And your winner is ...

 OK, OK, O-kay. Guess I've put this off as long as I can.

You want to know who's gonna win the Big Roman Numeral today, right?

"Nah, nah, nah," you're saying now. "We want to know who's gonna win halftime. Who'll it be, Bad Bunny or Up With Butt-Hurt White People?"

Oh, hell, I don't know. I think the people who aren't Butt-Hurt White People and the people who are will watch whatever they watch. Me, I'll prolly watch the Puppy Bowl. I hear the doodles are even money to knock off the labs this year.

Anyway ...

Anyway, back to the Big Roman Numeral.

I have some thought

My first thought is sometimes experience counts in this game, and sometimes it doesn't. Mostly it does, though -- which is why, weirdly, I think the younger, less-seasoned Patriots have the edge here. 

This is because their head coach, Mike Vrabel, has played in a few of these big to-do's, and Seattle's head coach, Mike Macdonald, has not. The whole three-ring circus is all new to Mac and the Seahawks; it's old hat to Vrabel. So if I had to pick the team that likely remained more focused on what matters this week, I'd pick the Patriots, despite their youth. Nothing like an OG to get you through the BS.

So, advantage, Patriots.

However.

However, it's hard to get around the fact that the Seahawks are ... well, just better.

They get the slight nod at quarterback, if only because Sam Darnold has been through every indignity the league can throw at a high-draft-pick QB, and Drake Maye has not. Now, Maye is eerily unflappable for a relative neophyte -- if you want to compare him to a young Tom Brady in that regard, I'm not gonna stop you -- but I look at Darnold and see another guy who got knocked around before finding his home place.

That would be the Jim Plunkett who won a Super Bowl with the Raiders after years of getting beaten up with (hello) the 1970s Patriots. The writer in me likes the symmetry of that.

Of course, the Seahawks also have a slight edge defensively, it says here. They have, maybe, a slight edge at running back with Kenneth Walker III. And they have Jaxon Smith-Ngjiba -- the one guy the Patriots simply don't have, and the guy most likely to flip the game with one touch.

They also have a team sharpened to a fine point by surviving the toughest division in football this season. To get here, they had to play league MVP Matthew Stafford and the Rams three times -- and beat them twice -- and Brock Purdy and the 49ers twice. The Patriots had to play the Jets.

On the other hand, the Pats are 9-0 away from home this season. Who does that in this league?

So who wins?

I say if the Maye and the Patriots upset the Seahawks the way Brady and the Patriots upset the Greatest Show On Turf all those years ago, it'll again come down to a field goal. Patriots win 24-23.

Or ...

Or, if Darnold and the Seahawks do what they've been doing all season, it'll be more like 30-17.

I'm pickin' the latter. If only because the Patriots feel like they're a year away at this point.

You may now commence with the ridicule.

The great vacancy

 So Sonny Jurgensen is dead now, and who is left, I ask? Who is left to throw the deep out, the flag and the post, the home run ball to Charley Taylor or Carroll Dale, to Jack Snow or Raymond Berry or Gene Washngton?

All these arms of my youth, gone from this earth now. Sonny, and John Brodie, and Roman Gabriel, and Bart Starr, and Dandy Don, and the greatest of them all, John Unitas. Gone.

Sonny went yesterday, at the full-to-the-top age of 91, and here's the real tragedy: The great vacancy it represents is not my childhood slipping away full life by full life, but that there are so few left to craft a proper chronicle. Who is left, in other words, to tell the tale?

Sonny Jurgensen, you see, spent most of his Hall of Fame career in Washington, D.C., which lends his passing a special poignancy. In the same week he died, after all, billionaire vandal Jeff Bezos eviscerated the proud Washington Post, eliminating 300 jobs. Among them was the entire sports desk, once the home of Shirley Povich and John Feinstein and Dave Kindred and Christine Brennan; of Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon and Tom Boswell and Sally Jenkins.

Institutional memory has rarely experienced such a gory reckoning. And without institutional memory, journalism is nothing but a Wikipedia entry, bloodless and devoid of soul or context. It can tell you that Sonny Jurgensen led the NFL in passing three times and still holds Washington's single-season record for touchdown passes, but it can't tell you what it looked or felt like.

It can't tell you how the city felt about him. It can't describe the way the stadium drew in its breath every time Sonny launched one of his gorgeous parabolas downfield to Taylor or Bobby Mitchell or Jerry Smith. It can't tell you how it felt to actually cover those gorgeous parabolas, or to listen to one of the old-timers describe what it was like.

