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?

American echoes

 "It wasn't long before the attacks (on Irish-Catholics) began. The ranks of the Know-Nothings swelled. What was happening to the United States was a conquest, they claimed, indirect and unplanned, by foreign hordes, unknowing of our ways, with foreign values."

-- Timothy Egan, "The Immortal Irishman", of the Irish-Catholic diaspora of the 1840s

"It's not racist to say you don't want Muslims in America."

-- Current Vice-President JD Vance, not a Know-Nothing as far we, well, know

Someone smarter than most of us once said history doesn't so much repeat as reverberate. Its echoes tumble down the years from one age to the next, fetching up in the present with only the details altered, not the substance.

(And, yes, we're taking a drive outside the Sportsball compound again. Standard protocols apply.)

Which brings us to the two quotations above.

The first, as noted, takes us back to the 1840s, when a political movement grounded in anti-Catholic hysteria decided the Irish fleeing the Great Famine were militant Papists whose goal was not the opportunity America presented for a better life, but its subjugation to Rome.  If the "invasion" of Irish-Catholics was not checked, the Know-Nothings warned, soon all of America would be bowing to the Pope.

And the second quotation?

It advances a theme every bit as hysterical: That Muslims in America are militant Islamists whose goal is not the opportunity America presents for a better life, but its subjugation to Mohammed. If the "invasion" of Muslims is not checked, JD Vance and his ilk warn, soon all of America will be bowing to the mullahs.

In both cases, the assumptions are identical. Roman Catholics/Muslims aren't really Americans; they don't share our common values; they are incompatible with our culture. Or as Egan went on to write of the Know-Nothings' warnings: "No country on earth had tried to form a common bond without common ancestry -- it could not be done. And America was not by design a haven for the world's rejects ..."

At which point the echoes of  1840s America become thunderous. It's as if the anti-Muslim bigots -- no, not racists, but certainly bigots -- are following the Know-Nothings' script word-for-word.

Everything changes and nothing changes, in other words. The fear and loathing that has greeted almost every succeeding immigrant wave from the Irish onward employs the same weary rhetoric, advances the same weary ideology, fuels itself with the same weary ignorance.

And we should be weary of all of it -- or at least recognize it as the divide-and-conquer boogaloo charlatans and scoundrels have employed to hold onto power since the beginning of time.

Speaking of which, let's go back to JD Vance echoing what a lot of his fellow travelers have been saying out loud: That Islam is fundamentally incompatible with American "culture" (despite the fact our "culture" is not one but many), and therefore its followers should be cast out of the country no matter what the Constitution says.

The great irony, of course, is that's exactly the sort of religious bigotry that drove the Pilgrims to our shores to begin what we now call America.  And the other irony?

That JD Vance would so perfectly echo the old Know-Nothings.

Because JD Vance, you see, is Roman Catholic.

Karma sighting

 Your Chicago Cubs took care of the Los Angeles Dodgers yesterday, 7-6, completing a three-game sweep of the Trolley Dodgers in Wrigley Field. Even beat L.A.'s shiny new toy, Tarik Skubal,  by a 5-1 count on Tuesday.

The sweep extended L.A.'s current spiral to six straight Ls, which makes the Blob wonder something now that everyone's saying how unfair it is that the back-to-back World Series champs, already shamefully loaded, were able to pluck a two-time Cy Young winner (Skubal) before the trade deadline.

What I'm wondering is this: Is the Dodgers' six-game skid karma? Or something like it?

Because no  one likes an overdog. And you have to figure the baseball gods don't, either.

Random thought for today.

Copy-cattin'. Or not.

And now ... logo wars!

Which is the Blob's way of introducing the current tiff between Smith & Wesson and the Fort Wayne Football Club, two entities you never thought you'd see in the same sentence until you did.

Smith & Wesson, see, thinks Fort Wayne FC's logo looks waaaay too much like Smith & Wesson's logo, which of course has been around waaaay longer. So S & W is suing the local soccer club for copyright infringement.

I gotta be honest here. I think Smith & Wesson might have a case. 

But only a teensy one.

Yes, the font and calligraphy of both logos are eerily similar. But this does not mean Fort Wayne FC is guilty of copy-catting Smith & Wesson's deal. It just means in an America where corporate logos are thicker than BS in a congressional inquiry, sooner or later lookalikes are going to happen.

Besides, does anyone with a working synapse think Fort Wayne FC intentionally copied the logo of a gunmaker? Or even ran across it when it was trying to come up with something snazzy?

Imagine the conversation ...

FC Artistic Guy: Hey, let's check out some gunmaker logos. Maybe we'll see something snazzy.

FC Project Manager: Do WHAT?

Artistic Guy: Gunmakers! I mean, why not?

