's 2025 and June's not wearing pearls and high heels as she whisks a tuna noodle casserole out of the oven, but running corporations and elbowing heads in pursuit of rebounds themselves. And generally being as badass as any Draymond Green.

Truth is, these days a guy like Draymond whining about being called a woman isn't so much an insult to women as a curiosity pathetically out of its time. It evokes less outrage than eyerolls and discrete snickers, as if Draymond had shown up wondering when the next stagecoach from Dodge City was due.

I mean, good lord, it's been going on 40 years since Jim Everett brawled with sportsbabbler Jim Rome because Rome kept referring to him as "Chrissie" -- again, not nearly the insult either man thought it was,  considering "Chrissie" Evert was tougher than either of them. And how long has it been since Caitlin Clark and Diana Taurasi and so many others made a laughingstock of the old sneer, "You shoot like a girl"?

Because nowadays the proper comeback would be, "Yeah? Too bad you don't."

And as for Draymond Green ...

Too bad he doesn't, either, apparently.

Feeling the Love

 Look, I am not a Domer homer. Let's get that out there right from the jump.

"Yes, you are," you're saying now.

No, I'm not.

"Yes, you ARE. You love the Golden Dome. You love the Grotto. You love Touchdown Jesus, and Fair Catch Corby, and the fake George Gipp deathbed scene in 'Knute Rockne, All-American.' I bet you even have a plastic Rockne riding on the dashboard of your car."

That's ridiculous. Besides, everyone knows a plastic Lou would be better, just for the irony.

No, I am not a homer. I have the hate mail to prove it. But I do feel compelled to say something here.

Which is that I think Notre Dame is going to be a dangerous out in the College Football Playoff, which the Fighting Irish seem destined to make now after bouncing No. 22 Pitt off the walls yesterday at the Panthers' place.

Beat a 7-2 Power 4 team in a walk, 37-15, and it wasn't that close. Jeremiyah Love busted a 56-yard score, and on the very next play from scrimmage Tae Johnson (All hail, Fort Wayne North Side!) jumped a route and raced 49 yards with the pick for another score, and that was that. It was 14-0 and the Irish never looked back.

And, yeah, OK, I know. The Irish have fooled me before. I've thought "Hey, don't look now, but Notre Dame's legit," and then they get in against an Alabama or a Georgia and get sent home in sandwich bags. But this time I think I know what I'm seeing.

What I'm seeing is a team that's won eight in a row since losing by a total of four points to Miami and still-unbeaten Texas A&M to start the season. What I'm seeing is a team that beat a ranked USC team by 10, mauled a once-beaten Navy outfit by 39, and then mauled a ranked Pitt outfit by 22. 

That's three wins by an aggregate score of 120-46 over three teams with a combined record 21-7, if you're keeping score at home.

Know what else I think I'm seeing?

A team with a precocious young quarterback and quality receivers and an elite defensive backfield, and a guy named Eli Raridon who looks for all the world like he's fixing to be the next great Irish tight end. Oh, and a Heisman Trophy winner at running back.

There. I said it. Jeremiyah Love for the gnarled little stiff-arming guy.

I say this knowing full well that Indiana quarterback Fernando Mendoza has been amazing and stupendous, and Alabama quarterback Ty Simpson has been mostly amazing and stupendous, and Ohio State quarterback Julian Sayin has been perhaps the most amazing and stupendous of all, although for some reason he's not getting the buzz the other two are -- perhaps because his own teammate is the amazing and stupendous wideout Jeremiah Smith, another Heisman candidate.

Nonetheless. Love gets my vote, even though I don't have one.

I'm picking him not because he plays for Notre Dame or because I have a plastic Rockne riding on the dashboard of my car, but because without him Notre Dame is gearing up for the Chicken Sandwich/Radial Tire/Riding Mower Bowl, not the CFP. I'm picking him because he and Smith are the best football players I've seen this season.

I'm also picking him because he's scored 14 touchdowns and averaged 6.4 yards per rush this season. And because in his last four games, with every defense keying on him, he's lugged it 55 times for 505 yards, which comes out to 9.1 yards per lug. And because, what the hell, running backs haven't been getting much Heisman love lately.

One running back winner in the last 15 years. That's it. And a full decade since the last one, Derrick Henry out of Alabama.

We're way past due, in other words.

"Homer," you're saying (OK, sneering) now.

Plastic Lou says get bent.

Everyone's a fraud

 Your ninth-ranked Notre Dame Fighting Irish barge into Pittsburgh today to take on the 23rd-ranked, 7-2 Pitt Panthers, and everyone says this is a must win for both even if Pitt coach Pat Narduzzi doesn't seem to think so, on account of (to paraphrase Walter Sobchak from "The Big Lebowski") it's not a league game, Smokey.

(Although it kinda is, because Pitt's an ACC school and Notre Dame kinda-sorta is, because even though it claims it's independent in football it plays half its schedule against ACC schools. So, you know ...)

Anyway.

Anyway, this game is a very big deal for Notre Dame, which put itself in a hole in regards to the College Football Playoff by losing its first two games. True, the two losses were to 16th-ranked, 7-2 Miami and third-ranked, 10-0 Texas A&M, by a total of four points. But two losses are two losses.

