Decisions, decisions, Part Deux

 The shoe finally dropped yesterday in Oxford, Miss., and, well, it went almost exactly the way everyone expected it would.

To wit:

1. Ole Miss football coach Lane Kiffin took the money and ran to LSU.

2. And, being Lane Kiffin, he was a total douchecanoe about it.

What he did was tell his staff if they wanted to follow him to LSU, they'd best be on the plane to Baton Rouge or he'd leave them behind. This was an attempt to carry out his rumored threat that if he wasn't allowed to coach the Rebels in the College Football Playoff, he'd take his entire staff with him and leave the team and community he professed to love high and dry.

Then he released an official statement that was a masterwork of obfuscation, blaming Ole Miss athletic director Keith Carter for not allowing him to stick around for the CFP. And making it sound like he, Lane Kiffin, was the hero in the whole deal for standing by his players.

"My request ... was denied by Keith Carter despite the team also asking him to allow me to keep coaching them so they could better maintain their high level of performance," the statement read.

In other words: I WANTED to stand by my guys for another minute or two, but the AD wouldn't let me. 

In further other words: Therefore I am throwing him under the bus, driving over him, then backing up to do it again. Even though he revived my faltering career by hiring me when a lot of others wouldn't.

There are words to describe such breathtaking ingratitude, but most I can't repeat here. This is a PG-13 Blob, after all.

Suffice it to say it was nuclear level self-absorption for Kiffin to think Ole Miss would allow him to coach the Rebels in the CFP after he'd already told them he was abandoning them. And not just abandoning them, but abandoning them for a conference rival.

(Somewhere in suburbia. A typical middle class neighorhood.)

Suburban Dad: "Honey, I'm home! And guess what? I'm leaving you for the 25-year-old stripper who lives next door!"

Suburban Mom: "Pack your bags and get out then, mister."

Dad: "Aw, come on. Don't be that way. Think about Junior. Can I still take him on our big fishing trip this weekend? The kid is really looking forward to it, and I'd like to be there for him one last time before I ditch his ass."

Mom: "What?? NO."

Dad: "Well, OK. But he'll be really disappointed when I tell him you wouldn't let him go."

Which of course makes Mom the bad guy.

Which of course means she has to patch things up with her son while Dad hits the bricks with Trudi Kazootie.

Which of course is precisely what Kiffin is doing to Ole Miss.

And, look, it's not as if we didn't know already that loyalty is as obsolete as the rotary phone in the age of NIL and ungoverned transfer portal. But somehow when people wring their hands over the perceived crumbling of college athletics, it's always the athletes who get tagged as faithless carpetbaggers. Yet all they're doing is exactly what Coach Slobberknocker has been doing for decades.

Jumping schools for a chunkier payday, or more exposure, or a better situation. Being a me-first guy even as he preaches teamwork and family and all-for-one, one-for-all. Being the rankest of hypocrites when he bemoans how the kids are just in it for themselves these days.  

I never want to hear that again from anyone. 

Especially if "anyone" is named Lane Kiffin.

For the life of Lem

 A body ought to know by now not to believe everything he or she reads on the internet. Even the good stuff, like Xtwitter posts by Abe Lincoln such as "Fourscore and seven years ago McClellan finally moved his ass", and also, "Jeff Davis has the IQ of a hamster and he smells like one too!"

And speaking of people who are dead ...

Here's someone who isn't: Lem Barney.

If you grew up watching the NFL in the 1960s, you know who Lem Barney is. He's the shutdown corner and return specialist who played on a lot of mediocre Detroit Lions teams during that era -- teams whose quarterbacks went by names like Bill Munson and Milt Plum, and whose best players (aside from Barney) went by names like Mel Farr and Altie Taylor and Charlie Sanders.

In his 10-year career, Barney was the NFL's Defensive Rookie of the Year in 1967, played in seven Pro Bowls and was All-Pro twice. In 1992, he was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.

Which is why the HOF put out the sad news Saturday that Lem Barney was dead at the age of 80. Other media sites on the 'net quickly picked it up, including Sports Illustrated, NBC and even the NFL's official website.

Problem was, like the old man in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," Lem Barney wasn't dead yet.

