The self-harm of spite

 This morning we begin with a Woody Allen quote, or a Fielding Mellish quote if you prefer the character out of whose mouth it came, or "that one quote from 'Bananas'" if you can recall the name of the film but not the source of the quote.

In any event, to quote Allen/Mellish, what we saw in Denver yesterday was a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham.

What we saw in Denver was a practice squad wide receiver trying to play quarterback in what the league insisted on calling an official NFL game.

The practice squad wide receiver was Kendall Hinton, and on the day he threw nine passes and completed three, two of them to the wrong team. He took roughly half the snaps in a 31-3 loss to the Saints. Running backs Phillip Lindsay and Royce Freeman took direct snaps the rest of the time, which made the Broncos' offense somewhat, um, predictable.

No doubt by now you're asking "Mr. Blob, why would the NFL allow such a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham to go on? Why wouldn't they just move the game like they've moved so many others affected by the Bastard Plague?"

For the answer, we turn to Broncos defensive back Kareem Jackson.

"I guess they felt like they had to make an example," he said, acknowledging that the flaunting of league COVID-19 protocols by the Broncos' quarterbacks was, well, kinda stupid.

If so, even more stupid was the NFL's decision to make a joke of their product, simply out of spite.

Because, look, if Jackson's right, and the league was trying to make an example of the Broncos, it's a textbook example of spitting into a hurricane. The target of your disdain might get a tad damp, but you get a faceful of expectoration.

A more thoughtful approach would have been to move the game and dole out a handful of fines, along with a stern warning that if the Broncos decided to be so cavalier about the Plague again, it could cost them draft picks. Instead ...

Instead, they handed the Saints, locked up in a fight with Tampa Bay for the NFC South title, a virtual automatic W. That couldn't have made the Buccaneers too happy, given that they were in the process of losing to the Chiefs at roughly the same time.

That's a potential two-game swing. And now the Saints are 2 1/2 games clear in the division.

In any event, NFL officials can thank God that, on Saturday night, Mike Tyson and Roy Jones Jr. fought to a "draw" in their old-dude Sorta Brawl On Geritol. 

Which meant Broncos-Saints wasn't the weekend's only farce.

Unraveling

I don't know how you know when the stitching has come too much undone. Is it when you can see through the fabric as if it were milky glass? Or is it not until the fabric at last begins to fall apart in your hands?

So many questions, here in the Year of the Bastard Plague. So few answers, because when has there been a year like this since before almost any of us were born?

A few items from Sportsball World, as we lean hard into the Season of Christmas Music Until You Want To Just Scream:

* Because of the Plague, the Denver Broncos have no roster quarterbacks available today for their game against the New Orleans Saints.

* Because of the Plague, the Ravens-Steelers game has been moved twice and will now be played Tuesday, maybe, although the Ravens now have 17 players or staff members who've tested positive.

* Partly because of the Plague, the Indianapolis Colts will be without five starters today.

* Because of a massive outbreak in Santa Clara County, Calif., officials have prohibited all contact sports, which means the San Francisco 49ers have to find another place to practice and play their next two home games.

* Because of a similar outbreak among the Ohio State Buckeyes, the best team in the Big Ten is now in danger of not playing enough games to be eligible for the Big Ten championship. They've already had two games canceled; one more and they're out.

On and on and on. And so the landscape shifts, subtly at first and then seismically. And so the Plague alters situation, and through that alters outcome.

And again, I don't know. How bad does it have to get before the NFL or the Big Ten just shut everything down, at least temporarily? How ludicrous must  the circumstance before someone finally just says "Ah, to hell with it, this is ridiculous"?

Where is the line? Or is there one?

I'd think an NFL team being forced to play with none of their roster quarterbacks might be a tipping point. I'd think another NFL team being forced to abandon its own stadium might be, or one of the four teams currently in line for the College Football Playoff being in peril of missing its own conference title game might be.

Instead, all I know is this: There should be a giant asterisk attached to all of it. Like, one so big you mistake it for the rising sun.

Because, listen, someone's going to win the CFP and the Super Bowl, and when they do it will be impossible to ignore the extenuating circumstances. It's all unraveled so much, and the unraveling has so unleashed a cascade of situations that never would have happened otherwise, that it's not just the elephant in the room but an entire herd of them. 

And so, the asterisk. Or maybe just the year itself, because "2020" has become an asterisk in its own right.

Thus you can say the Pittsburgh Steelers or whoever are "Super Bowl Champions*", or it can just read "Super Bowl Champions, 2020." Ditto with Alabama or Notre Dame or whoever wins the CFP.

In any case, you gotta do something to indicate this was not like any year, any season, ever. History demands its accounting, after all.

Or so says the Blob*.

(* Written in 2020)

Bellyachers

OK, so maybe he wasn't whining. Maybe he was just making an observation, albeit a silly one, and it only sounded like whining.

