Next legend up

 You had your pick of lore as it all got late down in south Florida last night, and that was a hell of a thing for the loyal sons of old Notre Dame. What lore would be their favorite lore? What moment in a stuffed evening of moments would get to join the statuary watching over all that cherished history and mythology?

Does Jeremiyah Love get a spot in Loreville for plowing through one, two, three Penn State Nittany Lions on a bum knee, refusing to go down until the football was over the goal line?

Does Steve Angeli for coming in when Riley Leonard got his head bounced off the turf and directing the Irish to their first three points of the long, tense night?

Does Leonard for coming back in and finding Jaden Greathouse in lonely splendor to bring the Irish from behind yet again? Or Greathouse for juking the last Penn State defender to the ground on his way to Six City? Or Christian Gray for reading Penn State quarterback Drew Allar like a dime novel and making a diving interception to set up Mitch Jeter's game-winning field goal?

Or how about Jeter for coldly banging that puppy through with eight seconds to play?

They all did their bit as Notre Dame beat the Nittany Lions 27-24 in the Orange Bowl, earning the right to play for a national championship for the first time in a dozen years. It was Next Legend Up all night for the Irish, and the tenders of all that Notre Dame lore have been warned: Expansion is coming, and that right soon.

The Irish got down 10-0 in this one, scored 17 straight points to take a 17-10 lead, surrendered 14 straight to go down again with 7:55 to play. Leonard tied it again at 4:38  on the 54-yard strike to Greathouse. Then Gray picked Allar with 30 seconds remaining, and Jeter -- who's missed just one kick in eight attempts in the playoffs after missing four of his last five in the regular season -- came on to stick the game-winning 41-yarder.

By that time, of course, a lot of other stuff had happened. Love had run out of a tackle in the backfield, then fought through three other Nittany Lions at the goal line to open the fourth quarter. Leonard had wobbled off the field after a big hit, and Angeli had come on to complete his first four passes and 6-of-7 total on a 13-play, 52-yard drive that ended on a Jeter field goal, sending the Irish to halftime down 10-3 instead of 10-0.

I suppose this means Angeli goes down in the pantheon as The Backup Who Saved Us. And Love's run becomes simply "The Run." And Greathouse's move on the final tying score becomes "The Juke", and Gray's pick becomes "The Pick", and Jeter's kick becomes, naturally, "The Kick."

Because here's the thing, boys and girls, and it's why all those loyal sons in their Joe Montana throwbacks are smirking right now: At Notre Dame, no one has to pick what lore is his or her favorite, or which moment deserves the Father Corby/Knute Rockne/Lou Holtz/Frank Leahy bronzing.. As the loyal sons will tell you (with just the right amount of  that smugness the rest of us finds so infuriating), they all deserve it. 

Even more infuriating: This time they're right.

An Indiana sighting

 Down in Bloomington last night your Indiana Hoosiers punked USC by 13 in a Big Ten  basketball game, which is still such a weird concept a lot of us may never get used to it.

("Wait'll the Big Failed Basic Math and the SEC merge into one gelatinous mass," you're saying now. "You really WON'T ever get used to that!")

Yeah, well ...

As I said, Indiana beat USC by 13, and now the Hoosiers are 13-3 and 4-1 in the conference, with only Michigan and Michigan State are ahead of them in the standings. They're tied for third with Illinois, they're on a five-game winning streak, and no one in the conference has more wins so far this season than their 13.

So, good on them. Could be they might actually be a tough out by the time March rolls around.

I say this not to honk off any candy-striped loyalists, but to acknowledge what Indiana watchers have grown used to the last few seasons: Waiting for the other shoe to drop. It's what happens when you're as maddeningly inconsistent as Indiana has been recently, following up encouraging victories with getting blown out by Whatsamatta U. 

So far this season, though, that generally hasn't happened. All those transfers Mike Woodson brought in from hither and yon are slowly rounding into a cohesive unit, mainly Woodson seems to have found a cohesive rotation. 

