Trapped (and not)

 Indiana, unbeaten and for the most part untried, marched into a sun-washed cauldron of red out there in Nebraska yesterday, and nearly put its shiny 21-game winning streak in the ditch. In front of a bunch of goobers wearing plastic corncobs on their heads, no less.

Meanwhile, in West Lafayette ...

Giddy Minnesota marched into Ross-Ade Stadium under cover of darkness, and did put its 4-1 record in the ditch. The Purdue Boilermakers -- like Pinocchio having suddenly become a real boy -- mashed all that giddy into odd shapes and sizes in a resounding 41-13 romp.

Both of those games were trap games, one more than the other. And you could see 'em both comin' from a mile off.

That was especially true in West Lafayette, where Minnesota likely was still hung over from its big Little Brown Jug takedown of Michigan last week. It was the first time the Golden Gophers had beaten the Wolverines in Minnie in 50 years, and delirium reigned: The fans stormed the field, irrepressible head coach P.J. Fleck crowd-surfed his team in the locker room, and you knew -- you just knew -- the party was going to last all week.

Which made the Gophers prime chumps for the Purdues, who were coming off a huge road win at Illinois and came back home understanding what it takes to win football games in the Big Ten.

It's a Purdue team markedly more talented than last year's sadsacks, with a now-poised quarterback in Ryan Browne and a bunch of hungry transfers on defense and another transfer, Fame Ijeboi, gouging out meaningful yards on the ground. And here came the school he'd transferred from, Minnesota, still pumped full of helium from the week before.

Classic trap game.  And the Gophers done got trapped.

Meanwhile, back in Lincoln, Neb. ...

Here came the seventh-ranked, undefeated defending national champions, a week away from the big clash in Bloomington against Ohio State. And here was an amped-up Memorial Stadium and  an equally amped-up (and equally unbeaten) mob of Nebraska Cornhuskers, who were absolutely laying for them.

And so, for a long time, the home team had Indiana in six kinds of trouble. The Huskers blocked better; they tackled better; they executed with more discipline and more passion. And all the while the cornheads roared and howled and drowned the Hoosiers in a tsunami of sound.

At halftime, the score was 10-3, Nebraska. Then it was 10-6. Then, early in the fourth quarter, it was 17-6, and the cauldron of red filled the world.

 And then ...

And then, Indiana got gnarly. It got gritty. It got as stubborn as its head coach, Curt Cignetti, who'd spent most of the afternoon restlessly pacing the sideline wearing his patented Coach Cig Mask O' Granite.

In the game's last 12 minutes, Josh Hoover finally hit the chunk play he'd been looking for all day, a 75-yard strike to Nick Marsh. Then he found Marsh again for 44 yards and another six, completely suckering the Cornhuskers on fourth-and-1. The defense hunkered down and grew some nasty, and Indiana pulled it out, 20-17.

Cignetti later called it a W for "indomitable will," and maybe it was that. Or maybe it was just the realization the Big One in Bloomington next week wouldn't be big at all if the Hoosiers didn't get it done in Lincoln.

Look. This is not the Indiana of a year ago. Hoover is not Fernando Mendoza. Outside of Marsh and Charlie Becker, the receiver corps is not last year's receiver corps. And the DBs are not last year's DBs, which means if the front seven doesn't bring it every week, opponents are going to dent the scoreboard.

But if Saturday showed us anything at all, it showed us these are still the Cignetti Hoosiers. They will come at you with their jaw stuck out a mile, daring you to take a poke. They will fight you to the last whistle. And many more times than not, they'll be ahead on the scoreboard when that last whistle bleats.

Trap game?

Indiana laughs at your trap game. Minnesota, on the other hand, left the last laugh to Purdue.

Narrative fail

 Ancient truism in the sportswriting biz, and the best comeback to every Joe Fan who ever declared, "You just hate (Joe Fan's team)!":

We don't root for the team. We root for the story.

Which brings us to the best story in baseball this season, until it wasn't.

That would be your Chicago White Sox, who made the postseason after losing 329 games across the previous three seasons, including a modern-day record 121 two summers ago. Last year they went 60-102.

This year: 84-78.

In other words, the 2026 White Sox would have finished an astounding 24 games ahead of the 2025 Pale Hose. So just making the playoffs was the baseball story of the year, and it's not even debatable.

And then ...

And then, the Sox wiped out Houston two straight in the best-of-three wild-card round.

And then ...

And then, they beat their nemesis, the Cleveland Guardians two straight in Cleveland in the ALDS to go back to Chicago needing just one more win in the best-of-five to advance to the ALCS.

