Olympian questions

Hanging out in my neighborhood hang yesterday, watching Sam Darnold and Super Bowl MVP Kenneth Walker III tour Disneyland (and wondering if either has slept since Sunday night). And there on one of the TVs over the bar, a couple of young people were ice dancing.

I immediately wondered if it was Tai and Randy.

(As in "Babilonia and Gardner", America's figure skating sweethearts about a thousand years ago).

I was subsequently informed by someone more knowledgeable about these matters that Tai and Randy were pairs skaters, not ice dancers. Torvill and Dean were the latter.

"Who can tell?" I asked.

Because I can't. It all looks like a man and a woman skating around lifting one another off the ice to me.

Anyway, this is just one question I have so far about the Winter Games in Milan/Cortina, which I'm just now catching up with after the tsunami of self-congratulatory hype surrounding the Super Bowl. Some of the other questions are:

* You mean there's pairs curling, too?

There is. And the U.S. pair, Korey Dropkin and Cory Thiesse, have curled their way into the final. They beat Italy 9-8 in the semis and will now face Sweden for the gold medal.

Not even Tai and Randy did that.

* Was Lindsey Vonn insane to try skiing the downhill nine days after tearing her ACL?

Maybe. Probably. OK, so highly likely, considering she crashed mere seconds into her first competitive run and broke her left leg all to hell -- the same leg with the torn ACL.

Vonn says she hooked a gate with her right arm and that's what caused her to crash, not the torn ACL. She suffered a complex fracture of the tibia she admitted will require "multiple" surgeries to repair. Which means her career is likely done, considering she's also 41 years old.

"Knowing I stood there having a chance to win was a victory in and of itself," she wrote in an Instagram post, adding that she had no regrets. "I also know that racing was a risk. It always was and always will be an incredibly dangerous sport."

Which is true.

Which is also why, yes, she's insane, but no more insane than anyone else who thinks it's a good idea to go flying down a mountain at 70 mph on two slats of aluminum siding. They're all seriously loco, these folks.

* Despite that, is "Breezy" not the perfect name for someone who wound up winning the women's downhill?

Yes. Yes it is. Breezy Johnson is her full name, and she took the gold for the U.S. So take that, all you other crazy downhillers with not-nearly-as-cool names.

* Is the U.S. women's hockey team still kicking butt?

'Tis. The women shut out Switzerland 5-0 yesterday and are 3-0 in the tournament so far. They face their nemesis Canada today, so buckle up.

*  Does the young American skating phenom, Illia Malinin, sort of remind you of King Joffrey Baratheon from "Game of Thrones" (as a friend suggested the other day)?

Aw, you bet. Except Malinin, by all accounts, is not a giant gaping orifice like Joffrey. That little jerk had it coming for sure.

And last but not least ...

* What's the medal count so far? Is Norway leading like usual?

Not yet. The Norwegians are third with six total medals, half of them gold. The host country, Italy, leads the way with nine medals, six of them bronze. Japan is second with seven medals, and behind Norway are the usual suspects: Switzerland, Germany and Austria.

"Where is the U.S., Mr. Blob?" you're saying now.

The U.S. is tied for seventh with seven other countries, among them more usual suspects. They have two medals so far, both of them gold.

"Does this mean Tai and Randy won?" you're asking.

Enough. Enough with the Tai and Randy bit.

That game

 So, then: Seattle 29, New England 13.

Drake Maye 3 turnovers; Sam Darnold 0.

Patriots 79 yards rushing; Kenneth Walker III 135.

Patriots 1 sack; Seahawks 6.

That's your tale of the tape in the 60th rendition of what always winds up being Just A Football Game, because, hello, that's all its. No matter how it plays out.

And how did it play out this time?

Well, how it played out was the Seahawks defense squeezing the life out of poor Drake Maye and the Patriots. It was kind of like watching "Anaconda", only Jon Voight's creepy character doesn't get swallowed whole in the end.

That unfortunate circumstance fell to the baby-faced Maye, who put up decent numbers only because the Seahawks D took its foot off the gas in the fourth quarter. Maye engineered 18 first downs, just two fewer than the Seahawks, and 331 total yards, just four fewer than Seattle. But that was exactly the mirage the numbers so often are in football.

The Patriots, see, racked 11 of the first downs and 253 of the yards in the last 14 minutes of the game, by which time Seattle led 19-0 and the deal was done. Prior to that, the Pats were a rumor; through three quarters, they coughed out just 78 yards of offense and five first downs. The Seahawks at that point had as many sacks.

Eight of New England's nine first-half possessions ended in punts, and the ninth was a kneel-down to end the half. A third of those possessions were three-and-outs. The Seahawks led 9-0 by then, but it might as well have been 90-0.

So does all this mean the Big Roman Numeral was a Big Crashing Bore?

Unless you bore some weird grudge against the eminently likeable Drake Maye, yes.

Will it go down as one of the least memorable of the 60 Supes?

Except for Kenneth Walker III, the Seattle D and Jason Myers' record five field goals, yes.

Do you think Sam Darnold, Mike Macdonald and the rest of the Seahawks care?

What do you think?

Other thoughts ...

* That Puerto Rican guy all those cranky MAGAs despise so much they staged their own Aggrieved White People halftime show did not come out in a feather boa, slingback heels and a garter belt. He did not perform obscene, America-hating acts, forcing parents to cover their impressionable children's eyes. 

No, what Bad Bunny did was invite Lady Gaga, Ricky Martin and others to help him celebrate his Latin culture in a joyous mix of dance, music and -- hey, look at this -- patriotism. They danced the salsa. They performed happy reggaeton. A couple actually got married during the festivities, and Bunny handed his latest Grammy to a young child actor who was apparently supposed to be his own young self.

For the finale, Bunny said, "God bless America" in English, and everyone broke out the flags of all the nations of North and South America, beneath a Jumbotron message that read "The Only Thing More Powerful Than Hate Is Love."

So, unity, cultural diversity and goodwill toward men (and women). You know, all the things Aggrieved White People believe are un-American.

* Kenneth Walker III was the logical choice for Super Bowl MVP, but only because the officials couldn't chainsaw the trophy into 11 pieces. That way the real MVP of the night -- the Seattle defense -- could have been properly feted.

Me, I think they should have named Myers the MVP for his five field goals and 17 total points. Just to hear all the yapping sportstalk poodles howl.

* Super Bowl commercials rating: Generally lame.

The standouts were the Dunkin' Donuts sendup of "Good Will Hunting"; the Budweiser eagle ad; and the Hellman's ad starring "Meal" Diamond. Everything else was "meh" to "meh"-minus.

And your winner is ...

 OK, OK, O-kay. Guess I've put this off as long as I can.

You want to know who's gonna win the Big Roman Numeral today, right?

"Nah, nah, nah," you're saying now. "We want to know who's gonna win halftime. Who'll it be, Bad Bunny or Up With Butt-Hurt White People?"

Oh, hell, I don't know. I think the people who aren't Butt-Hurt White People and the people who are will watch whatever they watch. Me, I'll prolly watch the Puppy Bowl. I hear the doodles are even money to knock off the labs this year.

Anyway ...

Anyway, back to the Big Roman Numeral.

I have some thought

My first thought is sometimes experience counts in this game, and sometimes it doesn't. Mostly it does, though -- which is why, weirdly, I think the younger, less-seasoned Patriots have the edge here. 

This is because their head coach, Mike Vrabel, has played in a few of these big to-do's, and Seattle's head coach, Mike Macdonald, has not. The whole three-ring circus is all new to Mac and the Seahawks; it's old hat to Vrabel. So if I had to pick the team that likely remained more focused on what matters this week, I'd pick the Patriots, despite their youth. Nothing like an OG to get you through the BS.

So, advantage, Patriots.

However.

However, it's hard to get around the fact that the Seahawks are ... well, just better.

They get the slight nod at quarterback, if only because Sam Darnold has been through every indignity the league can throw at a high-draft-pick QB, and Drake Maye has not. Now, Maye is eerily unflappable for a relative neophyte -- if you want to compare him to a young Tom Brady in that regard, I'm not gonna stop you -- but I look at Darnold and see another guy who got knocked around before finding his home place.

That would be the Jim Plunkett who won a Super Bowl with the Raiders after years of getting beaten up with (hello) the 1970s Patriots. The writer in me likes the symmetry of that.

Of course, the Seahawks also have a slight edge defensively, it says here. They have, maybe, a slight edge at running back with Kenneth Walker III. And they have Jaxon Smith-Ngjiba -- the one guy the Patriots simply don't have, and the guy most likely to flip the game with one touch.

They also have a team sharpened to a fine point by surviving the toughest division in football this season. To get here, they had to play league MVP Matthew Stafford and the Rams three times -- and beat them twice -- and Brock Purdy and the 49ers twice. The Patriots had to play the Jets.

On the other hand, the Pats are 9-0 away from home this season. Who does that in this league?

So who wins?

I say if the Maye and the Patriots upset the Seahawks the way Brady and the Patriots upset the Greatest Show On Turf all those years ago, it'll again come down to a field goal. Patriots win 24-23.

Or ...

Or, if Darnold and the Seahawks do what they've been doing all season, it'll be more like 30-17, Seattle.

I'm pickin' the latter. If only because the Patriots feel like they're a year away at this point.

You may now commence with the ridicule.

The great vacancy

 So Sonny Jurgensen is dead now, and who is left, I ask? Who is left to throw the deep out, the flag and the post, the home run ball to Charley Taylor or Carroll Dale, to Jack Snow or Raymond Berry or Gene Washngton?

All these arms of my youth, gone from this earth now. Sonny, and John Brodie, and Roman Gabriel, and Bart Starr, and Dandy Don, and the greatest of them all, John Unitas. Gone.

Sonny went yesterday, at the full-to-the-top age of 91, and here's the real tragedy: The great vacancy it represents is not my childhood slipping away full life by full life, but that there are so few left to craft a proper chronicle. Who is left, in other words, to tell the tale?

Sonny Jurgensen, you see, spent most of his Hall of Fame career in Washington, D.C., which lends his passing a special poignancy. In the same week he died, after all, billionaire vandal Jeff Bezos eviscerated the proud Washington Post, eliminating 300 jobs. Among them was the entire sports desk, once the home of Shirley Povich and John Feinstein and Dave Kindred and Christine Brennan; of Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon and Tom Boswell and Sally Jenkins.

Institutional memory has rarely experienced such a gory reckoning. And without institutional memory, journalism is nothing but a Wikipedia entry, bloodless and devoid of soul or context. It can tell you that Sonny Jurgensen led the NFL in passing three times and still holds Washington's single-season record for touchdown passes, but it can't tell you what it looked or felt like.

It can't tell you how the city felt about him. It can't describe the way the stadium drew in its breath every time Sonny launched one of his gorgeous parabolas downfield to Taylor or Bobby Mitchell or Jerry Smith. It can't tell you how it felt to actually cover those gorgeous parabolas, or to listen to one of the old-timers describe what it was like.

