A parting's sweet sorrow

 It appears obvious now the Anthony Richardson Experiment in Indianapolis is done like dinner, with word coming down yesterday that the Colts were not picking up his option for 2027. And if you have any sort of beating heart at all, you should feel something about that.

Sadness, certainly. Pity for a lovely young man. The disappointment of high hopes gone to ash. 

Anger?

Well, yes. That, too.

Anger, first and foremost, that the Colts took a flier on a grass-green prospect of un-surpassing athleticism, and then basically said, "OK, kid, play." Richardson was still just 20 years old at the time, and he'd started just 13 games in college. He likely was still humming his high school's fight song when the Colts plucked him with the fourth pick in the 2023 NFL Draft.

And yet ...

And yet, two weeks into his first NFL training camp, they named him their starting quarterback.

This was insane on its face; the kid was nowhere near ready to be a QB1 in the NFL, and anyone with a working porch light should have known it. And so, as night follows day, we all know what happened next.

He failed.

In 17 starts across three seasons, he threw 11 touchdowns with 13 interceptions, and completed a touch over half his throws in a league where 65 percent or so is the benchmark. He got hurt, over and over, trying to do the sort of things against grown-ass men he did against high school and college kids. As the Colts' starter in 2023 and '24, he missed 17 games; last season he languished on injured reserve after sustaining an orbital fracture in a bizarre pregame mishap involving a resistance band.

By that time, however, it was becoming unnervingly obvious that he might not The Guy the Colts drafted him to be. His immaturity became an issue, because -- hello -- how could it not have been? It culminated when he took himself out of the game to "catch his breath" during a potential winning drive.

He got roasted for that by all the social media brainiacs, and the brainiacs actually had a valid point for once. On the other hand, who handed Richardson the reins -- and the truckload of responsibilities that come with it -- in the first place?

Hint: It wasn't AR.

It was Chris Ballard, Shane Steichen and the rest of  'em, who kept trying to clean up the mess they'd made until they couldn't. So they brought in Daniel Jones, and Jones won the starting job, and then the eye thing happened, and suddenly Richardson was third on the depth chart behind Jones and Riley Leonard out of Notre Dame.

And now, perhaps not even that.

Parting is such sweet sorrow, the bard told us. And all the people in their Horseshoe Blue said, "Amen."

Derby time!

The 152nd Kentucky Derby goes off tomorrow down at Churchill Downs, and, sadly, once again My Friend Flicka is not among the favorites. Neither is National Velvet, Mr. Ed or his smart-aleck son Mr. Ted, who mouthed off one too many times and wound up holding together some second-grader's art project.

"Oh, nice, Mr. Blob," you're saying now. "Don't you think it's time to come up with some new material? You make the same jokes every year."

You mean the one about all the women wearing hats designed by Frank Lloyd Wright?

"Yes," you're saying, through gritted teeth.

The one about how the Derby field is always three or four actual horses and 16 cans of Alpo?

"(Grumble)."

The one about how mint juleps are just Robitussin in a fancy glass? Or how the Twin Spires are great because, look, there's two of 'em? Or how "My Old Kentucky Home" has got nothin' on Dan Fogelberg's "Run For The Roses"?

"Oh, great, let's not leave THOSE out," you're saying.

Wouldn't think of it. Also wouldn't think of failing to mention (again!) how much I love everything about the Derby, even though I've never been and the only thing I know about horses is they have something called a fetlock and something else called withers, which I think once wrote a song called "Ain't No Sunshine."

"Aaaand here comes the Bill Withers joke," you're saying, rolling your eyes.

Anyway ...

Anyway, it's time for another hardy perennial, Derby Advice From A Guy Who Doesn't Know Anything About Horses, Except That Sometimes They "Walk The Shedrow," Whatever That Is:

* The Derby favorite as of this morning is a horse named Renegade, but don't put your money on his nose. This is because the betting favorite hardly ever wins the Derby, and also because Renegade drew the inside post position. Which is kind of like starting 33rd in the Indianapolis 500.

* There's a Japanese horse in the Derby this year, but don't drop your coin on him, either. Not only is he a 20-1 shot as of this morning, he's a Japanese horse. Japanese horses are mutts in the Derbo; ten horses bred there have run the Run for the Roses, and only one has finished better than fifth.

However, this one does have a cool name: Danon Bourbon. No, I don't know what it means. But if you're one of those carefree souls who bet on horses' names, have at it. Hey, it's not my money.

* Speaking of foreign horses, you know who was the last Derby winner to be bred outside North America? Tomy Lee, way back in 1959. I don't know squadoosh about him, either, but you might win a bar bet with that nugget.

* And speaking of mutts ...

As of this morning, there are three 50-1 shots in the Derby field: Six Speed, Great White and the Blob's personal favorite, Ocelli.

Ocelli drew the 20th and last post position, which means he basically starts the race across the river in Jeffersonville. He's winless in six starts, but he does have D. Whitworth Beckman as his trainer.

Now, I don't know anything about D. Whitworth Beckman, which is no surprise. But he sounds like one of those crusty old guys in British horse movies who wears a lot tweed, smokes a pipe and goes around snarling at people to keep their hands off the horse, laddie.

(Alas, my imagination fails me again. D. Whitworth Beckman is actually a local. Grew up in Louisville. And he's only 43 years old.)

And last but not least ... 

* Your Derby pick.

I'm going with a horse named So Happy.

So Happy is a 15-1 shot right now, but at least he's not starting from the No. 1 or No. 20 post position. He's also not starting from the No. 2 post (no Derby winners since Affirmed in 1978); the No. 9 post (last Derby winner, Riva Ridge in 1972); the No. 12 post (Canonero II, 1971); the No. 14 post (Carry Back, 1961); and the No. 17 post, from which no Derby winner has ever started.

No, So Happy starts from the No. 7 hole, and he's got a poignant back-story. Not only was he a bargain buy -- he initially went for just $14,000 at auction -- he's trained by Mark Glatt, who's got a horse in the Derby for the first time at the age of 53. It would be a joyous occasion for him had he not lost his beloved wife Dena in February.

Taking So Happy to the gate will be jockey Mike Smith, who has his own story. Officially he's listed as 60 years old, but Smith keeps insisting he's only 59. So you've got a horse purchased on the cheap, a first-time Derby trainer weighed down by grief, and a jock who's either 59, 60 or, hell, who really knows.

That gets my money.

Two bucks on So Happy to win. I'm goin' all in.

Hoosier hysteria

 The Indiana High School Athletic Association is weighing an NIL proposal for its high school athletes, and, boy, howdy. You know what that means, boys and girls.

"The end of days?" you're saying now. "Lakes of fire, rivers running backward, dogs and cats living together?"

Well ... no.

But you can't help imagining all of that, as Hoosier Hysteria becomes simply hysteria in some corners of our fair state.

What if the parents of the kid who gets cut from the team sues the coach for restraint of trade?

What if South Northwest Podunk High sues Big Suburban Moneybags High for stealing its 6-9 center with a chunkier endorsement deal?

What if the parents of the current Big Suburban Moneybags High center sues the school for lost wages, because the 6-9 move-in now has their Johnny's former endorsement deal?

Sound, well, hysterical?

Maybe. But any and all of the above could happen. Although a lot of it probably won't.

That seems to be the way these seismic events tend to unspool, with the hand-wringers' worst-case scenarios making only sporadic appearances. Will there be lawsuits? Well, yes, because this is America, and in America everyone sues everyone for everything. Also there already have been lawsuits here and there (emphasis on "here and there") in a lot of the other states that have adopted high school NIL.

Which is almost of them.

As of the turn of the year, 45 states plus the District of Columbia have some form of Name, Image and Likeness at the high school level. Indiana is one of the five that doesn't, which figures. We are, after all, the stubborn coot of states, forever coming around last; we're so notorious for it, in fact, the state seal should include the aforementioned coot shaking his liver-spotted fist and shouting at a too-modern-looking cloud.

Me?

I just wonder WWOD. Or what WWDD. Or WWRMD.

As in: What Would Oscar Do, and What Would Damon Do, and What Would Rick Mount Do. Or George McGinnis, Jay Edwards, Shawn Kemp, Glenn Robinson, any number of others.

Bobby Plump has made a career out of hitting that mid-range jumper for Milan back in 1954; he even has a restaurant named Plump's Last Shot. But he didn't open it in high school. If NIL had been around, he could have -- or at least lent his image to it for a handsome fee.

Damon Bailey?

Shoo. There's already a monument to him in his hometown of Heltonville, and John Feinstein made him famous -- as an eighth-grader -- in "A Season on the Brink." By the time he took Bedford North Lawrence to the state finals as a freshman, everyone in the state had heard of him. Heck, he was so famous he could have opened his own rib joint.

(Ha-ha, just kidding. I know the Damon's Grill chain wasn't named for Damon Bailey. Or at least I don't think so.)

Oscar Robertson, meanwhile, is only the greatest basketball player ever to come out of our basketball state, unless it's Larry Bird.  And Rick Mount was the first high school athlete ever to grace the cover of Sports Illustrated. Think they couldn't have made some NIL jack?

As for the others ...

Well, Glenn Robinson actually had a nickname: The Big Dog. He could have been the public face  -- again, for a handsome fee -- of a chain of dog-grooming places called Big Dog's Daring 'Do's. How perfect is that?

"Umm ... not very?" you're saying now.

OK. But you get the gist, right? 

The point is, the possibilities are endless, and not just in basketball. Just now, for instance, I'm remembering Indiana football legend Jade Butcher, who, before he starred for IU's first Rose Bowl team, was a hometown high school legend at Bloomington High School. Imagine what sort of NIL deal he could have landed as the public face of a rare gem shop?

Hi, I'm Jade Butcher from Bloomington High, and welcome to Jade's House of Jade ...

Great, right?

Um, right? 

March Mediocrity

 Word out of college basketball today is the NCAA is about to expand its cash-cow men's and women's basketball tournaments to 76 teams, and, oh, goody. I can't wait.

I can't wait to see eight play-in games instead of four, which is the current plan for the expanded tournaments. I can't wait to see, on the women's side, Geno Auriemma pound a couple more teams 70-12 in the early rounds. 

Now, I'm sure there are folks out there who think this wouldn't be such a bad deal. More March Madness is more March Madness, right? Especially if it means more of those fan-favorite Power 4 mids get in. 

Which of course is what this is all about.

It certainly isn't about the Ivy League, the Patriot League or the MEAC getting another team or two into March Madness, even if that team goes 27-2 and then stubs its toe in the conference tournament. Oh, hell, no. Let 'em continue to eat NIT cake, the posers.

No, this is so the selection committee can wedge even more Big Ten, SEC, ACC and Big 12 teams into the show, whether or not they deserve to be there. The Power 4 poobahs -- most notably Greg Sankey from the SEC -- have been bitching and moaning 'til hell won't have it about how these small-conference automatic bids deprive some of their back-marker schools from getting in. It just tain't fair.