Arziona transfer Oumar Bello went for 23 points and eight boards last night, and has combined with the currently-injured Malik Reneau to give the Hoosiers the force inside they've been missing since Trayce Jackson-Davis left. Washington State transfer Myles Price added 19, nine rebounds and six assists -- Braden Smith numbers from up the road at Purdue -- and gives Indiana the steadying point guard play it's been similarly missing.

Luke Goode, meanwhile, is now a regular starter and was 4-of-5 from beyond the arc last night, filling the purpose for which he was intended when he left Illinois to come to B-town.

This is not to say the Hoosiers can suddenly hit the broad side of a naval broadside from Threeville. They can't yet, at least not consistently. Aside from Goode, after all, they were 2-of-16 from deep last night. You could blindfold Mister Magoo and spin him around three times and he'd shoot better.

So, there is work to be done yet. But Whatsamatta U. hasn't blown them out yet, so  there you go. 

Saturday night they're in Iowa City to face the 11-4 Hawkeyes, and next Tuesday they get Illinois in the Hall. Collect a couple of Ws in those two, and then we'll start to know something. We'll know, or at least strongly suspect, they're actually good-good, and not just conceptually good.

I can't speak for Hoo-Hoo-Hoosier Nation. But I suspect they'd take that.

And your winners are ...

 ... hell, I don't know. Notre Dame and Ohio State. Penn State and Ohio State. Ohio State and Ohio State.

And if you're inferring from that I'm at least reasonably comfortable with picking Ohio State over Texas in tomorrow night's Cotton Bowl, congratulations. I think the Buckeyes are going to win the whole schmear now. Thus I crawl out on a limb, chainsaw in hand.

As for Penn State-Notre Dame ...

They are too alike, the Nittany Lions and Fighting Irish. Both play smash-mouth football. Both their defenses are like barbed wire six layers deep in front of the German trenches. Notre Dame likes to run it down your throat with Riley Leonard and a squadron of gnarly running backs; Penn State counters with its gnarly tight end, Tyler Warren, who lines up everywhere and comes in six different flavors of mean.

So I'm gonna make the homer call  and pick the Irish, by either an eyelash or, more likely, a mangled knuckle. I'm guessing the score will be some Bo/Woody 12-10 production, but this is one of those games that'll end up 34-31 and we'll all wonder how.

Anyway.

Anyway, if I'm right, it's a Notre Dame-Ohio State national championship game, if I'm right. Or Notre Dame-Texas if Ryan Day blows again, or if the Longhorns get their backs up about hardly anyone pickin' 'em.

Otherwise, I have no further insight. Which will happen when you're trying to get your 69-year-old head around the fact Notre Dame is playing in the Orange Bowl a week after it won the Sugar Bowl, and Ohio State is playing in the Cotton Bowl a week after it won the Rose Bowl.

Now that I never could have called, back in the day. Strange new worlds, and what-not.

And now ... the Greenland Cup!

 The Blob has never been your home for great ideas so much as your home for stupid seventh-grade-boy ideas, so I'm not going to present the following as anything but the latter. And I'm certainly not going to pretend to know if our president-elect, Donald John Training Wheels Mussolini Trump, is as batshite as he appears or just trolling us all.

I say this because Training Wheels did an interview the other day and said all manner of goofy stuff, like how we were going to buy Greenland and annex Canada and rename the Gulf of Mexico the "Gulf of America". And also force Panama, at gunpoint if necessary, to give us back the Panama Canal -- which was turned over to the Panamanians almost 50 years ago on account of it's in their own damn country.

(That bit about making Canada our 51st state, though, I'm pretty sure is just Training Wheels playing with us. Surely by now someone has told him you can't just make an entire sovereign nation another state. Presumably someone has also told him we already tried to do that twice, and Canada kicked our hineys back across the border both times. So we're 0-2 vs. the Great White North in the forced annexation biz.)