The suits will toss out suit words like "synergy" and "re-purposing" and "branding," but what they're really talking about giving readers less and selling it as more. They'll farm out their sports coverage to websites like The Athletic (as the New York Times did) and tell the paying customers they're getting MORE STORIES THAN EVER.

Except.

Except the stories will be written by people (or, in the age of AI, perhaps not) who have no connection to the community. Who have no institutional memory. Who'll provide only the context they can find on the web, because it's not about context anymore. It's about "content."

I can't say this any better than a longtime sports journo named Buddy Martin did the other day, when he penned a screed I shared with my Facebook bros. And so I will turn the wheel over to Buddy, who wrote the following:

I spent a lifetime in these trenches -- five sports editorships, five mastheads, five sets of presses humming through the night -- and I'll tell you this: A real sports section is a living, breathing organism. It's the guys and women at 11:45 p.m. arguing over a headline, the copy desk catching a stat on deadline, thde beat writer changing ledes because a kid hit a three-run homer in the bottom of the ninth ...

Sports sections were never just about scores and standings. They were the back fence of the city. You learned who you were as a fan, as a town, by the way your paper told the story of your teams ... It was a covenant. We show up, every day, on deadline, to tell you what happened and why it mattered.

Damn skippy.

A wintry mix

 It's snowing again outside as I write this, winter doing what winter does some years in these northern climes. This year in particular what it seems to be doing is annoying the hell out of us, like that party guest who stays too long and eats all the Chex mix.

Or maybe it just feels that way because it's February, and February is always when winter goes from "Aw, look at the pretty snow" to "Bad word bad word SNOW bad word bad word."

At any rate, with the world gone all gray and white, it seems the perfect time to talk about this weekend's official Sportsball World forecast: Wintry mix with a chance of contusions.

I say this because the Winter Olympics are officially underway in Milan/Cortina, Italy, and this weekend they'll go head-to-head with that most hallowed of American sacraments, the Feast of St. Lombardi. Or the Super Bowl, if you prefer.

This year is the 25th edition of the former and the 60th of the latter, which calls for a little blended reminiscing. Remember when Jean-Claude Killy caught two touchdown passes in Super Bowl I after partying all night? Or how about Joe Montana winning the downhill in ... Montana?

Was it Mike Eruzione who quarterbacked the Jets against the Colts in the Miracle on Turf in Super Bowl III? Or Joe Namath who scored the winning goal against the Soviets in the Miracle on Ice in Lake Placid?

Lord knows a body could get confused.

This weekend we'll get figure skaters and lugers and skiers and hockey players in Milan/Cortina, and large men with bad intent trying to turn Drake Maye and Sam Darnold into macrame. And the tie that binds is both pursuits tend to booger people up.

Football, of course, is the home office for the aforementioned contusions, not to mention abrasions, concussions and shredded-wheat ligaments. But one of the reasons the Blob loves the Winter Olympics is they, too, have a more than nodding acquaintance with extreme physical calamity.

You've got the downhill, first off, the marquee event in Alpine skiing. It's basically falling with style, as Buzz Lightyear likes to say. Last man and woman to cross the finish line upright, and not in a cartoon jumble of arms and legs, wins. 

Then of course, there's ski jumping, which is more falling with style. Short-track speedskating, which is what NASCAR would be if the drivers were allowed to pack switchblades. Luge, in which competitors rocket down a funnel of ice feet-first on jumped-up Flexible Flyers; and skeleton, in which competitors do it headfirst.

(The latter, by the way, are clinically insane in the Blob's opinion.  There ought to be a study of this.)

What else?

Well, ski-jumping, of course, and not just because of that old Wide World of Sports clip of the guy crashing on takeoff. Those people are nuts, too. Even figure skaters, sequined-up though they are, occasionally succumb to the deadly triple Salchow. And then there's the biathlon, in which cross-country skiers par-boil their lungs while occasionally stopping to shoot at stuff.

Imagine your heart banging away like Thor's hammer (because cross-country skiing at the Olympic level is extremely cardiovascular), and  suddenly you're commanding it to stop so you can squeeze off a shot. Why more biathletes' tickers don't just say "Aw. HELL, no" and pack it in is one of life's great mysteries.

Anyway ...

Anyway, the Blob is looking forward to it all -- even curling, which is weirdly compelling, especially when the Danish women's team is competing. And then comes Super Bowl Sunday, when America eats too much and drinks too much and critiques commercials like ad execs, and mainly doesn't care or even know who's pla- wait, you mean there's a football game, TOO?

Yes, indeed. And I don't know about you, but I'm like way super-excited for it.

I mean, have you seen Drake Maye in sequins?

Pulls a 9.8 in the long program, that kid. Every time.

Mickey Lolich, and a son's tale

 So word comes down now that Mickey Lolich has died, and again I think of my father. This is the grand American construct, of course, fathers and sons and baseball. But with us it was different.

Part of this is because of circumstance: My dad was 40 years old and in the hospital recovering from back surgery the day Lolich took the hill on two days rest to face Bob Gibson in Game 7 of the World Series.

The other part is Dad's son was quite possibly the worst baseball player the good Lord ever saw fit to place on this earth.

They say hitting a round ball square is the hardest skill to master in sports, but for me it was quantum physics -- and I was lousy at math, too. My dad would stand in the backyard and lob the ball to me, and I would swing and miss. And swing and miss. And swing and miss.

"Don't try to kill it," Dad would say. "Swing level."

Now, "Don't try to kill it" might have been fatherly advice, or it might have been Dad's idea of a joke. I was, after all, a speck of a kid whose Coke-bottle glasses outweighed him. I'd have been no better than even money in Vegas against a fruit fly, let alone a baseball.

I was, however, obsessed with sports, possibly because of the aforementioned. And in 1968, being servants to geography, Dad and I were rooting for the Detroit Tigers against the mighty St. Louis Cardinals, the defending World Series champs.

Well, it went about as expected. The Tigers got down three-games-to-one, and one day a note arrived for me from my dad in the hospital. Faithless memory blurs the details, but what I remember clearly is the last line, written by a father to his sports-nut son: "They (the Tigers) are really gonna have to hustle to pull this one out of the fire."

Enter Lolich.

He went the distance in Game 2 and struck out nine, and the Tigers won 8-1 to even the Series at a game apiece. The Cardinals won Games 3 and 4, but Lolich won 5-3 in Game 5, again going the distance, to begin the Tigers' comeback.

Denny McLain, who won 31 games that year for Detroit but lost his first two duels against Bob Gibson, came back on two days rest to win Game 6 in St. Louis; the Tigers thoughtfully provided him with 13 runs in a 13-1 rout. That set up Game 7, again in St. Louis, again with the fearsome Gibson on the mound for the home nine.

And for Detroit, here came Lolich again, on two days rest.

He'd already pitched 18 innings in the Series and faced 71 batters. But in Game 7 he surrendered just five hits and one run and struck out four, and Jim Northrup hit the ball over Curt Flood's head, and St. Louis and the great Gibson were vanquished, 4-1. It was the Tigers' first World Series title in 23 years.

Lolich, of course, was the Series MVP. In seven days, he'd pitched 27 innings, faced104 batters and struck out 21 of them. His three complete-game World Series victories remains unmatched to this day; when he retired, no left-handed pitcher in history had more striketouts. 

If life were at all fair, he'd have a plaque in Cooperstown, having punched out more batters in his career than Bob Feller, Warren Spahn, Don Drysdale, Christy Mathewson, Cy Young and Whitey Ford. But life isn't fair, and Lolich died, at 85, on the outside looking in.

But on the day he passed, a son read the news and remembered his father. That's something, right?

This just in ...

 Because the Blob is your First Source For News You Can Use (or something like that), we present to you this morning a couple of breaking (or broken) items you didn't think you needed to know.

One: The NFC won the Pro Bowl Flag Football Game And Fish Fry, 66-52. Antoine Winfield Jr. intercepted Joe Burrow with about four minutes to play to seal the comeback victory. A lineman scored a touchdown. A wide receiver intercepted a pass. And Micah Parsons, still recovering from a season-ending injury, tried to check himself into the game on a scooter.

 Alas, the officials wouldn't let him. Big meanies.

Meanwhile, in actual sporting events that aren't really sporting events ...

Two: A Doberman pinscher named Penny won the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show.

Penny, you'll be pleased to learn, is four years old and loves treats. She's the fifth Dobie to win the Westy. And she'll tear you into tiny bite-sized chunks when her handler says "Mustard!"

Nah, just kidding. Penny's a sweetheart, apparently. 

Other stars of the show included an Afghan hound named Zaida; a Lhasa apso named JJ; a Maltese named Cookie; and old English sheepdog named Archibald Burlingame IV (actually, Graham). There was also Storm the Newfoundland, Oliver the golden retriever and the Blob's personal favorite, Lumpy the Pekingese, whom the spectators of course serenaded with cries of "Lumpy! Lumpy! Lumpy!" Lumpy responded by putting on oversized rhinestone sunglasses and breaking into a cover of  "Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting" while the crowd went wild.

Nah, just kidding.

It was actually "Bohemian Rhapsody."

The lunacy lives

 In world of bizarre flights of fancy from our national "leaders", plus a general free-floating insanity from same, it's comforting to know there are still grounded elements amid all the chaos. There is, for example, Super Bowl Media Day.

Those of you who read the Blob's post yesterday ("Oooh! You're calling them 'posts' now! Fancy!" you're saying) were treated to a lot of old-man reminiscing about the sheer lunacy that is Media Day. It's been recast now as Super Bowl Opening Night, but the good news, is, the lunacy remains.

At one point in the festivities last night, for instance, Seahawks quarterback Sam Darnold was compelled to put a plastic ham on his head. No, I don't know why. Maybe because "Sam" rhymes with "ham" or something.

Meanwhile, according to the website Awful Announcing, the Guy Who's Just There To Ask Stunt Questions was also on hand. He's been a Media Day/Opening Night staple for years, and these days his name is Dave Dameshek. He hosts a podcast for something called the DraftKings Network, and Awful Announcing describes him as a "longtime NFL personality."

Rule of thumb to know and learn: Anyone people describe as a "personality" is most certainly not  "media." He (or she) is a lounge act. A rodeo clown. The comic relief with a well-established bit.

Dameshek's bit is to ask the same intentionally absurd question at every Super Bowl Media Day/Opening Night, just to see how his target reacts. This time the target was Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel, and the question, as always, was, "Is this a must-win game?"

Ha-ha. Tee-hee. Hilarious.

Now, I don't know what reaction Dameshek was shooting for. Likely he wanted Vrabel to blurt out something along the lines of, "'A must-win game'? What are you, stupid? It's the Super Bowl, for God's sake! You must have cream cheese for brains!"

Alas, Vrabel played it straight. Said something about how he regards every NFL game as a must-win game. And Dameshek did not get the honor and glory of being told he had a cranium full of bagel condiments.