And besides, everyone knows Notre Dame is a TOTAL FRAUD.

This is what some folks are saying out there in the great wasteland of the intertoobz, and by golly they're adamant about it. According to the Some Folks, Notre Dame hasn't beaten anyone who's any good. It's been one long run of the Little Sisters of the Poor and the Even Poorer Little Sisters of the Poor, to hear them tell it. I mean, Purdue?

Come on now.

So, yeah, the Irish are as phony as canned Guinness. And, by the way, that Texas A&M team that beat them way back in September?

The Aggies are phony, too.

So is top-ranked and unbeaten Ohio State.

So is second-ranked and unbeaten Indiana.

So are Alabama, and Georgia, and, oh, heck, name anyone. Not a single one of 'em has actually had to beat anyone to achieve their lofty standing, according to Some Folks.

Sure, Alabama's only lost one game, but it was to the Florida State Train Derailments. And Georgia's only lost one game, too, but it was to the same Alabama team that lost to the Derailments. At home, no less.

And don't even get Some People started on A&M, Ohio State and Indiana.

The Aggies are nothin' but glue and crepe paper, too, because they've beaten a bunch of teams who were so lame they'd either fired their head coaches or were about to. Plus they almost lost to Arkansas, for God's sake.

As for Ohio State, well, who have the Buckeyes beaten? OK, Texas, but even Texas is only 7-2. Other than that, it's been a bunch of lousy pudknockers from the lousy pudknocker Big Ten.

Indiana?

Same deal, only worse. Heck, the Hoosiers did Notre Dame one better, opening the season by playing the So Poor The Even Poorer Sisters Of The Poor Won't Claim Them As Kinfolk. Like, three straight times.

Then it was on to the same lousy pudknockers Ohio State's gotten fat on.

In other words: Everyone's a fraud. Which means the CFP will be a big ol' punchline this year.

Except ...

Except, when you look at Notre Dame's schedule, four of the seven teams they've beaten like throw rugs have winning records. 

And when you look at 'Bama's schedule, you'll find that win at No. 5 Georgia, plus a road win at No. 14 Missouri and wins at home over No. 16 Vanderbilt and No. 11 Tennessee. 

And Georgia hasn't lost since losing to Alabama.

And A&M has beaten everyone except Notre Dame, Arkansas and Auburn by at least two touchdowns, including three teams that were ranked when the Aggies played them.

And five of Ohio State's nine wins have come against teams with six of more wins.

And Indiana beat then-No. 9 Illinois (6-3) by 53 points ... and beaten then-No. 3 Oregon (9-1) by 10 on the road ... and they've pounded all the teams they should have pounded: Michigan State (38-13), UCLA (56-6) and Maryland (55-10). And they escaped the upset last weekend at Penn State, whose 3-6 record is something of a mirage because almost all the players who got the Nittany Lions to the national semifinals last year are still around.

But, yeah, the Hoosiers are a fraud. Everyone's a fraud.

You just gotta know where to look. And where not to.

Paths taken, or not

 Two men died in America in the last week, and a rhythm section heralded them to their reward. It was the sound of a basketball beating a drumroll on hardwood, and the two men followed it all their long lives.

One followed it to the Basketball Hall of Fame as a player and as a coach, and when he died at 88, surrounded by those who loved him, LeBron James tweeted "RIP LEGEND",  and Dallas Mavericks coach Jason Kidd called him "a pioneer, a legend, a role model." And the Cleveland Cavaliers -- for whom he was both an All-Star guard and then the head coach who won a club record 316 games there and took the Cavs to the playoffs five times -- held a moment of silence in his memory.

The other followed the drumroll to a couple of dizzying weeks of glory, and then down a dark road that left him chasing the game to every dim and anonymous place where its unending lure resides.

One game. Two men. Two paths, taken or not.

The first of them was Lenny Wilkens, and you know that name. Precise and dignified, he came off the playgrounds of New York to star as an eyeblink-quick, elegant guard at Providence College and then in the NBA -- where he was a nine-time All-Star as a player, coached a record 2,487 games, won an NBA title in 1979 as head coach of the Seattle Supersonics, and won gold medals as an assistant coach for the 1992 and 1996 US. Olympic teams.

The '92 team, of course, was the Dream Team, and it's in the Basketball Hall of Fame. So is Lenny Wilkens -- as part that '92 team, and as a player, and as a coach. As NBA commissioner Adam Silver noted upon Wilkens' passing, he holds the unique distinction of being named both one of the top 75 players of all time, and one of the top 15 coaches of all time.

"Lenny Wilkens represented the very best of the NBA -- as a Hall of Fame player, Hall of Fame coach and one of the game's most respected ambassadors," Silver said.

And the other man in this tale?

His name was Kevin Mackey.

In 1986, as a 40-year-old college basketball wunderkind, he coached tiny Cleveland State to 29 wins and the NCAA Sweet Sixteen. In the first round, the Vikings -- who'd never before in the program's 57-year history played in the postseason -- shocked Bob Knight and lordly Indiana, 83-79, a 14-seed-over-a-3-seed that remains one of the biggest upsets in the history of March Madness.

