Foolery vanisheth

 (In which the Blob once again escapes the Sportsball corral. You know the drill.)

Today is April 1, which used to be a day for gags, practical jokes and general seventh-grade boy tomfoolery. Hey, look, your barn door's open! April fool! Hey, didja hear the cafeteria puts catfood in its meatloaf? April fool! Omigod, you've got a HUGE booger hanging out of your  left nostril! April fool!

Or how about this one: Hey, look! There's a picture on the internet of Kristi Noem's husband wearing ginormous fake boobs!

Oh, wait. Turns out that one's real.

Which of course is the whole problem with April Fool's Day here in 2026.

See, America, and the world in general, has become such a galactically bizarre place that fooling people with tomfoolery has become passe. All those outlandish pranks we used to pull on April Fool's Day pale in comparison to simple reality now.

Like, you know, Kristi Noem's husband being revealed as an alleged cross-dresser with ginormous fake boobs.

I admit this did sound like an April Fool's joke to me, initially. Raised a skeptical eyebrow. Thought it was social media doing its usual social media thing, a sort of an enhanced version of little Joey putting fake vomit on little Susie's seat in math class.

Only later did it become clear it was real vomit.

Which is a shame, sort of, because it means foolery of the April 1 sort is vanishing because, seriously, how can it top Kristi Noem's hubby and his Hindenburg mammaries?  Just when you think you've seen it all, Bryon Noem pops up on your feed to say, "Nah, bro. Not even close."

(In all fairness, it's hard to blame him. I mean, if you were married to Cosplay Rambolina, you, too, might occasionally get the urge to slip into a sleek little Prada number and dab some Chanel No. 5 behind your ears. Especially if you kept hearing about her cattin' around with that sorry-ass Corey Lewandoski.)

(And how rich is all this, by the by? A woman who thinks drag queens are evil sorcerers forcing our children to wear bouffant wigs and stilletto heels has a husband who's ... a drag queen? Beauty.)

Anyway ...

Anyway, Bryon Noem's just the tip of the iceberg of April Fool's-like weirdness these days, beginning of course with our Fearless Leader and his clown-car cabinet. Hey, didja hear our Secretary of Defense is a former Fox talking head and religious fanatic who likes to style himself the Secretary of War? Didja hear our Educashon Secretary came from the educashonal world of pro wrestling? Didja hear the head of Health and Human Services is a heroin burnout and conspiracy kook?

Or how about the 23-year-old former stock boy who's in charge of the anti-terrorism wing of the Department of Homeland Security? Or the new head of DHS himself, a former MMA fighter and all-around loon?

April fool!

Or, you know, NOT April fool.

Now, it must be pointed out here that there is a preponderance of leg-pulling fakery going on out there on this day, but more and more actual human behavior eclipses it. There's an entire genre in some news outlets devoted to the real-life adventures of the doofuses collectively known as Florida Man, for instance. And of course the real-life adventures of Fearless Leader himself pretty much could all be passed off as April Fool's jokes, they're so completely off the rails.

My favorite, and a lot of Americans' favorite, is about F.L. gifting his cabinet members with Florsheim shoes he declared the best ever made in the entire history of shoemaking, or some such thing. None of them were sized right, apparently; Secretary of State Marco Rubio's pair were so large they looked like literal clown shoes. Yet Rubio and the others all wore them because they were apparently afraid not to.

"Oh, come on, Mr. Blob," you're saying now. "We're no April fools. You can't get us with that one. I suppose next you're gonna tell us the President's going to start naming stuff after himself, or getting others to do it for him, like he's Gov. William J. Le Petomane or someone.*

(* -- Gratuitous "Blazing Saddles" reference)

Well, actually ...

Robot wars

 We're not a week into the wrapper-fresh season yet, and the Blob already thinks baseball -- the most over-stat-ted game in the world of games -- needs a new stat.

I think MLB should add ABSW to WAR and PEACE and all the other analytics that so fascinate baseball nerds.