Better luck next year, dude.

Excuse me. Better luck next year, Longtime NFL Personality.

Welcome to Super Roman Numeral Week

 I don't know if the groundhog or porcupine or whatever it is saw his shadow this morning, but I do know what today ushers in. It's Super Roman Numeral Week, boys and girls!

During which there will be parties and lots of patting oneself on the back by the NFL, and also parties. And other parties. And Sam Darnold being asked 900 times why he doesn't suck anymore. Followed by even more other parties.

I say this as someone who covered three of these distinctly American bacchanals, and was always left slack-jawed at the pure silliness that attends the biggest week in the nation's biggest sport. Dirty little secret: As a sportswriter, it wasn't all that hard a gig. There were news conferences every day that spoon-fed us stories only a hundred or so others wrote; there also stories just lying on the ground that, if you were lucky or enterprising enough, no one else thought to write.

It also provided some, shall we say, unique experiences.

Like the year Prince was the halftime show, and turned his pre-Super Bowl news conference into an impromptu three-number concert. Alleged journalists leaped to their feet cheering and clapping and dancing in the aisles. Weirdest presser ever.

On the other hand, nothing was weirder than Media Day. This became an event in itself -- in Indianapolis in 2012, they actually sold tickets to it -- and it had as much to do with actual Media as the Jerry Springer Show. You had legit writers and radio and TV foofs, but you also had quasi-celebrities and self-promoters and that one guy from Telemundo asking questions via sock puppet. 

For instance, I was there the day someone asked Bears tight end Desmond Clark what position he thought Chewbacca would play if Chewbacca played football.

I was there the day some Nickelodeon character named Pick Boy was traipsing around in orange-and-green tights and cape pronouncing that his muscles were real and his hair was perfect. I was there for Super Bowl Wayne -- legit handle: Wayne C. Lavelle -- who was from Honolulu and whose claim to fame was he'd been to 32 Super Bowls in a row.

I was there the day someone showed up dressed as Red Grange, complete with leather helmet.  There the day Genghis Khan made an appearance, only this Genghis Khan was wearing white sunglasses with lenses the size of dinner plates. There ... oh, look, here's Super Bowl Wayne again, handing out business cards.

"Television Radio Film Internet Personality," it read.

I hope the Television Radio Film Internet Personality is at this week's Media Day.

I mean, someone's got to ask Drake Maye, for the 500th time, if he's ready for this. And if he's ready, how ready? Is the percentage of his readiness 60 percent? Seventy-five percent? Ninety percent?

After which someone really does have to ask Sam Darnold why he doesn't suck anymore.

And, by the way, what's the percentage of his readiness?

Mother Unnatural, Part Deux

 So remember yesterday, when the Blob talked about Nelly Korda and the LPGA, and the bomb cyclone that hit Orlando and the rest of Florida before Bond could disarm it?

(Because, to reiterate, "bomb cyclone" sounds more like a doomsday weapon Goldfinger would come up with than a weather system)

Well, it's not just women's golf Mother Unnatural messed with. 

It was also NASCAR. 

Know what the folks at that venerable old bullring Bowman Gray Stadium were doing Sunday, instead of kicking off the season with the Busch Clash?

They were plowing snow off the track. Like, lots and lots of snow.

This is because Bowman Gray is in Winston-Salem, N.C., which got a foot of snow last week. A foot of snow. In North Carolina.

Meanwhile, in Tampa, Fla., the NHL played an outdoor game Sunday in what actually felt like hockey weather (game-time temp was a wintry 40 degrees without the windchill). Talk about turning the globe upside-down.

By the time the storm blew itself out, after all, Winston-Salem looked more like Helsinki,  and Charlotte -- where most of the NASCAR teams are quartered -- was doing a passable imitation of Oslo. And this in a state where you can usually handle winter with four snowplows and a salt shaker.

(OK, so I exaggerate. North Carolina prolly has five snowplows at least.)

So, yeah, on Sunday, when folks were supposed to be tuning into the Clash, they were tuning into the Highway Department 200 instead. Plus, it got down to 14 degrees in Winston-Salem last night. And a '64 Volkswagen Beetle has a better heater than your average Cup car.

Ah, but by Wednesday, the temperature supposed to climb all the way to 40. That's when the Clash is supposed to take place now, the good Lord willing and the creek don't freeze over.

Any-hoo, I guess we can infer from all this that Mother Unnatural not only doesn't like golf, she apparently doesn't like stock-car racin', either. Which oughta be grounds for deportation, in my mind. It is what we do best these days, after all.

Mother Unnatural

 Happy February, everyone, that benighted month in which "winter wonderland" becomes an epithet and everyone thanks the calendar gods that it's also the shortest month.

I'm looking out my window right now, for instance, and it's not some Currier and Ives print of the horse pulling the sleigh over the river and through the woods. No, sir. It's  Siberia out there: Eight or so inches of snow on the ground, minus-1 degrees. . 

Everything's white, including my salt-encrusted car. Woo-hoo.

Want to know the worst thing?

You can't even go to Florida to get warm.

Hanging ten through my socials this a.m., and I saw that play was suspended yesterday in the third round of the season-opening LPGA Tournament of Champions. Not because of thunder, lightning and rain, mind you. Because it was TOO DAMN COLD AND WINDY.

That's got to be a first. Especially since they were playing in FREAKING ORLANDO.

The wind was blowing at 20 mph with gusts up to 40, dropping the windchills into the 40s. The weather boys and girls said the culprit was a bomb cyclone -- which sounds more like a weapon Bond must dismantle than a weather system -- staging a daring daylight raid on the Sunshine State.

And elsewhere. I surfed a little more, and some pictures from Myrtle Beach and Charlotte, N.C., popped up. The roads were white with snowpack, and it was still coming down. It looked like Norway had invaded the Deep South. 

Either that, or Mother Nature (Mother Unnatural?) saying, "You wanna see a War of Northern Aggression? I'll show you a War of Northern Aggression!"

Yeah, boy. Don't try to tell me our weather isn't doing some weird stuff. It is. And it's getting weirder the more our elected numbskulls keep denying our weather is doing weird stuff.

But enough about that. Let's get back to Orlando.

Where, according to my weather app, it's 28 degrees right now, with a windchill of 17. But the good news is, it's supposed to be a balmy 40 by noon.

Which means Nelly Korda, who shot 64 yesterday before play was suspended and sits atop the leaderboard, could make history today: 

First LPGA player to win a tournament while wearing a thermal mittens and a parka. Visor by Cabela's. 

The immortal one

 Look, I don't know what keeps Novak Djokovic going. Carrot juice, perhaps. Kale smoothies. Peanut M&Ms.

All I know is, yesterday down in Australia, while the wider world pretty much ignored it, he did something remarkable.

He outlasted Jannik Sinner in five sets in the Australian Open semifinal.

Won the fifth set 6-4. Walked off the court a winner after four hours and nine minutes of grinding. The match didn't end until 1:30 in the morning Australian time.

Oh, and one more thing: Novak Djokovic is 38 years old.

In tennis years, that's like 65. Maybe 70. And yet the Joker keeps on keeping on. 

Across the years he's won more majors (24), more Masters (40) and been ranked No. 1 in the world (428 weeks) more than any male player in history. He's the only player in history to achieve a career grand slam three times. He is, without much dispute, the greatest male tennis player the world has ever seen.

Maybe the most solid proof of that?

In Sinner, he beat a man 14 years his junior. And it wasn't even that big an upset, because even though Sinner is the No. 2 player in the world, Djokovic is still ranked fourth.

Fourth. At 38.

By contrast, his two major contemporaries, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, are 44 and 39, respectively. Federer retired three years ago, at 41. Nadal retired last year, when he was 38. Neither were ranked anywhere close to fourth in the world when they departed.

Now here is Djokovic, the only one of the Magnificent Three left standing, still standing tall. He won his first major 18 years ago. Tomorrow he could win his 25th.

It probably won't happen. Awaiting him in the final is the No. player in the world, Carlos Alcaraz. He's 16 years younger, faster and absolutely relentless. The Australian Open is also, at the tender age of 22, the only major title he hasn't won. So he has motivation on his side, too.

However.

However, he's facing a man who might just be immortal. 

Ridiculous, I know. Or is it?

Movie time!

(In which the Blob once again escapes the Sportsball compound to maraud freely through the landscape of America, pillaging small villages and frightening the children. You know what to do.)

The long awaited action rom-com "Melania" opened around the country this weekend, and like many of you I am super excited to stop at the gas station, buy some Junior Mints to sneak in and head off to the movie theater. So much anticipation! So much mystery! So many questions!

For instance, in the climactic light saber fight, will Melania take on the giant space centipede in the obligatory Thong Bikini That Leaves Nothing To The Imagination?

(I'm guessing yes)

Also, will there be an epic catfight with Joan Collins at some point? 

(Because there always has to be an epic catfight with Joan Collins at some point)

Will there be a torrid love scene with Glen Powell, who plays the obligatory Wisecracking Secret Service Agent With A Heart Of Gold? And will Melania's husband, President Donald John Trump Esq. -- portrayed by the late Soupy Sales -- discover them, fly into a rage and invade, I don't know, Uruguay, perhaps?

(Unquestionably)

Will Dr. Evil make an appearance? And will he capture Melania, whisk her off to  Mar-a-Lago and inflate her lips to the size of dirigibles?

(Surprise cameos by Kristi Noem, Kimberley Guilfoyle, Lara Loomer et al)

Will Melania then find Diana Rigg's long-lost martial arts unitard from "The Avengers", and, inspired, put it on and kick the hell out of Dr. Evil?

(Surprise cameo by Mr. Miyagi)

Will Melania and Glen Powell live happily ever after, like Sigourney Weaver and Kevin Kline in "Dave"? Will there be yet another surprise cameo, this one by Martin Sheen as former President Jed Bartlet? And will the real Donald John Trump Esq. demand his own cameo, which then will magically be expanded into a Major Starring Role?

Do we even have to ask that last question?

And now, the Non-Grump Factor

 The Blob had some tongue-in-cheek fun yesterday at the expense of its four-decade profession -- "stupid sportswriters" was the unifying theme -- but today it's time to abandon the standup routine. That's because a couple of those sportswriters have come forward to explain why they didn't vote for Bill Belichick on his first crack at the Pro Football Hall of Fame. 

One of those sportswriters, Vahe Gregorian, is from Kansas City. The other, Mike Chappell, is from Indianapolis.

Which undoubtedly will get all the Sullys in Boston seriously espousing what the Blob largely played for laughs. 

The Colts and New England Patriots, after all, always seemed to wind up on opposite sides of the field back in the day, and the Patriots almost always won. This surely made all the sportswriters from Indianapolis bitter and looking for payback. And so ...

And so, Chappell took it out on poor Bill by voting against him.

Chappell's word for that was "asinine." It's a good word. And it's especially true if you're talking about Mike Chappell.

