Combine time!

 Tomorrow in Indianapolis begins the NFL's annual Festival of Analysis Paralysis -- aka, the NFL Combine -- and the Blob can barely contain its excitement. This is because one of its favorite things is ridiculing perceived silliness, and the combine is nothing if not silly a great deal of the time.

For the next week, we'll see large men in shorts running, large men in shorts jumping, and large men in shorts being poked, prodded and measured in what evokes uncomfortably a slave auction in the antebellum South. Words like "tight skin", "waist-bender" and "burst" will be thrown around. Half the invited quarterbacks won't show up, because ... 

Well. Because the combine has very little to do with whether or not they can actually play football.

This goes for the running backs, the wide receivers, the edge rushers, and the O-linemen, too, of course. That's not really what the combine is about, after all.

 In an era when teams have warehouses of video on prospective draft picks, everyone has already identified who can play and who can't. Usually they've even broken it down into smaller increments, like who can will be an impact player right away, who projects to be an impact player with the proper coaching, and who will be Mr. Irrelevant -- i.e., the last player taken in the draft.

No, the combine is largely a stress test to see who can maintain his cool through a week of intense, numbing and sometimes pointless scrutiny. It's a bit like that part in "The Right Stuff" where the prospective astronaut pool is weeded out via a lot of humiliating physical and psychological tests. 

At least the NFL has decided to rein in the humiliation part. That's why GMs are now prohibited from asking prospects if their mothers were prostitutes, or if a prospect was gay. Also gone is the utterly useless Wonderlic test, which measured precisely nothing.

Some of the best players in NFL history posted some of the worst Wonderlic scores. And vice-versa. So, out it goes.

Too bad, in a way. The Wonderlic was so easy to make fun of, after all.

Now we'll just have to make fun of how excited everyone gets over some right tackle's 40 time. And wonder, as we always do, why we shouldn't be paying more attention to his 10-yard time, seeing how 10 yards is going to be the farthest he ever runs most of the time.

Ah, but enough of that. Let's line up those big hosses, and stop with the nitpicking. It's go time, baby.

Or, you know, some kinda time.

Standards, Part Three

 Or "Part Infinity," apparently.

Hate to bang yet again on those basketball folks at Alabama, but, gee, they make it so easy. They stick their face out there and it keeps running into my fist.

Hear what happened yesterday?

At No. 2 'Bama's first home game since star freshman Brandon Miller did not get so much as a talking-to for helping facilitate capital murder, he got a rousing ovation from the 'Bama crowd. Then a teammate jokingly patted him down (for a gun, get it?) as he was introduced.

Making light of a young mother's murder. What a great idea.

In fairness, 'Bama coach Nate Oats kinda-sorta decried the patting-down thing in the postgame (The Crimson Tide, with Miller scoring 24 points, beat Arkansas 86-83). He said it was "inappropriate" and would not happen again.

Inappropriate?

Try, "Complete bulls***", Coach. Also try, "The player involved will no longer be part of our program.”

Oats didn't say either of those things, of course. I mean, it's almost March, for cryin' out loud.

Priorities, you know.

Baseball the way it should be

 Well, then. I guess baseball really is serious about this pitch clock deal.

This after a spring training baseball game between the Boston Red Sox and Atlanta Braves ended in a 6-6 tie yesterday because Cal Conley of the Braves horsed around too long during his at-bat. 

The bases were loaded and Conley thought he'd just drawn a game-winning walk when, oops, the shot clock buzzer went off. Or, you know, something like that.

Actually, the ump called him out on a third strike because Conley wasn't set in the batter's box when the pitch clock wound down below eight seconds. Under the new rules, that's the designated time for the batter to be set between pitches.

Conley couldn't believe it. The fans booed. But you know what?

I love it.

Oh, I don't love that it ended the game, but then again, it was only a spring training game, so who cares? No one, which is why it ended in a tie. Had it had been a regular season game, only the inning would have been over.