 "We are giving away highly competitive opportunities for automatic qualifiers (from smaller leagues), and I think that pressure is going to rise as we have more competitive basketball leagues at the top end because of (conference) expansion ..." Sankey said in 2024.

This was right before his conference got a record 14 teams into last year's NCAA Tournament.

Fourteen teams! And I bet some of 'em actually breached the .500 mark in conference play.

The SEC put 10 teams into the Madness this time around, leaving out the likes of Auburn (7-11 in conference) and Oklahoma (ditto). Add another eight teams to the pile, and they'd have likely gotten in. 

Ditto the Big Ten, which was represented by nine teams but left Indiana (9-11 in conference), Minnesota (8-12) and USC (7-13) curbside. Again, add eight more teams, and at least two of those might have squeezed through the door.

The ACC? Eight teams this year, including an SMU squad that went 8-10 in conference. 

Big 12? Also eight teams, including Central Florida, BYU and Baylor, which finished a combined 24-30 in conference play.

To reiterate: Oh, goody.

Look. The Blob has been shouting this to the heavens until it's blue in the face, which is nothing anyone needs to see: The first two days of March Madness are what sell the whole deal, and no one's tuning into them to see some crud Big 12 school play some crud SEC school in that riveting 8-9 matchup. No, sir. They're tuning in to see, I don't know, Hofstra take down North Carolina or some such thing. 

The little guys are the heartbeat of the Madness. So now we're going to add eight more Power 4 cruds to the mix? How does this do anything but let the Power 4s stuff even more cash in their already bulging pockets?

It certainly doesn't make the tournament more attractive. Or maybe adding even more March Mediocrity to March Madness is some genius-level strategy mere mortals fail to grasp.

Nah.

Journalist to the rescue

 I once saw a local media goober cut the line to get a selfie with Muhammad Ali.

The Greatest was in town for a Fort Wayne Komets hockey game, and also to meet with a bunch of kids with cancer. Local media was prevented from interviewing him -- his Parkinson's was quite advanced by then -- but we were invited to his suite in the arena to watch him interact with the kids.

One by one they queued up to meet the champ and pose with him for photos, as if Ali (who loved kids like no one else) were some sort of fistic Santa Claus. It was a sweet scene.

Until.

Until the aforementioned goober metaphorically shoved the cancer kids out of the way so he, too, could have his moment with Ali. The rest of us (and by "rest of us," I mean the other media goobers in attendance) were appalled. Like the world doesn't already think we're a bunch of lowlife hotdog-munching slobs?

"Thanks a lot, dip(bleep)," we said. Or at least thought.

Why do I bring this up?

Because the other night in Cleveland, a home run sailed into the stands, and a guy tried to grab it. Instead, he muffed it, and it rolled to a stop at the feet of a young girl. Who of course reached down to pick it up.

After which the guy who dropped -- a grown man, for God's sake -- leaped forward to wrestle it away from her. Stole candy from a baby, so to speak.

The home broadcast team said nothing. The broadcast team for the visiting Tampa Bay Rays, on the other hand, called the guy out on the air, as well they should have.

That wasn't the best part of this, however.

The best part was another guy named Ryan Bass took another baseball down to the where the girl and her family were sitting, and presented it to her. Then he posed for a selfie with them.

Ryan Bass is a Tampa-area TV broadcaster, podcaster and digital and print beat writer who covers the Rays for Otter PR. So score one for the hotdog-munching slobs.

Who frankly need the kudos these days, given that the current Regime and its acolytes despise the free press, verbally abuse any of its members who have the temerity to do their jobs, and banish any media from its presence who aren't bootlicks for said Regime. It's all straight out of that well-worn playbook, Tips For The Successful Autocrat.

Well, neener-neener-neener on them. This time, it was a journalist to the rescue.

Hooray for us.

History obscura

 Remember, on this Monday morning, the alliterative name Sabastian Sawe, because Sunday he did something no man, woman or child had ever done before. Remember, too, the name Yomif Kejelcha, who may have done something even more amazing.

What Sabastian Sawe did, on a flat course on a perfect dry day, was become the first human in history to run an official marathon in less than two hours. 

And Yomif Kejelcha?

He became the second human in history to run an official marathon in less than two hours -- and in his very first try.

Sawe won the London Marathon in one hour, 59 minutes and 30 seconds. Sixteen seconds later Kejelcha -- running in his first marathon -- crossed the finish line in one hour, 59 minutes, 46 seconds.

Sawe is from Kenya, ancestral home of distance runners since the days of Kip Keino almost 60 years ago. Kejelcha is from Ethiopia, second ancestral home of distance runners since the days of Abebe Bikila and Mamo Wolde, who won the marathon in three straight Olympics.

Wolde won in Mexico City in 1968. Bikila, the father of Ethiopian distance running, won it back-to-back in Rome and Tokyo in 1960 and '64. In Rome, he won it running barefoot.

All this, or at least Sawe and Kejelcha's historic achievement, you might have seen on the network news last evening, or perhaps even in your local paper. Where you didn't see it was on the lead page of  ESPN's website -- where it was inexplicably, and conspicuously, absent.

Lots of NFL post-draft stuff was there, of course. NBA and NHL playoff coverage and highlights. Also baseball; WNBA fantasy news; NWSL soccer; Nelly Korda going wire-to-wire to win her third LPGA major at the Chevron Championship; UFL football and NASCAR.

Heck. There was even a clip on there of Gettysburg College scoring a spectacular last-second goal in men's lacrosse.

But no Sawe. No Kejelcha. History obscura, so to speak.

Now, to be fair, you could find the Sawe/Kejelcha story on ESPN's site. But it was buried on the Olympic sports page, along with news about Chelsea Clinton running the Boston Marathon for the first time. And I suppose it's possible it was at one time on the lead page -- but by 7 a.m. this morning it was already gone, while every other sporting event from Sunday was still present and accounted for.

Doesn't seem right. Just doesn't.

Cautionary tale

 Diego Pavia's phone never buzzed this week, or whatever it is phones do these days. Not on Thursday. Not on Friday. Not even on Saturday, when the last name called in the 2026 NFL Draft was a linebacker from Buffalo named Red Murdock.

That made Murdock this year's Mr. Irrelevant, a title more coveted than it probably should be.

And Vanderbilt's Pavia?

Well, what do you call a Heisman Trophy runnerup who doesn't get drafted at all, and in the hours after the draft ended didn't even get an invite -- not from a single one out of 32 NFL teams -- as an undrafted free agent?

I don't know. Mr. Cautionary Tale, maybe?

Because, listen, it's not just that Pavia is a quarterback who tops out at 5-10 and 198 pounds. It's that Pavia is a quarterback who tops out at 5-10 and 198 pounds, and has a definite Johnny Manziel vibe to him.

Remember him? Johnny Football? The guy who beat Alabama, won the Heisman Trophy as a freshman, and loved to make that money-money-money gesture with his fingers every time he pulled a rabbit out of a hat at Texas A&M?

Manziel got drafted by the Cleveland Browns, where flashy QBs regularly go to become insurance salesmen. The Browns ruin quarterbacks the way most of us eat ice cream. Except in Manziel's case, he kinda did that to himself.

First of all, he wasn't as good as his hype.

Second of all, his hype was, if not entirely manufactured by Manziel himself, at least aided and abetted by him. Self-absorption practically rolled off him in waves, which is why he regularly wound up embroiled in off-the-field ... situations. Hey, he was Johnny Football, dammit. Why couldn't he (fill in off-the-field situation here)?

It only took the Browns two seasons to grow weary of all that. That's the same amount of time it took everyone else in the NFL to grow weary of  him, and also to realize he just wasn't very good. Which is why no one else signed him.

 He wound up playing in the CFL for the Hamilton Tiger-Cats and Montreal Alouettes, before the CFL kicked him out for violating the terms of his contract. After that he played briefly for some team called the Memphis Express in something called the Alliance of American Football, and later for some team called the Zappers in something called Fan-Controlled Football.

Now, I have no idea if Diego Pavia's career path will track that way. But if Johnny Football is his cautionary tale, Diego Pavia is Cautionary Tale 2.0 -- i.e., "How to guarantee you won't get taken in the NFL Draft."

It wasn't that he couldn't play; like Manziel at A&M, the guy beat Alabama, and he also beat Auburn three times. Vandy went 10-3 last season, with Pavia throwing for 3,539 yards and 29 touchdowns and running for 862 yards and 10 more sixes.

And did it all with, um, let's be polite and call it "swagger." A LOT of swagger.

After beating Auburn for the third time, for instance, he hinted that maybe Auburn coach Hugh Freeze might have fared better against him if Freeze had recruited him.

He also openly campaigned for the Heisman Trophy -- and, when he was beaten out by Indiana quarterback Fernando Mendoza, he went on social media and posted "(Bleep) all the voters", then partied at a New York nightclub under a sign that read "(Bleep) Indiana."

He later apologized, but the damage was done. NFL teams are almost comically terrified of potential distractions, especially among quarterbacks. And everything about Pavia screamed potential distraction -- even the fact he didn't find it necessary to hire an agent.

Everything about him screamed Johnny Football, in other words.

And thus, for three days, his phone didn't scream at all.

Too little ...

 Timing is everything, they say, except when it's not. And so let us first say this morning that the Boston Red Sox finally scored some runs yesterday.

Like, 17 of them.

Paved the Baltimore Orioles like a four-lane highway, 17-1.

And then ...

And then the Red Sox poobahs fired everyone.

Well, OK. So not everyone.

Only manager Alex Cora, the bench coach, the hitting coach, the assistant hitting coach, the third-base coach and the hitting strategy coach were served their walking papers. A sixth coach -- Jason Varitek, who's been with the organization for 30 years -- was "reassigned to a new role within the organization," probably because he's Jason Varitek.

(Of course, "reassigned to a new role within the organization" pretty much lives right next door to being fired. Think Milton Waddams and his stapler being "reassigned" to a basement storeroom in "Office Space.")

Now, if you're thinking here this all seems a tad drastic, given it's only April 25 in a season that stretches into the first blush of October ... well, that's certainly fair. But the Red Sox are off to a 10-17 start, which doesn't sound all that dreadful until you consider it's the second-worst record in the American League and the third worst in MLB.

Heck, even the Chicago What Sox (11-16) and the Colorado Rockheads (11-16) are a game better. The only teams worse are the Houston Astros (10-18), the hideous New York Mutts (9-17) and the appalling Philadelphia Phooeys (9-18). The latter are so bad they're already 10 games (OK, so 9.5) out of first in the NL East after just 26 games.

Extrapolate that out to a full 162-game season, and the Phooeys are on track to finish 59 games behind. That's impressive.

But back to the Red Sox.

