An obscenity of riches

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

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

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

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

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

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

And last but hardly least:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Legendary

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

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

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

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

Cubs 8, Indians 7 in Game 7 in 2016.

And now ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So how did we get this place with Indiana?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fernando Mendoza, and Indiana football, in full flight.

And never coming down.

Da prediction

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

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

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

Unless Miami does.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Touchdown. Overtime. Bears wi-

Oops.

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

So much for narratives.

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

No. See: Third paragraph of this piece.

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

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

Meanwhile, in Assembly Hell ...

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

Well ...

That was a week or so ago.

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

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

And yesterday?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bills come due

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

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

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

And, speaking of "2" ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yes, he was.

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

Indeed.

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

Well ...

You would think so.

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

"This also applies to pass interference."

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

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

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

Prize appropriation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Construction paper and library paste are well represented.

Another milestone

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

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

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

Indiana football being accused of cheating.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Damn cheaters.

The enduring taint

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

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

The next year, they were something else entirely.

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

Worst part was, CCNY wasn't alone.

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

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

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

Unfortunately, the lesson had an expiration date.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Around and around the wheel goes.

Shrinking the Big Deal

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

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

Really?

Storming the court because you beat somebody ranked 14th?

How pathetic.

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

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

Except that's not North Carolina anymore.

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

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

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

Oh, and Stanford?

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

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

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

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

And so on, and so forth.

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

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

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

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

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

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

How you do it

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now?

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

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

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

Past as prologue

 The  big news out of golf right now -- it's January, so any news out of golf qualifies as big -- is that Brooks Koepka is coming back to the PGA fold, though with less folding money. Under the PGA's Returning Member Program, he'll be allowed back inside the ropes, but only after paying a hefty fine.

Koepka, who defected to the LIV golf "tour" in 2022, ponied up. And now he'll re-defect back to the PGA, having met the RMP's provisions -- that he'd been away from the PGA Tour for at least two years, and that he'd won the Players Championship or one of the four majors since he left.

So what does this mean?

I'll tell you what it means.

It means you can't spell "LIV" without "WHA."

It means the past is often prologue, and thus LIV golf is just the old World Hockey Association, which 50 years ago was the LIV golf of hockey. Like LIV, it was a breakaway league, only from the NHL instead of the PGA. Like LIV, it threw fistfuls of money at established stars to jump ship. And, like LIV, it turned out to be something less than the defectors expected.

In the WHA's case, it turned out to be an under-capitalized mess that thrived for a bit in some places, and never caught hold in others. The league made a big splash at the outset when it lured established stars such as Bobby Hull, Derek Sanderson, Gerry Cheevers and Bernie Parent, and it put "major league" hockey in places that had never before seen it:  Miami, Calgary, Dayton, O., and San Francisco, and later Indianapolis, Hartford, Conn., and Edmonton, Alberta. 

Alas, not all of those teams survived for long. Dayton and San Francisco, for instance, never made to the ice; before the inaugural season even began, Dayton became the Houston Aeros and San Francisco the Quebec Nordiques. The Calgary Broncos and Miami Screaming Eagles, on the other hand, wound up folding outright.

Eventually, after seven seasons, the league folded in 1979 with four teams -- Winnipeg, Quebec, the Edmonton Oilers and the Hartford Whalers -- being absorbed into the NHL. Of those four, only Winnipeg and Edmonton survive in their original form. The Whalers are now the Carolina Hurricanes, and the Quebec Nordiques became the Colorado Avalanche.

LIV golf hasn't gone that way yet. But the pattern does seem unnervingly familiar.

Like the WHA, it's not all it was cracked up to be; it's turned out to be a gussied-up exhibition tour, with 54-hole tournaments, no cut and guaranteed paychecks even if you play like Weekend Wilbur and snap-hook every ball you address.  Primarily an overseas tour -- Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Hong Kong, etc. -- its TV presence is negligible, and its American venues do not exactly wake up any echoes.

Chatham Hills in Westfield, In., for instance. The Cardinal at St. John's in Plymouth, Mich. Bayou Oaks in New Orleans' City Park.

All very nice venues, I'm sure. But close your eyes and it's 1972 Dayton, Calgary and Winnipeg all over again.

Now, admittedly, this is a lot to extrapolate from one guy coming back to the PGA Tour. But three other LIV golfers -- Bryson DeChambeau, Cameron Smith and Jon Rahm -- also meet the Returning Member Program requirements. So it's reasonable to think Brooks Koepka could be less an outrider than a groundbreaker.

In other words: Stay tuned.

Times and places

 I once heard a reporter in a press conference totally befuddle a young man named Major Harris.

The year was 1989, the occasion was the Fiesta Bowl, and Harris was the quarterback for West Virginia, who would go on to lose to Lou Holtz's Notre Dame legions to secure ND's last national championship. The question, if I recall (and, come on, it's been 37 years), came from a Pittsburgh newspaper reporter. It went something like this:

"Major, what percentage of the Notre Dame mystique will be a factor in the game?"

Harris looked at her like she had two heads.

"Uh ..." he replied, or words to that effect.