Four successful years later, Cleveland State rewarded Mackey with a $300,000 contract.

A handful of days after that, Mackey stumbled out of a crack house in Cleveland, high on booze and blow. The police pulled him over on an OWI charge, and Mackey's rising tide had crested.

He wound up doing 60 days in former NBA player John Lucas' rehab program, getting himself clean and staying clean until the day he died earlier this week. But the glory days were gone for good. He wound up bumping around the minors of the basketball minors -- the USBL; the IBA -- coaching teams you never heard of: the Miami Tropics, the Portland (Me.) Mountain Cats, the Atlantic City Seagulls, the Mansfield (O.) Hawks.

Oh, he could still coach. He won three straight USBL titles with Atlantic city, and, in Mansfield's only season, he coached the Hawks to the league title.

Eventually, Larry Bird hired him as a scout for the Indiana Pacers. Mackey did that for the next 17 seasons, retiring in 2021 at the age of 74 as both a symbol of triumph over addiction, and a great what-if.

One game. Two men. Two paths, taken or not.

Cruds alert!*

 (* -- The offseason edition)

Wait ... where are you going, Blobophiles?

"We're bailing," you reply. "Because you're going to piss and moan about your Pittsburgh Cruds again, and for the umpteenth time NO ONE CARES ABOUT THEM, not even the immortal soul of Roberto Clemente probably, and least of all us."

But ... but what if I wasn't going to piss and moan about my Cruds? What if--

"Oh, please," you're saying. "You are. Especially now that Ben Cherington, the Pirates' GM, has said he's not trading Paul Skenes, because the Pirates are about to make a BIG BREAKTHROUGH, or, you know, a semi-breakthrough, and Skenes is going to be a major part of that."

But --

OK. You got me.

Yes, I am going to piss and moan about my Cruds, especially Cherington, who did indeed come out and say they're not trading Skenes, so neener-neener-neener. And double neener-neener-neener to you, Mr. Skenes, who when last seen was locked in the tower of Cruds owner Bob Nutting's tower like some damsel in distress.

(Brief pause as we imagine Nutting twirling his Snidely Whiplash 'stache and saying "Bwah-ha-ha-ha!")

Anyway, this pretty much confirms my plan to have a bunch of "Free Paul Skenes" T-shirts made up and shipped to P-town for distribution. He is, see, the best pitcher in baseball, and everyone wants him. But of course the Cruds aren't going to do the decent thing and trade him to a real baseball team. 

Which the C's are not.

What they are instead is an organization addicted to losing the way our illustrious Vice-President, Mini-Me Vance, is addicted to eye-liner. In the season just past, they returned for the second straight year to their ancestral home -- the cellar of the NL Central -- despite Skenes again channeling his inner Koufax; in 32 starts and 187 2/3 innings, he struck out 216 batters and led the majors with a 1.97 ERA.

But his won-loss was only 10-10, because the Cruds only won 71 games themselves and finished 20 games under .500. That was five games worse than last year, despite having a pitcher who may well win the NL Cy Young tomorrow.

Of course, Cherington swears that's all about to turn around. The other day he said something about "payroll flexibility" and how the Cruds have more of it this winter, and how they'll use the extra cash to improve an offense that ranked dead last in the majors in runs scored in 2025.

And blah-blah-blah, yadda-yadda-yadda.

In other words: Cruds Nation has heard all of this before. And in further other words?

Expect the Cruds to make a serious run at fourth place next season. Or, you know, not.

A day of thanks, and remembrance

(Re-posted from 2022):

In the den of our quiet home in a quiet part of the world, there's a certificate, framed, propped on one of the bookshelves in the den. I'm looking at it, this cold November morning. It isn't hard: I turn my head and there it is, about two feet to the left of where I sit writing this.

The certificate is from the local chapter of the Korean War Veterans Association, thanking me for a handful of columns I wrote30 or so years ago about their efforts to get a Korean War memorial built. It's signed by the group's president, John Settle, a wonderful gentleman who was up on Chosin Reservoir when the Chinese came pouring across the Yalu in the icebox  winter of 1950.

Frozen Chosin, the survivors called it. John's souvenir was a nasty case of frostbite, of which he was reminded every time the weather turned frigid. The bottom of his feet would knot up in hard little balls. It didn't sound like three rings of fun for him.

I'm guessing John's probably gone now, as are a lot of those vets I got to know. It's been  three decades, after all, and none of them were young then.

But I'm looking at the certificate they gave me and thinking about them because today is Veterans Day, and also Armistice Day. I think of it as the latter because I'm a history nerd, and World War I -- four years of pointless slaughter on an industrial scale -- has for some reason always held a particular fascination for me. So the moment the armistice ending it went into effect, at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, resonates.

In any event, on this day I always conflate remembrance of that war with saluting those who fought all our wars, or who wear or have worn the uniform. And I've taken to reposting something I wrote several years ago on this day, because it seems to sum it all up.