If timing is everything, you've got to wonder how hard the Red Sox braintrust was smacking itself in the forehead when yesterday's score came down. The Blob's frequently over-active imagination figures the conversation went something like this:

Braintrust Guy No. 1: So, it's decided then. We're firing everybody but Varitek, who's being reassigned to the broom closet on the second floor.

All The Other Braintrust Guys (in unison): Huzzah!

Braintrust Guy No. 1: Now we just gotta deci-

Junior Braintrust Guy In The Back: Uh, boss?

Braintrust Guy No. 1: Milton! I told you never to interrupt me!

Junior Braintrust Guy: But ... but ...

No. 1: But what?

Junior: Um, we beat the Orioles 17-1 today.

All The Other Braintrust Guys: WHAT??

Junior: Um, yeah. 17-1.

No. 1: Well, that's great. That's. Just. Great. We're about to clear out almost our whole staff in April, which will make us look like a bunch of jittery goobers as it is. Now we're going to do it right after we scored 17 runs? And we're doing it mainly because WE HAVEN'T BEEN SCORING ANY RUNS?

We're gonna look like complete idiots.

Random Braintrust Guy: Well ... except for the fact that right now we're even worse than the White Sox and the Rockies.

(Brief pause as everyone reflects on the horror of that)

Braintrust Guy No. 1: True. Aw, to hell with it, let's do it. We'll just fall back on the old "too little, too late" defense.

(Everyone high-fives.  Junior Braintrust Guy says he'll spring for drinks.)

A few Draft-y thoughts, Part Deux

 I did not watch a single minute of the second day of the NFL Draft, and, no, not because I knew Pat McAfee, who long ago red-lined the Annoying Meter, was going to present the Colts' second-round pick. That was just sheer luck.

No, I didn't watch because, basically, I wasn't really on pins and needles to see if the Vikings, with the 82nd pick in the 2026 NFL Draft, would take Domonique Orange from Iowa State, whoever he is. Or if the Jaguars, with the 100th pick in the 2026 NFL Draft, would take Jalen Huskey from Maryland, whoever he is.

(No offense intended to either Domonique and Jalen. Guys, I just picked your names at random. But if you become stars in the NFL, now you can each say, "People said I would never make it. Including some dumbass in Indiana.")

Anyway ... 

On with today's Draft-y thoughts;

* The Indianapolis Colts, with the 47th pick in the 2026 NFL Draft, traded down to the 53rd pick. According to Gregg Doyel of the Indianapolis Star, who was paying far more attention than I was, this apparently got all the Colts fans riled up and calling for GM Chris Ballard's head again -- especially when the Jets scooped favorite son D'Angelo Ponds of Indiana with the 50th pick.

Instead, the Colts wound up with linebacker C.J. Allen from Georgia. People say he's pretty darn good. I guess we'll see.

* Speaking of the Colts, and Pat McAfee, he apparently was as strange as ever, calling the Colts the "Kings of the AFC South" and saying weird stuff about how Jim Irsay cured Daniel Jones' torn achilles from heaven. 

Watching the clip later on, however, I did notice Pat was dressed for the occasion. Wore pants and shoes and a shirt -- collared, even! -- and a sport coat. He wasn't wearing a tie, but, hell, neither did Roger Goodell on opening night. 

In fact, McAfee actually looked spiffier than the commish. Which frankly ought to be the story of the entire draft by my lights.

McAfee Out-Dresses Goodell. Film at 11.

* And speaking of the story of the draft ...

I guess it's still the fact the Los Angeles Rams used their first pick -- and the 13th overall -- to snatch quarterback Ty Simpson from Alabama. 

This despite the fact they still have Matthew Stafford, the reigning NFL Most Valuable Player, at the head of the table in their quarterback room.

This despite the fact Rams head coach Sean McVay didn't look all that pleased to welcome Simpson aboard, which suggested it was GM Les Snead who made the call.

This despite the fact McVay then went out of his way to say the Rams were still Matthew Stafford's team, and that, fine, OK, now we've got Ty Simpson, but he's going to be competing with Stetson Bennett for the backup spot.

The day-after spin from Snead and the Rams' organization is that Snead and McVay were definitely on the same page, and that the reason McVay wasn't turning cartwheels over the Simpson pick was because he didn't want to show the rest of the league how excited he was.

I can't tell you exactly how many people bought that. But a good guess would be "no one."

So what were the Rams thinking?

Beats me. Maybe they were looking at Stafford, who's 38 now, and noting how quickly quarterbacks (except for Tom Brady) tend to fall off the table once the years starting piling up. Or maybe they see Simpson is future trade bait if beats out Stetson Bennett for the backup spot. 

"Or maybe they just made a really dumb pick," you're suggesting now.

Oh, come on. When has THAT ever happened?

* Kinda surprised to see Carson Beck, who quarterbacked Miami to the national championship game before falling to Indiana, fell to the first pick in the third round. The Cardinals picked him. They also picked a 6-5, 315-pound offensive lineman from Texas A&M, Chase Bisontis. 

This suggests the Cards don't intend to just be Jeremiyah Love and a bunch of guys. Or Jeremiyah Love running for his life from three hundred bazillion dudes on every snap.

* Know who got drafted yesterday?

IU running back Kaelon Black, who went to the 49ers with the 90th overall pick. And Notre Dame tight end Eli Raridon, whom the Patriots snatched with the 75th pick. 

Total regional bias here, but I think both teams got one of those mid-draft gems Mel Kiper Jr. and the gang are always yakking about. That especially goes for Raridon, if for no other reason than Notre Dame seems to grow NFL tight ends like velvet leaf.

Anthony Fasano. Kyle Rudolph. Michael Mayer. Cole Kmet. Tyler Eifert before the injuries took him down. And if you want to go back some, Dave Casper and Mark Bavaro, among others.

That's a heck of a bloodline. Maybe the Patriots noticed.

I mean, they're the Patriots. They would. 

A few Draft-y thoughts

 Actually watched part of the NFL Draft last night, on account of the air in my tires was already rotated and the paint on the fence had already dried. What else was I gonna do?

Anyway, I watched. And, as night follows day, I have a few thoughts ...

* Roger Goodell, the commissioner of the Nash-unal FOOT-ball League, dressed for the occasion like a guy out for lunch at the club. What the hell, Rog, you couldn't even put on a tie? What was up with that? 

* Speaking of appropriate dress, one of the highlights of the night is always what the crazy superfans of various teams are wearing. The winner, by the Blob's lights, was either the Dallas Cowboys fan wearing the UFO on his head -- flashing lights, the whole bit -- or the New York Jets' fan in head-to-toe green and a plastic green Hulk fist garnished with jewel-encrusted rings spelling out J-E-T-S.

Or maybe the other Jets fan wearing a green hardhat with a white Mohawk growing out of the top of it.

As someone watching with me observed: "It looks like New Year's Eve in Times Square."

Yeah. Except the multitudes jamming Times Square are at least celebrating the New Year. The multitudes jamming the NFL Draft set included people celebrating being Jets fans. Lord have mercy.

* And speaking of the Jets ...

With the second pick in the Draft, they selected edge rusher David Bailey from Texas Tech. Like every other pick last night, he looked overjoyed. I can't for the life of me think why.

* Ditto top pick Fernando Mendoza from Indiana, gleefully donning a Raiders cap. And third pick Jeremiyah Love from Notre Dame, joyously tugging on a Cardinals cap. And linebacker Arvell Reese from Ohio State, happy to be the top pick of the wretched New York Giants, and offensive tackle Spencer Fano from Utah, whose fate might have been worst of all.

He's headed to the Cleveland Browns.

* Speaking of Fernando Mendoza, how cool was it that he chose to spend his Draft night with his mom, who suffers from multiple sclerosis? He could have been out there sharing a hug with Rog beneath all the bright lights, but he picked Mom to hug instead.

I'm tellin' ya. That young man's going places.

Well. Unless the Raiders ruin him.

* And last but not least ...

Did anyone else think it was odd they kicked off the Draft with the national anthem and a flyover? 

 I mean, it's the Draft, and the NFL is big on giant American flags and The Troops and all other forms of militaristic patriotic fervor. But at bottom it's just a selection show. I don't recall anyone belting out "The Star-Spangled Banner" to open the Oscars, the Grammys or America's Got Talent.

Just seemed a trifle weird to me.

Or maybe I'm just weird.

Don't answer that.

Drumming up dumbness

 (In which the Blob once again waves a brief but cheery farewell to Sportsball World. The standard procedures apply.)

Oh, Micah. Micah, Micah, Micah.

You done did it now, son.

You done riled up the band people.

On social media the other day you hand-wrung about the Westfield High School drum corps posting photos of them performing while wearing ... well, red uniforms. Guess you thought this meant they were worshipping the Devil or some such thing, because you said this was an example of anti-Christian attitudes in our public schools and urged parents to use the voucher system to get their kids out said schools.

Oh, Micah. Micah, Micah, Micah.

I'd say you were dumber than a bag of hammers, but that would get boxes of rocks howling, "Hey, what about US?"

Never mind the fact that Micah Beckwith, our esteemed Loot Guv, is openly encouraging parents to use vouchers to flee the very school system he, as an elected government official, is charged with overseeing. (And by doing so, spilling the beans about the voucher system: Its goal, and the political right's goal, is to destroy the public school system). And never mind what a punk move it is for the Loot Guv of the state of Indiana to pick on a bunch of high school kids.

It's also extinction-level clueless.

Because these were not just high school kids he chose to target. They were high school band kids. And, by extension, high school band kids with parents.

Oh, Micah. Micah, Micah, Micah.

I'd say you were about half-bright, but that would get the other half howling, "Hey, what about ME?"

Every reporter who's ever covered the state band contest, see, could tell about band parents. (And, no, before you start, not all band parents). You do NOT want to piss off band parents, or band people in general. It's like saying "Hey, what if I woke up this sleeping bear?"

And so the aforementioned Every Reporter was always very, very careful about how they wrote their contest stories, making sure to mention every local school competing. And even then, a day or two after his or her newspaper splashed the story and big photos all over its pages, at least one phone would ring in the newsroom.

Whoever picked it up would hear this: "Who is this (Every Reporter's name here), and why did (he/she) only devote ONE SENTENCE to our proud Dean Wormer High School Marching Plumb Bobs? How could (he/she) just IGNORE all their hard work, which earned them a 10th-place finish?"

After which Every Reporter would have to go into hiding for awhile.

And, yes, OK, so I'm joking. But not by a lot.

Quick story: I once covered a football game at a local high school whose marching band -- and a damn good one, by the way -- called itself the Big Orange Pride. Except one year the Big Orange Pride decided to dress in teal uniforms. This apparently became a huge bone of contention among the various band parents.

I know this because when the band marched out at halftime, I blurted out, "Hey, look, it's the Big Teal Pride!"

The school employee sitting next to me practically turned white as a sheet.