This is not how Jaguars head coach Liam Coen responded yesterday in the postgame presser after the Jags lost to the Bills in an wild-card playoff game

No, he merely grinned and said "Thank you, ma'am" when Lynn Jones of the Jacksonville Free Press asked ... well, OK, so it wasn't exactly a question.

What she said was this: "How you doing today, Lynn Jones, Jacksonville Free Press. I just want to tell you, congratulations on your success, young man. You hold your head up, alright? You guys have had a most magnificent season. You did a great job out there today. You just hold your head up, okay? Ladies and gentlemen, Duval, you the one. We got another season, okay? Take care, and much continued success to you and the entire team."

Now, I wasn't there, obviously. But I've sat in enough of these postgames (including the one at the aforementioned Fiesta Bowl) to imagine at least some others among the assembled media looked at one another and mouthed, "What the hell?"

Because, listen, there's such a thing as protocol in these affairs, and Jones' boosterish declaration violated it in any number of ways. One, she didn't ask a question (even a dumb one involving the Notre Dame mystique). Two, she DIDN'T ASK A QUESTION. And, three, even if there's a time and place to give a pep talk to a source (and I'm not sure there is), this wasn't it.

This was the time and place to ask what in the name of Tom Landry was Coach thinking when he dialed up a fullback dive on third-and-9. Or why he didn't take the gimme field goal when he came up short on fourth down inside the 10. Or why he stuck with the Cover Two even though the other team's QB1 was tearing large holes in it.

Look. I don't know Lynn Jones, so I can't tell you what she was thinking. But I know her job, because she's a columnist for the Free Press, and I did a little columnizing myself in my time. So I can say with some assurance (as Drew Lerner of Awful Announcing noted in his story on this) that the place for telling a coach what a magnificent job he did is in the column.  Not in the presser.

It's not that I don't understand that impulse, mind you. I do. More than once I felt for a coach or player in the wake of a tough loss, but I held my tongue. I didn't tell him (or her) to keep his/her head up. I didn't give him/her a sympathetic pat on the shoulder. I just asked my questions and moved on.

Maybe that meant I didn't get the best stuff sometimes, I don't know. Maybe keeping a professional distance wasn't always the way to go. But it was my way, and it served me well.

I do know one thing, though.

Lynn Jones' way is not the way to go. Never was. Never will be.

Cliffhanger Central

 Look, there has to be a name for them now. Has to be. They can't just be the Bears ... or Da Bearz ... or Da (Bleepity-Bleeping) Bearz.

So what do we call them, as Caleb Williams and his crew pull another one out of either the hat or a certain orifice? What do they answer to?

The Kardiac (as opposed to Kodiak) Bears?

The Windy City "Whew"s?

Or Chicago Med, because they've sent more of their fans to the ER this year than six Chicago dogs with extra peppers and a Malort chaser?

You tell me. You tell me after Chicago 31, Green Bay 27 last night, which was either an epic Packers choke (the Wisconsin version) or just another day of the week for the Bears (the Illinois version).

Seven times now this season the Bears have fallen down the well, which is about two more times than Timmy did on "Lassie." Seven times they've found a rope that conveniently seemed always to be there and clambered out.

The seventh time happened after the Bears went down 21-3 at halftime to their ancient rivals ... and after Packers quarterback Jordan Love kept picking them apart ... and after they kept going for it on fourth down and failing, which happened a staggering four times. It was as if Bears coach Ben Johnson's gambling old boss in Detroit, Dan "Call And Raise" Campbell, had pulled off some sort of alpha-male demon possession.

At any rate, it was still 21-6 heading to the fourth quarter, and the Bears looked expired. The Packers own 'em, the Pack's their daddy, all that noise.

And then ...

And then Super Caleb sprang from the phone booth, and the Bears followed.

Somehow, some way, they scored 25 points in the fourth quarter, and stole it right off the Packers' plate. D'Andre Swift ran for a score and Williams found Olimeade Zaccheaus for another score, and then threw to Colston Loveland for the two-point conversion. 

That pulled the Bears within three at 27-24. The Packers promptly missed a 44-yard field goal try -- a virtual gimme, these days -- and here came Super Caleb again, hitting DJ Moore from 25 yards out with 1:43 to play for the winning six.

Voila: Fifteen straight points in the last 6:36, at which point the Bears trailed 27-16. Seventh fourth-quarter comeback. Seventh win after trailing with two minutes to play.

And, oh, yeah: First playoff W for the Bears in 15 years.

Lovie Smith was still the coach then. Devin Hester was still running back kicks. Brian Urlacher was still terrorizing ballcarriers, and Jay Cutler was the surly quarterback.

Fifteen years along, Super Caleb fills that role, minus the surliness. And the Bears are headed to the second round, where they'll welcome either the Eagles or the Rams to Soldier Field -- aka Cliffhanger Central.

"I think it's our identity here at this point," Johnson said, when asked about all the fantastic finishes. "Some people say it's not sustainable. I don't know."

Or maybe he does. Wink, wink.

Hail to the conceivable, Part Deux

 Driving around with the radio on a smidge before 5:00 yesterday afternoon, and a high school basketball game was just about to start already. Nothing odd about that, persay. It was January, it was Friday night, it was Indiana. Of course there would be high school buckets in the high school buckets state.

