Just not getting it

 "You're not there to pop off about politics. You're there to play a sport. You're there to represent your country and hopefully win a medal."

-- JD Vance, Vice-President of These United States

Oh, dearie dear, as the Waco Kid put it in "Blazing Saddles." Bless your heart, Mini-Me.

Bless your heart, because while you and your fellow travelers are wrapping themselves in the American flag, you are, per usual, Just Not Getting what it is you're wrapping yourselves in. Because if a kid from the United States of America can't pop off about politics whenever he feels like it -- yes, even at the Olympics -- what country is he representing, exactly?

Here's a hint: It's not the United States of America.

Want to know something else?

If Mini-Me and the rest also are inferring politics have no place in the Olympics, they haven't been paying attention for, I don't know, about 90 years or so.

That would put us back in 1936, when the twisted gnome running Germany decided to turn the Berlin Olympics into an infomercial for Aryan superiority. The entire summer Games that year popped off about politics, if not explicitly then certainly implicitly. That Jesse Owens and handful of other non-Aryans gummed up the message was political popping off in its own right, again implicit but again perfectly clear.

Later would come the great tug of war between the United States and the Soviet Union, each just as clearly using running and jumping and cross-checking as a political scoreboard. Whose way of life is best? Let's see the puny Americans beat Olga Korbut!  Let's see some pasty Russkie  outrun Bullet Bob Hayes!

That sort of thing.

At some point in there, too, were protests against South African apartheid, and the murder of 11 Israeli athletes by Black September terrorists, and the U.S. and Soviets trading boycotts over Afghanistan. It's even about something that happened just yesterday, when a Ukrainian skeleton slider chose not to compete because he was ordered by the Olympic capos not to wear a helmet in competition honoring Ukrainian athletes killed in the Russian war.

Me?

For me, the image that still resonates more than half a century on is this: Tommie Smith and John Carlos, heads bowed on the medal stand, thrusting gloved fists into the Mexico City night.

It was their silent contribution to the civil rights struggle engulfing America at the time -- a struggle that goes on to this day thanks to the retrograde politics of the Regime. Which perhaps is why I saw Mini-Me's quote and immediately thought of Smith and Carlos.

Way back in 1968, they got sent home for those bowed heads and gloved fists. Fifty-seven years later, we're right back there again, with calls to do the same to American athletes deemed not properly worshipful of the US of A -- or at least of its current leadership.

Front and center in the controversy seems to be a freestyle skier named Hunter Hess, plus a handful of others including figure skater Amber Glenn. The Regime-ists and assorted other usual suspects claim they're entitled snots "trashing" America because ...

Well. Because they answered a reporter's question honestly.

Hess, for instance, responded to said question by saying, yes, he had "mixed emotions" about representing the United States right now. 

 “It’s a little hard, there’s obviously a lot going on that I’m not the biggest fan of and I think a lot of people aren’t,” Hess said. “Just because I’m wearing the flag doesn’t mean I represent everything that’s going on in the U.S.”

Fellow freestyler Chris Lillis, meanwhile, answered the same question by talking about how his country should focus on respecting the rights of all its citizens, adding that he hoped "when people look at athletes compete in the Olympics, they realize that that's the America that we're trying to represent."

Now, reasonable people would agree those are reasonable sentiments, and miles and miles from "trashing" America. Unfortunately, reasonable people aren't driving the bus right now. Fearless Leader, Mini-Me and the Regime-ists are -- and they will brook no criticism of their rule, implied or otherwise.

"When you wear the Stars and Stripes, you represent ALL of us -- not just the parts you like," one of them spluttered on the Magic Social Media Thingy.

Um, no. You represent whatever those stars and stripes mean to you, or what you hope they mean when you put them on. America is America because it means something different to all of us -- and because it does, we have the freedom to cherish it as we see fit.

Even if Mini-Me and Co. have decided to conflate cherishing America with cherishing the Regime.

One wonders, after all, what Mini-Me's reaction would have been had Hunter Hess and the others lavished praise on. the current administration Would he still have said they weren't there to pop off about politics? Would he still have said, essentially, to stick to sports?

I'll make a wild guess here and say, "No."

Because, see, this isn't about ungrateful punks trashing America or the flag. It's about the un-American notion that loving America means bending a knee, and the very American notion of saying, "Aw, HELL, no."

"Politics affects us all," Amber Glenn told reporters last week. "It is something I will not just be quiet about."

Nor should she have to, Mr. Vice-President. Ever.

