Writer-ly sins

I once wrote a line in a column that spoofed a player's unusual name with bathroom humor unworthy of a sixth-grade boy. So I know how it feels when you try too hard to be clever or deep or, heaven forbid, writer-ly, and wind up stepping in a big ol' pile of goo.

"You're better than this," my sports editor told me at the time.

He was absolutely right. I was.

And Nancy Armour is better, too.

By now social media has been all up in our faces with its usual performative outrage about what Armour wrote the other day in a USA Today column about Caitlin Clark. The gist was that Clark's own performative victimhood -- i.e., her flopping -- was inciting death threats and possible violence against black players in the WNBA from the lint brains who see white folk as the new persecuted class.

It's an interesting theory, but one that tightropes the rational in the Blob's opinion. And Armour didn't help her cause by pointing out that the WNBA All-Star Game was in Chicago this weekend, and Chicago was Emmett Till's hometown, and there's a display there right now about Till and what his life would have been like had he not been brutally lynched in Mississippi in 1955.

So here's a national columnist trying to make her point about possible threats to black basketball players by invoking one of the most notorious acts of racial violence in American history. It was not only a bridge too far; it was the saboteurs blowing up the bridge over the River Kwai at the end of the movie.

It was, in short, a big pile of goo, and Armour stepped in it. So much so, she issued a statement the next day admitting the Till reference was "unartful" while defending her original point.

Which, again, in the Blob's opinion, contains a grain of truth, but perhaps only a grain.  Plus it contributes to the damaging and largely phony black-vs.-white narrative the media and certain performance-art politicians (Come on down, Marlin Stutzman!) seem hell-bent on pushing about the WNBA.

Look. I don't know Nancy well, but I met her at several sporting events, and she always struck me as a kind, soft-spoken and incredibly intelligent person.  Someone who doesn't deserve the venom she's drawing from the usual buttheads for whom mining outrage is not only their brand, but their only discernible talent.

As one of my dearest friends and former colleagues pointed out with his usual laser perception, a good copy editor might have saved Armour from herself, or at the very least  have said, "Whoa, Nance, Emmett Till? Really?" But, as this friend also pointed out, the vandals who've either destroyed or gelded so many media entities these days -- including Gannett, for whom Nancy Armour works -- have laid waste to copy desks in the process.

You reap what you sow, in other words. Nice goin', dummies.

And Nancy Armour?

Yeah, she blew it this time. But you know how they say if 10,000 monkeys typed for 10,000 years, one of them would produce the works of Shakespeare?

Same applies to columnists, only in reverse. If you write 10,000 columns, sooner or later you're gonna write one that clanks. And Armour's written about 9,999 that didn't.

Even if, human nature being what it is, they only remember the one that sucked.

Today in irony

 Which involves our illustrious fear-mongering senator, James "Jimbo" "The Fear-Mongerer" Banks, who posted a photo of his ownself with NCAA president Charlie Baker that highlighted the pleasant chat they had about, among other things, how to "protect girls sports."

Protect them from what, he didn't have to say. Because by now we all know what.

It's those evil transgenders, who are invading girls and women's with their sick gender-confusin' transgender-in'. Not that Banks, butt-hurt former swimmer Riley Gaines or any of the other bigots have anything against transgenders, mind you. Oh, heavens, no.

Now for the irony.

The irony is the guy Banks is so proudly posing with is on record as saying there only 10 or so known transgenders competing in NCAA athletics. Ten out of 554,298 athletes circa the 2024-25 academic year.

In other words, Banks said he discussed this issue with a guy who says it's not really an issue, and has the numbers to back it up.

So we're back to the original question: Protect girls and women's sports from what?

Because claiming you're protecting them from transgenders is like claiming you're protecting Nebraska from killer whales. That is all.

Autumn whispers

 Listen close this fine summer morning, and you can hear it coming. Coming on little cleated feet, to cadge from Sandberg.

Football, boys and girls. And here you thought autumn was a ways off yet. 

To be sure it's a mere whisper of a whisper just now, a stir in the breeze under July's fierce sun. But sooner than you think -- so much sooner -- the little cleated feet will be clackety-clacking into our ordered lives again, and then the clackety-clack will become a CLACKETY-CLACK, and pretty soon it will be a CLACKETY-CLACKETY-CLACKETY-CLACK that fills the world.

I know this because ESPN's website is telling me this morning that NFL training camps are officially open.

I know it because the major college football conferences are beginning to roll out their annual preseason media ragers again.

I know it because I dreamed it last night.

