Irish moment

 Tonight is the Big One at Notre Dame — No. 4, once-beaten ND vs. No. 1, unbeaen Miami — and every Golden Domer from South Bend to Poughkeepsie knows what that  means.

It means another one of those Irish Moments.

Backs against the wall. The Gipper not picking up. Miami over there with, I don’t know, Steve Walsh or Bernie Kosar or Michael Irvin ready to push down Rockne or shove Leahy into a locker or something.

If Notre Dame loses this, it can likely say buh-bye to the College Football Playoff for the second year in a row.

If Miami loses in that garden of ghosts known as Notre Dame Stadium, it will only be a door-ding for a team virtually guaranteed a CFP slot win or lose.

Which is why I’m picking the Irish. It’s their kind of script.

Logic might dictate otherwise, despite the fact Miami will be missing incandescent receiver Malachi Toney and hasn’t blown EVERYONE out on its march to 8-0.

It barely beat a .500 North Carolina team last week, 38-35. Two weeks before, the Hurricanes needed two overtimes to survive 3-5 Florida State, which subsequently fired head coach Mike Novell for his shabby treatment of the House That Bobby Bowden Built.

Notre Dame?

It was 11th in the first CFP standings, one place from being out in the cold. This is because the Irish lost the only game on their schedule that’s mattered so far, against then-unbeaten BYU. Otherwise it’s been a lot of Navys and Stanfords and Whatsamatta U.s

So, yeah, this is the Irish Moment for this season. If Miami arrives without Toney, Notre Dame is missing some key defensive guys. If the ‘Canes would love a W here, the Irish need it. It’s flu-ravaged-Joe-Montana-slurping-chicken-soup-at-halftime-of-the-Cotton-Bowl time.

We all know what happened next: Flu-ravaged Joe went out and brought ND back from a 34-12 deficit, engineering a 23-point fourth quarter to beat Houston 35-34. 

Nobody’s hoping C.J. Carr ‘n’ them need that kind of melodrama tonight. They don’t even hope they need Pat Terrell picking off Steve Walsh to preserve that epic 31-30 Irish win over Miami in 1988 — the Catholics-vs.-Convicts game that ignited a rivalry that’s not nearly as bitter (or as much of a rivalry) 38 years later.

A nice, tidy 24-20 win will suffice. Or 27-24, or 20-17, or 33-31 for that matter.

Any old W will do. The lore will follow.

A LIV-ing requiem

 LIV golf officially went belly-up yesterday, joining the WFL, the USFL, the WHA and the late, great XFL in the pantheon of failed acronyms. 

Challenging the reigning monoliths of your sport is tough duty. And usually thankless. 

LIV Golf challenged the PGA, and as with the aforementioned challengers it did so by throwing money around like confetti — and by defying convention.

And so, like, say, the XFL had the running clock and nicknames instead of names on jerseys, LIV Golf was initially 54-hole tournaments with no cuts and guaranteed paychecks for every participant. And like, say, the WHA, WFL and USFL, LIV spent enormous sums to lure established PGA stars.

Unfortunately, also like the aforementioned, the cash outlay eventually proved too rich for even LIV’s well-moneyed backers. After five years and $5 billion, the league called it quits, done in by the usual: Not enough TV money, not enough eyeballs on the product and too many out-of-the-way venues.

Although, like that vintage Derek Sanderson Philadelphia Blazers jersey you found on eBay, maybe someday LIV devotees can score a vintage LIV Golf Andalucia tournament visor. Ya never know.

Curmudgeon time!

 I know Halloween is over now because one of the pumpkins on my porch has transformed into a black, rotting mess of pumpkin-y putridity, which some might interpret as a sign I should start hauling out the Christmas stuff. I disdainfully decline.