More Olympian feats

 You can have your U.S. women's hockey team -- swatted nemesis Canada 5-0 yesterday, yes, the ladies did -- and your latest American figure skating phenom, Illia Malinin. My two favorite Olympians in these Winter Games so far are a German and a Norwegian.

The German is named Philipp Raimund.

The Norwegian is Sturla Holm Laegreid.

Raimund is a ski jumper who'd never won an international event until he won Olympic gold the other day. Laegreid is a biathlete who finished third in the 20-kilometer event this week.

What makes Raimund one of my faves is -- I swear I'm not making this up -- he's publicly admitted he's afraid of heights.

Wait, what?

Here's a guy whose chosen profession is sailing off a ramp 15 feet in the air at 60 mph or so, and he's AFRAID OF HEIGHTS? Really? So why on earth would he choose ski-jumping as his sport to pursue?

Raimund hasn't told us that, nor has he explained how he got so good at it he's now an Olympic gold medalist. But for sure he's now the best Olympic ski jumping story since Eddie the Eagle, the British jumper who was so bad -- and yet so cheerful about it -- he became the most unlikely Olympic icon in history.

Good on you, Philipp. You the (petrified) man.

And now, on to Sturla Holm Laegreid. Or Days Of Our Skiin' And Shootin'. Or The Young And The Over-Sharing.

Our man Sturla, you see, turned the 20-kilometer event into a soap opera when, in the immediate aftermath of his third-place finish, he confessed to a Norwegian TV reporter (and thus the world) that he'd cheated on his girlfriend.

"It was the choice I made," Laegreid said, choking back tears. "We make different choices during our life, and that's how we make life. So today I made a choice to tell the world what I did, so maybe, maybe there is a chance she will what she really means to me. Maybe not."

Me, I'd put some coin on the latter. That's because the girlfriend in question -- to whom Laegreid had earlier 'fessed up -- told a Norwegian tabloid she was mucho pissed about not only the cheating, but that her float-brain boyfriend chose to tell God and everyone about it at the freaking Olympic Games.

Later, Laegreid admitted to the same tabloid that perhaps she had a point.

"I deeply regret that I brought up this personal story on what was a joyous day for Norwegian biathlon," he said in a statement. "I am not quite myself today, and I am not thinking clearly."

Gee. Ya think?

Olympian questions

Hanging out in my neighborhood hang yesterday, watching Sam Darnold and Super Bowl MVP Kenneth Walker III tour Disneyland (and wondering if either has slept since Sunday night). And there on one of the TVs over the bar, a couple of young people were ice dancing.

I immediately wondered if it was Tai and Randy.

(As in "Babilonia and Gardner", America's figure skating sweethearts about a thousand years ago).

I was subsequently informed by someone more knowledgeable about these matters that Tai and Randy were pairs skaters, not ice dancers. Torvill and Dean were the latter.

"Who can tell?" I asked.

Because I can't. It all looks like a man and a woman skating around lifting one another off the ice to me.

Anyway, this is just one question I have so far about the Winter Games in Milan/Cortina, which I'm just now catching up with after the tsunami of self-congratulatory hype surrounding the Super Bowl. Some of the other questions are:

* You mean there's pairs curling, too?

There is. And the U.S. pair, Korey Dropkin and Cory Thiesse, have curled their way into the final. They beat Italy 9-8 in the semis and will now face Sweden for the gold medal.

Not even Tai and Randy did that.

* Was Lindsey Vonn insane to try skiing the downhill nine days after tearing her ACL?

Maybe. Probably. OK, so highly likely, considering she crashed mere seconds into her first competitive run and broke her left leg all to hell -- the same leg with the torn ACL.

Vonn says she hooked a gate with her right arm and that's what caused her to crash, not the torn ACL. She suffered a complex fracture of the tibia she admitted will require "multiple" surgeries to repair. Which means her career is likely done, considering she's also 41 years old.

"Knowing I stood there having a chance to win was a victory in and of itself," she wrote in an Instagram post, adding that she had no regrets. "I also know that racing was a risk. It always was and always will be an incredibly dangerous sport."

Which is true.

Which is also why, yes, she's insane, but no more insane than anyone else who thinks it's a good idea to go flying down a mountain at 70 mph on two slats of aluminum siding. They're all seriously loco, these folks.

* Despite that, is "Breezy" not the perfect name for someone who wound up winning the women's downhill?

Yes. Yes it is. Breezy Johnson is her full name, and she took the gold for the U.S. So take that, all you other crazy downhillers with not-nearly-as-cool names.

* Is the U.S. women's hockey team still kicking butt?