Dreamed I was covering a high school football game between a local school (I won't name it, but the team wore orange) and some school I'd never heard of, and the local team's quarterback was throwing touchdown passes and catching touchdown passes, and a bunch of college coaches were there to watch him.

As dreams will do, the details have gone tattery around the edges here in the light of day. So I don't remember who the coaches were, only that they were big-deal guys. I've also lost the quarterback's name. the name of the school the orange team was playing (only that it was weird), or what the final score was (although the orange team won big).

What I do remember is the quarterback looked a little like Arch Manning, only he wasn't Arch Manning. And I remember he threw 54 passes and only completed 21, but four or five were for touchdowns -- including one that seemed to cover half-a-mile in the air before hitting the receiver in stride. Also, Not Arch Manning caught six passes for 72 yards, though I don't remember seeing him do it.

In other words, it was as ridiculous as dreams tend to be.

But it stayed with me long after I awoke, and now I'm thinking about football. About training camps opening up. About all those high school Friday nights -- including the night I got locked in some area school's stadium and had to climb an eight-foot fence to get out. And about our college mercenaries telling a mob of phones and tape recorders about the great season their latest whistle stop will have -- if in fact they can remember which whistle stop it is.

Yeah, we're gonna kick some prime booty here in Columbus this year. Wait, did I say Columbus? I meant Corvallis. Or maybe College Station. One of those "C" places.

Whatever, dude. In any event, I dreamed of football last night, and when I got up this morning it was 53 degrees outside and the windows were open and it felt almost ... kinda-sorta ... a wee bit like autumn. Like a Friday night, or a Saturday afternoon, or a Monday/Thursday/Sunday night.

And I know if I walk into a supermarket in the next few days, I'm going to see pumpkin spice Cheerios or something on the shelves. I know it.

The Republic of the SEC

 SEC commissioner Greg Sankey dropped a warhead the other day at the conference's preseason football soiree, and all the Blob has to say is, it's not like we haven't seen this before. Bunch of southerners talking about secession?  Old news, baby.

Yet that's what we've got here, because the warhead Sankey dropped was admitting that, hell, yes, the SEC might just go out on its own, and for much the same reasoning South used back in 18 and 61: Because a Union isn't working for them. The Union, in this case, being the NCAA.

Which admittedly has made total hash of college athletics here in the new age of NIL and unrestricted transfer portal warfare, to the extent that the college game is now just the pro game without any guardrails. The high-end talent goes where the money is, and, unlike the NFL or NBA or MLB, it can go there two, three, four times in four years if it wants to.

Free agency on that other level at least has some rules. Not so in the NCWildWest.

Which is why the SEC, or at least its leadership class, is seriously contemplating telling the NCAA to go fly a kite. And to form, I don't know, the Democratic Republic of the SEC or the Kingdom of Sis-Boom-Bah or the Confederate State U.'s of America or some such thing.

This of course would blow the current college construct to matchsticks, and it's a measure of just what a cluster that construct has become that a good chunk of America would say, "It's about damn time." And unlike that previous secession, it wouldn't carry the seeds of its own destruction from the jump.

The SEC could pull it off, see. It has the beefiest network in its corner (ESPN); its TV numbers are consequently the biggest; and you can't dial up March Madness, the College Football Playoff, or any other tournament in the revenue sports without tripping over six or eight SEC schools.

So, yeah. The Democratic Republic of the SEC could do its own thing -- and by its own rules, which it no doubt figures it could enforce better than the NCAA enforces its rules. If in fact it actually has any worth the name anymore.

A noble sentiment. But what happens then?

This is where the reception gets a bit fuzzy.

If the SEC goes out on its own, how long would it be before the other super conference -- the Big We-Can't-Count Ten -- breaks away, too? And if that happens, whither the Big 12, the ACC and so on? And speaking of the ACC, what would Notre Dame do if its longstanding deal with NBC either didn't survive the big shakeup, or would at least be significantly altered? 

What if Stonewall Jackson had been at Gettysburg?

Questions upon questions. For instance, if the SEC breaks away, would it stage its own March Madness? Its own CFP? Would it entice schools from the NCAA to participate with cash on the barrelhead and other incentives? And if it did, would the NCAA retaliate by trying to poach SEC schools for its tournaments by saying, fine, play with yourselves if you like, but wouldn't you rather be national champs?

Because you know the NCAA would claim whoever won its March Madness or CFP would be the REAL national champions, and not just champions of the Democratic Republic of the SEC.

"Nuh-uh!" you could imagine Sankey and the SEC responding.

