Friday night slights

 They'll play a high school game at Luersfield tonight between the Bishop Luers Knights and Garrett Railroaders, just like there'll be high school football games in Mishawaka and Merrillville and Warsaw and a handful of other places.

It's semistate week in Indiana, see, and the 24 schools who are left will be playing for the chance to play for a state title next week. Moms and dads and aunts and uncles and grandmas and grandpas will huddle in the cold bleachers and cheer for the best of their progeny's dreams to come true.

Also, Purdue will play Michigan State in a Big Ten football game in East Lansing, Mich.

This will be exactly one week after Purdue's basketball team knocked off No. 2 Alabama in Mackey Arena -- a marquee game that had no business being played on a Friday night in the middle of the Indiana high school football tournament.

So says the Blob, anyway, which tends toward the curmudgeonly but never more so than with this ancient gripe.

To wit: Friday nights should belong to the high schools. The colleges need to butt out.

Now, I know this is not a new phenomenon, college football and basketball on Friday nights. But that doesn't make it any less wrong. Especially in basketball, but increasingly in football, too, the colleges already play every other day of the week. They've gotta have Friday night, too?

No, they don't, the greedy bastids. No, they don't.

Look. I get how threadbare an argument this is, because a college game on a Friday night isn't going to keep anyone away from a high school game. There's almost literally no crossover. No one who tuned in Purdue-Alabama last week was going to a high school football game anyway; nor are any of those moms and pops and aunties and uncles venturing out to Luersfield tonight going to miss Purdue-Michigan State football, 'cause they likely wouldn't have watched it even if they'd stayed home.

But it's the principle of the thing, see. It's the optics, as people like to say, of the colleges horning in on the one night a week that should belong to the high schools, when they already have six other nights to choose from.

I covered a pile of college football and basketball in my almost 40 years as a working sportswriter, and a bunch of  Super Bowls and Final Fours and big-deal motorsports events, besides. But high school Friday nights always held a special place in my grubby scribe's heart. In fact I might have more scrapbook memories from those nights in Anderson's fabled Wigwam, or on football fields in Berne or Kendallville or Monroeville or Fort Wayne, than I do from what might be termed "the big stuff."

So, yeah. Friday nights are kinda sacrosanct to me. And so go ahead and call me an old man shouting at clouds if you like, because that's exactly what I am on this subject.

Dadgum it.

Burying Indiana

 The Blob is not a big conspiracy guy, so you won't get much from me about killer vaccines, 5G eating our brains and the public schools turning our kids gay and transgender. I leave those dark fantasies to the brainiacs who see nefarious plots in virtually everything, even when they're easily explainable by saner folk.

However.

However, there's a persistent notion buzzing around in my head right now, and I can't quite common-sense it away.

It involves Indiana University's football team, currently 10-0 and headed for a great big mega-humongous showdown against Ohio State two days from now.

It also involves what I've been hearing for the last week or so, and at a volume that seems to increase exponentially by the day.

It's that Indiana is a 10-0 poser who shouldn't be included in the 12-team College Football Playoff, even though the Hoosiers are ranked fifth and seeded seventh right now in the latest CFP mock bracket. This makes me suspect that the handful of people who are saying this are trying to influence whoever votes in the CFP poll, and might in fact be speaking in proxy for some of them.

This in turns makes me suspect something else: That the CFP voters can't wait for Indiana to lose Saturday so they can bury the Hoosiers without a funeral.

Now, the Hoosiers might not actually lose Saturday, because as the Blob has noted before, this is unlike any other Indiana team that's trundled down the pike. They're good. They're legit good, with an elite quarterback and an elite wide receiver corps and a bunch of good running backs, and interior lines that are everything IU's interior lines have rarely been, which is big and strong and physical.

So, yeah, the Hoosiers could win, and then go on to run the table against a godawful Purdue squad. They probably won't, because Saturday's game is in Columbus and Ohio State for once will be taking the Hoosiers very seriously. So let's say, I don't know, the Buckeyes win by a couple of scores.

Watch what happens in next week's CFP poll. Watch Indiana freefall from No. 5 to 13 or so in one mighty plummet, and miss out on the playoff of which a few talking heads say they're unworthy.

