An eternal debate

 It's May now and down in Speedway, In., that old May soundtrack -- the whine and whoosh of purebred racing machines -- rises again from the erector-set canyon of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.  So I guess it's time once more to dust off the eternal debate.

 This isn't my idea, mind you. It's Stephen A. Smith's.

Or, rather, he's the one who brought it up a couple of weeks ago, when he was running his mouth as usual and said golfers and race-car drivers -- specifically, NASCAR drivers -- are not really athletes. 

"Come on, man," Stephen A. opined. "That don't count. You driving a car!"

This brought withering rebuttals from a number of NASCAR folk -- including, significantly, car owner Michael Jordan and longtime driver Kurt Busch. The latter posted this on social media: "Let's go cupcake. I will personally drive you around a NASCAR track for 30 minutes or when you pass out on lap 30."

Ooh. Shots fired!

Me?

Well, my best friend and I have been having this same debate practically since we've known each other, which is almost the entirety of our mutual 71 years. A confirmed gearhead, I covered the Indianapolis 500 as a sportswriter for 40 years; my friend did not. So he takes the "nay" position, and I take the "yay" position. 

Of course, we both long since concluded neither was going to convince the other, so the debate, eternal as it is, has become something of a pro-forma inside joke. Kinda like that old SNL bit with Jane Curtin and Dan Aykroyd, where Dan would routinely challenge Jane's position by beginning, "Jane, you ignorant slut."

In any case, our debate has gone viral now, and let me say this about that: Stephen A.'s elevator doesn't go all the way to the top.

I say this having watched racers literally being pulled from their cars in exhaustion after "driving" for three or four hours in the suffocating heat of a southern summer. I say it having watched IndyCar drivers circle Indy's fabled, capricious two-and-a-half miles for three hours at 220-plus.

Any twitch, any micro-second of inattention or less-than-superhuman reflex will put you in a world of often literal hurt there. Just as it will for the stock-car boys at Talladega or Daytona or gritty old bullrings like Bristol or North Wilkesboro.

Once, in what I like to call the Before Time, I got roped into a charity race at Anderson (In.) Speedway, another venerable old bullring roughly 50 miles northeast of IMS. I was 28 years old then, played a lot of basketball, and was in decent physical shape. The race was 10 laps on Anderson's banked quarter-mile track. So, what, 2.5 miles, right?

In other words, one lap around Indy. At, I don't know, 50 mph or so top end in a battered late-model I suspected was being held together by duct tape.

And who was utterly exhausted by the end of it?

This guy. Twenty-eight-year-old physically fit humanoid. After 10 laps.

I can't even imagine what kind of shape you have to be in -- or what kind of eye-hand coordination, reflexes and concentration you have to have -- to last 200 laps and 500 miles in a rocket ship traveling roughly 323 feet per second. Or  to make it through a 500-mile stock car race at, say, Talladega, where you're humming along at 180 or 190 mph inches apart from 40-some others for three or four hours.

So, yeah, there's my "yay" perspective in this eternal debate. And Stephen A. Smith?

I think he should take Kurt Busch up on his offer. Might open his eyes a bit.

At least until he passes out.

One smallish leap

 Well, well, well. Now they've gone and done it.

Kinda.

Sorta.

In a really, really careful way, like when you ask someone "Is this safe?", and he or she says "Yeah, it's safe", and then you say "Are you sure?", and he or she says "Sure, I'm sure", and then you say "Gee, I don't know ..."

This was the Indiana High School Athletic Association yesterday.

Which stuck its toe in the NIL waters by voting to approve an NIL structure for its high school athletes, although it won't be called NIL and has restrictions on its restrictions, just to keep high school kids from signing exclusive personal services deals with Big Harve's Gently Used Lawn Tractors, a longtime supporter of Pudville Consolidated High School athletics.

Nah. None of that for the IHSAA. What they voted to approve yesterday will not be called "NIL" but "PBA," which stands for "personal branding activities" and is not to be confused with that other PBA, the Professional Bowlers Association.

Under the  "personal branding activities" PBA, Indiana high school athletes will be allowed to engage in branding activities that include "social media, personal appearances and endorsement activities unrelated to their school athletic participation." In other words, they can't "perform personal athletic services", or appear in their high school uniform, or in any other way use represent their high school in a "branding activity."