 Mistletoe and lighted wreathes and Santa 'n' them can wait their damn turn, far as I'm concerned. Thanksgiving comes first. Thanksgiving should issue a restraining order, in fact, against the jolly fat man and his filthy interloping elves. It should hire one of those Winthrop dudes to represent them, put on its hat with buckles and haul all that candy-cane, twinkly-lighted, a-star-a-star-shining-in-the-night noise into court.

And if that doesn't work, bring out the blunderbusses. 

"Gee, Mr. Blob," you're saying now. "You're sounding especially curmudgeonly this morning."

Yeah, well. Just taking my lead from the undisputed Curmudgeon of the Week, Charles Barkley.

The NBA analyst and outspoken proponent of all things sensible was back on the air a few days after Halloween, and he was not pleased. Oh, not because little Draculas and Spidermen and Coralines came to his door looking for candy, mind you. Because they also came to his door with his basketball card, looking for an autograph.

"You damn brats gotta quit bringing basketball cards and stuff to my damn house," Barkley groused. "I'm giving you free candy; I'm not there to sign autographs all night."

 Then he said it made him want to punch them in the face, but of course you can't go around punching little kids in the face. Imagine the fuss if Sir Charles decked some tyke in a Barney the Dinosaur suit. I mean, it was funny when he took Barney into the low post and crushed him on Saturday Night Live; it would be something else again if he did to a 3-foot-tall Barney.

Chuck being Chuck, of course, his rant did not sound as nasty as it looks in print. That's because he was doing his patented Exasperated Barkley schtick, which you suspected as usual was part real but mostly a put-on. No one who heard it seriously believed he was going to punch some poor kid in the face, or even throw him through a plate-glass window.

(Which of course he famously did to an obnoxious drunk one time, back in his rambunctious playing days.)

On the other hand, you did sympathize with him a bit. Greedy autograph collectors have been using little kids as beards for awhile now, which puts sports celebs like Barkley in a quandary. If they tell the kid to get lost because they know the game they're playing, they get blasted on social media: "Joe Big-Deal Baseball  Star Refuses To Sign Cap For Little Johnny! Outrage at 11!"

And if they sign?

Well. Then they know the kid's gonna take whatever they signed back to some collector, who'll sell it on eBay for a poop-ton of cash.

So, yeah. Put-on or not, some of Sir Charles's exasperation was likely genuine.

Which means, kids, a word to the wise: Next time you knock on Charles Barkley's door at Halloween, just take the Milky Way and be glad of it. And keep his rookie card in your pocket.

Common cause

 The stadium lights were ablaze at Fremont High School the other evening, even though it wasn’t Friday night and the Eagles’ next football game was a few days off.

Ninety miles to the south, meanwhile …

Ninety miles to the south, there is a vacancy this week that cannot be filled.

There is, this week, an ache in a communal soul, and a hole in a communal heart. There is an empty locker, an empty uniform; an empty place in the hallways at school, and an empty place on the practice field as the South Adams Starfires prepare to play a 1A sectional championship game tomorrow night.

The opponent is Fremont High School.

Whose stadium lights drove back the November dark to remind us that some losses, some vacancies, are universal. And that they bind us together no matter what the circumstance or occasion.

And so the lights were on at Fremont, and down in Adams County they were on, too, at Bellmont High School, where they held a prayer vigil to honor the memory of  South Adams football player Gabe Steiner, who was 16 years old and a bright light himself until Saturday night.

At a little after 10:30 that night, see, someone  sped through a stop sign at an Adams County crossroads and plowed into Steiner’s car. He was airlifted to Fort Wayne, where the docs brought the unimaginable news that Gabe Steiner — football player, wrestler, all-around all-American kid — had no brain function.

Wednesday afternoon, his parents had the machines turned off, and let him go to God. And tomorrow night, Gabe Steiner’s teammates will play a football game without him.

It’s been a grand season for the Starfires. They’re 9-2, and the only two games they’ve lost were against Eastside, an undefeated 2A team, and Bluffton, an undefeated 3A school. Ranked sixth in the state in 1A, they’ll be the favorite against Fremont.

