A Royal to root for

 We're still six days away from Selection Sunday -- most of your big conference tournaments have yet to be played -- but the Blob is already jacked to the gills for the Madness, on account of watching High Point tattoo Winthrop in the Big South championship yesterday.

OK. So not really.

Actually I watched a little of High Point-Winthrop and a little of the Patriot League semifinal between Lehigh and Colgate, which Lehigh won because Colgate couldn't make a shot down the stretch. So go, Mountain Hawks, and all that.

Also, go, you Queens University of Charlotte (N.C.) Royals!

Who won the Atlantic Sun (ASUN) title by beating Central Arkansas 98-93 in overtime, immediately becoming the Blob's annual little-guy-that-could-but-probably-won't favorite. There are a number of reasons for this.

One, Queens has only been D-I for four years, which means the Royals have played their way into the Big Dance/Soiree/Hootenanny the first year they were eligible for it.

Two, Queens is no fly-by-night operation. It's 169 years old, has a modest enrollment of 1,900 undergrads and was originally founded as the Charlotte Female Institute, and later the Presbyterian College for Women.

Three, among the 13 men's sports it offers is cheerleading. And among the 16 women's sports it offers are equestrian and dance.

Equestrian and dance! Now there's some refinement for ya.

And speaking of refinement ...

Should we mention the Queens' mascot? 

Of course we should mention the Queens' mascot.

His name is Rex the Royal and he's an endearingly scruffy-looking ... I don't know, lion, I guess. He wears a crown that looks as if it's seen better days, but don't hold that against him. He still looks mighty beloved:

Come on, America. Get on Rex the Royal's bandwagon before it fills up.

Mackey Daddy-ed

 Look, you can't say they didn't rise to the occasion, your Purdue Boilermakers. You can't say that at all.

Mackey Arena made its usual 747 sound on this Senior Day, and the Boilermakers put up 93 points, and they shot enough lights out to win most days. Or maybe you think 51 percent (34-of-67) and 44 percent (11-of-25) from the 3-point arc is small stuff. 

Well, it's not.

For instance, Fletcher Loyer, one-third of Purdue's most celebrated senior threesome since the Three Amigos (Troy Lewis, Todd Mitchell and Everette Stephens) almost 40 years ago, splashed six threes in nine attempts beyond the arc and scored 23 points. Braden Smith did Braden Smith things, scoring 20 points and dealing nine assists. And the third member of Purdue's senior triumvirate, Trey Kaufman-Renn, scored 17.

Heck. The Boilers even won the glass, outrebounding Senior Day opponent Wisconsin 34-22.

But speaking of Wisconsin ...

Well. The Badgers kinda went off script.

They shot even more lights out than the Purdues, making an absurd 56 percent including an even more absurd 53 percent (18-of-34) from Threeville. Four Badgers -- John Blackwell, Austin Rupp, Aleksas Bieliauskas and Andrew Rhode -- were a ridiculous 15-of-26 from downtown. And Wisky hung 97 on Matt Painter's guys, enough for a four-point win.

It was the Boilers' fourth loss in their last six games as they continue to slouch into March.

Perhaps more significantly, it was their third straight loss in Mackey, and fifth overall.

I have been to a game or two in that place, across the years. And when Purdue's on a run and the faithful get going and the sound goes up and ricochets off the roof and barrels back down, it really is like being on the inside of a giant kettle drum. Few joints get louder.

Which is a lot of why Purdue doesn't lose in Mackey very often. Or at least not usually.

This, it seems, clearly is a not-usually year, for a variety of reasons. One, the Boilers are losing games just when they ought to be doing the opposite. And, two, as evidenced by Wisconsin's 97 points yesterday, it's mostly happening because Purdue has not been very good on the end of the floor where Gene Keady's and Matt Painter's teams have traditionally made their bones.

That would be the defensive end.

In Purdue's four losses since Valentine's Day, for instance, opponents have averaged 86.5 points. They've shot 53 percent (112-of-211). And they've made 56 threes, or 14 per game.