Here it is:

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

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

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

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

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

I met my share of veterans, in my four decades as a journalist. I met Korean veterans and Vietnam veterans and, once, 30 years ago in the living room of a modest home near Georgetown Square, a vet who survived both Tarawa and Okinawa in World War II. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 10

 And now this week's edition of "The NFL In So Many Words," the relentlessly unending Blob feature of which critics have said "I will END you!", and also, "How 'bout I relentlessly inject my foot up your a**?":

1. "Dear god, will this horror never end?" (Browns fans, after the even lowlier New York Jet beat the Brownies on a punt return for a score and a kickoff return for a score)

2. "I will END you!" (Browns head coach Kevin Stefanski, presumably, to his special teams coach)

3. Meanwhile, the Mike McDaniel Era!

4. Relentlessly refuses to end as the Dolphins somehow beat the Buffalo Bills by two touchdowns.

5. "We will END you, you relentlessly disappointing Bills, as soon as we finish getting totally s***faced and jumping half-naked onto card tables!" (The Bills Mafia fan base)

6. The Broncos beat the Raiders 10-7. The Eagles beat the Packers 10-7. The awful Saints won on the road against the wait-I-thought-we-didn't-suck-anymore Panthers; Jonathan Taylor ran for eleventy-hundred yards and scored three times as the Colts beat the Falcons in overtime in Berlin; and the Lions ball-peened the Commanders 44-22 in front of President Donald J. Trump, who was booed by the Commanders' fans.

7. "Listen to them booing the Democrats! What fun!" (President Trump)

8. "10-7? Really? I skipped a house payment so I could sit in the nosebleeds and watch 10-7?" (Eagles, Broncos fans)

9. "I thought you were supposed to tackle him." "What? No way, I thought you were supposed to tackle him." "Well, I definitely wasn't supposed to tackle him, I know that." (The Falcons defense)

10. "Dear god, will this horror never end?" (Panthers fans, for whom the suckiness apparently remains ... relentless) 

Name that excess

 Fearless Leader was in the booth for a bit at the Lions-Commanders game yesterday, but the sound was down so I couldn't quite hear what he was saying. He did look quite cheerful and animated, however, which suggests perhaps he was contemplating deporting Lions wideout Aman-Ra St. Brown because his name sounded illegal or something.

I mean, you never know with this guy.

More likely, though, he was talking about the plans for a new stadium for the hometown Commanders, a deal for which Fearless Leader (or at least his propaganda ministers) is taking full credit. According to ESPN, F.L. has expressed a desire to have the new stadium named for ... well, him. You know, as a thank you.

Personally I think this is a splendid idea.

Then again, I've always been a big fan of tacky excess, and you know a facility named Trump Stadium or the Trumpdome or The Presidential Su-weeeet would be Full Metal Tacky Excess. I envision lots of Home Depot gold leaf, a Jumbotron outlined in costume jewelry from the Home Shopping Network and a solid-gold statue of Fearless Leader out front, leaning resolutely on a 3-wood.

The statue, including base, would be 18 feet tall. That's because Tom Brady's statue and base outside Gillette Stadium measures 17 feet, and no way would Fearless Leader let a mere football player eclipse him.

Concessions? Oh, hell, yes, there'd be concessions. And not just the kind Fearless Leader has extorted from institutions of higher learning and all those weak-ass Democrats and what-not on the Hill.

No, THESE concessions would be stadium food, and it would be as gloriously excessive as everything else. A two-foot long Trump Dog (because a footlong would be too ordinary). Trumpcorn in two sizes, Vat and Super Lard-Ass Vat. The Don Burger, a one-pounder garnished with a block of cheese, a head of lettuce and two full Vidalia onions. Kristi Noem's Stop Or We'll Shoot Nachos, presented in a cardboard bowl shaped like an unmarked van and decorated with images of scary-looking roofers and landscapers.

Washed down, of course, with a Fearless Leader Cola and ICE Ice.

The highlight of every Sunday, of course, would be the moment the home team takes the gilt-edged field every as the re-re-named Washington Redskins, accompanied by the cheerleaders and team mascot. Oh, the pageantry! The very Fearless Leader-ness!

The cheerleaders would dance out wearing fake Native American headbands, skimpy buckskin fringe and moccasins from J. Crew. The mascot would be a white guy in fake Native American dress, waving a rubber tomahawk and performing a "war dance" that looks curiously like John Travolta doing his thing in "Saturday Night Fever."

Say hello to Chief Wampum Stomp'em, boys and girls. And his backup band, the Squaw Squad.

Why, you can just see it, can't you?

Well, OK. But I can.

A great escape

 One hundred eleven seconds to play out there in Happy Valley, and the detractors had their knives out. You could hear their gloating even over the 747 roar of the home crowd, which was all jacked up because a precious moment of redemption was right there for the downtrodden Nittany Lions of Penn State.

Who led the unbeaten (and untried, the detractors said) Indiana Hoosiers, the No. 2 team in the land, 24-20.

Who in turn were 80 distant yards away from escape velocity with 1:51 to play.

See, I told you they were a fraud ...

Got fat on a pile of cupcakes ...

Losing to a 3-6 team that's been playing out the string since its head coach got the gate four games into the season ...

Gloat, gloat, gloat.

And then ...

Well. By now you know all about "and then".