"Shhhh," he said, leaning over. "That is a BIG controversy right now.'

Or words to that effect.

Anyway, way to go, Micah Beckwith. Drum up some more dumbness. Wake up that sleeping bear. And don't worry.

I hear they do wonders with plastic surgery these days.

Your political hoo-ha for today

 Got a flier in the mail the other day touting the virtues of a local political candidate, and, I know, I know. No intelligent person takes these things seriously. No intelligent person assigns any more credibility to them than they would to any other child's fairy tale -- which is essentially what these fliers are, other than an excellent vehicle for jamming up your mailbox.

However ...

"However, you are NOT an intelligent person, Mr. Blob?" you're saying now.

Well, maybe.

No, however, this one I got the other day was all about BOYS COMPETING IN GIRLS SPORTS, which might be the most egregiously manufactured "issue" to come down the pike in a long time. It features the Local Political Candidate standing next to Riley Gaines, butt-hurt college swimmer turned activist. Riley's been on a tear against transgender athletes ever since trans swimmer Lia Thomas beat her out for, I don't know, fifth or something in the nationals a few years back.

Thomas has since been banned from further competition by the NCAA, so I guess Riley's campaign to save girls sports (or, SAVE GIRLS SPORTS to give it the proper voice) at least achieved that. That'll learn ya for beating Riley, vile creature!

Anyway ...

Anyway, even though I knew I shouldn't, I read on. It didn't take long -- one sentence -- to yelp "What??" and pitch the thing in the trash.

Here was the sentence: (Candidate's name here) stands with Riley Gaines and Trump's America First agenda to protect girls' sports ...

Oh, please.

"Protect girls sports"? From what, exactly?

Because a month or so ago, girls in Indiana played their high school basketball tournament, and I don't recall a glut of news stories -- and the accompanying ginned-up political outrage -- about all the trans athletes who were competing. That's because there weren't any.

So, obviously, "boys taking over girls' sports" clearly is a massive issue here in the Hoosier state. Right?

"Well, what about college sports?" you're saying now. "How many Lia Thomases are lurking out there to unfairly deprive Riley Gaines of fifth place?"

Glad you asked.

A little over a year ago, see, NCAA chief Charlie Baker was asked that very question. And what he said was ... um, what he said was ...

He said that as far as he knows there are fewer than 10 college student-athletes in the NCAA. Among, um, 510,000 total.

Now, I'm not a math guy. But even I can figure that means trans athletes in college sports amount to a tick under 0.02 percent of the total.

Zero point zero-two percent. That's what this whole "issue" is about.

Or, rather, what it's not about.

What it's really about, of course, is the whole idea of transgender humans to begin with. Some folks regard them as offensive and a biological outrage. Therefore they elect representatives to pass anti-trans laws disguised as "protecting" both trans humans and those of us who are allegedly being victimized by them.

Bald-faced bigotry has rarely been expressed so right-out-loud in the political arena. And with little fear of backlash, because A) being offensive has been re-cast in the Trumpian era as admirable and brave, and B) those trangenders are just creepy as hell, aren't they?

Me?

I present this merely as your election-year hoo-ha for today, in this golden age of hoo-ha.

Draftbots

 The NFL Draft begins Thursday evening, and I for one can't wait to see which team picks Dr. Miguelito Loveless, ace running back out of (choose college here). Or maybe it's Courtney Love. Or maybe ...

Ah, heck. See, I've been consulting AI again. And this is what it's spitting back at me:

Love Boat is very fast according to most measurable analytics, and should be drafted either by the Tennessee Large Mythical Humanoids, the New York Combustible Gases or the Arizona Small Red Birds -- known in colloquial terms as the Titans, the Jets and the Cardinals ... 

And OK, OK. So we're really talking about Jeremiyah Love from Notre Dame here. But we're also talking about AI, which the Blob loathes with every microbe in his body because A) he's a writer, and B) I have seen "The Terminator" umpteen times, and I know Skynet when I see it. 

By this I mean the machines are coming for us, and they're nothing like Ah-nold or even the Robert Patrick upgrade. This generation of Terminators is doing something far more destructive.

They're "writing" sports stories.

As an old sports scribe, I find this both hysterically funny and absolutely disgusting, because machines cannot now and never will be able to "write." Ain't no Steinbecks, Hemingways or Faulkners among the machines, boys and girls. Think the Robert Patrick Terminator could ever come up with Faulkner's epic 175-word run-on sentence about Pickett's Charge in "Intruder In The Dust"? Get outta here.

That's not the worst of it, though. Because now I find at least one NFL team is using AI to help evaluate talent for the draft.

"And you don't need to be expert!" gushes general manager John Lynch of the 49ers, the team in question.

(Which is hilarious, if you think about it, because John Lynch, as GM, is supposed to be one of the "experts". So it's kinda like he's saying, "And now I'm completely unnecessary! Whoopee!")

In any event, the draftbots are here, and there goes the romance, the silliness and Mel Kiper Jr. No more waiting on teams to take ten minutes to make a pick they decided on back in February. Not more chatter about "burst," "waist-benders" and the Blob's all-time favorite dopey draft term, "tight skin." No more endless ruminating about whether or not a quarterback's hands are too small.

The draftbots will take all that from here.

The quarterback expected to be taken with the top pick in the draft, Mendoza Line from the University of India, has hands somewhere in the middle of the preferred measurement spectrum, and therefore a grip circumference that has historically led to success in the League (i.e., "The National Football") ...

Or imagine if the draftbots had been around, say, 50 or so years ago:

Walter Pavement from Jacks On Straight has been described as "intriguing" by the humans who have been judged inferior by Skynet and thus will be eliminated (except for Mel Kiper Jr.) ...

Yikes.

On to May

 Someone asked me the other day who I thought was going to win the Indianapolis 500, I guess on account of they thought I knew something about it. This will happen when you covered the Greatest Spectacle for 40 years, and are a certified and somewhat notorious Indy 500 nerd.

(Which I am. Totally. Go ahead, give me a year and I'll tell you who won without looking it up. That is deeply nerdish stuff, friends.)

Anyway, I said, heck, I don't know, which is good news for IndyCar. It means you can't just say "Alex Palou" and be right three-fourths of the time, even though Alex Palou is top dog in IndyCar these days by a considerable margin. He even won the Big One last season, on his way to a fourth IndyCar championship in the last five years.

Here's the thing, though: It was only his first Indy 500 victory.

That's because Indianapolis is a quirky old place, and not just because they'll drop the green on the 110th running of the 500 there in a month or so. It's a quirky place because, for all its age and history, it sometimes behaves with a child-like capriciousness.

Withholds its affections. Punishes the careless/inattentive/arrogant. Makes some people wait and wait and wait some more, while conferring its favor on others when they least expect it.

It's why Mario Andretti, one of the two greatest American racers in history, only won the 500 once in 29 tries.

It's why the two grandees of this IndyCar generation, Scott Dixon and Will Power, have  won the 500 just once each in a combined 41 starts.

It's why Josef Newgarden, a two-time IndyCar champion, went a dozen 500 starts before slamming down the milk -- and then did it two years in a row,

A guy named J.R. Hildebrand had the Spectacle in his pocket one year, only to lose control and hit the wall on the very last corner of the very last lap, allowing the late Dan Wheldon to claim his second 500 win. Louis Schneider, George Robson and Buddy Rice  have their faces on the Borg-Warner Trophy; Michael Andretti, Lloyd Ruby and Dan Gurney do not. 

On and on it goes. One of the most amazing pieces of engineering ever to race at Indy -- the sleek, brutish Novi -- never won there. Ditto the STP turbines. But Coyotes, Chaparrals and Peugeots did.

This year?

Well, it'll be either a Chevy or a Honda, IndyCar having long abandoned the automotive laboratory for comfortable conformity. And who'll take the checkers on Memorial Day weekend?

Take your pick.

Maybe it'll be Kyle Kirkwood, who has one win and five top fives in five races so far this season. Or young David Malukas, who has four top tens. Or, for third time, Newgarden -- who got off to horrible start this year, but has a win and a seventh-place finish in the last two events.

Want someone who's due and then some?

Pato O'Ward's your man. In six 500s, he's finished lower than sixth just one time. In the last five, he's finished second twice, third once and fourth once. In those same five starts, he's led 95 laps. 

Of course, all that means is he could be the next Michael or Ruby or Gurney. Always there, but never, you know, there.

At any rate, it's on to May and Indianapolis. And on to more unhelpfulness from this guy, who knows nothing about the Indy 500 so much as he knows how utterly unknowable it is.

Which is why, when that someone asked who was going to win the 500 this year, I shrugged and said this: 

"Well ... you can never go wrong with Alex Palou."

Now that there's what you call your insight.

The new Cruds

 The New York Mets lost their 11th straight baseball game yesterday, and while it's probably too early to say there's a new chump in town, maybe it isn't. Someone has to inherit the mantle of the '24 Chicago What Sox and the '25 Colorado Rockheads. Why not the Mutts?

Er, Mets?

They're 7-15 now after the Cubs -- The Cubs! First in your hearts, tied for last in the NL Central! -- beat up on 'em in Wrigley Field over the weekend, and in last place in the entire National League. (Even the Rockheads, tied for last in the NL West, have won two more games). They're already eight games behind the front-running Atlanta Braves in the NL East. And did we mention they've lost 11 games in a row?

"Pffft," you're saying now. "That's not so bad. The '25 Rockheads didn't win their seventh game until May 11, by which time they were 7-33. And the '24 What Sox didn't win their seventh game until May 4, when they stood a proud 7-26."

True. It is only April 20, the Blob must concede. And so far no has proved to be as impeccably horrid as the '24 What Sox and '25 Rockheads. The Mutts, er, Mets' 7-15 is as bad as it gets.

On the other hand, to reiterate, it is only April 20. So there's still plenty of time for some truly horrid baseball to be played.

My money's on the Mutts. Er, Mets. Er, the new Cruds, at least so far.

Ageless wonder

 Look, I don't care what you think of LeBron James. I don't care if you think he's a flopper, a whiner, soft as single-ply or (the big one) Not Michael Jordan. I don't care about any of that.

What I do care about is what a wonder of nature he is.

What I care about is what he did last night, when -- at 41 years and 110 days of age, in his 23rd NBA season, after 1,914 games -- he once again put his team on his back and (along with Luke Kennard and his 27 points) got them a W.

With Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves on the shelf for the Los Angeles Lakers, LeBron delivered 19 points, 13 assists, eight rebounds, two steals and a block for the Los Angeles Lakers last night. He played 38 minutes and turned it over just twice. Eight of his assists came in the first quarter, when the Lakers shot 78.9 percent (15-of-19) to forge a 33-29 lead.

Fourteen of  their 15 field goals in that quarter came off assists. It got them started on a 107-98 win that gave the Lakers a 1-0 lead in their first-round playoff series with the Houston Rockets.