The suits will toss out suit words like "synergy" and "re-purposing" and "branding," but what they're really talking about giving readers less and selling it as more. They'll farm out their sports coverage to websites like The Athletic (as the New York Times did) and tell the paying customers they're getting MORE STORIES THAN EVER.

Except.

Except the stories will be written by people (or, in the age of AI, perhaps not) who have no connection to the community. Who have no institutional memory. Who'll provide only the context they can find on the web, because it's not about context anymore. It's about "content."

I can't say this any better than a longtime sports journo named Buddy Martin did the other day, when he penned a screed I shared with my Facebook bros. And so I will turn the wheel over to Buddy, who wrote the following:

I spent a lifetime in these trenches -- five sports editorships, five mastheads, five sets of presses humming through the night -- and I'll tell you this: A real sports section is a living, breathing organism. It's the guys and women at 11:45 p.m. arguing over a headline, the copy desk catching a stat on deadline, thde beat writer changing ledes because a kid hit a three-run homer in the bottom of the ninth ...

Sports sections were never just about scores and standings. They were the back fence of the city. You learned who you were as a fan, as a town, by the way your paper told the story of your teams ... It was a covenant. We show up, every day, on deadline, to tell you what happened and why it mattered.

Damn skippy.

A wintry mix

 It's snowing again outside as I write this, winter doing what winter does some years in these northern climes. This year in particular what it seems to be doing is annoying the hell out of us, like that party guest who stays too long and eats all the Chex mix.

Or maybe it just feels that way because it's February, and February is always when winter goes from "Aw, look at the pretty snow" to "Bad word bad word SNOW bad word bad word."

At any rate, with the world gone all gray and white, it seems the perfect time to talk about this weekend's official Sportsball World forecast: Wintry mix with a chance of contusions.

I say this because the Winter Olympics are officially underway in Milan/Cortina, Italy, and this weekend they'll go head-to-head with that most hallowed of American sacraments, the Feast of St. Lombardi. Or the Super Bowl, if you prefer.

This year is the 25th edition of the former and the 60th of the latter, which calls for a little blended reminiscing. Remember when Jean-Claude Killy caught two touchdown passes in Super Bowl I after partying all night? Or how about Joe Montana winning the downhill in ... Montana?

Was it Mike Eruzione who quarterbacked the Jets against the Colts in the Miracle on Turf in Super Bowl III? Or Joe Namath who scored the winning goal against the Soviets in the Miracle on Ice in Lake Placid?

Lord knows a body could get confused.

This weekend we'll get figure skaters and lugers and skiers and hockey players in Milan/Cortina, and large men with bad intent trying to turn Drake Maye and Sam Darnold into macrame. And the tie that binds is both pursuits tend to booger people up.

Football, of course, is the home office for the aforementioned contusions, not to mention abrasions, concussions and shredded-wheat ligaments. But one of the reasons the Blob loves the Winter Olympics is they, too, have a more than nodding acquaintance with extreme physical calamity.

You've got the downhill, first off, the marquee event in Alpine skiing. It's basically falling with style, as Buzz Lightyear likes to say. Last man and woman to cross the finish line upright, and not in a cartoon jumble of arms and legs, wins. 

Then of course, there's ski jumping, which is more falling with style. Short-track speedskating, which is what NASCAR would be if the drivers were allowed to pack switchblades. Luge, in which competitors rocket down a funnel of ice feet-first on jumped-up Flexible Flyers; and skeleton, in which competitors do it headfirst.

(The latter, by the way, are clinically insane in the Blob's opinion.  There ought to be a study of this.)

What else?

Well, ski-jumping, of course, and not just because of that old Wide World of Sports clip of the guy crashing on takeoff. Those people are nuts, too. Even figure skaters, sequined-up though they are, occasionally succumb to the deadly triple Salchow. And then there's the biathlon, in which cross-country skiers par-boil their lungs while occasionally stopping to shoot at stuff.

Imagine your heart banging away like Thor's hammer (because cross-country skiing at the Olympic level is extremely cardiovascular), and  suddenly you're commanding it to stop so you can squeeze off a shot. Why more biathletes' tickers don't just say "Aw. HELL, no" and pack it in is one of life's great mysteries.

Anyway ...

Anyway, the Blob is looking forward to it all -- even curling, which is weirdly compelling, especially when the Danish women's team is competing. And then comes Super Bowl Sunday, when America eats too much and drinks too much and critiques commercials like ad execs, and mainly doesn't care or even know who's pla- wait, you mean there's a football game, TOO?

Yes, indeed. And I don't know about you, but I'm like way super-excited for it.