But at 5 p.m.?

Once again, your Indiana football Hoosiers had given us something even the codgers among us had never seen before.

Not even IU basketball, after all, had ever pushed aside the high school version on a Friday night in January. That IU football would cause schools to shove back starting times and/or move their games off Friday altogether was ... well, as Wallace Shawn said in "The Princess Bride": Inconceivable!

And yet, it happened. IU was playing Oregon in the Peach Bowl for a berth in the CFP national championship game, and kickoff was scheduled for 7:30 p.m. So a girls-boys doubleheader between Northrop and Snider was tipping at the alien hour of 5 p.m. High school basketball, the holiest of Hoosier holies, moved aside.

Of course, we're way past the point where Curt Cignetti's Hoosiers made a ghost of the previously inconceivable. Roll unbeaten through the regular season? Conceivable. Beat No. 1 Ohio State in the Big Ten championship game? Conceivable. Destroy Alabama -- Alabama, for pity's sake -- in the Rose Bowl?

Conceivable.

And now we take you to Atlanta last night, the Peach Bowl, first play of the game against a smart, talented Oregon team whose only loss was to Indiana back in October.

Was that really D'Angelo Ponds picking Dante Moore and taking it to the house on the first snap of the game?

Conceivable.

The game wasn't over the moment Ponds danced across the goal line, but it might as well have been. The Hoosiers went on to score touchdowns on four straight  possessions, took a 35-7 lead into halftime, and led 42-7 before Oregon managed a couple of garbage-time scores. The final was 56-22, a lamination no one saw coming except, perhaps, Coach Cig and his guys.

And yet, there it was. The Hoosiers forced three turnovers and turned them into scores, while turning it over zero times themselves. Heisman Trophy winner Fernando Mendoza was ridiculous again, throwing more touchdown pass (5) than incompletions (3) for the second game in a row. He found four different Indiana receivers for scores, led by Elijah Sarratt's seven catches for 75 yards and two touchdowns.

And now ... onward.

To play for a national title. Against Miami in Miami. With a quarterback who can't seem to miss, and a wide receiver corps that runs impeccably precise routes and never drops a ball, and a defense that never lets opponents take an easy breath.

In two playoff games, that group has beaten Alabama and Oregon by a combined 69 points, outscoring them 94-25.

In two games, Mendoza has thrown eight touchdown passes, no interceptions and just five incompletions.

In two games, Sarratt has 11 catches for 115 yards and three scores.

Hail, America. Hail to the conceivable.

 

Da prediction

 Every day now people ask me what I think, usually people dressed in IU red this or IU red that. I tell them I don't know what to think. I'm tempted to add this is because thinking hurts when you get to be my age.

They ask anyway.

"So, what do you think? Indiana or Oregon?" they say.

"Beats me," I reply. "Besides, I'm almost always wrong about these things."

It's that "almost" that's hanging me up here.

See, Indiana-Oregon in the Peach Bowl tonight for a berth opposite Miami in the national championship game is one of those conventional wisdom deals, and so it ought to be an easy call. Conventional wisdom says it's hard -- damned hard -- to beat a really good football team twice in one season, and Oregon is a really good football team. Indiana beat the Ducks 30-20 in Eugene back in October, so ...

So, conventional wisdom says it's Oregon all the way. The Ducks have their own sideline wizard in Dan Lanning. They've got their own stud quarterback in Dante Moore. They've got athletes just like Indiana has athletes.

However ...

However, there is this: Indiana eats conventional wisdom for breakfast.

The Hoosiers, see, are as unconventional as they are undefeated, which is why some people still think they're a trick of the light. They've got a 64-year-old head coach who's now 25-2 in his first major-league job, and an OK quarterback who somehow morphed into a Heisman Trophy winner after transferring from Cal to IU. They're the unconventional wrapped in the improbable, these guys.

Which is maybe why last week they became the only team in the two-year history of the 12-team College Football Playoff to actually win its first-round game. This year, Georgia lost and Texas Tech lost and Ohio State lost. Indiana didn't just win, but paved lordly Alabama like an off-ramp, 38-3.

The Hoosiers were a machine in that game, their first Rose Bowl victory ever (and only their second trip to Pasadena). It was yet another convention-trashing moment for a school whose national perception still is skewed by a football lineage that is ... well, somewhat less regal than Alabama's.

Andnow  here we go again: In two years of the 12-team CFP, every rematch has gone to the team that lost the first meeting -- the latest, of course, being Ole Miss taking down Georgia in the Sugar Bowl after losing to the Bulldogs earlier in the season.

This bodes well for the Ducks, to reiterate. Or would, if they were playing anyone but Indiana.

Let's call it this way, then:

Indiana 30, Oregon 26.

And now ...

 ... allow us to introduce Indiana University's basketball team.

Did you even know Indiana University had a basketball team?

Well, it does. They've got uniforms and everything.