That means, presumably, that Big Harve can't say, "This here's Flip Wannamaker, star quarterback for the Pudville Fightin' Pine Knots, demonstratin' what a great job our gently-used lawn tractors do. Go ahead, Flip, fire that puppy up and take it for a spin!"

And Flip dutifully fires it up and mows a strip or two, his aqua No. 17 Pudville jersey proudly rippling in the breeze.

Now, I don't know if the IHSAA's restrictions will prevent some Flip from Indiana to be identified as an athlete at a specific high school in some TV ad, or if he'll just be an unidentified high school kid who shows up eating a cheeseburger at the Burgers 'N' Such Cafe and gets paid for it. Except for the getting paid for it part, after all, it wouldn't be the first time a local high school athlete appeared in the background of a TV commercial or in a social media ad for some local business or other.

So the IHSAA is taking a baby step here. A smallish leap for mankind, if you will. A tentative concession to the new age, when not only good old Flip but his teammates can make a little on the side.

Although I don't know how the IHSAA gets around the obvious fact their "branding opportunities" unavoidably will be tied to their "high school athletic participation," even if the IHSAA says that's a no-no. I mean, those opportunities are going to happen precisely because of their high school athletic participation, right?

Just one Gordian knot the IHSAA will have to hack through now that it's decided (reluctantly) to join modern times. There will surely be others.

However distasteful the IHSAA, and the rest of us, may find that prospect.

Stupid human tricks

 (In which the Blob takes another brief detour from Sportsball World. Standard procedures apply.)

America the Calibrated scored another big "W" last night, except this time there was no body count. Thank God for small favors, and all that.

This time the usual knuckleheads skinned their smokewagons (obligatory "Tombstone" reference) during a party at a lakeside campground in Oklahoma. At least a dozen people wound up going to the hospital with gunshot wounds, and the beat goes on, the beat goes on. The Blob long ago shed its naivete over such incidents, having accepted the sad fact that the knuckleheads far outnumber the sane folk today in these United States.

So hooray for the nation of the Second Amendment ... and all that. Where Lee Greenwood is proud to be an American, where at least he knows he's free to, I don't know, pull out a Sig Sauer and start shooting because someone looked at him cross-eyed. Where every freedom-loving 'Merican thinks it's perfectly normal to pack heat wherever he or she goes, because The Right To Keep And Bear Arms Shall Not Be Infringed.

Also because you never know when a trip to the Piggly Wiggly is going to require some sort of Wyatt Earp cosplay.

"Gee, Mr. Blob," you're saying now. "You sound bitter."

Do I? More like resigned. Not to say weary to death of the knuckleheads and law-makin' lint-brains who enable them.

So, I hereby surrender.

Sure, by all means, let's keep pulling guns out and opening fire at -- in this case -- a first-weekend-in-May celebration called (un-ironically, apparently) Sunday Funday. Let's break up another soiree in Bloomington just a week earlier, when post-Little 500 partiers on Kirkwood were sent fleeing because more knuckleheads decided to pull out their guns and start shooting, winging five of the revelers.

Let the congress critters with their AR-15 lapel pins offer up the usual thought-and-prayers, for all the good it ever does. Let stupid humans performing stupid human tricks become the new normal here in this insane asylum that used to be the greatest country on earth. 

That business on Sunday Funday in Oklahoma, for instance? 

It took place outside of Edmond, a city of 95,000 or so just north of Oklahoma City, where Timothy McVeigh did his deal 31 years ago. Nine years before that, in Edmond itself, a postal worker named Pat Sherrill walked into the post office and shot 20 people before turning the gun on himself. Fourteen of them died.

So Sunday Funday was a legacy calibration event, in a sense. God bless America.

He may be the only one.

Rarity Day

 And now, Alex Trebek, we'll take Stuff  You Don't See Every Day for $100 ...

* He was dead last most of the way. Thirteenth with a quarter-mile to go. Still 13th at the head of the stretch.

But you know what?

Golden Tempo won the 152nd Kentucky Derby anyway.

A 23-1 shot even his jockey, Jose Ortiz, called "lazy", Golden Tempo finally got up and said, "Welp, time to go", swung wide, and passed the field down the stretch like a Maserati passing a bunch of combines. Made 'em all look like statuary except for the betting favorite, Renegade, another late runner whom Golden Tempo beat to the wire by a neck.