I mean, have you seen Drake Maye in sequins?

Pulls a 9.8 in the long program, that kid. Every time.

Mickey Lolich, and a son's tale

 So word comes down now that Mickey Lolich has died, and again I think of my father. This is the grand American construct, of course, fathers and sons and baseball. But with us it was different.

Part of this is because of circumstance: My dad was 40 years old and in the hospital recovering from back surgery the day Lolich took the hill on two days rest to face Bob Gibson in Game 7 of the World Series.

The other part is Dad's son was quite possibly the worst baseball player the good Lord ever saw fit to place on this earth.

They say hitting a round ball square is the hardest skill to master in sports, but for me it was quantum physics -- and I was lousy at math, too. My dad would stand in the backyard and lob the ball to me, and I would swing and miss. And swing and miss. And swing and miss.

"Don't try to kill it," Dad would say. "Swing level."

Now, "Don't try to kill it" might have been fatherly advice, or it might have been Dad's idea of a joke. I was, after all, a speck of a kid whose Coke-bottle glasses outweighed him. I'd have been no better than even money in Vegas against a fruit fly, let alone a baseball.

I was, however, obsessed with sports, possibly because of the aforementioned. And in 1968, being servants to geography, Dad and I were rooting for the Detroit Tigers against the mighty St. Louis Cardinals, the defending World Series champs.

Well, it went about as expected. The Tigers got down three-games-to-one, and one day a note arrived for me from my dad in the hospital. Faithless memory blurs the details, but what I remember clearly is the last line, written by a father to his sports-nut son: "They (the Tigers) are really gonna have to hustle to pull this one out of the fire."

Enter Lolich.

He went the distance in Game 2 and struck out nine, and the Tigers won 8-1 to even the Series at a game apiece. The Cardinals won Games 3 and 4, but Lolich won 5-3 in Game 5, again going the distance, to begin the Tigers' comeback.

Denny McLain, who won 31 games that year for Detroit but lost his first two duels against Bob Gibson, came back on two days rest to win Game 6 in St. Louis; the Tigers thoughtfully provided him with 13 runs in a 13-1 rout. That set up Game 7, again in St. Louis, again with the fearsome Gibson on the mound for the home nine.

And for Detroit, here came Lolich again, on two days rest.

He'd already pitched 18 innings in the Series and faced 71 batters. But in Game 7 he surrendered just five hits and one run and struck out four, and Jim Northrup hit the ball over Curt Flood's head, and St. Louis and the great Gibson were vanquished, 4-1. It was the Tigers' first World Series title in 23 years.

Lolich, of course, was the Series MVP. In seven days, he'd pitched 27 innings, faced104 batters and struck out 21 of them. His three complete-game World Series victories remains unmatched to this day; when he retired, no left-handed pitcher in history had more striketouts. 

If life were at all fair, he'd have a plaque in Cooperstown, having punched out more batters in his career than Bob Feller, Warren Spahn, Don Drysdale, Christy Mathewson, Cy Young and Whitey Ford. But life isn't fair, and Lolich died, at 85, on the outside looking in.

But on the day he passed, a son read the news and remembered his father. That's something, right?

This just in ...

 Because the Blob is your First Source For News You Can Use (or something like that), we present to you this morning a couple of breaking (or broken) items you didn't think you needed to know.

One: The NFC won the Pro Bowl Flag Football Game And Fish Fry, 66-52. Antoine Winfield Jr. intercepted Joe Burrow with about four minutes to play to seal the comeback victory. A lineman scored a touchdown. A wide receiver intercepted a pass. And Micah Parsons, still recovering from a season-ending injury, tried to check himself into the game on a scooter.

 Alas, the officials wouldn't let him. Big meanies.

Meanwhile, in actual sporting events that aren't really sporting events ...

Two: A Doberman pinscher named Penny won the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show.

Penny, you'll be pleased to learn, is four years old and loves treats. She's the fifth Dobie to win the Westy. And she'll tear you into tiny bite-sized chunks when her handler says "Mustard!"

Nah, just kidding. Penny's a sweetheart, apparently. 

Other stars of the show included an Afghan hound named Zaida; a Lhasa apso named JJ; a Maltese named Cookie; and old English sheepdog named Archibald Burlingame IV (actually, Graham). There was also Storm the Newfoundland, Oliver the golden retriever and the Blob's personal favorite, Lumpy the Pekingese, whom the spectators of course serenaded with cries of "Lumpy! Lumpy! Lumpy!" Lumpy responded by putting on oversized rhinestone sunglasses and breaking into a cover of  "Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting" while the crowd went wild.

