A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 1

 And now, like the swallows to Capistrano or the mosquitos to, well, pretty much everywhere, the perennial return of The NFL In So Many Words, the Blob feature of which John McEnroe said "You CANNOT be SERIOUS!", and Margie in "Fargo" said "Just throwin' up here.":

1. "You CANNOT be SERIOUS!" (Green Bay fans, after the Packers blew another double-digit lead, gave up 29 unanswered points and lost to the Vikings. The Vikings, for pity's sake!)

2. "Just throwin' up here." (Cowboys, Colts, Browns, Rams, Panthers fans)

3. "You CANNOT  be SERIOUS!" (Panthers fans again, after Carolina gave up 59 points to the Bears)

4. "Arrrgh! Sixty points and I woulda won a free Big Mac!" (Bears fans)

5. Meanwhile, the Chiefs!

6. Kicked the Broncos around like a beanbag on Monday Night Football.

7. "Ha! Told ya I wasn't dead! You said I was dead! Well, I'm not! So phooey on you!" (Patrick Mahomes, who threw for two scores and ran for another in the 31-10 Chiefs win)

8. "Ha! I caught a long pass! Told ya I wasn't washed! Marrying Tay-Tay didn't ruin me after all, so nyah nyah nyah-nyah nyah!" (Travis Kelce, who caught three balls for 71 yards)

9. "Daaaang. We just lost to Drew Lock!" (The Patriots, after Seattle won the Super Bowl rematch with their backup Lock after losing Sam Darnold in the first quarter)

10. "Daaaang. Australia's, like, really, really far away!" (The Rams, after getting jet-lagged in Melbourne by the 49ers -- who, unlike the Rams, flew down a week early to acclimate themselves)

Historical shenanigans

 God love that Eli Drinkwitz. He's the football coach at the University of Missouri, and even though I've got no dog in that hunt, I'll root for the Tigers every time because that dude has his business together.

For example, hear what happened over the weekend at the Missouri-Kansas Border War game?

Some meatheads in Lawrence decided to engage in historical shenanigans to hype the big game.

Rolled out a video, the meatheads did, about all the Bleeding Kansas stuff that foreshadowed the bloodiest, most tragic four years in American history, when Missouri vigilantes invaded Kansas and sacked Lawrence (home of KU) and murdered a bunch of abolitionists, and John Brown and his boys murdered a bunch of anti-abolitionists in retaliation. It was not a happy time for either state.

But Kansas being a free state and Missouri a slave state at the time, KU decided it would be way cool to dredge it up 170 years after the fact, under the heading "Heroes vs. Villains."

Nice.

Not that Drinkwitz thought so.

After the game -- a No, he said, rightly, that it was weird and stupid and in exceedingly poor taste, especially given it was the 25th anniversary of 9/11 and a time when we should all be reflecting on the futility of violence in the name of one ideology or other. Then he admitted he dialed up a take-that touchdown on fourth down late in the Tigers' 38-21 rout. 

"I don't really care of (the rivalry) continues or not," Drinkwitz said. "If they're going to be weird about it, what's the point. If they want to have a football game and play a football game and have a great rivalry on the border, then awesome. Let's do it."

And then, taking one last shot he couldn't resist: "But if we want to make it deeper than that, man, we left Kansas bleeding again."

Ouch.

Love this guy.

Close-out of the year

 You can call Caitlin Clark a lot of stuff -- and, lord, everyone has -- but one thing you're never gonna call her is The Glove, which is what they used to call NBA star Gary Payton. This is because Payton made his bones as a shut-down defender, and Caitlin does not.

She's a scorer, a facilitator, a court visionary. But "D" is never gonna be her A-game.

However ...

However, that might have been the close-out of the year she pulled off yesterday.

This was after Team USA cleaned its plate in the World Cup basketball tournament, dispatching France 97-79 in the championship game. The 'Mericans rolled unbeaten through the tournament, and have now won five straight World Cups. 

Among many notable items in the win was Breanna Stewart once again leading the way for Team USA. And also the way Clark and her supposed nemesis, Angel Reese, worked in concert on the floor as if they'd been playing together since childhood.

Clark dished to Reese. Reese dished to Clark. This astonished a lot of folks who've dined on the phony narrative lazy media types have been selling about women's buckets these days -- which is that mean black girls are resentful of a white girl (Clark) becoming the face of of the WNBA, and thus are picking on her.