"What the heck is ABSW, Mr. Blob?" you're asking now.

Well, it stands for "Automated Ball-Strike Wins", and it would measure every MLB team's success in utilizing the newfangled ABS system to challenge a plate ump's call. It's just like batting averages, except in this case it would be second-guessing averages.

"'Automatic Ball-Strike Wins'," you're saying now. "Would that be before or after replacement?"

Stop it.

No, what got me thinking about this was what happened in the Yankees-Mariners game last night, which the M's won 2-1. It was the Pinstripes' first loss of the infant season, but get this: They went 5-for-5 in ABS challenges.

Five times a Yankee said, "Yeah, you missed that one, ump." Five times the ABS system backed him up.

The plate ump in this case was Mike Estabrook, and he must have hated that. In fact, I'm guessing every umpire in MLB despises ABS. They must hate it worse than Sarah Conner hated all those Terminators.

"(Bleeping) robots," I imagine them grumbling. "Job's tough enough as it is without (bleeping) Data looking over our shoulders. (Bleep). Why can't Captain Picard just shove him out an airlock or something? Make it so, (bleep), yeah."

Sorry, boys (and now, girls).  But Jean-Luc ain't comin' to your rescue.

You're stuck with your robot umps, and God help us if it ever goes beyond that. All it'll take is your clean-hitter hitting an 0-for-31 slump, and XLP Model 34 will be replacing him in the lineup.

Until then ...

Until then, XLP Model 34 will be limited to embarrassing MLB umps. Or enraging players and managers by saying, "Nah, Blue got it right this time."

At which point Earl Weaver will come out of the dugout and kick dirt on XLP Model 34. 

Man. How great would THAT be?

When the joy is gone

 Max Verstappen isn't the first driver to decide he doesn't like his new car. But he is the first one who's won four Formula One driving titles and more F1 races (76) than anyone besides Lewis Hamilton and Michael Schumacher.

He remains, if not the best wheelman in motorsports, at least one of the top two or three. On a good day, with a good car under him, everyone else might as well stay home. You're not gonna beat him.

Who can forget last year, when, even in a Red Bull ride that was not nearly as dominant as it had been, he won six of the last nine races -- including the last three -- to nearly overhaul Lando Norris for his fifth F1 title?  Finished just two points behind after trailing Norris by 104 at one point.

So, yeah. Max was still Max.

Now?

Well, now the cars are all different, thanks to an overhaul of F1 regs. And Verstappen hates the change. Says it's now "anti-driving."

Says it's just not fun anymore, and he's thinking seriously of walking away from the sport at the end of this season.

He said all this after finishing eighth in the Chinese Grand Prix -- the new wunderkind of F1, 19-year-old Kimi Antonelli, collected his second straight win of 2026 -- and, sure, the immediate reaction is, well, he's just mad because it's harder to win these days. More than whiff of gonna-take-my-ball-and-go-home in that.

Except.

Except, Max has always said he'd stick with F1 until it wasn't fun anymore. He said this when he was winning those four straight titles and damn near every race on the skeddy. And he said it even when he was no longer the champion, or before he ever was.

"I can easily accept to be in P7 or P8 where I am," he said last weekend. "Because I also know that you can't be dominating or be first or second or whatever, fighting for a podium every time. I'm very realistic in that and I've been there before. I've not only been winning in F1."

 But?

"But at the same time when you are in P7 or P8 and you are not enjoying the whole formula behind it, it doesn't feel natural to a racing driver ... Then at one point, yeah, it's just not what I want to do."

And here, of course, is where we need to point out Verstappen is still not yet 30. So of course he puts a premium on having fun doing what he's doing. Having once, eons ago, been a 20-something myself, I know this is true. You don't so much care about the money, even (and perhaps especially) when you're either not making any or, like Max, filling entire bank vaults with it. The joy is the thing.

And the joy is gone, for Max Verstappen. Just as it goes for athletes at the other end of the chronological spectrum, when age and infirmity drains what used to be an inexhaustible reservoir of passion.