Full disclosure time: I've known Chap for almost 50 years, and a journalist with more decency and integrity you'll not find if you search forever. He was my mentor in Anderson, In., when I landed my first job as a punk kid out of college, and of all the good fortune with which I've been blessed over the years, that was the ... goodest. Everything I knew about doing the job right, I learned from Chap.

And as an NFL beat writer?

Well, there's a reason his colleagues call him The Dean.

He's been covering the Colts, and the NFL, since the former moved to Indianapolis 42 years ago. Few beat writers, if any, have done it better or with a more even hand. And few, if any, are more familiar with the vagaries of an HOF vote.

So when all the ruckus got ruckus-ing about the Big Belichick Snub, Chap picked up his pen to explain his vote. And it made all kinds of sense.

What he wrote was the the reason he voted for Patriots owner Robert Kraft and a couple of senior candidates was partly because his hands were tied; coaches and contributors are lumped in with senior candidates, so he could only vote for three. He went with Kraft because of his role in building the Patriots' dynasty and forging labor peace in 2011; he went with the senior candidates because they might not get another chance at induction.

Belichick, he figured, had lots of chances left. And it'll probably only take one more for him to get in.

Chappell also admitted that the Spygate scandal of 2007 played a role in his decision to go with Kraft over Belichick. "This wasn't alleged," he wrote, noting the maximum league fine of $500,000 levied against Belichick and the Patriots' forfeiture of $250,000 and a first-round draft pick. 

That wasn't Mike Chappell and a bunch of bitter Indy guys who did that. It was the NFL itself.

And so ...

And so, Robert Kraft got the nod on Chappell's ballot. Belichick could cool his heels for a year. And it was the Non-Grump Factor that decided it.

"Stupid sportswriters"?

Yeah, OK. Whatever.

The Grump Factor

 Couple of days now since Bill Belichick got the big snub from the Pro Football Hall of Fame voters, and the prevailing zeitgeist has boiled down to two basic reactions:

1. This is (choose one) completely ridiculous ... an abomination ... or, as Woody Allen famously said in "Bananas", a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham.

2. Stupid sportswriters.

The first, of course, is absolutely on the mark. That perhaps the greatest coach in NFL history will not be a first-ballot Hall of Famer is ... well, a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham. The man has eight Super Bowl rings, six as a head coach and two as a defensive coordinator. Only Don Shula won more games as a head coach. If there were a Mount Rushmore of NFL coaches, his face would be on it.

His scowling face.

And therein lies the rub.

It is not, see, that Belichick did not have the resume of a first-ballot Hall-of-Famer. He so plainly did it's hardly worth saying so. If Belichick wasn't a first-ballot HOFer based on accomplishment, no coach from here until judgment trump should ever go in on the first ballot.

No, sir. The reason Belichick got the big nuh-uh, more than likely, was the Grump Factor.

Which is to say, he didn't play nice with the stupid sportswriters, and we are a vindictive lot. All of those years of gruff one-word answers and obvious reluctance to provide them came back to bite him. In every interaction with the media, he looked like he was being waterboarded -- while someone yanked out his fingernails with pliers.

If only he'd smiled once or twice. Cracked a joke or two. Been more down-home-y, spinning yarns like some codger down at the feed store.

Or as an acquaintance put it: "That's what you get for being an a**hole."

Which is entirely unfair to the man, sure, but,  again, sportswriters. If only we'd written more about Bill's zany side, like the time he dressed up as a pirate for a Halloween party. Or that other time when, at the geriatric age of 72, he started dating a 24-year-old hottie.

Oh, wait. We did write about that.

Are writing about it.

Ad nauseum.

Of course, the main reason we're doing that is to paint Belichick as some sort of weirdo. Which, let's face it, he kinda is. But he's also a damn smart weirdo.

Now, some folks will say another reason the stupid sportswriters might have snubbed Belichick is because of Spygate and Deflategate and all his other 'Gates. The guy did get caught cheating a few times, after all.

(Although Deflategate, in the Blob's opinion, wasn't all that scandalous. It basically was a psych job -- the lineal descendant, if you will, of Hayden Fry painting the walls of the visitors' locker room pink when he was at Iowa, or Red Auerbach putting visiting teams in a locker room where the windows didn't open, and then cranking up the heat.)

But enough of that. The point is, it was the Grump Factor that mainly did in Belichick, not the Sleaze Factor. And as illustration, I offer a moment back in 2012, when Belichick's New England Patriots were taking on the New York Giants in the Super Bowl in Indianapolis.

It was Media Day in Lucas Oil Stadium, which anyone who's ever attended will tell you is about anything but Media. It's a three-ring circus -- and, as one of the featured acts, Belichick was penned up in a booth down on the field, surrounded by Media..

Including yours truly.

Anyway, at one point in the proceedings, some radio foof next to me started waving a red plastic tricorn hat at Belichick. "Bill!" he cried. "Bill! Will you  put this on?"

To which Belichick growled, with perfect Belichickian form: "No, I'm not gonna do that."

See what I mean?

If only he'd put on the hat.

If only he'd, I don't know, done a little dance, sung a few bars of "Yankee Doodle," maybe made an off-color joke or two about Paul Revere and his horse.

Why, the man would have soared into the Hall of Fame this week on the wings of eagles. Guaranteed.

Transferrable

 Coach Cig and some of the boys were in the house, and they brought their shiny new hardware with them. So straightaway the mojo was right. 

Straightaway you knew Tuesday wouldn't be one of those nights when Matt Painter brought those ornery Purdue Boilermakers into Assembly Hall and trashed the place. Not with the Hall -- full to the last seat for the first time this season -- bringing a barely remembered thunder. Not with Coach Cig as its monitor, sitting courtside and posing for pictures. Not with that glorious, newly-won CFP National Championship trophy that came along as sidekick and inspiration and, who knows, maybe even spirit animal.

Could the basketball Hoosiers do less than they did, given all that?

Were the Purdues toast on a stick from the start, with all that arrayed against them?

No, and yes. And so here came Indiana 72, No. 12 Purdue 67 -- and barely a flicker of surprise, because if football's mighty example wasn't transferrable, what possibly could be?

First blood to Darian DeVries in this old and fable-shrouded rock fight. First Quad 1 win for the Hoosiers in seven tries this season. Third straight loss for Painter's Boilers, who have hit a patch of black ice as January gives way to February.

The book on this Indiana team is it lives and dies at the 3-point arc, and, OK, so that's mostly true. Last night, for instance, the Hoosiers splashed a dozen threes in 33 attempts, five more than Purdue, who stuck seven of 20. Nick Dorn had four of the 12 for Indiana, and finished with 18 points. Lamar Wilkerson scored 19. 

But it wasn't all a three party. Tucker DeVries stuffed the stat sheet with nine points, 10 rebounds, three assists, three steals and a blocked shot. Indiana's starters outrebounded Purdue's 22-20. The Hoosiers' bench outscored Purdue's 16-12.

The game seesawed back and forth for most of a half, and Purdue almost filched it at the end, turning a 10-point Indiana lead into nervous time. But the Boilers once again couldn't finish, and once again some of their leading lights mirrored that struggle.

Fletcher Loyer, one of the premier shooters in the Big Ten, continued to search for his wandering shooting eye, missing seven of his 10 shots on the night. And Braden Smith, the nation's top point guard, was uncharacteristically quiet, scoring 14 points but missing eight of his 14 shots and racking almost as many turnovers (4) as assists (5).

By contrast, his opposite number, Conor Enright, had three more dimes (8) and one fewer turnover (3). Who had that on their bingo card?

Who had the Indiana players rushing over to celebrate with the student section, and Darian DeVries pumping his fists right in the middle of it? As if, you know, he wasn't still new to all this, just as all the imports on his roster are new to it all?

"Every time we needed the crowd tonight, they were there," DeVries said when it was done. "They never took a possession off either. They played 40 minutes tonight ... 

"Tonight was as good as it gets in college basketball."

Lot of that going around these days.

Disappearing act

 Cruising through my socials today, and I came across a couple of posts from a Facethingy bro that made me sigh and shake my head.

(This is not to say I don't sigh and shake my head at virtually everything these curmudgeonly days, mind you. But sometimes I really sigh and shake my head, and occasionally mutter the more blasphemous version of "Jeezly crow.")

Anyway, what Facethingy Bro -- he has a name, and it's Michael Pointer, a former sportswriting colleague -- had put up were three items about the Washington Post, which was one of the nation's great newspapers until Jeff Bezos got his mitts on it. One item noted that the Post reportedly would not be sending a beat writer to Nationals' spring training this year; a New York Times piece reported the Post had abruptly decided not to send a team to the upcoming Winter Olympics. 

And the third item?

It highlighted the logical conclusion a reasonable person might reach from the previous two: That there are strong indications the Post will soon be doing away with its sports desk altogether.

It was right about then I thought about Bill Gildea.

Bill, you see, worked the sports beat for the Post, along with a number of other luminaries.  You had Bill and Tom Boswell and Christine Brennan and Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon and Chuck Culpeper, and a bunch of others. John Feinstein worked the sports beat there for a goodly stretch. Ditto Sally Jenkins, who worked there twice and is still there.

They were the '27 Yankees of sports scribbling, in other words. The Lombardi Packers/Chuck Noll Steelers/Bill Walsh Niners/Bill Belichick Patriots. And now they're bailing on spring training? And -- good grief -- the Olympic Games?

What a world. What. A. World.

But back to Gildea.

I met him 29 years ago when he was traveling around Indiana, gathering material for his paean to high school basketball in the state. It was the last year of Hoosier Hysteria, Indiana's fabled single-class tournament. One of the teams Gildea was following was DeKalb -- which that season featured soon-to-be Mr. Basketball Luke Recker, and which was right up the road from my port of call in Fort Wayne.

In other words, I saw Bill more than a few times that winter. Reviewed the subsequent book, "Where The Game Matters Most." It was as graceful, and gracious, as Bill himself, who was a first-rate gentleman without a whiff of pretense.

He's gone now, alas. Shuffled off the mortal coil in 2020, at the age of 81. But I'm wondering if, somewhere in the Good Place, he's sighing and shaking his head and saying "Jeezly crow" or some variation, too.

Because the '27 Yankees are skipping the World Series, as it were. They're surrendering the field. It's a disappearing act we're seeing everywhere these days, distressingly. 

Yet it still confounds those of us who remember when a top-drawer sports staff sold the book, so to speak -- and never mind that the metro-desk drones called it The Toy Department.

Now?

Now the Washington Post isn't sending scribes to the Olympics. It's not covering spring training. There's no all-star lineup flooding the zone, as it were;no Tony Kornheiser cracking wise about luge or cross-country skiing or the Zen-like appeal of curling.

Kornheiser, by the way, left the Post years ago for a pile of TV dough. So did his sidekick, Wilbon. In Kornheiser's case, his exit deprived us of one of the funniest writers in America -- a man whose second compilation of columns bore one of the all-time great (and honest) titles: "I'm Back For More Cash."