The corollary to that is Clark and Reese are mortal enemies. Which led to an exchange between Clark and a reporter in the postgame yesterday, as reported on the website Awful Announcing..

It began with the reporter asking if Clark and Reese were, you know, "friends now."

Clark, who has had it up to here with all the nonsense surrounding her and the WNBA, shut that s*** right down.

"We've always been friends," she snapped.

And then:

"Don't try to do that," she went on, shaking her finger at the reporter. "Don't try to do that."

Not content with that, when her media availability was done she walked back to said reporter and gave him another piece of her mind.

Now THAT was some stellar "D." The Glove would be proud.

Invisible

 You probably missed it while the Bears were scoring eleventy-hundred points and your Indianapolis Colts were getting off to a rousing start in their season opener, but Kyle Larson drove his race car to victory in a race-car race yesterday.

(And, OK, so the Colts DIDN'T get off to a rousing start. That was a joke. So were the Horseshoes, who played like big dummies and got paved by the visiting Baltimore Ravens, 41-23.)

(Also, the Bears DIDN'T score eleventy-hundred points. They only scored 59. Caleb Williams threw for two scores and ran for two more and looked the best quarterback the Bears have had since Peter Tom Willis. OK, that was a joke, too. He actually looked the best quarterback the Bears have had since, I don't know, forever.)

Where was I again?

Oh, yeah, Kyle Larson driving his race car to victory in a race-car race. It happened at World Wide Technology Raceway in Madisonville, Ill., which is close enough to St. Louis to count as St. Louis. Larson snapped a 51-race winless streak with his win, which came in the second race of the NASCAR Cup playoffs and featured two red flags in the last 11 laps because guys kept running into one another.

I know all this only because I looked it up on a sports website. And not on the lead page of the sports website, but way back in the NASCAR section. What, you thought NASCAR was gonna be front-page news on the first Sunday of the NFL season, and also the day an American (Ben Shelton) couldn't quite close the deal in the U.S. Open final against Alexander Zverev?

(Too bad for the latter. Shelton and Frances Tiafoe are the two most dynamic American men to come down the tennis pike in a long time. One or the other's gonna win a major before long, just you see.)

Anyway ...

Anyway, seeing NASCAR turn invisible just when its playoffs get rolling makes me wonder again who's running this sport and why they can't see what seems so obvious to the rest of us. Namely, that its season is waaay too long, and consequently gets swallowed up every year by King Football and the World Series and who knows what all.

What NASCAR ought to do, in the Blob's humble opinion, is follow IndyCar's lead.

And, yeah, I know, that's the last thing NASCAR wants to hear, but listen: IndyCar does this right. It ran the last race of its season last week, on Labor Day weekend. That got it  off the stage before football and all the rest began, which is as organic a stopping point as there is.

NASCAR?

NASCAR's season begins in mid-February and lasts until the voyages of the starship Enterprise. This year it didn't even begin the climax of its season until Labor Day weekend, when it ran one of its traditionally iconic races, the Southern 500 at Darlington. It was the first race of the playoffs, which go on for another 2 1/2 months.

If yours truly were running the show, the Southern 500 would be the LAST race of the playoffs, and thus the last race of the season. I'd achieve this by axing eight to ten regular-season races and running a 26-or-27-race regular season. That seems like plenty to me.

And, again, yeah, I know. There's no way that's going to happen. Cutting  eight or ten races out of the schedule means cutting revenue stream, for both NASCAR and the venues it supports. In a sport that sucks down dollars the way Joey Chestnut sucks down hotdogs, that's a non-starter.

And yet ...

And yet, at least NASCAR wouldn't vanish into the ether once the clock struck football season. At least it wouldn't do that.

Big Tin

 Gee, thanks a LOT, Ohio State. Now we'll never hear the end of it from those southern-fried goobers.

In the marquee game of the unofficial (sort of) Big Ten-SEC Challenge yesterday, The Ohio State University, the No. 1 team in the land, swallowed a Buckeye wrong and yakked one up to No. 4 Texas. The  Tree Nuts did this despite leading 23-3 going into the fourth quarter, in Austin, making all those burnt-orange fanatics grab their heads in dismay.

So the Big Ten was looking pretty, pretty, pretty good, to quote Larry David. Earlier in the day, Michigan had  taken down No. 11 Oklahoma in a throwback defensive battle that must have had Bo Schembechler tugging on his "M" cap in approval up there on the Big Sideline. Ohio State washing Texas would make it 2-0 over ranked SEC schools for the Big Ten, and neener-neener-neener.