Not that it matters so much, after this week. Not that what happened at that crossroads last Saturday night hasn’t lent a different aspect to what will happen this Friday night.

When two excellent football teams will battle it out for a sectional title. And when two small communities will rediscover the common cause that knits all small communities together, no matter how fiercely they compete on 100 yards of Indiana turf.

Your home truth for today.

Some election thoughts

 So Election Day is in the rearview now, and thank God for that. No more ads from Candidate A accusing Candidate B of cheating on his taxes, rooting for the Yankees and  throwing little Timmy down the well.

Whew. Enough of THAT nonsense. Besides, everyone knows it was Vivek Ramaswamy who threw little Timmy down the well (and poisoned Lassie!)

And speaking of governor’s races …

Looks like Tommy Tuberville will not be on the list for the Florida State football job.

Instead, the old ball coach was elected governor of Alabama last night, riding a Crimson Tide of loyal  ‘Bama fans, presumably. Anything to get Coach Tommy somewhere he couldn’t beat them anymore.

See, back when Tuberville was coaching Auburn before heading off to say goofy stuff in Congress, he used to beat ‘Bama like a dusty rug. Whupped the Tide six straight times, in fact, on his way to an 85-40 record in 10 seasons with the Tigers.

Now he’s in the governor’s office — where, in honor of the late George Wallace’s time in that chair, he’ll be standing in the schoolhouse door of coherence or some such thing. This is based on his track record in Congress, where he would periodically surface to call American Muslims terrorists, praise white nationalists and say transgender Americans were mentally ill.

But, hey. At least he won’t be coaching Florida State next season. Or Auburn, for that matter.

Which is surely cause for celebration in Tuscaloosa. 

The state capitol (Montgomery) is 103 miles away, after all. Not even Coach Tommy can kick the Tide around from there.

Youth is served

 Formula One racing may or may not be on your radar these days (“Formula what? Formula who?” you’re saying now), but the other day something fairly significant, and even historic, happened.

Mercedes driver Kimi Antonelli clinched the world championship.

He’s not a high school kid, But he’s not much beyond it, either.

At 20, he’s already in his third season in F1, which kinda officially makes him a prodigy. And, at 20, he’s the youngest F1 champion by a staggering three-plus years.

Know what else?

He!s also the first Italian driver to win the F1 title in 73 years.

Hard to believe? Of course it’s hard to believe.

I mean, you’d have thought Enzo Ferrari would have put fellow Italian in one of his smokin’ Italian Ferraris enough times in the 73 years to put an Italian atop F1 before now. But, nah. Hasn’t happened since 1953, when the great Alberto Ascari won the title in, yes, a Ferrari.

Ascari and Giuseppe Farina, by the way, were the only Italians to win an F1 title before Antonelli came along. Again, hard to believe.

Not anymore. Antonelli won five straight Grand Prix early in the season and nine of the first 19 to outdistance the field. He’ll likely do it again before he’s done, given what an early jump he’s gotten.

Hats off to him. And to youth, once again served.

Your Little Guy news for today

 Raise a glass this morning East Texas A&M University, a school of which you’ve never heard from a place of which you’ve never heard — Commerce, Tex., which sits northeast of Dallas pretty darn close to the Red River that separates Texas and Oklahoma.

Speaking of the latter, here’s why you should raise a glass to ET A&M:

‘Cause the Lions went up to Norman last night and beat the mighty Oklahoma University Sooners in men’s basketball.

Yes, sir. Took down the Sooners 68-64. Never trailed after the 12:59 mark of the first half. Entered the game as a 28.5-point underdog.

Which figured, because Oklahoma has an enrollment of 40,000 and had been playing D-I basketball for 118 years.

East Texas A&M has an enrollment of just over 8,000. The Lions have been D-I for just five years.

So here’s to the little guy. May he always loom large.