A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 7

 And now this week’s edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the bigly Blob feature of which critics have said, “Hey, you ain’t all THAT bigly,” and also “Come over here, Bigly, and lemme small-ify you.”:

1. “Ha! Ha-ha-ha-ha! Told ya we were bigly good!” (The Dallas Cowboys, after paving the floundering,  Jalen Hurts-less Eagles 38-21 to get to, um, 3-4 on the season)

2. “Hey, lookit us, baby! We’re 5-2 and you’re not! If that ain’t bigly good, what is?” (The Cleveland Browns, after squeaking by the 1-6 Tennessee Titans)

3. “Yeah, but it was the 1-6 Titans.” (Unimpressed America)

4. “Yeah, but that sorry Deshaun Watson’s still your quarterback.” (Also unimpressed America)

5. In other news, the Dolphins won a game; the previously 1-5 Buccaneers crushed the Panthers 43-13; the previously winless Dolphins beat the Jets in the Meadowlands; the previously 2-4 not-really-the-Super-Bowl-favorite-anymore Rams trucked the Raiders; and the Giants scraped by the Texans with Cam Skattebo and JJ Abrams, er, McCarthy, at quarterback.

6. “See? We do not either suck!” (The Rams, the Bucs, the Giants)

7. “But we do!” (The Raiders)

8.  “And we kinda did Sunday!” (The Panthers and Texans)

9. “Hey, we beat the Jets on the road! You know how hard that is?” (The Dolphins)

10. “Eh, not very.” (Unimpressed America — and thoroughly disgusted Jets fans.)

(Manning)cast aside

 Your Indianapolis Colts lost again yesterday, in typical Indianapolis Colts fashion, which is to say they looked pretty good for awhile until they didn't. 

They were actually leading at halftime in Minneapolis against unbeaten Minnesota, 10-6. Then the Vikings prize-winning defense shut 'em down, until they weren't. Wound up losing 16-10 to fall to 2-5 on the season,  as Daniel Jones threw for just 108 yards and a pick and was sacked four times. The Colts managed just 218 total yards, averaged just 3.7 yards per play, and even their most reliable offensive weapon -- placekicker Spencer Shrader -- missed two field goals.

So, another dreary Sunday afternoon for a franchise owner Carlie Irsay-Gordon has already begun the tear-down on. Things were never like this when Peyton Manning was throwing and Marvin Harrison and Reggie Wayne were catching.

And speaking of Peyton Manning ...

Adam Schefter of ESPN confirmed over the weekend that the Colts have not reached out to Peyton for the Colts now-vacant general manager job, for the excellent reason that Peyton does not now nor has ever shown an interest in being an NFL front-office guy. He's far too busy with his various business ventures, including the Manningcast co-piloted with his brother Eli. And who would want that job right now, anyway?

So, no, Peyton's not coming back to save the day, even if there is a nine-foot statue of him outside Lucas Oil Stadium. This will undoubtedly disappoint the same flavor of fan who always thought Brad Stevens was going to come back to IU from the Boston Celtics to return the Hoosier basketball kingdom to its former glory.

There was, of course, never a chance Stevens was going to do that. Just as there was almost certainly never a chance Peyton was going to do the same for the Colts.

Sometimes the knight in shining armor's white horse is riderless. Home truth.

 

Survive and …

 … survive. That’s enough, right?

Your sixth-ranked Indiana Hoosiers won the toughest game it will play all year yesterday, and, listen, don’t respond by saying “Yeah, but …”

Yeah, but nothin’. A win is a win is a win.

And, sure, it was only 13-6, and the Hoo-Hoo-Hoo-Hoosiers had to go overtime to do it, and it was against a Michigan team that’s not, you know, Michigan. But you know why it was the toughest game they’ll play all year?

Because it came a week after they lost the Big One at home to Ohio State by the width of Nick Marsh’s foot — their first L in 23 games.

Because seven days later they had to play Michigan in the Big House, which ain’t easy even if Michigan is Michigan Lite this year.

Because a bunch of other teams in a similar position couldn’t do what they did.

For instance: Know what happened a week after Minnesota beat Michigan in the Little Brown Jug game in Minneapolis for the first time in 50 years?

The Golden Gophers went down to Purdue and got their hinders handed to them, 41-13.

Know what happened a week after then-No. 1 Texas was upset by unranked Oklahoma in the Red River Rivalry?

The Longhorns came home and lost again, this time to Florida. 

Refocusing is hard. Sometimes teams can do it; sometimes they can’t.

Indiana?

Scratched and clawed and gasped and wheezed but found a way to win when Josh Hoover — so banged up Curt Cignetti thought about pulling him for Grant Wilson — barged into the end zone in overtime to save the day.

This on a day when Auburn, which last week shocked No. 1 Georgia between the hedges in Athens, came home and got filleted 38-17 by LSU. And on a day when BYU, a week after knocking off No. 2 Notre Dame in the biggest game ever played in Provo, went on the road and lost in two overtimes to Central Florida.