(And, yes, I know, Mississippi State laminated Minnesota 38-13. So, technically, with a quarter to play in Austin, the Big Ten was up only 2-1 on the SEC.  But it was Mississippi State and Minnesota, so who really cared?)

Where was I again?

Oh, yeah, Ohio State absolutely spanking the Longhorns after three quarters, looking like much the better team by a long chalk. Julian Saylin was throwin' and Jeremiah Smith was catchin' and Bo Jackson was runnin' AND catchin', and so much for the epic showdown. The Longhorns were steak nuggets on a plate.

And then ...

And then Arch Manning started running and throwing, and one of the great names in college football this year -- Hollywood Smothers, I kid you not -- started slithering through cracks in the Ohio State front, and, hey, look, the Longhorns finally breached the end zone.

Then they did it again.

And, then, after Ohio State missed a 45-yard field goal attempt that would have closed the door with 4:16 left, Hollywood vaulted into the end zone to win it for the 'Horns with 25 seconds showing.

Made Lam Jones and Ham Jones proud. Also Cotton Speyrer. Also Happy Feller, Duke Carlisle and everyone else on the Longhorn All-Name Team.

Final score: Texas 24, Ohio State 23. Final fourth-quarter score: Texas 21, Ohio State 0. Final Big Ten/SEC score: SEC 2, Big Ten 1.

"Thank God for Michigan," a Big Ten fan might said, if such things are actually said outside of Ann Arbor these days.

Thank God, too, that Saturday's over, because it wasn't a red-letter day for the Big Tin generally. Iowa did manage to come from behind to beat rival Iowa State in the Farmall Bowl (OK, so nobody calls it that), but No. 6 Oregon went down to Stillwater, Okla., and got shelved by unranked Oklahoma State, 39-31. Duke sashayed into Champaign and took down Illinois. And Purdue ...

Ah, geez, Purdue. Geez.

Purdue had its first win in three years over a Power 4 school safely battened down, but then it Purdue-ed it up. The Boilermakers erased a 10-point deficit in the last four minutes to force overtime, and, after the fabulously named Fame Ijeboi (it's a great year for names in college football, apparently) scored to put Purdue up 36-30 in the second OT, the Boilers had Wake Forest down a hole on its possession: Fourth down, 15 yards to go, everyone in Ross-Ade howling for the imminent W.

And then ...

"They blew it, didn't they?" you're saying now.

Yes they did.

Instead of bringing the house on fourth down, the Boilers went into cover mode (aka: faint-heart mode). That gave Wake QB Gio Lopez breathing room to make a play, which of course he did. Threw a pass to Carlos Hernandez, who either stepped out of bounds short of the first-down marker (Purdue's version), or extended the football enough to get the first (the officials' version).

 Couple of plays later, Lopez scored to tie it. Then he skipped into the end zone for the two-point conversion and the win, 38-36.

Ah, geez, Purdue.

And also: Ah, geez, Big Tin.

A shamelessly partisan post

(In which the Blob dons its Ball State University cap, says "Chirp-chirp!" and talks about the gallant fight the Cardinals put up against No. 1 Ohio State last week. Among other things.)

Wait, did I say "gallant fight"?

Well, by golly, that's what it was. The Cards marched into Columbus and gave the la-di-dah Buckeyes all they wanted before barely losing 56-3, mainly because Ohio State cheated by having way better players.

Nonetheless, the Cardinals valiantly did not get shut out, so that's a W. Also they valiantly came within 1:55 of beating the spread, which means all those fools who bet large on the Buckeyes came close to losing money.

So, you know, the Cards have that going for them.

Know what else they have going for them?

They're back in Muncie today for their home opener, and it's not against Ohio State. It's against the Stony Brook Seawolves from Stony Brook, N.Y., a research school with an enrollment of 18,500 undergrads that styles itself the official university of Long Island.

The Seawolves play in the Colonial Athletic Association, along with your Maines, your Monmouths, your Elons and your Campbells, plus a handful of Rhode Islands, Towsons and New Hampshires. So does that mean the Cardinals, a proud member of the mighty Mid-American Conference, should handle their business today?

Far be it from me to succumb to bias and say yes, but ... yes.

And Ohio State?