But goodness gracious, the Nebraska Cornhuskers lost again, and here was their head coach and former icon quarterback, Scott Frost, attributing the snapping issues of his center to Iowa players clapping on the sideline. Said it might have confused poor Cameron Jurgens, and that's why he kept snapping the ball all cattywampus.

So football players clapping on their own sideline is an issue now for the Cornharrumphers? What's next, demanding a recount of the latest loss, this one 26-20 to the Hawkeyes?

Bad enough that the Huskers are 1-4 now and looking nothing like what Nebraska is supposed to look like on a football field. But they're also whining about it, and that is especially unbecoming.

Whining about players clapping. Whining about the Big Ten initially shutting down the season, and threatening to temporarily bolt to the Big 12, which Nebraska couldn't do and stay in the Big Ten. Whining, when the conference finally relented and announced a late-to-the-party season, about their schedule. 

Whining about one of its games being canceled because of the Bastard Plague, and hunting around for an alternate opponent -- which the Cornhuskers were told they also couldn't do but tried to do anyway.

At which point the Big Ten was probably regretting not letting them just go ahead and bolt to the Big 12. 

Good lord. Somewhere now, if I'm very still, I can hear old Bob Devaney stomping around up there in X-and-O heaven, wondering WHEN THE HELL his mighty Nebraska Cornhuskers turned into a bunch of BELLYACHING CANDY ASSES.

Things were different in Lincoln in Coach Bob's day. He rounded up a bunch of square-jawed farmboys named Bob and Dave and Jeff and Bill, and he made sure some of them were so big they could block out the sun, and they went around mashing people into odd shapes and sizes. They didn't whine and bellyache and cry like toddlers; they made everyone else whine and bellyache and cry like toddlers.

And they certainly didn't make excuses when Bob or Dave or Bill botched the snap. No, sir. They benched him and brought in another Bob or Dave or Bill, and went right on murderlizing whatever poor Whosis State they were playing that week.

Clapping on the opposing sideline?

That would have just made 'em laugh.

Instead, here in 2020, it's the opponents who are kinda-sorta laughing.

Never heard of that," Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz said when a reporter brought up Frost's complaint/excuse. "If a player on the field was doing it, I get that. But what are we talking about? The next thing you know, we're going to be treating this like golf."

Well. Maybe at Nebraska, at least.

A few brief thoughts, Turkey Day edition

 And now, just in time for your next Pie Break, a special holiday edition of The NFL In So Many Words, of which the critics have said nothing because they didn't know it was coming. Also their mouths are still full of pie:

1. God, the Lions are awful. Can't we get someone else to play football on Thanksgiving for once?

2. God, the Cowboys are awful. Can't we get someone else to play football on Thanksgiving for once?

3. Combined records of the four teams that played on Thanksgiving: 15-29.

4. Combined number of viewers who turned off the games before they were over to watch "Elf," "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" or "Christmas Vacation":  I don't know, but it was a lot. A LOT.

That's it for today, boys and girls. Go eat some more pie.

So, anyway, thanks

Happy Turkeycide Day, everyone, and here's hoping the bird comes out juicy and succulent, and the stuffing is savory, and the pumpkin and pecan and (for me) sugar cream pie holds out against the expected onslaught.

I'd like to say a few words of thanks, at this time. I'd like to thank 2020 for some stuff.

Yes, I know. It's been a pill, 2020. It's been the weirdest, stupidest, vilest year that ever took a can of paint and scrawled a giant penis on a calendar. And it's especially been a nasty son of you-know-what to Sportsball World, because it's killed so many of our treasured icons.

Just yesterday, for instance, it killed off Maradona. Maradona, for heaven's sake, god of soccer, who wasn't even that old (60). 2020 just doesn't take a day off, I swear.

But I'd like to give thanks to it anyway.

I'd like to give thanks that 2020 didn't let the cheatin' Astros win the World Series, which would have been intolerable considering it's taken Tom Seaver and Al Kaline and Lou Brock and Bob Gibson from us, among others.

I'd like to give thanks we got a Masters, even though it was weird; and an Indianapolis 500, even though it was weird; and college football, even though it continues to be weird.  2020 could have wrecked all of that, too, but it left the backdoor cracked just enough so clever people could make it kinda-sorta happen. So there's that.

I'd like to give thanks there will be state championship high school football in Lucas Oil Stadium this weekend, in spite of everything. Blue ribbons will go around some necks, and red around others, and there will be joy and heartbreak and tears and laughter, and the culmination of a hard strange season beneath the bright lights and closed sky.

I'd like to give thanks for Patrick Mahomes and Tom Brady and Kyler Murray and Lamar Jackson, who are all still playing. I'd like to give thanks for the New England Patriots, who are  finally, finally discovering how the other half lives. 