"I got to do a little bit of everything," James said when it was done. "It's what the job requires."

Even now. Even at 41 years and 110 days of age.

Associations

 It was all over the news the other day that radio giant Bob Kevoian had died after a long battle with cancer, and right away I noticed the redbud was blooming and the grass had come in thick and green, and how there are days now, more than just one, when the mercury tilts past 75 degrees in the afternoons.

Weird, the associations your brain makes. They are visceral and textural and do not intersect in any sort of geometry known to mathematicians or academics.

And so when I heard the news about Bob Kevioan -- one half of the legendary "Bob & Tom Show" -- I didn't think of seventh-grade boy humor, or Chick andr Christy Lee, or Duke Tumatoe's latest update of "Lord Help Our Colts." No, sirree.

I thought that it's mid-April, and we're just a couple of weeks from May.

I thought it's only a handful of days now until the temple of American motorsports opens its gates again, and a century-plus of ghosts and memories and legend will echo again to the whine of racing engines. Alex Palou, Pato O'Ward and Josef Newgarden 'n' them will be adding to their own legends. They'll be running the infield road course, and, later, on Memorial Day weekend, it'll be "Gentlemen and ladies start your engines" and "Back Home Again In Indiana" and the flyover and 300,000 humans turning the Indianapolis Motor Speedway into a decent-sized city.

It'll be May, and the Indianapolis 500.

And where do Bob Kevoian and Tom Griswold fit into all this?

They'll provide the soundtrack (laugh track?) for the whole ancient spectacle, or at least the parody soundtrack. Who could forget "I'm Just A Mario"? Or "The 500 Song" by Heywood Banks? Or "A Song For Dick" by Tammy Whynot, in which a woman laments drawing Dick Simon (a perennial back-marker as a driver) in the annual 500 betting pool?

I got "Dick"-ed again,

I picked Dick to win ...

Ah, memories.

Deja lose all over again

 Time now to look in on LIV golf, which is, in fact, still going, despite rumors that it had become the sasquatch of golf tours -- i.e., occasionally glimpsed but never verified.

Well, forget that noise. Sasquatch lives. It's down there in Mexico City this week, playing in front of a gallery of dozens and somewhere in the tangled wilderness of cable/streaming service TV.

It is, as the saying goes, not dead yet. But it's definitely made out the will and checked into hospice.

This upon the news that the Saudi group who threw truckloads of money at mid-list golfers apparently have decided continuing to do so is not a wise investment strategy. So it's looking for an exit strategy.

To those of us with longer memories than most, this does not surprise, because we've seen it before. It's deja lose all over again.

In other words, it's time to re-acquaint ourselves with the Chicago Fire, the Philadelphia Bell and the Birmingham Americans, among others.

They were teams in the World Football League, brainchild of a man named Gary Davidson, who was instrumental in launching the American Basketball Association and the World Hockey League. The ABA and WHA were ultimately successful enough to put three or four of their teams into the NBA and NHL. Davidson figured the WFL could do the same with the NFL.

And so, like the Saudis with LIV golf 49 years before them, Davidson and Co. decided to open the cashbox back in 1974. Like LIV with the PGA, they shoveled mountains of green at both established NFL stars and not-so-established NFL stars. Like LIV, they ... well, overspent, shall we say.

The Memphis Southmen raided the Miami Dolphins for Larry Csonka, Jim Kiick and Paul Warfield. Calvin Hill and Craig Morton signed with Hawaii and Houston, respectively. Ken Stabler signed with the Americans, and Daryle Lamonica with the Southern California Sun.

Eventually, the WFL claimed to have 60 NFL players under contract. Most of those, however, were future contracts; Stabler and Lamonica, for instance, weren't committed to play for the Americans and the Sun until the 1975 season. Ditto Csonka, Kiick and Warfield, who signed to play in '75 for the then-outrageous sum of $3.5 million. But the WFL came apart at the seams midway through that season, all its lofty plans dying in a sea of red ink.

And now, LIV golf, which began with similar fanfare and hubris in 2023. The new tour gave Jon Rahm a reported $300 million to jump from the PGA after Rahm won the Masters. It signed then-53-year-old Phil Mickelson for $138 million, Brooks Koepka for $130 mill, Bryson DeChambeaut for $125 mill and Dustin Johnson for $125 mill. It even gave a guy named Talor Gooch $70 mill to come to the LIV side.

Talor Gooch is 34 years old. He has a world ranking of 967. His lone PGA Tour victory came in 2021 at Sea Island, Ga., and, in 124 PGA events, he missed the cut 43 times.

But the Saudis paid him ginormous sums anyway. And for the money, Gooch and the others got to play in out-of-the-way places in what amounted to a glorified exhibition circuit: No cut, 54-hole events, guaranteed paychecks for everyone.

But down-market TV coverage, and down-market venues. No Augusta National. No Pinehurst No. 2. No Doral, Pebble Beach, etc., etc.

Little wonder the viewership numbers have been so miniscule.

Little wonder the moneymen are therefore thinking of bailing.

Little wonder that Gary Davidson, who's 91 years old these days, is no doubt shaking his head somewhere right now, and muttering, "Damn fools."

The weight of appearances, Part Deux

 Dianna Russini resigned from The Athletic this week, on account of she could no longer do her job as an NFL insider without some drooling hack on social media obsessing over her like a hormonal seventh-grade boy. 

Mike Vrabel, meanwhile did not resign as head coach of the New England Patriots, on account of he's the reigning NFL Coach of the Year and the supply chain tends to run thin in that area.

This should surprise absolutely no one.

It is, after all, the way of the world, and has been since Adam blamed Eve for that apple thing. In any unseemly -- or seemingly unseemly -- interaction between men and women, it's almost always the latter who take the hardest hits. The shame, not to say the consequences, are largely theirs. It's such a given after all these millennia the unfairness of it rarely elicits more than a shrug.

"Yeah, the woman loses her job and the man keeps his," is the prevailing sentiment. "And water is wet and fire is hot. What else is new?"

This is not to say there are never consequences for the guys, too, or that they don't occasionally get shown the street. But the second acts for them seem to come much more readily than for the woman in the (in)equation.

None of this, mind you, is to defend Russini or her judgment as a journalist. Whatever her relationship was with Vrabel -- and, listen, the assumption that she and Vrabel must have been knocking boots is merely that, an assumption -- it pretty clearly crossed the tricky line between source and buddy. And, fairly or unfairly, it was mostly Russini who had the most to lose by crossing it.

She was, or is, damn good at her job, after all. If credibility is the coin of the realm for a journalist, she had a truckload. And nowhere is that more valuable, for a woman, than in Sportsball World.

Neanderthals still roam freely there, after all, emboldened these days by the comeback of misogyny in this retrograde America of ours. And so occasionally they'll surface on the Great Intertoob Thingy wondering why these wimmin' are on their teevees talkin' about sports instead of, you know, in the kitchen makin' their man a sammich.

A hard dollar for sure, bucking that sort of headwind. When I came into the biz, for example, Melissa Ludtke of the New York Times was still suing to get into the locker room. Press boxes and sports departments were almost exclusively male. And very few of us wondered why that was so, or what it must have been like for the first women we encountered in those press boxes and sports departments.

Pretty damn lonely, I imagine. Pretty damn intimidating, too, what with all the whispers and innuendo that, when a woman ascended the newsroom ladder, it must have been because she slept with someone -- not because of her talent.

Now it's all these years later, I'm retired, and I can't count the number of talented women with whom it was my privilege to share press boxes and newsrooms. And yet, all these years later, some things never seem to change.

This fall, Mike Vrabel will be coaching the New England Patriots.

Diane Russini will be doing ... something. 

So it goes.

Cruds alert!*

 (*Well, sort of)

Baseball is a strange game.

It giveth, it taketh away, and, sometimes, it rains. Think about it.

"Hey, no fair stealing from Nuke LaLoosh!" you're saying now.

OK, OK. But I'm looking at what happened in the major leagues yesterday, and the weirdness jumped up and smacked me right in the gob.

Over here was Garrett Crochet of the Boston Red Sox, who finished second in the AL Cy Young voting last season but pitched more like Neil Young last night. And over here were my very own Pittsburgh Cruds, who are being disturbingly un-Cruddy at the moment.

Let's start with Crochet.

Who pitched a typical gem until, I don't know, his opening delivery against the Minnesota Twins, who lit him up like a Roman candle in a 13-6 bashing of the Bosox. In just an inning and two-thirds before manager Alex Cora mercifully removed his bullet-riddled remains, Crochet gave up 11 runs -- 10 earned -- and nine hits. He walked three, hit a batter, and had zero strikeouts for the first time in his 68 career starts.

In the first inning, Crochet gave up four hits on 31 pitches. In the second, he gave up seven more.

"Wow, Mr. Blob," you're saying now. "Have you ever seen anything like that before?"

Well as a matter of fact ...

Let's examine what the Cruds did last night.

What they did was rap out 16 hits and 16 runs in a 16-5 drubbing of the Washington Nationals, and now they're 10-6 and a game clear in the NL Central. And by "a game clear" I do not mean a game clear of their ancestral home in the division cellar.

No, sir. I mean a game clear of the Reds, the Brewers, the Cardinals and the Cubs. I mean they're in first place, with the second-best record in the entire National League as of this morning.

Paul Skenes is doing Paul Skenes things, giving up one hit and one run with six punch-outs in six innings last night. Leadoff hitter Oneal Cruz was 2-for-3, scored three runs and drove in three. Brandon Lowe (4-for-5, five RBI) and Brian Reynolds (3-for-4, four RBI) drove in nine runs between them, and five Pittsburghers collected at least two hits.

Too weird. Like, you know, Donald-Trump-as-Jesus weird.

And before you say anything, yes, I get it: It's only mid-April. Garrett Crochet, whose ERA is 7.58 right now, could win his next ten games and strike out eleventy-hundred batters in a row while doing it. My Cruds could remember who they are and begin an inexorable crawl toward the old last-place homestead. All things are possible in such an upside-down, inside-out universe.

I mean, when I looked at the standings this morning, I saw that the hideous Colorado Rockheads have already won six games, and are merely tied for last in the NL West with the San Francisco Giants. And the woeful Chicago What Sox, even though they're last in the AL Central as always, are actually playing .500 ball over their last ten games.

Not even Trump Jesus is that weird.

Portal, schmortal

 We're now officially a week into transfer portal season, and poor Scotty is busier than a one-legged Klingon in an arse-kicking contest. Guys are transporting down to New Planet U.'s surface so fast he's telling Captain Kirk the dilithium crystals are in danger of fusing, and wailing, in a mournful Scottish brogue, "I canna keep up, Captain!"*

(*Egregious, and horribly tortured, "Star Trek" analogy for today)

In more conventional terms, college hoopsters are zipping here, there and everywhere like there's no tomorrow. One prized portal-er is transferring to his fourth school in as many years. Alma mater, you say?

