Same-old, same-old

 I wouldn't know Florida football coach Billy Napier if he cut in front of me at the grocery store. So this is not where you come to find out if he can actually coach 'em up down there in Gainesville.

I do know one thing, though: The man can arm-wrestle the obvious right down to the ground.

This after Coach Billy acknowledged that high-stakes college football is "a cutthroat business", which is a bit like saying water is wet. In this instance, though, Napier was specifically referring to the transfer portal, and how it's being illegally used to tamper with other programs' players. According to Napier, it's a damn epidemic.

 "There's no doubt tampering is real," Napier told Alex Scarborough of ESPN. "... And I think that until there's something done about it, I think you'll continue to see it."

Of course you will. The transfer portal, after all, is hardly the midwife for this sort of thing.

It's just another way for coaches to do what desperate coaches (i.e.: all of 'em) have been doing since Knute Rockne and Fielding Yost first bad-mouthed each other. Tampering is as old as the single wing, and you'll teach a fish to do algebra before it's curtailed by the NCAA. 

Long before anyone dreamed up the transfer portal, see, coaches have been poaching each other’s players. No one calls it that, however, because the players in question aren't yet players, but recruits. And it's perfectly legal to continue pursuing them long after they've plighted their troth to dear old Big Ticket U.

That’s because a recruit’s commitment isn't actually a commitment until he signs that National Letter of Intent. And so coaches from Big Ticket's rivals can keep right on wooing him.

Officially, after all, it's not tampering. It's just business -- as Billy Napier says, a cutthroat business.

In spite of that, there actually used to be a time when there were gentleman's agreements between coaches that, once a kid committed, you left him alone and moved on to the next stud on your list. Hard to believe, but it happened.

Of course, there was also a time when Atari was state-of-the-art gaming. Time marches on, and all that.

In which case I suppose it left me behind.

That's because I hear coaches complain about how the transfer portal and the NIL facilitate tampering with another program's players, and I don't see a hell of a lot of difference between that and tampering with another program's recruits. I understand that it is different, but to me it's all the same ethical shadiness at work.

I mean, if you're not going to honor a kid's commitment during the recruiting process, why would anyone expect you to stop there?

My question for today.

Get that weak history outta here

 ... or to put it another way: "The Spirit of  '04 Cryin' Out Loud."

History and symmetry and the pleasing storyline, they all fell down and went boom last night in Boston. This is what happens when the script writers go out on strike.

Had they not been walking the picket lines out there in Hollywood, see, they'd have had the Celtics completing the reverse-sweep in Game 7 against the Heat. Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, the dynamic duo, would have been cast as GOATs instead of goats. Johnny Damon and Curt Schilling and Big Papi, all the 2004 Red Sox heroes, would have been in attendance to see the Celts duplicate their historic comeback from three-games-to-none down against the Yankees in the '04 ALCS.

Instead ... 

Well, instead, Game 7 looked like this: Heat 103, Celtics 84.

Get that weak s*** outta here, history. Deja whoops, and all that.

How the Celtics could be such a no-show in a Game 7 in their own house -- especially in this Game 7 -- is a mystery better left to philosophers and mystics, I suppose. But it happened.

Heat 103, Celtics 84 happened. Jayson and Jaylen bricking a combined 36 of 49 shots (including 13 of 15 three-point attempts) happened. The Celts shooting a horrendous 9-of-42 from three-point, and 32-of-82 from everywhere, happened.

That's 21.4 percent and 39 percent, respectively, if you're doing the math. They might as well have been shooting bowling balls instead of basketballs, or throwing darts at a wallet photo of King George III from a half-mile off. In the middle of a nor'easter.

And this after the Celtics lost the first three games of the series and, like their spiritual brethren over in Fenway, improbably emerged from the grave.

The Heat baked them like an apple pie in the first three games, and then the Celtics won the next three, the first two by 17 and 13 points. In Game 6, Derrick White's putback at the horn sent it back to Boston for Game 7 and seemed to affirm that the Celtics were as destined as those '04 Sox.

And then ...

And then the Boston Massacre, NBA division.

