Disappearing act

 Cruising through my socials today, and I came across a couple of posts from a Facethingy bro that made me sigh and shake my head.

(This is not to say I don't sigh and shake my head at virtually everything these curmudgeonly days, mind you. But sometimes I really sigh and shake my head, and occasionally mutter the more blasphemous version of "Jeezly crow.")

Anyway, what Facethingy Bro -- he has a name, and it's Michael Pointer, a former sportswriting colleague -- had put up were three items about the Washington Post, which was one of the nation's great newspapers until Jeff Bezos got his mitts on it. One item noted that the Post reportedly would not be sending a beat writer to Nationals' spring training this year; a New York Times piece reported the Post had abruptly decided not to send a team to the upcoming Winter Olympics. 

And the third item?

It highlighted the logical conclusion a reasonable person might reach from the previous two: That there are strong indications the Post will soon be doing away with its sports desk altogether.

It was right about then I thought about Bill Gildea.

Bill, you see, worked the sports beat for the Post, along with a number of other luminaries.  You had Bill and Tom Boswell and Christine Brennan and Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon and Chuck Culpeper, and a bunch of others. John Feinstein worked the sports beat there for a goodly stretch. Ditto Sally Jenkins, who worked there twice and is still there.

They were the '27 Yankees of sports scribbling, in other words. The Lombardi Packers/Chuck Noll Steelers/Bill Walsh Niners/Bill Belichick Patriots. And now they're bailing on spring training? And -- good grief -- the Olympic Games?

What a world. What. A. World.

But back to Gildea.

I met him 29 years ago when he was traveling around Indiana, gathering material for his paean to high school basketball in the state. It was the last year of Hoosier Hysteria, Indiana's fabled single-class tournament. One of the teams Gildea was following was DeKalb -- which that season featured soon-to-be Mr. Basketball Luke Recker, and which was right up the road from my port of call in Fort Wayne.

In other words, I saw Bill more than a few times that winter. Reviewed the subsequent book, "Where The Game Matters Most." It was as graceful, and gracious, as Bill himself, who was a first-rate gentleman without a whiff of pretense.

He's gone now, alas. Shuffled off the mortal coil in 2020, at the age of 81. But I'm wondering if, somewhere in the Good Place, he's sighing and shaking his head and saying "Jeezly crow" or some variation, too.

Because the '27 Yankees are skipping the World Series, as it were. They're surrendering the field. It's a disappearing act we're seeing everywhere these days, distressingly. 

Yet it still confounds those of us who remember when a top-drawer sports staff sold the book, so to speak -- and never mind that the metro-desk drones called it The Toy Department.

Now?

Now the Washington Post isn't sending scribes to the Olympics. It's not covering spring training. There's no all-star lineup flooding the zone, as it were;no Tony Kornheiser cracking wise about luge or cross-country skiing or the Zen-like appeal of curling.

Kornheiser, by the way, left the Post years ago for a pile of TV dough. So did his sidekick, Wilbon. In Kornheiser's case, his exit deprived us of one of the funniest writers in America -- a man whose second compilation of columns bore one of the all-time great (and honest) titles: "I'm Back For More Cash."

Pretty much the theme music for the Jeff Bezoses of the world, come to think of it.

To our detriment.

The Who Cares Bowl

Lots of people ... OK, some people ... OK, a few people ... have been caterwauling lately about Shedeur Sanders being named to the Pro Bowl as a replacement for Pro Bowler Drake Maye, who's busy getting ready for the Super Bowl. Lots, or some, or a few, think it's ridiculous that a guy who started just seven games for the hideous Cleveland Browns and threw more interceptions (10) than touchdowns (seven) should be in the Pro Bowl.

"Where's, I don't know, Trevor Lawrence?" they say. "Where's the guy who was a finalist for NFL MVP, threw for 4,007 yards, 29 touchdowns and just 12 interceptions and led Jacksonville to the AFC South title? Where's that guy?"

