Past as prologue

 The  big news out of golf right now -- it's January, so any news out of golf qualifies as big -- is that Brooks Koepka is coming back to the PGA fold, though with less folding money. Under the PGA's Returning Member Program, he'll be allowed back inside the ropes, but only after paying a hefty fine.

Koepka, who defected to the LIV golf "tour" in 2022, ponied up. And now he'll re-defect back to the PGA, having met the RMP's provisions -- that he'd been away from the PGA Tour for at least two years, and that he'd won the Players Championship or one of the four majors since he left.

So what does this mean?

I'll tell you what it means.

It means you can't spell "LIV" without "WHA."

It means the past is often prologue, and thus LIV golf is just the old World Hockey Association, which 50 years ago was the LIV golf of hockey. Like LIV, it was a breakaway league, only from the NHL instead of the PGA. Like LIV, it threw fistfuls of money at established stars to jump ship. And, like LIV, it turned out to be something less than the defectors expected.

In the WHA's case, it turned out to be an under-capitalized mess that thrived for a bit in some places, and never caught hold in others. The league made a big splash at the outset when it lured established stars such as Bobby Hull, Derek Sanderson, Gerry Cheevers and Bernie Parent, and it put "major league" hockey in places that had never before seen it:  Miami, Calgary, Dayton, O., and San Francisco, and later Indianapolis, Hartford, Conn., and Edmonton, Alberta. 

Alas, not all of those teams survived for long. Dayton and San Francisco, for instance, never made to the ice; before the inaugural season even began, Dayton became the Houston Aeros and San Francisco the Quebec Nordiques. The Calgary Broncos and Miami Screaming Eagles, on the other hand, wound up folding outright.

Eventually, after seven seasons, the league folded in 1979 with four teams -- Winnipeg, Quebec, the Edmonton Oilers and the Hartford Whalers -- being absorbed into the NHL. Of those four, only Winnipeg and Edmonton survive in their original form. The Whalers are now the Carolina Hurricanes, and the Quebec Nordiques became the Colorado Avalanche.

LIV golf hasn't gone that way yet. But the pattern does seem unnervingly familiar.

Like the WHA, it's not all it was cracked up to be; it's turned out to be a gussied-up exhibition tour, with 54-hole tournaments, no cut and guaranteed paychecks even if you play like Weekend Wilbur and snap-hook every ball you address.  Primarily an overseas tour -- Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Hong Kong, etc. -- its TV presence is negligible, and its American venues do not exactly wake up any echoes.

Chatham Hills in Westfield, In., for instance. The Cardinal at St. John's in Plymouth, Mich. Bayou Oaks in New Orleans' City Park.

All very nice venues, I'm sure. But close your eyes and it's 1972 Dayton, Calgary and Winnipeg all over again.

Now, admittedly, this is a lot to extrapolate from one guy coming back to the PGA Tour. But three other LIV golfers -- Bryson DeChambeau, Cameron Smith and Jon Rahm -- also meet the Returning Member Program requirements. So it's reasonable to think Brooks Koepka could be less an outrider than a groundbreaker.

In other words: Stay tuned.

Times and places

 I once heard a reporter in a press conference totally befuddle a young man named Major Harris.

The year was 1989, the occasion was the Fiesta Bowl, and Harris was the quarterback for West Virginia, who would go on to lose to Lou Holtz's Notre Dame legions to secure ND's last national championship. The question, if I recall (and, come on, it's been 37 years), came from a Pittsburgh newspaper reporter. It went something like this:

"Major, what percentage of the Notre Dame mystique will be a factor in the game?"

Harris looked at her like she had two heads.

"Uh ..." he replied, or words to that effect.

This is not how Jaguars head coach Liam Coen responded yesterday in the postgame presser after the Jags lost to the Bills in an wild-card playoff game

No, he merely grinned and said "Thank you, ma'am" when Lynn Jones of the Jacksonville Free Press asked ... well, OK, so it wasn't exactly a question.

What she said was this: "How you doing today, Lynn Jones, Jacksonville Free Press. I just want to tell you, congratulations on your success, young man. You hold your head up, alright? You guys have had a most magnificent season. You did a great job out there today. You just hold your head up, okay? Ladies and gentlemen, Duval, you the one. We got another season, okay? Take care, and much continued success to you and the entire team."

Now, I wasn't there, obviously. But I've sat in enough of these postgames (including the one at the aforementioned Fiesta Bowl) to imagine at least some others among the assembled media looked at one another and mouthed, "What the hell?"