Jimmy Butler became Playoff Jimmy again, dropping 28 on the Destineds. Caleb Martin added 26 and 10 rebounds. Bam Adebayo had a double-double, 12 and 10. Duncan Robinson came off the bench to score 10. The Heat shot 50 percent from three-point (14-of-28), outrebounded Boston 49-40, made seven steals, forced 15 turnovers -- eight of them from Jaylen Brown.

I am not a Celtics fan (or a Heat fan), but I can imagine what they were all thinking last night, watching this. I figure it's one of three things.

1. "Cripes, if you were gonna lose, whyncha just lose three games ago and get it over with?"

2. "Larry 'n' them woulda nevah cratered like this in a Game 7 in the Gahden. Ne-vah."

And, of course, last but not least:

3. "Well, at least it wasn't the Yankees."

A few (or more) day after thoughts

 When the thing was done he stopped the car precisely on the yard of brick, and then -- finally; FINALLY -- the Champ Perpetually In Waiting got to do what he'd been aching to do for a dozen bitter years. 

He got to go crowd-surfing.

As America watched and the 300,00 inside motorsport's holiest cathedral howled and banged their palms together, he bailed out of his seat, ran over to the fence, and -- wait, what's he doing now?

Not climbing the fence, like some knockoff Helio. No, he's ducking under it, then hopping the low fence that separates the fence from that immense cliff of grandstand, and ... oh, look, he's wading into this dense mass of  humanity, letting it swallow him, flow around him, buffet him with a thousand reaching hands.

This is how Josef Newgarden celebrated winning the Indianapolis 500.

This is how he celebrated being The Guy Who Did after so long being The Guy Who Will.

Sunday was his 12th 500 and he's been one of the designated faces of his sport for several years, winning two IndyCar titles for the name-in-lights monolith that is Team Penske. But something always happened to him on the last Sunday in May, and it was never good. Never good until going on 4:30 yesterday afternoon, when he was 2,000 yards from home on the last lap of a 500 that gone on too long and too bizarrely. 

What happened was, he got a run on defending champ and leader Marcus Ericsson coming off turn two.

Halfway down the backstretch he flogged his car past him, as Ericsson snake-danced to steal his air the way he'd snake-danced to shake Pato O'Ward a year ago.

Deja vu all over again. Until it wasn't.

Newgarden passed him and then snake-danced himself down the main straightaway toward the checkers, as Ericsson desperately tried to re-pass him. He failed by less than half a second.

And then Newgarden was climbing out of the car and going under the fence and running back and forth through that sea of reaching hands, and, listen, if this was something we'd never seen here before .... well, that was pretty much the narrative of the day.

Never before, after all, had we seen the race red-flagged three times in the last 15 laps.

Never before had we seen it come down to a one-lap sprint to the checkers.

Never before, after all the times Josef Newgarden had been a favorite to win, did the win finally come on a day when he probably wasn't expected to win.

While the Ganassi and McLaren stables blazed around the joint, the Penske rides were pokey all month, which accounted for Newgarden coming to the green from the middle of Row 6. But on this day he had a fast car from jump, and the laps rolled by, and stuff began to happen. And pretty soon you blinked and he was in third place, right up there with Ericsson and Pato O'Ward and Felix Rosenqvist and the rest of the frontrunners.

His day, at long last. His day, when for so long it looked like Alex Palou's day or O'Ward's or Ericsson's or even that of Santino Ferrucci, who gave the No. 14 stars-and-stripes livery of  A.J. Foyt a hell of a drive before finishing third.

Some other stuff:

* Welcome to the day of "I Went To The Indianapolis 500 And The Daytona 500 Broke Out."

Because, really, this was some yee-ha business down there at the end, when (just like Daytona!) people kept running into each other and stopping the race because they'd sprayed the track with auto parts. 

The first red flag came out when Rosenqvist got up in the marbles off turn one, banged the wall and spun down to the inside of the track, where Kyle Kirkwood clipped him and sailed into the fence in turn two. One of his tires went whirling over the fence, narrowly missing the grandstand and landing on a car in the parking lot like a thunderbolt from some angry Firestone god.

Kirkwood, meanwhile, wound up sliding down the track upside-down, a wild-looking ride he walked away from without a scratch.

The other two red flags were, like so many of Daytona's, avoidable in one case and simply stupid in the other.

