Seriously, though ...

 Two more Ws now, after Jonathan Doerer sidewinded the football through the uprights in overtime last night. Two more Ws and Knute Rockne steps aside as Brian Kelly becomes the winningest coach in Notre Dame football's long and endlessly storied history.

What this means is that Brian Kelly is an excellent football coach.

What it doesn't mean is he can do standup comedy.

If you missed it -- and I don't know how you could, given that it's all over the Magic Twitter Thingy and various other forms of social media today -- Kelly tried out an old John McKay line on sideline reporter Katie George after No. 9 Notre Dame outlasted Florida State 41-38 last night. He blew the punchline.

Actually, he took the punchline, chopped it up, sauteed it and then left it on the stove to burn.

The original McKay line was in answer to the question "What do you think of your team's execution?" McKay's answer: "I'm in favor of it."

Witty. Hilarious. And classic McKay.

Kelly's mangling of it, alas, was classic Kelly.

"I'm in favor of execution," Kelly said, after the Irish blew an 18-point lead in the fourth quarter. "Maybe, maybe our entire team needs to be executed after tonight."

Ouch.

Also, clearly Kelly trying to be John McKay and failing.

Also, not what you should say if  you once had a kid die on your watch after foolishly deciding to conduct practice in a windstorm.

Also, not a "thing" -- although, because it's 2021, it was a thing because in 2021 everything is a thing, no matter how silly or inconsequential.

Five will get you ten Kelly will issue a public apology today during his weekly day-after presser. Even though he addressed it last night by saying, correctly, "Are you people crazy?"

Why, yes, Coach. Yes, they are.

Indinia*

 (*And, yes, we know that's misspelled)

Or maybe it isn't.

Maybe what showed up on the front of freshman running back David Holloman's jersey -- "Indiana" somehow spelled "Indinia" -- was only a Distant Early Warning for what kind of day it was going to be out there in Iowa City. Because after that, "Indinia" went on to misspell "win."

Also "expectation."

Also "What the hell was THAT?"

Iowa 34, Indinia 6. That's what that was.

It was an outcome you could almost have predicted, if you're a long-time follower of IU football. They are the masters of deflation, these football Hoosiers. They are the kings of raising expectations and then shattering them like a petulant child flinging a china cup. If they had a mascot, it would be a cheery red balloon that slowly loses air as the game goes on.

Certainly everything up to Saturday was a cheery red balloon for this Indiana team. Hadn't the Hoosiers gone 6-2 last year and risen to No. 7 in the polls? Didn't they return quarterback Michael Penix and a whole pile of guys who could play? Hadn't Tom Allen created a culture -- LEO, for "Love Each Other" -- that was attracting the sort of recruits Indiana never used to get, and even a former USC running back (Steven Carr)?

And so, yeah, the expectations were through the stratosphere. Old-timers from the 1968 Rose Bowl team were predicting this would be the team to go back to Pasadena. They were saying the Hoosiers would go 10-2 or 11-1. L. Jon Wertheim of Sports Illustrated even did a feature story on Allen and his program.

And then ...

And then Penix threw a pick six.

And then he threw another pick six.

And then he threw another pick -- Iowa didn't take this one to the house, but still -- and suddenly Indiana was down 31-3 and and the game was gone.

Iowa 34, Indiana 6.

A throwback result, but not the sort of throwback the sons of '68 envisioned. 

This one looked more like a throwback to 1973, 1974, when the Hoosiers went a combined 3-19 and lost by scores that looked a lot like Saturday's: 24-0, 49-9, 38-17, 37-7. It won't be that bad in 2021 -- look for the Hoosiers to stomp Idaho next week and then give No. 8 Cincinnati all it wants -- but it won't be 11-1 or 10-2, either.

The Blob sees 8-4, maybe, and another bowl game. And the Bucket will stay in B-town.