I'd like to give thanks for the Detroit Lions, because Thanksgiving wouldn't be the same without crummy football, and for the Dallas Cowboys and Washington To-Be-Renamed-Laters for the same reason. I'd like to give thanks the To-Be-Renamed-Laters are going to be renamed later, at long last. And I'd like to give thanks for the Chicago Bears' continuing run of beige at the quarterback position -- because in a year without normal, pining for the days of Bob Avellini or Jack Concannon or Bobby Douglass is as close to normal as a Bears fan can get.

I'd like to give thanks for bubbles, and for bubble screens. For alternating cries of "The Colts are terrible!" and "The Colts look like a Super Bowl team!", depending on the week. For the ability, in an America awash in a killer virus and political corruption and all manner of presidential lunacy, to be able to push all that aside because, down a score with no timeouts and the clock running out, our idiot coach called a five-yard route to the middle of the field on third-and-10.

Thank God, in the midst of all 2020's chaos, we can still throw stuff at our TVs and call Coach a moron. Because there is comfort in that, surely.

So thanks, 2020. But don't get too full of yourself. You kill off another sports icon, and we'll boot your decrepit ass out the door before you even see Christmas.

I mean, this is 2020. I bet we can do that.

Pandummies

He's the highest-paid public employee in his state, but that's not why Dabo Swinney is catching a raft of stuff this week.

He's catching a raft of stuff because he's behaving like what he is, which is a football coach.

And so here he is, going all Coach Slobberknocker because Florida State abruptly called off its game last Saturday against Swinney's Clemson Tigers. Coach Slobberknocker 'tweren't happy about that, because dadgum it, it was time to buckle the chinstraps and get after it. And you can't do that if you're gonna be a buncha fraidy cats about some pandemic whatcha.

I suppose it's mere fancy to think it, considering how much they love their football in South Carolina. But shouldn't this be the part where someone reminds Coach that if he's gonna be the highest-paid public employee in the state, he should start acting in the interests of the public?

Because, listen, while Coach Slobberknocker was ranting and raving -- yesterday he was still at it, saying Florida State should forfeit the dadgum game -- it's worth pointing out that Florida State, of all people, did the responsible thing here. Seminole Nation has rather famously behaved cavalierly itself when it had football games to win, but common sense scored the upset this time around.

This time around, Florida State canceled the game Saturday morning after learning a Clemson player had tested positive for the Bastard Plague the day before. And not only that, he'd been symptomatic the entire week.

And yet he'd still been allowed to practice by Coach Slobberknocker. Because, football. 

This meant who knows how many others among the Clemsons had been infected, and that's why Florida State pulled the plug. The Tigers would have been tough enough to handle without having to take on the Four Horsemen of Respiratory Distress, too. And it seemed especially irresponsible with Thanksgiving break coming and students on college campuses headed home.

Then again ... irresponsibility seems to be a thing these days in the age of 'rona.

Out in South Dakota, for instance, they just spent close to a million dollars on an ad campaign promoting tourism to the state, an idea so appallingly bad only South Dakota's famously yee-ha governor, Kristi Noem, could have dreamed it up. The virus is spiraling again everywhere, hospital resources are strained to the breaking point, but, hey, folks, let's get travelin'. Cram yourselves aboard one o' them sky tubes and wing off to our lovely state!

And never mind that South Dakota is a 'rona hotspot right now -- a direct consequence of Governor Slobberknocker sneering at all that sissified mask-wearin' and social-distancin' and temporary lockin'-down.

For instance: Just yesterday, the state recorded more than a thousand new cases. Considering South Dakota contains about 12 people, this might be regarded as alarming. But, sure, come on out!

As for Coach Dabo ... well, as noted above, he's a football coach. Not only that, he's a football coach at a school he's built into perhaps the pre-eminent power, along with Alabama, in the game. Which means what he's in charge of is Clemson Football Inc., and his job is to generate revenue for that entity.

And you can't generate revenue if you don't play. Priorities, don't you know.

Yeesh, It's a wonder the apes haven't taken over and put Dr. Zaius in charge.

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 11

 And now this week's edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the sometimes indecipherable Blob feature of which critics have said "Mrxyz 1247!", and also "His handwriting is atrocious! It's practically indecipherable!":

1. First half: Packers 28, Colts 14. Second half: Colts 20, Packers 3.

2. "Mrxyz 1247." -- Colts coach Frank Reich, explaining.

3. "Hey! Where did the Rams come from?" -- America.

4. "We came from mrxyz 1247, by way of bflspmrtk 13590." -- the Rams.

5. In other news, Kirk Cousins threw for 314 yards, three touchdowns and zero picks. So there.

6. And the Vikings still lost to the cruddy Dallas Cowboys, at home.

7. "It's utterly indefgsu4261 how we do this!" -- Cousins.

8. In still other news, the Patriots lost to the cruddy Texans, the Dolphins panicked and benched Tua and the Jets scored 28 points.

9. Of course, they also Jets-ed around and lost anyway.

10. "Finally! Something decipherable!" -- America.