The first happened when O'Ward tried to go under Ericsson in turn three, got squeezed and wound up in the wall, ending a day that for a long time looked like his. Then, almost as an afterthought, he was rear-ended by rookie Augustin Canapino, who got clipped by another back-marker and snapped a brake line. 

Then, as the yellow came out, Simon Pagenaud ran into the back of Scott McLaughlin, which brought out the red flag again.

And the third red flag?

The dumbest of all. 

When the green dropped with four laps to run, the leaders barely were in the first turn before Ed Carpenter and rookie Benjamin Pederson got together trying to go three (or four) wide with Marco Andretti and Graham Rahal. All four were deep in the pack, raising the obvious question of why a bunch of back-markers were trying to go three (or four) wide.

"Because I coulda finished, I don't know, 16th or something," is not an acceptable answer.

*  Welcome, also, to the day of  "We Drive Really Fast, But For God's Sake Don't Let Us Try To Park."

Which is to say, you'd think guys (and gals) good enough to negotiate 500 miles at 220-plus could get in and out of the pits without running into something.

Not yesterday, they couldn't. 

It was a cavalcade of shenanigans in the pit area all day, with drivers overrunning their pit boxes and sliding around and either narrowly missing or crashing into one another.

Katherine Legge lost it in the pits. Rinus Veekay got sideways and hit Alex Palou as both were exiting, which sent Palou into the pit wall and subsequently to the back of the field -- one of the day's biggest what-ifs, because Palou was the hottest shoe of the day and proved it by getting all the way back to fourth by the end.

Oh, and a tire nearly got away from one of Ferrucci's changers on his last and most critical stop. More shenanigans.

And, finally ...

* Welcome to "Live From Saturday Night At The Local Half-Mile, It's Trophy Dash Time."

Which is not the way you're supposed to decide the Indianapolis 500, some would say. That includes Marcus Ericsson, who got hung out to dry on that dash-for-cash and wasn't at all happy about it.

The Blob's position on this is he had a point. 

The Blob's other position is, what would you have rather seen? Ericsson walking it across the line under yellow, or the hectic drama of that last lap?

I'll take Door No. 2.

It is, after all, the Greatest Spectacle In Racing. And that last lap was, if perhaps ill-advised, Spectacle.

And your winner is ...

 Look, I know how it goes, down there in the Mecca of Speed. Sentiment will get you a boot in the glutes.

That's the bone truth of these ancient two-and-a-half miles of ring road at the corner of 16th Street and Georgetown Road, and everyone knows it. It's a hard old place crowded with ghosts, and they walk there as a reminder that hopes and dreams and, yes, sentiment more often than not get ground to dust there.

Which is to say, I want Tony Kanaan to win the Indianapolis 500 today.

Which is also to say I'm not going to pick him. 

I want TK to win the 107th running because it's his last running, and because he's one of the best people in motorsports, and. also because I was a sportswriter for most of my life. We are a selfish lot, you see. TK winning his last 500?

Hell. That's the Column That Writes Itself of myth and legend.

It's also why you can probably forget about it, because the sportswriting gods are rarely so accommodating. He's got one of those McLaren rocket ships under him, and he starts way up there on the outside of Row 3, but ... well, it comes down to this: We couldn't get that lucky.

So who then?

If you want to be cagey about it, you might pick Santino Ferrucci, who drives for A.J. Foyt and starts on the inside of the second row. Ferrucci has never started the 500 on such a lofty perch, which bodes well because he always finishes better than he starts. In four previous 500s he's started 23rd, 19th, 23rd and 15th; he's finished seventh, fourth, sixth and 10th.

Plus, winning for A.J. would be another Column That Writes Itself. But I've already told you about the sportswriting gods.

And so let's keep looking, because there's a lot to look at. There's Scott Dixon, the best IndyCar driver of his generation, starting on the outside of Row 2 and 14 years overdue for his second bottle of milk. There's two-time winner Takuma Sato next to TK in the middle of Row 3, with one of Chip Ganassi's dominant rides under him. There's defending champ Marcus Ericsson one row back, and 2016 winner Alexander Rossi next to Sato on the inside of Row 3, and Alex Palou on the pole.