Because, listen, there's such a thing as protocol in these affairs, and Jones' boosterish declaration violated it in any number of ways. One, she didn't ask a question (even a dumb one involving the Notre Dame mystique). Two, she DIDN'T ASK A QUESTION. And, three, even if there's a time and place to give a pep talk to a source (and I'm not sure there is), this wasn't it.

This was the time and place to ask what in the name of Tom Landry was Coach thinking when he dialed up a fullback dive on third-and-9. Or why he didn't take the gimme field goal when he came up short on fourth down inside the 10. Or why he stuck with the Cover Two even though the other team's QB1 was tearing large holes in it.

Look. I don't know Lynn Jones, so I can't tell you what she was thinking. But I know her job, because she's a columnist for the Free Press, and I did a little columnizing myself in my time. So I can say with some assurance (as Drew Lerner of Awful Announcing noted in his story on this) that the place for telling a coach what a magnificent job he did is in the column.  Not in the presser.

It's not that I don't understand that impulse, mind you. I do. More than once I felt for a coach or player in the wake of a tough loss, but I held my tongue. I didn't tell him (or her) to keep his/her head up. I didn't give him/her a sympathetic pat on the shoulder. I just asked my questions and moved on.

Maybe that meant I didn't get the best stuff sometimes, I don't know. Maybe keeping a professional distance wasn't always the way to go. But it was my way, and it served me well.

I do know one thing, though.

Lynn Jones' way is not the way to go. Never was. Never will be.

Cliffhanger Central

 Look, there has to be a name for them now. Has to be. They can't just be the Bears ... or Da Bearz ... or Da (Bleepity-Bleeping) Bearz.

So what do we call them, as Caleb Williams and his crew pull another one out of either the hat or a certain orifice? What do they answer to?

The Kardiac (as opposed to Kodiak) Bears?

The Windy City "Whew"s?

Or Chicago Med, because they've sent more of their fans to the ER this year than six Chicago dogs with extra peppers and a Malort chaser?

You tell me. You tell me after Chicago 31, Green Bay 27 last night, which was either an epic Packers choke (the Wisconsin version) or just another day of the week for the Bears (the Illinois version).

Seven times now this season the Bears have fallen down the well, which is about two more times than Timmy did on "Lassie." Seven times they've found a rope that conveniently seemed always to be there and clambered out.

The seventh time happened after the Bears went down 21-3 at halftime to their ancient rivals ... and after Packers quarterback Jordan Love kept picking them apart ... and after they kept going for it on fourth down and failing, which happened a staggering four times. It was as if Bears coach Ben Johnson's gambling old boss in Detroit, Dan "Call And Raise" Campbell, had pulled off some sort of alpha-male demon possession.

At any rate, it was still 21-6 heading to the fourth quarter, and the Bears looked expired. The Packers own 'em, the Pack's their daddy, all that noise.

And then ...

And then Super Caleb sprang from the phone booth, and the Bears followed.

Somehow, some way, they scored 25 points in the fourth quarter, and stole it right off the Packers' plate. D'Andre Swift ran for a score and Williams found Olimeade Zaccheaus for another score, and then threw to Colston Loveland for the two-point conversion. 

That pulled the Bears within three at 27-24. The Packers promptly missed a 44-yard field goal try -- a virtual gimme, these days -- and here came Super Caleb again, hitting DJ Moore from 25 yards out with 1:43 to play for the winning six.

Voila: Fifteen straight points in the last 6:36, at which point the Bears trailed 27-16. Seventh fourth-quarter comeback. Seventh win after trailing with two minutes to play.

And, oh, yeah: First playoff W for the Bears in 15 years.

Lovie Smith was still the coach then. Devin Hester was still running back kicks. Brian Urlacher was still terrorizing ballcarriers, and Jay Cutler was the surly quarterback.

Fifteen years along, Super Caleb fills that role, minus the surliness. And the Bears are headed to the second round, where they'll welcome either the Eagles or the Rams to Soldier Field -- aka Cliffhanger Central.

"I think it's our identity here at this point," Johnson said, when asked about all the fantastic finishes. "Some people say it's not sustainable. I don't know."

Or maybe he does. Wink, wink.

Hail to the conceivable, Part Deux

 Driving around with the radio on a smidge before 5:00 yesterday afternoon, and a high school basketball game was just about to start already. Nothing odd about that, persay. It was January, it was Friday night, it was Indiana. Of course there would be high school buckets in the high school buckets state.

But at 5 p.m.?

Once again, your Indiana football Hoosiers had given us something even the codgers among us had never seen before.

