A few Draft-y thoughts

 Actually watched part of the NFL Draft last night, on account of the air in my tires was already rotated and the paint on the fence had already dried. What else was I gonna do?

Anyway, I watched. And, as night follows day, I have a few thoughts ...

* Roger Goodell, the commissioner of the Nash-unal FOOT-ball League, dressed for the occasion like a guy out for lunch at the club. What the hell, Rog, you couldn't even put on a tie? What was up with that? 

* Speaking of appropriate dress, one of the highlights of the night is always what the crazy superfans of various teams are wearing. The winner, by the Blob's lights, was either the Dallas Cowboys fan wearing the UFO on his head -- flashing lights, the whole bit -- or the New York Jets' fan in head-to-toe green and a plastic green Hulk fist garnished with jewel-encrusted rings spelling out J-E-T-S.

Or maybe the other Jets fan wearing a green hardhat with a white Mohawk growing out of the top of it.

As someone watching with me observed: "It looks like New Year's Eve in Times Square."

Yeah. Except the multitudes jamming Times Square are at least celebrating the New Year. The multitudes jamming the NFL Draft set included people celebrating being Jets fans. Lord have mercy.

* And speaking of the Jets ...

With the second pick in the Draft, they selected edge rusher David Bailey from Texas Tech. Like every other pick last night, he looked overjoyed. I can't for the life of me think why.

* Ditto top pick Fernando Mendoza from Indiana, gleefully donning a Raiders cap. And third pick Jeremiyah Love from Notre Dame, joyously tugging on a Cardinals cap. And linebacker Arvell Reese from Ohio State, happy to be the top pick of the wretched New York Giants, and offensive tackle Spencer Fano from Utah, whose fate might have been worst of all.

He's headed to the Cleveland Browns.

* Speaking of Fernando Mendoza, how cool was it that he chose to spend his Draft night with his mom, who suffers from multiple sclerosis? He could have been out there sharing a hug with Rog beneath all the bright lights, but he picked Mom to hug instead.

I'm tellin' ya. That young man's going places.

Well. Unless the Raiders ruin him.

* And last but not least ...

Did anyone else think it was odd they kicked off the Draft with the national anthem and a flyover? 

 I mean, it's the Draft, and the NFL is big on giant American flags and The Troops and all other forms of militaristic patriotic fervor. But at bottom it's just a selection show. I don't recall anyone belting out "The Star-Spangled Banner" to open the Oscars, the Grammys or America's Got Talent.

Just seemed a trifle weird to me.

Or maybe I'm just weird.

Don't answer that.

Drumming up dumbness

 (In which the Blob once again waves a brief but cheery farewell to Sportsball World. The standard procedures apply.)

Oh, Micah. Micah, Micah, Micah.

You done did it now, son.

You done riled up the band people.

On social media the other day you hand-wrung about the Westfield High School drum corps posting photos of them performing while wearing ... well, red uniforms. Guess you thought this meant they were worshipping the Devil or some such thing, because you said this was an example of anti-Christian attitudes in our public schools and urged parents to use the voucher system to get their kids out said schools.

Oh, Micah. Micah, Micah, Micah.

I'd say you were dumber than a bag of hammers, but that would get boxes of rocks howling, "Hey, what about US?"

Never mind the fact that Micah Beckwith, our esteemed Loot Guv, is openly encouraging parents to use vouchers to flee the very school system he, as an elected government official, is charged with overseeing. (And by doing so, spilling the beans about the voucher system: Its goal, and the political right's goal, is to destroy the public school system). And never mind what a punk move it is for the Loot Guv of the state of Indiana to pick on a bunch of high school kids.

It's also extinction-level clueless.

Because these were not just high school kids he chose to target. They were high school band kids. And, by extension, high school band kids with parents.

Oh, Micah. Micah, Micah, Micah.

I'd say you were about half-bright, but that would get the other half howling, "Hey, what about ME?"

Every reporter who's ever covered the state band contest, see, could tell about band parents. (And, no, before you start, not all band parents). You do NOT want to piss off band parents, or band people in general. It's like saying "Hey, what if I woke up this sleeping bear?"