And then ...

Ahem.

And then, the Guardians showed why they were the AL Central champs, and the White Sox were not.

They bombed the White Sox 9-3 in Game 3, then bombed them again, 9-5. Last night, back in front of the home crowd, they completed the comeback with a 2-0 win to send the best story in baseball home for the winter.

In those final three games, Cleveland outscored the Sox 20-8. 

That's what those of us in the biz call a "narrative fail." And not just any narrative fail, but a big-time narrative fail.

Ah, well.

Da Man

 Unavoidably, this morning, you think of Da Bearz, of the Superfans, of George Wendt and Joe Mantegna and Chris Farley and his chronic heart attacks. And of Mini Ditka and Regular-Size Ditka, of course.

"So if Dikta went to meet God, who would win?"

"Mini Ditka or Regular-Size Ditka?"

"Regular-Size Ditka."

"Oh, well, then Ditka for sure."

"Ditka."

"Ditka."

"Ditka."

Well, of course, Mike Ditka talked God (or wrestled God) into letting him into heaven. He's Ditka. Heck, even Mini Ditka could beat the stupid Packers with one arm behind his back. You think he couldn't defeat the afterlife?

And so this morning he's probably up there in the Great Hereafter trading punches with Buddy Ryan, that back-stabbing SOB. He's telling Walter Payton to leave him the, um, heck alone, because how many times does a guy have to apologize for letting the Fridge score that touchdown in the Super Bowl?

 He's running up the seam and snatching a football out of the sky, while celestial spectators exclaim "Dang, I didn't know a tight end could do THAT."

Before he was head coach of the Super Bowl Shuffle Bears, see, Mike Ditka was a Bears tight end, which some people tend to forget. Now he's neither, having gone to meet his Maker yesterday at the tender age of 86.

A big piece of whatever makes Chicago, Chicago, went with him. 

In the city of big shoulders he was the big shoulders, a kid from the steel towns of western Pennsylvania who came to represent another closed fist of a town in the Midwest. If Ditka wasn't Chicago -- all sweat stains and elbow grease and no fancy put-on airs -- no one was Chicago. He was Stan Mikita's tough mug and Tony O in goal; Rodman diving six rows into the high-dollar seats chasing a loose ball; Jason Hayward saying whatever he said to the Cubs during the rain delay in Game 7.

He was Harry Caray and the Go-Go Sox and a Chicago 'dog and Rush Street. Lou Malnati's and Lakeshore Drive and the El and the U505 over there at the Museum of Science and Industry. He was all of that.

Of course he'll mainly be remembered as the man who corralled those irrepressible '85 Bears -- Richard Dent and Danimal and Mongo McMichael, and that crazy Yalie Gary Fencik -- and turned them into the real Monsters of the Midway, brutalizing the rest of the league with Ryan's ferocious 46 defense. Except for one lost night in Miami, Jim McMahon and Walter and Refrigerator Perry and that defense destroyed everything in their path that season, finishing it by clowning the New England Patriots 46-10 in Super Bowl XX.

Oh, and that lost night in Miami, when Dan Marino and the Dolphins strapped an inconceivable 38 points on 'em?

A couple of days later Da Bearz recorded Da Super Bowl Shuffle. Talk about big brass ones.

Which gets us around to Ditka again, Da Man who epitomized Da Bearz and everything else. So much so, perhaps, that people do indeed tend to forget he's in the Hall of Fame as a player, and a groundbreaking one at that.

 Before Ditka came snarling out of Pitt, tight ends were basically just a fifth offensive lineman. Theirs was not to reason why; theirs was but to block linebackers and defensive ends.  But then Iron Mike went out and rung up more than 1,000 receiving yards in his rookie year, and tight ends became an offensive weapon forever after.

Oh, and before you ask: It was Regular-Size Ditka who did that.

Not that Mini Ditka couldn't have, of course.

Fed. Up.

 Caitlin Clark is far too savvy a public figure to say what she'd like to say out loud. But she's frankly sick of some of you.

She wishes you would, you know, get bent. Go away. Stop being racist hilljacks bogarting her orbit. Stop wearing her jersey when you go off on stupid rants about how she's the GREATEST WOMEN'S BASKETBALL PLAYER OF ALL TIME and no one appreciates her because she's white and straight and all those black lesbian b*****s are just jealous of her.

Enough. The object of your obsession is fed up with you.

Or so Clark made clear the other day in her end-of-season presser, if in a far more politic way.