'Tis. The women shut out Switzerland 5-0 yesterday and are 3-0 in the tournament so far. They face their nemesis Canada today, so buckle up.

*  Does the young American skating phenom, Illia Malinin, sort of remind you of King Joffrey Baratheon from "Game of Thrones" (as a friend suggested the other day)?

Aw, you bet. Except Malinin, by all accounts, is not a giant gaping orifice like Joffrey. That little jerk had it coming for sure.

And last but not least ...

* What's the medal count so far? Is Norway leading like usual?

Not yet. The Norwegians are third with six total medals, half of them gold. The host country, Italy, leads the way with nine medals, six of them bronze. Japan is second with seven medals, and behind Norway are the usual suspects: Switzerland, Germany and Austria.

"Where is the U.S., Mr. Blob?" you're saying now.

The U.S. is tied for seventh with seven other countries, among them more usual suspects. They have two medals so far, both of them gold.

"Does this mean Tai and Randy won?" you're asking.

Enough. Enough with the Tai and Randy bit.

That game

 So, then: Seattle 29, New England 13.

Drake Maye 3 turnovers; Sam Darnold 0.

Patriots 79 yards rushing; Kenneth Walker III 135.

Patriots 1 sack; Seahawks 6.

That's your tale of the tape in the 60th rendition of what always winds up being Just A Football Game, because, hello, that's all its. No matter how it plays out.

And how did it play out this time?

Well, how it played out was the Seahawks defense squeezing the life out of poor Drake Maye and the Patriots. It was kind of like watching "Anaconda", only Jon Voight's creepy character doesn't get swallowed whole in the end.

That unfortunate circumstance fell to the baby-faced Maye, who put up decent numbers only because the Seahawks D took its foot off the gas in the fourth quarter. Maye engineered 18 first downs, just two fewer than the Seahawks, and 331 total yards, just four fewer than Seattle. But that was exactly the mirage the numbers so often are in football.

The Patriots, see, racked 11 of the first downs and 253 of the yards in the last 14 minutes of the game, by which time Seattle led 19-0 and the deal was done. Prior to that, the Pats were a rumor; through three quarters, they coughed out just 78 yards of offense and five first downs. The Seahawks at that point had as many sacks.

Eight of New England's nine first-half possessions ended in punts, and the ninth was a kneel-down to end the half. A third of those possessions were three-and-outs. The Seahawks led 9-0 by then, but it might as well have been 90-0.

So does all this mean the Big Roman Numeral was a Big Crashing Bore?

Unless you bore some weird grudge against the eminently likeable Drake Maye, yes.

Will it go down as one of the least memorable of the 60 Supes?

Except for Kenneth Walker III, the Seattle D and Jason Myers' record five field goals, yes.

Do you think Sam Darnold, Mike Macdonald and the rest of the Seahawks care?

What do you think?

Other thoughts ...

* That Puerto Rican guy all those cranky MAGAs despise so much they staged their own Aggrieved White People halftime show did not come out in a feather boa, slingback heels and a garter belt. He did not perform obscene, America-hating acts, forcing parents to cover their impressionable children's eyes. 

No, what Bad Bunny did was invite Lady Gaga, Ricky Martin and others to help him celebrate his Latin culture in a joyous mix of dance, music and -- hey, look at this -- patriotism. They danced the salsa. They performed happy reggaeton. A couple actually got married during the festivities, and Bunny handed his latest Grammy to a young child actor who was apparently supposed to be his own young self.

For the finale, Bunny said, "God bless America" in English, and everyone broke out the flags of all the nations of North and South America, beneath a Jumbotron message that read "The Only Thing More Powerful Than Hate Is Love."

So, unity, cultural diversity and goodwill toward men (and women). You know, all the things Aggrieved White People believe are un-American.

* Kenneth Walker III was the logical choice for Super Bowl MVP, but only because the officials couldn't chainsaw the trophy into 11 pieces. That way the real MVP of the night -- the Seattle defense -- could have been properly feted.

Me, I think they should have named Myers the MVP for his five field goals and 17 total points. Just to hear all the yapping sportstalk poodles howl.

* Super Bowl commercials rating: Generally lame.

The standouts were the Dunkin' Donuts sendup of "Good Will Hunting"; the Budweiser eagle ad; and the Hellman's ad starring "Meal" Diamond. Everything else was "meh" to "meh"-minus.

And your winner is ...

 OK, OK, O-kay. Guess I've put this off as long as I can.

You want to know who's gonna win the Big Roman Numeral today, right?