At issue for those folks is Indiana's strength of schedule, which isn't great. The Big Ten  indisputably is down this year, and the Hoosiers didn't exactly plow through a murderer's row in the run-up to conference play. It was a pinch of Charlotte and a dash of Florida International and a soupcon of Western Illinois, none of whom would ever be mistaken for Alabama or Georgia or Texas.

Here's the thing, though: They've beaten everyone who's been put in front of them, and usually by a lot. It's hardly their fault the teams that were put in front of them turned out not to be very good this fall. You play who you play, and that's all you can do.

Indiana has done that. So has Notre Dame, for that matter. So has, say, Boise State.

The Irish are 9-1 and ranked sixth right now. Boise State is also 9-1, and if the playoff began tomorrow, the Broncos would get a first-round bye. Hardly anyone is uttering a peep about that, even though both schools haven't exactly waded through a pile of 'Bamas and Georgias and Texases, either.

With the exception of 15th-ranked Texas A&M and then-unbeaten Navy, N.D.'s schedule has been six shades of beige, and of course the Irish lost to Northern Illinois, a middling MAC school. Boise State, meanwhile, has played all of two ranked teams since its only loss to No. 1 Oregon.

One is Washington State, currently ranked 25th. The other is 23rd-ranked UNLV.

Yet the Broncos are a shoo-in, and the Irish are too if they win out as expected. But if Indiana loses to Ohio State and then makes Crabby Patties out of Purdue, some say the Hoosiers should miss the show even though they'd be 11-1.

Let me say this about that, as Dick Nixon used to put it: A College Football Playoff that leaves out an 11-1 Big Ten school is a College Football Playoff unworthy of being taken seriously. It is, in fact, a damn joke.

Best get the laugh track warmed up, in that case.

Old guy rules

 It's been a tough go lately for those of us in the late autumn of our years, because our old-coot powers have been diminished by proxy. Sour 40-year-old coot Aaron Rodgers is playing like the sour 40-year-old coot he is. Fifty-eight-year-old Mike Tyson fought like a 58-year-old against Jake Paul (but raked some serious cabbage for that farce). And so, and so forth.

On the other hand ...

On the other hand, we've still got Alex Ovechkin.

The Great 8 is 39 years old now but still schooling the kids out there in the National Hockey League, or at least he was until he banged knees with Jack McBain of Utah last night, and went down with a lower-leg injury that will keep him out of the lineup for a bit. So his pursuit of the uncatchable -- Wayne Gretzky's career total of 894 goals -- is on the shelf until further notice.

"Why do you say Gretzky's 894 career goals is uncatchable, Mr. Blob?" you're saying now.

Because until Ovie started playing like he was 19 again, it pretty much was.

Last season, see, he was playing like the literal graybeard he is, and Gretz's 894 was still in a galaxy far, far away. But something happened in the offseason. The Blob doesn't now what it was, exactly, except to speculate that somewhere Ovie got hold of some magic old-coot potion that, like spinach for Popeye, transformed him into Super Coot.

Until he went down last night, see, his Washington Capitals had played 18 games so far this season. Ovechkin had scored 15 goals in those 18 games -- the 14th and 15th coming last night, when he uncorked a pair of seeing-eye rockets that originated in 1997 or something. That gave him 868 career goals, just 26 adrift of Gretzky.

It also gave him his 100th career multi-goal road game, 17 more than anyone in history.

So raise your glass of Ensure to the man, fellow coots. I can't speak for any of you, but I feel an extra spring in my step this morning. 

Although that could just be a touch of the rheumatiz.

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 11

 And now this week's edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the swaggeringly vindicated Blob feature of which critics have said "Not so fast with that 'vindicated' business, asshat", and also "Why don't you swagger on over here and let my fist vindicate your face?":

1. "Get rid of ME, will you? Ha! I'm as timeless as the three rivers!" (Mike Tomlin, whose Steelers are now 8-2 and first in the AFC North a year after people were ready to run him out of Pittsburgh)

2. "Get rid of ME, will you? Ha! Joe Flacco can sit his wrinkly old ass down because I'm back, baby!" (Demoted Colts quarterback Anthony Richardson, who returned to the Horsies' lineup and had his best game as a pro in a 28-27 win over the Jets)

3. "Get rid of ME, will you? H- Oh, wait ..." (Daniel Jones, after the Giants finally benched His Royal Cruddiness in favor of, um ... Tommy De Vito?)