Palou is going to win this race someday, and it could well be today. After all, the stars are aligned for him: A dominant win in the Indy Grand Prix two weeks ago, then the fastest pole run since Arie Luyendyk in that different time that was 1996. A win today completes the May trifecta.

I'm going to regret not picking him. I can feel it already.

But today I'm riding with Pato O'Ward, whose McLaren goes off in the middle of Row 2. I'm picking him because in three previous starts he's never finished lower than sixth, and he's gotten closer every year: Sixth in 2020, fourth in 2021, chasing Ericsson to the checkers in second last year. And today he's starting fifth in car No. 5, if you're into the numerology thing.

I am not. I'm simply guessing he'll be up there at the finish again today, and sooner or later a guy who's up there at the finish is going to draw the winning card.

Of course, if that sort of logic weren't deeply flawed, I'd be much better at the picking the winner than I am. And I'm not very good at it.

Still ...

 I stand by my pick.

Pato for the win. 

 

Dog days

 ... or, lame duck days. 

It's Choose Your Own Species time out in Oakland, Calif., and that is a sad deal for anyone with a working appreciation for baseball  lore. The Oakland A's are about to become the Las Vegas A's thanks to their garden slug of an owner, and it's enough to uncurl Rollie Fingers' fabled 'stache. That the A's of Rollie and Reggie and Catfish Hunter and Joe Rudi have now become the Nays is the worst kind of betrayal, of both the fan base and history.

As of this morning the A's stand 10-43 on the current campaign, and they're schlepping a nine-game losing streak into Memorial Day weekend. Five days before June rolls in, they're already 23-and-a-half games out of first in the AL West. And if geography got drunk and the A's were suddenly in the AL East, they'd be 28 games adrift of the front-running Tampa Bay Rays.

I  can't imagine how it must feel to be an A's fan these days. And that's saying something considering I'm a fan of the eternally pitiful Pittsburgh Pirates.

At least the owner of my Cruds is just a penny-strangling Scrooge, and not a seemingly vindictive SOB like the Garden Slug (whose straight name is John Fisher). Not content with just fleeing the fan base that got to see the glory days of Rollie and Reggie 'n' them, the Garden Slug decided to give it an extra kick on his way out the door. It's about as unconscionable as unconscionable gets.

Hey, Oakland, guess what? I'm gettin' outta Dodge. You can keep your s***hole of a ballpark that's only a s***hole because, as the anchor tenant, I refused to put any dough into it. And as a parting gift, here's a garbage Triple A team to watch as I head out the door.

Adios, mother(bleepers)!

Yeesh. Upon further review, "garden slug" might be too generous.

Surely we can assign a more vile creature to this sort of cruelty, as the dog days settle into Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum two months early. Or as the lame duck days do.

Choose your species. Both work, sadly.

Name game time!

The deposed owner of the Washington Commanders, Disgustin' Dan Snyder, predictably has left some lovely parting gifts for Josh Harris and the new ownership group. And by "lovely parting gifts", I do not mean the kind they used to dole out on "The Price Is Right."

I mean parting gifts like, "Oh, yeah, and our nickname? It might be a problem."

According to this piece from Eric Blum of Deadspin, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office denied the Washington NFL team's application  to trademark the Commanders nickname. That's because two other sports entities -- including the annual Army-Navy football game, called the Commanders Classic -- have dibs on the name.

It's a par-for-the-course screwup by Disgustin' Dan and the rest of his Disgustin' regime, and it could mean the franchise might have to change its nickname for the third time in four years.

Granted, it probably won't happen. All the application rejection means is the Commanders might have a harder time fighting people who want to sell knockoff Washington Commanders gear. But should Harris and Co. want to change the name again, a piece of advice: Don't pick something as generic and boring as "Commanders."

"Oh, no," you're saying. "I suppose this means you have a few suggestions."

Well, now that you mention it ...

How about the Washington Fightin' Appropriators?

It's both highly relevant and a true reflection of how things work in Washington D.C., where Congress critters never met a pet project at which they wouldn't throw bales of taxpayer cash. No one appropriates the hell out of a thing like an elected official. It's their favorite pastime, narrowly beating out schmoozing donors and shivving bills they don't like by letting them die in committee.

Speaking of which, how about the Washington Fightin' Bills?