Oh, they're not the football team, these Dribblin' Hoosiers, and no one on the roster is as famous as Fernando Mendoza (who won the Heisman Trophy!), or the Baron of Bloomington himself, Coach Curt "Coach" Cignetti (who once ACTUALLY SMILED!). Heck, lots of people couldn't even tell you who the basketball coach is.

"Is it Coach Cig?" they ask.

Nah. It's this guy named Darian DeVries.

Who, don't look now, has a whole roster of new names runnin' and jumpn' and wearin' out the three-point arc, in case you haven't noticed. The Dribblin' Hoosiers shoot threes like they're about to be outlawed, if you must know. In 15 games so far this season, they've jacked up a shameless 435, which works out to 29 per game.

They're shootin' fools in other words. And, yeah, OK, so they're only making a touch over 36 percent from the arc; last night at Maryland, they got up 25 from Threeville but made just eight, or 32 percent.

Here's the thing, though: They won. On the road. By 18, 84-66.

It was the Hoosiers' fourth straight win since a 12-point loss to Kentucky just before Christmas, and now they're 12-3 overall and 3-1 in the Big Ten. Lamar Wilkerson led them with 24 points, including 16 straight at one point. They also got 19 from Tayton Conerway, 16 from Conor Enright and 15 off the bench from Reed Bailey.

And, yeah, I know. Unless you're still an obsessed Hoosier basketball fan, you've likely never heard of any of them, being all newbies. But they can play. And they can shoot. And when they make enough of 'em, they tend to overwhelm folks.

Like Maryland last night. Like Penn State, whom they swamped by 41, 113-72. Like Marquette (a 23-point win), Kansas State (a 17-point W) or Washington (90-80).

All told, the Dribblin' Hoosiers are averaging 85 points per game. That's way more than Coach Cig's boys scored against Alabama in the Rose Bowl -- although the 35-point lamination the Hoosiers laid on the Crimson Tide looked a lot like the Dribblin' Hoosiers vs. Penn State.

Saturday, those Hoosiers welcome unbeaten Nebraska to Assembly Hall. It'll be their sternest test of the Big Ten schedule to date. And you might actually hear something about it -- or not.

Coach Cig's boys, after all, take on Oregon in the Peach Bowl the night before. At stake is a berth in the national championship game.  And if the Hoosiers manage to serve up Duck L'Squash for the second time this season, the most insane sports story of the year will get even more insane.

And the next day?

The most quietly interesting sports story in Bloomington will have a chance to be a lot less quiet. And a lot more interesting.

A gamer goes

That must be one whale of a 0-0 save-fest they've got going on up in the Great Beyond right now, with the word coming down that Mr. Goalie himself has passed. Glenn Hall was 94 and follows by a few months the great (maybe the greatest) Ken Dryden, which means when the celestials choose up sides for pond hockey each gets a stud between the pipes.

Dryden, of course, owned the 1970s for the lordly Montreal Canadiens. Hall, on the other hand, made his rep with the less-than-lordly Chicago Black Hawks of the 1950s and early '60s, when you could set your watch by two things: That the sun would come up in the east every morning, and that Glenn Hall would be in goal for Chicago every night. 

Records are made to be broken, to lapse into cliche, but Hall holds one that likely will never be touched. For seven years, between 1955 and 1962, he started every game -- and with his bare face hanging out, because goalie masks were not yet a thing. 

Counting playoffs, he started 552 games in a row. That's 295 more than the guy in second place, Alec Connell of the original Ottawa Senators between 1924 and 1930. 

The man was a gamer, in other words. Even if he wasn't always rewarded for it.

In all his years fielding pucks aimed at his mug, after all, Hall hoisted the Stanley Cup only one time. That was in 1961, when he backstopped the Black Hawks to the Stanley Cup. Seven years later, he was in the net for the St. Louis Blues in another Cup Final, but the expansion Blues were swept by the Canadiens in the Cup Final.

Know what, though? 

In four games, Mr. Goalie gave up just 11 goals. He made so many kick-saves-and-a-beauty, in fact, he won the Conn Smythe Trophy as the playoff MVP anyway. At the time he was only the second player from a losing team to do that; all these years later, he's still only one of six.

Rarity was his thing, it seems. And not just for those few times someone managed to slip a puck past him.

Night of the sieve

 So, you think you had a bad day yesterday? You didn't have a bad day.

Jacob Markstrom, now, he had a bad day.

Markstrom, see, is the goaltender for the New Jersey Devils -- the spiritual descendant, as it were, of the great Martin Brodeur, who backstopped the Devils for years and years. Last night against the New York Islanders, however, he was more like the spiritual descendant of, say, Martin Short. 

Gave up all nine goals, Markstrom did, in a 9-0 obliteration. On just 24 attemps. The Islanders put two pucks behind him on their first two shots, and three on their first five. Enough biscuits went into Markstrom's basket to feed an impoverished nation for a month.

You go all hockey traditional and call him a sieve. But that would be an insult to sieves.

Not that his teammates were much better.

The Devils actually outshot the Isles 44-24, but still were somehow shut out. And just two nights before, they lost to Carolina when defenseman Luke Hughes put not one but two pucks in his own net. 

"I'm embarrassed of myself," Markstrom said, sounding the general theme in the postgame locker room.

I should say so.