 And there we'd be, with two different schools calling themselves national champs. Why, we'd be right back to the days (in football at least) when the AP poll declared one team the national champion, and the coaches' poll declared another team the national champion.

Voila: Dueling "We're No. 1!" bumper stickers.

Which actually was kinda fun, come to think of it.

Hmm.

The LeBron Watch

 So, then ...

Spain won the World Cup over a bunch of butt-hurt toddlers from Argentina.

A guy named Ryan Fox won The Open Championship by dunking a birdie putt on the 72nd hole ... after playing Royal Birkdale12-under across the last three days ... to become the first New Zealander to win the Open since Bob Charles way back in 1963.

The Boston Red Sox have won 14 straight games. Some guy is winning a bike race over in France. Caitlin Clark put up 45 points and 10 assists for the Indiana Fever the other night.

And still we don't know where LeBron James will be playing basketball this season.

"So?" you're saying now.

Also, "Is this like The Decision, only more annoying because LeBron's 41 years old now and it really doesn't matter where he plays basketball next year?"

Also, "In other words, who cares?"

The Blob's answers, in order: "What do you mean 'so'?" ... "Maybe" ... "'Who cares'? I'll tell you who cares -- Adam Silver."

Who is, of course, the commissioner of the NBA, and who the other day issued a public statement about the free agent negotiations of a single player. I can't say if this was unprecedented, but it was fairly extraordinary. And it demonstrated once again that LeBron James is one of the two or three greatest players in the history of basketball, and certainly the most significant player of his generation.

What Silver said, essentially, is LeBron needs to quit screwing around and tell everyone where his landing spot is for next season, which presumably will be his last. That's because where he lands will impact NBA scheduling, his auld-lang-syne season obviously requiring premo TV dates. So it would be nice to know which team to pencil in for those dates.

"Come on, LeBron," Silver said. "Poop or get off the pot."

OK, so he didn't actually say that. But the sentiment was there.

In response, of course, LeBron's close friend Rich Paul said King James will not be rushed, by Adam Silver or anyone else. He'll decide when he decides, and he'll go public with it when he goes public. This assumes he hasn't already decided where he's going, which a lot of NBA watchers suspect he has.

So perhaps this really is a sequel to The Decision, a ruinous public relations splatter that made LeBron appear incredibly self-absorbed, not to say high-and-mighty and I'm-LeBron-and-the-rest-of-you-peons-aren't, and who knows what all.

"What an a**hole!" was America's reaction.

And now?

"What an a**hole!" is both America's and Adam Silver's reaction.

(And, OK, again, Adam Silver never said that. But I'll put good coin down that he's thinking it, or something like it.)

In any event, LeBron ain't sayin' nothin', and there's nothin' even the commissioner of the NBA can do about it. Which makes the Blob imagine all sorts of ridiculous news items ...

NEW YORK, August 15 -- With LeBron James still not revealing where he'll play this season, NBA commissioner Adam Silver is busily working the phones trying to figure it out on his own.

"Is it you?" he asked the Philadelphia 76ers.

"Is it you?" he asked the Cleveland Cavaliers.

"Is it you?" he asked the Miami Heat, the Golden State Warriors, the New York Knicks, even the old Syracuse Nationals and Rochester Royals.

All of them declined to comment.

"Oh, come on, you guys!" Silver reportedly cried.

Or perhaps there'll be this ...

LOS ANGELES, September 3 -- LeBron James called a news conference today to finally announce where he'll be playing this season, as the entire NBA waited with baited breath.

"Looks like I'll be taking my talents to ... the Kentucky Colonels!" James announced.

And then, with an exaggerated wink: "Nah. Just messin' with ya. I just wanted to see if I could get you all out here."

"What an a**hole!" the assembled media cried.

"What an a**hole!" concurred Adam Silver.

And this time he meant it.

Espana!

 Generalissimo Francisco Franco may still be dead, but Spain is alive and well and, when last seen, was holding up the World Cup.

(Not to dredge up an ancient Chevy Chase bit or anything.)

Spain dunked defending champion Argentina 1-0 in extra time in the final yesterday, and consider it justice served. The best team doesn't always win in Sportsball World, but it surely did this time.

La Roja won because it's a precise and disciplined side that controls the ball and squeezes the life out of its opponents with the remorselessness of a python, or some other overheated metaphor. They spread you out and pounce on every ball that isn't as well-placed as theirs, and all of that was on full display Sunday against an Argentine squad that was mostly helpless against it.