And so the aforementioned Every Reporter was always very, very careful about how they wrote their contest stories, making sure to mention every local school competing. And even then, a day or two after his or her newspaper splashed the story and big photos all over its pages, at least one phone would ring in the newsroom.

Whoever picked it up would hear this: "Who is this (Every Reporter's name here), and why did (he/she) only devote ONE SENTENCE to our proud Dean Wormer High School Marching Plumb Bobs? How could (he/she) just IGNORE all their hard work, which earned them a 10th-place finish?"

After which Every Reporter would have to go into hiding for awhile.

And, yes, OK, so I'm joking. But not by a lot.

Quick story: I once covered a football game at a local high school whose marching band -- and a damn good one, by the way -- called itself the Big Orange Pride. Except one year the Big Orange Pride decided to dress in teal uniforms. This apparently became a huge bone of contention among the various band parents.

I know this because when the band marched out at halftime, I blurted out, "Hey, look, it's the Big Teal Pride!"

The school employee sitting next to me practically turned white as a sheet.

"Shhhh," he said, leaning over. "That is a BIG controversy right now.'

Or words to that effect.

Anyway, way to go, Micah Beckwith. Drum up some more dumbness. Wake up that sleeping bear. And don't worry.

I hear they do wonders with plastic surgery these days.

Your political hoo-ha for today

 Got a flier in the mail the other day touting the virtues of a local political candidate, and, I know, I know. No intelligent person takes these things seriously. No intelligent person assigns any more credibility to them than they would to any other child's fairy tale -- which is essentially what these fliers are, other than an excellent vehicle for jamming up your mailbox.

However ...

"However, you are NOT an intelligent person, Mr. Blob?" you're saying now.

Well, maybe.

No, however, this one I got the other day was all about BOYS COMPETING IN GIRLS SPORTS, which might be the most egregiously manufactured "issue" to come down the pike in a long time. It features the Local Political Candidate standing next to Riley Gaines, butt-hurt college swimmer turned activist. Riley's been on a tear against transgender athletes ever since trans swimmer Lia Thomas beat her out for, I don't know, fifth or something in the nationals a few years back.

Thomas has since been banned from further competition by the NCAA, so I guess Riley's campaign to save girls sports (or, SAVE GIRLS SPORTS to give it the proper voice) at least achieved that. That'll learn ya for beating Riley, vile creature!

Anyway ...

Anyway, even though I knew I shouldn't, I read on. It didn't take long -- one sentence -- to yelp "What??" and pitch the thing in the trash.

Here was the sentence: (Candidate's name here) stands with Riley Gaines and Trump's America First agenda to protect girls' sports ...

Oh, please.

"Protect girls sports"? From what, exactly?

Because a month or so ago, girls in Indiana played their high school basketball tournament, and I don't recall a glut of news stories -- and the accompanying ginned-up political outrage -- about all the trans athletes who were competing. That's because there weren't any.

So, obviously, "boys taking over girls' sports" clearly is a massive issue here in the Hoosier state. Right?

"Well, what about college sports?" you're saying now. "How many Lia Thomases are lurking out there to unfairly deprive Riley Gaines of fifth place?"

Glad you asked.

A little over a year ago, see, NCAA chief Charlie Baker was asked that very question. And what he said was ... um, what he said was ...

He said that as far as he knows there are fewer than 10 college student-athletes in the NCAA. Among, um, 510,000 total.

Now, I'm not a math guy. But even I can figure that means trans athletes in college sports amount to a tick under 0.02 percent of the total.

Zero point zero-two percent. That's what this whole "issue" is about.

Or, rather, what it's not about.

What it's really about, of course, is the whole idea of transgender humans to begin with. Some folks regard them as offensive and a biological outrage. Therefore they elect representatives to pass anti-trans laws disguised as "protecting" both trans humans and those of us who are allegedly being victimized by them.

Bald-faced bigotry has rarely been expressed so right-out-loud in the political arena. And with little fear of backlash, because A) being offensive has been re-cast in the Trumpian era as admirable and brave, and B) those trangenders are just creepy as hell, aren't they?