Pretty much the theme music for the Jeff Bezoses of the world, come to think of it.

To our detriment.

The Who Cares Bowl

Lots of people ... OK, some people ... OK, a few people ... have been caterwauling lately about Shedeur Sanders being named to the Pro Bowl as a replacement for Pro Bowler Drake Maye, who's busy getting ready for the Super Bowl. Lots, or some, or a few, think it's ridiculous that a guy who started just seven games for the hideous Cleveland Browns and threw more interceptions (10) than touchdowns (seven) should be in the Pro Bowl.

"Where's, I don't know, Trevor Lawrence?" they say. "Where's the guy who was a finalist for NFL MVP, threw for 4,007 yards, 29 touchdowns and just 12 interceptions and led Jacksonville to the AFC South title? Where's that guy?"

One supposes they have a point.

One also supposes it doesn't matter.

That's because, hello, it's the Pro Bowl, which is nothing but recess in a warm place these days. There are relay races and skills contests and then a flag football game on the beach. Afterward there's a cookout.

(OK. So it's not on the beach. But it could be.)

(Also, as far as I know, there's not a cookout, either. But there could be.)

Point is, who really cares who plays in the Who Cares Bowl, so heck, why NOT Shedeur Sanders? He's new. He's fun in the sense that you never know when he's going to do something harebrained. And he has a brand, which is a big deal in corporate America these days.

"But ... but ..." you're saying now.

But what? Look around the AFC. Patrick Mahomes and Bo Nix are on the shelf. Ditto Daniel Jones and Cam Ward. Lamar Jackson and Joe Burrow missed big chunks of the season with injuries, and CJ Stroud is likely still in hiding after throwing four picks in an ugly playoff loss to the Patriots.

As for Lawrence ...

Well, he was a Pro Bowl alternate. Lots of people, or some, or a few, think he should have been chosen ahead of  Justin Herbert, who's one of the three AFC quarterbacks. The fact Lawrence is not, after the breakout season he had, suggests he was asked and said, "Nah, I'm good."

This in turn suggests Trevor Lawrence is smarter than your average bear, so to speak.

Although he will miss the cookout. I hear it's a hell of a feast.

(Just kidding.)

Welcome to the big city

So, OK, then: Patriots vs. Seahawks in the 60th Super Bowl.

Two head coaches who've never been to the Big Supe as head coaches.

Two quarterbacks who've never been there, either.

It's Mike Vrabel, who's 50 years old and in his second gig as an NFL head coach, vs. Mike Macdonald, who's 38 and in his first. It's Drake Maye, who's in just his second year as an NFL starting quarterback, vs. Sam Darnold, who's the journeyman of all journeymen, bouncing around from place to place as a starter and backup before finding his mojo in Seattle.

This isn't Lombardi vs. Landry or Reid vs. Shanahan in the Big Six-Oh, but never mind that. And it's not Montana vs. Marino or Mahomes vs. Brady, but never mind that, either.

What it is are two teams who talk less about scheme and analytics than about heart and will and belief and vision, all the old verities. They talk about team unity and pieces fitting together into a cohesive whole, and everyone pulling an oar in the same direction for each other and the organization and, hell, even their cities.

They're new schoolers, these two, but they talk as old school as inkwells. It's heartwarming and wonderful and, OK, a little corny, too.

The Patriots, for instance?

Their fresh-faced quarterback looks like Johnny Be Good and plays like Billy Be Damned, out-gritting the Broncos yesterday on a snow-swirled day in Denver with his legs and his guile. It was the Patriots' ninth road win against zero losses this season -- which no one ever does in the NFL, especially not a team that was 4-12 last season.

Know something else about their quarterback?

He's married to his middle-school sweetheart, Ann Michael. Know what she does?

She bakes cookies for Maye and his teammates before every game.

Does it get any more "Little House On The Prairie" than that?

Out in Seattle, meanwhile, you've got a kid head coach who got the Seahawks to buy in on Day One. He did it by envisioning a team that never, ever quits, and that would wind up playing in the NFC championship game on a rain-soaked day Seattle.

Except for the fact it was a gorgeous day in Seattle, everything he envisioned came true.

The Seahawks won 14 games during the regular season in the toughest division in football, earned the NFC's No. 1 seed, and, yes, wound up playing in the NFC championship game. And they never quit, just like their leader -- Sam Darnold himself -- never quit through all his travels and tribulations. 

Matthew Stafford and the nemesis Rams kept coming at them; Darnold and Jaxon Smith-Njigba and Kenneth Walker III kept answering back. Smith-Njigba caught 10 balls for 153 yards and a touchdown. Walker ground out 62 yards and another six against a Rams defense that had no other back on whom to key. And Sam Darnold ... well, Sam Darnold played the game of his life in the biggest game of his life, throwing for 346 yards and three scores without a turnover. 

Does it get any more Shane-Falco-in-"The-Replacements" than that?

It's all a damn movie script, and in two weeks it culminates in the most cinematic of our Roman circuses. Will Drake Maye and the resurrected Patriots win on the road again? Will Darnold and JSN and Walker et al complete their young coach's giddy vision? 

We shall see. But in the meantime ... 

Welcome to the big city, Pats and 'Hawks.

Wear sunglasses. Those lights are some bright.

Another one gone

 Little by little these days, my childhood disappears. This will happen when you ascend to the first class section of codgerdom, which I can reliably claim to have done.

(Great place, codgerdom first class. You get free tapioca. Also unlimited supplies of "consarn it," "dadgum it" and various other codgerisms.)

Where was I again?

Oh, yeah. Disappearing childhood.

Another piece vanished yesterday when the news came down that John Brodie had died, and, boy, that's bummer. For one thing, he was 90 years old, which seems impossible. Wasn't it just yesterday he was throwing to Gene Washington and handing off to Ken Willard?

Who were two others I remember from those 1960s San Francisco 49ers, who used to battle the seagulls in decrepit Kezar Stadium. Every Sunday afternoon, it seemed, we'd get the Bears, the Lions or the Vikings on the early game, and the Niners or the Rams on the late game. Sometimes we'd get both when they played one another.

Brodie, of course, was the quarterback of those Niners, and thus the ringleader. Besides Washington and Willard, they had some guys named Dave Parks and Charlie Krueger, and some other guys named Howard Mudd and Dave Wilcox and Bob Windsor. Even had a young Jimmy Johnson back there at cornerback.

Brodie played 17 seasons for the 49ers, retiring after the 1973 season with 214 career touchdown passes and 31,548 yards. In an era when it was a whole lot tougher to complete passes, he completed 55 percent of them. The 49ers during his time were sometimes decent, more often "meh" and occasionally awful. 

But in 1970 Brodie had his big year, winning league MVP while quarterbacking the Niners to a division title for the first time in his career. They lost to the Cowboys in the NFC championship game, 17-10.

And now he's gone, and those Sunday afternoons of my kid-hood grow that much dimmer. Brodie, Roman Gabriel, Gale Sayers, Dick Butkus, Mel Farr, Bart Starr ... the list goes on, as lists like this always will.

 'Bye, guys. See ya later, alligator.

Musical coaches

 Listen, I don't know what the Buffalo Bills are thinking. I make it a rule assume no NFL team is ever thinking much of anything, on the excellent chance none of them are.

So, yeah, Bills, OK, go ahead and fire Sean McDermott for not getting Josh Allen to the Super Bowl. McDermott's had plenty of chances, after all. So I guess it was time.

And, yeah, go ahead and interview Mike McDaniel, even though the Dolphins just got sick of him. Ditto Brian Daboll, who couldn't even get through the this season before the chronically putrid Giants fired him because he couldn't make them less chronically putrid.

Hey, you don't know! Maybe Mike and Brian will do better this time! Could happen, right?

Same goes for Robert Saleh, fired by the Jets only to be hired as the next head coach of the Titans. Also for Jeff Hafley -- whom the Dolphins just hired to replace McDaniel, and whose last head coaching gig was at Boston College, where he drove a pretty decent program onto the rocks.

But that was college! And this the pros! Whole different ballgame, right?

Which brings us back to the Bills.

Who, yesterday, down in Florida, interviewed not a former college head coach, but a current high school coach. Come on down, Philip Rivers!

"Wait ... what?" you're saying now.

Yes, that's right. Philip Rivers, last seen being called in off the couch to quarterback the Indianapolis Colts at the age of 44, got a sitdown with the Bills. He's never coached at the pro level. He's never coached at any of the various college levels. But Josh Allen thinks the world of him, so ... 

"So this is Gerry Faust 2.0?" you're saying.

Maybe. Although probably not. 

Probably the Bills will go with one of the retreads they're interviewing in this game of musical coaches, unless they go with some flavor-of-the-month offensive or defensive coordinator. It's a roll of the dice either way, especially given the less-than-stellar ownership and front office in Buffalo.

Sometimes, after all, retreads find second lives in new places (See: Bill Belichick, Mike Vrabel, etc.). And sometimes coordinators flourish as head coaches (See: Sean McVay, Ben Johnson, a host of others), and sometimes they crash-and-burn (See: McDaniel, Daboll, Josh McDaniels). 

But a guy with no tread or coordinator chops whatsoever?

Yikes.

Which is not to say Philip Rivers wouldn't be really good at the coaching thing. He probably would. And maybe the Bills are smarter than I'm giving them credit for, or that they've ever shown themselves to be. Maybe what they're really doing by interviewing Rivers is feeling him out for a gig as their quarterbacks coach. It's possible.

All I know is this: If they were really serious about him as a head coaching candidate, let me tell you about the last guy to go straight from the playing field to head coach in the NFL.

According to the Elias Sports Bureau and ESPN, that would be Norm Van Brocklin, also a quarterback, who finished his 12-year playing year in 1960 and was hired the next year by the Minnesota Vikings as their first head coach. Van Brocklin went on to coach 13 seasons with the Vikings and Atlanta Falcons, compiling a 66-100-7 record. He had just three winning seasons in those 13 years.

Not sayin'. Just sayin'.

Diminishment returns

 Four days later, people still can't wrap their heads around it. Indiana, ascending to heights once the exclusive property of the Alabamas, the Ohio States, the Michigans, the Notre Dames? Going where only the Rocknes and Leahys and Bear Bryants and Bobby Bowdens et al had gone before? Indiana?

This does not compute. This does not track. Surely the saddest of sadsacks in college football couldn't be that good, could they?

And so, let the diminishment returns begin (with appropriate refutation):

* Indiana only won because it bought a championship with NIL. 

Well, yes. The Indiana NIL payroll was $21.1 million. Which ain't couch-cushion dough.

But the payroll for Miami, whom it beat in the title game, was $24.1 million.

And the payroll for Oregon, whom it beat twice, was $30 million.

And the payroll for Ohio State, whom it beat in the Big Ten championship, was a whopping $35 million plus.