Nah, just kidding.

It was actually "Bohemian Rhapsody."

The lunacy lives

 In world of bizarre flights of fancy from our national "leaders", plus a general free-floating insanity from same, it's comforting to know there are still grounded elements amid all the chaos. There is, for example, Super Bowl Media Day.

Those of you who read the Blob's post yesterday ("Oooh! You're calling them 'posts' now! Fancy!" you're saying) were treated to a lot of old-man reminiscing about the sheer lunacy that is Media Day. It's been recast now as Super Bowl Opening Night, but the good news, is, the lunacy remains.

At one point in the festivities last night, for instance, Seahawks quarterback Sam Darnold was compelled to put a plastic ham on his head. No, I don't know why. Maybe because "Sam" rhymes with "ham" or something.

Meanwhile, according to the website Awful Announcing, the Guy Who's Just There To Ask Stunt Questions was also on hand. He's been a Media Day/Opening Night staple for years, and these days his name is Dave Dameshek. He hosts a podcast for something called the DraftKings Network, and Awful Announcing describes him as a "longtime NFL personality."

Rule of thumb to know and learn: Anyone people describe as a "personality" is most certainly not  "media." He (or she) is a lounge act. A rodeo clown. The comic relief with a well-established bit.

Dameshek's bit is to ask the same intentionally absurd question at every Super Bowl Media Day/Opening Night, just to see how his target reacts. This time the target was Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel, and the question, as always, was, "Is this a must-win game?"

Ha-ha. Tee-hee. Hilarious.

Now, I don't know what reaction Dameshek was shooting for. Likely he wanted Vrabel to blurt out something along the lines of, "'A must-win game'? What are you, stupid? It's the Super Bowl, for God's sake! You must have cream cheese for brains!"

Alas, Vrabel played it straight. Said something about how he regards every NFL game as a must-win game. And Dameshek did not get the honor and glory of being told he had a cranium full of bagel condiments.

Better luck next year, dude.

Excuse me. Better luck next year, Longtime NFL Personality.

Welcome to Super Roman Numeral Week

 I don't know if the groundhog or porcupine or whatever it is saw his shadow this morning, but I do know what today ushers in. It's Super Roman Numeral Week, boys and girls!

During which there will be parties and lots of patting oneself on the back by the NFL, and also parties. And other parties. And Sam Darnold being asked 900 times why he doesn't suck anymore. Followed by even more other parties.

I say this as someone who covered three of these distinctly American bacchanals, and was always left slack-jawed at the pure silliness that attends the biggest week in the nation's biggest sport. Dirty little secret: As a sportswriter, it wasn't all that hard a gig. There were news conferences every day that spoon-fed us stories only a hundred or so others wrote; there also stories just lying on the ground that, if you were lucky or enterprising enough, no one else thought to write.

It also provided some, shall we say, unique experiences.

Like the year Prince was the halftime show, and turned his pre-Super Bowl news conference into an impromptu three-number concert. Alleged journalists leaped to their feet cheering and clapping and dancing in the aisles. Weirdest presser ever.

On the other hand, nothing was weirder than Media Day. This became an event in itself -- in Indianapolis in 2012, they actually sold tickets to it -- and it had as much to do with actual Media as the Jerry Springer Show. You had legit writers and radio and TV foofs, but you also had quasi-celebrities and self-promoters and that one guy from Telemundo asking questions via sock puppet. 

For instance, I was there the day someone asked Bears tight end Desmond Clark what position he thought Chewbacca would play if Chewbacca played football.

I was there the day some Nickelodeon character named Pick Boy was traipsing around in orange-and-green tights and cape pronouncing that his muscles were real and his hair was perfect. I was there for Super Bowl Wayne -- legit handle: Wayne C. Lavelle -- who was from Honolulu and whose claim to fame was he'd been to 32 Super Bowls in a row.

I was there the day someone showed up dressed as Red Grange, complete with leather helmet.  There the day Genghis Khan made an appearance, only this Genghis Khan was wearing white sunglasses with lenses the size of dinner plates. There ... oh, look, here's Super Bowl Wayne again, handing out business cards.

"Television Radio Film Internet Personality," it read.

I hope the Television Radio Film Internet Personality is at this week's Media Day.

I mean, someone's got to ask Drake Maye, for the 500th time, if he's ready for this. And if he's ready, how ready? Is the percentage of his readiness 60 percent? Seventy-five percent? Ninety percent?

After which someone really does have to ask Sam Darnold why he doesn't suck anymore.

And, by the way, what's the percentage of his readiness?