Da Flubs

 Well, that was some kinda Creature Feature.

Your Chicago Cubs didn't get started in their wild-card opener against San Diego until 10 o'clock EDT last night, on account of it was out in San Diego. Which was good if you were a Cubs fan who struggles to make past 10:30 or 11 most nights, and bad if were a night-owl Cubs fan.

Remember back in the day, when one of your local TV stations always aired some ancient horror flick late on Saturday nights?

Every other week, or so it seemed, it was "The Blob," starring a young Steve McQueen. Last night it was also "The Blob," only it starred the Cubs, who mostly just sat there like ... well, like a blob.

Final score from the west coast: Padres 8, Cubs 0.

Number of hits managed by the northsiders, who led the majors in runs scored: Three.

Number of Cub strikeouts against Padres starter Michael King and the Pads bullpen: 11.

It was the first time in 132 seasons the Cubs had been shut out in a playoff game, and it was hardly what anyone expected from Pete Crow-Armstrong and Alex Bregman, or from Matt Busch and Seiya Suzuki, either. Those four, the top of the Cubs' order, were a robust 1-for-13 on the night. PCA and Bregman struck out five times between them. The Padres, on the other hand, raked Chicago pitching for 13 hits. 

All of this makes Game 2 of the three-game wild-card series a must-win for the Bearcubs, and maybe the urgency of the moment will cause their bats to awaken. And maybe pigs will fly, perform barrel rolls and land at O'Hare on slow days, too.

"That's just mean!" you're saying now. " Come on, have some faith!"

Well ... OK. But transforming Da Flubs back into the Da Cubs is gonna take some doing.

Gordie

 Gordon Johncock died yesterday in the full measure of 90 years, and there goes another piece of IndyCar's golden years. There was Gordie and A.J. and Mario and J.R. and Bobby and Al and luckless Lloyd Ruby, and don't forget  McCluskey and McElreath and Donohue and Dallenbach, too.

Those were the days, as someone once said. That was the cast that sucked in a skinny kid with Coke bottle glasses, and holds him fast to this day.

That kid was me, of course, who became an Indianapolis 500 nerd because of Gordie 'n' them, and remains one here in late autumn of my years. It is ridiculous, how cluttered my brain is with geeky morsels from that race and that time. And so I can tell you a few things about Gordon Johncock, gone now to his reward.

I can tell you he was the quiet one from the rookie class of 1965 at Indy, the one that contained Mario and Al and Joe Leonard and sports car star Masten Gregory, and six other rookies. Gordie was driving one of only three front-engine roadsters that year, as the rear-engine revolution reached flood tide. But he finished fifth, behind Jim Clark in his rear-engine Lotus Ford and Parnelli Jones in his rear-engine Kuzma-Lotus Ford and Mario in his rear-engine Brawner Ford and Al Miller in his rear-engine Lotus Ford.

The next year, Gordie was wheeling a rear-engine car, too, on his way to a 26-year career that would see him win 25 champ car races and the 1976 champ car title. Along the way, eight years after '65, he had the bad luck to win the 500 no one wants to remember.

That was the 57th running in 1973, which took three days to run because of rain, killed crewman Armando Teran and driver Swede Savage, and was finally put out of its misery by more rain after 133 laps. It was a pinnacle moment Johncock likely couldn't properly celebrate, because no one did. Everyone was just glad it was over.

Which makes 1982 a redemption of sorts for the little guy from Hastings, Mich., 35 miles northeast of Kalamazoo.

See, Gordie won the 500 that year, too, and this time it was memorable for all the right reasons. Who could forget the last 10 laps, when Rick Mears kept getting closer and closer while Gordie used every bit of his considerable skill to stay in front of him?

By the last lap, Mears was on him like white on rice, but somehow Gordie held him off. Took the checkers 0.16 seconds in front, the closest finish ever to that point.

I was there that day, weirdly, as a civilian, because usually I was there as a member of the working press. Across four decades, it was one of only two 500s I didn't cover for one newspaper or another.

What I remember, hazily, are those last ten laps, and how that distinctive Indy 500 surf-sound of the crowd got louder and louder with every one. Made me fall in love with Indy and the month of May all over again.

So thanks for that, Gordie. And for everything else of which you were a part.

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 3

 And now this week's edition of The NFL In So Many Words -- the multidimensional Blob that features time travel and teleporting, and of which critics have said "Can we go back to a time before you thought up this crap?", and also "Imma send you to another dimension with my fist, pal":

1. In Chicago, Case Keenum arrives from 2014, throws for two scores and runs for another, and helps the Bears pave the Eagles, 27-7.

2. "Hey, no fair! You can't add a guy from 2014 to your roster!" (The Eagles)

3. "Oh, yeah?" (Mike Singletary, who arrived from 1985 and made nine tackles for loss)

4. In other news, Drake Maye's doppelganger and Justin Herbert's doppelganger from an alternate universe where quarterbacks play like goofs continued to play like goofs. Maye threw three picks in the Patriots' 35-6 wipeout against the Jaguars, and Herbert threw a horrendous pick and the Bills dropped two others in the latter's 24-16 win over the Chargers.

5. "We're Brazil's Team!" (The Cowboys, teleported to Rio de Janeiro to play the Ravens)

6. "No, you're not!" (The Ravens, who won the Teleport Bowl on a last-second field goal)

7. "Hey, no fair! You can't add 2011 Aaron Rodgers to your roster!" (The Bengals, who lost 30-27 to the Steelers as Rodgers threw for 292 yards and three scores)

8. "I feel like I'm 27 again! Oh, wait I am!" (Aaron Rodgers, who's actually either 42, 57 or 65)

9. "Hey, no fair! How come we can't add 2011 Aaron Rodgers to OUR roster?" (The Packers, for whom 2011 Rodgers actually played, and who were trucked in Lambeau by the Falcons, 35-14)  

10.  "Woo-hoo! We're 2-1! Feels like we've been teleported back to '86, '87 or any number of other years when our hearts got curb-stomped!" (Browns fans) 

Observations

 Some cool stuff happened over a Sportsball-engorged weekend, and some not so cool stuff, and some frankly abominable stuff from the usual abominable suspects. Therefore the Blob will depart from its usual windy pontificating to offer some brief observations in a feature we'll call, cleverly, "Some Cool Stuff And Not So Cool Stuff And Frankly Abominable Stuff":

* In Detroit, my Pittsburgh No-Longer-Cruds-For-Now beat the Tigers yesterday, 4-2, thereby finishing the 2026 season 82-80. It's the former Cruds' first winning season in eight years, and they also finished third in the NL Central for the first time in a decade.

So here at the Blob, we don't care if you don't care. Raise a cheer anyway, losers.

* Also in Detroit ... on Saturday, when Justin Verlander's young daughter escorted him off the mound after his last game, and the plate umpire saluted him, if your throat didn't get tight you have no soul.

* Desman Stephens II's brutal hit on a sliding Dante Moore in Saturday's USC-Oregon was not the most egregious thing about the whole incident. Seen in real time, Moore slid late and Stephens was already committed. This doesn't mean it wasn't a cheap shot and Stephens didn't deserve his ejection; it only means football at that level is played at warp speed, and so you can understand (well, I can, anyway) how hits like that happen sometimes.

No, what was egregious was Stephens celebrating the hit while Moore lay unconscious and twitching on the field. And USC coach Lincoln Riley not on only not stopping him, but allowing Stephens to remain on sidelines. A real football coach would have banished him to the locker room for the rest of the afternoon.

(Postscript: To his credit, Riley did announce Sunday he was suspending Stephens for one game. Maybe he came to his senses, or the viral blowback from the incident forced his hand.)

* Congratulations, or something, to the Colorado Rockheads, king of baseball's Cruds for the second year in a row. The 'Heads finished 58-104, a comfortable 42 games out of first in the NL West, and four full games ahead of MLB's next Cruddiest team, the Los Angeles Mange-els. It was the fourth straight season Colorado has lost at least 100 games.

So "Huzzah!" to the Mile High Defile.

* In golf news, Team USA came from way back to win its 11th straight President's Cup, beating the International team 17-13. The Americans won nine of the 12 singles matches Sunday, an historic beatdown witnessed by President Donald John "Get My Good Side" Trump, who was on hand to present the trophy.

The President was so excited he immediately signed an executive order to rename it the America's Cup, thereby honking off yacht racers everywhere. Then he grabbed the trophy and ran off with it to his waiting motorcade.

(OK, so he didn't either of those things. But you know he wanted to.)

* And speaking of our Fearless Leader ...

Word came down over the weekend that his Regime is looking into building a ballpark somewhere in Grand Teton National Park, at the request of Major League Baseball. Apparently Fearless Leader 'n' them think this would be a lovely idea, on account of there's nothing they like better than pissing on nature.

Those of us who do not enjoy that pastime would prefer MLB commish Rob Manfred -- who put this benighted idea in F.L.'s head -- be taken on a scouting trip to the Tetons, smeared with honey and left in the path of a grizzly.

"The claws!" Manfred screamed. "Oh, God, the CLAWS!" ...

Beautiful.

The glorious unknowable

 Script? We don't need no stinking script!

-- From "Treasure of the Sierra Madre," almost

What makes college football the best kind of football happened in several places this week, but mostly in Ann Arbor, Mich., and State College, Pa., and Gainesville, Fla. Oh, and Los Angeles, Calif., and Baton Rouge, La., too.

Call it the glorious unknowable, for want of a better term. Plus a healthy disdain for scripts.

But first, how about some John Lennon?

Instant karma's gonna get you

Gonna knock you right on the head ...

Which brings us back to Ann Arbor, and also L.A.

In the former, your Michigan Wolverines had another Big House win all wrapped up in a neat bow, and then they didn't. They were leading 19-14, and the visiting Iowa Hawkeyes had jumped offside on a crucial fourth-and-inches and then missed the subsequent field goal attempt. Now they had the ball on their own 10-yard line or so with not quite two orbits of the clock left.

So of course they marched right down the field and -- on the last play of the game, as the final two seconds drained away -- scored a touchdown to steal it off UM's plate, 20-19. 

So how does John Lennon figure into this?

Because a few weeks back, Michigan stole one off Western Michigan's plate because the Wolverines got a do-over on their own throw into the end zone. The game clock showed zeroes, but the game officials -- who were not, contrary to rumor, the same zebras who gave the Soviets three chances to beat the Americans in the 1972 Olympic basketball final -- decided zero wasn't really zero. So Michigan, given a reprieve, stuck the landing this time to win the game.