The relevant point here is baseball is finally, finally doing something to return the sport to its roots -- i.e., make it the fast-paced, no-futzing-around game it was when it became the National Pastime. The Braves and Red Sox managed to play nine innings of baseball, including an astounding 17 pitching changes, in just under two hours and 40 minutes. 

Now that, folks, is baseball the way it should be. Hoorah.

Post-mortems, and stuff

 Certain things become obvious, as the energy hisses out of  Mackey Arena and Indiana runs its high-falutin' rival off its own floor:

Jalen Hood-Schifino is a first-round draft pick who will never have a sophomore season at IU.

Zach Edey is the Big Ten and National Player of the Year because even in defeat, you can't stop him.

Purdue needs more than Edey to win; Indiana needs Trayce Jackson-Davis but doesn't NEED need him, if you catch the drift.

And, finally … 

Indiana is not sneaky good. It's just good now, and if there's a negative in that it's that the Hoosiers have lost whatever element of surprise they had.

This after Jackson-Davis scored zero points in the first half last night, and yet it was Purdue that was in trouble. The Boilers led just 38-34 at the break, and Hood-Schifino was the best player on the floor with 23 points on his way to 35. This was foreshadowing if you were at all paying attention.

Because then the second half commenced, and Indiana splashed a couple threes, and Trey Galloway stole the ball and laid it up at the other end. And, poof, the Purdues were done. The Hoosiers hit 'em with a 19-5 salvo to open the half, Jackson-Davis got into the flow as a rebounder (eight boards) and facilitator (seven assists), and the Hoosiers won at Mackey -- and swept their higher-ranked rivals -- for the first time in a decade.

Unavoidable conclusion: Purdue has the POY. Indiana has the better team.

The Hoosiers have Jackson-Davis, they have Hood-Schifino, and they have enough other pieces that -- when they're right -- they can make you pay for focusing on the Big Two. They're looking at a 3 or 4-seed in Da Tournament right now, and they'll be the 3 or 4-seed no one wants to see if they play the way they did last night.

Purdue?

The Boilermakers have lost four of their last six and are beginning to look like a team that left its best basketball behind it in January. Their resume still might ensure them a 2-seed, but when two of your three wins in February have come against the worst team in the Big Ten (Ohio State) and a "meh" Penn State team, it doesn't inspire a lot of confidence.

Prediction: Edey gets Purdue to the Sweet Sixteen, where its season ends.

Other prediction: Indiana gets to the Sweet Sixteen, too. And then ...

Well, who knows? The Hoosiers have laid down some flat efforts at some odd times this season. It's the only reason I'd hesitate to say they're Elite Eight at least right now.

In any event, it's going to be an interesting tournament. I mean, just look at what happened yesterday.

Unranked Arizona State beat No. 7 Arizona on 'Zona's home floor with a 60-foot heave at the buzzer.

A 9-20 Florida State team rallied from 25 points down in the second half and shocked No. 13 Miami on, you guessed it, a 3-pointer at the buzzer.

 An underachieving North Carolina team knocked off No. 6 Virginia by eight.

Iowa, trailing by 13 with a minute-and-a-half to play, made 6-of-9 threes -- including four in a row in the last 32 seconds -- to force overtime and beat Michigan State, 112-106.

A wild day, capped by IU asserting itself as the best team in the state. Wilder days to come.

Standards, Part Deux

 And in the further adventures of the smash new basketball series "Clueless In 'Loosa," our heroes continue to be Clueless, while finding it shocking, somehow, that Stuff Happens.

In this week's further adventures ...

* Alabama's freshman star Brandon Miller -- off the hook for delivering a gun to a former teammate, who then handed it to a buddy, who then allegedly committed capital murder with it -- scored a freshman-record 41 points the other night, including the winning shot in overtime as No. 2 'Bama staved off an upset bid at South Carolina.