Those are not the sort of "D" numbers that strike fear into the heart of many "O"s.

And so, the Boilers are now 23-8 and sixth in the Big Ten, three weeks after they were 21-4 and tied for second. And they've lost five games at home for the first time since 2019-2020, when Purdue finished 16-15 and missed the NCAA Tournament for the only time in the last 11 years. 

Mackey Daddy, in other words, has become Mackey Daddy-ed.

"That's a horrible pun, Mr. Blob!" you're saying now.

Yeah, well. I yam what I yam.

And these Purdue Boilermakers?

They are what they are, too, apparently. Until proven otherwise.

The persecution (or not) of Danica

 Danica Patrick will not be part of Sky Sports' coverage of F1 racing this season, and this has predictably provoked the usual howling from the usual suspects from the usual darker corners of the American psyche.

In other words:  That segment of America that loves to pretend it's put-upon, belittled or -- let's go all the way out there -- flat-out persecuted thinks she got axed because of her politics. A victim of the woke hive-mind, as it were.

Yes, I know. It does get a trifle exhausting, this endless grievance mining.

That's especially so in this case, because not only does Danica insist leaving the coverage team was her choice -- maybe so; maybe not -- but her departure seems to be little more than one of those boring corporate deals. In other words, Apple TV is taking over the Sky F1 feed this season for American viewers, as well as the F1 in-house entity. It's one of those changes that usually does result in ... well, changes.

So, Danica is out, either by jumping or being pushed. How much of that had to do with her right-wing political tilt, however, is being grossly exaggerated or out-and-out fabricated by the aforementioned usual suspects.

Mind you, Patrick's political tilt has gotten increasingly more tilt-y as the years have gone by, to the extent that even Generalissimo Francisco Franco might find her a bit off-putting. Not only has she gone full MAGA, she's apparently gone full conspiracy kook, too, as often happens. You know, the whole moon-landing-was-faked, JFK-was-shot-by-the-re-animated-corpse-of-Marilyn-Monroe catechism.

Did that make her, well, somewhat polarizing to F1 viewers?

Perhaps.

Did the fact she wasn't terribly insightful as an F1 analyst, on account of she never turned a wheel in F1?

Even more perhaps.

This is no knock on Danica's overall skills as an analyst, mind you. Put her on the mic as an analyst at the Indianapolis 500, and she's got something to say that's worth hearing, given that she made seven starts there and finished in the top ten in six of those starts. At least at Indianapolis, she has as much insight as most of her broadcast partners.

Of course, admitting that would leave the grievance-miners nowhere to park their persecution complexes. So there's that.

Fixin' to fix ... something

The Fearless Leader of America, President Donald John "Do What We Say Or We'll Bomb You Back To Antiquity" Trump, took time out from his latest military adventure to discuss college athletics yesterday. And I don't know about you, but I feel better already.

I mean, with F.L. on the case, this whole NIL/transfer portal mess will be solved lickety-split, or at least in the blink of an eye. We'll go back to the way things used to be, when college kids played for the love of the game and their school, and let the athletic departments scoop all the dough from it.

F.L. said all of this, or something akin to it, in a two-hour round table at the White House,  attended by the media and various luminaries who mostly just listened to him ramble. None of the various luminaries were college athletes, of course, because this wasn't about them. This was about  getting them back under control.

And, OK, yes, that is way cynical of me. Mark it down to 38 years of covering college sports as one of those cynical sportswriter types.

But if it's my natural state, it's hard to depart from it in this particular case. Not when the "Saving College Sports" roundtable was co-chaired by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, New York Yankees president Randy Levine and Florida governor Ron DeSantis.

"What do any of these people know about college sports?" you're saying now. "And why, in a roundtable about college sports, are the New York Yankees involved?"

Hey, don't ask me. I'm just the messenger here. 

As far as I know Rubio, Levine and DeSantis don't know jack-all about college sports, except DeSantis' state contains Florida State, Florida and Miami, college football powers all. Also Rubio went to law school at The U, so, go, 'Canes.