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 18

 And now the last, final, this-is-it edition of the season of The NFL In So Many Words, the time-sensitive Blob feature of which critics have said, "Thank you, thank you, thank you, Lord!", and also, "Does 'time-sensitive' mean I can't hit you over the head with this giant clock?":

1. "Thank you, thank you, thank you, Lord!" (The Raiders, the Jets, the Browns, the Cardinals, the Giants et al)

2. "Thank you, thank you, thank you, Lord!" (Fans of the Raiders and Browns after they fired Pete Carroll and Kevin Stefanski, respectively)

3. "Thank you, thank you, thank you, Lord!" (Pete Carroll and Kevin Stefanski, presumably)

4. "Hey, look, you guys! We beat the Cowboys in an utterly meaningless game! Woo-hoo!" (The Giants)

5. "Hey, look, you guys! We won our last three utterly meaningless games after being eliminated from the playoffs!" (The Saints)

6. In other news, the Bears lost to the Lions but still clinched the No. 2 seed in the NFC because the Eagles rested everyone and lost to the Commanders; the Seahawks clinched the .top seed in the NFC by smothering the black-helmeted 49ers 13-3; and the Steelers missed an extra point but the Ravens retaliated by missing what would have been a game-winning field goal to hand Pittsburgh a playoff spot.

7. "Hey, look, you guys! We  beat the kinda-sorta Eagles! Woo-hoo!" (The Commanders)

8. "Hey, look, you guys! We're in the playoffs and we have ... OK, Aaron Rodgers is older than dirt, but still! Woo-hoo!" (The Steelers)

9. "Hey, look, you guys! We clinched the top seed in the NFC and we have ... OK, we only have Sam Darnold, but still!" (The Seahawks)

10. "Look like clowns, play like clowns." (The 49ers in those black helmets)

Sign of some very new times

 They're having a whole pile of fun down in Bloomington, In., these days, trying to figure out how IU football has gone from worst to first in just two short years, and if maybe it's all just a dream brought on by too many giant pork tenderloins from the Edinburgh Diner 50 miles to the north and east.

If it's a dream, don't wake 'em up. And if it's not ... well, here's a sign of some very new times in the kingdom of Hoosiers football:

The head coach is getting the full Secret Service treatment.

According to a very reliable source in B-town, there's now a university police car stationed at the turnoff to head coach Curt Cignetti's home, and more university police stationed outside the residence. They've been stationed there, my source has learned, since before the Hoosiers departed for the Rose Bowl.

Now, this suggests one of three things: Either it's standard procedure and always has been;  or Coach Cig has gotten a threat or two from some deranged Ohio State or Alabama fans; or the uniforms are there to keep equally deranged IU fans from knocking on Coach's door and expressing their appreciation.

If it's the second, my source noted, it indicates just how seismically the worm has turned in Bloomington.

"An IU football coach getting death threats," he said, chuckling. "I guess that means we've arrived."

Indeed.

Q's with few A's

 The Indianapolis Colts died trying again yesterday, this time falling 38-30 to the playoff-bound Houston Texans. It was their seventh straight loss to close out the 2025 season, which at one point held so much promise when Daniel Jones was ambulatory and the Colts were 8-2 and looking like the best team in the AFC.

And then ...

Well. We know all about "then", don't we?

First, Jones cracked his fibula, and then he tore his Achilles, and then Riley Leonard got hurt. With Anthony Richardson already on the shelf, the Colts had to call 44-year-old granddad Philip Rivers off his living room couch to play quarterback.

Rivers played like, I don't know, a 35-year-old, maybe, a minor miracle in itself. But the Colts lost all three games he started.

So yesterday they handed the car keys to Leonard, who played OK enough:  21-of-34, 270 yards, two touchdowns and a rating of 94. It was enough to convince at least some people in Indy media (i.e.: Indy Star columnist Gregg Doyel) he'd not only make a decent QB2, but maybe, in time, even a decent QB1. Which I suppose means hope springs eternal when you've just watched a good football team circle the drain thanks to a horribly unlucky run of injuries.

By the time the season ended under water at 8-9, after all, the Colts' injured-reserve room had become the hey-we've-got-no-more-room-in-here room. Guys were sitting in the lobby reading year-old Ligament Illustrateds waiting for a space to open up.

So what now?

Lots of questions. Not nearly enough answers.

First off, how soon will Daniel Jones be back, and in what condition? 

Depending on the latter, will he still be QB1?

If he's not, does the job devolve to Riley Leonard?

Because what are the Colts going to do with AR, whose eye injury has put his future in limbo? Has the hardest of hard-luck stories turned the last page in Indy?

Lots of Q's. Very few A's.

Here are some more: What about the draft? Will GM Chris Ballard screw it up again? (Though, to be fair, he did get the NFL's next great tight end in 2025). Will he even be around to screw it up? 

No doubt a healthy slice of the Colts fan base hope he won't be, given that in nine years he's produced zero division titles and just two playoff appearances. But all indications out of Indy are that the Irsay daughters will stand pat with both Ballard and head coach Shane Steichen, at least for one more year.

Which makes about as much sense as not.