A lot of people outside of Ann Arbor didn't think that was fair. Thus a lot of people thought Iowa stealing one in the last second was, you know, instant karma.

Meanwhile, out in L.A., the USC Trojans got a helping of instant karma, too. After a brutal late hit sent Oregon quarterback Dante Moore to the hospital in an ambulance, the incensed Ducks commenced pounding lumps on the home team. Backup QB Dylan Raiola came in, threw for 289 yards and two scores, and No. 20 Oregon, up 13-10 at the time, outscored No. 12 USC 28-17 the rest of the way in a 41-27 rump-roasting. Quack-quack.

And speaking of rump-roastings ...

Here came Trinidad Chambliss and No. 4 Ole Miss into Gainesville still enjoying the afterglow of last week's emotional win over LSU, and the Florida Gators said "Afterglow this, b*tches," or something similar. They turned loose running backs Jadan Baugh and Duke Clark, trampled Ole Miss with 302 rushing yards, and swamped the Rebels in the Swamp, 52-28.

And have we mentioned yet what happened in State College?

Penn State was all over Wisconsin as expected, because, what, you thought the Badgers were going to win in a place where they hadn't won since 2002? Heck, they hadn't beaten the Nittany Lions anywhere in 15 years. So when Penn State went up 17-0, everyone figured it was just more of the same.

But then quarterback Colton Joseph started throwing, and the Badgers defense got prickly, and Wisky outscored the No. 13 Nittany Lions 24-3 the rest of the way, including a 72-yard Joseph touchdown pass with 1:13 remaining. 

Meanwhile, Minnesota took the long roadie out to Seattle, jumped out 24-10 on the Washington Huskies, and held on for a 27-24 win.

Also meanwhile, LSU, still smarting from last week's loss at Ole Miss, came back home to poleax Texas A&M 35-6 in what was supposed to be one Saturday's marquee matchups.

"Script? We don't need no stinking script!" LSU coach Lane Kiffin said when it was done.

OK, so he didn't say that. But you get the idea.

Boiler ... something

 Your Purdue Boilermakers welcome Notre Dame to Ross-Ade today for the traditional rivalry game/ritual sacrifice, and maybe we'll find out if they're actually new and improved or if they're still just Purdue. There have been hints so far the former might be true, but ND will be the measuring stick.

The Irish, after all, are undefeated, ranked ranked third in the nation and, except for one "meh" half, have mostly cruised so far. They've also dropped 122 points on the Boilers in their last two meetings.

Two years ago, it was 66-7. Last year, it was 56-30. 

Today?

Well, today, we're looking at a result closer to last year than the year before, by all indications. Which is to say, in three games the Purdues have hinted that they have another of those Quarterback U. quarterbacks (Ryan Browne), and a pretty good running back with a marvelous name (Fame Ijeboi), and more athletes at more positions than they've had in awhile.

Unfortunately, most of them seem to be on the offensive side of the ball. Also unfortunately, they can't seem to shake the inclination to Purdue it up on occasion.

The latter is why the Boilers come to today's tilt 1-2 instead of 2-1, because two weeks ago they flat out gave one away to Wake Forest. Had a six-point lead and Wake backed up fourth-and-15 in the second overtime, only to surrender the first down because they unaccountably chose to play a soft cover instead of bringing the kind of pressure that had put the Demon Deacons in fourth-and-15 to begin with.

Two plays later, Wake scored. Then the Deacons made the two-point conversion for the walk-off win.

So instead of 2-0, the Boilers were 1-1 heading out to the Rose Bowl last week to take on UCLA. But, hey, look at this: They put up 38 points and 488 total yards against the Bruins, with Browne looking very Quarterback U-ish: 19-of-30 passing, 378 yards and three touchdowns. Ijeboi added two more sixes on the ground.

However ...

However, UCLA scored 56 points. Piled up 645 yards. Rushed for 369 yards and averaged a yawning 7.7 yards per carry. Hogged the football for a shade over 36 minutes to just under 24 minutes for Purdue.

Most disturbing part of that: UCLA was flagged 12 times for 103 yards in penalties. Which makes you wonder how many points the Bruins could have scored had they not been quite so sloppy.

It also pretty much erases the notion that the Boilers could pull off the shocking upset today, as they famously have on several occasions in this ancient series. 

 No, sir. I'm thinking 56-30, Notre Dame, gets it about right. 

In which case, "Boiler up" will continue to be "Boiler ... something."

The first superstar

 Saw on the news the other day that Bob Pettit passed, and it's OK if you don't know the name. He may have been the NBA's first superstar, but no superstar has ever been more cursed by his time and his circumstance than the 6-9 backbone of the old St. Louis Hawks.

Pettit died in his native Louisiana at the full-to-the-top age of 93, but back when the world was young no one in the still-infant NBA could stop him. He was Jordan and LeBron and Kareem and Bird all in one, and he did MJ and LeBron and Kareem and Bird things.

A star at LSU, he played 11 seasons in the NBA , was an All-Star in every one, and was the All-Star game MVP a record four times. In 1956, he was the league's first Most Valuable Player. And in 1958, in Game Six of the NBA Finals, he scored 50 points to beat Red Auerbach and the Boston Celtics and clinch the Hawks' only title.

No one scored 50 points in a game those days, long before the advent of the three-ball and the NBA's current addiction to it. That was an MJ sort of deal. It was a Kobe or Steph or even a Shai Gilgeous-Alexander sort of deal.

All of whose names you know, of course. But maybe not Bob Pettit's.

That's because he played his entire career in a small Midwestern market before ESPN, before FS1, before Apple TV and Prime and Peacock and all those choke-a-horse TV deals.  Before the NBA went global. Back when even the NFL was an afterthought.

So he toiled mostly in obscurity, and that's a damn shame. Because by the time Bob Pettit retired after the 1964-65 season, he was the NBA's all-time leader in points with 20,880. He was second in rebounds with 12,849. For his career, he averaged 26.2 points and 16.2 boards and was the first big man to play a good share of the time facing the basket.

In other words, for his time, he was a singular talent. The problem was his time was not this time, or even the time when he retired. Because by the time he took his bows in '65, the nation was starting to notice the pro game -- largely, of course, because of Red Auerbach's Celtics.

Bob Pettit never got in on that, playing when he did and where he did. More's the pity.

Chicago ... Chicago ...

 ... that toddlin' town ...

And now you're saying this: "'Toddlin'?' 'Toddlin'?' What the heck does that even mean, Mr. Blob?" 

Hell if I know. Hey, I didn't write the song. But that's the song, so stop whinging and nitpicking and just sing it loud and proud, OK?

Sing it loud and proud, because yesterday, the Chicago Cubs clinched a playoff spot with a W over the woeful Miami Marlins. Also yesterday -- on the EXACT SAME DAY -- the Chicago White Sox clinched a playoff spot, too, with a W over the woeful Kansas City Royals.

You know how many times both Chicago baseball teams have made the playoffs, in all of the long and mythology-spangled history of our once-upon-a-time national game?

Three times. And they never clinched on the same day.

First time it happened was in 1906, when the southsiders upset the northsiders in an all-Chi World Series. It was an entire century plus two years before it happened again, in 2008. And then it happened again in the Covid-shortened 2020 season.

And speaking of the White Sox in particular ...

Know how many times a team coming off back-to-back-to-back 100-loss seasons has made the playoffs?

Not once. Not ever. Not even when the Brooklyn Eckfords were tooling up on the New York Mutuals or something back in the 1860s.

The Pale Hose lost 106 games in 2023, but they were just getting started. In 2024, they lost more games than any team in the history of the modern game, going 41-121 and finishing an astounding 51 1/2 games out of first in the AL Central. They followed that with 102 losses last season.

So three years, 329 losses. But this season?

Well, the Sox are 82-77, one game behind the first-place Cleveland Guardians in the AL Central heading into the last weekend of the season. So it's conceivable -- not probable, but conceivable -- they could win or tie for the division title, one year after finishing dead last, 28 games out of first.

In 2025, the southsiders won 61 games. At 82 heading into the weekend, they're already 21 games better than they were a year ago -- and an astounding 41 better than just two years ago.

A 41-game improvement in two seasons? Last place by 51 1/2 games to the playoffs? Who does that?

Your Chicago White Sox, that's who. In like Flynn with their northside rivals.

Toddlin' town, indeed.

Cruds alert!*

 (*Not really)

We're in the last week of the regular season in Major League Baseball season, and exciting news, fans of a team none of you care about: The Pittsburgh Not-Really-Cruds-Anymore Cruds at NOT going to finish last in the NL Central this season.

No way, Vandelay. With five games left in the season, they're four games up on the fourth-place Cardinals and seven games up on the cellar-occupyin' Reds. It'll take a collapse of Cruddian proportions for them not to finish third in the division.

Third in the division! And you thought they were doomed when Paul Skenes unaccountably lost his mojo this summer.

(And, no, I don't know why Skenes suddenly became ordinary. I don't know why Pittsburgh immortal Steve Blass suddenly couldn't throw a strike, either, six months after pitching the Buccos to the 1971 World Series championship. Pitchers are just weird.)

Anyway, the Cruds are no longer Cruds, but good honest Pirates again. And you know something else?

"No, and we don't want to," you're saying now.

Well, TOO BAD. Imma tell you anyway.

With five games to go, the Bucs are three games north of .500. This means (once again absent a major fold job) they're going to finish with a winning record for the first time in eight years.

Last time it happened was in 2018, when they went 82-79 and wound up fourth in the Central. It's been a full decade since they finished higher than that; they were third in 2016.

And now?

Third again. Probably.

Makes me want to pull my Roberto Clemente jersey out of the closet and slip that puppy on. Yessir.

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 2

 And now this week's edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the excruciatingly formulaic Blob feature of which critics have said "God, this is so excruciating!", and also "Formulaic? I got your formulaic right here, pal":

1. "God, this is so excruciating!" (Commanders quarterback Jayden Daniels, after going down with a dislocated elbow)

2. "Ditto!" (Bears quarterback Caleb Williams, after going down with a hamstring injury)

3. "Ditto!" (Giants quarterback Jaxson Dart, after going down with a sprained meniscus)

4. "Hey, what about me?" (Colts wide receiver Alec Pierce, who injured his left heel and is expected to miss several weeks)

5. Meanwhile, A-Aron Rodgers!

6. Did not get hurt. He and the Steelers merely got paved by the Patriots and Drake Maye -- who did not get hurt, either, and better yet did not throw three picks again.