You know Indiana's quarterback, the great and powerful Fernando Mendoza, first took a sack, then completed a 22-yard pass, a 12-yard pass, a 29-yard pass and a 17-yard pass. 

Then he hoisted a throw toward the back of the end zone, where Omar Cooper Jr., leaped, caught and somehow pas-de-deuxed a toe inside the end line. There were 36 seconds to play, and the Hoosiers were still unbeaten.

"Most improbable victory I have ever been a part of," Indiana coach Curt Cignetti said, after the 27-24 W went final.

It was also the first time in program history Indiana had beaten Penn State in Happy Valley, having gone 0-for-13 until Saturday. Now they're 10-0 for the second straight year,  Cignetti is 21-2 in Bloomington -- and the detractors still claim it's all a trick of the light.

Because Coach Cig's Hoosiers had almost lost to a 3-6 football team.

Because the Hoosiers blew a 13-point second-half lead and were outgained 336 yards to 326 by that 3-6 football team.

Because the Big Ten is a poser conference and Indiana is the biggest poser of all.

On the other hand ...

On the other hand, the great escape the Hoosiers made yesterday came against a team that returned virtually everyone from a team that went 13-3 last season, won the Fiesta Bowl and reached the CFP semifinals before losing 27-24 to Notre Dame. And whose 2025 season imploded only after the then-No. 3 Nittany Lions lost 30-24 in double overtime to defending Big Ten champion and then-No. 6 Oregon -- a game that wasn't decided until Oregon defensive back Dillon Thieneman intercepted Drew Allard in the end zone in the second OT.

Oregon is now 8-1 and still ranked sixth -- its only loss, of course, coming against Indiana.

In other words, all those players who took the Nittany Lions to the natty semis and fought to the end against the defending conference champs were still around yesterday. And Indiana still found a way to beat them.

"Yeah, but ..." the detractors insist.

Yeah, nothing. Close call or not, Indiana still has 10 wins and zippo losses, and their average margin of victory in those 10 wins -- even with yesterday's three-pointer -- is an FBS-leading 32.4 points. Poser conference or not, no one else in it is beating people like that.

And so ... onward.

Conflict of what?

 Listen, I know what people are gonna say here. They're gonna hear Michelle Beadle -- an eclipsed former star in the vast sports media firmament -- going after ESPN's ubiquitous Stephen A. Smith on her radio show the other day, and say she's just noshing on sour grapes. 

Can't argue with that. Because, yeah, those people likely aren't entirely wrong.

Thing is, neither is she.

Oh, to be sure, there's little love lost between Beadle and Stephen A., and not without reason. Stephen A. did, after all, blindside her by stealing her Sirius XM radio spot, which he announced before Beadle knew anything about it. One minute she had a show; the next she was hearing Stephen A. say on the air that, nah, man, I'm movin' in. See ya, wouldn't wanna be ya.

However.

However, when she took off on Stephen A. for his sleazy deal with a sleazy online solitaire app, she was absolutely on the side of the angels.

The app, Solitaire Cash, is run by Papaya Gaming, which recently was knicked for fraud. Seems they introduced bots into competitions that were supposed to be on the level -- i.e., actual paying customers playing actual paying customers -- thereby robbing said customers. To make matters, well, sleazier, Stephen A.'s deal was an apparent attempt to cash in on the now-famous incident in which he was caught playing solitaire on his phone at the NBA Finals, when he was allegedly supposed to be working. 

Think a carnival huckster endorsing a new shell-game app, and you've got the basic vibe. And to make matters, well, even sleazier, several other ESPN personalities jumped on Stephen A.'s train and endorsed the Papaya site, too.

"It's gross, man," Beadle was quoted as saying by the website Awful Announcing, which reported the story. "You gotta have principles in this thing."

Or, you know, not.

This whole business, after all, is a microcosm of professional sports and its beholden media these days, in which the latter climbs into bed with the former and then claims, "Yeah, but nothin' happened, so we can still be trusted as a journalistic entity." That's how we wind up with the ludicrous scenario of ESPN reporting on, say, the recent gambling scandal in the NBA while at the same time endorsing online gambling apps on its website.

Presumably money changes hands in those endorsements. Which means, essentially, that ESPN -- and, yes, the NFL, NBA and others -- is being paid by the gambling industry. Yet we're supposed to trust its reporting on that industry?

Please.

 Truth is, Sportsball World in the Baffling Twenties is one massive ball of conflicts -- so much so that those conflicts are rarely even seen as conflicts anymore. They're just bidness, as they say in the oil industry. And if that's true in sports, sports takes its cue from Washington D.C. -- where conflicts of interest have become as natural as humidity in August, and open graft is simply the way govermentin' gets done these days.

In which case, maybe Stephen A. and the rest of the yapping poodles at ESPN are just hanging ten on the national zeitgeist. A disheartening notion to be sure.

Bogart of the year

 Raise a glass this morning to St. Louis Blues goalie Jordan Binnington, but make sure you keep a firm grip on it. Seems the guy's got some exceedingly sticky fingers. 

Last night, for instance, he tried to bogart Alex Ovechkin's milestone goal, only to have the on-ice officials basically say, "Come on, man. Give it up." What happened was, Ovi collected the trash from an errant shot from the point, neatly slid it to his backhand, and tucked it behind Binnington. 