One supposes they have a point.

One also supposes it doesn't matter.

That's because, hello, it's the Pro Bowl, which is nothing but recess in a warm place these days. There are relay races and skills contests and then a flag football game on the beach. Afterward there's a cookout.

(OK. So it's not on the beach. But it could be.)

(Also, as far as I know, there's not a cookout, either. But there could be.)

Point is, who really cares who plays in the Who Cares Bowl, so heck, why NOT Shedeur Sanders? He's new. He's fun in the sense that you never know when he's going to do something harebrained. And he has a brand, which is a big deal in corporate America these days.

"But ... but ..." you're saying now.

But what? Look around the AFC. Patrick Mahomes and Bo Nix are on the shelf. Ditto Daniel Jones and Cam Ward. Lamar Jackson and Joe Burrow missed big chunks of the season with injuries, and CJ Stroud is likely still in hiding after throwing four picks in an ugly playoff loss to the Patriots.

As for Lawrence ...

Well, he was a Pro Bowl alternate. Lots of people, or some, or a few, think he should have been chosen ahead of  Justin Herbert, who's one of the three AFC quarterbacks. The fact Lawrence is not, after the breakout season he had, suggests he was asked and said, "Nah, I'm good."

This in turn suggests Trevor Lawrence is smarter than your average bear, so to speak.

Although he will miss the cookout. I hear it's a hell of a feast.

(Just kidding.)

Welcome to the big city

So, OK, then: Patriots vs. Seahawks in the 60th Super Bowl.

Two head coaches who've never been to the Big Supe as head coaches.

Two quarterbacks who've never been there, either.

It's Mike Vrabel, who's 50 years old and in his second gig as an NFL head coach, vs. Mike Macdonald, who's 38 and in his first. It's Drake Maye, who's in just his second year as an NFL starting quarterback, vs. Sam Darnold, who's the journeyman of all journeymen, bouncing around from place to place as a starter and backup before finding his mojo in Seattle.

This isn't Lombardi vs. Landry or Reid vs. Shanahan in the Big Six-Oh, but never mind that. And it's not Montana vs. Marino or Mahomes vs. Brady, but never mind that, either.

What it is are two teams who talk less about scheme and analytics than about heart and will and belief and vision, all the old verities. They talk about team unity and pieces fitting together into a cohesive whole, and everyone pulling an oar in the same direction for each other and the organization and, hell, even their cities.

They're new schoolers, these two, but they talk as old school as inkwells. It's heartwarming and wonderful and, OK, a little corny, too.

The Patriots, for instance?

Their fresh-faced quarterback looks like Johnny Be Good and plays like Billy Be Damned, out-gritting the Broncos yesterday on a snow-swirled day in Denver with his legs and his guile. It was the Patriots' ninth road win against zero losses this season -- which no one ever does in the NFL, especially not a team that was 4-12 last season.

Know something else about their quarterback?

He's married to his middle-school sweetheart, Ann Michael. Know what she does?

She bakes cookies for Maye and his teammates before every game.

Does it get any more "Little House On The Prairie" than that?

Out in Seattle, meanwhile, you've got a kid head coach who got the Seahawks to buy in on Day One. He did it by envisioning a team that never, ever quits, and that would wind up playing in the NFC championship game on a rain-soaked day Seattle.

Except for the fact it was a gorgeous day in Seattle, everything he envisioned came true.

The Seahawks won 14 games during the regular season in the toughest division in football, earned the NFC's No. 1 seed, and, yes, wound up playing in the NFC championship game. And they never quit, just like their leader -- Sam Darnold himself -- never quit through all his travels and tribulations. 

Matthew Stafford and the nemesis Rams kept coming at them; Darnold and Jaxon Smith-Njigba and Kenneth Walker III kept answering back. Smith-Njigba caught 10 balls for 153 yards and a touchdown. Walker ground out 62 yards and another six against a Rams defense that had no other back on whom to key. And Sam Darnold ... well, Sam Darnold played the game of his life in the biggest game of his life, throwing for 346 yards and three scores without a turnover. 