"I think as far as people have used me to demonstrate racist rhetoric or hate or discrimination, that's not something I stand for," is how she put it. "That's never been something I've stood for. "

She went on to say other things, too, like how she loves her (black) teammate Kelsey Mitchell, who's apparently caught some racist flack of her own and admitted it's sometimes hard to play for "fans" like that. And how the media-driven "feud" between Clark and Angel Reese is unfiltered BS and needs to stop. And ... and ...

Well. No need to elaborate. It's all stuff Clark has said before, after all, over and over again.

How weary she must be of repeating it.

How weary she must be of constantly tight-roping that fine line between calling out the more deranged members of her cult and expressing her appreciation for the more mentally stable fans who flock to see her.

"I think for the real fans that do show up and do support and do respect, I applaud you," Clark said. "And there are a lot of you, and not just here in Indianapolis. That's across the league."

And as for the Hate-lin Clark crowd?

Go away. Just go away.

How much clearer can she make it?

Lost in translation

 (In which the Blob again escapes Sportsball World in the dead of night, intent on joining the circus. And let's face it, it's all just a great big circus these days.)

I debated writing this. 

I told myself that by writing what I'm about to write, I'd be doing exactly what the gremlins and warlocks of social media want me to do, which is dive down the rabbit holes I regularly lampoon. Don't do it, that still small voice of  reason whispered. Don't go there, because you know as surely as sunrise that people will misconstrue and distort it. Misconstruing and distorting are the national pastime now, after all.

Suffice to say I didn't listen. And the reason I didn't listen is because misconstruing and distortion go right to the heart of this matter.

The matter being, what President Donald John "Look, A Squirrel!" Trump said the other day at a rally in Nebraska. And what he did not say.

He did not, for instance, say he wishes Iran would "take out" Los Angeles and San Diego. As some internet trolls insist he did.

What he said, rather, has been parsed to mean whatever the competing wings of our national divide wish it to mean, neither of which more than brushes up against the truth.

What Squirrel Boy did say, in its full context, is this:

"With the war it's just artificial, it's a little high, it's a small price to pay for keeping the world safe, keeping our country safe. They could take out a city!* Let 'em take out Los Angeles!* Let 'em take out San Diego!* It's a small price to pay."

(*Hysterical exclamation points mine).

The subject was gas prices. The message -- or so it seems to me having read the quote and watched the clip multiple times -- was hopelessly mangled on as usual by our Dotty Old Grandpa In Chief, so it looked as if he were saying turning L.A. and San Diego into charcoal briquettes would be a small price to pay for doing whatever it is we're trying to do to Iran.  Let's face it, he's never had more than a nodding acquaintance with the English language, and now that creeping senility has set in he frequently seems to have abandoned it entirely.

And, yes, I know what's coming next. I know those on one side of the divide are going to say I'm making excuses for Der Fuhrer, that he did indeed mean to invite Iran to take out two American cities, and that anyone who believes otherwise is either an apologist or an enabler.

And on the other side?

They'll say how dare you call our Fearless Leader senile, to claim he's not in his right mind, to portray him as some mumbling ancient drooling in his soup.

Here's what I'll say to both of them: Whatever, dude.

Here's what I'll also say: Distortion is not the exclusive property of the left or the right -- although out-and-out lying does seem to have been cornered by the latter. The folks on the right outraged by the folks on the left twisting Fearless Leader's words, after all, are the same folks who regularly (and far more blatantly) twist the words of people they don't like. 

Most of whom seem to be brown or Muslim these days. Or both.

In this case, however, I'll take the other side to task, because I expect it to be smarter than this. See, to me, by claiming their nemesis was doing anything more than lost-in-translation fear-mongering ("He's saying L.A. and San Diego should be destroyed!"), they provide him cover. They give him and his acolytes fuel for their false narratives ("See? The left always lies!"), and obscure the most troubling aspects of this whole episode.

Because the worst part about Squirrel Boy talking about the Iranians "taking out" American cities?

It indicates the President of the United States -- the President of the United States -- more and more inhabits a fantasy world these days.  His obsession with Iran's imaginary nuclear capability, after all, directly refutes what he himself said a little over a year ago.

Which is that the United States had totally destroyed Iran's nuclear capability.

Yet now they're suddenly going to rain hellfire on L.A. and San Diego if we don't continue to do whatever the hell it is we're doing over there? Sure, Jan.

And as for characterizing high gas prices as some minor annoyance ...