Anyway, if Training Wheels really does think he can pry Greenland away from Denmark by force or protection-racket diplomacy ("Youse got a real nice plot o' land here, Denmark. Be a shame if somethin' happened to it. Or to you."), the Blob has a less Gambino-ish solution. Why not play soccer for it?

The Denmark men's national team vs. the U.S. men's national team. Best-of-three series. We could call it the Greenland Cup. Sell tickets. Give Training Wheels a 70/30 cut, because you know he never goes for anything unless he personally can make a pile from it.

"Why, that's the stupidest seventh-grade-boy idea I ever heard!" you're saying now.

Yes, but is it? Is it REALLY?

See, I've actually done the bare minimum of research on this, and what I've discovered is the Danes kinda suck at soccer. They didn't so much as qualify for the World Cup until 1986, and they've missed out on it entirely three times since.

 As for the other six times, they haven't exactly made anyone forget Argentina or Brazil; twice they failed to get out of their group, and they've never advanced beyond the quarterfinals. And they did that 27 years ago, way back in 1998.

In the most recent World Cup, 2022, they finished 28th and bowed out in group play. Heck, they couldn't even score against Tunisia, with whom they played a 0-0 draw.

"But Mr. Blob," you're saying now. "Don't we kinda suck at soccer, too?"

Well, yes. We do. Or at least the men do.

But at least they've reached the Round of 16 twice in the last four World Cups, which Denmark can't say. We also beat the snotty Iranians in group play in 2022, before getting smoked 3-1 by the Netherlands in the Round of 16.

So, yeah. Bring on the Greenland Cup. And for those conversant with Shakespeare, the Blob even has a slogan all ready to fire up our lads in red, white and blue: Make The Danes Melancholy Again.

Works for me.

Silence is golden ...

 ... or, you know, maybe the democratic process proceeding democratically is, at least in a nation with decency and laws and rituals sanely upheld.

I write this as I sit at the kitchen table with the light coming up, revealing the classic January tableau: Gray on white on gray, and quiet in a way it never is during the bellowing growing time. The earth is deeply asleep now in this part of the world, and as always it inspires this crazy urge to tread softly and talk in whispers lest you wake it up.

Which brings us back to silence being golden, and the democratic process.

Yesterday, after all, was the fourth anniversary of one of the most shameful days in American history, a day when plain insanity got right out in the open. A mob of flag-waving loonies attacked the seat of American government, egged on by a deranged narcissist all butt-hurt because he lost his presidency.

And so here came his acolytes, knocking down barricades and assaulting police who tried vainly to stop them, breaking windows and otherwise vandalizing the Capitol building in an unfocused attempt to stop the certification of a presidential election. It was an insurrection no less worth the name because it failed, and it failed because it was fueled not by coherent thought but by the equally unfocused rage of its delusional source.

Anyway, January 6 passed as quietly as today's dawn this time. And you know why?

Yeah, OK, because this time it was the deranged narcissist whose election was being confirmed, so no need to assault the Capitol building, hunt down Nancy Pelosi or spin fantastical tales of corruption and electoral fraud. Amazing how quickly reform can happen when the vote comes out right. 

But you know how else Jan. 6, 2025 was not Jan. 6, 2021?

Because the losers didn't act like losers.

Because Vice-President Kamala Harris, who lost by a touch more than a percentage point to Donald Trump back in November, dutifully conducted the certification of her opponent's victory. Because the losers behaved liked grownups. And, most of all, because they understood the American way of doing things, and acquiesced to it.

I find that refreshing, after the madness of four years ago. I find it ... encouraging, as if there's yet hope for our battered national experiment.

As if, however mad the coming madness gets, we'll survive it.