If you're getting rid of Ballard, see, you have to get rid of Steichen, too, because the new GM is going to want his own guy in the big chair. And if you get rid of both, you're starting from scratch with a team that, to reiterate, was a damn good football team until all the injuries hit.

I'm not saying that's the logic at work here. I'm not even saying it is logic as we humans understand it. I'm just saying it sounds like the logic at work here.

In any case, dumping Ballard and Steichen may or may not be the answer to the Colts' core woes. That may lie elsewhere.

Me, I'd dump the medical staff first. Just a thought.

Chaos, lovely chaos

 A-portaling we will go ... a-portaling we will go ... heigh ho the dair-

Oops, sorry. Just trying to get with the zeitgeist here.

Just trying to sync up, to circle back, to embrace the culture, as the corporatists say. (Is that what they say?). In other words, I'm trying to become comfortable with utter chaos, which is what the transfer portal has brought to big-time college athletics now that every kid in America is shopping around for the mythic Better Situation -- or at least for enough NIL jack to buy himself that Maserati the well-heeled alums used to buy for him back in the olden days.

What's that?

Yes, I do carry on sometimes. And, yes, I do have a healthy complement of that old-man cynicism.

But it's hard not to be cynical when you look up and see that somewhere around 3,700 "student-athletes" entered the transfer portal Friday when it opened for business. Thirty-seven hundred. That's a lot of kids looking for somewhere else to land, and a lot of high-dollar programs carnival-barking to get them to land at dear old State U.

Quarterbacks? You say you're looking for a quarterback?

Well, step right up, because here are just a few who either entered the portal Friday or are expected to: Josh Hoover from TCU, Sam Leavitt from Arizona State, Dylan Raiola from Nebraska, DJ Lagway from Florida. Oh, and the big prize in this deal: Brendan Sorsby from Cincinnati.

Sorsby did not play in Cincinnati's 35-13 loss to Navy in the Liberty Bowl Friday night, having already decided to bail on the Bearcats after playing the last two seasons for them. Indiana fans might remember him from his time with the Hoosiers, for whom he played two seasons before bailing on them to go to Cincinnati.

Now he's on the market again, with 7,208 career passing yards and 82 touchdowns in tow. And let you think the Blob is picking on him, it should be noted he's no more itinerant than Raiola (who originally committed to Georgia, flipped to Nebraska, and now is flipping somewhere else after two seasons) or Leavitt (who played one season at Michigan State, portal-ed to Arizona State, and now is portal-ing somewhere else after two seasons).

It's a landscape of vagabonds now, in other words. Have endorsement dough, will travel. Need a QB who can throw a football over those mountains? Uncle Rico is yours for a song and a fat check from Subway, State Farm or Murray's Mercantile in downtown Hog Wallow.

And, listen, I'm not blaming the kids. For years, they were walking billboards for their schools' apparel deals and got zippo for it -- at least above the table. If they're now commanding serious NIL money instead of the fabled Thousand-Dollar Handshake, more power to them.

And the portal chaos that's resulted?

Not the kids' fault, either. They're just playing by the non-rules the NCAA unleashed by instituting all this without a plan. So that's on Charlie Baker and the gang.

Still, it is a strange new world. it is indeed.

 In the wake of Indiana's 38-3 paving of Alabama in the Rose Bowl, for instance, 'Bama predictably pissed and moaned and made all manner of hilarious excuses. None was more hilarious, or more revealing of what chaos has wrought, than this: One of the internet whiners complained that of course Indiana won, because the Hoosiers had a surfeit of fourth- and fifth-year juniors and seniors, 23- and 24-year-olds with a lot more experience and maturity. 

Which is to say, Indiana was exactly what good college football teams used to look like before all the portal-ing began. Go figure.

Or, you know, sync up, circle back, embrace the culture, as the case may be. 

A winter wonder-what-this-is land

 The New York Rangers beat the Florida Panthers 5-1 yesterday in the NHL's "Winter" Classic, and a good time was had by all. The game was played in the Florida Marlins' ballpark under sunny skies and temps in the low 70s, and, according to the ESPN account, "There was some artificial snow falling from the edges of the stadium ..

"A Southern setting (and) the ice was fine," Panthers coach Paul Maurice crowed. "The spectacle was incredible."

Well, that was his opinion.

Mine was more along the lines of, "Artificial snow? What in the name of  Eddie Shore are we doing here?"

A "Winter" Classic with fake snow, sunhats instead of toques (Canadian for "stocking cap") and shorts-and-flip-flops weather is not a Winter Classic, it says here. Although it might be the most NHL thing ever.

And, yeah, OK, so this is coming from one of those cranky old farts who go around saying "Consarn it!" and snarling about the designated hitter rule. I'll own that.  But if you're going to play a "Winter" Classic, it seems to me winter should somehow be involved.

After all, that was the whole idea behind an outdoor NHL game to begin with.

Originally it was about hockey reaching back to its roots, when kids in Canada and the northern tier of states learned the game playing on frozen ponds in freeze-your-nuts off weather. Your nose went numb and then your cheeks and eventually your feet, and the ice gradually turned powdery beneath your blades because no Zamboni's were available. That was hockey, by god.