7. In other news, the Ravens lost to the Saints, the Eagles barely survived the Titans and the Browns beat the Buccaneers in Tampa.

8. "What th--?" (Ravens fans)

 9. "Expletive, expletive, what th--!" (Eagles fans)

10. "Oh, come ON! The BROWNS??" (Buc fans)

A tale of two ... weeks

 So remember this time last week, when folks in Chicago were saying "Daaang, these boys are gooood," and folks in Indianapolis were saying "Daaang, these boys are baaaad"?

We thought we were SO SMART. We thought, one game into a season that lasts until judgment trump, that Da Bearz were gonna go through the NFC North like poop through a goose. And we thought the AFC South was gonna go through the Colts like ... well, the same.

See what happened yesterday?

The Bears lost at home to the Minnesota Vikings, 9-3, and Caleb Williams popped a hammy. Seven days after turning the end zone into a campground -- Fifty-nine points! Are you KIDDING me? -- they couldn't find the end zone with search planes and a GPS. Six City became the Forbidden City. It was the starship Enterprise with its shields up.

 And that was before Williams went down like a shot on a scramble. Which didn't happen until there were, what, six minutes or so to play?

So they went roughly 54 of the 60 minutes with their star quarterback pulling the trigger, and instead of 59 points, they generated one lousy field goal. How does that happen?

"Because the Vikings are really, really good?" you're saying now.

Come on. They beat the Bears with Carson Wentz, for pity's sake. Try again.

"Well, it was raining and all," you're saying.

In other words, it was Bear Weather. Try again.

"Weeell ..."

Well, nothing. This was a football team that looked like the king of the world a week ago looking like Dennis the Peasant from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail." From the Lady of the Lake holding aloft Excalibur to a watery tart throwing swords in seven short days.

(If you don't get the latter, look up the Dennis the Peasant scene online. It's my favorite.)

Anyway, the whole business should remind us that in the NFL, it's always Not For Long, as Jerry Glanville used to say. Fifty-nine points one week become one lonely field goal the next. One week you're the windshield; one week you're the bug.

And speaking of bugs ...

Here's another example of the NFL's capriciousness: Your Indianapolis Colts.

Who last week got so smooshed by the windshield -- i.e., the visiting Baltimore Ravens -- the home fans were booing them before the first quarter was over. The offense was "meh," putting up 23 points and 251 yards. The defense looked like Larry, Curley, Moe ) and eight other guys who couldn't tackle Lamar Jackson.

Final score: Ravens 41, Colts 23. The ugly details: Lamar 'n' them racked 506 total yards and almost eight yards per play. The equally ugly conclusion: Eight-and-nine, here we come again.

Exactly one week later, I turned on my TV and saw DeForrest Buckner sacking Patrick Mahomes.

"What th-?" I said, along with most of America.

"What th-?",, indeed. The same team that was so odiferous in Lucas Oil Stadium last week was in Arrowhead, giving Chiefs Kingdom all it wanted. The Horsies didn't win, of course -- come on, that would have been too much even for the NFL -- but it took overtime for Mahomes and the Chiefs to finally put them away, 33-30.

"Does this mean the Colts are NOT looking at another 8-9 season?" you're saying now.

No, it doesn't mean that at all. After all, the same names -- Chris Ballard and Shane Steichen -- are still at the top, even though Colts owner Carlie Irsay-Gordon has put them on double secret probation. There are still 15 games for them to start breaking stuff again.

"But is it possible they could make the playoffs for the first time since 2020?" you're saying.

Sure, it's possible. It was also possible Dr. Jack Miller the Racing Dentist could have won the Indianapolis 500 back in the day. But probable?

Well. After last week and this week in Chicago and Indy, I'd say all bets are off on that one. And on pretty much every other one, too. 

In the meantime ...

Let's see what happens this week. 

And the week after that.

And all the weeks after that.

Fight night!

 Hardly anyone was watching, one presumes, but the best fight of the night Saturday did not happen in the octagon or a boxing ring or even on various football fields in various college towns across America.

No, it happened in Bristol, Tenn. Where NASCAR ran the annual Bristol night race while America was watching Ole Miss beat LSU and Notre Dame tool up on Michigan State.

 What happened was Carson Hocevar and Ryan Blaney were going around and around, and then Hocevar either got under Blaney or Blaney came down on Hocevar (opinions vary). At which point Hocevar turned Ryan into the wall with the classic Bristol Tap on his left rear quarter panel.

Not long thereafter Blaney came after Hocevar in the pits, and they threw down. Well, Hocevar did, anyway. 

Seriously, check this out. That's some straight-up Mike Tyson/Joe Frazier stuff right there.

And, sure, lots of people think Hocevar is is a punk-ass b**** and Blaney's a solid citizen who was raised right, which means the good guy didn't win this time. However ...

However, Blaney's been around the barn a few times, and that includes Bristol. So he should know as well as anyone that what happened Saturday night wasn't a particularly glaring bit of villainy. It was just Bristol.

The Bristol Tap? Shoot, Dale Earnhardt pulled that stunt a million times. Ditto countless others. You squeeze 43 cars into that small a space, people are gonna run into each other, sometimes deliberately and sometimes not.

Hocevar swears it was the latter. The proper response to that is "Sure, Jan."

(Gratuitous "Brady Bunch" reference)

And Blaney?

He just caught the wrong end of it this time. In more ways than one.

Hotty Toddy ...

 ... and all that jazz.

Final score from Oxford, Miss., where The Grove broiled under a merciless September sun until it gave way to hectic, sweaty night: Ole Miss 32, Lane Kiffin 24.

Wait, did I say "Lane Kiffin"?

I meant LSU, of course. Although you might have been forgiven for thinking otherwise.

You might have been forgiven because The Return of the Prodigal Son (known in some quarters around Oxford as "The Return of the Prodigal S***head") was the storyline to Ole Miss-LSU, whose rich history of football enmity became merely garnish for the main course this time around. This time it was all about LSU coach Lane Kiffin, last seen winging away from Oxford on an LSU charter, trailing less-than-good wishes behind him.

It wasn't that Kiffin grabbed for the cash. Lots of coaches do that (hello, Brian Kelly, who fled Notre Dame for LSU under similar circumstances). It's that he strung Ole Miss along, then high-tailed it for Baton Rouge while acting like the injured party because Ole Miss wouldn't let him stay and coach the Rebels in their bowl game. 

This was cheeky even for Kiffin, a notoriously cheeky sort. And this was on top of the fact he poached several of Ole Miss players on his way out the door, and took most of his Ole Miss staff with him.

So this really was brother-vs.-brother Saturday night, a familiar theme in the heart of the old Confederacy. And what happened?

An endless rain of boos. A few catcalls, vulgar and otherwise. A guy waving a facsimile corn dog with Kiffin's face on it.

And one hell of a football game.

Ole Miss jetted out to leads of 17-0 and 24-7, and then here came LSU. Tied it at 24, finally, in the fourth quarter -- after which the splendid Trinidad Chambliss ran and passed the Rebels right back down the field, scoring the winning touchdown on a 14-yard dash to the pylon with 6:14 to play.

So was it over? Heck, no it wasn't over.

LSU's equally splendid Sam Leavitt immediately ran and passed his guys 69 yards the other way, and there the Tigers were, camped on the Ole Miss 6-yard line. But Leavitt couldn't close the deal, missing tight end Zach Grace at the goal line on third down and bouncing a fourth-down pass off the helmet of Ole Miss defensive end Kam Franklin.

The football settled obediently in the hand of defensive back Jaylon Braxton in the end zone, and the thing was done.

Ole Miss 32. LSU 24.

Trinidad Chambliss, surely the biggest man on the Ole Miss campus now since William Faulkner, was 33-of-48 passing for 363 yards and two scores. Sam Leavitt threw for 158 yards and once score and ran for 63 yards and another. And Lane Kiffin, gracious in defeat, professed to be glad the whole ordeal was over.

"I'm sure I'll be criticized for saying that (Editor's note: He wasn't), but, yeah, I am," Kiffin said in the postgame. "I was thinking that all week, especially today, and I would have said that in a win or a loss ... It was just really a lot of emotions of gratefulness for this place and the six years. It went well beyond football."

It did. And then sweltering night fell, and the lights came up, and, blessedly, football was all that was left.

Today in live sacrifices

 Today your Kent State Golden Flashes make the cross-state trip to Columbus, O., and one can only hope they didn't check the scores from last night first. You want to have your mind right when you're the Christian and the lions are waiting.

Which is to say, didja see what happened out in Eugene, Ore., last night?

The Portland State Vikings, in the Christian role, got swallowed whole by the Oregon Ducks, who portrayed the Lions.

The final score was Ducks/Lions 84, Vikings/Christians (now there's an interesting juxtaposition) 0. And raise your hand if you didn't see that coming. 

See, Oregon was coming off that shocking upset at unranked Oklahoma State, which dropped the Ducks from No. 6 to No. 21 in the polls. Portland State likely thought "Uh-oh" when it saw that. This is because Oregon is still Oregon, and Portland State is ... well, not. And not only that, but now Oregon was undoubtedly a pissed-off Oregon.

This could not have filled the Portlands with confidence, given that they're a humble Big Sky Conference school who were an equally-humble 1-11 last season. In fact, if it weren't an insult to their competitive spirit, you can imagine the following exchange after last week:

Coach: OK, men, big challenge next week against Oregon, which you know of course just lost to unranked Oklahoma State. Who's ready for a pissed-off Oregon team?

Players: Uhhhh ...

Coach: Oh, come on! This is what anyone with a competitive spirit lives for!

Players: Uhhhh ...

One Brave Soul Among The Players: Coach, can't we just call in sick?

Anyway, they came, they saw, they were eaten, the Portlands. And now Kent State's got to be wondering if a similar gruesome fate awaits it.

Just like Oregon last week, after all, the Ohio State Buckeyes suffered a galling defeat last week. The top-ranked Buckeyes had the No. 4 Texas Longhorns 'Horn-swoggled, leading 23-3 after three quarters and looking much the better team. And then ...

And then the Buckeyes ran out of gas, or something, and Arch Manning and the Longhorns zoomed past them like Dale Earnhardt lapping a back-marker. After lollygagging (or mostly just gagging) for three quarters, they outscored the Buckeyes 21-0 in the fourth to pull out a crushing 24-23 win.

"What th-?" every Ohio State fan said, when they were done throwing snacks at their 100-inch TV screens.

And now?