4. "Hey, what's with the question mark? And enough with the Danny De Vito jokes, ya bums." (Tommy De Vito)

5. In other news, the Chiefs!

6. Lost to Josh Allen and the Bills, which means they won't go undefeated, which also means a bunch of old coots with walkers and such once again get to say they're still the only undefeated team in NFL history.

7. "Suck on that, Rozelle!" (The old coots, aka the 1972 Miami Dolphins)

8. "Wait, what?" (Also the coots, upon being reminded Roger Goodell, not Pete Rozelle, is now the commissioner of the NFL)

9. "Yes! No more Aints for us! We're movin' up to the big time!" (Various paper bags, excited at the prospect of being donned by fans of the Dallas Cowboys after America's Team pooped on the carpet in front of their home fans and the entire country in a 34-10 loss to the Texans on Monday Night Football)

10.  "See? We're not the only ones who suck!" (The Jaguars, the Browns, the Raiders et al)

Un-Bearable

 OK, so maybe it's not just Aaron Rodgers who owns the Bears. Maybe it's the entire Green Bay Packers franchise, for whom Rodgers was playing that time he beat the Bears and taunted the Ditkaheads with his infamous declaration of ownership.

I say this after the Bears blocked and tackled and ran and passed their ancient nemesis to a standoff in Chicago yesterday, only to lose 20-19 when the Packers swatted a last-second, game-winning field goal attempt into oblivion.

You could almost hear the late Dikembe Mutombo, the czar of blocked shots, cackling at the sight. You could also almost hear the Packer who blocked the kick, Karl Brooks,  snarling, "Get that weak s*** outta here!"

And you likely could hear the wailing and gnashing of teeth from Winnetka to Naperville because FOR GOD'S SAKE THE BLEEPITY-BLEEP BLEEPING PACKERS BEAT US AGAIN.

The hell do the Bears have to do to beat these cheese eaters? Raise Bronko Nagurski from the dead? 

After all, everything they had to do to win Sunday, they did. Caleb Williams, last seen being flattened like Wile E. Coyote run down by an Acme truck, completed 23-of-31 passes for 231 yards, ran nine times for 70 more yards and was sacked only three times. Four Bears receivers caught at least of four of Williams' throws, led by D.J. Moore (7 for 62 yards) and Rome Odunze (6 for 65). And the Bears led 19-14 with under five minutes to play.

Still, they lost. In the most Bears way possible.

First, Jordan Love led a desperate Packers drive that ended with him plunging one yard for the go-ahead score with 2:59 showing. Then Williams led the Bears right back down the field to set up Cairo Santos -- who'd already made a 53-yarder -- with a 46-yard kick to win it.

And then ...

A blocked field goal as time expired? Really?

"Aw, hell, he prolly woulda missed it anyway," disgusted Bears fans are likely saying this morning.

The fatalism is well-earned, certainly. The loss, after all, was the Bears 16th to the Packers in the last 17 meetings, and a record 11th straight. In a series that goes back 103 years, neither team had ever won 11 straight until Sunday; the last time the Bears beat the Packers was 2018, when Donald Trump was in the White House the first time.

Fun fact to know and tell: Packers head coach Matt LaFleur has never lost to the Bears. He's 11-0 lifetime.

Complementary fun fact to know and tell: That of course means Bears coach Matt Eberflus has never beaten the Packers. He's 0-for-5 in the closest thing the NFL has to an actual rivalry.

"Another reason to get rid of Eberflush," Bears Fan is likely saying now.

And also: "So if the Packers own us, does that mean the McCaskeys are finally out?"

At last a silver lining.

Of contracts and such

 One of my best friends grew up in the Detroit 'burbs, and, because Detroit is Hockeytown, his family has had Red Wings season tickets since goalies started wearing masks or something. A long time, in other words.