In retrospect that cheery red balloon was likely overinflated, as cheery red balloons tend to be in the weeks leading up to a new season. Penix, for instance, struggled in the last game he played last year, going 6-of-19 for 84 yards against Maryland before the Terrapins knocked him out for the season. And then the Hoosiers lost to a 4-5 Ole Miss team in the Gator Bowl, after grumbling that they got dissed out of a New Year's Day game.

So maybe the expectations were a step or two beyond realistic to begin with.

Still.

Iowa 34, Indiana 6?

No matter how you spell it, no one expetced that.

A Throwback Hoosier suggestion

 The Blob tends to be ambivalent about football teams and their throwback uniforms. Its feelings about them depend largely on how butt-ugly the chosen throwbacks are, and to which era they're being thrown back.

A few years ago, for instance, Notre Dame broke out its shamrocks-on-the-helmets throwbacks. This was a mistake, and not just because they looked horse you-know-what. It was because when the Irish wore shamrocks on their helmets, they were circus clowns.

Probably not a good idea to remind fans of perhaps the ONE era in your storied program's history when you were going 2-8 and the like. Ah, yes, the Joe Kuharich years. Those were the days, boy!

On the other hand, there's what Indiana is going to do this fall.

For the Cincinnati game on Sept. 18, see, they'll be wearing throwback unis from the 1980s and '90s. 

Not only will that be a salute to the Bill Mallory Era -- the best period of sustained competence in IU's admittedly pallid football history -- but Indiana actually looked like Indiana in those unis. Crimson jerseys, crimson helmets with the iconic block "I" and a stripe down the middle, the whole shootin' match.

Considering the Hoosiers once donned helmets that looked like the love child of Yuri Gagarin and Santa Claus, this is an entirely pleasing and respectful development.

But the Blob thinks there's a throwback uni choice that would be even better.

With all the expectations flying around this team, why not break out unis that honor the 1968 Rose Bowl team?

The Hoosiers haven't been back to Pasadena since, and probably won't be this year unless a massive sinkhole opens up and eats Columbus, Ohio. But they are ranked in the preseason top 25 for the first time in 52 years.

So maybe this is the year to break out the Harry Gonso/John Isenbarger/Jade Butcher duds.

Works for me.

Meanwhile, in Pittsburgh ...

 ... My Cruds are still Crudding stuff up.

You might remember my Pittsburgh Pirates, alleged major league baseball team, pulling this laugh-a-minute gem back in May. Well, the other night they were again playing the Cubs, who are Cruds themselves now after garage-saleing themselves into oblivion. And this happened.

Yes, that's right. The Cubs won because Wilmer Difo dropped an infield popup none of the Little Leaguers we just saw in Williamsport would have muffed.

And now the Cruds are just 13 Ls away from the magic 100-loss mark for the season.

Come on, boys. You can do it. The Blob believes in you.

Hittin' the head (games)

 Those of a certain ideological bent might disagree, but there are some lines media types remain loathe to cross. We might ask a politician when he stopped beating his wife, but no one is comfy with asking a tennis player about why the hell he's spending so much time in the bathroom.

"Pee or poo?", it seems, is a question reserved for Marge Schott -- and then only about her St. Bernard, Schottzie.

But how else do you approach the kinda-sorta controversy Stefanos Tsitsipas has created for himself at the U.S. Open?

For the second straight match, Tsitsipas took an inordinately long toilet break at a suspiciously opportune time, and, yes, people are now wondering what the hell he's doing in there. Tsitsipas spent eight minutes in the loo immediately after losing a set to Adrian Mannarino, a couple of nights after taking multiple bathroom breaks -- including one that lasted seven minutes -- during his win over Andy Murray.

The eight-minute epic against Mannarino seemed especially fishy, and indeed Tsitsipas emerged to bagel Mannarino in the next set and wrap up the match, 6-3, 6-4, 6-7, 6-0. So it was logical to deduce Tsitsipas used the lengthy break to get his head back together, and play head games with Mannarino.

Either that or there's a heck of a stash of reading material in that bathroom.

In any case, folks are wondering now if he's abusing the privilege, and also what the guy is eating. And it surely makes for some squirmy moments for media types more accustomed to more, um, customary questions.