At any rate, Fearless Leader, as is his wont, says he has a grand plan to solve all the problems in college athletics. It's all contained in the executive order he promises to issue in the next week.

"It will be very all-encompassing," F.L. bragged, er, said. "And we're going to put it forward, and we're going to get sued, and we're going to see how it plays, OK, but I'll have an executive order, which will solve every problem in this room, every conceivable problem, within one week, and we'll put it forward."

Awesome. Terrific. Sounds wonderf--

Wait a minute.

Did he say "and we're going to get sued"?

He did. In fact, he said it's the only thing he knows for sure right now. Which suggests a couple of things to the cynical old sportswriter in me:

1. His Big Fix is supremely half-baked. (Which, let's face it, is pretty much par for the course for F.L.)

2. And a lot of it probably is illegal. (Ditto)

Now, understand, the cynical old sportswriter in me does not disagree with Fearless Leader and his various minions. The whole NIL/transfer portal deal is out of control, thanks to the NCAA's sudden passion for laissez faire stewardship. College athletics is threatening to become the Major League Baseball model, with the Power 4 conferences using the Rest Of 'Em conferences as a de facto farm system. 

Play a couple years at say, Eastern Michigan, then get called up to Ann Arbor -- or Columbus or Tuscaloosa or Athens, Georgia. That sort of thing.

However, Fearless Leader's executive order fixin' to fix everything sounds a lot like Richard Nixon's "secret plan" to end the war in Vietnam. And, look, maybe you still trust the guy, and vaya con Dios if you do. But at this point I wouldn't trust him to unclog a toilet.

Especially when even he admits his Secret Plan To Restore College Sports To Greatness has some flaws. Such as, for instance, legality.

Remember that famous line of Ronald Reagan's (speaking of cynicism), about how the worst thing you could ever hear was, "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help"?

I've got a new version of that, cynic that I am:

I'm your Fearless Leader, and I'm here to help.

Yikes.

Lou

I don't know how it's going with Lou Holtz this morning at the pearly gates, but I bet he's telling St. Peter he's still scared to death of Rice.

I bet he's doing magic tricks, and saying how "the University of Navy" used to make him tremble, and asking if the good Lord has laid in an adequate supply of Zagnut bars. I bet this tiny man -- this leprechaun, OK? -- is being every bit the Lou Holtz we knew but never really knew, because Lou was always aces at the shake-and-bake, the juke and the deke, the spin move that left us all grabbing air.

Which is to say, Lou Holtz, who died yesterday at 89, was a whole pile of things. What he wasn't was uncomplicated.

He was a comedian and a hard-ass and one hell of a football coach, to start with. He won 33 games in three seasons at William & Mary, for God's sake. At Arkansas, he once suspended his star running back right before the Orange Bowl, replaced him with some kid named Roland Sales, and Roland Sales ran for 200 yards as the Razorbacks crushed No. 2 Oklahoma 31-6.

He won everywhere he coached, unless you count that ill-considered foray into the NFL with the New York Jets. A man who always knew himself and where he belonged better than any of us, Lou bailed on that deal after just 13 games. The Jets were 3-10 at the time.

Of course, Notre Dame is where he made his bones, and if you put him on the coaching Mt. Rushmore two things are going to happen: No Domer's gonna kick, and Lou's gonna crack wise. Say something like, "Fine, but make sure you get the nose right."

Lou took over the wreckage of the Gerry Faust years and produced a national champion in just three seasons, beating archrival Miami 31-30 in an epic October clash and then taking down West Virginia 34-21 in the Fiesta Bowl. He had Tony Rice and Tony Brooks and a freshman named Rocket Ismail on offense, and scary dudes like Michael Stonebreaker and Frank Stams and Ned Bolcar on defense, and the Irish ran the table, finishing 12-0.

That remains, of course, Notre Dame's only national title in the last 50 years. It's partly why there's a statue of Lou outside Notre Dame Stadium now, same as Knute Rockne and Frank Leahy and longtime athletic director Moose Krause.