His family confirmed that he was, in fact, very much alive, and they were not happy about the HOF reporting otherwise. In fact, it's fair to say they were supremely pissed.

"My brother is fine,"  his sister, Verina Carter, told Tony Paul of the Detroit News. "I don't know where this (expletive) is coming from."

I do. It's the (expletive) internet.

Where I just ran across an Xtwitter denial from a certain A. Lincoln.

"I never said Jeff Davis had the IQ of a hamster," Lincoln posted. "That was one of those parody accounts.

"I said he had the IQ of a gerbil. Get it right, people."

Decisions, decisions

 Look, I don't know what Lane Kiffin's going to do, down there in magnolia country. I don't much care, either, except for the fact he's a not-so-shining example of what big-boy college athletics have become.

A football coach holding an entire university -- Ole Miss -- hostage? A university that produced William Faulkner holding its breath because, again, a football coach can't make up his mind?

If that doesn't tell you how the athletics tail now wags the academic dog, I don't know what else does. It's the American university as Walmart -- a spreadsheet-driven corporate entity whose function is merely to serve as branding for its football or basketball teams.

And so here's Lane Kiffin, who's taken Ole Miss football to heights it hasn't glimpsed in 60-plus years, being aggressively pursued by another company. And not just another company, but one that's a direct competitor. It's like Macy's raiding Gimbel's for its director of sales.

The direct competitor, of course, is LSU, whose delusions of grandeur have birthed a willingness to fling outlandish amounts of money at every hot property that comes down the pike. And Lane Kiffin is the hottest right now, having coached Ole Miss to an 11-1 record and a surefire spot in the College Football Playoff.

Even in Oxford, everyone assumes he's headed one state over to one of Ole Miss' ancient SEC rivals. But he dithers. He deflects. And the suspicion -- probably more than a suspicion -- is that he's trying work out a deal where he can collect LSU's big bucks but still coach Ole Miss in the CFP.

In other words, he wants the ranch and the beach house. It's the Trumpian ethos in full flower, where greed is not only good but practically an imperative for every right-thinking American.

And if I'm the Ole Miss powers-that-be, I push back on that.

I tell Lane Kiffin if he's going to LSU, then get packin' and quit jacking us around.

I tell him there's only two ways we'll let him coach our football team in the CFP: No way, and no (bad word that starts with "F") way.

The powers-that-be probably wouldn't add that Kiffin is a yellow-dog dirtbag, because he did lift Ole Miss to unimagined heights. But, well, he is a yellow-dog dirtbag.

Ole Miss, remember, hired Kiffin at a time when a lot of big-money schools were off him because of his reputation as an entitled me-first snot. Ole Miss took him in, anyway. Gave him a home. Gave him a second chance, and the wherewithal to make it work.

It was an act of charity that enabled Kiffin to resuscitate his career and put him a position to be wooed  by ... well, by LSU. And he'll repay that act of charity, most people now think, by taking LSU's money and running.

Even though LSU is three rings of fun right now, having fired both Brian Kelly and athletic director Scott Woodward because Louisiana's dopey governor couldn't keep his mouth shut. Even though Governor Dopey very publicly -- and very stupidly --  said Woodward was an idiot to give Kelly that enormous buyout, and said there's no way LSU would ever offer such a buyout again.

Just the sort of sales pitch you want to put out there when you're shopping for a new coach. Yeah, boy.

But Kiffin's apparently OK with it -- even though if he stayed at the school to whom by all rights he owes his loyalty, he'd hardly be living in a cardboard box under the overpass.

A product of his times, Lane Kiffin. And that's no compliment.

The 'Eyes have it

 Waiting for my order at a local pizza joint Friday night, and there was a woman wearing an Ohio State sweatshirt, so of course I had to say something. And, no, it wasn't a mean something like you all probably think.

"Your guys gonna win tomorrow?" is what I said.

She smiled.

"I hope so," she replied. "Four years in a row is just too much."

By which she meant, "Four years in a row losing to Michigan." Or maybe, "Four years in a a row losing to those turds from up north," relations between the Buckeyes and Wolverines being what they are.

Ohio State vs. Michigan has always be one of the marquee annual rivalry games in college football, even if during the Woody vs. Bo years it was also the most boring. It was Archie Griffin going off-tackle 4,000 times vs. Billy Taylor or Ed Shuttlesworth or Rob Lytle going off tackle 4,001 times, and the final score was always 12-10 or 13-12 or some other Novocaine number.