Not even IU basketball, after all, had ever pushed aside the high school version on a Friday night in January. That IU football would cause schools to shove back starting times and/or move their games off Friday altogether was ... well, as Wallace Shawn said in "The Princess Bride": Inconceivable!

And yet, it happened. IU was playing Oregon in the Peach Bowl for a berth in the CFP national championship game, and kickoff was scheduled for 7:30 p.m. So a girls-boys doubleheader between Northrop and Snider was tipping at the alien hour of 5 p.m. High school basketball, the holiest of Hoosier holies, moved aside.

Of course, we're way past the point where Curt Cignetti's Hoosiers made a ghost of the previously inconceivable. Roll unbeaten through the regular season? Conceivable. Beat No. 1 Ohio State in the Big Ten championship game? Conceivable. Destroy Alabama -- Alabama, for pity's sake -- in the Rose Bowl?

Conceivable.

And now we take you to Atlanta last night, the Peach Bowl, first play of the game against a smart, talented Oregon team whose only loss was to Indiana back in October.

Was that really D'Angelo Ponds picking Dante Moore and taking it to the house on the first snap of the game?

Conceivable.

The game wasn't over the moment Ponds danced across the goal line, but it might as well have been. The Hoosiers went on to score touchdowns on four straight  possessions, took a 35-7 lead into halftime, and led 42-7 before Oregon managed a couple of garbage-time scores. The final was 56-22, a lamination no one saw coming except, perhaps, Coach Cig and his guys.

And yet, there it was. The Hoosiers forced three turnovers and turned them into scores, while turning it over zero times themselves. Heisman Trophy winner Fernando Mendoza was ridiculous again, throwing more touchdown pass (5) than incompletions (3) for the second game in a row. He found four different Indiana receivers for scores, led by Elijah Sarratt's seven catches for 75 yards and two touchdowns.

And now ... onward.

To play for a national title. Against Miami in Miami. With a quarterback who can't seem to miss, and a wide receiver corps that runs impeccably precise routes and never drops a ball, and a defense that never lets opponents take an easy breath.

In two playoff games, that group has beaten Alabama and Oregon by a combined 69 points, outscoring them 94-25.

In two games, Mendoza has thrown eight touchdown passes, no interceptions and just five incompletions.

In two games, Sarratt has 11 catches for 115 yards and three scores.

Hail, America. Hail to the conceivable.

 

Da prediction

 Every day now people ask me what I think, usually people dressed in IU red this or IU red that. I tell them I don't know what to think. I'm tempted to add this is because thinking hurts when you get to be my age.

They ask anyway.

"So, what do you think? Indiana or Oregon?" they say.

"Beats me," I reply. "Besides, I'm almost always wrong about these things."

It's that "almost" that's hanging me up here.

See, Indiana-Oregon in the Peach Bowl tonight for a berth opposite Miami in the national championship game is one of those conventional wisdom deals, and so it ought to be an easy call. Conventional wisdom says it's hard -- damned hard -- to beat a really good football team twice in one season, and Oregon is a really good football team. Indiana beat the Ducks 30-20 in Eugene back in October, so ...

So, conventional wisdom says it's Oregon all the way. The Ducks have their own sideline wizard in Dan Lanning. They've got their own stud quarterback in Dante Moore. They've got athletes just like Indiana has athletes.

However ...

However, there is this: Indiana eats conventional wisdom for breakfast.

The Hoosiers, see, are as unconventional as they are undefeated, which is why some people still think they're a trick of the light. They've got a 64-year-old head coach who's now 25-2 in his first major-league job, and an OK quarterback who somehow morphed into a Heisman Trophy winner after transferring from Cal to IU. They're the unconventional wrapped in the improbable, these guys.

Which is maybe why last week they became the only team in the two-year history of the 12-team College Football Playoff to actually win its first-round game. This year, Georgia lost and Texas Tech lost and Ohio State lost. Indiana didn't just win, but paved lordly Alabama like an off-ramp, 38-3.

The Hoosiers were a machine in that game, their first Rose Bowl victory ever (and only their second trip to Pasadena). It was yet another convention-trashing moment for a school whose national perception still is skewed by a football lineage that is ... well, somewhat less regal than Alabama's.

Andnow  here we go again: In two years of the 12-team CFP, every rematch has gone to the team that lost the first meeting -- the latest, of course, being Ole Miss taking down Georgia in the Sugar Bowl after losing to the Bulldogs earlier in the season.

This bodes well for the Ducks, to reiterate. Or would, if they were playing anyone but Indiana.

