Shady doin's

 So now the federal government owns the Los Angeles Lake--

I'm sorry, what?

You're saying that's not true?

OK, then, so Donald John "Paws In Every Pie" Trump, president of these United States, owns the Los Angeles Lake--

Excuse me?

You're saying that's not true, either? 

OK, O-kay. I'll take off my tinfoil hat. But as L.A. Times columnist Bill Plaschke writes, something kinda stinks here, and for once it ain't the Prez's Underoos.

This after Lakers owner Mark Walter reportedly sold the Lakers this week for a record $12.5 billion, less than 14 months after buying them. The new owners are Bob Iger, former CEO of Disney, and Josh Kushner, a venture capitalist who recently tried to buy a minority stake in the World Cup until widespread condemnation caused FIFA head Gianni Infantino to back out of the deal.

"Kushner ... Kushner," you're saying now, a bit puckishly. "No, where have I heard that name before?"

To which the Blob replies: Yes, OK, he's the brother of Trump's son-in-law, real estate dude and alleged slumlord Jared Kushner.

This of course raises some eyebrows, and not just Plaschke's. Jared Kushner, after all, has swung some ethically shady deals since his ethically shady father-in-law became president. This includes playing footsie with the Saudis while kinda-sorta serving as an extra-legal representative of daddy-in-law's administration.

Now, that in itself doesn't mean anything. However ...

However, the guy who just abruptly sold the Lakers to Iger and Jared's brother is being investigated for some suspicious bookkeeping by the federal government. Donald Trump's federal government.

"Oh, come on," you're saying now. "You're implying that Trump's feds put the arm on Mark Walter so he'd sell the Lakers to Trump's son-in-law's brother? Like this is some kind of 'Godfather' make-him-an-offer-he-can't-refuse shenanigan?"

Of course I'm not implying that. Besides, Trump says he's got nothing to do with any of this, and whose word is more golden than Trump's?

All I'm saying is, it is a trifle weird, given that Walter became the official owner of the Lakers only last October, when he was unanimously approved by the league. And now he's selling them? And, shall we say, rather abruptly? Who does that, unless ...

But, no. I will be That Guy. I will not put the tinfoil hat back on and start babbling about chemtrails and vaccines causing autism, like the Prez's batshite director of Health and Human Services (and the Prez himself).

Although that tinfoil hat looks mighty fine, if you tilt it just-so. Mighty fine.

That Cunningham woman, Part Deux

 Indiana Fever coach Stephanie White came out swingin' last night before her team's game against the New York Liberty, and applause, applause. At some point money talks and the bullshite walks, and she sent it packin'.

Said the "hate, the fear-mongering, the divisiveness, the stuff that's trying to hijack our league will not win." Said there were a bunch of keyboard culture warriors out there trotting out "narratives that simply don't exist." Corrected one of those narratives, which is that she failed to have Sophie Cunningham's back after DiJonai Carrington of the Chicago Sky clotheslined Cunningham the other night.

Every word she spoke was true. Every word she spoke said "Enough, already." Especially the part where she said she'd stick by her team, and everyone else could go to hell.

This presumably includes Indiana's meddlesome lieutenant governor, Micah Beckwith, our First Culture Warrior and general all-around blowhole. Beckwith said White should be fired either for not standing up for Cunningham, or for not buying into the keyboard warriors' bullshite narrative about poor white girls being mugged by a bunch of jealous black lesbians. 

The Blob's reaction is pretty much White's. And also that the First Culture Warrior should stay in his lane, wherever in the wilds of the extremist right that is these days.

 Because, see, the last I looked, the Fever were 21-12 and had won nine of their last 12 games, despite White's horrible coaching and failure to stand up for her players. That's the fourth-best record in the league. And, oh, yeah: Last night, in a stark display of just how much White has lost her locker room (according to the keyboard warriors),  the Fever blasted the New York Liberty by 14, 106-92.

Led by as much as 21 at one point. Made 16-of-25 threes, the second-highest 3-point percentage in WNBA history.

"No way we were losing this game," declared Caitlin Clark, who put up 22 points and 10 assists, despite her PERFECTLY OBVIOUS disdain for White (according to the keyboard warriors).