Me?

I present this merely as your election-year hoo-ha for today, in this golden age of hoo-ha.

Draftbots

 The NFL Draft begins Thursday evening, and I for one can't wait to see which team picks Dr. Miguelito Loveless, ace running back out of (choose college here). Or maybe it's Courtney Love. Or maybe ...

Ah, heck. See, I've been consulting AI again. And this is what it's spitting back at me:

Love Boat is very fast according to most measurable analytics, and should be drafted either by the Tennessee Large Mythical Humanoids, the New York Combustible Gases or the Arizona Small Red Birds -- known in colloquial terms as the Titans, the Jets and the Cardinals ... 

And OK, OK. So we're really talking about Jeremiyah Love from Notre Dame here. But we're also talking about AI, which the Blob loathes with every microbe in his body because A) he's a writer, and B) I have seen "The Terminator" umpteen times, and I know Skynet when I see it. 

By this I mean the machines are coming for us, and they're nothing like Ah-nold or even the Robert Patrick upgrade. This generation of Terminators is doing something far more destructive.

They're "writing" sports stories.

As an old sports scribe, I find this both hysterically funny and absolutely disgusting, because machines cannot now and never will be able to "write." Ain't no Steinbecks, Hemingways or Faulkners among the machines, boys and girls. Think the Robert Patrick Terminator could ever come up with Faulkner's epic 175-word run-on sentence about Pickett's Charge in "Intruder In The Dust"? Get outta here.

That's not the worst of it, though. Because now I find at least one NFL team is using AI to help evaluate talent for the draft.

"And you don't need to be expert!" gushes general manager John Lynch of the 49ers, the team in question.

(Which is hilarious, if you think about it, because John Lynch, as GM, is supposed to be one of the "experts". So it's kinda like he's saying, "And now I'm completely unnecessary! Whoopee!")

In any event, the draftbots are here, and there goes the romance, the silliness and Mel Kiper Jr. No more waiting on teams to take ten minutes to make a pick they decided on back in February. Not more chatter about "burst," "waist-benders" and the Blob's all-time favorite dopey draft term, "tight skin." No more endless ruminating about whether or not a quarterback's hands are too small.

The draftbots will take all that from here.

The quarterback expected to be taken with the top pick in the draft, Mendoza Line from the University of India, has hands somewhere in the middle of the preferred measurement spectrum, and therefore a grip circumference that has historically led to success in the League (i.e., "The National Football") ...

Or imagine if the draftbots had been around, say, 50 or so years ago:

Walter Pavement from Jacks On Straight has been described as "intriguing" by the humans who have been judged inferior by Skynet and thus will be eliminated (except for Mel Kiper Jr.) ...

Yikes.

On to May

 Someone asked me the other day who I thought was going to win the Indianapolis 500, I guess on account of they thought I knew something about it. This will happen when you covered the Greatest Spectacle for 40 years, and are a certified and somewhat notorious Indy 500 nerd.

(Which I am. Totally. Go ahead, give me a year and I'll tell you who won without looking it up. That is deeply nerdish stuff, friends.)

Anyway, I said, heck, I don't know, which is good news for IndyCar. It means you can't just say "Alex Palou" and be right three-fourths of the time, even though Alex Palou is top dog in IndyCar these days by a considerable margin. He even won the Big One last season, on his way to a fourth IndyCar championship in the last five years.

Here's the thing, though: It was only his first Indy 500 victory.

That's because Indianapolis is a quirky old place, and not just because they'll drop the green on the 110th running of the 500 there in a month or so. It's a quirky place because, for all its age and history, it sometimes behaves with a child-like capriciousness.

Withholds its affections. Punishes the careless/inattentive/arrogant. Makes some people wait and wait and wait some more, while conferring its favor on others when they least expect it.

It's why Mario Andretti, one of the two greatest American racers in history, only won the 500 once in 29 tries.

It's why the two grandees of this IndyCar generation, Scott Dixon and Will Power, have  won the 500 just once each in a combined 41 starts.