Truth is, yes, NIL has changed the calculus. But it's a calculus available to anyone; Miami quarterback Carson Beck's NIL haul, for instance, was $3.1 mill, compared to Fernando Mendoza's $2.6 mill. So if Miami or any of the other aforementioned schools had won the CFP, would the yapping poodles of the internet be saying they bought themselves a title? Did anyone say it last year when Ohio State did?

Next, please.

* Indiana only won because it was a de facto pro team, pitting grown men against teenagers.

Well, yes, Indiana did have a veteran team. But, as the Blob pointed out the other day, one of its principal players -- breakout wide receiver Charlie Becker -- is a true sophomore.  Most of the other key figures are either 22 or 23.  So the narrative that Indiana won because it was playing a bunch of 24- and 25-yearold grown men falls apart in a hurry.

Truth is, the Hoosiers brought a fairly traditional senior-laden team to the dance. Of course, no traditional senior-laden team had EVER won a national championship. Not one. No, sirree.

Next.

* Indiana only won because it was the Rent-A-Hoosiers. A transfer-portal team. 

Well, yes. A-portaling Indiana did go.

But so does everyone else these days.

And it's not like Fernando Mendoza was Carson Beck or anything.

Mendoza  came out of high school as the 2,140th-ranked prospect according to the scouting website 247, so little regarded he was recruited by none of the 18 schools whose football camps he attended. A brilliant student, he was headed to Yale before a spot on the Cal-Berkeley roster opened up.

Beck?

He was the backup on two national championship teams at Georgia, quarterbacked the Bulldogs to the 2023 SEC championship, and started 27 games there. The Bulldogs went 24-3 in those games as Beck threw for 7,912 yards and 58 touchdowns.

Portal advantage to Miami.

Truth is, Indiana didn't exactly load up on national champs or 5-stars via the portal. Aiden Fisher, the heart and soul of the Hoosiers' voracious down-seven on defense, wound up at James Madison because the big shooters all thought he was too slow and too small. D'Angelo Ponds, Indiana's All-American corner, didn't get a sniff because he everyone thought he was too small as well.

And Riley Nowakowski, the hybrid fullback/tight end who scored Indiana's first touchdown in the championship game?

He was a zero-star coming out of high school who walked on at Wisconsin and played a little tight end and fullback, but mostly special teams. Not exactly Ron Dayne or Jonathan Taylor.

Yes a-portaling the Hoosiers did go. But not to put together a roster of superstars. To put together a roster of misfit toys that included no five-stars, eight four-stars, and various scrap-heapers whom Curt Cignetti molded into a dynamic whole.

Next.

Next? Anyone?

Moneyball

 UCLA basketball coach Mick Cronin likely never set out to play the lead role in "The Perpetually Unhappy Man," the long-running hoops procedural that once starred Bob Knight, Jim Boeheim and a host of other grumps. But he's doing a bang-up job.

The other night, for instance, his Bruins handed No. 4 Purdue its first Big Ten loss in Pauley Pavilion, 69-67. It was a taut thriller UCLA snatched off the Boilermakers' plate with a game-ending 8-0 run, Tyler Bilodeau sticking a 3-ball with 8.8 seconds left to provide the winning points.

Think that made The Perpetually Unhappy Man smile?

It did not.

Instead, Cronin lashed out at the Big Ten in the postgame, sarcastically thanking it for making the Bruins play five of their first seven league games on the road. He also remains less than thrilled with the whole Big Ten thing in general, but reluctantly understands "that's gonna be what it's gonna be."

Somewhere in there, he also said this: "They (the Big Ten) don't care about basketball. Truly."

It says here Melancholy Mick only missed the mark by a hair with that one.

Truth is it isn't just basketball the Big Ten doesn't care about, it's also football. And volleyball. And soccer. And just about any other sport the conference offers.

If it cared about any of them -- or rather, any of the "student-athletes" who play them -- it never would have scavenged UCLA, USC, Washington and Oregon from the ruins of the Pac-12. It never would have scooped Rutgers and Maryland. You could even go back 35 or so years and say it never would have welcomed Penn State to the fold.

But the Big Ten did all that, and not because it had to. Or should have. It did it because TV rights and revenue streams drive the bus here in the merry 2000s, and the Big Ten hungered for those juicy east and west coast markets. What's a Big Ten Network without New York and L.A., after all?

So the conference blew up its footprint, because footprints are as old-fashioned as your granny's lace doilies. Moneyball is the new normal.

Heck, they're even paying the players now to spend all that extra time on airplanes, which means Big Ten commish Tony Petitti and the gang don't even have to feel guilty about it. How great is that?

"But Mr. Blob," you're saying now. "What about academics? What about all the class time the student-athletes will miss kiting around the country?"

Bwah-ha-ha-ha. Ha. Ha.

That stuff went out the first time a school realized there was gold in them thar quarterbacks and point guards, and that was some time ago. Coast-to-coast is the most now, and even Mick Cronin has resigned himself to that. If he's mad at the Big Ten, after all, he should be just as mad at his university, which decided satchels of cash trumped its alleged mission.

UCLA's upcoming schedule, for instance?

Beginning the last day of January, the Bruins play three straight at home, then fly to Ann Arbor and East Lansing for roadies at Michigan and Michigan State. Then they fly back home to host Illinois and USC. Four days after that they fly to Minnesota; three days after that, they're back home to host Nebraska.

All that in 31 days.

But, hey. I'm sure the TV numbers will be huge.

An obscenity of riches

 Saw the other day that the Los Angeles Dodgers signed a career .273 hitter for $240 million over four years, and my unkempt mind immediately began imagining a world in which the Dodgers owned everything. Headlines began to blossom in my frontal lobe:

Dodgers Buy Judge, Raleigh, Skenes, Ohtani, Skubal; Ohtani Reminds Dodgers They Already Own Him.

Dodgers Respond By Buying The Re-Animated Corpses Of Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Joe DiMaggio And Ted Williams; "With Or Without His Head?", Fans Inquire Of Williams.

Dodgers Buy Denmark, Belgium, Sweden, Germany, France; Tell President Trump, "I Got Your NATO Right Here, Pal."

Dodgers Buy Norway; Tell Trump, "And Your Nobel Peace Prize, Too."

Dodgers Buy MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred For Two Packs Of Bazooka Bubble Gum And A Game-Worn Chico Salmon Jersey; "Paid Too Much," Fans Complain.

And last but hardly least:

Dodgers Buy Entire National League. With the subhead, "Finally, Some Competitive Balance": Dodger Execs.

All of this is in jest, of course, but not by much. If the Dodgers can afford to shovel $240 mill at Kyle Tucker, the aforementioned career .273 hitter, how big a pile must they be sitting on? 

Because it's completely ridiculous -- no longer an embarrassment but an obscenity of riches -- and it launches the entire market into orbit. The Dodgers scooped the 29-year-old Tucker from the Cubs. Know what he did for the northsiders last season?

Batted .266. Hit 22 homers. Drove in 73 runs.

Now, those are OK numbers, but they're hardly $240 mill numbers. And they're especially not $240 mill numbers when you consider the Dodgers are back-to-back World Series champs who scarcely needed a .266 hitter to bolster an already gilded lineup. 

So Tucker's a spare part, essentially. And if you can afford to spend that many dineros on a spare part, how is anyone else expected to keep up?

No wonder the other owners have their Jockeys in a twist, yowling for a salary cap even though none of them are exactly destitute. Steve Cohen's Mets, for instance, just dropped $126 million across three years on the Blue Jays' Bo Bichette. That ain't chump change.

Besides, considering Bo's numbers dwarf Tucker's -- Bichette is a .294 career hitter who batted .311 with 18 homers and 94 RBI last season -- the Mets might have gotten him cheap. Bizarre as that sounds.

Then again, it's all bizarre these days. Which is why the Blob's unkempt mind might not be as unkempt this time as it usually is.

I mean, the Dodgers probably could buy NATO. Or at least a piece of it. And if Fearless Leader and the rest of his cabal objected?

Why, the Trolley Dodgers will just call Yoshinobu Yamamoto out of the pen. That'll shut 'em up.

Legendary

 Go ahead and close your eyes, on this morning after. Close your eyes and see what you will see forever now, see decades distant, see the way you see the puck whickering past Vladimir Myshkin off Mike Eruzione's stick or Kris Bryant scooping and throwing to first to end an interminable rainy night in Cleveland.

Now there's this: Fernando Mendoza diving into the end zone, ball outstretched, body and will at full extension. 

Fernando Mendoza going the last full measure for an Indiana football that went the last full measure itself, and now will be remembered the way America remembers the Miracle on Ice and the Miracle in Wrigleyville, aka the Cubs winning the World Series for the first time in 108 long hot summers.

USA 4, Soviet Union 3 in the Lake Placid Olympics in 1980.

Cubs 8, Indians 7 in Game 7 in 2016.

And now ...

Indiana 27, Miami 21 in the 2026 College Football Playoff national championship.

Maybe there's a better ashes-to-apotheosis tale than what happened last night in Miami, but good luck finding it. The Miracle on Ice? Sure, but Team USA had been there before, back in 1960. The Miracle in Wrigleyville? OK, but the Lovable Losers had won 85 or more games four times in the previous nine seasons, including 97 in 2015. They were one of the richest franchises in baseball, with a genius GM in Theo Epstein.

Indiana, on the other hand, was until this season the losing-est major college football program in the entire history of the sport.

Now the Hoosiers are the first major college football program ever to win 16 games in a season, two years after going 3-9 and finishing dead last in the Big Ten. That was right before Curt Cignetti hit town lugging a steamer trunk of hubris and swagger, and stood 100-plus years of dreary history right on its head.

The Hoosiers went 11-2 and reached the CFP in Coach Cig's first year. Now they're 16-0 and national champs, one end of a thread that stretches back 50 years exactly to Indiana's unbeaten 1976 NCAA basketball champions.

Two teams; 48-0 against the world, between the two of them. Who else can say that?

And, yes, OK, so people will say this only happened because of  NIL and the transfer portal, and that Indiana -- Indiana -- winning the national championship is Exhibit A of  how both have ruined the game. You don't have to build a program anymore; all you have to do is rent a few studs and you, too, can become an InstaChamp.

This of course ignores the fact that Indiana's rent-a-studs are for the most part not really studs but (as Mendoza said) "misfits" who became pieces of a greater whole. There isn't a 5-star player on the roster, and for all the caterwauling about the Hoosiers being a bunch of 24- and 25-year-old professionals beating up on children, the reality is somewhat different.

Mendoza, for instance, is 22, as are star wideouts Elijah Surratt and Omar Cooper Jr., star linebacker Aiden Fisher and the DB who made the game-clinching interception, Jamari Sharpe. Charlie Becker, who made two pressure catches last night to add to his growing list, is a sophomore. Running back Roman Hemby and All-American DB D'Angelo Ponds are both 23.