"Nah, nah, nah," you're saying now. "We want to know who's gonna win halftime. Who'll it be, Bad Bunny or Up With Butt-Hurt White People?"

Oh, hell, I don't know. I think the people who aren't Butt-Hurt White People and the people who are will watch whatever they watch. Me, I'll prolly watch the Puppy Bowl. I hear the doodles are even money to knock off the labs this year.

Anyway ...

Anyway, back to the Big Roman Numeral.

I have some thought

My first thought is sometimes experience counts in this game, and sometimes it doesn't. Mostly it does, though -- which is why, weirdly, I think the younger, less-seasoned Patriots have the edge here. 

This is because their head coach, Mike Vrabel, has played in a few of these big to-do's, and Seattle's head coach, Mike Macdonald, has not. The whole three-ring circus is all new to Mac and the Seahawks; it's old hat to Vrabel. So if I had to pick the team that likely remained more focused on what matters this week, I'd pick the Patriots, despite their youth. Nothing like an OG to get you through the BS.

So, advantage, Patriots.

However.

However, it's hard to get around the fact that the Seahawks are ... well, just better.

They get the slight nod at quarterback, if only because Sam Darnold has been through every indignity the league can throw at a high-draft-pick QB, and Drake Maye has not. Now, Maye is eerily unflappable for a relative neophyte -- if you want to compare him to a young Tom Brady in that regard, I'm not gonna stop you -- but I look at Darnold and see another guy who got knocked around before finding his home place.

That would be the Jim Plunkett who won a Super Bowl with the Raiders after years of getting beaten up with (hello) the 1970s Patriots. The writer in me likes the symmetry of that.

Of course, the Seahawks also have a slight edge defensively, it says here. They have, maybe, a slight edge at running back with Kenneth Walker III. And they have Jaxon Smith-Ngjiba -- the one guy the Patriots simply don't have, and the guy most likely to flip the game with one touch.

They also have a team sharpened to a fine point by surviving the toughest division in football this season. To get here, they had to play league MVP Matthew Stafford and the Rams three times -- and beat them twice -- and Brock Purdy and the 49ers twice. The Patriots had to play the Jets.

On the other hand, the Pats are 9-0 away from home this season. Who does that in this league?

So who wins?

I say if the Maye and the Patriots upset the Seahawks the way Brady and the Patriots upset the Greatest Show On Turf all those years ago, it'll again come down to a field goal. Patriots win 24-23.

Or ...

Or, if Darnold and the Seahawks do what they've been doing all season, it'll be more like 30-17, Seattle.

I'm pickin' the latter. If only because the Patriots feel like they're a year away at this point.

You may now commence with the ridicule.

The great vacancy

 So Sonny Jurgensen is dead now, and who is left, I ask? Who is left to throw the deep out, the flag and the post, the home run ball to Charley Taylor or Carroll Dale, to Jack Snow or Raymond Berry or Gene Washngton?

All these arms of my youth, gone from this earth now. Sonny, and John Brodie, and Roman Gabriel, and Bart Starr, and Dandy Don, and the greatest of them all, John Unitas. Gone.

Sonny went yesterday, at the full-to-the-top age of 91, and here's the real tragedy: The great vacancy it represents is not my childhood slipping away full life by full life, but that there are so few left to craft a proper chronicle. Who is left, in other words, to tell the tale?

Sonny Jurgensen, you see, spent most of his Hall of Fame career in Washington, D.C., which lends his passing a special poignancy. In the same week he died, after all, billionaire vandal Jeff Bezos eviscerated the proud Washington Post, eliminating 300 jobs. Among them was the entire sports desk, once the home of Shirley Povich and John Feinstein and Dave Kindred and Christine Brennan; of Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon and Tom Boswell and Sally Jenkins.

Institutional memory has rarely experienced such a gory reckoning. And without institutional memory, journalism is nothing but a Wikipedia entry, bloodless and devoid of soul or context. It can tell you that Sonny Jurgensen led the NFL in passing three times and still holds Washington's single-season record for touchdown passes, but it can't tell you what it looked or felt like.

It can't tell you how the city felt about him. It can't describe the way the stadium drew in its breath every time Sonny launched one of his gorgeous parabolas downfield to Taylor or Bobby Mitchell or Jerry Smith. It can't tell you how it felt to actually cover those gorgeous parabolas, or to listen to one of the old-timers describe what it was like.

The suits will toss out suit words like "synergy" and "re-purposing" and "branding," but what they're really talking about giving readers less and selling it as more. They'll farm out their sports coverage to websites like The Athletic (as the New York Times did) and tell the paying customers they're getting MORE STORIES THAN EVER.