Still, the enmity kept you watching, because to someone with no dog in the hunt it was endlessly fascinating and a trifle amusing. After all, if you were an alum of one of those other Big Ten schools Bo and Woody routinely beat 69-7, you despised both of them. You regarded both as merely football factories masquerading as institutions of higher learning.

Unlike, you know, Northwestern. Or Purdue or IU or Wisconsin.

At any rate, the week leading up to Ohio State's 27-9 dismantling of the Wolverines in Ann Arbor yesterday was particularly entertaining.

Michigan fans kept saying Ohio State's 2024 national title was bogus on account of the Buckeyes lost to the Wolverines for the fourth straight time. Ohio State fans retaliated by saying, "Oh, yeah? Well, your 2023 title should have been voided because Jim Harbaugh was a (bleeping) cheater. Also, you've beaten us just seven times since the turn of the millennium, so shut the hell up."

The Michigan fans' insult was ridiculous because, by their logic, every national champion who's ever lost a regular season game is a fraud. And the Ohio State fans' retort is ridiculous because, if you voided every national champion who'd ever pulled a fast one -- fast ones much worse than spying on future opponents, in some cases -- "Void" would have more national titles than anyone.

Not that the Ohio State fans are caring much, this morning. The Buckeyes went to Ann Arbor, got down 6-0 early to the jacked Wolverines, and then methodically did what they've done to everyone in this 12-0 run of theirs: Beat them down with their endless supply of talent and depth.

Outscored the Wolverines 27-3 from that point on. Put a big smile on Ryan Day's face -- because Michigan fans spent the last four years laughing at him, and Ohio State fans, until last year's natty, spent the last four years saying he didn't know jack-all about football.

Well, Day and the 'Eyes have it now, at least for another year. So neener-neener-neener, Michigan. And you, too, Ohio State complainers.

Friday night slights

 They played the Old Oaken Bucket game in West Lafayette last night, and it was the coldest Bucket game on record -- 24 degrees at game time -- and Indiana did what Indiana does, which was trash-compact poor Purdue 56-3. Ran on the Boilers like Secretariat, stacking 355 rushing yards and averaging a ridiculous 9.6 yards per carry. Finished with 548 total yards to the Purdues' 282.

And that's all I have to say about that, to quote Forrest Gump.

The rest goes back to those first 12 words: They played the Old Oaken Bucket game in West Lafayette last night ...

Last night.

On the first day of the high school football state finals in Indianapolis.

On a night -- Friday night -- that's supposed to belong to high school football, even when it's not state finals weekend.

That's wrong. It's just flat-out, certifiably, indubitably wrong.

And, yes, before you start in, I know how this makes me sound: Like Shout At The Kids In The Clouds To Get Off His Lawn guy. To which I will plead guilty. Sportsball World isn't like it used to be, and while I acknowledge that as a codger who still has most of his marbles, it doesn't mean I can't cuss and spit and say "consarn it!" a lot about what it's become.

Playing the Bucket game on what's supposed to be one of high school football's big days, for instance.

Mind you, this is not to single out Purdue and Indiana. Every money-grubbing institution of higher earning plays on Friday nights now -- even in Texas, where high school football is king and the colleges horning in on their deal is like taking the Lord's name in vain. It's pure-dee straight-up blasphemy.

Of course, being money-grubbing institutions of higher earning, the universities don't care about such things. They care about TV deals that could choke Mister Ed. Which means the days when college football told the networks "Here's when we're playing, televise it if you want" are long gone. 

The network tail started wagging the college football dog decades ago, and now the colleges play every day of the week except Sunday and Monday. If CBS or ESPN or Fox decided it could get a better return on their investment by having Purdue and Indiana play at midnight on a Wednesday during finals week, then Purdue and Indiana would play at midnight on a Wednesday during finals week. 

Money talks; propriety ... oh, hell, what's propriety got to do with it?

And so, the Boilers and Hoosiers played last night. And down in Indianapolis, at the same time, New Palestine concluded an unbeaten season by disposing of Merrillville in the 5A state title game. And in Ross-Ade Stadium and the university boardrooms and the lushly-appointed offices of the networks, they presumably said, "Aw, gee, isn't that sweet."