And Cunningham, whose back White DEFINITELY DOES NOT HAVE (again, according to the keyboard warriors)?

She chipped in 12 points off the bench and said, as did White, that the reason White merely called Carrington's Flagrant 2 a hard foul was because she'd only seen the play in real time at the time she was asked about it.

"She didn't see the (video) clip ... and that's OK," Cunningham said.

And as for the W against the Liberty ...

"We did it for Steph, and we did it for everyone in the locker room," she said.

Hey, bullshite. There's the door.

Today in awesome cheating

 Golf is the gentleman's game, or so we've been told, the only sport other than playground hoops where you call your own fouls and take your punishment like a man (or woman) -- even when the infraction for which you're being penalized looks as silly as kittens on laughing gas to those of us outside the golfing culture.

(I refer here, as I always do, to the time Dustin Johnson was penalized two strokes for grounding his club in a bunker during the U.S. Open, even though the bunker resembled a bunker the way I resemble, say, Jason Momoa. Spectators were actually standing in it, for crying out loud.)

Anyway, cheating in this gentleman's -- or gentlewoman's -- game therefore is regarded as the lowest form of human behavior, punishable by forfeiture of A) your brand-new Callaway driver with the built-in radar function; and B) your entire wardrobe of John Daly Loudmouth golfwear. (The latter being especially cruel.)

On the other hand ...

On the other hand, since golf is such a gentleman/gentlewoman's game, it makes it that much more hilarious when someone cheats as extravagantly as Zach Holland did recently.

Holland, a 2-handicap, was playing in a membership event at WingHaven Golf Club in O'Fallon, Mo., when he decided to fake a hole-in-one. He did via an elaborate scheme that included -- not even kidding -- a mythical phone call from his dead grandmother. 

(Actually, she was only critically ill. But still.)

What happened was, Holland took a cart out to the par-3 fourth hole at WingHaven before his tee time and placed a golf ball in the cup. Then he told the rest of his group he'd go on ahead to the fourth hole after saying he had to take a phone call from his sick grandmother.

When the rest of his group showed up, Holland claimed to have "thinned" his tee shot and didn't see where the ball ended up. Imagine his surprise and delight when he discovered it nestled in the bottom of the cup!

Unfortunately, according to Holland, security cameras caught him driving his cart near the fourth green well before his tee time. Busted.

"There's no excuse for what I did, and I was completely in the wrong," Holland told a local ESPN radio show out of St. Louis, adding that he'd resigned from WingHaven, as well he should have.

But is what he did not a total Carl Spackler "Caddyshack" moment, or what?

Here he is, Zach Holland, Cinderella boy, about to win the Masters ... It's in the hole! It's in the hole ...

Only thing missing was the groovin' gopher.

That Cunningham woman

 Sophie Cunningham is all over social media again, and not because she pointed at someone or said girls sports should be protected from trans women, which is kind of like saying girls sports should be protected from Puff the Magic Dragon, but, OK.

No, sir. This time it's because she got clotheslined by DiJonai Carrington of the Chicago Sky, which got Carrington properly ejected with a Flagrant 2 and got all the keyboard  warriors stoking the fires of a racial animus they say is rampant in the WNBA.

It's not, but the warriors' frankly racist narrative -- that clean-cut straight white girls are being targeted for abuse by animalistic black lesbians -- continues to have legs, because never underestimate the staying power of manufactured grievance.

"White privilege," Carrington, who is black, tweeted after her ejection, which of course only stoked this particular fire.

"Black privilege," fired back butt-hurt former swimmer Riley Gaines, who's whiter than Wonder Bread.

Apparently this was Gaines' way of saying, "I can even more ridiculous than you."

Look. I've watched the video of the Carrington foul half a dozen times, and I don't see a deliberate mugging. I see Carrington making an awkward swipe at the ball as Cunningham drove to the rim, and then lowbridging her on the follow-through. I see a reckless and potentially dangerous foul, which was why it drew a Flagrant 2.