Yet more evidence of the massive disconnect between Squirrel Boy's let-them-eat-cake Regime and the American people.

See, it's easy for Fearless Leader to brush off high gas prices when he never has to worry about buying gas, or balancing a checkbook, or robbing Peter to pay Paul. But for those who do have to worry about that, four-buck-a-gallon gas is a hell of a lot more than a temporary inconvenience.

Those are the real issues with Squirrel Boy's latest word salad. That, and one more thing:

When he said "Take out Los Angeles! Take out San Diego!" out there in Nebraska, the allegedly God-fearing Christian patriots in attendance cheered. Cheered. At the thought of two American cities and millions of their fellow Americans being incinerated.

And did the President of the United States wave his hand and say, "Hey, wait a minute, don't be cheering that, you asshats"?

No. No, he did not. 

You want to be outraged about something?

Be outraged about that.

No Gurlz Allowed

 Dumb stuff always becomes a thing when the Intertoobal poodles start yapping, and this week, I guess, the thing is about Colts owner Carlie Irsay-Gordon. 

She's on the sidelines for every game, you see. With a clipboard. Taking notes.

Rational folks would say this just shows she's engaged in the operation of her team, which isn't a bad thing for the owner of a gazillion-dollar business. Besides, she's just there taking notes. She's not pestering the coaches or players or insisting Shane Steichen roll out the old Statue of Liberty play. So what's the problem?

Ah, but the poodles ...

Well. The most prominent among them -- the super-annoying Bill Simmons -- says it's "bonkers" Irsay-Gordon does this. He says it's "crackers," and "nuts" and a bunch of other words. He says if she were a male owner, like, say, fellow sideline stalkers Jerry Jones or Falcons owner Arthur Blank, people would be raising perdition.

This, of course, is exactly backward.

If she were a male owner taking notes on the sideline, Bill-O and the rest of the Magical Twitter/X/Instagram/Podcast-al crowd wouldn't be saying a word.

Let's take Jones, for instance. Or as everyone calls him, "Jerry."

Jerry stalks the Cowboys sideline as regularly as Irsay-Gordon, and, unlike her, he never met a camera he wouldn't chase down to put his face in front of. He's the biggest attention-hound in America. And yet when's the last time you heard Bill-O call HIM bonkers or crackers or nuts?

Hint: Never.

 "So all this much-ado is because she's a woman?" you're saying now.

Of course it's because she's a woman. What, you think the sun rises in the west now?

It's because she's a youngish woman in a world populated by mostly ancient men -- many of whom, one suspects, she's a heck of a lot smarter than. In fact the NFL, you could argue, is the foremost bastion of male hegemony in all of Spfaortsball World. If it were a treehouse, there'd be a faded No Gurlz Allowed sign hanging out front.

Faded, because its time is long past. Still hanging there, because -- Irsay-Gordon aside -- the ancient men still nostalgically cling to it.

Aided and abetted by poodles like Bill Simmons, apparently.

Geez, people. Get with the times, why doncha.

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 4

 And now this week's edition of The NFL In So Many Words -- the yin-and-yang Blob feature that's either really, really good or really, really bad, and of which critics have said "Bad! I'll take bad!", and also, "I got a good fist and a bad fist. You choose which one you want for your knuckle hoagie":

1. The Packers edged the 0-4 Buccaneers 17-14. The Cowboys had to come from behind to beat the 0-4 Texans 34-30.

2. "Ha! See? Told ya we didn't suck!" (The Packers, who, let's face, still pretty much suck)

3. "Ha! See? We are BACK, baby! We are sooooo back!" (The Cowboys, who probably aren't as back as everyone always says they are when they win one)

4. In other news, the Dolphins remained winless after losing to the undefeated Vikings. The Chargers remained winless after losing to the 3-1 Seahawks.

5. "Are we the best team in the NFL? Hell, yeah, we're the best team in the NFL!" (The Vikings, who might be the best team in the NFL, but also might not even be the best team in the NFC North)

6. "Are we still the champs? Hell, yeah, we're still the champs!" (The Seahawks, forgetting the unbeaten 49ers are still in their division)

7. "Are we still in the division? Hell, yeah we're still in the division!" (The 49ers)

8. Meanwhile, the Bills jacked around and lost at home to the Patriots (which they always seem to do),  and the Cardinals jacked around and lost to the Giants (and Jameis Winston)

9. "Gah! How do we always jack around and lose to the Patriots?" (The Bills)

10. "Gah! How did we jack around and lose to Jameis Winston?" (The Cardinals)"