Now Kent State, a humble Mid-American Conference school that was a humble 5-7 last season, gets the no-longer-No.-1 Buckeyes, who likely spent most of this week figuratively throwing snacks at their own TV screens. Kent State is 1-1, having beaten Wofford after getting rolled 57-0 by South Carolina. And South Carolina isn't Ohio State.

Especially not a pissed-off Ohio State.

Someone light a candle for the Golden Flashes. Compassion demands it.

Game of the week

 Tomorrow night Ole Miss welcomes LSU for their traditional Saturday Night Lights  throwdown, and apparently the only question is the choice of weapons. Will the Tigers and Rebels choose broadswords, battle axes or pistols at 20 paces?

This on account of there likely will be an Extreme Venom Alert, on account of LSU's head coach and incorrigible asshat Lane Kiffin was coaching Ole Miss a year ago. Then LSU threw a pile of green at him to jump ship, and Lane-o did, with unbecoming haste. Took a few Ole Miss players with him, too, just to twist the knife.

And speaking of twisting the knife .. Kiffin being Kiffin, after he fled Oxford he couldn't resist flapping his gums about how it was harder to recruit black players to Ole Miss because blacks didn't feel as welcome there.

Never let it be said Ol' Motormouth has trouble locating someone's hot button.

Ole Miss, of course, was where they used to greet football visitors with a forest of Confederate battle flags and full-throated renditions of "Dixie." It's also where the student body practically started Civil War The Sequel because a black student -- James Meredith, perhaps you remember the name -- wanted to enroll there.

All of that was a long time ago, of course, and a few things have changed at Ole Miss since. The majority of the football players are black now, including star quarterback Trinidad Chambliss.  The student body, 100 percent white back in the James Meredith days, is roughly 13 percent black. And the Confederate flags, blessedly, are long gone.

But race is still a sensitive subject in Oxford and surrounding precincts. So it was an on-target cheap shot from Kiffin, not to say some impressive ingratitude from a guy Ole Miss paid $9 million last year to coach its football team.

Anyway, Kiffin comes back to Vaught-Hemingway Stadium tomorrow night, and an ancient rivalry likely will be even more rivalry-er than usual. In fact Ole Miss is calling in extra mounted police to keep the hooliganism to a minimum.

Game of the week for sure in college football. Don't forget the snacks.

Gotcha-ed

 Look, I should know better. OK? I should.

I should know better than to cruise social media certain weeks. I know the level of idiocy, always flirting with the red line, will reach critical mass then. And I know it will frost my cookies, even though I acknowledge frosting the public's cookies is the overarching purpose of social media.

It exists to mine outrage, almost all of it phony. To annoy. To make you splutter, "Why, that's the stupidest thing I ever heard!"

Which is what a lot of social media cruisers spluttered when they saw what a couple of  fools named Jason Whitlock and Laura Ingraham had to say about sideline reporter Holly Rowe after Texas coach Steven Sarkisian blew her off in the wake of the Longhorns' win over Ohio State.

They made her the bad guy, is what they did. 

Whitlock, a former sportswriter transformed by some inner furies into a raging make-me-a-sandwich misogynist, said Rowe was trying to "destroy the patriarchy" and "invade male spaces."  This of course was news to those of us who just thought she was a veteran (and well-respected) reporter doing her job. 

But then, Whitlock used to be a semi-respected reporter, too. Now he's just another insecure male ranting in the online wilds about how all these damn women are ruining America for, you know, men.

And Ingraham, Fox harpy extraordinaire?

You know what you're gonna get from her, too. And so, right on cue, she sided with Arch Manning after the little goof laughed about all the AI memes featuring Rowe and Sarkisian -- particularly the one where Sarkisinian knocks her flat with a backhand slap.

"Have y'all seen that?" the little goof said to reporters this week. "That's a good one. Of him slapping Holly Rowe? It's hilarious."

(The worst part about that? Some of the reporters laughed, too. Oh, yeah, tee-hee, ha-ha, someone AI-ed a video of a woman getting slapped, that's a real knee slapper. Not one of those reporters, apparently, had either the good sense or common decency to say, "Hey, Arch, that's not funny." But then there's no accounting for how some folks were raised.)

Anyway, a day or so later the little goof apologized. I'm guessing this was preceded by a stern phone call from Papa Manning -- Cooper, Peyton's and Eli's brother -- reminding Arch that there was an accounting for how he was raised, and by God you're gonna apologize, mister, and I mean RIGHT NOW.

Ingraham, of course, thought Arch had nothing to apologize for, to get back to the no-accounting-for-how-some-folks-were-raised thing. In fact she blamed Rowe for somehow "extracting" the apology from the poor lad -- which was so ridiculous that, sure enough, it made me splutter "Why, that's the stupidest thing I ever heard!"

And now here I am, writing about it, giving these fools more oxygen -- which of course is exactly what they were after. Gotcha, Blob Boy.

I should know better. I really should.

Stupid geography

The world was too ridiculous to even bother to live in.

-- Jack Crabb, "Little Big Man"

Boy howdy there, Mr. Crabb. You sure hit that one on the noggin.

The world is too ridiculous to live in these days, and it's getting ridiculous-er by the day. We got us basketball players (Kyrie Irving) who think the Earth is flat, and football players (Aaron Rodgers) who think America's pre-eminent epidemiologist is Josef Mengele. And we got us hysterical (or cynical) politicians who tell us Commies and Muslims are trying to take over America and make us all buy crappy Soviet-era cars and pray to Mohammed five times a day.

And that's not even mentioning the senile old fart in the White House, who picks fights with Canada, of all people, and shut down the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts because he refused to renovate it unless they stuck his name on it, too.

Also, he says he'll pay us all $5,000 if the Republicans win in November. Which sure sounds to me like bribing folks to vote Republican, but what do I know.

Oh, yes: And he likes renaming stuff he can't really rename.

Which brings us today's Stupid Geography Trick, which is the Cleveland city council voting to rename a large swatch of Lake Erie the Gulf of Cleveland. Now, apparently this was all very tongue-in-cheek, a splendid trolling of El Presidente by the council. Sort of like, "You know how absurd it is to rename international bodies of water you have no authority to rename? Watch THIS."

In any case, it's yet more fodder for the Blob's seventh-grade-boy sense of humor ...

Q: What did the part of Lake Erie designated for renaming say when it found out?

A: "The Gulf of CLEVELAND?? Aw, HELL, no!"

I got a million of 'em, I tell ya.

Here's another one: If Lake Ontario is Lake America now, and part of Lake Erie is the Gulf of Cleveland, what's our next geographical snatch-and-grab? The senile old fart already has his eye on both Niagara Falls, or so the story goes. And if we can steal Canada's falls for our own, the sky (soon to be renamed "The American Sky") would seem to be the limit.

President Trump: I hereby sign an executive order to rename the Canadian Yukon the "AmeriKon."

President Trump again: I hereby sign an executive order to rename Greenland "Ours," and Iceland "Ours, Too," and Venezuela "You Damn Right It's Ours."

Also President Trump: And from now on, Nova Scotia, whatever that is, will be known as BOSSA Nova Scotia here in the U.S. And the "Montreal Canadiens" will be called the "Montreal Boom Shakalakas" because "Canadiens" sounds French, and really woke, besides.

A million of 'em, I'm tellin' ya. A million of 'em.

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 1

 And now, like the swallows to Capistrano or the mosquitos to, well, pretty much everywhere, the perennial return of The NFL In So Many Words, the Blob feature of which John McEnroe said "You CANNOT be SERIOUS!", and Margie in "Fargo" said "Just throwin' up here.":

1. "You CANNOT be SERIOUS!" (Green Bay fans, after the Packers blew another double-digit lead, gave up 29 unanswered points and lost to the Vikings. The Vikings, for pity's sake!)

2. "Just throwin' up here." (Cowboys, Colts, Browns, Rams, Panthers fans)

3. "You CANNOT  be SERIOUS!" (Panthers fans again, after Carolina gave up 59 points to the Bears)

4. "Arrrgh! Sixty points and I woulda won a free Big Mac!" (Bears fans)

5. Meanwhile, the Chiefs!

6. Kicked the Broncos around like a beanbag on Monday Night Football.

7. "Ha! Told ya I wasn't dead! You said I was dead! Well, I'm not! So phooey on you!" (Patrick Mahomes, who threw for two scores and ran for another in the 31-10 Chiefs win)

8. "Ha! I caught a long pass! Told ya I wasn't washed! Marrying Tay-Tay didn't ruin me after all, so nyah nyah nyah-nyah nyah!" (Travis Kelce, who caught three balls for 71 yards)

9. "Daaaang. We just lost to Drew Lock!" (The Patriots, after Seattle won the Super Bowl rematch with their backup Lock after losing Sam Darnold in the first quarter)

10. "Daaaang. Australia's, like, really, really far away!" (The Rams, after getting jet-lagged in Melbourne by the 49ers -- who, unlike the Rams, flew down a week early to acclimate themselves)

Historical shenanigans

 God love that Eli Drinkwitz. He's the football coach at the University of Missouri, and even though I've got no dog in that hunt, I'll root for the Tigers every time because that dude has his business together.

For example, hear what happened over the weekend at the Missouri-Kansas Border War game?

Some meatheads in Lawrence decided to engage in historical shenanigans to hype the big game.

Rolled out a video, the meatheads did, about all the Bleeding Kansas stuff that foreshadowed the bloodiest, most tragic four years in American history, when Missouri vigilantes invaded Kansas and sacked Lawrence (home of KU) and murdered a bunch of abolitionists, and John Brown and his boys murdered a bunch of anti-abolitionists in retaliation. It was not a happy time for either state.

But Kansas being a free state and Missouri a slave state at the time, KU decided it would be way cool to dredge it up 170 years after the fact, under the heading "Heroes vs. Villains."

Nice.

Not that Drinkwitz thought so.

After the game, he said, rightly, that it was weird and stupid and in exceedingly poor taste, especially given it was the 25th anniversary of 9/11 and a time when we should all be reflecting on the futility of violence in the name of one ideology or other. Then he admitted he dialed up a take-that touchdown on fourth down late in the Tigers' 38-21 rout. 

"I don't really care of (the rivalry) continues or not," Drinkwitz said. "If they're going to be weird about it, what's the point. If they want to have a football game and play a football game and have a great rivalry on the border, then awesome. Let's do it."

And then, taking one last shot he couldn't resist: "But if we want to make it deeper than that, man, we left Kansas bleeding again."

Ouch.