Anyway, for years, their seats were next to an odd duck named Bob, whose chief characteristic was a virtually impenetrable pessimism. No matter how bright the silver lining, Bob never lost sight of the cloud. He therefore became known as Black Cloud Bob.

Which is taking the long way around the barn to say I guess you could call me his spiritual kin today.

The other day, see, Indiana University handed first-year football coach Curt Cignetti $64 million (and potentially $72 mill) to continue coaching the Hoosiers through 2032. This is on account of the fact Cignetti is 10-0 right out of the box and has the Hoosiers ranked fifth in the country, their highest ranking since the Rose Bowl season 57 years ago.

All the reports on this development have said essentially the same thing: Indiana has "locked up" Cignetti with a long-term deal.

My take: This is great news. But locks can be picked.

This is not to say Cignetti, at 63, is going anywhere any time soon. But coaches' contracts aren't worth the paper they're printed on these days, which means the "locked up" part is only theoretical. Some high-gloss program comes calling with a bigger wad, Coach Locked-Up will become Coach Jailbreak before you can blink twice. 

It happened to Notre Dame three years ago, when Brian Kelly kicked out a window and escaped to LSU. And if it can happen to Notre Dame, it can surely happen to Indiana.

Of course, the whole idea of extending a coach's deal is to put a firewall between the coach's current school and any potential poachers. The longer and fatter the deal, the more a competing school (or pro team) would have to pay to buy out a coach's contract.

 That was undoubtedly Indiana's goal in making Cignetti not only one of the highest-paid coaches in the Big Ten, but the highest-paid employee in the school's history. That, plus Cignetti's age, should almost certainly keep even the wealthiest poachers at arm's length.

Still ...

Still, almost certainly is only almost certainly. So it could happen. Has before, after all.

In which case, I guess you can call me Black Cloud Ben now.

Or, you know, a few less printable names.

Bayou bungles

 Your LSU Tigers lost another football game yesterday, this time to a sub-.500 Florida team in The Swamp, and somewhere in America some Rudy undoubtedly said "Gee, that's a shame." And then chuckled a bit.

This is because if you're a Notre Dame alum or subway alum, betrayal is not to be tolerated. And when Brian Kelly, the winningest coach in the school's history, fled Domerville because LSU threw a wad of cash at him, he went from being plain old Brian Kelly to being Judas IsKellyot.

Nobody leaves Notre Dame for some other lame school, or so the thinking goes in South Bend. Nobody.

But that is calcified reasoning in these transactional times, when everyone and everything has its price. It may still be the halcyon days of yore for Domers of a certain age, but not out in the world. So LSU poached, Kelly agreed to be poached, and off to Baton Rouge he went.

Where his chances at a national title have not as appreciably improved as he perhaps thought.

Instead, Kelly went 10-4 in his first year and 10-3 in this second, and LSU wound up in the Citrus Bowl and something called the ReliaQuest Bowl. This was considerably more than a stone's throw from the College Football Playoff, let alone a national championship.

This year?

Well, the Tigers started 6-0, and now they're 6-3. And Kelly, who has a disagreeable tendency to throw his players under the bus when the going gets tough, is back at it again.

Yesterday, he laid into wide receiver Chris Hilton Jr. at one point, apparently using the word "uncoachable" in his tirade. Then another LSU wideout, Kyren Lacy, was caught on camera yelling at Kelly later on.

Good times there in Geaux Tigers country. Gooood times.

In South Bend, meanwhile, Marcus Freeman has the Irish rolling at 9-1, and yesterday they handled Virginia 35-14 on Senior Day. It was their eighth straight win since the increasingly inexplicable loss to Northern Illinois, and seven of those have been by 18 or more points.

Next up are unbeaten Army and then USC, and if the No. 8 Irish get past those two they'll be 11-1 and a CFP lock. In Baton Rouge, meanwhile, Kelly will presumably still be battling his own team and getting more and more heat from an LSU fan base that's wondering when, if ever, they'll get a return on their investment.

You might call that karma, if you're a loyal son of Notre Dame. And be sorely tempted by the sin of schadenfreude -- aka, gloating.

I'm thinking those loyal sons will risk it, though.