"Getting enough roughage, Stefanos?" is not a question, after all, you hear every day. Even if no one's asked it so far.

So would the Blob ask it?

Nah. Movie buff that I am, I'd more likely ask Tsitsipas how the process of taking a mid-match break works, hoping against hope it would be the way it worked in "Cool Hand Luke."

"Bathroom break, boss?" ...

After which Tsitsipas locks himself in the bathroom and shakes the bush every so often to let 'em know he's still there.

Awesome.

The joy of make-believe

 We love our fairy tales, here in America. Just look at all the fairy tales the Previous Occupant spun, and all of 'em that continue be spun by his lovesick groupies.

So maybe this story isn't as weird as it seems. Or maybe it's even weirder.

It's confusing and confounding and draped in questions, like tinsel on a Christmas tree. But here's the nut: It seems ESPN, which likes to put big-deal high school football teams on the air periodically, got slicked recently into putting a "team" on the air that doesn't actually exist.

OK. So the team exists, even though it's not much of a team. Somehow its coaches, or someone, talked their way into a televised game with a legit high school power, IMG Academy out of Florida, and got laminated 58-0.

It was frankly embarrassing for all parties --  including ESPN, which got righteously catfished. That's because the team represents a prep school, "Bishop Sycamore" from Columbus, Ohio, that apparently doesn't exist.

Well. OK, so it might exist, but if it does it's only an online entity. It has a website, but it's empty. It's not a member of the Ohio high school athletic association. There's never actually been a "Bishop Sycamore" in Ohio, and it has two listed addresses that seem more than a little suspect.

One is a duplex in a residential area. The other is the library at Franklin University in Columbus.

Further, its coach, Roy Johnson, is a con artist who's fielded fake high school teams before and currently has a warrant out for his arrest on domestic abuse charges. 

The "team," meanwhile, was 0-6 last year and got poleaxed by everyone. And it played a game on the Friday night before it played IMG on Sunday.

All of which shifts the Blob's famously bent powers of imagination into hyperdrive ..

FORT WAYNE, In. -- Marvin "Big Boy" Merlin, the coach of a high school football team some suspect doesn't actually represent a high school, issued an impassioned rebuttal yesterday to the rumors swirling around his team.

"It does so exist," Merlin said of Bishop Herb High School. "Does so, does so, does SO."

Asked where the "school" is located, he waved a hand vaguely toward the southwest side of Fort Wayne, a city of 300,000 or so in northeast Indiana.

"Aw, it's over there somewheres," Merlin said. "You know, over where all the rich people live. It's right out there next to one o' them fancy housing developments -- the Swale-y Swales of Swale Hills, the Glen-dy Glens of Glen-dy Hollows, one o' them places."

When told no one has been able to locate it, Merlin scoffed.

"Well, you just ain't lookin' hard enough, then," he said.

There are other questions about Bishop Herb, some of which involve the players on the Fightin' Chardonnays' roster. A few, it seems, are rumored to be 27, 28, even 30 years old.

"Well, that's just ridiculous,'' Merlin said, a bit huffily. "They's all legit, and we got some good'uns. Our quarterback, Billy 'Early Withdrawal' Barrow, is a junior coll- er, junior transfer from Dirt Clod, Oklahoma. Got a heck of an arm, and he beat that armed robbery rap fair and square. 

"And his favorite target? Shoo. Well, that's Homer 'Jailbreak' Jenkins, who came here from Hog Jowl Correctional in Alabama after an unfortunate dispute with the parole board. Kid can fly, I'm tellin' ya.

"We got a bunch o' other good kids, too. They ain't too big and they can' run a lick, but they'll hit ya, especially when you ain't lookin'. Just gotta teach 'em a little whistle discipline."

Asked how they were doing in "school", Merlin again waved his hand airily.

"Ah, they doin' fine," he said. "Found the cafeteria on the first day."

