Today in mollycoddling news

 God bless the Women's Tennis Association. They've got their jaws clamped around China's ankle and they're not letting go.

The Chinese and their willing enablers, the International Olympic Committee, have finally produced missing tennis player Peng Shuai, sort of, with video of her at a couple of public events and a 30-minute video call with IOC president Thomas Bach in which the IOC says Peng assured them she was safe and well at home in Beijing.

Now, I don't know if that call actually happened, or if Peng said what the IOC said she said. And I don't find that skepticism misplaced.

This is because the WTA remains skeptical itself, if not of the call at least of the entire affair. The Chinese government, after all, certainly seems to have muzzled Peng after she went public with allegations of sexual abuse against a former government official. Her social media post was immediately scrubbed from the interwhatsis, and Peng vanished for three weeks.

The WTA says Peng apparently turning up does not change its call for "full, fair and transparent" investigation into the Peng situation. Again, God bless 'em.

At least they're no mollycoddles -- unlike the IOC, who have willing knuckled to the Chinese out of craven self-interest. There's simply no other way to see the IOC's statement about the alleged video call, given that the Peng situation has cranked up the volume on calls to boycott the Beijing Winter Olympics.

The IOC must be terrified of that. And so they've joined hands with a repressive regime in a campaign of state-sponsored propaganda aimed at easing international condemnation. Their mothers must be so proud.

Unlike the mothers of the WTA members, who actually should be.

A Horsey resurgence

 Well, OK. So nobody saw this coming.

Nobody saw Jonathan Taylor, suddenly the next best thing to the injured Derrick Henry, going into Orchard Park, N.Y. and leaving tread marks all over the Buffalo Bills, once the Super Bowl-bound Buffalo Bills. No one saw the Indianapolis Colts handle the Bills like a dog handles a pork chop. No one saw Colts 41, Bills 17 -- now there's someone else in the ever-shifting AFC to whom everyone might want to pay attention.

Remember when we were all yelling at Frank Reich to RUN THE FOOTBALL, DAMMIT? Remember when Carson Wentz was, yep, the same broken flash-in-the-pan l he was in the last days in Philly? Remember when the Colts were 1-4 and the season was circling the drain?

Prisoner-of-the-moment stuff. All of it.

Because, listen, it was never that bad, ever. Those who kept their wits about them looked at the Colts schedule and noticed they started the season with the Seahawks, the Rams, the Titans and the Ravens in their first five games. None of them have turned out to be as good as they were supposed to be, and the Seahawks are godawful right now. But they weren't then.

Those who kept their wits about them also noticed a pile of Colts were inoperative at the time. And so they looked at that, and looked at the opening acts of the sked, and said "It'll get better."

And it has.

People have healed. Reich is turning the ball over to Taylor and the run game and letting Wentz pick his spots against defenses grown weary from the battering. And now the Horsies are 6-5 and have won five of their last six, ahead lies the Buccaneers, Patriots and Cardinals, but also the 2-8 Texans, the 2-8 Jaguars and the 5-5 Raiders. who've lost their last three and, in the last two, have been outscored 73-27 by the Chiefs and the Bengals.

And the Colts?

Yesterday, Taylor lugged it 32 times for 185 yards and four touchdowns, and caught a pass for a fifth score. The offensive line blew the Bills off the ball the way an offensive line some call the best in the league is supposed to. And the defense picked Josh Allen twice and recovered a fumble.

So, see? It's all working out, just like the cooler heads said it would.

Well. For now, anyway.

Score of the weekend

 So, remember the other day, when the Blob Blobbed about reports that Michigan State was about to hand football coach Mel Tucker a 10-year choke-a-horse extension deal, and how everyone there had apparently forgotten the Charlie Weis Lesson, which is that you never jump the gun on handing10-year choke-a-horse deals to guys?

Your score from Columbus, Ohio, Saturday: Ohio State (9-1) 56, Michigan State (9-1) 7.