Does it get any more Shane-Falco-in-"The-Replacements" than that?

It's all a damn movie script, and in two weeks it culminates in the most cinematic of our Roman circuses. Will Drake Maye and the resurrected Patriots win on the road again? Will Darnold and JSN and Walker et al complete their young coach's giddy vision? 

We shall see. But in the meantime ... 

Welcome to the big city, Pats and 'Hawks.

Wear sunglasses. Those lights are some bright.

Another one gone

 Little by little these days, my childhood disappears. This will happen when you ascend to the first class section of codgerdom, which I can reliably claim to have done.

(Great place, codgerdom first class. You get free tapioca. Also unlimited supplies of "consarn it," "dadgum it" and various other codgerisms.)

Where was I again?

Oh, yeah. Disappearing childhood.

Another piece vanished yesterday when the news came down that John Brodie had died, and, boy, that's bummer. For one thing, he was 90 years old, which seems impossible. Wasn't it just yesterday he was throwing to Gene Washington and handing off to Ken Willard?

Who were two others I remember from those 1960s San Francisco 49ers, who used to battle the seagulls in decrepit Kezar Stadium. Every Sunday afternoon, it seemed, we'd get the Bears, the Lions or the Vikings on the early game, and the Niners or the Rams on the late game. Sometimes we'd get both when they played one another.

Brodie, of course, was the quarterback of those Niners, and thus the ringleader. Besides Washington and Willard, they had some guys named Dave Parks and Charlie Krueger, and some other guys named Howard Mudd and Dave Wilcox and Bob Windsor. Even had a young Jimmy Johnson back there at cornerback.

Brodie played 17 seasons for the 49ers, retiring after the 1973 season with 214 career touchdown passes and 31,548 yards. In an era when it was a whole lot tougher to complete passes, he completed 55 percent of them. The 49ers during his time were sometimes decent, more often "meh" and occasionally awful. 

But in 1970 Brodie had his big year, winning league MVP while quarterbacking the Niners to a division title for the first time in his career. They lost to the Cowboys in the NFC championship game, 17-10.

And now he's gone, and those Sunday afternoons of my kid-hood grow that much dimmer. Brodie, Roman Gabriel, Gale Sayers, Dick Butkus, Mel Farr, Bart Starr ... the list goes on, as lists like this always will.

 'Bye, guys. See ya later, alligator.

Musical coaches

 Listen, I don't know what the Buffalo Bills are thinking. I make it a rule assume no NFL team is ever thinking much of anything, on the excellent chance none of them are.

So, yeah, Bills, OK, go ahead and fire Sean McDermott for not getting Josh Allen to the Super Bowl. McDermott's had plenty of chances, after all. So I guess it was time.

And, yeah, go ahead and interview Mike McDaniel, even though the Dolphins just got sick of him. Ditto Brian Daboll, who couldn't even get through the this season before the chronically putrid Giants fired him because he couldn't make them less chronically putrid.

Hey, you don't know! Maybe Mike and Brian will do better this time! Could happen, right?

Same goes for Robert Saleh, fired by the Jets only to be hired as the next head coach of the Titans. Also for Jeff Hafley -- whom the Dolphins just hired to replace McDaniel, and whose last head coaching gig was at Boston College, where he drove a pretty decent program onto the rocks.

But that was college! And this the pros! Whole different ballgame, right?

Which brings us back to the Bills.

Who, yesterday, down in Florida, interviewed not a former college head coach, but a current high school coach. Come on down, Philip Rivers!

"Wait ... what?" you're saying now.

Yes, that's right. Philip Rivers, last seen being called in off the couch to quarterback the Indianapolis Colts at the age of 44, got a sitdown with the Bills. He's never coached at the pro level. He's never coached at any of the various college levels. But Josh Allen thinks the world of him, so ... 