And if it snowed?

Well. At least it was real.

Now, of course, the NHL has put a match to all of that. Now it's fake snow and banana daiquiris and board shorts, just as the NHL is now L.A. (which has itself hosted a "Winter" Classic, alas), and Tampa, and Dallas, and Charlotte. And, yes, Miami, home to the defending Stanley Cup champions.

Hence the NHL bringing the "Winter" Classic to a place that doesn't do winter. Hence a winter wonderland becoming a winter wonder-what-this-is land. And hence my suggestion that the Winter Classic never be played below the Mason-Dixon Line sounding laughably anachronistic.

That ship has sailed. I admit it.

I just wish it wasn't a cruise ship.

Hail to the conceivable

 So it's not inconceivable the Crimson Tide could pull the upset ...

-- Me, 24 hours ago

I was wrong. It was inconceivable.

-- Me, today

And, yes, yes, yes, YES, Indiana fans. Feel free to pile on.

I thought the Hoosiers were good enough to beat a three-loss Alabama team. I didn't think they were good enough (or Alabama bad enough) to turn the Crimson Tide into a chew toy.

I thought they'd win by five. They won by 35.

By 35?? And they said WE didn't belong in the playoff!

-- Tulane and James Madison, who lost by 31 and 17, respectively

Yes, indeed, you two. Gloat away.

But while you're gloating, contemplate what happened last night in the lee of those famous Shining San Gabriel Mountains. Indiana -- playing in its biggest game, well, ever -- was virtually flawless. It rushed for 215 yards, averaging 4.3 yards per carry, and held Alabama to 23 (1.4 ypc). It outgained the Crimson Tide 407 yards to 193, piled up twice as many first downs (22-11), won time of possession by almost nine minutes (34:21-25:39).

Heisman Trophy winner Fernando Mendoza, meanwhile, had more touchdown passes (3) than incompletions (2, in a 14-of-16 night). Kaelon Black ran for 99 yards and Roman Hemby for 89, averaging 6.6 and 4.9 yards per carry, respectively. And the Hoosiers had a virtually clean sheet on the infraction side: One penalty for 10 yards, and zero turnovers.

In other words, they were who they've been all season: A superbly focused, superbly prepared team that doesn't beat itself. 

That's why this one was over by halftime, when the Hoosiers led 17-0, and maybe even by the 10:49 mark of the second quarter, when Mendoza found Charlie Becker from 21 yards out to make it a 10-0 game. Indiana wasn't going to hand back those leads; Alabama would have to overcome them itself. And Alabama couldn't.

And so Indiana 38, 'Bama 3 at the finish. It was the first Rose Bowl win in Indiana football's less-than-decorous 138-year history, and its first bowl victory of any kind since the Hoosiers won the Copper Bowl 35 years ago.

38-3! I bet Paul Finebaum and the rest of the SEC shills are eating a big ol' plate of crow.

-- America

Are (chewing noises) not (more chewing noises)!

-- Paul Finebaum and the rest of the SEC shills, eating a big ol' plate of crow.

So what's next?

What's next is a rematch with Oregon, whom the Hoosiers beat by 10 in Eugene back in  October. If they repeat that performance, they'll be playing for the national championship against either 10th-seeded Miami, who knocked out 2-seed Ohio State on New Year's Eve in the Cotton Bowl, or six-seed Ole Miss, who upset 3-seed Georgia in the Sugar Bowl last night.

My prediction?

I'm not making any. Not yet.

Coward!

-- Indiana fans

That's conceivable.

-- Me

A Rose, with thorns

 Omens are dark and soulless things if you believe in them, but only if you believe in them. And right now, at the dawn of a new and probably even more insane year,  the Blob refuses to do so.

Which means I do not think Ohio State's flameout against Miami in the Cotton Bowl last night bodes anything in particular for Indiana in the Rose Bowl today.

The usual trolls were out in force this morning after the Hurricanes paved the Buckeyes 24-14, saying the Big Ten was overrated like they all said, and therefore undefeated and No. 1 Indiana is destined to go down to mighty three-loss Alabama of the mighty SEC. One internet creature even said the Buckeyes' loss convinced him to jack his prediction from Alabama by 10 to Alabama by 17.

Why? Well, because the Big Ten sucks and the Mighty SEC is a juggernaut juggenaut-ing its way over every other loser conference in college football.

The Blob is a firm non-believer in that doctrine. 

I'm a firm non-believer because the Big Ten has already whipped up on several SEC schools this bowl season, to begin with. And I'm a firm non-believer because the dynamics of every game hit different because every team in those games is different. 

Against Miami, for instance, the Buckeyes faced a team that could match them physically up front -- just as they did against Indiana in the Big Ten championship game. They also faced a team that, since being surprised by SMU on Nov. 1, had crushed everything in its path, outscoring its opponents 161-44. That included a first-round CFP silencing of Texas A&M, which came in averaging 34 points per game and managed just three in a 10-3 loss to the Hurricanes.

In their previous five games, the 'Canes had held opponents to a tick under nine points per. Ohio State's O-line, on the other hand, had been exposed by Indiana, which sacked Julian Sayin five times and registered nine tackles for loss. So it perhaps figured the Bucks were going to have trouble with Miami's voracious D.