To date, Bishop Herb does not have a complete schedule. Merlin says he'd love to play the other Catholic schools in town, Bishop Luers and Bishop Dwenger, both of  which have a deep and illustrious football tradition that includes a combined 15 state titles. But so far Luers and Dwenger have given Bishop Herb a wide berth -- wisely, most people in Fort Wayne seem to think.

"They just scared," said Merlin, whose team is 0-2 so far and been outscored 125-6.

Officials at Luers and Dwenger refused comment, aside from rolling their eyes, shaking their heads and maybe laughing a little.

Contagion(s)

 There's a contagion loose in America these days, and it puts the Bastard Plague in the shade. Delta variant, you say? Pffft. This bastard plague's got a million variants.

Call it Viral Crazy. And so far there ain't no vaccine for it.

You hear it coming these days from the mouths of babbling halfwits on Fox "News", and from conspiracy kooks going live on the interwhatsis from Mom's basement, and even from elected officials. Hell, the Previous Occupant was Patient Zero for it.

And so you look up one day and here's some lunkhead congress critter named Madison Cawthorn talking, in almost wistful tones, about taking up arms against the dang gum'mint of which he's a part. And here's another lunkhead congress critter named Marjorie Taylor Greene hollering about made-up electoral fraud. And here are school board members and local political hacks saying wearing masks in a raging pandemic causes kids to commit suicide, and that ingesting livestock de-wormer is a safe and effective way to treat the Plague.

Anyone who says otherwise, of course, is simply a Tool Of Big Pharma who's Suppressing The Truth because they want us to take the Vile Vaccine, which everyone knows turns us all into brain-eating zombies.

Or, you know, something like that.

Just the other night, the anti-vaxxer, anti-mask nuttery was on full display at a local school board meeting. People, presumably parents, shouted down a doctor when he pleaded for a little common sense. They chanted "Re-vote! Re-vote!" when the board decided to re-institute mandatory masking because, well, kids are already getting sick two weeks into the new school year.

Their kids, presumably. Or some of them. I can't even.

Meanwhile, in the NFL ...

("Finally! Sports!" you're saying)

In the NFL, your Indianapolis Colts remain a bastion of anti-vaxxer nuttery, and because of that, new store-bought quarterback Carson Wentz is in Bastard Plague jail. So are wide receiver Zach Pascal and center Ryan Kelly -- and so, recently, was star offensive tackle Quentin Nelson.

Wanna guess what they all have in common?

Yep. None of them have been vaccinated. 

None of them have been vaccinated, even though the NFL is pushing it hard and instituting different rules for those who haven't been -- which is why Wentz, Pascal and Kelly are all on quarantine not because they tested positive, but because of "close contacts." Had they been vaccinated, they wouldn't be quarantined for that.

But now they all are, less than two weeks before the start of the season. And the Colts kinda-sorta need them. And what is the big damn deal, if you're at all a rational human, about getting a freaking shot?

The Pfizer vaccine is now FDA approved, after all, and it was safe before it was because they tested the hell out of it before they allowed it on the market. Long-term effects? I don't know, what are the long-term effects of any vaccine/shot/medication?

I'll tell you: Virtually none, statistically.

And so, yeah, I'm going to call out the anti-vaxxers as nutters, because that's what they are. I'm going to say Wentz and Nelson and Kelly and Paschal, and any other Colts who haven't been vaccinated, are being selfish and stupid. And I'm not going to shed any tears for Cam Newton, whom the New England Patriots abruptly released the other day.

Cam, you see, isn't vaccinated, either. I don't think that was why Belichick showed him the road, but I doubt it was a point in his favor. And I'd have to think long and hard about signing him if I were another team, because given the NFL's protocols, not being vaccinated means his availability would always be in question.

And, yes, I know what you're gonna say. You're gonna say name-calling is no solution, and I've been name-calling to a fare-thee-well in this post.

You're absolutely right. It's not a solution, and I have been.

But I can't help it. The truth may hurt, but I gotta speak it. And it's not my fault.

The Viral Crazy made me do it.