No one questions the 38-year-old linebacker with a quantum of knee surgeries in his past when he steps away, saying that passion can't beat out the pain anymore. But when a Max Verstappen talks about quitting at the peak of his powers because it's no fun anymore?

Well, then he's just a sore loser. Or seems so.

Me?

I think it's just 29-year-old Max Verstappen being 29-year-old Max Verstappen. And being who he's always been.

Finally, Four

 Well, alrighty then: Arizona, Michigan, Duke-Er-UConn, Illinois.

There's your Final Four, America.

"Wait, who is Duke-Er-UConn?" you're saying now.

Well, it's UConn, but until the very-very-very end it was Duke.  The Blue Devils led by 20 for awhile, and then they led by 15, and still, even when the game clock go down to six minutes or so, they were still leading by double digits.

And then ...

And then, some stuff happened, and then some other stuff happened, and finally with a sliver of a fraction of a second left, this kid from Indiana, I don't know, downtown Hooterville or someplace, and when it came down Duke, er, UConn had won 73-72 and was going to the Final Four. 

In Indianapolis, no less.

A mere 25 miles west of where the Indiana kid, name of Braylon Mullins, played his high school ball.

"The Indiana kid sent us to Indianapolis," Mullins' teammate Alex Karaban crowed.

Indeed. The Huskies are going to Indianapolis, where they'll play an Illinois team that's been good to occasionally great this season, and if this is nivarna in Storrs, Conn., it's something else again in the rest of America. That's because Braylon Mullins' 35-foot, radar-guided, last-second three means we'll be subjected to another week of UConn coach Dan Hurley, aka The Most Annoying Man On The Planet.

I fully expect him to beat Illinois Saturday night and advance to the national championship game, because the Final Four sometimes has a mean streak.

I also expect the other national semifinal, 1-seed Arizona vs. 1-seed Michigan, will be your de facto national championship game.

The Wildcats and the Wolverines, after all, have been the dominant teams in Da Tournament, and not by a little. Arizona has won its four tournament games by  34, 12, 21 and 15 points. Michigan has won its four games by 21, 23, 13 and 33. Their collision in the national semis will likely be the first time either has broken a sweat.

I'm picking Arizona by, who knows, maybe another 35-foot splash with a sliver of a fraction of a second left.

Then I'm picking the Wildcats to beat the Huskies for the national title.

Unless ...

Unless the Final Four leans into its mean streak again, and we have to watch Dan Hurley cut down the nets while "One Shining Moment" plays in the background.

Please, God, anything. Anything but that.

The prodigal sleaze

 I don't know what kind of hooch they're selling down there in the bayou, but the folks in the LSU athletic department need to lay off it. It's done ruint their minds, as the saying goes.

This upon the news that former LSU basketball coach Will Wade -- last seen in Baton Rouge offering a recruit a barrel of illicit cash on an FBI wiretap -- is returning to LSU in the same role, four years after the school booted him for getting it sideways with the feds and the NCAA. 

"Why would LSU do that, Mr. Blob?" you're undoubtedly asking now.

Beats me. Gotta be the hooch, I figure.

On the other hand, it's LSU, which has not been known for the quality of its judgment lately. It poached Brian Kelly from Notre Dame because it thought its football program was the greatest in America (Spoiler alert: It's not). Then it had to eat a gargantuan buyout when it deemed Kelly unworthy of such greatness. 

After which the governor of Louisiana started running off at the mouth about how there was NO WAY he would ever allow such a buyout to happen again. That got the athletic director fired -- which left LSU with no football coach, no AD and not much of a clue.

Apparently the Bengal Tigers still don't.

And apparently Will Wade, the prodigal sleaze, is still ... well, a trifle sleazy.

A year ago almost to the day, see, he signed a six-year deal to coach the Wolfpack at North Carolina State  -- and, no, I don't know what they were thinking, or drinking, in Raleigh, either. Now, just 12 months later, he's bailing.  