This is basically what Fever coach Stephanie White said postgame, for which she of course was vilified by the keyboard crowd because it didn't play into their preferred storyline. According to them, this couldn't simply have been Carrington being Carrington, given she has a reputation for brutal takedowns. This was Carrington punishing Cunningham on behalf of the "woke" WNBA because of her alleged transphobia.

(Which has been overblown, too, by the other side in the culture wars. Just to show they're all off their meds.)

Anyway, according to the keyword crowd, Carrington was Luca Brasi and the league was the Godfather, sending her out to take care of the "problem." Riiiight.

Rational deduction quickly laughs this scenario out of the room, even if rationality has fallen out of favor these days. Regardless, its message remains: Carrington has an established rep as a dirty player, and Cunningham isn't exactly a shrinking violet herself. Last week she caught an elbow to the jaw because she was aggressively bodying an opponent looking to make a pass; last season, of course, she did this to Jacy Sheldon of the Connecticut Sun.

So: One clothesline vs. one out-and-out tackle. Seems like a tit-for-tat cheapshot tie to me.

Of course, I don't have an agenda to sell. 

Beware the machines

 The first time I saw one of those Waymo self-driving cars it freaked me out.

We were in San Francisco and an old friend of my wife's was showing us around -- he lives in Berkeley, just across the water -- and suddenly this car went past and THERE WAS NOBODY IN IT.

"Yah!" I said, or something like it. "Now that is creepy."

My wife's friend chuckled.

"It's the future, Ben," he joked.

"I don't care," I replied. "It's still creepy."

And I stand by that judgment, stubborn codger that I am.

I especially stand by it now that Kyle Shanahan has revealed his Tesla was in autopilot mode -- not exactly the same thing as Waymo, but close enough -- when he caused an accident that (as former Indiana football coach Bill Mallory used to say) boogered him up considerable.

Wound up with a serious concussion, a broken hand, a broken nose, three broken ribs and 40 stitches in his face. Damn near lost an eye, too.

Shanahan said his phone slid off his leg and he took his eyes off the road to look for it, never a winning move in a motor vehicle. This week he added the autopilot detail.

"See?" my inner stubborn codger said. "You can't trust the machines. Doesn't anyone remember how Skynet created the Terminators?"

"Oh, come on," you're saying now. "That was just a movie. Movies aren't real. If they were, 5-foot-7 Tom Cruise and 74-year-old Liam Neeson would be indestructible action heroes."

Well, maybe. But I still don't trust the machines. 

When I'm in a car, I want my hands on the wheel, not some invisible AI Mario Andretti. That's because you'd never know when Mario was going to morph into Fender Bender McGee or someone.

What an epitaph that would be: "He Lived. He Died. He Let An AI Whittington Brother Drive."

No way, baby. I'm not getting a Tesla with an autopilot feature, and not because it boogered up Kyle Shanahan. And I'm for sure not climbing into a Waymo taxi -- yes, they have Waymo taxis now -- unless I'm either unconscious or heavily sedated.

"Where to, buddy?" my invisible taxi driver would say.

And then he'd turn around, and it would be Arnold at the end of the first Terminator, with all his skin worn away and one angry red eye glaring at me.

"Yah!" I'd shout.

If the heart attack didn't get me first.

No-brainer

 There was no way Drew Brees was ever going to wind up in Canton, until there was no way he wasn't. You want to sum up a guy's journey in a single sentence, that would be it.

He was too short and he didn't have a rocket launcher for an arm, and that was before he blew up his shoulder and the San Diego Chargers shipped him off to New Orleans like a sprung couch. Set him out by the curb for the Salvation Army to pick up, and that was the last anyone would hear of him.

Except.

Except now we're 25 years down the road from all that, and, hey, look who's in Canton today. The sprung couch is about to go into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and rarely has there been more of a no-brainer than that. 

Twenty years in the league, a Super Bowl MVP and 13 Pro Bowls will do that for a guy. More than 80,000 passing yards, 571 touchdowns and a ridiculous 67.7 completion rate will. And being the heart and soul and light in the night for a wrecked city after Katrina took N'awlins down to the studs?

Well, that'll do it, too.