The game this afternoon?

It says here Indiana should win, because the Hoosiers simply are objectively better. They also can run the football if they have to, and Alabama cannot. In its 34-24 win over Oklahoma in a first-round CFP game, the Crimson Tide scratched out just 28 yards on 25 carries. That's a robust 1.1 yards per attempt.

The Sooners, meanwhile, blew a 17-point lead, giving up 27 straight points and handing 'Bama some early Christmas gifts: A punt that was blocked, another punt that was fumbled, and a pick six. That sort of unraveling isn't likely to happen against Indiana, a profoundly focused team which rarely makes mistakes and never beats itself.  

This does not mean the Rose Bowl will be without thorns for the Hoosiers, however. It doesn't even mean they'll win, because Alabama has its usual complement of deluxe skill players. So it's not inconceivable the Crimson Tide could pull the upset and set the internet trolls to trolling again.

However ...

However, the Blob sees this in his murky crystal ball: Indiana 26, Alabama 21.

Onward.

Resolved

 (Interior monologue, 8:17 a.m., January 1, 2026 ...)

"You're not really gonna do this, are you?"

"Do what?"

"The whole New Year's resolution thing. Come on, say you're not."

"Well ..."

"Oh, please! It's the most lame, hackneyed, unoriginal bit ever! You're better than that! And you don't how it kills me to say so!"

"Yeah, but ..."

"Omigod. You ARE! You ARE going to do it! And I suppose you're also going to drag out your same old lame, hackneyed line about 2026 kicking 2025 out on its treacherous ass, too, aren't you?"

"Well ..."

Well. So here we are.

Mere hours after 2026 kicked 2025 out on its treacherous ass.

A time for sober reflection, for re-assessing, for taking the measure of things. A time for  looking back and ahead at the same time, like Linda Blair in "The Exorcist."

OK. So maybe not exactly like that.

Actually, it's more a time when we resolve to do better, to be the best version of ourselves, and all the other New Year's Day junk that sounds really noble until you come back from the gym on January 2 and resolve never to do that again. 

And for me, personally?

It means the following:

I resolve not to look at the Hunts leaving Arrowhead Stadium for new digs across the state line in Kansas, and wonder for the eleventy-hundredth time why the taxpayers are footing part of the bill (in this case, about $600 million of it) when the Hunts are worth $24.8 billion and can PAY FOR THE DAMN THING THEMSELVES, THE FREELOADING BAST-

Sorry. Got a trifle carried away there. I resolve to stop doing that.

I also resolve to not pull my hair out yet again over what a mess college sports are these days. The latest? Some 7-foot basketball player from Nigeria was granted college eligibility even though he was taken with the 31st pick in the 2023 NBA draft and has played pro ball in Europe the last five years. 

His name is James Nnaji, and he's headed to Baylor. Now, the NCAA has decreed that no player under contract to an NBA team will be allowed to do what they're allowing Nnaji to do. But the guy's still a pro, and so you know -- you just know -- that sooner or later some kid from overseas who's signed with an NBA team will lawyer up and challenge that inequity. And he'll win because it's the NCAA and the NCAA always loses these things.

And so pretty soon Luka Doncic will be suiting up for, I don't know, Purdue or someone, and Nikola Jokic and Victor Wembanyama will be squaring off for Duke and North Carolina, respectively.

I resolve not to scream and yell and throw things at the TV if that happens. And, yes, I already know that one's goin' down.

So what else do I resolve?

I resolve not to write about the impending Travis Kelce-Taylor Swift nuptials more than eleventy-hundred times -- unless, that is, Travis decides to play another year, in which case all bets are off.

I also resolve to not post stuff about my sorry-ass Pittsburgh Cruds baseball team more than eleventy-hundred times. Or have a T-shirt made that says "Free Paul Skenes" and wear it around all summer.

(Notice I said, "ALL summer." Loopholes are fun.)

I resolve not to grumble and make old-man noises about the NHL playing the outdoor 2026 Winter Classic in FREAKING MIAMI tomorrow. I mean, the only ice in Miami this time of year -- or any time of year, really -- is in a mojito. Playing the Winter Classic there is stupid beyond the galactic boundaries of stupidity. What will the teams' throwback unis be, board shorts and tank tops? Will Coppertone be a sponsor? Wil-

Aw, crap. I'm already grumbling and making old-man noises. Well, that resolution was never going to see another sunrise, anyway.

Same goes for any and all resolutions that involve the NFL's kickoff rules; baseball's extra-innings rules (and that proposed Golden At-Bat rule, ridiculousness cubed); MMA fights on the White House lawn;  President Fearless Leader's proposed Patriot Games, which sound vaguely creepy in a Hitler Youth Games sort of way; and (choose one) the Trump World Cup , the Trump World Series, the Trump Indianapolis 500, the Trump Super Bowl and the Trump Masters featuring Trump's Creek, Trump Amen Corner and the Trump Cathedral of Pines.

I resolve not to let my head explode over any of it.

Aw, crap. Too late.