Let's call it this way, then:

Indiana 30, Oregon 26.

And now ...

 ... allow us to introduce Indiana University's basketball team.

Did you even know Indiana University had a basketball team?

Well, it does. They've got uniforms and everything.

Oh, they're not the football team, these Dribblin' Hoosiers, and no one on the roster is as famous as Fernando Mendoza (who won the Heisman Trophy!), or the Baron of Bloomington himself, Coach Curt "Coach" Cignetti (who once ACTUALLY SMILED!). Heck, lots of people couldn't even tell you who the basketball coach is.

"Is it Coach Cig?" they ask.

Nah. It's this guy named Darren DeVries.

Who, don't look now, has a whole roster of new names runnin' and jumpn' and wearin' out the three-point arc, in case you haven't noticed. The Dribblin' Hoosiers shoot threes like they're about to be outlawed, if you must know. In 15 games so far this season, they've jacked up a shameless 435, which works out to 29 per game.

They're shootin' fools in other words. And, yeah, OK, so they're only making a touch over 36 percent from the arc; last night at Maryland, they got up 25 from Threeville but made just eight, or 32 percent.

Here's the thing, though: They won. On the road. By 18, 84-66.

It was the Hoosiers' fourth straight win since a 12-point loss to Kentucky just before Christmas, and now they're 12-3 overall and 3-1 in the Big Ten. Lamar Wilkerson led them with 24 points, including 16 straight at one point. They also got 19 from Tayton Conerway, 16 from Conor Enright and 15 off the bench from Reed Bailey.

And, yeah, I know. Unless you're still an obsessed Hoosier basketball fan, you've likely never heard of any of them, being all newbies. But they can play. And they can shoot. And when they make enough of 'em, they tend to overwhelm folks.

Like Maryland last night. Like Penn State, whom they swamped by 41, 113-72. Like Marquette (a 23-point win), Kansas State (a 17-point W) or Washington (90-80).

All told, the Dribblin' Hoosiers are averaging 85 points per game. That's way more than Coach Cig's boys scored against Alabama in the Rose Bowl -- although the 35-point lamination the Hoosiers laid on the Crimson Tide looked a lot like the Dribblin' Hoosiers vs. Penn State.

Saturday, those Hoosiers welcome unbeaten Nebraska to Assembly Hall. It'll be their sternest test of the Big Ten schedule to date. And you might actually hear something about it -- or not.

Coach Cig's boys, after all, take on Oregon in the Peach Bowl the night before. At stake is a berth in the national championship game.  And if the Hoosiers manage to serve up Duck L'Squash for the second time this season, the most insane sports story of the year will get even more insane.

And the next day?

The most quietly interesting sports story in Bloomington will have a chance to be a lot less quiet. And a lot more interesting.

A gamer goes

That must be one whale of a 0-0 save-fest they've got going on up in the Great Beyond right now, with the word coming down that Mr. Goalie himself has passed. Glenn Hall was 94 and follows by a few months the great (maybe the greatest) Ken Dryden, which means when the celestials choose up sides for pond hockey each gets a stud between the pipes.

Dryden, of course, owned the 1970s for the lordly Montreal Canadiens. Hall, on the other hand, made his rep with the less-than-lordly Chicago Black Hawks of the 1950s and early '60s, when you could set your watch by two things: That the sun would come up in the east every morning, and that Glenn Hall would be in goal for Chicago every night. 

Records are made to be broken, to lapse into cliche, but Hall holds one that likely will never be touched. For seven years, between 1955 and 1962, he started every game -- and with his bare face hanging out, because goalie masks were not yet a thing. 

Counting playoffs, he started 552 games in a row. That's 295 more than the guy in second place, Alec Connell of the original Ottawa Senators between 1924 and 1930. 

The man was a gamer, in other words. Even if he wasn't always rewarded for it.

In all his years fielding pucks aimed at his mug, after all, Hall hoisted the Stanley Cup only one time. That was in 1961, when he backstopped the Black Hawks to the Stanley Cup. Seven years later, he was in the net for the St. Louis Blues in another Cup Final, but the expansion Blues were swept by the Canadiens in the Cup Final.

Know what, though? 

In four games, Mr. Goalie gave up just 11 goals. He made so many kick-saves-and-a-beauty, in fact, he won the Conn Smythe Trophy as the playoff MVP anyway. At the time he was only the second player from a losing team to do that; all these years later, he's still only one of six.

Rarity was his thing, it seems. And not just for those few times someone managed to slip a puck past him.