"So this is Gerry Faust 2.0?" you're saying.

Maybe. Although probably not. 

Probably the Bills will go with one of the retreads they're interviewing in this game of musical coaches, unless they go with some flavor-of-the-month offensive or defensive coordinator. It's a roll of the dice either way, especially given the less-than-stellar ownership and front office in Buffalo.

Sometimes, after all, retreads find second lives in new places (See: Bill Belichick, Mike Vrabel, etc.). And sometimes coordinators flourish as head coaches (See: Sean McVay, Ben Johnson, a host of others), and sometimes they crash-and-burn (See: McDaniel, Daboll, Josh McDaniels). 

But a guy with no tread or coordinator chops whatsoever?

Yikes.

Which is not to say Philip Rivers wouldn't be really good at the coaching thing. He probably would. And maybe the Bills are smarter than I'm giving them credit for, or that they've ever shown themselves to be. Maybe what they're really doing by interviewing Rivers is feeling him out for a gig as their quarterbacks coach. It's possible.

All I know is this: If they were really serious about him as a head coaching candidate, let me tell you about the last guy to go straight from the playing field to head coach in the NFL.

According to the Elias Sports Bureau and ESPN, that would be Norm Van Brocklin, also a quarterback, who finished his 12-year playing year in 1960 and was hired the next year by the Minnesota Vikings as their first head coach. Van Brocklin went on to coach 13 seasons with the Vikings and Atlanta Falcons, compiling a 66-100-7 record. He had just three winning seasons in those 13 years.

Not sayin'. Just sayin'.

Diminishment returns

 Four days later, people still can't wrap their heads around it. Indiana, ascending to heights once the exclusive property of the Alabamas, the Ohio States, the Michigans, the Notre Dames? Going where only the Rocknes and Leahys and Bear Bryants and Bobby Bowdens et al had gone before? Indiana?

This does not compute. This does not track. Surely the saddest of sadsacks in college football couldn't be that good, could they?

And so, let the diminishment returns begin (with appropriate refutation):

* Indiana only won because it bought a championship with NIL. 

Well, yes. The Indiana NIL payroll was $21.1 million. Which ain't couch-cushion dough.

But the payroll for Miami, whom it beat in the title game, was $24.1 million.

And the payroll for Oregon, whom it beat twice, was $30 million.

And the payroll for Ohio State, whom it beat in the Big Ten championship, was a whopping $35 million plus.

Truth is, yes, NIL has changed the calculus. But it's a calculus available to anyone; Miami quarterback Carson Beck's NIL haul, for instance, was $3.1 mill, compared to Fernando Mendoza's $2.6 mill. So if Miami or any of the other aforementioned schools had won the CFP, would the yapping poodles of the internet be saying they bought themselves a title? Did anyone say it last year when Ohio State did?

Next, please.

* Indiana only won because it was a de facto pro team, pitting grown men against teenagers.

Well, yes, Indiana did have a veteran team. But, as the Blob pointed out the other day, one of its principal players -- breakout wide receiver Charlie Becker -- is a true sophomore.  Most of the other key figures are either 22 or 23.  So the narrative that Indiana won because it was playing a bunch of 24- and 25-yearold grown men falls apart in a hurry.

Truth is, the Hoosiers brought a fairly traditional senior-laden team to the dance. Of course, no traditional senior-laden team had EVER won a national championship. Not one. No, sirree.

Next.

* Indiana only won because it was the Rent-A-Hoosiers. A transfer-portal team. 

Well, yes. A-portaling Indiana did go.

But so does everyone else these days.

And it's not like Fernando Mendoza was Carson Beck or anything.

Mendoza  came out of high school as the 2,140th-ranked prospect according to the scouting website 247, so little regarded he was recruited by none of the 18 schools whose football camps he attended. A brilliant student, he was headed to Yale before a spot on the Cal-Berkeley roster opened up.

Beck?