In other words, most of Indiana's key players are no older than the seniors on any senior-laden team. That those sorts of teams generally fare well in college football is hardly a revelation -- nor a reason to diminish what they accomplish.

So how did we get this place with Indiana?

Same as any program has ever gotten there, from the turn of the last century to today: Hard work, attention to detail, obsessive preparation and the right combination of grit, talent and the willingness of players to buy in as a seamless whole. 

What happened last night wasn't magic, in other words. It wasn't Indiana finding some cheat code or slick shortcut. It was just a superb football team being superb when it needed to be.

It was Mendoza getting roughnecked by the vicious Miami defense and bouncing up, over and over. It was Becker making a huge fourth-down catch because he and Mendoza had practiced it over and over. And it was Mendoza, his passing arm looking as if it had been gnawed by wolves, tucking it and running into the teeth of the Miami D on fourth-and-5.

Not stopping, of course, until he was Wilbur-and-Orville-ing into the end zone on the 12-yard run that will forever make him, and this Indiana team, legendary.

Someday a photo of that wingless flight will hang in an honored place in the Indiana football complex. And the alums will see it the way the Mikes and Sullys in Boston still see Bobby Orr's wingless flight after scoring the Cup-winning goal against the Blues. 

That was the iconic image of the Bruins' glory days. Mendoza's will be the same for these glory days. 

Go ahead and close your eyes, on this morning after. Close your eyes and see what you will see forever now, see for decades distant.

Fernando Mendoza, and Indiana football, in full flight.

And never coming down.

Da prediction

 You want to surrender to the narrative, at this point. It's grown so big, after all.

You want to just say "Indiana is going to win a national title in, are you kidding me, FOOTBALL tonight" because it seems the only way the narrative can end now, the only possible outcome now that destiny -- no, DESTINY -- is driving the bus. And destiny cannot be denied, especially when it's shouting as loud as it is now.

So, here's the Blob's prediction: Indiana is going to win a national title in football tonight.

Unless Miami does.

Unless destiny -- no, DESTINY -- decides to ditch the Hoosiers and go home with the Hurricanes, who by the way have their own narrative. If Miami wins, after all, it officially will be a Return To Glory. And it will happen in Miami (OK, so halfway between Miami and Fort Lauderdale). And how is that not karma shouting just as loud as destiny?

The Canes playing for a national title again in their hometown. I mean, come on.

"Oh, here we go," you're saying now. "Durwood Downer has entered the building."

Well ... not really. OK, so maybe.

What I'm really doing is being true to my essential nature, which is always to see the single cloud in a bluebird sky and say, "Oh, crap, it's gonna rain." It's how I get whenever I bump up against the aura of inevitability I sense in all this.

Maybe it's just because I live in Indiana, but it seems as if almost everyone assumes that the Hoosiers are, yes, inevitable at this point. That they're an unstoppable machine that will roll over Miami the way they've rolled over 15 other opponents this dream-like season. That every soul in Bloomington is simply tapping his or her foot until it's time to can pour out into the frigid January night and head for Showalter Fountain.

Where the fish sculptures have already been removed in anticipation of the par-TAY.

I read that the other day, and had this immediate thought: Man, these guys are really tempting fate.

I thought this because football is football, and it is sometimes very hard on narratives. Last night, for instance, was there any doubt about the narrative when Caleb Williams made that ridiculous off-balance throw to Cole Kmet to save the Bears' season again?

He faded back and faded back and faded back, a host of Los Angeles Rams closing in on a game-ending sack. And then, at the last second, he reared back and threw.

It looked like desperation itself. It was desperation itself. Except somehow it arced across the night and hit Kmet in stride in the end zone some 40 yards away.

Touchdown. Overtime. Bears wi-

Oops.

Because in overtime, the Bears stopped the Rams, and Williams led them downfield to within a handful of yards of what would surely be the field goal that would complete the narrative. And then, for some unaccountable reason, he threw deep, and a Rams defensive back made a diving interception, and a handful of plays later, it was the Rams who kicked the winning field goal.

So much for narratives.

Do I think something similar will happen tonight? Do I think Miami -- which has a terrifying defense and a quarterback as unflappable as Fernando Mendoza in sixth-year transfer Carson Beck -- will slap down the Hoosiers for their impertinence?

No. See: Third paragraph of this piece.

I think Indiana will win, because Mendoza will be prepared and his elite receiver corps will be prepared and those two running backs, Roman Hemby and Kaelon Black, will be prepared. The offensive line will be prepared to do some more road grading. D'Angelo Ponds and the other shutdown DBs will be prepared to take away Beck's weapons, and Aiden Fisher and the rest of the defensive down seven will be prepared to chase him around his own backfield.

Call it Indiana 33, Miami 24 this time. Because sometimes the ironclad narrative really is ironclad.

Meanwhile, in Assembly Hell ...

 So remember a week or so ago, when Indiana's basketball team had won four in a row and the Blob saw fit to remind everyone that, yes, there was still quality hoops happening in Bloomington despite all the hoo-ha surrounding the football Hoosiers?

Well ...

That was a week or so ago.

Now you'd be forgiven for actually thinking, "Hey, where'd basketball go?", because right now Hoosier Nation isn't getting any. Not quality basketball, anyway. Not basketball an Indiana fan would actually want to watch unless he or she enjoyed cursing and throwing things at the TV.

This is because, since the Blob rashly sang the praises of the basketball Hoosiers, they've lost three in a row. Two of those losses were in Assembly Hell, er, Hall. Two happened because Darian DeVries' guys blew a 16-point second-half lead at home against unbeaten Nebraska, and gave up 19 straight points in East Lansing in an 81-60 loss to Michigan State.

And yesterday?

Yesterday the Hoosiers got ball-peened in the Hall by an Iowa team that was on a three-game skid. The Hawkeyes won by 17, 74-57. They never trailed -- never trailed -- after a 10-2 start. And after Indiana drew within four in the second half, the Hawkeyes went on a 21-5 run to close the lid.

Two Hawkeyes, Bennett Stirtz  and Tavion Banks, flame-broiled the Hoosiers for a combined 53 points, with Stirtz scoring 27 and Banks 26. Indiana, meanwhile, died again at the 3-point line, bricking 18-of-24 attempts. And once again the Hoosiers were beaten on the glass, albeit this time by just one rebound.

Thus the motif continues for the DeVries Hoosiers: They live and die at the arc because they don't have much of an inside game -- which means when the 3s are dropping they can beat anyone and when they're not ...

Well. When they're not, they lose by 17 at home to a struggling Iowa team.

Some numbers: In these last three losses, the Hoosiers have shot just 31.7 percent from Threeville, going 27 of 85. They've been out-glassed by 19 rebounds -- including a 37-19 beatdown at Michigan State. And they've been outscored by a combined 36 points in the second halves of those games.

Not exactly what anyone was expecting, I'm guessing, when Scott Dolson plucked DeVries from West Virginia, and before that the wilds of the Missouri Valley Conference.

But, hey. At least you still got football, Indiana.

Bills come due

 Three things you can take away from yesterday's NFL divisional playoff games, two of them from the Book of Mr. Obvious and the other from the Book of NFL Rules, which seems occasionally as if it were written in ancient Sumerian:

1. The Seattle Seahawks do not need Sam Darnold to be Sammy Baugh for them to roll whoever gets in their way. He could be Sammy Davis Jr. for all it matters.

2. The Buffalo Bills always come due in the playoffs, by which I mean sooner or later Josh Allen turns into a pumpkin while God and the Book of NFL Rules laugh.

And, speaking of "2" ...

3. The greatest philosophical mystery of our times, at least this morning, is either what constitutes a catch or what constitutes an interception. Because the Book of NFL Rules seems profoundly unclear on that.

 I say this not out of any particular fondness for the Buffalo Bills, who sabotaged themselves enough to guarantee their traditional playoff flameout. This time it was 33-30 in overtime to the AFC's top seed -- aka the Denver Broncos, who got to celebrate for about five minutes before learning their gritty young quarterback Bo Nix broke his ankle and will not be playing in the AFC championship next week.

Of course, Josh Allen will not be playing either, mainly on account of Josh Allen. He coughed up the football four times yesterday, most ruinously in the dying seconds of the first half. That's when he took off running when he should have taken a knee, and the football, which he'd secured the way Pete Hegseth secures classified info, flew out of his hand and was recovered by the Broncos.

A few moments later, the Broncos cashed the gift field goal and had the three points that ultimately decided the outcome. Without it, they go to halftime up 17-10 instead of 20-10, and the Bills' field goal to end the second half wins the game 30-27 instead of merely forcing overtime.

Which means the Book of NFL Rules never comes into play.

About halfway through overtime, see, Allen threw a deep ball that Brandin Cooks caught and fell to the ground with, setting up the Bills for a potential game-winning field goal of their own at the Broncos' 20-yard line. But wait!

After Cooks caught the ball and fell to the ground with it, Broncos defensive back Ja'Quan McMillian pried the ball out of Cooks' grasp and began parading around with it. Perhaps he was celebrating the indecipherability of the aforementioned Book, because the officials thumbed through it, declared the play an interception and awarded the football to the Broncos.

"But wasn't Crooks on the ground when he did that?" you might be asking now.

Yes, he was.

"And didn't he have both hands on the football when he hit the ground?" 

Indeed.

"So shouldn't the play have been over before McMillian took the ball away?"

Well ...

You would think so.

But, nah. In the ancient Sumerian, the Book reads, "The ground can't cause a fumble, but it sure as hell can cause an interception." Also, "Let the word go out from the great god Crom that a catch is a catch not when a receiver wraps both hands around the ball and pulls it to his body, but when he 'secures' it or 'completes a football move'. Both are defined by the game officials, who do not read ancient Sumerian and therefore have no idea what they are, either.

"This also applies to pass interference."

Which, of course, was whistled twice on the Broncos' final march to the winning field goal. One might actually have been interference. Or both. Or neither. No one really knows.

In any event, good on the Broncos. And good on either New England or Houston, who won't have to face Bo Nix next week in the AFC championship.

I'm saying it'll be New England. Unless, of course, the ground causes another interception.

Prize appropriation

 (In which, once again, the Blob kinda-sorta escapes the Sportsball World compound. Act accordingly.)

Have listened to all the chortling and outright guffawing the last few days about Fearless Leader -- the Achievement And Merit President -- accepting the Nobel Prize medal from its latest winner, Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado. And I have a few thoughts.

One, was it merely a goodwill gesture, or Machado's way of saying, "Please don't have me kidnapped/assassinated"?

Two, does this mean Fearless Leader -- the Achievement And Merit President -- finally will stop whining about getting stiffed by those Nobel chumps?

Three, will Fearless Leader -- the Achievement And Merit President -- admit that accepting someone else's medal is the ultimate DEI move? And sort of pathetic if you think about it?

Answers: Most likely the latter ... we can only hope ... and, not a chance in hell.