Close-out of the year

 You can call Caitlin Clark a lot of stuff -- and, lord, everyone has -- but one thing you're never gonna call her is The Glove, which is what they used to call NBA star Gary Payton. This is because Payton made his bones as a shut-down defender, and Caitlin does not.

She's a scorer, a facilitator, a court visionary. But "D" is never gonna be her A-game.

However ...

However, that might have been the close-out of the year she pulled off yesterday.

This was after Team USA cleaned its plate in the World Cup basketball tournament, dispatching France 97-79 in the championship game. The 'Mericans rolled unbeaten through the tournament, and have now won five straight World Cups. 

Among many notable items in the win was Breanna Stewart once again leading the way for Team USA. And also the way Clark and her supposed nemesis, Angel Reese, worked in concert on the floor as if they'd been playing together since childhood.

Clark dished to Reese. Reese dished to Clark. This astonished a lot of folks who've dined on the phony narrative lazy media types have been selling about women's buckets these days -- which is that mean black girls are resentful of a white girl (Clark) becoming the face of of the WNBA, and thus are picking on her.

The corollary to that is Clark and Reese are mortal enemies. Which led to an exchange between Clark and a reporter in the postgame yesterday, as reported on the website Awful Announcing..

It began with the reporter asking if Clark and Reese were, you know, "friends now."

Clark, who has had it up to here with all the nonsense surrounding her and the WNBA, shut that s*** right down.

"We've always been friends," she snapped.

And then:

"Don't try to do that," she went on, shaking her finger at the reporter. "Don't try to do that."

Not content with that, when her media availability was done she walked back to said reporter and gave him another piece of her mind.

Now THAT was some stellar "D." The Glove would be proud.

Invisible

 You probably missed it while the Bears were scoring eleventy-hundred points and your Indianapolis Colts were getting off to a rousing start in their season opener, but Kyle Larson drove his race car to victory in a race-car race yesterday.

(And, OK, so the Colts DIDN'T get off to a rousing start. That was a joke. So were the Horseshoes, who played like big dummies and got paved by the visiting Baltimore Ravens, 41-23.)

(Also, the Bears DIDN'T score eleventy-hundred points. They only scored 59. Caleb Williams threw for two scores and ran for two more and looked the best quarterback the Bears have had since Peter Tom Willis. OK, that was a joke, too. He actually looked the best quarterback the Bears have had since, I don't know, forever.)

Where was I again?

Oh, yeah, Kyle Larson driving his race car to victory in a race-car race. It happened at World Wide Technology Raceway in Madisonville, Ill., which is close enough to St. Louis to count as St. Louis. Larson snapped a 51-race winless streak with his win, which came in the second race of the NASCAR Cup playoffs and featured two red flags in the last 11 laps because guys kept running into one another.

I know all this only because I looked it up on a sports website. And not on the lead page of the sports website, but way back in the NASCAR section. What, you thought NASCAR was gonna be front-page news on the first Sunday of the NFL season, and also the day an American (Ben Shelton) couldn't quite close the deal in the U.S. Open final against Alexander Zverev?

(Too bad for the latter. Shelton and Frances Tiafoe are the two most dynamic American men to come down the tennis pike in a long time. One or the other's gonna win a major before long, just you see.)

Anyway ...

Anyway, seeing NASCAR turn invisible just when its playoffs get rolling makes me wonder again who's running this sport and why they can't see what seems so obvious to the rest of us. Namely, that its season is waaay too long, and consequently gets swallowed up every year by King Football and the World Series and who knows what all.

What NASCAR ought to do, in the Blob's humble opinion, is follow IndyCar's lead.

And, yeah, I know, that's the last thing NASCAR wants to hear, but listen: IndyCar does this right. It ran the last race of its season last week, on Labor Day weekend. That got it  off the stage before football and all the rest began, which is as organic a stopping point as there is.

NASCAR?

NASCAR's season begins in mid-February and lasts until the voyages of the starship Enterprise. This year it didn't even begin the climax of its season until Labor Day weekend, when it ran one of its traditionally iconic races, the Southern 500 at Darlington. It was the first race of the playoffs, which go on for another 2 1/2 months.

If yours truly were running the show, the Southern 500 would be the LAST race of the playoffs, and thus the last race of the season. I'd achieve this by axing eight to ten regular-season races and running a 26-or-27-race regular season. That seems like plenty to me.

And, again, yeah, I know. There's no way that's going to happen. Cutting  eight or ten races out of the schedule means cutting revenue stream, for both NASCAR and the venues it supports. In a sport that sucks down dollars the way Joey Chestnut sucks down hotdogs, that's a non-starter.

And yet ...

And yet, at least NASCAR wouldn't vanish into the ether once the clock struck football season. At least it wouldn't do that.

Big Tin

 Gee, thanks a LOT, Ohio State. Now we'll never hear the end of it from those southern-fried goobers.

In the marquee game of the unofficial (sort of) Big Ten-SEC Challenge yesterday, The Ohio State University, the No. 1 team in the land, swallowed a Buckeye wrong and yakked one up to No. 4 Texas. The  Tree Nuts did this despite leading 23-3 going into the fourth quarter, in Austin, making all those burnt-orange fanatics grab their heads in dismay.

So the Big Ten was looking pretty, pretty, pretty good, to quote Larry David. Earlier in the day, Michigan had  taken down No. 11 Oklahoma in a throwback defensive battle that must have had Bo Schembechler tugging on his "M" cap in approval up there on the Big Sideline. Ohio State washing Texas would make it 2-0 over ranked SEC schools for the Big Ten, and neener-neener-neener.

(And, yes, I know, Mississippi State laminated Minnesota 38-13. So, technically, with a quarter to play in Austin, the Big Ten was up only 2-1 on the SEC.  But it was Mississippi State and Minnesota, so who really cared?)

Where was I again?

Oh, yeah, Ohio State absolutely spanking the Longhorns after three quarters, looking like much the better team by a long chalk. Julian Saylin was throwin' and Jeremiah Smith was catchin' and Bo Jackson was runnin' AND catchin', and so much for the epic showdown. The Longhorns were steak nuggets on a plate.

And then ...

And then Arch Manning started running and throwing, and one of the great names in college football this year -- Hollywood Smothers, I kid you not -- started slithering through cracks in the Ohio State front, and, hey, look, the Longhorns finally breached the end zone.

Then they did it again.

And, then, after Ohio State missed a 45-yard field goal attempt that would have closed the door with 4:16 left, Hollywood vaulted into the end zone to win it for the 'Horns with 25 seconds showing.

Made Lam Jones and Ham Jones proud. Also Cotton Speyrer. Also Happy Feller, Duke Carlisle and everyone else on the Longhorn All-Name Team.

Final score: Texas 24, Ohio State 23. Final fourth-quarter score: Texas 21, Ohio State 0. Final Big Ten/SEC score: SEC 2, Big Ten 1.

"Thank God for Michigan," a Big Ten fan might said, if such things are actually said outside of Ann Arbor these days.

Thank God, too, that Saturday's over, because it wasn't a red-letter day for the Big Tin generally. Iowa did manage to come from behind to beat rival Iowa State in the Farmall Bowl (OK, so nobody calls it that), but No. 6 Oregon went down to Stillwater, Okla., and got shelved by unranked Oklahoma State, 39-31. Duke sashayed into Champaign and took down Illinois. And Purdue ...

Ah, geez, Purdue. Geez.

Purdue had its first win in three years over a Power 4 school safely battened down, but then it Purdue-ed it up. The Boilermakers erased a 10-point deficit in the last four minutes to force overtime, and, after the fabulously named Fame Ijeboi (it's a great year for names in college football, apparently) scored to put Purdue up 36-30 in the second OT, the Boilers had Wake Forest down a hole on its possession: Fourth down, 15 yards to go, everyone in Ross-Ade howling for the imminent W.

And then ...

"They blew it, didn't they?" you're saying now.

Yes they did.

Instead of bringing the house on fourth down, the Boilers went into cover mode (aka: faint-heart mode). That gave Wake QB Gio Lopez breathing room to make a play, which of course he did. Threw a pass to Carlos Hernandez, who either stepped out of bounds short of the first-down marker (Purdue's version), or extended the football enough to get the first (the officials' version).

 Couple of plays later, Lopez scored to tie it. Then he skipped into the end zone for the two-point conversion and the win, 38-36.

Ah, geez, Purdue.

And also: Ah, geez, Big Tin.

A shamelessly partisan post

(In which the Blob dons its Ball State University cap, says "Chirp-chirp!" and talks about the gallant fight the Cardinals put up against No. 1 Ohio State last week. Among other things.)

Wait, did I say "gallant fight"?

Well, by golly, that's what it was. The Cards marched into Columbus and gave the la-di-dah Buckeyes all they wanted before barely losing 56-3, mainly because Ohio State cheated by having way better players.

Nonetheless, the Cardinals valiantly did not get shut out, so that's a W. Also they valiantly came within 1:55 of beating the spread, which means all those fools who bet large on the Buckeyes came close to losing money.

So, you know, the Cards have that going for them.

Know what else they have going for them?

They're back in Muncie today for their home opener, and it's not against Ohio State. It's against the Stony Brook Seawolves from Stony Brook, N.Y., a research school with an enrollment of 18,500 undergrads that styles itself the official university of Long Island.

The Seawolves play in the Colonial Athletic Association, along with your Maines, your Monmouths, your Elons and your Campbells, plus a handful of Rhode Islands, Towsons and New Hampshires. So does that mean the Cardinals, a proud member of the mighty Mid-American Conference, should handle their business today?

Far be it from me to succumb to bias and say yes, but ... yes.

And Ohio State?

Having narrowly escaped failing to cover last week, the Buckeyes travel to Austin, Texas to take on the No. 4 Longhorns. The 'Horns are probably a better football team than my Cardinals -- I'll go out on a limb here and say they could well be -- so Ohio State will have another fight on its hands. Also a Manning is the Texas quarterback, perhaps an upgrade over the Cardinals' 5-10 mighty mite, Keldric Luster.

I expect Keldric to stand tall today against the Stony Brooks, or as tall as a 5-10 guy can stand. And I expect the Cardinals to dispatch the Seawolves in handy fashion, say, 35-10. Or 42-10. Whatever.

And the Buckeyes?

They will pay for last week's insolence. They will pay.

The names, and the message

 A quarter-century now since that blue September morning, since the planes went into the buildings and a field east of Pittsburgh, and what have we learned? What have we learned about ourselves, and about the grand experiment that is America?