Ahem.

Paying forward

 You know what the investment suits like to say: Past performance does not guarantee future results.

What the Blob likes to say is more succinct, but along the same lines.

Charlie Weis, people. Charlie Weis.

Which is to say, Michigan State apparently is about to hand head football coach Mel Tucker a horse-choking 10-year, $95 million extension based primarily on 10 games. OK, so nine games, plus a double-digit loss to Purdue.

State presumably is going to do this mainly because some juicy positions (USC, LSU, etc.) now have Help Wanted signs out, and MSU doesn't want any of those schools poaching their guy. So they'll lock Tucker in, presumably, based on his 9-1 record so far this year and not on the 2-5 mark he put up in his first season in East Lansing, or the 5-7 he produced in his only season at Colorado in 2019. 

Tucker responded the way you figure a guy would who's about out to have a Brink's truck back up to his door. He said on Draymond Green's radio show that Michigan State is a "destination" job.

I suppose it is, sort of.

I also suppose, if MSU closes this deal, it will enjoy continuing to pay Tucker large chunks of cash long after he's moved on to his next destination -- or after Michigan State tells him it's time he found another destination.

I say this because, again, Charlie Weis.

Who, you might recall, got handed his own horse-choking 10-year deal by Notre Dame, and not because of nine wins or even a signature win. He got his deal after a signature defeat, the epic 2005 loss to No. 1 USC in which the Trojans narrowly escaped with the "W." That was apparently enough of a convincer for ND to open its checkbook.

We know what happened next, of course. Weis went 10-3 in 2006 and then ran out of his predecessor Tyrone Willingham's recruits, going 3-9, 7-6 and 6-6 the next three seasons before Notre Dame showed him the road.

But because of that gargantuan deal, up until a short time ago Notre Dame was still paying Weis more per year than Brian Kelly, Muffet McGraw and Mike Brey -- all of whom are still gainfully employed by ND, and all of whom have been far more successful there than Weis ever was.

I hope such an absurd state of affairs is not coming for Michigan State. But, well ...

Well, the Spartans get Ohio State this weekend. Then they get Penn State. Based on past performance, future results suggest Sparty's going to get laminated by the Buckeyes and possibly lose to Penn State, which is far better than its 6-4 record indicates.

Of course, we know what the investment suits say about that.

But what do they know?

What's in a name

Something called Crypto.com bought an arena's naming rights this week from an office supply company, and  now folks in Los Angeles are bemoaning the passing of the office supply company name.

I find this fascinating.

On the one hand, I get that the Staples Center, across 22 years, has seen a whole lot of memorable stuff happen, like Shaq and Kobe and then Kobe and whoever. I also get that, as a consequence, a lot of people will continue to say "I'm goin' to Staples tonight" even after it becomes Crypto.com Arena.

This is perfectly OK with the Blob, especially because I have no idea what Crypto.com actually is, other than a website where you can invest in virtual money (however that works). I envision stacks of Monopoly money strewn around the site, although that's probably not what the virtual money looks like (if it looks like anything).  

In any case, what I find fascinating about all this is how people can become attached to even soulless corporate branding if it's tied to a particular set of memories or experiences.  It becomes "iconic," even if corporate branding is exactly the opposite for the most part.

A Comiskey Park or Jacobs Field or Lambeau Field is iconic, on the other hand, because they were all named for breathing humans who were iconic. You can change Comiskey to Guaranteed Rate Field or Jacobs Field to Progressive Field, but they're always going to be Comiskey or the Jake in the hearts and minds of the faithful.

The corporate suits who've absconded with those names hate that, of course, because they didn't shell out millions for the naming rights so people could ignore the name, no matter how silly. (And let's face it, "Guaranteed Rate Field" is about as silly as it gets unless the Yum Center in Louisville enters the conversation.)  They also hate it when people start calling, say, Lucas Oil Stadium "The Luke," even going so far as to send out sternly worded warnings against it.