(A brief aside: The people caterwauling about the selfishness/lack of loyalty among today's portal-hopping college athletes should take note of this. They clearly learned it from their coaches, who've been displaying exactly the same selfishness/lack of loyalty for decades.)

The oddest thing about this whole affair is Will Wade didn't exactly bring home a string of national titles the first time LSU came calling. In five seasons under his hand, LSU lost 10 or more games four times. And the Tigers advanced beyond the round of 32 just once, losing in the Sweet Sixteen in Wade's second season.

Which of course makes LSU re-hiring him even more bizarre.

I'm tellin' ya, man. That hooch must be powerful stuff.

End of a lovely line

 For awhile there, the long hallowed run looked extendable. Purdue, and the Braden/Fletcher/TKR triumvirate, led by seven at the break. They still led by seven two-and-a-half minutes into the second half. And then ...

And then, the best team left in March Madness hit the gas. And the Purdues and their three-headed paragon of sticking with it ran out gas.

It was Arizona 44, Purdue 17 the rest of the way, the 1-seed Wildcats simply too much the way they've been too much the entire tournament. In four games so far, they've won by 34, 12, 21 and 15 points. No matter who wins the other two Elite Eight games today, they'll go to the Final Four as the betting favorite.

And so no shame for the Boilermakers, who squeezed as much as they could from what they had until they couldn't squeeze anymore. For the second straight game, they shot poorly -- 38 percent this time out, including 8-of-22 from the 3-point arc -- and that more than anything doomed them when Arizona turned up the heat. In the second half, the Boilers were just 9-of-26 from the field, and clanked seven of their eight 3-point attempts.

But shed no tears for this Purdue team, and especially for Braden Smith, Fletcher Loyer and Trey Kaufman-Renn, who looked in the postgame presser to have shed more than a few. They won 117 games as Boilermakers, more than anyone in program history. They took Purdue to the only Final Four it's seen in 46 years, and the only national championship game it's ever seen. And they leave with their names all over the school's record books.

Most assists in a career (Smith). Most 3-pointers in a career (Loyer). Most games played in a career (Smith, Loyer, TKR).

The last perhaps being the most notable, in today's rootless landscape of have-mad-skills-will-travel.

"They're great," Painter told TBS yesterday, at the end of this lovely line. "They emptied their tanks. Every single day they worked at it. They really set a standard for our program and that's what you want. You want guys ... who keep taking it to another level."

And do it in one place.

Return to Bogeyville

 Tiger Woods rolled his Land Rover the other day down in Florida, got clipped for misdemeanor DUI and sat in a jail cell for eight hours, and I think I've figured out what he needs right now.

No, not more rehab from his latest back surgery.

What he needs is driver's ed.

This is, after all, the fourth time he's crashed a motor vehicle since 2009, and the second time he caught a DUI charge for it. The last crash before this one was a doozy, smashing the hell out of his leg and likely ending his time as a serious competitive golfer. It was also the stupidest; he was doing 85 or 90 on a twisty stretch of California road where the listed speed limit was 45. 

In this latest incident, he was speeding along a road not far from his Jupiter, Fla., home when he came up on a truck towing a pressure cleaner, swerved to try to pass it, and nudged the trailer just enough to flip his vehicle on its side. No one was injured, but this latest return to automotive Bogeyville came amid growing speculation that Woods would attempt to play the Masters in a couple of weeks.

Or, you know, not.

He's 50 years old, his body's a surgical Erector set, and he apparently can't drive for doody. The last, of course, has no impact on whether or not he can still play golf like anything more than the ghost of himself. But rental car companies around Augusta, Ga., no doubt already have his picture up.

And, no, not with a caption of him saying, "When I'm looking for a good rollover plan, I choose Enterprise."

More likely, it's "Under no circumstances rent this man a vehicle. He crashes more than (IndyCar driver) Sting Ray Robb."