We have learned our comfortable assumptions about our comfortable American lives are a chimera, a cheap toy that jitters apart at the touch.

We have learned when that happens, some of us run toward the jackstraw ruins, and some of us do not.

We have learned that the best of us draw closer, pull each other up, stand as one. And we have learned that the worst of us use our 9/11s to divide us, to make us fear and loathe, to peddle some sinister Other because doing so is their path to power.

And so I begin, this morning of mornings, with two names.

One is Zohran Mamdani.

The other is Mohammed Shajahan.

One is the mayor of New York, and a Muslim.

The other, also a Muslim, died when the towers went down 25 years ago today -- which is why you'll find his name etched in the smooth metal that surrounds the reflecting pools where the towers once stood, and which now memorialize the almost 3,000 dead hatred and fanaticism killed that day.

Some people think Zohran Mamdani, though he is the city's mayor and a New Yorker who lost a piece of his soul on 9/11 as surely as any New Yorker, should stay away from today's remembrance in the city. They think showing up would be a slap in the face to the families of the murdered, because to some people being Muslim means you might as well have murdered them yourself.

To them, I offer the name Mohammed Shajahan. And I offer something I wrote after visiting the 9/11 memorial a decade ago -- something about Shajahan's name and all the other names, and the message they should send to every one of us.

Ten years along, I hardly needed to change a word:

We went to where it happened on a clear morning in August, the kind that brings up an ache even years after that murderous September day. It is a lush, contemplative place now, with shade trees and benches and the two reflecting pools, water spilling down the sides like silver murmuring embroidery.

Two pools; two peaceful footprints where the towers stood that day. And around them the names etched in smooth slanting steel, all those names, all those lost and blameless souls.

Pretty soon, the names are all you see.

Pretty soon, the lovely twin footprints fade. So does the triumphant rise of One World Trade Center, glittering in the sun just north of the north pool. The world narrows. You look down. And you find yourself reading off the names as you walk slowly around the pools, wondering who they were, what their lives were like, how it can be that you keep walking and walking and walking and the names never seem to end.

The names are Diaz and Bachman and Vicario; White and Miller and Lee. There are Morrises and Singhs and Benvenios; Doanys and Bonnetts and Roaches. And, yes, names like this, too: Mohammed Shajahan.

Which is to say, hate is ecumenical.

Hate killed Christians and Jews and, yes, Muslims, that day. It killed whites and blacks and Asians and Hispanics. It is a lesson we need to remember this day, a home truth to which we need to hold fast especially in this ugly, riven time, when unprincipled American outliers use fear and loathing and blatant falsehoods to con the easily conned.

One of the most stubborn of those falsehoods: That we can make ourselves safe from all future 9/11s by re-making America in the image of a particularly noxious brand of Christian faith,  instead of acknowledging the harder truth that those who killed so many on 9/11 were not adherents of any faith. They were simply barbarians whose only God was death.

And so making Muslims an Other because the barbarians claimed it as their faith, as the more reprehensible among us tend to do, is a fool's enterprise that only demeans America and what it stands for, making it safer only in the sense that it makes us less American. America is an idea to the barbarians, and there is only one way to kill an idea. That's by making its defenders diminish it themselves.

But 9/11 should have taught us the folly of that. It should have taught us that our enemies are enemies of all of us, not just Judeo-Christians. If that were not so, our enemies would not have killed so indiscriminately that day, would not even now be persecuting and killing Muslims as prolifically as they do anyone else.

The names, all those names upon names, are our witnesses to that.

American revival

Far be it from the Blob to say American men's tennis is back just because half the U.S. Open semifinal is 'Merican, but ... baby, American men's tennis is back.

This after the fist-pumping, screaming-to-the-heavens Ben Shelton knocked out defending champion (and best player in the world not named Jakob Sinner) Carlos Alcaraz in five epic sets the other night/early morning, finishing up at the zero-dark-thirty hour of 3:30 a.m. And this after the fist-pumping, screaming-to-the-heavens Frances Tiafoe rallied from a two-sets-to-zip hole to knock fellow American Alex Michelsen in five more epic sets.

Now they face one another in the finals, and if it won't exactly be Connors vs. McEnroe, it might stir a few echoes of same. Neither Shelton nor Tiafoe are as abrasive and obnoxious as Jimmy or Mac, but at least they play like they have a pulse. Energy and exuberance rolls off both of them like static electricity.

And if you're wondering what they've produced head-to-head ...

Well. They've faced one another four times, and Shelton's won three of them. Their last match happened in the Washington Citi Open last year, where Shelton won 7-6, 6-4.

I suppose that makes Shelton the favorite tomorrow.

I also suppose it won't be a straight-setter.

Here's hoping for another five-set thriller. American tennis deserves it.

Bread and circus

 Our national game kicks off tonight out in Seattle, and, no, I don't know why. It's Wednesday, traditionally a day unsoiled by Roger Goodell's mighty colossus. Perhaps the Geico camel was down on his luck and needed the work.*

(*Reference to the promo making the rounds, in which Geico camel makes his triumphant return, harassing Mike Tirico with his trademark "Mike-Mike-Mike-Mike-Mike! What day is it? Hump DAAAAY!" schtick.)

Anyway, it's the New England Patriots against the Seattle Seahawks in a Super Bowl rematch, and boy, that will be some fun. The last time they met, the Seahawks won the Lombardi Trophy by 16 points, 29-13. It will probably be closer this time. Or not.

Anyway-anyway, it all gets started tonight and tomorrow night, when the 49ers and Rams open their season on the cricket grounds in Melbourne, Australia. No, I don't know why they're doing that, either. Maybe so they can tell a great Roger Goodell joke.

Q: What do Aussies call NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, who tips the tape measure at just 5-11?

A: Shrimp on the barbie!

"Yeah, saw that comin'," you're saying now.

Maybe. But I bet you didn't see this: If you click on the NFL schedule, and look under the heading "Tickets", know what it says about New England-Seattle tonight?

Tickets as low as $280.

As LOW as $280? Really? And for that you get what, Drake Maye being eaten alive this time by the ravenous Seahawk pass rush?

"As low as $280." Yeesh.

And, yes, before you start, I'm sure you can get tickets for a much more reasonable price on one of the many online Tickets-R-Us sites. But the point pertains: Goodell's oligarch's playground more and more is becoming accessible only to other oligarchs.

For instance, let's check out some other Week 1 games.

For New Orleans at Detroit, you can get Tickets As Low As $191. 

For Green Bay at Minnesota, $197.

For Bears at Carolina -- Carolina, for pity's sake, the number is $160. For Washington at Philadelphia, $211 (fan brawl not included). Denver at Kansas City on Monday night?

Tickets As Low As $202 to watch Patrick Mahomes hopefully not get hurt again.

"What about our Indianapolis Colts?" Blue Crew fan is asking.

Well, you're in luck, For Baltimore at Indy, you can get tickets for as low as $78. For that, plus parking and concessions, you can take the whole family and get out for under four bills! Sweet.

"Are there any games where a workaday Joe could rub elbows with all the hedge-fund asshats and tech-bro pirates?" you're asking now.

Well, as a matter of fact ...

Just checked the "Tickets" heading next to the New York Jets at Tennessee, and guess what?

You can a ticket for as low as $20 for that one.

Twenty bucks! Of course, you have to sit through the Jets and Titans.

Otherwise ...

Welcome to Roger Goodell's bread-and-circus. Bring lots of the former.

States rights

 (And here we go with another Escape From Sportsball World. Hall passes for all who qualify.)

Lots of dopey senators, representatives and other politicos responded seriously to President Donald John "Look! A Squirrel!" Trump's latest dopey post the other day, which only went to show that A) the whole country is dopey now; and B) if you let a 3-year-old loose with a marker, stuff is gonna happen.

The post in question, see, featured Donald John showing a graphic of New Mexico in which the word "Mexico" is markered out and replaced with "America." As always it's anyone's guess what prompted this, although there are a couple of possibilities.

One is that Fearless Leader thought actual Americans were suggesting this, when it in fact was a piece of internet satire. The other is it was F.L. trolling everyone again, and the aforementioned dopey politicians falling for it by getting all outraged. 

In which case the politicians' proper responses should have been this:

1. Laugh and say, "I see someone left the President unsupervised again."

2. Laugh and say, "'New America.' Awww, that's so cute."

The Blob being the Blob, of course, I have questions. If New Mexico is New America, does this mean all the other states are Old America? And how do they feel about that? Does Nevada or Arizona or Utah rise up and say "Hey! We're New, too! We got indoor plumbin' and ever'thing!"?

Also, what could we rename other states, following Fearless Leader's lead?

A few suggestions:

* Nebraska becomes "West Iowa."

* Iowa becomes "East Nebraska."

* Wyoming and Colorado merge to become "The Republic of Square States."

* North and South Dakota swap names to see if anyone notices.

* Ditto Oregon and Washington.

* Indiana becomes "North Mississippi."

* Mississippi becomes "South Indiana."

* Illinois becomes "West Hammond."

And last but not least ...

* Texas becomes "New Mexico."

Or, you know, "Old Mexico." 

Hat tricks

 Doug Eddings -- aka "Cranky Old Man Shouting At Clouds" -- shoulda known better. You indeed start shouting at clouds, the clouds aren't gonna shout back. 

They're just gonna laugh at you.

And so journey back to Friday night, when Eddings, a major-league umpire, let his inner coot out to play awhile. When St. Louis rookie Hansel Rincon came the mound for his first appearance in the bigs, Eddings looked at the slightly crooked way Rincon was wearing his cap, and ordered him to straighten it.

No, really. I'm serious.

That brought St. Louis manager Oliver Marmol out of the dugout, asking Eddings why he was picking on the kid, and what the hell, besides. Eddings responded that Rincon wasn't going to wear his cap like that on HIS field, which might have prompted Marmol to ask when exactly Eddings bought a stake in Busch Stadium, but probably didn't.

What he did say, however, prompted Eddings to throw him out of the game. For which Marmol should have gotten an extra cookie from Cardinals' management for standing up to a bully who was picking on the smallest kid on the block, a least metaphorically.

Anyway, long story short, the very next night, with Eddings on the call again ... well, a blind man could have seen what was coming. And Eddings should have seen it coming.

Every player in the Cardinals dugout was wearing his cap crooked. 

Left yourself wide open for that one, Dougie. 

Notre Dame is ...

 ... over-hyped as usual.

... pretty damn good, maybe.

... not 0-1 at least.

After last night in Lambeau Field, any and all of the above apply.