Alma Hardly Matters is more like it.

But you know where it still does matter?

Come on. Guess. This isn't that hard.

"Purdue?" you're saying now.

Ding-ding-ding!

Yes, Purdue University, where Matt Painter's Boilermakers just won 30 games and reached the Elite Eight with a team led by three seniors -- Braden Smith, Fletcher Loyer and Trey Kaufman-Renn -- who actually know the way to the student union. Stayed all four years, they did. Played in a national championship game. First Purdue players to do that since Rick Mount was filling it up from deep 57 years ago.

Know what else?

Those three seniors weren't outliers.

Comes now the news, see, that every one of Purdue's key returning players are actually, well, returning. Every ... single ... one.

 C.J. Cox, Gicarri Harris, Omer Mayer. Daniel Jacobsen, Raleigh Burgess, Jack Benter.  Maybe even Oscar Cluff if the NCAA grants him another year of eligibility, which doesn't seem likely at the moment.

Around them, Painter will add 2026 Indiana Mr. Basketball Luke Ertel. And the Ivy League Player of the Year, 6-foot-7 wing Caden Pierce from Princeton. And yet another 7-footer, Sinan Huan. And maybe a few other guys.

In other words, Painter will again have a roster cored by a pile of guys who won't have to wear nametags on the first day of practice. No, I don't know how he does it, other than building a culture to which young men want to buy in. Yes, it is as old-timey, here in the go-go-elsewhere 2020s, as peach baskets and canvas high tops.

"Yeah, but you can't win that way anymore," skeptics will say. "Or at least you won't be able to for long."

To which all the Blob will say is Painter's won 29, 29, 34, 24 and 30 games in the last five seasons doing it his way. So, you know, portal schmortal.

And ain't those peach baskets grand?

A Master(s) class

Okey-dokey, Smokey. Here's your assignment for today.

Imagine, if you can, that Rory McIlroy is not Rory McIlroy.

Imagine, instead, that he's Herb the claims adjuster, Mel the actuary or some other weekend warrior at Whispering Divots Golf Club And Breakfast Buffet.

Now imagine what Rory/Herb/Mel might have been thinking Saturday night, when he went to bed tied for the lead in the Masters at Augusta.

Oh, God. I just blew the largest 36-hole lead in Masters history, is one thing he might have been thinking.

I suck. Why do I suck? I don't know, but I suck, is another. 

I'm gonna get out there tomorrow, and I'm gonna choke. I'm gonna choke so bad that from now until eternity my picture will be next to the word "choke" in the dictionary, is yet another.

Except ...

Except Rory McIlroy is not Herb or Mel from Whispering Divots. So after blowing that six-stroke lead in the third round, he just went out and won another green jacket.

In so doing he became only the fourth man in history to win back-to-back Masters, joining some guy named Jack Nicklaus, and some other guy named Tiger Woods, and some other guy named Nick Faldo. Not a bad foursome to fill out.

Of course, Rory being Rory, ("I don't make it easy," he acknowledged), he didn't make it easy. He lost his piece of the lead two holes in, then regained it, then popped a double-bogey and a bogey to lose it again. Then he birdied a couple of holes, and suddenly he was leading at the turn.

After which he played Amen Corner in 2-under and the back nine in 1-under. Came to 18 with a two-shot lead, and -- after, of course, spraying his tee shot on 18 so far right it practically landed in Florida -- got it up and down for a tap-in bogey to seal it.

 This on a day when no one was quite good enough to catch him. Scottie Scheffler made a run but slid too many birdie putts past the jar and came up a stroke short. Collin Morikawa birdied five straight holes but was too far back and finished three strokes adrift. Ditto Tyrrell Hatton, who put up a glittering 66 but needed a 64 to tie.

Justin Rose, Russell Henley, Cam Young?

All had their moments. But not enough of them.

And so it was Rory again with a Master(s) class in composure, and with a final round eerily similar to last year's, when he kept taking the lead and giving it back and taking the lead again. Augusta used to torture him like that through all his long, dry years there. Now it tortures him just for old times' sake before saying, "OK, I guess you can put the green jacket on now."

Which suggests the place is getting soft in its old age. Not that Rory or anyone else would say so.

The weight of appearances

 By now I have seen the photos, which hardly makes me special. I mean, by now, every living soul in America has seen the photos -- including the President of the United States, probably, who's no doubt whipping up some harebrained executive order about it at this very second. 

The photos are of New England Patriots coach Mike Vrabel and New York Times NFL reporter Dianna Russini, allegedly gettin' cozy at a resort in Sedona, Ariz. In one of them they appear to be holding hands. In another they're hugging. In yet another, they're lounging next to one another poolside.

The photos hit the Great Intertoob Oz five days ago. A millisecond later everyone was Bob Beamon-ing to conclusions.

Which is to say they were assuming, from the photos, that Vrabel and Russini -- both of whom are married with children to other people -- were having a smoking-hot affair. OMG, look, Martha. They're sitting side-by-side at the pool! They must be boinking the living daylights out of each other!

Well ...

Well, here's what I'll say about that: Sometimes appearances deceive.

Both Russini and Vrabel said the idea they're engaging in Forbidden Love is ridiculous, and for once the Blob (which normally consumes salacious gossip with a big ol' spoon) is inclined to believe them. That's because, in all three photos, you can't see what's just outside the frame. You can't tell if or how the photos might have been cropped for maximum innuendo-y effect. 

"Oh, come on, Mr. Blob," you're saying now. "Who would do THAT?"

Oh, I don't know. Paparazzi. Your Aunt Myrtle. The guy down the street who insists on cutting his grass at 7 o'clock in the morning; the other guy down the street who comes out of his house to threaten him with an epic beatdown.

In other words: Damn near everybody.

So, sure, the photos suggest a certain intimacy, and it's true Vrabel and Russini are close, a relationship that goes back to when Russini was an ESPN beat writer for the Tennessee Titans when Vrabel was the Titans' head coach. Both Vrabel and Russini, however, say they were at the resort with a whole group of people who hung out together. So there could have six or seven other people sitting with them poolside. Who knows?

What I do know is this: The weight of appearances is heavy, especially here in the Age of Gotcha. Which is why, for a journalist, there's always been a razor-thin line between cultivating sources and getting too chummy with them.

That is doubly true for women journalists, ancient sexist tropes being the stubborn creatures they are. And it is triply (triple-y?) true here in the 2020s, when the relationship between sporting events and the media entities that cover them is practically incestuous.

The SEC Network, for instance, is owned by ESPN. Fox owns 61 percent of the Big Ten Network. And so on, and so forth.

And so here are Russini and Vrabel caught, deceptively or not, on camera. And here is the New York Times benching Russini in one of its typically random spasms of journalistic integrity.  And here endeth the lesson:

Never get too close to your sources. Never cross that thin, thin line.

A "birdie" for the ages

 They're moving into the weekend down at Augusta National, and so far the defending Masters champ has everyone covered. Rory McIlroy is at 12-under after stacking a 65 atop an opening-round 67, and he's six shots clear of the field. That's the largest 36-hole in Masters history.

Which means he's either headed for an epic rout of the field, or an epic collapse. It's the Masters, so it could go either way.

And speaking of going either way ...

Let's talk about Robert MacIntyre, the most unruly Scotsman since William Wallace.

Rory's the story but Robert gave us the signature moment of the tournament so far as he was defacing the game in the first round Thursday. The No. 8 golfer in the world sprayed golf balls all over the Hallowed Grounds, shooting an 80 that ensured he would miss the cut.

But it was what he did on the par-five 15th hole that made him immortal.

What he did was, he took a gruesome quadruple bogey after finding water twice and then flying his next ball over the green. And then ...

And then, as he was fleeing the scene, he flipped off the 15th green.

Yes, that's right, sports fans. Showed that bleeping-bleep 15th his middle finger. Birdied the hole after quad-bogeying the hole, so to speak. 

This, it was reported, will likely earn MacIntyre some disciplinary action, because apparently you just can't go around flipping off landscaping, at least Augusta. The best part of that is the PGA said it would defer any punishment to the Masters folks, a notoriously humorless lot when it comes to the sanctity of their tournament and golf course. Which of course gets the Blob's notoriously irreverent mind imagining what that conversation will be like ...

Masters Official Howard Buckingham Prescott III: Flipping off Augusta National! Why, how DARE he! I say we pour honey on him and let the fire ants have at him.

Masters Official Wilbur McKenzie Portmandeau IV: But not on the course. After all, it gets defiled enough every year by the common people. And besides, FIRE ANTS? My God, they'll be EVERYWHERE. Perish the thought.

Masters Official Montague Marcus Aurelius V: Oh, there's no call for something so melodramatic, Howie. I say we simply banish the Scottish whelp from the grounds forever. And we instruct our security team to shoot him on sight if he so much as comes within two miles of Magnolia Lane."

Prescott: Just two miles, Monty? When did you get so soft? I say if he steps foot IN THE STATE OF GEORGIA again, it's hollow-point time for the haggis-sucker. Send him back to the old country in sandwich bags. I'm sure we could get the governor to sign off on that.

Portmandeau: Oh, my.

Aurelius: Oh, dear.

Prescott: Well, we have do SOMETHING radical, do we not? Otherwise before you know it people will be peeing in Rae's Creek and saying vile things about the Sarazen Bridge,  and calling the azaleas -- dear God -- "just a bunch of bleeping flowers."

Portmandeau and Aurelius (in horrified unison): No! Not THAT!

Braggin ri- oops

 Those Michigan Wolverines, they've sure been walkin' tall this week. A fan base that's never been accused of thinking too little of itself  has taken its swagger to even more obnoxious heights than usual.

Why, lookie here, America, they're saying. We just won March Madness! And lookie HERE! Our hockey team's ranked No. 1 and favored to win the Frozen Four this weekend! That's two ... two ... two nattys in one!

Or, you know, something like that.

Anyway, the UM backers have bragging rights, and by golly they've been exercisin' 'em. The champion of buckets, and presumed champion of hockey. All their Gretzkys had to do was brush aside troublesome Denver in the semis and then probably No. 2 North Dakota in the national championship game, and--

Oops.

Did I say "brush aside troublesome Denver"?

Well, forget that.

Forget that, because troublesome Denver, those plucky Pioneers, upset the mighty Wolverines in double overtime last night, 4-3. Kent Anderson netted the winner 7:29 into the second OT. Michigan pelted Denver goalie Johnny Hicks with 52 shots, and Hicks said "nuh-uh" to 49 of them. 

Now it's the Pioneers who are on to the title tilt, and -- what's this? -- it won't be North Dakota they'll be playing. The Fighting Hawks got kicked to the curb by underdog Wisconsin, so it'll be a 'dog fight for the championship.

And Michigan?