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 18

 And now this season's final edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the recurring Blob feature of which critics have said "Yah, recurring like gout", and also "Yah, recurring like a spike being hammered into your forehead every week":

1. "Yippee, we don't have to watch this team anymore!" (Giants fans, Jets fans, Patriots fans, Raiders fans, Browns fans, Colts fans)

2. "Yippee, we finally beat the Packers!" (Bears fans)

3. "Yippee, we're goin' to the playoffs and you're not!" (Packers fans)

4. "So it's over now, right? I can leave now, right?" (Aaron Rodgers)

5. "Yes, Aaron, you can leave now. Fat lot of good you did us anyway." (Jets fans weary of all the A-Aron drama)

6. In other news, Joe Burrow!

7. Had still another lights-out day as the Bengals beat the Steelers to keep their playoff hopes ali-

8. "Not so fast, chuckleheads!" (The Chiefs, cackling madly as they played their backups plus, who knows, maybe some guys from their Super Bowl IV team, and laid down for the Broncos, 38-0. Which put the Broncos in the playoffs instead)

9. "Thank you, God!" (Broncos fans)

10. "I'm not God. I just play him in State Farm commercials." (Chiefs head coach Andy Reid)

Same old ...

 ... aaaand you know the rest. Begins with "same", ends with "old."

Same old, same old.

Also "What th-?!". Because that fits, too.

Not even a handful of hours, see, after the Indianapolis Colts wheezed past the cruddy Jacksonville Jaguars in overtime to end their crash site of a season, owner Jim Irsay announced they were going to stay the crash site-y course. Head coach Shane Steichen, who lost his locker room when he benched Anthony Richardson, then restored him to QB1, will remain the head coach. And as for general manager Chris Ballard ...

Well. He's stickin' around, too.

No, I don't know why. Maybe he has naked pictures of Irsay doing heinous naked things. Maybe he stole a guitar from Irsay's frankly awesome collection of musical artifacts and is holding ol' Les Paul hostage.

Nothing else makes sense about keeping Ballard in particular, who built this glaringly flawed mess of a team and looks increasingly like the guy who blew the crucial franchise quarterback pick in 2023.

The Blob will reserve judgment on that one for now, because Anthony Richardson is still only 22 and still has played quarterback for only a handful of those years. He's a kid who was in high school just four years ago. You can tell that by the way he hasn't figured out how to lead a professional football team, on account of him asking out of a game with his team in the red zone and, according to others in the locker room, not putting in the proper off-the-field work.

"Then why did the Colts draft him when he was still just 20 years old and then anoint him the starter right out of the gate?" you're asking now.

Beats me. Go ask Chris Ballard -- and maybe Shane Steichen, too.

Who does not seem to know what to do with the poor kid, even as he somehow wrung eight wins out of this dog's breakfast. For that he can thank the AFC South, which was even more tumbledown than usual because the Jags were woeful and the Tennessee Titans virtually inert this season.

Of course, the Colts still managed to lose to the Jaguars in Jacksonville, where they haven't won since the conquistadors ran the place. They also lost to the worst team in the NFL, the New York Giants, when a "W" would have kept them in the playoff hunt.

On the other hand ... every other loss was to a team that made the playoffs: The Packers, the Vikings, the Bills, the Texans, the Broncos, the Lions. So there's that, I guess.

As to everything else, who knows? Irsay retaining the same brain trust that's so badly mishandled its prize quarterback pick, and which thought they got a steal back in April when they landed edge rusher Laiatu Latu with the 15th pick, suggests only more chaos to come. 

Latu wound up being mostly invisible this season.  And by season's end, Steichen's locker room was full of grumbling veterans who openly questioned the Colts leadership and lack of vision. 

Yeah, boy. Sounds exactly like a course you want to stay. Kinda like the Titanic's, you know?

Of course, Irsay being Irsay, the course might not stay stayed. It's possible the backlash from his announcement yesterday will be so fierce (and the cancellation of season tickets so voluminous) he might just throw up his hands and say. "Just kidding! OK, everybody out."  You never know with him.

All we know for now is this: That iceberg's gettin' closer by the minute.