In a spectacular self-awareness fail, Alabama fans were reportedly enraged when South Carolina fans chanted "Lock him up, lock him up" at Miller. This was of course entirely predictable, and it was entirely Alabama's fault because it painted a target on Miller by allowing him to play in the first place. 

Way to throw the kid to the wolves, guys! Gold stars all around.

* Conventional wisdom says the first rule of getting out of a hole is to stop digging. But fie on conventional wisdom, says Alabama coach Nate Oats. Nobody wins in March without being bold, and Oats (and Alabama) are all about winning in March.

And so, after saying Miller had done nothing wrong the other day, and then clarifying it with a statement that essentially said the same thing, what did Oats do?

He kept talking!

This time he said he and the university had been taking the whole Miller thing "very seriously from Day 1." Then he said they all feel they've "done the right thing in this case."

Well ... it's obvious they're taking something very seriously down there in Tuscaloosa.

Like, you know, March. The Big Dance. Alabama's best shot at cutting down the nets on the first Monday in April since, well, forever.

Two things, Coach Oats:

1. Stop talking.

2. Don't get all indignant when rival schools use your self-serving inaction against you. In an increasingly vicious fight for talent, coaches exploit any opening they can. And Alabama has given them an opening you could drive Jupiter through.

No coach with any recruiting chops, after all, is going to think twice about sitting down with Mom and Dad, pointing toward Tuscaloosa and saying "You really want your son to go to a program where they let players fool around with guns?"

It's almost too easy. Because, see, these things have consequences, and this will surely be one of them.

 Consequences. What a concept.

Hey, look! It's that LIV thing!

College basketball has become AAU buckets with shinier shoe and TV deals, and looser morals. Aaron Rodgers has emerged from the dark (literally!) with a higher plane of consciousness, or at least more ideas for screwing with the Packers. And the NBA and NHL seasons keep going on and on and on against all logic.

So it's understandable you might have missed the news that LIV Golf  -- aka, "(Blood) Money For Nothin'" -- opens its second season today at some track down in Mexico.

The usual collection of burnouts, has-beens or back-nine-of-their-careers dudes will be on hand. So will the CW, the only network with whom LIV could ink a deal. Presumably they'll wedge the coverage between episodes of "Nancy Drew" and "Riverdale."

It'll be the usual exhibition of soulless, no-risk golf by a bunch of rich guys who won't be playing for a paycheck, because the paycheck (in the form of appearance fees) already will have been pocketed. But don't take my word for it.

Take the word of Washington Post columnist Sally Jenkins, one of the masters of the form and someone who's never been squeamish about eviscerating institutions that have it coming. Unfortunately for LIV Golf, this time it's them.

Check it out here. Apologize in advance if it's behind a paywall.

Uh-oh

 So, Michigan State clocked an uninspired Indiana team by 15 the other night in East Lansing, which was the first home game for the Spartans since Crazy Guy With A Gun decided to roam around campus shooting people, and thus it was a hugely emotional night and consequently a not at all surprising W.

But you know the Blob. It tends to see these things through a different lens, usually warped as hell and upside-down.

Which is why the first thing I did after seeing Michigan State 80, Indiana 65 was to look toward West Lafayette and think "Uh-oh, Boilers."

That's because the last time Indiana and Purdue met, it was four days after the Hoosiers had put up an uninspired effort and Maryland rolled 'em by 11 in College Park. Meanwhile, No. 1 Purdue had just disassembled Penn State by 20.

We all know what happened next, right?

Indiana came out like the bastard issue of Sharknado and Megatron, buried the Purdues under a 20-point halftime cave-in and then outgutted them down the stretch in a 79-74 upset in Assembly Hall.

Now here we are again.

Indiana-Purdue II.

Indiana coming off a double-digit loss on the road, four days ago.

Purdue coming off a 27-point disassembling of Ohio State.

Hmm.

I say Purdue still wins, because it's in Mackey this time and the Boilers will have had six days to rest up for it. But the convergence of events makes me also think something else.

Beware, Purdue. Be very Ware.