A refresher course in what happens when you get too full of yourself: Someone will always be there to stick a pin in you and let all that excess helium go whooshing out.

But, hey. You still got Dusty May, Yaxel Lendeborg 'n' them, Wolverines. So party on.

Tinkly pines of azaleas

 The Masters golf tournament began this morning down in Augusta, Ga., and, no, Scottie Scheffler hasn't won it yet. Neither has Bryson DeChambeau, Jon Rahm, Rory McIlroy or any of the other favorites among the twee golf set, who live for these four days like no other.

Me?

I think it'll be tinkly piano music over a Cathedral of Pines and a bed of azaleas in a playoff.

No golf tournament, with the possible exception of the Open when it's at St. Andrews, trades on its flora, fauna and geography like the Masters. It's a lovely place, Augusta, enhanced by all those beauty camera shots CBS puts up to shove the loveliness right down America's gullet. It is, to coin a phrase, Nature Unlike Any Other. 

Also History Unlike Any Other (although not really, considering the Open predates it by about 75 years). Also Self-Reverence Unlike Any Other, and Ritual Unlike Any Other, and -- the Blob's personal favorite -- Mayhem Unlike Any Other.

Weird stuff happens at the Masters, especially on the back nine on Sunday. Greg Norman blows a six-stroke lead. Rory McIlroy hits a ball onto the Butler Cabin's front porch, or nearly so. Drives sail into the pines; irons splash into Rae's Creek; green jackets go sailing off with the angels because, on Augusta's marble-top greens, Ricky Joe Farnsworth IV breathed too hard on a putt and sent it skittering a mile past the cup.

Either that, or Rory finally wins the thing and spends the next 15 minutes alternately weeping and laughing. 

That happened last year -- and, listen, if it didn't suck you in, you must have had a soul-ectomy somewhere along the line. It is, after all, the kind of drama that keeps you watching even though it's golf, and that separates the Masters from your weekly Citibank Mutual of Omaha Rubbermaid Open.

And, hey: There's always a chance Scottie Scheffler won't win.

Or Rory. Or Bryson DeChambeau. Or Jon Rahm. Or -- let's see -- Xander Schauffle, Justin Rose, Ludvig Aberg, Colin Morikawa, Viktor Hovland or Cameron Smith. Or even some random A. Bhatia or S. Im.

And speaking of random ...

I'm putting my dimes on Maverick McNealy.

He's a 30-year-old pro out of Stanford who's 41st on the PGA money list right now, and I'm not picking him just because his name is Maverick McNealy. OK, so, that's mostly why I'm picking him.

 I mean, come on: Has there ever been a better golfer name than Maverick McNealy?

You think Maverick McNealy, you think the suave, sashayin' jerk the hero must vanquish in a Dan Jenkins' golf novel. You think Shooter McGavin from "Happy Gilmore". Heck, you think Happy Gilmore.

Maverick McNealy!

Start sizin' him for that green jacket now. You heard it here first.

Hearing footsteps

 The person you most do not want to be today is named Kim Caldwell, who coaches women's basketball at the University of Tennessee. At least, you know, presently.

I say "presently", and also say Caldwell is the person you most do not want to be, because she is the new president of the Waiting For The Other Shoe To Drop Society. Or the Waiting For The Phone To Ring Society. Or the Hearing Footsteps Society.

See, it's not just that she coached one of the most illustrious programs in women's college buckets to levels of mediocrity not seen since the late, great Pat Summitt was driving the team bus and personally washing its uniforms half a century ago. It's because the program has all but deserted her.

Know what the Volunteers' roster looks like, on this eighth day of April?

It looks like incoming freshman Gabby Minus.

That's it. That's the entire roster right now.

Everyone else has either graduated, hit the transfer portal or -- in the case of  Oliviyah Edwards, the No. 2 recruit in the SC Next 100 class of 2026 -- requested a release from her national letter of intent. Every ... single ... one.

I don't know about you, but this would make me a trifle nervous about my future in Knoxville, if I were Kim Caldwell. After all, young women used to crawl over broken glass to play at Tennessee. Now they're fleeing Knoxville like it's in fire.

Now, losing your entire roster, it must be said, doesn't always mean Coach is about to get an anvil dropped on his or her head. Roster upheaval is just part of the landscape now in the age of the unrestricted transfer portal. No one, for instance, is thinking Darian DeVries occupies a hot seat at Indiana simply because another roster turnover seems imminent in Bloomington.

Of course, DeVries is still getting his feet under him, having just completed his first year at IU. Not even the delusional Hoosier fan base is calling for his scalp quite yet.

So you could argue it's a tad melodramatic to portray Caldwell, who just completed her second season in Knoxville, as dangling from a fraying rope. But it's harder to make that play after the season the Vols had in Caldwell's second crack at it.

A preseason top-ten pick, Tennessee went 16-14 and lost its last eight games. The Vols lost by 30 to former nemesis UConn in February, the second-worst loss in program history. They lost seven games by 15 or more points. One of those was a 76-61 first-round loss to North Carolina State in the NCAA Tournament.

It was only the third time in 44 years they'd lost in the first round of the Madness.

So, yeah. Maybe Kim Caldwell dangling from a fraying rope is not so melodramatic.

Nor is waiting for the other shoe to drop. Or waiting for the phone to ring. Or hearing footsteps.

A champion for these times

 The Michigan Wolverines are your NCAA men's basketball champions, and, listen, no carping from Statler and Waldorf up there in the peanut gallery. This is how it's done now, in the Transient Twenties. You can either get with the program, or continue to mourn the death of the set shot and basketballs with laces.

I say this because the Wolverines were sneered at in some quarters as store-bought, which wasn't entirely untrue. Almost all their key parts, after all, came from somewhere else: Aday Mara from UCLA; Elliot Cadeau from North Carolina; Morez Johnson Jr. from Illinois; and the piece that fused all the others from UAB.

That would be Yaxel Lendeborg, gimping around out there on a shaky knee he injured in Michigan's 18-point leveling of Arizona in the national semifinals. He scored 13 points in the title game but wasn't anywhere close to 100 percent -- which is probably why Michigan only beat UConn by six, 69-63.

But back to this store-bought business.

The rebuttal to that is, who isn't these days?

Yes, Michigan was a collection of vagabonds, but with few exceptions (cough, Purdue, cough) almost everyone is. Did Lendeborg, Mara, Johnson and Cadeau get NIL dough from Michigan's deep, deep pockets? Of course they did. Did they also transfer to Michigan because they were promised, and got, something they weren't getting elsewhere?

What do you think?

Look, even that paragon of the old school, Robert Montgomery Knight, didn't win his third and last natty until he broke his longstanding embargo on junior college transfers. And, yes, that's not quite the same, but in a way it's exactly the same. Because just as he wove JC transfers Keith Smart and Dean Garrett into the IU system in 1987, Dusty May -- a student manager in Knight's program way back when -- wove Mara, Johnson, Cadeau and Lendeborg into a cohesive whole 39 years later.

He took Lendeborg and made a first-round NBA pick out of him. He took Mara and Johnson, the two big men, and turned them loose. And he took Cadeau and standout freshman Trey McKenney and molded them into a devastating backcourt.

It was almost exactly the way Cori Close built UCLA into the juggernaut that won the women's title 24 hours earlier. Like May, Close had a pile of NIL money to spread around. And like May, she susequently built her team around two homegrowns -- Kiki Rice and Gabriela Jaquez --  and a core of transfers: Lauren Betts from Stanford, Gianna Kneepkens from Utah, Charlisse Leger-Walker from Washington State and Angela Dugalic from Oregon. 

 In other words, both Close and May took a lot of disparate pieces and figured out the best way to fit them together. And isn't that what every good coach at every good program has done since ... well, since there were laces on the basketballs?

And so raise a glass to the Wolverines, the best team in college basketball for a good part of the season and now its champion. They're the first Michigan team to win a natty since Glen Rice. Rumeal Robinson and Steve Fisher 37 years ago, and the first Big Ten team to win it all since Mateen Cleaves, Tom Izzo and Michigan State in 2000. 

Champions for those times, Fisher's Wolverines and Izzo's Spartans. And now, a champion for these times.

Bragging rights of a fashion

 UCLA's women utterly demolished a good South Carolina team yesterday to win the national championship, and good on the Bruins.

Good on Lauren Betts, the indomitable 6-7 center. Good on Gabriela Jaquez, who had the game of her life (21 points, 10 rebounds, five assists, one steal). Good on Kiki Rice and Gianna Kneepkens and Charlisse Leger-Walker, and head coach Cori Close, who at last grabbed the ring after 15 years in Westwood.

Their championship banner will fly now with all the others in Pauley Pavilion, and if there's any harmonic convergence in all that, it's that 10 of those banners hang there because of John Wooden. Who didn't win his first national title at UCLA until he'd been there for 15 years -- or, in Wooden's case, 16.

Of course, the Big Ten can't claim bragging right rights for any of Wooden's titles. It can, sort of, for Cori Close's.

In fact, if the Michigan men roll over UConn the way they did over Arizona the other day, the Big Ten will be able to claim utter dominance over college hoops, sort of. They'll have BOTH the men's and women's championships in their barn.

Sort of.

"Why do you keep saying 'sort of', Mr. Blob?" you're saying now.

Because ...

Well, because the Blob is old. And cranky. And stubborn. And doesn't hold with newfangled .... stuff.

See, nothing against UCLA, but in Blob World it's not a Big Ten school, even though it's a Big Ten school. Yes, technically, I suppose, the Big Ten can claim the women's title as its own. But to cranky stubborn geezers like me, no way, because UCLA will never be a real Big Ten school.

Neither will Oregon, Washington and USC, fellow refugees from the Pac-12. Or Rutgers. Or Maryland. Or even Nebraska, although the Cornhuskers at least fit the geographic and cultural footprint.

I know, I know. And nothing will ever be as good as Atari, Betamax and eight-track tapes, either.

But I can't help what I can't help, and I can't help thinking it's kind of cheating for the Big Ten to claim the women's title, and -- if what happens tonight is what I think will happen -- to lord it over everyone as King of Buckets. I mean, how can big an achievement is that, really, if  half the major schools in the country are Big Ten schools? The odds will always be in your favor, to quote "The Hunger Games."

"Wow, you're quoting 'The Hunger Games' now?" you're saying. "How modern of you."

Yeah, well. I'm not that much of an antique yet. At least occasionally.

This, however, is one of those occasions. On this, I'm as antique as your grandma's lace doilies. On this, I am hopelessly, irrevocably lost in the past.

Bragging rights for the Big Ten?

Of a fashion, it says here. But only of a fashion.

A vote for Mee-chigan

 Ah, those clever Wolverines of Michigan. They've got me painted into a corner, the rascals.

Last night in the national semifinals they disposed of the team I told everyone was the best still standing -- Arizona -- like the Wildcats were a used tissue. Led wire-to-wire, the Wolverines did. Led 10-1 2:26 in. Led by double digits at the 5:31 mark. Won by 18, 91-73.