Not a bad deal for a guy who came out of Purdue as its latest Bob Griese/Mike Phipps/Jim Everett, only a miniature version of same. Yes, he blew away every passing record Purdue and the Big Ten had, but the tape measure stubbornly refused to declare him more than a smidge over six feet even. And then there was the arm strength thing. And then ...

And then, he languished into the second round of the NFL Draft before the Chargers said "Ah, what the hell" and snatched him up.

Those of us who watched him light up Ross-Ade Stadium for four years couldn't figure it out. Yes, he was short -- at 6-1, I'd never interviewed a major-college quarterback shorter than I was until I met Brees -- but, good lord, and holy gee, besides. Did the draft gurus not see what we saw?

Did they not see Brees-to-Morales for six?

Because the Purdue faithful will always see it, and not just because it beat Ohio State to all but seal the Boilermakers' first trip to the Rose Bowl in 34 years. Brees-to-Morales for six was, for those of us who were there, the first time you could see him in Canton some day.

It wasn't just that it was the knockout blow in a knock-down, drag-out hammerfest between the Big Ten's two heavyweights that year. It was because Drew Brees kept passing Purdue into the lead and then passing the Boilers out of it with four picks -- the last a Mike Doss interception that set up OSU's go-ahead score with a bit over two minutes left.

A couple plays later, with Ross-Ade one giant held breath and all the pressure of a pressurized afternoon bearing down hard, Brees took the snap 64 yards from the end one and dropped back.

He looked at Vinny Sutherland.

He looked at Tim Stratton.

And then, finally, he looked at Seth Morales free and clear downfield, and launched a perfect strike that won it for the Purdues once and for all.

"It wasn't designed to go to me," Morales said later. "Drew looked at Vinny, and he looked at Stratton, and he just came to me."

So it was a third-read touchdown at the biggest moment of an impossibly big day. And a revealing look into why Drew Brees is going into Canton today.

Because he was cooler than Arctic winter when nothing less would do.

Because when the heat was hottest, Mr. Cool went through his progressions like a man studying a bus schedule.

Because if the pros wrinkled their fussy beaks over his arm strength or lack thereof, they missed something else: That Brees' arm was more laser than rocket launcher, capable of throwing a football through a keyhole from ... well, from 64 yards away.

That's why they'll unveil his bust and slip the yellow jacket on him today. And that's why "Well, duh," is the only proper response to that.

Oopsie

 Look, I'm not here this morning to make fun of Tommy McClelland, Purdue's new athletic director. The poor guy came to West Lafayette from Rice. I hear lots of stuff hasn't gotten down there yet.

But ye gods, what a Florsheim insertion into mouth yesterday. You wanna come in swingin' at your fiercest rival in your introductory appearance -- especially when you're coming to a school that could use that sort of feistiness -- at least land a glancing blow. And have, you know, at least a nodding acquaintance with timing.

Here's what Tommy said, which has everyone from Valparaiso to Rising Sun guffawing today (but not me!): "We are here to win championships. If you don't want to win championships, go to Indiana."

Which, of course, just won the only championship that really matters, going 16-0 and beating everybody in the College Football Playoff.

Now, if the Blob were inclined to make fun here (and, really, I'm not!), it would point out what a lot of the online snarkmeisters were pointing out, which is that Indiana has won 24 NCAA titles over the years to Purdue's, um, five. And in the two biggies -- football and men's basketball -- the score is IU 6, Purdue 0.

Conference championships?

OK, there McClelland's on firmer ground. The Boilermakers have won or shared 83 Big Ten titles across the years, including 25 in men's basketball and eight in football. Indiana has won 22 and two-and-a-half in the Big Two, respectively. So neener-neener-neener, Hoosiers.

Also, good news for McClelland, who now has a handy escape hatch for yesterday's oopsie -- which at least one mean IU fan called "the most Purdue thing ever."

Wait, you thought I meant NATIONAL championships? you can hear McClelland saying. Oh, HELL, no. I meant we're here to win BIG TEN championships. Which we have more of in football and men's buckets than Indiana, by the way. So neener-neener-neener.

That would work, right?

Um, riiiight?