It was his third goal of the season, and one of half-dozen the Washington Capitals put behind Binnington in a 6-1 paving. It also was Ovi's 900th career goal, making the NHL's alltime leading goal scorer the only player in history to reach that particular round number.

So what did Binnington do?

Why, what any collector of rare artifacts would do: He quickly scooped the puck out of the net and stuffed it down his pants. Puck? Puck? No, sir, Mr. Referee, sir, haven't seen any pucks around here. 

Now, Binnington didn't speak with the media after the game, so the jury's still out on whether this was an actual bogarting, or if Binnington was just pulling a hockey player prank on Ovi. Having been around hockey players as a sports scribbler for a good chunk of my professional life, I'm inclined toward the latter.

(Mind you, this is not solely -- not solely --  because I once was pranked myself by a Fort Wayne Komet who shall remain nameless. At the height of the hilarity on the night the Komets won one of their several league championships, he dumped a beer on my head.  Then he baptized me again. I forgave him because  one, he was one of those guys it was impossible to get mad at, and, two, because I was the dummy who decided venturing into the locker room during the postgame celebration was a good idea.)

Anyway ... Binnington willingly surrendered the puck, and the game went on. Presumably the officials presented it to Ovechkin at some point -- which evokes a brief conversation that probably didn't happen, but could have.

Ovechkin: He stuffed it WHERE?

Official: Um, down his pants, Ovi.

Ovechkin (dropping puck): Ewww. 

Outrage outage

 The first College Football Playoff poll is out, and calm is mostly upon the land. Except for Paul Finebaum's head exploding, it's disappointingly un-contentious out there.

"Who is Paul Finebaum, and why is his head exploding?" you might be asking now.

Paul Finebaum is America's foremost SEC shill, and so the sight of Ohio State and Indiana from the Big Arithmetic Challenged coming in 1-2 in the first poll no doubt has him re-enacting a scene from "Scanners," the greatest head-exploding film of all time. This is especially true of Indiana, whom Paul thinks is an utter fraud who will surely be exposed this week ... OK, next week, then ... OK, next week then.

But the Buckeyes are 8-0 and the defending national champs, and Indiana is 9-0 and crushing everyone who gets in their way by eleventy gazillion points. So of course it makes total sense they'd be 1-2 in the first CFP poll, and no one but Finebaum could possibly have an issue with it.

Which is the problem here.

See, this first poll seems so well-duh for the most part there's hardly any outrage over it, and outrage is what makes college football fun. But this first poll seems to be suffering from a distinct outrage outage.

The first four teams -- the bye teams -- are Ohio State, Indiana, unbeaten Texas A&M and once-beaten Alabama. Georgia, meanwhile, is fifth. This seems so entirely inarguable it's almost ... um ... OK, boring.

And elsewhere?

The only serious quasi-controversy is BYU coming in at No. 7, which a lot of folks would consider four or five places too high. Oh, sure, the Cougars are 8-0 and going through the Big 12 like you-know-what through a goose, but they've got a big one this week at Texas Tech, who comes in as the 8th seed in the first CFP poll.

If the Cougars lose -- and they well could -- then the CFP seedings re-set themselves and BYU will no longer be seventh and, well, problem solved. Everyone will forget how mildly annoyed they were at the Cougars' lofty place in their first poll.

The Blob, meanwhile, only hopes subsequent polls maintain the respective positions of Notre Dame and Indiana, because as the seeding currently stand there's a good chance they'd play one another in the second round. This would be a rematch of last year's first-round game, in which the Irish easily dispatched the 11-1 Hoosiers in South Bend.

But Notre Dame would have to come to Bloomington this time, and the Indiana team it would face is several degrees better than the one the Irish faced a year ago, especially on defense. On the other hand, Jeremiyah Love and Jadarian Price are several degrees better, too, comprising as they do the best running back tandem in the college game. Who wouldn't want to see that collision?

"Paul What's-his-name?" you're saying now.

Well, OK. Maybe him.

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 9

 And now this week's edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the shockingly regular Blob feature of which critics have said "God, it's so shockingly regular!", and also "Come 'ere, so I can shock you on the regular with this cattle prod!":

1. "Wait, what? THIS ain't regular!" (The Packer, the Lions and the Bengals, shocked at home by the Panthers, the Vikings and the Bears)

2. "Ditto!" (The Panthers, Vikings and Bears)

3. "Double ditto!" (Bears quarterback Caleb Williams, who, a week after playing like the love child of Jack Concannon, played like the love child of Tom Brady in a 47-42 win in Cincinnati, completing 20-of-34 passes for 280 yards and three touchdowns, catching a pass for another score, and hitting tight end Colston Loveland down the middle for 58 yards and the game-winning six with 17 seconds to play)

4. "Well, if THIS ain't shockingly regular!" (Bengals fans, watching two tacklers bounce off Loveland on the way to the end zone.)