Except.

Except the stories will be written by people (or, in the age of AI, perhaps not) who have no connection to the community. Who have no institutional memory. Who'll provide only the context they can find on the web, because it's not about context anymore. It's about "content."

I can't say this any better than a longtime sports journo named Buddy Martin did the other day, when he penned a screed I shared with my Facebook bros. And so I will turn the wheel over to Buddy, who wrote the following:

I spent a lifetime in these trenches -- five sports editorships, five mastheads, five sets of presses humming through the night -- and I'll tell you this: A real sports section is a living, breathing organism. It's the guys and women at 11:45 p.m. arguing over a headline, the copy desk catching a stat on deadline, thde beat writer changing ledes because a kid hit a three-run homer in the bottom of the ninth ...

Sports sections were never just about scores and standings. They were the back fence of the city. You learned who you were as a fan, as a town, by the way your paper told the story of your teams ... It was a covenant. We show up, every day, on deadline, to tell you what happened and why it mattered.

Damn skippy.

A wintry mix

 It's snowing again outside as I write this, winter doing what winter does some years in these northern climes. This year in particular what it seems to be doing is annoying the hell out of us, like that party guest who stays too long and eats all the Chex mix.

Or maybe it just feels that way because it's February, and February is always when winter goes from "Aw, look at the pretty snow" to "Bad word bad word SNOW bad word bad word."

At any rate, with the world gone all gray and white, it seems the perfect time to talk about this weekend's official Sportsball World forecast: Wintry mix with a chance of contusions.

I say this because the Winter Olympics are officially underway in Milan/Cortina, Italy, and this weekend they'll go head-to-head with that most hallowed of American sacraments, the Feast of St. Lombardi. Or the Super Bowl, if you prefer.

This year is the 25th edition of the former and the 60th of the latter, which calls for a little blended reminiscing. Remember when Jean-Claude Killy caught two touchdown passes in Super Bowl I after partying all night? Or how about Joe Montana winning the downhill in ... Montana?

Was it Mike Eruzione who quarterbacked the Jets against the Colts in the Miracle on Turf in Super Bowl III? Or Joe Namath who scored the winning goal against the Soviets in the Miracle on Ice in Lake Placid?

Lord knows a body could get confused.

This weekend we'll get figure skaters and lugers and skiers and hockey players in Milan/Cortina, and large men with bad intent trying to turn Drake Maye and Sam Darnold into macrame. And the tie that binds is both pursuits tend to booger people up.

Football, of course, is the home office for the aforementioned contusions, not to mention abrasions, concussions and shredded-wheat ligaments. But one of the reasons the Blob loves the Winter Olympics is they, too, have a more than nodding acquaintance with extreme physical calamity.

You've got the downhill, first off, the marquee event in Alpine skiing. It's basically falling with style, as Buzz Lightyear likes to say. Last man and woman to cross the finish line upright, and not in a cartoon jumble of arms and legs, wins. 

Then of course, there's ski jumping, which is more falling with style. Short-track speedskating, which is what NASCAR would be if the drivers were allowed to pack switchblades. Luge, in which competitors rocket down a funnel of ice feet-first on jumped-up Flexible Flyers; and skeleton, in which competitors do it headfirst.

(The latter, by the way, are clinically insane in the Blob's opinion.  There ought to be a study of this.)

What else?

Well, ski-jumping, of course, and not just because of that old Wide World of Sports clip of the guy crashing on takeoff. Those people are nuts, too. Even figure skaters, sequined-up though they are, occasionally succumb to the deadly triple Salchow. And then there's the biathlon, in which cross-country skiers par-boil their lungs while occasionally stopping to shoot at stuff.

Imagine your heart banging away like Thor's hammer (because cross-country skiing at the Olympic level is extremely cardiovascular), and  suddenly you're commanding it to stop so you can squeeze off a shot. Why more biathletes' tickers don't just say "Aw. HELL, no" and pack it in is one of life's great mysteries.

Anyway ...

Anyway, the Blob is looking forward to it all -- even curling, which is weirdly compelling, especially when the Danish women's team is competing. And then comes Super Bowl Sunday, when America eats too much and drinks too much and critiques commercials like ad execs, and mainly doesn't care or even know who's pla- wait, you mean there's a football game, TOO?

Yes, indeed. And I don't know about you, but I'm like way super-excited for it.

I mean, have you seen Drake Maye in sequins?

Pulls a 9.8 in the long program, that kid. Every time.