As if that's gonna stop anyone. The suits know it, and they hate that, too.

In any event, the worst thing about corporations slapping their names on sporting venues is that, by their very nature, they're transitory. Thus Conseco Fieldhouse in Indy becomes Bankers Life Fieldhouse becomes, now, Gainbridge Fieldhouse. 

Somewhere down the road, of course, it will become something else. All Indy can hope for is it's not something as dumb as Guaranteed Rate Field, like Butterfinger Fieldhouse or the Craftsman Weedwacker String Trimmer & Blower Combo Kit Center.

And God help us all if the crazy MyPillow guy takes a shine to the facility. Yikes.

Wintry nix

 The Blob loves him some Winter Olympics.

Downhill skiing, aka Falling With Style. Short-track speedskating, aka NASCAR With Switchblades. Skeleton, aka Concussion Protocol Alert.

And then, of course, there's ski jumping (more Falling With Style), the biathlon (Guns And Oxygen Debt) and curling (This Is Boring But Why Am I Still Watching It 45 Minutes Later?).

Love it all. Love it.

But when the Winter Games fire up again in February, I may not watch. I even hope there's nothing to watch.

This year's Games are in Beijing, China, see. And right now China is doing what repressive regimes always do when challenged, which is make those who challenge the regime disappear.

Vladimir Putin in Russia is famous for making media critics and political opponents turn up dead, and the Chinese are perhaps even more adept at it. And this time it involves an athlete.

Her name is Peng Shuai, and she's a top-ranked Chinese tennis player who recently accused former Chinese official Zhang Gaoli of sexual abuse. Her post about it on social media subsequently vanished, and now she's gone missing, too.

Beijing's Winter Games have therefore lost some appeal for me. And I would hope it would for the athletes involved, too, though that's likely a fantasy more suited to Disney than reality.

You might hope the world's athletes would tell the Chinese "Produce Shuai unhurt or we bail on your Games," but that's not going to happen. Solidarity among elite athletes is almost always trumped by self-interest, even in times when so many athletes have grown a social conscience. About the only thing that might happen, therefore, are a few scattered protests by the participants.

Even that might be a bridge too far.

In the meantime, here's hoping Shuai turns up alive and unhurt. And that the Chinese government decides to take her charges seriously.

I know. More Disney fantasy.

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 10

 And now this week's edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the Blob's sentimental walk dow short-term memory lane of which critics have said "Remember when we could just forget this?", and also "A feature sure to make you long for traumatic amnesia":

1. "Remember when we were a Super Bowl team?" (The Rams, after getting smoked like a Virginia ham by the Titans and the 49ers)

2. "Remember when the Rams were supposed to smoke us like a Virginia ham?" (The 49ers)

3. "Remember when we had a 20-9 lead over the Jaguars and were just cruising along?" (The Colts, after hanging on to beat the Jags 23-17)

4. "Remember when everyone said we were trash now, and Patrick Mahomes couldn't play anymore?" (The Chiefs, and Patrick Mahomes, after Mahomes threw five touchdown passes in the Chiefs' 41-14 dismantling of the Raiders)

5. "Remember when we were good? Like, last week?" (The Browns, the Steelers, the Broncos, the Buccaneers)

6. "Remember when we were bad? Like, last week?" (The Cowboys, the Bills, the Dolphins)

7. "Remember when I was the legendary Mike White, media darling?" (Jets quarterback Mike White, who threw four picks and had a QBR of 27.7 in the Jets' doleful 45-17 loss to the Bills)

8. "Remember when we were winless, and the worst team in the history of football?" (The Lions, after tying the Steelers in overtime)

9. "Yeah, well, at least we won't lose every game now. And I bet we could beat the Jets like a dozen egg whites if we played 'em." (The Lions, upon being reminded they're still winless)

10. "Remember when there was no way the Lions could beat us like a dozen egg whites?" (The Jets)