He was the backup on two national championship teams at Georgia, quarterbacked the Bulldogs to the 2023 SEC championship, and started 27 games there. The Bulldogs went 24-3 in those games as Beck threw for 7,912 yards and 58 touchdowns.

Portal advantage to Miami.

Truth is, Indiana didn't exactly load up on national champs or 5-stars via the portal. Aiden Fisher, the heart and soul of the Hoosiers' voracious down-seven on defense, wound up at James Madison because the big shooters all thought he was too slow and too small. D'Angelo Ponds, Indiana's All-American corner, didn't get a sniff because he everyone thought he was too small as well.

And Riley Nowakowski, the hybrid fullback/tight end who scored Indiana's first touchdown in the championship game?

He was a zero-star coming out of high school who walked on at Wisconsin and played a little tight end and fullback, but mostly special teams. Not exactly Ron Dayne or Jonathan Taylor.

Yes a-portaling the Hoosiers did go. But not to put together a roster of superstars. To put together a roster of misfit toys that included no five-stars, eight four-stars, and various scrap-heapers whom Curt Cignetti molded into a dynamic whole.

Next.

Next? Anyone?

Moneyball

 UCLA basketball coach Mick Cronin likely never set out to play the lead role in "The Perpetually Unhappy Man," the long-running hoops procedural that once starred Bob Knight, Jim Boeheim and a host of other grumps. But he's doing a bang-up job.

The other night, for instance, his Bruins handed No. 4 Purdue its first Big Ten loss in Pauley Pavilion, 69-67. It was a taut thriller UCLA snatched off the Boilermakers' plate with a game-ending 8-0 run, Tyler Bilodeau sticking a 3-ball with 8.8 seconds left to provide the winning points.

Think that made The Perpetually Unhappy Man smile?

It did not.

Instead, Cronin lashed out at the Big Ten in the postgame, sarcastically thanking it for making the Bruins play five of their first seven league games on the road. He also remains less than thrilled with the whole Big Ten thing in general, but reluctantly understands "that's gonna be what it's gonna be."

Somewhere in there, he also said this: "They (the Big Ten) don't care about basketball. Truly."

It says here Melancholy Mick only missed the mark by a hair with that one.

Truth is it isn't just basketball the Big Ten doesn't care about, it's also football. And volleyball. And soccer. And just about any other sport the conference offers.

If it cared about any of them -- or rather, any of the "student-athletes" who play them -- it never would have scavenged UCLA, USC, Washington and Oregon from the ruins of the Pac-12. It never would have scooped Rutgers and Maryland. You could even go back 35 or so years and say it never would have welcomed Penn State to the fold.

But the Big Ten did all that, and not because it had to. Or should have. It did it because TV rights and revenue streams drive the bus here in the merry 2000s, and the Big Ten hungered for those juicy east and west coast markets. What's a Big Ten Network without New York and L.A., after all?

So the conference blew up its footprint, because footprints are as old-fashioned as your granny's lace doilies. Moneyball is the new normal.

Heck, they're even paying the players now to spend all that extra time on airplanes, which means Big Ten commish Tony Petitti and the gang don't even have to feel guilty about it. How great is that?

"But Mr. Blob," you're saying now. "What about academics? What about all the class time the student-athletes will miss kiting around the country?"

Bwah-ha-ha-ha. Ha. Ha.

That stuff went out the first time a school realized there was gold in them thar quarterbacks and point guards, and that was some time ago. Coast-to-coast is the most now, and even Mick Cronin has resigned himself to that. If he's mad at the Big Ten, after all, he should be just as mad at his university, which decided satchels of cash trumped its alleged mission.

UCLA's upcoming schedule, for instance?

Beginning the last day of January, the Bruins play three straight at home, then fly to Ann Arbor and East Lansing for roadies at Michigan and Michigan State. Then they fly back home to host Illinois and USC. Four days after that they fly to Minnesota; three days after that, they're back home to host Nebraska.

All that in 31 days.

But, hey. I'm sure the TV numbers will be huge.