Mug ya Blue

 In my mind this morning I'm out at Wayne High School, and I'm waiting for a phone call or a letter or an email. On the other end of the phone call or letter or email will be the NFL, ordering me to cease and desist.

This is because Wayne's school colors are powder blue and red.

Apparently that color combination is the sole property of the Nash-unal FOOT-ball League.

I say "apparently," because the league has threatened the University of Houston with a lawsuit if the Cougar football team again trots out powder-blue-and-red Houston Oiler tribute uniforms. The Cougars are to cut that shite out, because it seems the Houston Oilers and their colors belong to the NFL, even if the Houston Oilers haven't existed for more than a quarter century.

Owner Bud Adams moved them to Tennessee in 1997, where they were briefly the Tennessee Oilers before changing their name to the Titans. And so Luv Ya Blue was over in Houston, and now the NFL is engaging in Mug Ya Blue.

Threatening the University of Houston if they don powder-blue-and-red. Telling the Houston Texans, the Oilers ancestral descendants, they can't wear Oilers throwback unis, either, on account of the Titans are the actual Oilers -- even if they abandoned all that 26 years ago.

Me, I think a team that calls Houston home now has more right to the Oilers heritage than the Tennessee Titans do, seeing how the Oilers called Houston home for 36 years and were a charter member of the American Football League. If Bud Adams cared about any of that, why did he abandon Houston for Nashville, and then change the name of the team?

So only the franchise that decided it didn't want to be the Houston Oilers anymore gets to wear Oilers throwback gear. And the current franchise in the city where that franchise made most of its history is forbidden from doing so.

Makes perfect sense to me. How about you?

Listen, I get it. The NFL is all about protecting its brand, and the cash that flows from it thereof. This is true even if the brand, in this case, is about 99 percent cowflop. 

But what does the league get out of threatening the University of Houston, other than looking like a greedy over-lawyered bully? And if they're gonna go after a college, would they also go after, say, the Hog Wallow Junction Fightin' Oilers if the school colors were powder-blue and red and the school logo was an oil derrick?

You'd think they'd be smart enough to realize what a bad look that would be. On the other hand, it is the NFL.

Which in this case stands for "Never Forsake (the) Loot."

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 8

 And now a special Halloween edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the scaaarrry Blob  feature of which critics have said "Don't open that door! The scaaarrry Blob feature's in there!", and also "Aieeeee!":

1. "Aieeeee!" (America, forced to watch the Bears poop all over their Sunday night)

2. "Don't turn on Sunday Night Football! The Bears are in there!" (Also America)

3. And as the wind moaned around the eaves and a full moon rode the night sky like a ghostly frigate from the bowels of Hell, the Jets and Giants rose from their ancient graves and ...

4. ... roamed the countryside on legs that had all but forgotten the mechanics of walking.  Horrible to the sight with their rotting flesh, staring eyes and fleshless, clacking fingers, they moaned and gibbered with awful eagerness, beckoning the unsuspecting to watch them perform obscene abominations of the sacraments of football ...

5. ... until the unsuspecting cried out piteously and begged to be freed from their torment.

6. And, OK, so mainly they just said "What the (bleep) is THIS crap?"

7. Meanwhile, the Cowboys!

8. Lured the Rams into the Lair of Jerry and subjected them to all manner of vile torture, while America shuddered in revulsion at what they knew would come next ...

9. "Woo-hoo! Lookit us! We're GOIN' TO THE SUPER BOWL!" (Obnoxious Cowboy fans)

10. "Aieeee!" (America)

Stuck

 Light a candle this morning to Your Indianapolis Colts, who are exactly who we thought they would be before we were suckered into thinking they might be something else.

Remember? Remember when all the wise guys (including me) were talking about what a mess the roster was, and how this season was going to be a Learning Experience not only for prize rookie Anthony Richardson, but for the Colts in general?

Why, some people were saying they wouldn't win more than four games. 

Oh, yeah. That was me.

But then Richardson showed flashes and Zaire Franklin started tackling everything that moved, and Zach Moss turned out to be more than just a placeholder for the disgruntled Jonathan Taylor. And then Richardson went down but, hey, look, Gardner Minshew's throwing touchdown passes to Michael Pittman Jr., and Taylor's back, and ...

And stuff began to happen. The kind of stuff we thought would happen before we forgot we thought it.

Minshew started turning the ball over every time he blinked. The young secondary became the young-and-banged-up secondary, and even guys like Derek Carr started setting it on fire because the Colts' backup DBs turned out to be more Roddy McDowell than Ronnie Lott. 

Speaking of Carr, he picked on the Horsies yesterday for 310 yards, two touchdowns and a 133.3 quarterback rating, completing 70.4 percent of his throws. That was 45.7 points and 6.3 percentage points higher than his season averages so far.