Having narrowly escaped failing to cover last week, the Buckeyes travel to Austin, Texas to take on the No. 4 Longhorns. The 'Horns are probably a better football team than my Cardinals -- I'll go out on a limb here and say they could well be -- so Ohio State will have another fight on its hands. Also a Manning is the Texas quarterback, perhaps an upgrade over the Cardinals' 5-10 mighty mite, Keldric Luster.

I expect Keldric to stand tall today against the Stony Brooks, or as tall as a 5-10 guy can stand. And I expect the Cardinals to dispatch the Seawolves in handy fashion, say, 35-10. Or 42-10. Whatever.

And the Buckeyes?

They will pay for last week's insolence. They will pay.

The names, and the message

 A quarter-century now since that blue September morning, since the planes went into the buildings and a field east of Pittsburgh, and what have we learned? What have we learned about ourselves, and about the grand experiment that is America?

We have learned our comfortable assumptions about our comfortable American lives are a chimera, a cheap toy that jitters apart at the touch.

We have learned when that happens, some of us run toward the jackstraw ruins, and some of us do not.

We have learned that the best of us draw closer, pull each other up, stand as one. And we have learned that the worst of us use our 9/11s to divide us, to make us fear and loathe, to peddle some sinister Other because doing so is their path to power.

And so I begin, this morning of mornings, with two names.

One is Zohran Mamdani.

The other is Mohammed Shajahan.

One is the mayor of New York, and a Muslim.

The other, also a Muslim, died when the towers went down 25 years ago today -- which is why you'll find his name etched in the smooth metal that surrounds the reflecting pools where the towers once stood, and which now memorialize the almost 3,000 dead hatred and fanaticism killed that day.

Some people think Zohran Mamdani, though he is the city's mayor and a New Yorker who lost a piece of his soul on 9/11 as surely as any New Yorker, should stay away from today's remembrance in the city. They think showing up would be a slap in the face to the families of the murdered, because to some people being Muslim means you might as well have murdered them yourself.

To them, I offer the name Mohammed Shajahan. And I offer something I wrote after visiting the 9/11 memorial a decade ago -- something about Shajahan's name and all the other names, and the message they should send to every one of us.

Ten years along, I hardly needed to change a word:

We went to where it happened on a clear morning in August, the kind that brings up an ache even years after that murderous September day. It is a lush, contemplative place now, with shade trees and benches and the two reflecting pools, water spilling down the sides like silver murmuring embroidery.

Two pools; two peaceful footprints where the towers stood that day. And around them the names etched in smooth slanting steel, all those names, all those lost and blameless souls.

Pretty soon, the names are all you see.

Pretty soon, the lovely twin footprints fade. So does the triumphant rise of One World Trade Center, glittering in the sun just north of the north pool. The world narrows. You look down. And you find yourself reading off the names as you walk slowly around the pools, wondering who they were, what their lives were like, how it can be that you keep walking and walking and walking and the names never seem to end.

The names are Diaz and Bachman and Vicario; White and Miller and Lee. There are Morrises and Singhs and Benvenios; Doanys and Bonnetts and Roaches. And, yes, names like this, too: Mohammed Shajahan.

Which is to say, hate is ecumenical.

Hate killed Christians and Jews and, yes, Muslims, that day. It killed whites and blacks and Asians and Hispanics. It is a lesson we need to remember this day, a home truth to which we need to hold fast especially in this ugly, riven time, when unprincipled American outliers use fear and loathing and blatant falsehoods to con the easily conned.

One of the most stubborn of those falsehoods: That we can make ourselves safe from all future 9/11s by re-making America in the image of a particularly noxious brand of Christian faith,  instead of acknowledging the harder truth that those who killed so many on 9/11 were not adherents of any faith. They were simply barbarians whose only God was death.

And so making Muslims an Other because the barbarians claimed it as their faith, as the more reprehensible among us tend to do, is a fool's enterprise that only demeans America and what it stands for, making it safer only in the sense that it makes us less American. America is an idea to the barbarians, and there is only one way to kill an idea. That's by making its defenders diminish it themselves.

But 9/11 should have taught us the folly of that. It should have taught us that our enemies are enemies of all of us, not just Judeo-Christians. If that were not so, our enemies would not have killed so indiscriminately that day, would not even now be persecuting and killing Muslims as prolifically as they do anyone else.

The names, all those names upon names, are our witnesses to that.