Some numbers: In a game contested almost entirely in the Argentine end, Spain put 12 balls on goal to, incredibly, zero for Lionel Messi 'n' them. Only the brilliance of Argentine keeper Emiliano Martinez -- who made 11 saves, a record for a World Cup final -- kept it from being a blowout.

Spain did what Spain does, in other words. It made accurate passes an astounding 89 percent of the time, and compelled an increasingly desperate Argentina side to ugly up the game with ridiculous fouls and theatrical appeals to the game referee.

It wasn't a good look for the defending champs, nor was their unsportsmanlike postgame petulance. And Argentina paid for it, playing a man down for the 30 minutes of extra time after Enzo Fernandez was red-carded for two profoundly witless decisions. 

He drew his first yellow card for mockingly clapping after a foul call; then he drew the second, and his walking papers, for recklessly charging Spain's precocious 19-year-old center back Pau Cubarsi and flattening him with what amounted to a body block. Dumb and dumber.

Fernandez' red card happened three minutes into stoppage time. Eleven minutes into extra time, Nico Williams headed a slick backward pass from the end line to Ferran Torrez, who rocketed the only goal of the day into the top of the net.

Game, set and match for Espana, which is now 2-for-2 in World Cup finals. Incredibly, in eight games this time around, it surrendered just one goal -- against Belgium in a 2-1 quarterfinal win.

I know how most of us spell domination, in the wider world. But in the futbol world, on this warm July morning, it begins with "S".

A world united

The young man's name was Ishaan and he was wearing a Morocco soccer jersey, but today was not about Morocco. Today it was Colombia vs. Switzerland on the big screen in the back room of JK O'Donnell's here in the Fort, and Ishaan was rooting for Colombia.

"I put $20 on Colombia to win," he said proudly.

The seven or eight men and women dressed in Colombia yellow nodded and smiled when he said that. Then they went back to laughing and watching intently and moaning whenever Colombia -- which was forcing the action -- got a chance that came thisclose to a goal, but not close enough.

None of them were speaking English. 

Yet all of them seemed to understand whenever Ishaan expressed admiration for the way Colombia played this game of futbol, which of course is why we were all here in the middle of the afternoon on a Tuesday.

"Colombia's really good," Ishaan declared, and the men and women in their Colombia gear all nodded as if to say, "Thanks. And you're damn right we're good."

Something occurred to me just then.

It occurred to me that this World Cup business has been great for the human business, because it's knocked down all those flimsy, artificial barriers of language and culture and ignorance. In English or Spanish or German or Portuguese -- in French, Korean, Persian or Norwegian -- there is a universality to a man kicking a ball to another man. In every language on the planet, there's a way of saying, "That IDIOT! How did he misplay THAT ball??"

It's the mossiest cliche in the forest to say sports stitches us together like few other things, but we've seen the truth of it in close-up in America this past month or so. Foreigners our float-brain leaders encourage us to fear and loathe in other contexts have, in the context of the World Cup, seen the real America. And they have embraced it as readily as the real America has embraced them.

The Tartan Army of Scotland taking over Boston, and Boston returning the favor. The Clockwork Orange of Netherlands discovering barbecue in Kansas City. Another town in Kansas -- Lawrence -- embracing the Algerian team and fans as if they were its own.

We have learned about each other, in other words. And about ourselves in the process.

The Scots and Dutch and Norwegians and Algerians, first of all, have learned not just about barbecue and (go figure) ranch dressing; they've learned that Americans are not the worst of us.  We are not the bigots and xenophobes and bullying loudmouths who regrettably have become the official public face of our country here in the second Trump abomination. 

We are not Those Asshats, in other words. And Those Asshats do not speak for us.

So hooray for the Tartan Army, decorating Boston statuary with traffic cones and drinking up all the Sam Adams. And hooray for Norway's Erling Haaland, the Viking-est Viking ever, and the Viking row the Norwegian team and fans did everywhere they went.

Hooray for Lionel Messi and Kylian Mbappe and Mohammed Salah and Lamine Yamal, and for Switzerland's Breel Embolo and England's Jude Bellingham -- whom the English fans in their face paint and chain mail and Three Lions costumes saluted with a chorus of "Hey, Jude" after his two-goal performance against Norway, because of course they did.

Hooray, finally, for Ishaan in his Morocco jersey and the Colombian fans in their Colombian jerseys in the back room at O'Donnell's. I don't speak Spanish, regrettably, and I don't know how much English they knew. But we understood one another anyway.

Because when I got up to leave and said "Good luck",  they smiled and nodded and gave me a thumbs-up. For one small sliver of time, we were a world united.

Blessedly so.