5. "Wait ... what?" (85-year-old Joe Flacco, who'd just thrown his fourth touchdown pass of the day with 54 seconds left to put the Bengals ahead)

6. In other shockingly regular news, the Dolphins were paved at home by the Ravens; the Super Bowl-bound Cowboys lost by 10 at home to freaking Jacoby Brissett and the freaking Cardinals; the Patriots beat the Falcons (again!); and Jaxson Joe Willie Dart, the King of New York, threw for two touchdowns, ran for another and racked up 247 total yards against the 49ers.

7. Who beat Jaxson Joe Willie and the Giants anyway, even though Mac Jones was playing quarterback for them. Because the Giants, of course.

8. "Of course!" (Giants fans)

9. "Hey, at least we didn't lose this week!" (Gloating Jets fans, whose team extended its lifetime unbeaten record in its bye week)

10. "What? The Jets are unbeaten in something?" (The rest of America, properly shocked)

A big reveal. Or not.

 God it looks like Daniel ...

-- Elton John

Well, it did.

Look like Daniel, I mean.

And by "Daniel," I mean the Other Daniel, aka Manhattan Daniel Jones, aka That Guy Who Only Became Indiana Jones When He Came To A Place -- Indianapolis-- That Had A Running Back And Some Actual Wide Receivers And, Oh, Yeah, The NFL'S Next Great Tight End.

Well, forget that noise. At least for one Sunday.

It was a day when Other Daniel re-emerged thanks to the Pittsburgh Steelers, who put together a game plan that sent Indiana Jones into hiding. As his Indianapolis Colts went down 27-20, Other Daniel completed 31-of-50 passes, took five sacks, threw three picks and lost two fumbles. That's five turnovers to you and me, kids.

"I'm so disappointed in you, Junior," Sean Connery said in a postgame statement.

OK, so he didn't. But every skeptic in America who'd been waiting for Daniel Jones to stop impersonating a really good quarterback and go back to being Daniel Jones again got some meat and drink yesterday.

All it took was for the Steelers to A) get an early lead, and B) thereby take Jonathan Taylor out of the equation, or mostly out of the equation. Taylor lugged it 14 times for just 45 yards Sunday, as Jones tried vainly to pass the Colts back into it. But with Taylor mostly erased as a factor, the Colts offense became a three-legged stool minus a leg.

And Indiana Jones became merely Daniel Jones again.

"Told ya!" the skeptics sneered.

So they did. But does yesterday mean the Colts are going to go back to being the Colts again?

Nah.

Oh, sure, mimicry being a way of life in the NFL, everyone the Horseshoes will face from here on out will study the Pittsburgh tape, and then try to duplicate it. But not everyone has a T.J. Watt, an Alex Highsmith or a Keeanu Benton, who combined for four sacks, five tackles for loss and four quarterback hits Sunday. And Jonathan Taylor is not going to stop being Jonathan Taylor, which means he likely has a few more 100-yard days left in him.

Which means Jones will face more defenses that will have to play him honest, which in turn means they won't be teeing off on him the way the Steelers were able to. And which also means he can resume picking people apart with throws to Michael Pittman Jr. and Alec Pierce and Josh Downs and Tyler Warren, and all the other quality targets the Colts have in their stable.

In other words, that big ugly reveal the skeptics have been predicting perhaps wasn't as revealing as it looks. After all, it wasn't magic dust that turned Manhattan Daniel Jones into Indiana Jones. It was what it always is: The right combination of scheme, personnel and confidence in both.

You've gotta figure that combination is still there. Or, if you're the Colts, you hope it is.

Meanwhile, in NASCAR ...

 ... and, yes, before you start, it was still going on Sunday.

Yesterday was the last race of the season, in Phoenix.

Kyle Larson won the title for the second time, even though the last race he won was six months ago and he never led a lap Sunday.

Denny Hamlin was the guy who should have won, but, after 20 fruitless seasons, the racing gods kicked him in the tender bits again. And this time they clocked him a good one.

Hamlin, see, was leading the race with three laps to go, and no one was going to catch him. He was finally going to grab the brass ring, or whatever they call the Big Trophy in NASCAR. Unless something really stupid and cruel happened, he would never again be known as the best driver never to win a title.

And then ...

And then something really stupid and cruel happened.

With those aforementioned three laps to run, William Byron flatted a tire and smacked the wall, bringing out a yellow.

Hamlin led the field down pit lane, where he took new rubber all around.

Larson, on the other hand, elected to change just two tires, bringing him out in fifth while Hamlin came out in tenth.

The overtime green-white-checker that followed wasn't enough for Hamlin to make up the difference. He wound up sixth; Larson finished third and won a championship he both couldn't believe and -- let's be honest here -- totally lucked into.

"We were 40 seconds away from a championship," Hamlin said, when at last he could find his voice.

"This sport can drive you absolutely crazy," he said.

"Sometimes speed, talent, none of that matters," he said.

No, it doesn't. And now there will always be questions from those who love to ask questions after the fact.

The Blob's question: Why did Hamlin take four tires when he was already leading and so little time was left?

Why did he pit at all?

And, sure, OK, maybe thought he'd get beat on the green-white-checker restart by everyone who did take fresh rubber. But if his tires were that bad, why was he still  leading?  Wasn't track position more important at that point?

And while we're second-guessing stuff, who else sick to death of these manufactured green-white-checker finishes?