Project Manager: I dunno, because we're not a gunmaker? We're a soccer club. Why the hell would be looking at gunmaker logos? Better we should be checking out other soccer club logos so we don't inadvertently copy one and get sued.

Artistic Guy: OK, FINE. I suppose this means you don't want to check out these rad kitchen appliance logos, either. 

And so on.

At any rate, here's hoping some judge tells Smith & Wesson to take its teensy lawsuit and make a paper airplane out of it. 'Cause I, for one, happen to like the football club's logo. So I'd hate to see them have to scrap it for, I don't know, a logo featuring the silhouette of a soccer player leaning hard into a drive upfie--

Jerry West, from somewhere in the great beyond: "Hey! That looks like me!"

Well, crap.

Myths, fables and PCA

 Chicago Cubs star/wildcard Pete Crow-Armstrong (aka, "PCA") was on Kristin Cavallari's podcast this week, and, boy, did he not disappoint. Didja hear what he said THIS time?

(OK, so he didn't say it, exactly. A Seattle Mariners pitcher named Tayler Saucedo said it. PCA was just passing it along as an example of an unpopular opinion.)

Anyway, what PCA said Saucedo said was that, since very little video of Babe Ruth exists, maybe Babe Ruth didn't exist. Maybe he was a myth or a fable, like Paul Bunyan or Vince the ShamWow guy.

This, of course, immediately vaulted Saucedo into the top five on the Stupidest Things An Athlete Has Ever Said list. He's right up there with Kyrie "The Earth Is Flat" Irving now, or maybe even Aaron Rodgers.

Because of course Babe Ruth existed. The reason there's not much video of him is because ... well, figure it out. Start with "it was the 1920s" and go from there.

So, yeah. Babe Ruth existed, he hit 714 home runs, he called everyone "keed" (as in, "kid). He ate too many hotdogs and drank too much beer and one time in the World Series he called his shot, or didn't, or whatever.

Did we mention he hit 714 home runs?

Which PCA implied was less than impressive because, well, it happened in the Before Time, when he never had to face the likes of Satchel Paige on account of the baseball commissioner, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, was a racist douchecanoe who kept black players out of Major League Baseball.  

"People might as well have been like underhanding the ball to that guy," PCA said of the real/mythical Babe.

(Brief pause while Walter Johnson enters the chat. Also Lefty Grove. Also, what the hell, the Babe himself.)

(Lengthier pause while we discuss the door PCA opened with his comment, which is that you can't compare the 1920s to the 2020s because athletes are bigger, faster, stronger and not just white anymore.)

(All of which is true, by the way.)

What is also true, however, is that today's athletes are bigger, faster and stronger because training regimens are different and diet is different and the equipment is different. Saying the Babe, real or otherwise, couldn't compete today takes none of that into account. In the 1920s, he trained on hotdogs, chopped wood to get himself in shape, and thought cardio was the name of that new Italian slugger in Philly. And still, again, he hit 714 home runs.

Imagine a ripped, sleek Babe 2026 model swinging a modern bat crafted exactly to his specifications down to the molecular level. For that matter, imagine, say, Bjorn Borg in his prime playing with today's trampoline tennis racquets instead of the tiny wooden deals he had to make do with.

Why, he'd paint every line in the joint with those laser groundstrokes. It would hardly be fair.

Unless, of course, Tayler Saucedo or PCA or Kyrie claimed Borg never existed, either. You never know with these guys.

Today in turned tables

 Aaron Rodgers, everyone's favorite NFL wackadoodle, was on with Pat McAfee again yesterday, and he had some unkind things to say about Dr. Anthony Fauci, the ditso right's latest boogeyman/scapegoat/Extremely Evil Person. 

Veering off one of his tangents, A-Aron called Fauci an "absolute coward" for refusing to play along with Random Brain Cell Paul's dog-and-pony show last week. Said, like Fauci, he'd "plead the Fifth" when McAfee asked about training camp.

This gives the Blob the opportunity to turn the tables on all the aforementioned ditso's who love to tell left-leaning athletes and coaches to "stick to sports" and "just bounce the ball" when they offer non-sports opinions.

So, here goes:

1. "Stick to sports."

2. "Just throw the football."

3. "Nobody cares what you think of (choose one) Fauci, vaccines, the moon landing, etc."

4. "Could you go do your isolation thing again? 'Cause that would be awesome."

5. "You've been into the ayahuasca again, haven't you?"

6. "Or how about the peyote? Yeah, I bet it's the peyote."

7. "Orrrr ... or I hear your pal RFK Jr. is doing wonderful things with eye of newt these days. Maybe you scored some of that?"

And last but hardly least ...

8. "Bless your heart."