OK. So that's a lie.

What they really said, most likely, was nothing.

Chiefly "meh"

 Your world famous Kansas City Chiefs lost by a hair again yesterday, this time on Thanksgiving to the surging Dallas Cowboys. Who, don't look now, have won three in a row, came from 21-0 down to clip the division-leading Eagles last week, and now are GOING TO THE SUPER BOWL, DADGUM RIGHT, YOU BETTER BELIEVE IT, HOSS. HOW 'BOUT THEM COWBOYS??

Sorry. Some guy in a Stetson and a throwback Roger Staubach jersey just Linda Blair-ed me for a second. Demon possession can be such an ugly thing.

But back to the World Famous Chiefs.

If you're sick of them, you had one more thing to be thankful for yesterday, because Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce and the rest of 'em seem on the verge of going away, at least for now. And by "going away," I mean, "failing to make the playoffs."

Believe it or not, this could happen. And it's probably the latter -- not -- because it seems like every year for the last, I don't know, century or so, you're turning on your TV on Super Bowl Sunday and there that bleeping Mahomes and those bleeping Chiefs are again. They're like the Tom Brady Patriots only with more State Farm commercials.

Anyway, the Chiefs are 6-6 now, three games behind the Broncos in the AFC West and one game behind the Chargers. They've lost three of their last four, and would have lost the fourth had Shane Steichen not lost his nerve with the Colts up 11 in the fourth quarter in Arrowhead last week.

Now, it's true all of those six losses have been by a touchdown or less. But except for a win over the Lions on Sunday night six weeks ago, the Chiefs haven't beaten a team with a winning record this season. And they're 1-6 in those touchdown-or-less games -- a revealing stat for a team that was 10-0 in one-score games last season.

So, these are no longer the World Famous Chiefs. These are the Just Kinda "Meh" Chiefs.

Sorry, Patrick. Sorry, Taylor Swift's fiance. And, mostly, sorry, Chiefs fans.

You treated me right that time I covered a game in Arrowhead years ago, and I've had a soft spot for you since. But your guys are not going anywhere this year.

Your one bright spot: I'm almost always wrong when I say stuff like that. So there you go.

A few brief Thanksgiving thoughts

 Happy Turkeycide Day, Blobophiles -- aka I Couldn't Eat Another Bi-Wait There's Pie? Day, aka Omigod What Did Aunt Myrtle Put In Her Jell-O Mold This Year? Day. May you stuff your faces and then drift off to Tryptophan Land on third-and-11 at the Lions 34.

You might also, because the very day has the word "thanks" in it, make a show of gratitude for the bounty the Lord has provided you. Like, I don't know, FanDuel's cool new "Prison Or Probation?" app for those who've embezzled funds from the company to pay off their Thanksgiving Day FanDuel debts.

What I mean to say is, it's a wonderful life ("Hey! That's a Christmas thing! Wait your turn, you sneaky bastard!" -- Thanksgiving). And so, in that spirit, here are a few things the Blob is thankful for this day:

1. Pie.

2. Pie.

3. MORE PIE.

Oh, and also ...

4. The glory and wonder of NFL officiating.

5. The cleansing endorphins that come from yelling at the glory and wonder of NFL officiating because DAMMIT THAT WAS HOLDING THROW THE FLAG.

6. All the TV commercials that do NOT feature A) Patrick Mahomes; B) Travis Kelce; C) Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce; D) Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce and Jason Kelce.

7. Stuff that makes me laugh.*

8. (*Such as the unintentional comedy of a convicted felon -- aka our glorious Fearless Leader -- pardoning a turkey.)

9. (*Also all the other unintentional comedy emanating from Glorious Fearless Leader's three-ring circus.)

10. (*Also all those College Football Playoff arguments -- especially ones that begin, "Notre Dame is a joke (because I hate Notre Dame"); "The SEC should get nine bids (because my name is Paul Finebaum)"; and "Who has Indiana beaten, anyway? (because my name is Paul Finebaum)." To amend Mr. Carlson from "WKRP In Cincinnati": No one ever thought THOSE turkeys could fly.)