This one has the advantage of a ready-made mascot: The cartoon bill from "How A Bill Becomes Law." His name, of course, would be "Bill", and he could prance up and down the sideline waving his scary Fountain Pen of Death at opposing players.

The downside is this nickname also would lend itself to ready-made headlines should the Fightin' Bills turn out to be a giant can of Alpo. "Bills Tabled Again" comes to mind. So do  "Bears Vote Down Bills" and "Chiefs Line-Item Veto Bills To Death On Arrowhead Stadium Floor."

Also, the Buffalo Bills might object. Just a hunch.

Some other ideas:

* The Washington Fightin' Memorials.

With a rotating cast of mascots Memorializing Sammy Baugh, Sonny Jurgensen, Joe Theismann and other franchise greats. The logo could be a bas relief of the Lincoln Memorial, with a bas relief of the Jefferson Memorial for the alternate unis.

* The Washington K-Street Kommandos.

A nod to that great Washington tradition, accepting wads of cash from lobbyists in return for some favorable legislatin'. The logo could be a dollar sign above a handshake on a green background. The mascot could be a pig wearing a barrel -- pork barrel, get it? -- named Quid Pro Quo.

* The Washington Fightin' Traffics.

A salute to, what else, D.C.'s infamous traffic. Featuring Road Rage Ronnie, a snarly guy stomping around with a steering wheel and fake steam coming from his ears. Every home game, the team could burst onto the field to either "Highway to Hell" by AC/DC, or a soundtrack of blaring car horns.

And last but not least ...

* The D.C. Comics.

Obvious patent issues with this one. But how perfect would it be should the Washingtons haul off and go 3-14 some year?

I say go for it.

Florida the underdog

 You can blame the Florida Atlantic Owls for what happened last night in the Sunshine State. As every sibling has always said about every other sibling, they started it.

The Owls get to the Final Four, see, and pretty soon every sports entity in Florida is infected with the We Believe virus. You could say it's gone viral, but that would be redundant.

In any case, last night in a hockey arena west of Fort Lauderdale, the Spirit of the Owl was with the Florida Panthers. They beat Carolina on Matthew Tkachuk's goal with 4.3 seconds left to complete a 4-0 sweep of the Hurricanes in the NHL Eastern Conference final, and now are off to the Stanley Cup Final for only the second time in franchise history. 

They're also the living embodiment of an old, old Stanley maxim: A hot goalie and a hot forward will take you deep when playoff time rolls around.

The hot forward is Tkachuk, who of course scored the series winner because he's scored every winning goal for the Panthers in the playoffs, or so it seems. The hot goalie is Sergei Bobrovsky, who shut out the 'Canes in Game 3, won Game 2 in overtime 2-1 and won 3-2 in four overtimes in Game 1.

This means he surrendered just three goals in almost 12 periods of hockey in Games 1 and 2. That's a day's work and then some.

It also means the Panthers swept their presumed betters for the second time in the playoffs. Carolina won its division with the second-best record (52-21-9) in the NHL. This after the Panthers gave the boot in the first round to the Boston Bruins, who merely had the best regular season in league history at 65-12-5.

The Panthers, meanwhile, finished fourth in the Atlantic Division, at 42-32-8. That put them 43 points behind the Bruins and 21 behind the 'Canes. 

But, wait there's more!

Let's jump to the NBA Eastern Conference finals, where Playoff Jimmy Butler, Playoff Erik Spoelstra and the Miami Heat are about to erase a Boston Celtics team that needed a win in Game 4 to avoid a sweep. The Heat, who were a beige 44-38 in the regular season, knocked out the team with the NBA's best record (Milwaukee) in five games in the first round; now they're poised to eliminate the team with the second-best record.

Oh, yeah. And those dependably sorry Miami Marlins?

The Spirit of the Owl kinda-sorta moves in them, too.

After finishing 24 games under .500 and 32 out of first in the NL East last year, they're playing .500 baseball and are tied for second in the division with the Mets, five-and-a-half games adrift of Atlanta. 

And so Florida, a southern state run by a ham-fisted bully who likes to pick on underdogs, is suddenly Underdog Central. Oh, the irony.

Hat tip now from the Spirit of the Owl.

"Any time," he says.