Heck of a run for ol' lazybones.

Heck of a piece of history, too, because Golden Tempo's trainer was Cherie DeVaux, who became the first woman trainer in 152 runnings to win horse racing's biggest prize. Eighteen women have trained Derby entries across the years; only DeVaux managed to claim the roses. 

So Derby Day was also Rarity Day, and not just because of DeVaux. Know who was aboard Renegade as he and Golden Tempo came churning down the stretch?

Irad Ortiz. Jose's brother.

To sum up: Two brothers for the win, a woman trainer in the winner's circle for the first time, and, hey, look at this: Was that Ocelli, a late entrant and 70-1 shot, completing the trifecta in third?

Sure was. 

And was that Great White, another heavy 'dog, throwing his rider before being loaded in the gate and getting himself disqualified?

What, you think I could make that up?

Well, I didn't. It happened, speaking of rarities.

 Listen. There's always a horse or two who balks at stepping into the gate ("In there? I'm not going in there. Uh-uh, no way") in these deals. That happens all the time. But I've never seen a horse actually throw his rider ("I TOLD YOU I'M NOT GOING IN THERE!") to avoid it.

So, yeah. Rarity Day indeed.

And speaking of which ...

* Didja see what happened in Boston last night?

The Philadelphia 76ers beat the hometown Celtics109-100, as Joel Embiid went for 34 points, 12 rebounds and six assists, and Tyrese Maxey for 30 points, 11 boards and seven dimes. It was the first time NBA history that two teammates put up at least a 30-10-5 stat line in Game 7 of a playoff series.

But that's not all! Tell 'em what else the Sixers won, Johnny Olsen!

They won a playoff series against the Celtics for the first time in 44 years.

Yessir. The last time Philly knocked Boston out of the playoffs, it was 1982, and Ronald Reagan was president. Dr. J was still a thing in the City of Brotherly Love. Larry Bird was just beginning to burnish his legend. Michael Jordan was a freshman at North Carolina, and LeBron James wasn't even born yet.

Know what else?

The Sixers had to overcome a three-games-to-one deficit to swipe the series.

Which means they had to win two of the last three games in Boston. Which also means they had to do something they'd never done; they were an NBA record 0-18 when trailing 3-1 in a series. And which also means the Celtics had to do something they'd never done: Lose a series they led 3-1.

Going into last night, they were 32-0 lifetime in that circumstance. Thirty ... two ... and oh.

But Embiid, Maxey and the rest got it done. Just like Cheri DeVaux, Jose Ortiz and Golden Tempo got it done.

Great White, though ...

A parting's sweet sorrow

 It appears obvious now the Anthony Richardson Experiment in Indianapolis is done like dinner, with word coming down yesterday that the Colts were not picking up his option for 2027. And if you have any sort of beating heart at all, you should feel something about that.

Sadness, certainly. Pity for a lovely young man. The disappointment of high hopes gone to ash. 

Anger?

Well, yes. That, too.

Anger, first and foremost, that the Colts took a flier on a grass-green prospect of un-surpassing athleticism, and then basically said, "OK, kid, play." Richardson was still just 20 years old at the time, and he'd started just 13 games in college. He likely was still humming his high school's fight song when the Colts plucked him with the fourth pick in the 2023 NFL Draft.

And yet ...

And yet, two weeks into his first NFL training camp, they named him their starting quarterback.

This was insane on its face; the kid was nowhere near ready to be a QB1 in the NFL, and anyone with a working porch light should have known it. And so, as night follows day, we all know what happened next.

He failed.

In 17 starts across three seasons, he threw 11 touchdowns with 13 interceptions, and completed a touch over half his throws in a league where 65 percent or so is the benchmark. He got hurt, over and over, trying to do the sort of things against grown-ass men he did against high school and college kids. As the Colts' starter in 2023 and '24, he missed 17 games; last season he languished on injured reserve after sustaining an orbital fracture in a bizarre pregame mishap involving a resistance band.

By that time, however, it was becoming unnervingly obvious that he might not The Guy the Colts drafted him to be. His immaturity became an issue, because -- hello -- how could it not have been? It culminated when he took himself out of the game to "catch his breath" during a potential winning drive.