Against Wisconsin, decked out in what looked like Indiana University tribute uniforms -- all red -- the Irish chugged to a 13-10 halftime lead, leaving no doubt (to use head coach Marcus Freeman's current mantra) that they were again another cardboard cutout posing as the No. 4 team in the nation.

Ah, but in the second half ...

In the second half, they really did leave no doubt.

Put together cross-country excursions of  70, 75 and 88 yards. Got three touchdowns from their re-tooled running game, Aneyas Williams and Noah James. Got 133 yards and a touchdown from presumptive Heisman Trophy candidate C.J. Carr, who was 10-of-13 passing in the second half after looking startlingly pedestrian in the first half.

Oh, yes: And Notre Dame outscored Wisky 28-3 to blow out the Badgers 41-13. Which is kinda what you're supposed to do when you're the No. 4 team in the nation playing a team that was an un-Wisconsin-like 4-8 last year.

So there you have it: The Irish are over-hyped as usual ... no, wait, pretty damn good, actually ... well, at least not 0-1.

The last is especially relevant, because early losses have haunted the Golden Domes the last couple of seasons, and flat-out wrecked them in 2025. An 0-2 start with close losses to Texas A&M and Miami doomed Irish chances to reach the College Football Playoff, even if they were playing some of the best ball in the country by the end of the season.

The CFP snub was followed by the Irish declining to play a bowl game, which frankly made them look like the we're-Notre-Dame-and-you're-not elitists the Notre Dame haters think they are. And then when the buzz started up around this year's team ...

More fuel to the haters' fire.

Because, listen, when you lose two premier running backs (Jeremiyah Love and Jadarian Price) to the NFL and some folks are saying this team actually could be better -- like, national-championship better -- more than just he haters are going to raise a skeptical eyebrow. And raise it even higher after watching the Irish in the first half last night.

Second half?

That looked like the Notre Dame some were promising.

How promising?

Beats me. Did they look like a team that could bring home Notre Dame's first national title in 38 years? Maybe. Possibly. Was one sparkling half against an outmatched opponent a sufficient sample size to determine that?

Maybe. Possibly.

But probably not.

And so, as ever ... onward.

Bloody tough

 Kept flipping back and forth between Indiana-North Texas and Ball State-Ohio State yesterday afternoon, and, listen, don't be laughing at the second. In a weekend of upsets and near-upsets, my Cardinals pulled off a couple.

"Um, they lost 56-3. Are you on drugs?" you're saying now.

No. I'm just looking the world through the lens of my perspective.

My perspective is the Cards pulled off an upset when Brody Boehm legged a 54-yard field goal in the second quarter, depriving No. 1 Ohio State of the shutout. And my perspective is the Cards were tougher than a shoe-leather mignon because it took the Buckeyes until the 1:55 mark of the fourth quarter to beat the 50-point spread.

Another upset. Victory was ours.

In Bloomington, meanwhile, Indiana's new quarterback, threw four touchdown passes, missed on just three throws (13-of-16), and bled all over himself after getting his helmet ripped off on a brutal facemask.

But he got up, a rivulet of blood trickling from a cut on the bridge of his nose, and figuratively rubbed some dirt on it. Because there he was calling signals on the next play, blood on his facemask and chinstrap and jersey, the very embodiment of Curt Cignetti's culture of guts-up toughness.

And speaking of toughness ...

Indiana punished North Texas, 52-16. Also, they have a running back named Turbo Richard, who breached the end zone twice.

Turbo Richard! Now there's a tough-guy name if there ever was one.

A throwback do-over

 Know what's great about college football, other than the fact it's college football?

What's great about college football is it can, as Cher used to sing, turn back time. Both literally and figuratively.

And so come with us now to Saturday night, a mass o' humanity in the Big House in Ann Arbor, Mich., Bryce Underwood down there wallowing around as the clock leaned toward zeroes. He squares up. Heaves the football into the September night. Watches it sail to the back of the end zone as the clock not only leans toward but hits zeroes -- 0:00 -- before a Western Michigan player knocks it down.

Game over! Omigod! Western Michigan wins, 12-7!

Except ...

Except the game is not over.

Despite the zeroes on the clock, the officials say there's actually a smidge of a second hiding there somewhere because the Western Michigan player stepped beyond the backline before touching the football, automatically stopping the clock. So they put the ball down at the 47 again, Bryce Underwood took the snap and heaved the ball into the September night again, and THIS time it came down in the hands of Michigan receiver JJ Buchanan for an incredible Hail Mary six.

Game over! Again! Michigan wins, 13-12!

The fans storm the field, probably the first time in Big House history they stormed the field because the Wolverines barely beat a MAC school.  And Western Michigan ... well, Western Michigan done got Alexander Belov-ed.

Alexander Belov, for those who either don't know or don't remember, was the big Russian galoot who outmuscled two Americans for the basketball on a court-length pass and laid it in to give the Soviets the upset win in the 1972 Olympic gold medal game. 

This was after the clock had run out, and the officials said, nah, you're hearin' things, there's really still time left. So they put three seconds back on the clock. Then they did it a second time when the clock ran out again.

Given that second do-over, Belov done Belov-ed 'em. Game over (finally)! Omigod! Commies win!

So there we were again Saturday night, on the first big Saturday of college football, thrown back to 1972 again. Everyone was wearing pucca shells, plaid, cuffed bellbottoms and clogs. Everyone was listening to Black Sabbath and Elton John. JJ Buchanan was Alexander Belov, and Western Michigan coach Lance Taylor was U.S. basketball coach Hank Iba, wondering what the hell just happened.

I know what happened. Time travel happened. And college football.

Which used to feature glorious arguments about who's No. 1, and now will feature a glorious argument about whether or not Western Michigan got screwed or just homered by the Michigan zebras.

Headline in Ann Arbor today: Hail Mary! Michigan Wins, 13-12!

Headline in Kalamazoo: Phantom Second Beats Broncos, 13-12

Or, you know, something like that.

Counting chickens

The Labor Day weekend, and therefore college football, has barely begun, and already we have a clear frontrunner for the Fubar Of The Year Award Sponsored By Yugo -- aka the Ford Edsel Oopsie Award, aka the Exploding Pinto Snafu Award, aka the New Coke Oh Hell I Crapped My Pants Trophy.

Come on down, you Rutgers Scarlet Knights!

Who planned a big opening night celebration, complete with fireworks, after they crushed sacrificial lamb UMass, which is not an authentic big-boy school but a Mid-American Conference school that went 0-12 last season and hadn't beaten an FBS school since 2023.

So what happened?

You know what happened: UMass 37, Rutgers 21.

"I'm guessing they canceled the fireworks," you're saying now.

Wrong, bucko!

Apparently someone didn't get the word, so the fireworks went off as scheduled. Talk about the fubar of all fubars. Hey, look, everyone, fireworks to celebrate getting eaten by the cupcake we scheduled! 'Cause football is BACK, BABY and we are BIG-TIME!

Yikes.

Now, some will say this was a bigger (huge-r?) upset than Appalachian State marching into the Big House some years back and taking down Michigan. Nah. I mean, sure, App State was an FCS powerhouse and UMass is ... well, UMass. But Rutgers ain't exactly Michigan, either.

Frankly it's a school that probably ought to be in the MAC itself, because it has no business playing football in the Big Ten. It doesn't fit the profile, and if for sure doesn't fit the footprint, not that that matters anymore. The Big Ten abandoned its footprint some time back to go grasping for dollars.

Now Rutgers, and also Maryland, are "Big Ten schools" because the conference wanted to expand the Big Ten Network into the East Coast TV markets. And UCLA, USC, Oregon and Washington are "Big Ten schools" because the conference wanted to do the same thing on the West Coast.

None of this is legit, of course. You can call a rhinoceros an SUV but that doesn't make it one.

In any case, more than just the uniforms are red these days in New Brunswick, N.J. This will happen when you put a W on the board before you've actually played the game, which is why wiser heads never do that. Even Lou Holtz knew to be scared to death of Rice before going out and beating the Owls eleventy-hundred to seven or whatever.

Then again, there is a bit of solace for poor Rutgers here. Dubious though it might be.

On this first full weekend of college football, the Scarlet Knights lead the nation in number of unhatched chickens counted.

So, you know, they've got that going for them.

Petard, hoisted

Looks like LSU will have former Cleveland Browns tight end Dae'Quan Wright on its roster after all, thanks to a Louisiana judge who ruled it was OK for pros to come back to college, especially if it's LSU.

Despite what you may have heard, said judge was NOT wearing a Billy Cannon LSU throwback under his robes when he handed down his ruling. That is a vicious lie.

Nonetheless, Judge Geaux Tigers said it's perfectly OK for LSU to add former NFL players to its roster, hell as many as you want, son. That threw everyone into a tizzy including Clemson coach Dabo "Back In My Day" Swinney, who makes $10.7 million a year but has never liked the idea of his players gettin' theirs.

"It's embarrassing," Dabo said this week, in advance of Clemson's big showdown with LSU Saturday night. "I mean, it really is. We have no rules. There's no governance. I mean, it's a joke ... Never did I think we'd be living in an era like this, but that's where we are."

Dabo, and Clemson, were so appalled at LSU coach Lane Kiffin adding former NFL players to his roster they reportedly considered boycotting tomorrow night's game. That they didn't tells you everything you need to know about where the college game is today, and just how hoist it is by its own petard.

ESPN, see, is broadcasting Clemson-LSU on its anchor platform, and  it's bringing the A-list to do it: Chris Fowler and Kirk Herbstreit and Holly Rowe 'n' them. So the game's on the big stage, in prime time, which means mega-exposure. Which in turn means every four-and-five-star recruit will be tuning in.

You think Clemson's gonna pass on that?

You think it doesn't want to showcase players such as starting quarterback Christopher Vizzina, a senior who's done his time and now gets his big shot?

Know how much Clemson will be paying Christopher Vizzina this season in NIL dollars?

Right around $1 million.

Think that won't be a selling point for Clemson when it goes after those four-and-five-stars? And think it doesn't make all the hand-wringing about pros on college rosters a trifle silly?

Because, like Christopher Vizzina, there are players on every major-college roster in America right now pulling down major NIL coin. In other words, they're ALREADY pros. So what's the difference between a kid with an NIL deal coming to LSU from, say, Oklahoma, versus a kid with a free agent deal coming to LSU from Cleveland? 

Or maybe you think Clemson's indirectly paying Vizzina for sitting in the front row in chemistry class.

Yeah. Didn't think so.