It was Arizona's third loss of the season. Its other two were by four and three points, respectively. 

And so, on to the national championship game tomorrow night. And here's where Mee-chigan has me hog-tied.

Waiting for the Wolverines, you see, will be UConn, which held off Illinois 71-62 in the other semifinal. It will be the Huskies' third trip to the title game in four years. They scooped nattys in the other two.

I devoutly hope they don't scoop a third in 36 hours or so.

This is because the Huskies are coached by Dan Hurley, a terrific coach but also a singular asshat. Most of America agrees with me on that, I think. And so most of America, I think,  will be rooting for Michigan -- including me.

Which is the problem here. Because I've never been overly fond of Michigan, either.

I think they're snobby. I think they think they're better than everyone else, always going on about the Big House and what-not. I think maize is not a color, dammit. It's a vegetable.

And so when Michigan fans call it "maize-and-blue" when they're actually dressing in yellow-and-blue?

I think they just sound pretentious.

On the other hand ...

On the other hand, I really like their basketball team.

I like the way they play. I like the way their coach, Dusty May, coaches. I also like the fact he's NOT an asshat, but a classy guy with a great basketball mind and an ironclad work ethic.

Know where Dusty was during the first half of the UConn-Illinois semi, for instance?

He was sitting courtside like an ordinary Joe, scouting both teams. 

I like that.

I think focus like that deserves to be rewarded. I think not being an asshat deserves to be rewarded. I think, for one night, I can call yellow "maize."

OK. So, no.

I mean, there are limits. There just are.

The Zen of the sideline

  Saw Geno Auriemma and Dawn Staley holler at each other last night after Staley's South Carolina crew knocked Geno's UConn squad out of the women's Final Four, and, listen, boys and girls. I'm tellin' you right now you've got it all wrong.

You think Geno was acting like an ass because he was all mad his undefeated, defending national champion UConns got derailed on their presumed march to a second straight title.

You think Staley was acting like an ass because, by god, she wasn't gonna get yelled at without yelling back.

Nah, nah, nah. They were just practicing the Zen of the sideline.

They were just letting out all that emotion before it gave them an ulcer the size of Neptune. They were, as the saying goes, Releasing Stress. Nurturing Their Mental Health. Finding Inner Peace.

"'Finding inner peace'?" you're saying now. "What does a basketball coach behaving like a  platinum-grade jerk have to do with inner peace?"

Well, it's because you don't understand the Zen of the sideline. Which is different from your normal Zen. 

In your normal Zen, see, you find your center, your balance, through meditation and quiet reflection. In the Zen of the sideline, you find it by letting your inner asshat run free so it doesn't upset that center/balance. It's a pretty simple concept, really.

"So when Bob Knight threw the chair, he was in fact merely practicing this Zen of the sideline?" you're saying now.

Yes.

"And when Gene Keady used to get so upset he'd rip off his jacket and throw it on the floor, same deal?"

Yeppers.

"And when UConn men's coach Dan Hurley -- who's a total buttwad, by the way -- yells and screams like his diaper's wet, he's merely centering his balance or balancing his center or whatever?"

Indeed.

"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard, Mr. Blob."

Yeah, well. Whatever floats your boat, pilgrim.

Oops. I mean GO JUMP OFF A CLIFF YOU IGNORANT BLEEPING-BLEEP BLEEPING-BLEEPER!

Ah. Much better.

Cruds alert!*

(* -- i.e., not a normal Cruds alert.)

No, this Cruds alert is to alert you to the fact that Konnor Griffin, baseball's Next Great Superstar If My Pittsburgh Cruds Don't Screw Him Up, makes his MLB debut today in Pittsburgh's home opener. And I for one am extremely excited/extremely nervous.

I'm extremely excited because by all accounts Griffin, a shortstop who's still just 19 years old, could be the greatest Pirate since Roberto Clemente.

I'm extremely nervous because ... well, because he is a Pirate, aka a Crud.

Which of course means bad stuff could befall poor Konnor, catastrophic stuff, like forgetting how to play baseball. I don't think this will happen, but as someone who's followed my Cruds for the last 34 years of supreme Cruddiness, I never count my Ws until they're buried in an avalanche of Ls.

Or, you know, something like that.

In any event, Konnor Griffin is apparently the best prospect oldtimers have seen in years. He stands 6-foot-3 and weighs 222 pounds, and he can hit, hit with power, run, field and rescue puppies from fires. He went though A-ball and Double A last summer like a Kansas tornado (or rather, Mississippi, which is where he's from), batting .333 with 21 home runs and 65 stole bases in 122 games. And in five games this season Triple-A Indianapolis, all he's done is bat .438 with three doubles and three stolen bases in 21 plate appearances.

So, yes, we can hardly wait, we uncrushable Crud-ables. If Griffin's half what he's supposed to be, Primanti Bros. will name a sandwich after him. Yuengling will introduce a super-hoppy IPA in his honor. Konnor's Korner will become a thing, and even diehard Steeler fans will have to admit baseball might not be the wuss sport they thought it was.

Heck. With Konnor out there hittin', hittin' with power and stealin' bags, the Cruds might actually emerge from decades of Cruddiness and become the Pirates again, a real for-sure major league baseball team. 

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, Mr. Blob," you're saying now. "This Griffin dude may indeed prove to be Clemente with a dash of Pops Stargell and a pinch of Al Oliver, Manny Sanguillen and Rennie Stennett, but the same doofuses still run the show there. If they can trade him away for a sackful of magic beans, they will.

"I mean, we fear and loathe any mention of your stupid Cruds, as any sane person would. But let's not get carried away."

Sorry. Too late.

Blast(-off) from the past

Watched Artemis II rise into the heavens on a pillar of smoke and flame last night, and I was six-almost-seven again. Which is a nifty trick considering how far up in years I am these days.

It was the first rocket launch I've seen in eons, and it was on both TVs above the bar in my usual hang. And as I watched -- as everyone there watched -- that inner 6-year-old came roaring up from the depths, looking on with all the old wonder.

It wasn't 2026 anymore, suddenly. It was 1962, and the tech boys in mission control were saying "Godspeed, John Glenn," and the guy every 6-year-old in America wanted to be was riding a tin can into immortality.

Made three orbits, John Glenn did, while every system in the tin can slowly failed. When the heat shield warning started blaring, the tech boys decided to bring him down, hoping against hope the damn thing stayed on and Glenn didn't return to earth a cinder.

He didn't, of course. And a certain 6-year-old sitting in his living room on the southeast side of Fort Wayne became a gold-card space program fanboy.

I followed every launch after that, as the 6-year-old turned 7 and then 8 and finally 14. When Gordon Cooper made the last Mercury flight, I went out in the backyard to see if I could spot him flying over (I couldn't). I watched Ed White walk in space and Gemini 6 and 7 fly mere feet apart and Gemini 8 dock with the Agena (and then nearly kill Neil Armstrong and Dave Scott). 

White, Chaffee and Gus Grissom? Yeah, I was as shocked as anyone when they were killed in that Apollo 1 flash fire. Borman, Lovell and Anders? Damn straight I sat up late on Christmas Eve in '68 to watch the featureless gray of the moon's surface slide beneath Apollo 8, while the three of them read from the Book of Genesis.

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep ...

And then Frank Borman, giving the benediction: 

And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas -- and God bless all of you, all of you on the good Earth.

Seven months later, I stayed up late again to watch Neil Armstrong take that one small step for a man. Got deathly ill overnight. Underwent surgery the next day so the docs could yank out my hot appendix.

Needless to say I'll never forget Apollo 11. As if I would have anyway.

No, I'd remember Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins, and Alan Shepard, and Wally Schirra and  Malcom Scott Carpenter and Deke Slayton. And also the three Apollo 13 guys, Lovell, Swigert and Haise. And the crews of the Challenger and Columbia shuttles, God rest their souls, and now the crew of Artemis II.

Who are mission commander Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen.

Godspeed, gentlemen and lady. Godspeed.

Masters of decorum ...

 ... or, you know, snobbery. Depends how you look at it.

This upon the news the grand poobahs who run Augusta National, and the Masters golf tournament, have somewhat surprisingly given the OK to let wild man/famous-for-being-famous Jason Kelce on the premises next week as a broadcaster. Now, I can't be sure about this, but I'm guessing this means Kelce has signed a blood oath NOT to do the following things:

1. Take his shirt off.

2. Take his pants off.

3. Address the "patrons" as "My golf bros!" while taking his pants off.

4. Try to jump Rae's Creek in a golf cart while taking his pants off.

5. Smoke the azaleas.

6. Ride a Harley down Magnolia Lane and pop a wheelie in front of the clubhouse.

All of these might or might not be in Kelce's toolkit; past performance, at least in this case, does not guarantee future results. Certainly you'd have to lean hard on the latter, given Augusta's draconian rules about behavior within its gates.

The place has always had an almost comical reverence for itself, aided and abetted by the genuflection of its longtime broadcast partner CBS. By now you're as familiar with the CBS treatment as you are with breathing: The tinkly piano, the sunlight-through-the-pines camera shot, the soft-focus closeups of azaleas and immaculate greens and various other flora. And then of course the traditional benediction: The Masters ... A tradition unlike any other.

No one deviates from that script at Augusta, lest they be cast into outer darkness. Jack Whitaker once was banned from the premises for half a dozen years or so because he used the word "mob" to describe the patrons' mass pursuit of a certain golfer. And irreverent quipper Gary McCord was excommunicated for quipping, "I don't think they mow these greens, I think they bikini wax them."

Now, that's a funny line, and McCord likely could have gotten away with it at, say, the Greater Cheez Whiz Open. But not at Augusta, and not at the Masters. He might as well have unzipped and answered nature's call in the Cathedral of Pines.

("Good heavens!" you can imagine some green-jacketed Smedley Chesterfield III saying. "This McCord fellow is an utter barbarian. Why, we provide PLENTY of Port-a-Johns here for his sort. Someone ring the gendarmes and have him escorted from the premises. And not gently, by Jove!")

Anyway, Augusta is Augusta -- and so, as Michaleen Flynn said in "The Quiet Man," the proprieties at all times. Which means Jason Kelce signing his name in blood, presumably. And it means Pat McAfee, yapping little poodle of the airwaves, will once again be denied entrance, the poobahs having decided his show would desecrate the sacred grounds.

"We have attempted to be part of the Masters at the Wednesday Par-3 thing for three consecutive years now," McAfee said on his show the other day, according to the website Awful Announcing. "They told us to go to hell. So I think you should be happy about that, that they do try to preserve it as a whole. They have a certain thing that they are looking for."

And it ain't Pat McAfee in one of his vast collection of tank tops, obviously. Or, apparently, Jason Kelce poppin' wheelies.