So he got better in a hurry, and Alvin Kamara and Taysom Hill gashed the Colts for 122 yards and three scores on the ground, and the Saints won 38-27. It was the Horsies' third straight loss. And now they're 3-5 with the sadsack Panthers and Patriots next on the docket, and what do you do if you're them?

Some folks think it's time to pull the plug on the season, fire-sale the hell out of it at the trade deadline tomorrow, and look to next season. Because wasn't that how we all thought this should go back in early September?

On the other hand ...

On the other hand, they do have the Panthers and Patriots coming up. JT's doing JT things again. And there's a chance the front-line DBs will heal up, and that Minshew won't yak up the football the way he's been doing lately.

This is the very definition of stuck, if you're the Colts. So what do you do?

Hope you can win two winnable games and get to .500 through ten games, with an outside shot at squeaking into the playoffs? Or bail on the season and start looking to next year, when Richardson will be healed up and there might be a chance to do more than just squeak into the playoffs?

Even more crucial a question: Do you really at this point trust Chris Ballard to swing anything meaningful at the trade deadline? Or to engineer the 2024 draft any better than he's engineered his drafts so far?

Yeah, me neither.

And so we're back to our original starting point. Which is to say, the Colts really are exactly who we thought they would be.

Not very good.

Almost good

 Indiana did not save Tom Allen's job yesterday, on a warm rainy day in Happy Valley. But it probably solidified Brendan Sorsby's.

It was exactly that kind of "Yes, but ..." and "On the other hand ..." afternoon for the Allen's Hoosiers, who did not beat No. 10 Penn State but did not lose by 30 the way the Vegas wise guys thought. The Hoosiers lost 33-24, and it would have been 31-24 had Indiana not Indiana'ed it up there at the end, Sorsby taking a sack and fumbling into and through the end zone with 1:33 to play.

Safety, Penn State, Thirteen seconds after Drew Allard threw a 57-yard touchdown pass to save the day for the Nittany Lions  -- who gave up a 90-yard touchdown pass by Sorsby and then a 67-yard touchdown pass, and did not exactly find the open gate they were supposed to against the Indiana defense.

In fact, the Indiana defense picked Allard once, sacked him three times and pressured him into off-kilter throws a bunch of other times. All told they made six tackles for loss on the day, while limiting Penn State to a measly 132 yards rushing and 324 total yards, five fewer than Sorsby (13-of-19, 269 yards and three touchdowns passing) and the Indiana offense churned out.

So you can say, ungrammatically, that the Hoosiers were almost good, and Sorsby was ... gooder.

On the other hand ...

On the other hand, they still lost. 

Still did Indiana things, like turning the ball over twice at ruinous times. Still turned a 14-7 lead into a 17-14 halftime deficit in seven minutes. Still gave up the big play with 1:46 to play and score tied at 24.

Still remained winless in the Big Ten, and now Allen's conference record stands at 2-20 since 2021. That alone will be enough for Allen to be shown the door, unless the Hoosiers jump up, win out and get into a bowl game.

Could happen, I suppose, if the outfit that was tied with the No. 10 team in the country  with less than two minutes to play keeps showing up. I mean, it won't, but it could.

My natural pessimist's guess, based on years of watching Indiana football, is the Hoosiers will lose at home to Wisconsin next week to fall to 2-7. Because, you know, they're the Hoosiers.

Sometimes almost good. More often not.

October magic

 So, maybe you're not much into baseball anymore. The NFL has swallowed it whole. The World Series is just background noise to the Shield and big-ticket college football and basketball starting up and hockey starting up.

Maybe it even gets eclipsed by high school football, considering the geniuses who run baseball now decided to start the World Series on a playoff football Friday.

Too bad for you, in that case.

You could have seen one of those throwback moments that used to make the Series appointment viewing. You could have watched October magic happen the way it used to when they still played the World Series in the afternoons, under the burnished light of the October sun. You could have relived all the times you snuck your transistor radio into Mrs. Becker's class to listen when you were supposed to be conjugating verbs and such.

Game 1 brought all that back last night, including the part where you gave yourself away by shouting "Yes!" when the magic happened. Because, yes, the magic did happen.

Down 5-3 at home in the ninth, their bats muffled by the Arizona Diamondbacks' arms, the Texas Rangers suddenly rode again. 

First,with a man on, Corey Seager took D-backs closer Paul Sewald's 94-mph smoke for a ride into the right-field stands, tying the game with one out in the ninth. Then, in the bottom of the 11th, Adolis Garcia -- who doesn't seem to have swung and missed through the entire playoffs -- did it again, clubbing a walkoff home run to give the Rangers a stunning 6-5 win and a 1-0 lead in the Series.

It was the fifth straight game he'd homered, his record 22nd RBI in the playoffs, and first walk-off dinger in Game 1 of the World Series since a hobbled Kirk Gibson hit one of the most iconic home runs in Series history 35 years ago.