Mind you, this is coming from someone who is not and never has been a Denny Hamlin fan, particularly. But the green-white-checker thing has always annoyed me for some reason. It's always felt ... well, manufactured.

And, sure, without it, Hamlin wins the championship under yellow, which would have been seriously anticlimactic. But at least it would feel, I don't know, honest. If that makes any sense whatsoever.

If not ... well, here's to Kyle Larson, then. He is, after all, probably is the best driver in the sport right now. 

Just not yesterday.

Un-killable

 Somewhere out there is a world where the Los Angeles Dodgers are still just the high-priced spread, the Gucci Gang, a bunch of Limousine Louies wearing their portfolios to the plate the way Jacob Marley wore the chains he forged in life.

That world is not this world, however.

In this world, yes, the Dodgers are the team with a payroll that could choke a Clydesdale, but they sure don't play like it. In this world, the high-priced spread gets knocked down, rises and says, "Yah, nice try, bucko." They dare you to try that again, pal.  They are equal parts grit, stubbornness and sneer.

Gucci Gang?

Shoot. The Rub Some Dirt On It Gang is more like it.

Last night, in a performance typically devoid of glitter, they won the World Series again, beating the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 in 11 innings in Game 7. It was their third road win in the Series. It was their second win in extras, the first coming in Game 3 when they said "Hell, yes, we'll go 18 innings if we have to." And it made the Dodgers the first team in more than a quarter century to win back-to-back titles.

It also made them the team that refused to die. 

Bo Bichette put them down 3-0 early last night with a home run off Shohei Ohtani, who was finally asked to do more than even he could do by starting on three days' rest. The Rogers Centre was in full howl. The Dodger got it back to 3-2, but the Jays immediately answered with another run to make it 4-2.

In the top of the eighth, it was still 4-2, and the Trolley Dodgers were down to their last five outs. 

Then Max Muncy drove one into the seats, and it was 4-3 after eight.

Then Miguel Rojas, who hadn't had a hit since the wild-card round and had hit just one home run since July, took another pitch yard to tie it 4-4.

Then, in the bottom half of the ninth, the Blue Jays loaded the bags with one out. And the Rogers Centre was all but leaning with the noise and the anticipation of the Jays' first Series title in 32 years.

Except here was Rojas again, making an off-balance throw to the plate to get a sliding Isiah Kiner-Falefa by a fraction of a fraction of a second -- a play so bang-bang it had to be reviewed before it was confirmed that, yes, the game would go on.

Not. Dead. Yet.

And here was outfielder Andy Pages chasing down a deep drive to the wall from Ernie Clement, who'd already set a record with 30 postseason hits and, in the instant the ball left his bat, seemed to have ended it once again.

Nah. Pages went back, back, leaped, and somehow made a twisting backhanded grab while crashing into fellow outfielder Kiki Hernandez. 

Not. Dead. Yet.

Not dead, and then never dead, as Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamato took the hill just 24 hours after throwing 96 pitches in a 3-1 win in Game 6 and, unbelievably, did it again. This time, on no days rest, he threw 2 2/3 innings of scoreless, one-hit ball, and Dodgers won it on Smith's homer and a game-ending double play in the bottom of the 11th.

It was Yamamoto's third win of the Series, making him the only pitcher besides Randy Johnson to win three games in the World Series in the last 56 years. He's only the fourth pitcher in history to win both Games 6 and 7. 

He's now 4-0 lifetime in the World Series with a 1.13 ERA. Against the Blue Jays, he pitched the first complete game win in the World Series in a decade; won 3-1 in Game 6 Friday night; and went 3-0 with an ERA of 1.09.

"Incredible," Smith said.

"The GOAT!" Dodgers manager Dave Roberts shouted.

And something else, too, as the Commissioner's Trophy made its rounds in the Dodgers' clubhouse once again:

Un-killable.

For all of it

 So here we go, boys and girls, on a first of November we'll still call October just because: Game 7 for all of it.

Blue Jays vs. Dodgers for the ball of wax, the enchilada, the shebang. Max Scherzer vs. Shohei Ohtani, baseball's Superman, who'll be going on three days' rest and DH'ing.  Jays at home in front of all those yowling Canadians, as if that at all matters in a World Series in which the home team has lost four of the previous six games.

The Dodgers got there last night by a 3-1 score, leaning on Yoshinobu Yamamoto's sturdy  arm, a bullpen that didn't start any fires this time, and Enrique Hernandez's heads-up play in the ninth.

 Yamamoto went six innings this time, giving up five hits and one earned run while striking out six. Relievers Justin Wrobleski, Roki Sasaki and Tyler Glasnow took care of the rest, giving the Blue Jays nary a sniff -- three hits in three innings.

Then it was Hernandez who sealed the deal, charging a soft liner with one out and two on in the bottom of the ninth, making the grab and catching a too-eager Addison Barger leaning off second. Voila: Game-ending double play.

"A bad read," Barger lamented later, saying he thought the ball was going to land untouched and thus he was all but on his way to third.

And Hernandez?

"Game 7, amazing," he said. "This is what we dream of ever since we were little kids."

You bet. And one last whiff of October, no matter what the calendar says.