Lou went on to win 100 games in 11 seasons in South Bend, third on the all-time list behind Brian Kelly and Rockne himself.  His departure in November 1996, on the other hand, was hardly as straightforward. In fact it was downright weird.

On the day he talked about it, see, there were no magic tricks or jokes or one-liners about how special it was to walk outside at night and see the snow falling on the Lady atop the Golden Dome. ("And it's July," was always the punchline). The teevees and deadline grunts kept asking Lou why he was leaving, and all he kept saying was, "It's the right thing to do."

I was there that day, and what comes back to me now is a linebacker named Bert Berry, one of that year's stickout players. He was sitting behind the TV cameras with his head down and his hands folded. His eyes kept opening and closing, and every time he opened them to stare at his shoes, he looked every bit as bewildered as the rest of us.

Lou could do that you. Never uncomplicated, remember?

And so on the day he announced he was walking away from the only place he ever really wanted to coach, he said it was his decision but left the impression it wasn't. That he didn't want to step down, but was somehow left with no choice. And of course, being Lou, he never explained why that was.

There was talk, of course. It was rumored he and athletic director Mike Wadsworth got crosswise over an eligibility crackdown, which Lou vehemently denied. And there were all these stories about a booster/sort-of booster named Kimberly Dunbar who lavished gifts on Notre Dame's players right under Lou's nose.

Notre Dame got in dutch with the NCAA for that -- but not until after Lou left. Same thing happened at North Carolina State, Arkansas, Minnesota and South Carolina, too. And so the perception, fair or not, that Lou got out of Dodge each time just ahead of the law became part of his legacy, too.

On balance, though?

On balance -- the only way truly to measure a man's life -- he belongs up there on Rushmore. He deserves his statuary. Even if, at this very moment, he really is telling St. Peter he's still scared to death of Rice.

Know what the punchline is to that one?

The very week Lou said it, Notre Dame beat Rice 54-11.

Rimshot.

 

Opting out

 I wouldn't know Drew Dalman if he left tread marks on my chest, which, as a Pro Bowl center for the Chicago Bears, it's highly likely he might do. So I can't tell you why he's now a former Chicago Bear.

All I know is what I read in the papers, as they say, and the papers say Drew Dalman is retiring from professional football. This is news because Dalman is only 27 years old.

Other than that, I got nothin', because Dalman hasn't said anything. But it's worth noting because he's just the latest NFL player to walk away from the game in his 20s, before he was forced to limp away.

The most notable, of course, is Andrew Luck, who abruptly retired right before the 2019 season at the age of 29. There are still lint-brains out there who think he's a big wuss for doing that, but that's why they're lint-brains. Plus none of them ever took a hit on a Sunday afternoon from some 280-pound assassin with 4.5 speed.

Luck did, too many times, and paid the price for it. He left pieces of himself all over the En Eff Ell, and finally he wondered why the hell he kept doing it. As has been noted many times, Luck's a smart guy. So it's likely he looked into the future and decided it would be fun to still be able to walk up a flight of stairs by the time he was 45. 

Again, I don't know if that's what Drew Dalman is thinking. But he is a center, and centers get hit on every play with foot-pounds of force the lint-brains and big-talkin' tough guys can't even imagine. So maybe he looked into the future and thought it would be fun to still have a melon that wasn't squash by the time he was 45.

At any rate, after five years, Dalman's decided to opt out of this child's game. You can blame him if you want, but I won't. I've never stood on an NFL sideline during a game, but I have stood on  a few big-boy college sidelines and heard the scholars collide at full speed. It literally sounds like a car crash -- and that's just college.

I can't imagine what it must sound like in the NFL. And neither can you.

So color me un-shocked at Dalman's decision, even though he'll leave a vault of money on the table. He signed a three-year deal with the Bears worth $42 million before last season, and the Bears got their money's worth. Dalman wound up anchoring a rebuilt offensive line that gave quarterback Caleb Williams a fighting chance to avoid being killed, and Williams responded by throwing for 3,942 yards, 27 touchdowns and just seven interceptions. 