It does, however, raise some intriguing possibilities for future prize appropriation by the Achievement And Merit President, beginning with Monday night. FIFA has already allowed him to put his grimy paws on the World Cup, while at the same time handing Fearless Leader its own ridiculous peace prize, presumably composed of construction paper and library paste. What's next?

What's next is Monday, when the President will be in attendance for the college football national championship game in  Miami.

That was reported just the other day, and it immediately inspired possible scenarios from  the irreverent. Will Fearless Leader's legendary megalomania compel him to horn in on the proceedings? Will he wink-wink/nudge-nudge suggest what a cool idea it would be for him to present the championship trophy to the winner?

Will he then hold onto juuuust a smidge longer than etiquette demands?

"Congratulations, Coach Cignetti. Here's your trophy."

"Thank you, Mr. Presi- ... Mr. Presi- ... DAMMIT LET GO OF THE THING, ALREADY!"

After which NCAA President Charlie Baker smooths everything over by presenting Fearless Leader with his own replica trophy.

Construction paper and library paste are well represented.

Another milestone

That boffo new comedy on the interwhatsis, "The Diminishment Of The Hoo-Hoo-Hoo-Hoosiers," achieved yet another milestone the other day. Applause, applause.

Some lint-brain -- and I won't bother looking up which lint-brain, because they're all of a piece these days -- accused Curt Cignetti's Indiana football program of playing dirty.

Said the Hoo-Hoo-Hoo-Hoosiers were cheating. Didn't offer a shred of evidence, because you don't have to on the interwhatsis, but said only that they surely MUST be cheating because they're Indiana and Indiana could not possibly have gotten this good at football without a crib sheet.

Indiana football being accused of cheating.

Does that not signal Coach Cig and the guys truly have hit the big time?

After all, back when Lee Corso was driving a double-decker London bus into Memorial Stadium just to get people to pay attention for a nanosecond, no one would have dreamed of accusing Indiana football of cheating. If the Hoosiers were, they were incredibly bad at it, because Indiana football was incredibly bad. Historically so.

But then Coach Cig showed up, and now the Hoo-Hoo-Hoo-Hoosiers are 26-2 under his hand and playing for a national championship Monday night. This has broken the brains of the college football cognescenti, elitist snobs that they are. How dare the riffraff track mud all over the realm of the Alabamas and Georgias and Texases et al! Why, next they'll be letting one of the Ivies in here!

So, yes, Indiana must be cheating. This, of course, ignores the fact that what used to be cheating is just Bidness As Usual now. The NIL and transfer portal have neatly laundered it.

But logic flees when the status quo is threatened, so Cignetti's as crooked as Al Capone. Or his team's only good because its players are all, like, 30 years old. Or it's only good because its made a mockery of the new reality, simply renting an entirely new team every season while everyone else Respects The Process.

Meanwhile, Miami will trot out a sixth-year transfer from Georgia (Carson Beck) at quarterback Monday night. 

Damn cheaters.

The enduring taint

Once upon a time the City College of New York (CCNY) had a dandy little basketball team that was coached by a legend named Nat Holman, and it was so skilled and played with such discipline and will it won both the NIT and NCAA tournaments in the same year.

That year was 1950, and the CCNY Beavers were the toast of the Big Apple.

The next year, they were something else entirely.

The next year, several of their players were found to have shaved points during that magic season, taking money from gamblers not to lose games but to knock them off the level. Which comes to the same thing.

Worst part was, CCNY wasn't alone.

Turns out Manhattan College, NYU and Long Island University were also in on the fix, and eventually the scheme swallowed up Toledo, Bradley and '51 NCAA champion Kentucky as well -- plus players from USC, San Francisco, Oregon, Colorado, Georgetown and the Ivy League who met with gamblers but didn't take the deal.

Between that and another point-shaving scandal later in the decade, it all but wrecked college basketball. Nothing destroys the public trust more than players taking money to manipulate outcomes -- and without that trust, our games are just  professional wrestling by another name.

College buckets found that out the hard way 75 years ago.

Unfortunately, the lesson had an expiration date.

Here we are in the science fiction-y year of 2026, see, and it's 1951 all over again. According to a federal indictment in Pennsylvania that detonated like an atomic bomb yesterday, another point-shaving scheme has infected college buckets. This time it involves 39 players on 17 NCAA Division I teams who fixed dozens of games for another pack of hyenas looking to scam their way to riches.

Twenty of those indicted played college buckets either last season or the season before, per the indictment. Four of those played for their current teams just in the last week -- including a kid named Simeon Cottle, who scored 21 points to lead Kennesaw State past Florida International just two days ago.

Cottle, who's averaging 20.2 points per game this season, was the Conference USA preseason player of the year. He's now just an ex-player, Kennesaw State having summarily dismissed him after news of the fix broke.

Look. I'm not going to take to my bully pulpit here (for long, anyway) to point out that not only does history have an uncomfortable tendency to replicate itself, in this case it was as easy to predict as sunrise.  NIL and the unrestrained transfer portal, after all, have turned big-time college basketball and football into a purer money chase than they already were.  

It's been an I'm-gettin'-mine culture for decades, but now it's operating in broad daylight instead of the shadows beneath tables. Those thousand-dollar handshakes are now million-dollar NIL deals, and the "student-athlete" is not just fiction but a fable out of Aesop. The "student-athletes" are purely mercenaries now, same as their coaches and athletic departments.

Throw in all those mushrooming online betting sites, and how can you be shocked by the news out of Pennsylvania yesterday? Especially when the universities (or at least the networks who pay to televise their games) openly promote those sites?

Greed, it seems, is an enduring taint, and so once again history comes back around. That aforementioned point-shaving scandal in the late 1950s, for instance?

It eventually involved some 50 players from 27 schools. And the primary fixer was a former professional basketball player named Jack Molinas -- who, for a brief time, played for the Fort Wayne Pistons and then in a handful of minor leagues.

Now it's all these years later, and guess what?

One of those named but not charged in the indictment yesterday was Antonio Blakeney, who, for a brief time, played for the Chicago Bulls and then in a handful of leagues overseas.

Around and around the wheel goes.

Shrinking the Big Deal

 Saw an ESPN headline this a.m. that made me laugh, after which it made me say, "Really?" After which it made me say, "How pathetic is this?"

Here's what the headline said: Fans Storm The Court After Stanford Upsets No. 14 UNC.

Really?

Storming the court because you beat somebody ranked 14th?

How pathetic.

Also, what a shrinkage of the Big Deal motif, to the extent that the Big Deal becomes virtually meaningless; if everything is a Big Deal, then nothing is a Big Deal. That's how it goes, right?

Now, I'm sure the kids who stormed the court out in Palo Alto last night would argue it was a Big Deal, because their Cardinal beat North Carolina. Michael Jordan! Sam Perkins and James Worthy! Phil Ford and Tyler Hansbrough and Eric Montross and Saint Dean Smith Himself!

Except that's not North Carolina anymore.

North Carolina -- this year, anyway -- is Caleb Wilson and some kid named Henri Veesaar and some other kid named Luka, though not Luka Doncic. Luka Bogavac is his name.

North Carolina -- this year -- is a team that lost by 14 to unranked SMU and, right now, sits eighth in the ACC.

 North Carolina -- this year -- might as well be Coastal Carolina. 

Oh, and Stanford?

The Cardinal are 14-4 after last night. UNC, on the other hand, is 14-3.

In other words, this was not Chaminade taking down Ralph Sampson and No. 1 Virginia. It wasn't Watford-For-The-Win. It wasn't North Carolina State and Jimmy V shocking Houston and Phi Slamma Jama, or Villanova shocking Patrick Ewing and Georgetown, or Cleveland State taking down Indiana and Bob Knight.

It was one 14-win team beating another 14-win team. That's it.

And, yes, I know, I'm making way too much of a Big Deal myself about this, veering once more across the center line into Old Man Shouting At Clouds  territory. In my day, we only risked getting trampled to death when it MEANT something. In my day, we didn't have to invent achievement, we ACHIEVED it. In my day ...

And so on, and so forth.

But enough of that. I'm not going to embarrass myself completely and take some deep sociological plunge into the Diminishment Of Striving Among America's Youth or  The Entitlement Generation And How It Will Be The Downfall Of Western Culture.

That stuff is boring, for one thing. Also it's the most tired of rants. It is, after all, what every generation has said about the succeeding generation since Pliny the Elder was telling Pliny the Younger to get off his shiftless ass and do something with his life.

"DoorDash is not a career, Younger," quoth Elder.

Again, enough of that. Although I do wonder one thing.

What would happen if Stanford played No. 13 Illinois and won?

Why, they'd tear the roof off the place. Damn kids.

How you do it

 Raise a glass this morning to the people who get it, who can see home truth beyond the glare of ego, who jump instead of making those around them push.

Raise a glass. Raise a glass to Mike Tomlin, who showed everyone how you do it yesterday.

After 19 seasons in Pittsburgh, during which he never lost more than he won with one of the NFL's most iconic franchises, he stepped down as the Steelers' head coach yesterday. He still had a year (plus options) left on his contract, but decided it was time to move on. Maybe the pitiless grind of the gig -- and it is pitiless -- finally had worn him down. Or maybe he just decided he wasn't getting the job done to his own satisfaction, and that maybe a fresh voice was needed.

The latter, of course, is pure speculation, although not particularly fanciful speculation. It seemed to jibe with who Tomlin has been across almost two decades that he both sensed the end coming, and didn't want the Rooney family to be the bad guys of the piece. So he relieved them of that responsibility.

Not that the Rooneys were certain to be the bad guys. Even after the Steelers' latest playoff flameout -- an embarrassing 30-6 loss at home Monday night to the Houston Texans -- there was no immediate sense that Tomlin was going to walk the plank for it. The clamor for a regime change had never been louder, but the Rooneys have always operated by their own clock. You own a football team for well over half a century, you don't let anyone tell you what time it is.

So maybe they'd have reluctantly decided it was indeed time for a regime change, and maybe they wouldn't have. But Tomlin made the point moot.

You lose 30-6 at home in the playoffs, the message is both loud and clear: Something has to change. And so Tomlin changed it.

He'll leave behind that incredible run of 19 straight winning seasons, leavened by seven straight playoff losses. The last time Tomlin's Steelers won a playoff game was a full decade ago, when they beat the pre-Patrick Mahomes Chiefs in the divisional round enroute to a loss to the Patriots in the AFC championship.

That's an unconscionably thirsty dry spell for a franchise with six Lombardi Trophies in its possession. And no one could have been more acutely aware of that than Mike Tomlin, only the third head coach the Steelers have had in 57 years.

Chuck Noll. Bill Cowher. Tomlin. That's all, y'all, since 1969.

Now?

Now there are two jobless coaches out there with a combined 39 years of head coaching experience: John Harbaugh, unexpectedly fired by the Ravens after an underwhelming 2025 season, and Tomlin. Only one, however, is back on the market.

Tomlin, still only 53, will be taking 2026 off. 

Can't say he hasn't earned it. Can't say that at all.