Power outage

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

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

Good times, Horsie Nation. Goood times.

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

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

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

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

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

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

However.

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

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

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

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

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

The Blob is not prepared to do that just yet.

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

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

Taylor lugged it 13 times for 57 yards.

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

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

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

Now you're gettin' it.

Rebuttal

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

And then Notre Dame 70, Syracuse 7 happened. 

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

Just the way Freeman sketched it out.

But ... nah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Beat 2-9 Arkansas by 43.

Beat 1-10 Boston College by 15.

And, of course, beat Syracuse by 63.

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

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

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

A&M and Georgia.

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

Lunacy unbound

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

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

-- President Stillson, "The Dead Zone"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A movie script come to life?

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

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

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

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

We live in a country now where these things happen. 

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

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

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

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

When you're right ...

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

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

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

He said he hated the new NFL kickoff rule.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

OK, so no.

The things left unsaid

 "I love it here."

-- Ole Miss football coach Lane Kiffin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That was a horsepoop move. Legendarily so.

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

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

Owie.

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

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

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

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

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 11

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Woman's worth

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Secondly ... well, where to start?

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

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

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

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

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

And as for Draymond Green ...

Too bad he doesn't, either, apparently.