He also was sacked only 25 times. And I say "only" because he was sacked 68 times the year before.

Dalman, meanwhile, started all 17 games as a free-agent signing from Atlanta, where he started 40 games in four seasons. Last year he played every one of the Bears' 1,154 offensive snaps.

That's a lot of hits. A lot of car crashes, if you will.

So out the door Dalman goes, leaving the Bears to go looking for another center. It is, of course, a totally Bears sort of deal: Two months ago they won the NFC North title and a playoff game, and now they're shopping for a center for the second offseason in a row.

"Oh, for bleep's sake!" you can imagine them yelping.

Me?

I'll just say what long-suffering fans in Chi have been saying since the days of Bobby Douglass, Jack Concannon and the immortal Ralph Kurek:

Bears gonna Bears.

No littles allowed

 I've never been Bruce Pearl's biggest fan. I suppose we should get that out there right off the hop.

I've always thought he was too slick by half, a genial bender of rules who got Tennessee in trouble with the NCAA and then lit out for Auburn, where he never got caught doing anything shady but probably did. Or so I always figured, perhaps unfairly.

In any case, I freely confess to some bias where he's concerned. So keep that in mind when I say this: Bruce Pearl is an idiot.

The other day he got up in his analyst halftime gig to say Miami (O.), which is 29-0, should have to win its conference tournament to get into the big show. This is because Miami plays in the Mid-American Conference, a mid-major loop considered a rung or two below big-boy conferences like the Big Ten, ACC or SEC. As such, Pearl figures, Miami simply doesn't have the resume to get into the NCAA Tournament as an at-large team.

The Blob considers this elitist garbage. Over and above the fact Pearl has a dog in this particular hunt.

See, his previous gig, Auburn, now is coached by his son. The Tigers are 15-14at the moment, 6-10 in the SEC. But because it is the SEC, they're somehow still regarded as a bubble team.

To his credit, Pearl acknowledged the conflict of interest the other day. But that doesn't let him off the hook for his ridiculous take about Miami, and his apparent cluelessness about the nature of March Madness.

Which is this: It's not mid-or-worse SEC or Big Ten or ACC teams that make the Madness the Madness. It's the Miamis of Ohio.

Everything we all love about the NCAA's big show is about the Miamis, and also the Fairleigh Dickinsons, Maryland Baltimore Countys (UMBC) and Yales or Princetons. No one's tuning into that first weekend, which sells the whole deal, to see some lame seventh-or-eighth-place major conference team take on some other lame seventh-or-eighth-place major conference team.

Except for alums, no one cares about, say, 17-12 West Virginia taking on 18-12 Texas. No, sirree.

What they care about is Miami (O.) vs. whomever.

They want to see if the Red Hawks really are as good as all that. Or to see 16-seed UMBC upend 1-seed Virginia. Or to see Fairleigh Dickenson knock off Purdue. Or to see some kid with a '50s haircut light up lordly Kentucky with 10 threes.

That happened two years ago in the first round of the South Regional. The kid's name was Jack Gohlke, who scored 30 of his 32 points that day from behind the arc. And his team, Oakland out of the Horizon League, did indeed knock out UK, 80-76.

Alas, the ride didn't last long for Oakland; it lost in overtime to North Carolina State in the second round. But did that matter? Hell, no, it didn't matter. For four days, the previously unknown Gohlke was the talk of the tournament.

Meanwhile, on that same day, in the same regional, 20-14 Texas A&M beat 23-9 Nebraska. I know this only because I looked it up. Jack Gohlke, I didn't have to.

And so Bruce Pearl can go on all he wants about strength of schedule and Quad 1 wins and how unbeaten littles like Miami shouldn't be allowed inside the big tent if they lose in their conference tournament. A 15-14 Auburn has it all over, say, a 30-1 Miami in that case.

To which the Blob has but one suitable response:

Yeah, OK, buddy. Whatev'.