It's why Josef Newgarden, a two-time IndyCar champion, went a dozen 500 starts before slamming down the milk -- and then did it two years in a row,

A guy named J.R. Hildebrand had the Spectacle in his pocket one year, only to lose control and hit the wall on the very last corner of the very last lap, allowing the late Dan Wheldon to claim his second 500 win. Louis Schneider, George Robson and Buddy Rice  have their faces on the Borg-Warner Trophy; Michael Andretti, Lloyd Ruby and Dan Gurney do not. 

On and on it goes. One of the most amazing pieces of engineering ever to race at Indy -- the sleek, brutish Novi -- never won there. Ditto the STP turbines. But Coyotes, Chaparrals and Peugeots did.

This year?

Well, it'll be either a Chevy or a Honda, IndyCar having long abandoned the automotive laboratory for comfortable conformity. And who'll take the checkers on Memorial Day weekend?

Take your pick.

Maybe it'll be Kyle Kirkwood, who has one win and five top fives in five races so far this season. Or young David Malukas, who has four top tens. Or, for third time, Newgarden -- who got off to horrible start this year, but has a win and a seventh-place finish in the last two events.

Want someone who's due and then some?

Pato O'Ward's your man. In six 500s, he's finished lower than sixth just one time. In the last five, he's finished second twice, third once and fourth once. In those same five starts, he's led 95 laps. 

Of course, all that means is he could be the next Michael or Ruby or Gurney. Always there, but never, you know, there.

At any rate, it's on to May and Indianapolis. And on to more unhelpfulness from this guy, who knows nothing about the Indy 500 so much as he knows how utterly unknowable it is.

Which is why, when that someone asked who was going to win the 500 this year, I shrugged and said this: 

"Well ... you can never go wrong with Alex Palou."

Now that there's what you call your insight.

The new Cruds

 The New York Mets lost their 11th straight baseball game yesterday, and while it's probably too early to say there's a new chump in town, maybe it isn't. Someone has to inherit the mantle of the '24 Chicago What Sox and the '25 Colorado Rockheads. Why not the Mutts?

Er, Mets?

They're 7-15 now after the Cubs -- The Cubs! First in your hearts, tied for last in the NL Central! -- beat up on 'em in Wrigley Field over the weekend, and in last place in the entire National League. (Even the Rockheads, tied for last in the NL West, have won two more games). They're already eight games behind the front-running Atlanta Braves in the NL East. And did we mention they've lost 11 games in a row?

"Pffft," you're saying now. "That's not so bad. The '25 Rockheads didn't win their seventh game until May 11, by which time they were 7-33. And the '24 What Sox didn't win their seventh game until May 4, when they stood a proud 7-26."

True. It is only April 20, the Blob must concede. And so far no has proved to be as impeccably horrid as the '24 What Sox and '25 Rockheads. The Mutts, er, Mets' 7-15 is as bad as it gets.

On the other hand, to reiterate, it is only April 20. So there's still plenty of time for some truly horrid baseball to be played.

My money's on the Mutts. Er, Mets. Er, the new Cruds, at least so far.

Ageless wonder

 Look, I don't care what you think of LeBron James. I don't care if you think he's a flopper, a whiner, soft as single-ply or (the big one) Not Michael Jordan. I don't care about any of that.

What I do care about is what a wonder of nature he is.

What I care about is what he did last night, when -- at 41 years and 110 days of age, in his 23rd NBA season, after 1,914 games -- he once again put his team on his back and (along with Luke Kennard and his 27 points) got them a W.

With Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves on the shelf for the Los Angeles Lakers, LeBron delivered 19 points, 13 assists, eight rebounds, two steals and a block for the Los Angeles Lakers last night. He played 38 minutes and turned it over just twice. Eight of his assists came in the first quarter, when the Lakers shot 78.9 percent (15-of-19) to forge a 33-29 lead.

Fourteen of  their 15 field goals in that quarter came off assists. It got them started on a 107-98 win that gave the Lakers a 1-0 lead in their first-round playoff series with the Houston Rockets.

"I got to do a little bit of everything," James said when it was done. "It's what the job requires."

Even now. Even at 41 years and 110 days of age.