The Blob makes no claim to premonitions. But, weirdly enough, I was actually watching a clip of Gibson's blast and Vin Scully's legendary call of it ("And she's gone!") Friday afternoon. 

No, I don't know why. It just popped up on my YouTube feed. And there again was Gibson limping around the bases pumping his arm, and A's peerless closer Dennis Eckersley blanking following the ball as it sailed away, and the whole world, it seemed, going nuts.

Just a nostalgic wallow, I guess, as the 119th World Series waited on deck.

And then, several hours later, Seager and Garcia going deep with Game 1 on the line, same as in 1988.

You don't have to say it was that old October magic, echoing down the years. But I think I will.

A touch of Luka in the night

 I know how I describe this, if I'm whoever covered the Mavericks and the Nets last night. I steal from Grantland Rice.

Outlined against an October roof of a basketball arena, a game of H-O-R-S-E rode again. And Luka Doncic won it ...

Because, really, who's gonna match what Luka did with 26 seconds to go last night and his Mavs tied with visiting Brooklyn?

What he did was fling up a half-hook, half-what-the-hell-throw from beyond the 3-point line, with the Nets Dorian Finney-Smith draped over him like a rain suit. And Luka ... well, made it rain.

The ball left his hand, sailed on a sub-orbital arc, and banked in high off the glass to give the Mavs the lead and the eventual W. It might have been the most amazing make anyone in attendance ever saw, and put the exclamation point on Doncic's 49-point night. And it was one of four threes he made in the last 2:59.

Here's what it looked like. Finney-Smith joked Luka didn't call bank, but Luka joked he said it in Slovenian so Finney-Smith wouldn't understand.

Craziest thing about it?

Finney-Smith, who used to play with the Mavs, wasn't even that surprised.

"I've seen it a million times," he said. "He plays around and he honestly works on those shots. I feel we should have not let him get the ball back. That probably would have been the best option. S***, he couldn't even see the rim and he made that mug."

And Luka?

"I don't know how I made it," he said.

Yeah, right.

"That is absolutely disgusting"

You go, Mike Brown. Put your heart out there on your sleeve and let it speak.

Maybe you didn't see this the other night, after Brown's Sacramento Kings opened the NBA season. Likely he'll get the usual "Stick to sports" and "What does a basketball coach know about anything" in response, as if politicians wearing AR-15 pins on their lapels and regurgitating gun lobby bullet points know anything more.

To hell with that. Everything Mike Brown said the other night about what was happening again in America was true. Straight from the heart and true.

Another crazy person, this time in Lewiston, Me., going on a killing spree at a bowling alley and a bar? And not just any crazy person, but a crazy person with military training lugging a military-grade weapon?

And so another 18 or so dead, another 14 or so wounded, and two more ordinary American places turned into combat zones. And more blah-blah-blahing, more empty words,  the new Speaker of the House -- a right-wing extremist named Mike Johnson -- saying the problem is not military-grade weaponry too easily getting into the wrong hands, but "the human heart."

Well. Last I knew, the human heart couldn't pull a trigger. It can guide the hands that do, but without those hands and without the ordinance they cradle, all those dead and wounded in Maine wouldn't be dead and wounded today.

It's absolutely disgusting, as Brown said. It's sad, as he also said. And it goes on and on without letup, as he also said, because no one does a damn thing to try to slow it down.

I mean, it's the human heart doing it all by its lonesome, right?

And, yes, that's a snide and cynical thing to say. But I've got nothing else at this point. Like Mike Brown I am disgusted and weary and sick to death of the killing, of families mourning loved ones simply because they decided to go to school or a movie theater or church or the grocery store -- or a bowling alley or a bar.

We get the country we deserve, I say, every time some crazy person ups the body count. And clearly we live in a country now that considers periodic slaughters the price we have to pay for a constitutional amendment that was never intended to mean what the more fringe elements have decided it means.

So there will be Thoughts and Prayers and the usual hand-wringing and excuse-making from the gun nuts in Washington, who seem to have gotten the idea Moses brought the Second Amendment down from Mt. Sinai on stone tablets. Who seem to think you can't take any steps to make it more difficult to identify and hamper other prospective slaughterers without desecrating the Sacred Second.

And so this slaughterer will join the pantheon, and more innocents will die, and the vigil candles will gutter out at the blood-soaked sites of our latest carnage. And, as Mike Brown said the other night, nothing will happen except the next Slaughter of the Month or Week or Season.

And the usual suspects in Washington?

They'll proudly keep wearing their AR-15 pins, even as AR-15s and their ilk continue to mow down the citizenry. Some of them, incredibly, will pose with that weaponry on their Christmas cards. And they'll continue to tell us that a nation with more concealed and open carry laws than ever will be safer if only more people buy more guns.

Yes, it's disgusting. And consider this my disgusted surrender. We get the country we deserve, as I said. So be it.

I just have one question.

With more people buying more guns, and mass shootings now just a regular American thing in spite of that, when exactly do we get safer?