He got roasted for that by all the social media brainiacs, and the brainiacs actually had a valid point for once. On the other hand, who handed Richardson the reins -- and the truckload of responsibilities that come with it -- in the first place?

Hint: It wasn't AR.

It was Chris Ballard, Shane Steichen and the rest of  'em, who kept trying to clean up the mess they'd made until they couldn't. So they brought in Daniel Jones, and Jones won the starting job, and then the eye thing happened, and suddenly Richardson was third on the depth chart behind Jones and Riley Leonard out of Notre Dame.

And now, perhaps not even that.

Parting is such sweet sorrow, the bard told us. And all the people in their Horseshoe Blue said, "Amen."

Derby time!

The 152nd Kentucky Derby goes off tomorrow down at Churchill Downs, and, sadly, once again My Friend Flicka is not among the favorites. Neither is National Velvet, Mr. Ed or his smart-aleck son Mr. Ted, who mouthed off one too many times and wound up holding together some second-grader's art project.

"Oh, nice, Mr. Blob," you're saying now. "Don't you think it's time to come up with some new material? You make the same jokes every year."

You mean the one about all the women wearing hats designed by Frank Lloyd Wright?

"Yes," you're saying, through gritted teeth.

The one about how the Derby field is always three or four actual horses and 16 cans of Alpo?

"(Grumble)."

The one about how mint juleps are just Robitussin in a fancy glass? Or how the Twin Spires are great because, look, there's two of 'em? Or how "My Old Kentucky Home" has got nothin' on Dan Fogelberg's "Run For The Roses"?

"Oh, great, let's not leave THOSE out," you're saying.

Wouldn't think of it. Also wouldn't think of failing to mention (again!) how much I love everything about the Derby, even though I've never been and the only thing I know about horses is they have something called a fetlock and something else called withers, which I think once wrote a song called "Ain't No Sunshine."

"Aaaand here comes the Bill Withers joke," you're saying, rolling your eyes.

Anyway ...

Anyway, it's time for another hardy perennial, Derby Advice From A Guy Who Doesn't Know Anything About Horses, Except That Sometimes They "Walk The Shedrow," Whatever That Is:

* The Derby favorite as of this morning is a horse named Renegade, but don't put your money on his nose. This is because the betting favorite hardly ever wins the Derby, and also because Renegade drew the inside post position. Which is kind of like starting 33rd in the Indianapolis 500.

* There's a Japanese horse in the Derby this year, but don't drop your coin on him, either. Not only is he a 20-1 shot as of this morning, he's a Japanese horse. Japanese horses are mutts in the Derbo; ten horses bred there have run the Run for the Roses, and only one has finished better than fifth.

However, this one does have a cool name: Danon Bourbon. No, I don't know what it means. But if you're one of those carefree souls who bet on horses' names, have at it. Hey, it's not my money.

* Speaking of foreign horses, you know who was the last Derby winner to be bred outside North America? Tomy Lee, way back in 1959. I don't know squadoosh about him, either, but you might win a bar bet with that nugget.

* And speaking of mutts ...

As of this morning, there are three 50-1 shots in the Derby field: Six Speed, Great White and the Blob's personal favorite, Ocelli.

Ocelli drew the 20th and last post position, which means he basically starts the race across the river in Jeffersonville. He's winless in six starts, but he does have D. Whitworth Beckman as his trainer.

Now, I don't know anything about D. Whitworth Beckman, which is no surprise. But he sounds like one of those crusty old guys in British horse movies who wears a lot tweed, smokes a pipe and goes around snarling at people to keep their hands off the horse, laddie.

(Alas, my imagination fails me again. D. Whitworth Beckman is actually a local. Grew up in Louisville. And he's only 43 years old.)

And last but not least ... 

* Your Derby pick.

I'm going with a horse named So Happy.

So Happy is a 15-1 shot right now, but at least he's not starting from the No. 1 or No. 20 post position. He's also not starting from the No. 2 post (no Derby winners since Affirmed in 1978); the No. 9 post (last Derby winner, Riva Ridge in 1972); the No. 12 post (Canonero II, 1971); the No. 14 post (Carry Back, 1961); and the No. 17 post, from which no Derby winner has ever started.