Chirp chir--GACK!

 The first big weekend of college football starts tonight with a bunch of Colorados at Georgia Techs and Idahos at Utahs, and I can't wait, because I love me some college football. I also can't wait because I am a proud Ball State graduate, and my Cardinals open up Saturday.

So chirp-chirp, and go Cards. I feel confident they will cover themselves with gory Saturday afternoon.

Wait, did I say "gory"?

I meant "glory." Yeah, that's it, "glory."

I say this even though the Cards had a rough go of it last season, finishing 4-8 and 3-5  in the Mid-American Conference. And I say it even though Saturday afternoon they'll be in Columbus, Ohio, staked out on an anthill while the NO. 1 TEAM IN THE ENTIRE NATION picks clean their bones.

Yes, that's right, boys and girls. My Ball State Cardinals open the 2026 season against the No. 1 Ohio State Buckeyes, last seen going 12-2 and 9-0 in the Big Ten and reaching the College Football Playoff quarterfinals.

And do they have almost everyone back? Of course they have almost everyone back.

My Cardinals, meanwhile, have a new coach (Mike Uremovich), who inherits a team that wasn't nearly as good as Ohio State last year. Went 4-8 and 3-5 in the Mid-American Conference, the Cardinals did, which was good for 10th place. This was about what they deserved considering they lost their last three games by a combined score of 107-33.

Eastern Michigan beat 'em 24-9. Toledo mulched 'em 38-0. And Miami (O.) ball-peened 'em 45-24.

Not an optimum way to end the season when you're opening the next season at Ohio State.

"Why are they playing Ohio State, Mr. Blob?" you might be asking now. "Do they just hate their football players down there in Muncie? Did the athletic director get picked on by star linebacker Biff Biffington when he was a kid?"

Well ... no. Not to my knowledge, anyway.

No, the reason Ball State scheduled Ohio State is, surprise-surprise, money. Ohio State has lots of it, and they were willing to part with some to get the Cardinals to come get their heads beaten in. For that privilege, Ball State will receive just shy of $2 million.

It's what's called a guarantee game, and it's how athletic departments at the Ball States  keep their oars in the water. And so, for the good of the overall athletic program, the football team occasionally gets thrown to the wolves -- or, in this case, to a tree-borne nut native to the Midwest and upper Great Plains.

"So do the Cardinals have a chance?" you're saying now.

Well, let's put it this way. Last year the Cardinals opened at Purdue. The Boilermakers won 31-0. They went on to finish 2-10 and dead last in the Big Ten.

So, yes. They have a chance. To survive.

"What's the spread?" you're saying.

Last I looked, Ohio State was favored by 50.

"Does this mean if Ball State only loses by, say, 45, it's a win?"

No. It's a win if they go home on the team bus and not the team gurney.

Altogether now: Chirp chir-GACK!

Roll(er) call

 Saw a piece in the local paper the other day about Fort Wayne Roller Derby, and how it's opening a training camp for anyone ages 9 and up who want to learn how to ... well, how to do roller derby. And for once I thanked the good Lord for every one of my 71 years.

Were I not in an advanced state of decrepitude, see, I might have had a chance to seriously booger myself up.

That's because I grew up watching the Northwest Pioneers and San Francisco Bay Area Bombers on the tube every Saturday afternoon -- it was always the Pioneers vs. the Bombers, it seemed -- and, man, it was more fun than the Big One at Talladega. Blockers pounding on other blockers, a bar fight on wheels. Jammers trying to slither through the chaos. And who could forget Big Joanie Weston, the Blonde Bomber, or Charlie O'Connell, the ageless wonder?

You think Earnhardt punting Labonte into the wall was wild? You shoulda seen Big Joanie send some unfortunate Pioneer flying over the rail. Or Charlie O deck an enemy blocker with a Ginsu elbow.

(And that's not even mentioning Raquel Welch in that roller derby movie. I saw that, too, growing up. Though not necessarily for the roller derby part.)

Well, now you can learn all that, thanks to Fort Wayne Roller Derby. The ulterior motive is to put a roster together for this season; the immediate goal is to introduce young and less-young boys, girls, men and women the sport.

"At the training camp, we're going to teach skating, teach how to fall, eventually how to hit people, which is the draw," board president and community events coordinator Nicki Gunn told the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette. "Then you learn the rules, how to be a team player, how to work both offense and defense at the same time, communicate with other and everything that encompasses.

"We start with basic skills and footwork, and each week builds on the previous week and then moves on to something new within that."

Know what jumped out at me about that?

The part about teaching how to fall.

Because I'm telling you right now, falling would be my thing. I would be a falling All-Star. I would fall if you looked at me wrong. No one would ever hit me because I already would have fallen.

So, you know, take that, Charlie O'Connell. Nyah nyah, nyah-nyah nyah.

Although I'd never taunt Big Joanie Weston like that. What, you think I'm nuts?

Less Angeles

 God bless that ball coach at Texas Tech, Joey McGuire. He knows how to hit 'em where it hurts, even when the hit bounces off and smacks his own face.

Maybe you've heard a bit about how USC played San Jose State in its home opener last weekend, and like 12 people showed up. You not only could have picked your own seat in the Coliseum's yawning acreage, you could have picked your own row.

So, naturally, the interwhatsis had a fine time trolling USC and Less, er, Los Angeles, saying what a pathetic sports town it must be if even so proud a college football program as USC couldn't draw flies.

This included the aforementioned Coach Joey, who said this: "Not to take any shots, because I have a lot of respect for USC and Lincoln Riley, but it's really awesome to be playing in Lubbock, Texas, knowing we're going to be playing in front of 60,000 ... They're going to show up no matter what the weather's like. There's not going to be any excuses of why they're not here for us."

Couple of things about that, as McGuire unwittingly dents his own schnozz.

One, it's Lubbock, Texas.

Two, it's Lubbock, Texas.

Which is to say, OF COURSE they're gonna show up this weekend. What else is there to do in Lubbock, Texas, on a Saturday? Sit in a rocker down at the Cracker Barrel and watch the tumblin' tumbleweeds blow past?

And, yes, I know, Lubbock is an actual city -- a college town -- not Gulpin' Gulch or Dirt Clod Corners. For instance, it really does have a Cracker Barrel. Plus, one assumes, numerous other modern conveniences.

However.

However, it's not L.A. So McGuire making that comparison is the proverbial apple comparing itself to the proverbial orange.

L.A., after all, is Hollywood and Vine. It's swimmin' pools and movie stars. It's surfer dudes at Malibu, rollerbladers on Venice Beach and fancy restaurants where only studio execs can get a table, and which specialize in such delicacies as abalone pizza and medallions of squab hunkered down in a bed of imported Brisbane kale.

In other words, Angelenos have a lot goin' on. It's why L.A. has never been regarded as a great sports town, even by Angelenos. The only time the masses show up is when the Dodgers or Lakers are flying high -- and then it's not so much to root for the Dodgers or Lakers, but to be seen rooting for the Dodgers or Lakers.

As more than one observer has observed, L.A. is the front-runningest sports town in America.

So OF COURSE there were a lot of folks dressed as empty seats Saturday. Who's gonna come bake like a crescent roll to watch a nothing college football game in August? After all, they've got a table for two waiting at Musso and Frank's.

This is why the Blob is halfway stunned that L.A. now has not one but two NFL teams, the Rams and the Chargers. In previous lives, after all, the Rams and the Chargers were such big hits in Los Angeles they moved to St. Louis and San Diego. They only moved back because the owners of the St. Louis Rams and San Diego Chargers were colossal dicks, and because the NFL lusted after all that chunky L.A.  exposure.

I mean, how could the NFL call itself America's premier sporting attraction if it didn't have a Los Angeles presence, lousy sports town or no lousy sports town?

So no surprise the Coliseum was an echo chamber last weekend. And no surprise Lubbock's Galaxy Stadium will be anything but when the Red Raiders take the field Saturday night against Abilene Christian.

You got your culture, see, and you got your other culture. Ain't it great?

The Fist-y City

 There were no drunken brawls in the nether regions of Wrigley Field last night, possibly because the drunks were too busy catching the baseballs the Cubs kept airmailing into the seats. A 17-3 beatdown of the rival Brewers -- in which the Bearcubs hit an astounding nine home runs -- will soothe the savage beast in anyone, it seems.

And believe me, there do seem to be a lot of savage beasts in the Fist-y City these days. Or  plain idiots, if you prefer.

Several times in the last few weeks ugly brawls have erupted in the outfield seats at both Wrigley and Rate Park on the south side, as lard-ish over-served guys in throwback Sandberg and Konerko jerseys have traded punches ... or leaped four rows onto a Sandberg's back ... or been Konerko-ed three or four more rows on down.

At least once it happened during the Cubs-White Sox city series, so maybe no surprise there. Still, it does make you wonder what they're putting in the water these days in Chi.

Or maybe it's just Chicago being Chicago -- although far be it from me to indict a whole city for the actions of a few ... OK, a bunch ... OK. a whole pile of low-IQ meatheads.

Because, listen, how dim do you have to be to say "Imma go out to the Confines, slam  eleventy Old Styles and then go to Fist City with some loser in a Hee-Seop Choi jersey"?

You can't beat fun at the old ballpark, as Harry used to say.

Seriously, what compels anyone who walks upright to start a fight at a baseball game, other than the booze? It's a baseball game, people. It's supposed to be red hots and Cracker Jacks and a good time that's had by all. What could possibly make you mad enough to start punching another baseball fan in the face (or more than likely, miss everything but air with five out of six punches?)

Surely it can't be baseball-related, can it?

Drunken Sox Fan: Sandberg? Man, that guy was sooo overrated. 

Drunken Cubs Fan: Konerko? What's that, a rash?

Sox Fan: Remember 1906? (Sox 4-2 over the Cubs in the World Series)

Cubs Fan: Remember 2016?

Sox Fan:  Big whoop. You beat CLEVELAND, for God's sake.

Random Indians Fan In A Joe Charbonneau Jersey: Hey!

(Leaps over a row of seats and starts pounding on Sox fan)

Could that possibly happen? 

Or is just because it's late August/early September, everyone's worn out from the summer heat, and the Bears are still talking about moving to INDIANA, for God's sake?

Random Fan In The Bleachers: Hey, Indiana's not so bad.

(Drunken Sox Fan and Drunken Cubs Fan leap over TWO rows of seats and start swinging, knocking several full beers out of people's hands and drawing their pissed-off owners into the fray ...)

Yessir. Now THAT I could see.