No, So Happy starts from the No. 7 hole, and he's got a poignant back-story. Not only was he a bargain buy -- he initially went for just $14,000 at auction -- he's trained by Mark Glatt, who's got a horse in the Derby for the first time at the age of 53. It would be a joyous occasion for him had he not lost his beloved wife Dena in February.

Taking So Happy to the gate will be jockey Mike Smith, who has his own story. Officially he's listed as 60 years old, but Smith keeps insisting he's only 59. So you've got a horse purchased on the cheap, a first-time Derby trainer weighed down by grief, and a jock who's either 59, 60 or, hell, who really knows.

That gets my money.

Two bucks on So Happy to win. I'm goin' all in.

Hoosier hysteria

 The Indiana High School Athletic Association is weighing an NIL proposal for its high school athletes, and, boy, howdy. You know what that means, boys and girls.

"The end of days?" you're saying now. "Lakes of fire, rivers running backward, dogs and cats living together?"

Well ... no.

But you can't help imagining all of that, as Hoosier Hysteria becomes simply hysteria in some corners of our fair state.

What if the parents of the kid who gets cut from the team sues the coach for restraint of trade?

What if South Northwest Podunk High sues Big Suburban Moneybags High for stealing its 6-9 center with a chunkier endorsement deal?

What if the parents of the current Big Suburban Moneybags High center sues the school for lost wages, because the 6-9 move-in now has their Johnny's former endorsement deal?

Sound, well, hysterical?

Maybe. But any and all of the above could happen. Although a lot of it probably won't.

That seems to be the way these seismic events tend to unspool, with the hand-wringers' worst-case scenarios making only sporadic appearances. Will there be lawsuits? Well, yes, because this is America, and in America everyone sues everyone for everything. Also there already have been lawsuits here and there (emphasis on "here and there") in a lot of the other states that have adopted high school NIL.

Which is almost of them.

As of the turn of the year, 45 states plus the District of Columbia have some form of Name, Image and Likeness at the high school level. Indiana is one of the five that doesn't, which figures. We are, after all, the stubborn coot of states, forever coming around last; we're so notorious for it, in fact, the state seal should include the aforementioned coot shaking his liver-spotted fist and shouting at a too-modern-looking cloud.

Me?

I just wonder WWOD. Or what WWDD. Or WWRMD.

As in: What Would Oscar Do, and What Would Damon Do, and What Would Rick Mount Do. Or George McGinnis, Jay Edwards, Shawn Kemp, Glenn Robinson, any number of others.

Bobby Plump has made a career out of hitting that mid-range jumper for Milan back in 1954; he even has a restaurant named Plump's Last Shot. But he didn't open it in high school. If NIL had been around, he could have -- or at least lent his image to it for a handsome fee.

Damon Bailey?

Shoo. There's already a monument to him in his hometown of Heltonville, and John Feinstein made him famous -- as an eighth-grader -- in "A Season on the Brink." By the time he took Bedford North Lawrence to the state finals as a freshman, everyone in the state had heard of him. Heck, he was so famous he could have opened his own rib joint.

(Ha-ha, just kidding. I know the Damon's Grill chain wasn't named for Damon Bailey. Or at least I don't think so.)

Oscar Robertson, meanwhile, is only the greatest basketball player ever to come out of our basketball state, unless it's Larry Bird.  And Rick Mount was the first high school athlete ever to grace the cover of Sports Illustrated. Think they couldn't have made some NIL jack?

As for the others ...

Well, Glenn Robinson actually had a nickname: The Big Dog. He could have been the public face  -- again, for a handsome fee -- of a chain of dog-grooming places called Big Dog's Daring 'Do's. How perfect is that?

"Umm ... not very?" you're saying now.

OK. But you get the gist, right? 

The point is, the possibilities are endless, and not just in basketball. Just now, for instance, I'm remembering Indiana football legend Jade Butcher, who, before he starred for IU's first Rose Bowl team, was a hometown high school legend at Bloomington High School. Imagine what sort of NIL deal he could have landed as the public face of a rare gem shop?

Hi, I'm Jade Butcher from Bloomington High, and welcome to Jade's House of Jade ...

Great, right?

Um, right?