Refocusing is hard.

But Indiana did. And now the Hoosiers are 7-1. And as an IU fan told me when it was done yesterday, nothing’s wrong with 7-1.

Nope. Nothing at all.

One codger, exhausted

 And now the Blob presents a singular feature of questionable appeal — Stuff That No Longer Annoys Me Because There’s No Longer A Point To Being Annoyed By It, a surrender of sorts to the inevitability of codger exhaustion.

Which is to say, this codger has seen LaMelo Ball moonwalk a mile or so with nary a dribble, and all he can do is shrug wearily.

Yes, he traveled like Marco Polo. No, I’m not annoyed/perturbed/outraged that he wasn’t whistled for it, because traveling as a violation of the rules of basketball no longer exists in the National (Get Your) Boogey (Shoes On) Association.

Guys walk like Gandhi to the sea and get away with it because they call it a “gather” now; not long ago, a Celtics player went from just inside the foul circle to the rim without taking a dribble because he was “gathering” for a dunk. 

And the Euro Step, which is a conventional travel, is now just … the Euro Step. 

So be it. There’ll be no further shaking of bony fists and “Consarn it’s!” from this locale.

And while we’re at it …

I’m also not going to get annoyed/perturbed/outraged by  clueless high school football coaches, either.

One of them kicked his senior quarterback off the team for audible-ing out of a designed keeper. The kid handed it to his running back instead, figuring the RB had a better chance of getting the first down. 

QB1 was right. The running back got the first down. But Coach Dimmer Switch — i.e. Miles Smith, son of former NFL coach Lovie Smith — didn’t say “nice call”; he threw QB1 off the team for “disrespecting” Coach, and forbade him from having any further contact with his teammates.

A dozen  of whom quit the team in protest after Smith told them if they didn’t like his decision they could leave.

Again, so be it. No getting all exercised about it here.

Know why?

Because the next week Coach Dimmer Switch’s depleted squad lost 49-7. After which he and his dad, a volunteer assistant, resigned.

To which the Blob has only one response: Buh-bye.

Series time!

 The Fall Classic begins tonight in Milwaukee, where mittens might be required before mitts. But who cares? It’s the Fall Classic!

This year, weirdly, it actually pits the top team in each league against each other, and neither is the Dodgers or Yankees, which pleases everyone in America who’s not a network executive.  It’s the Milwaukee Brewers vs. the Tampa Bay Rays, two smallish-market teams who’ve never won a World Series, and who’ve only ever played in one a combined four times.

Three of those times it was the Rays, who are a sound, splendid team that doesn’t beat itself. The Brewers are also a sound, splendid team that doesn’t beat itself. So it should be a great Series.

And if you’re asking, at this point, which sound, splendid team the Blob favors (“We’re not, but OK,” you’re saying now), the answer is the Brewers.

I like ‘em partly because I consider  beer and brats part of a balanced diet; partly because of Laverne, Shirley, Lenny and Squiggy; and partly because Milwaukee hasn’t celebrated a World Series title since 1957, when the Braves beat the Yankees before departing for Atlanta.

The Brewers?

They’ve only played in the Series once, and that was 44 years ago. It was a team led by Robin Yount, Paul Molitor and slugger Gorman Thomas, who looked like a guy who  enjoyed an occasional beer and brat. If Milwaukee suddenly became a sentient being, it would be Gorman Thomas.

So, yeah. It’s time for Gorm’s spiritual descendants to bring home the Big Trophy.

One other reason to root for the Brewers?

They began life in 1969 as the Seattle Pilots, who lasted just one season before relocating to Milwaukee. And whom Jim Bouton made famous in “Ball Four.”

And so, in the immortal words of the Pilots manager Joe Schultz: “S***f***. F***s***. Up and at ‘em, Brewers, and pound that Budweiser.”

Moneyed interests

It’s probably a swipe of the broad brush to say the Big Ten, SEC, Notre Dame and ESPN just decided for everyone else what college football is going to look like going forward. But the Big Ten, SEC, Notre Dame and ESPN just decided for everyone else what college is going to look like going forward.

Which is a 24-team College Football Playoff.

The four entities named above, just hammered out a broadcast deal for said playoff, tentatively scheduled to launch next season. It won’t be finally approved until Dec. 1, but final approval is all but a lock.

This is because the deal with ESPN is expected to be a $300 million haul, and no one in what used to be “college” athletics has ever failed to lunge unbecomingly after every free-floating dollar. It’s how major corporations operate — even ones who style themselves institutions of higher learning.

What this means, ostensibly, is more high-end non-conference clashes and fewer Indiana-vs.-Howard abominations. This is because, in a watered-down CFP ,  teams will be able to lose three or four games and still get into the Big Hoo-Ha.

(Which kinda sucks for the Howards and MAC schools like the Blob’s alma mater Ball State. No more million-dollar guarantee games for you, mid-major losers! And, hey, the Power 4s will still get to raid you for the players you spent a year or so developing! How’s that for a deal?)

Sorry. Where were we again?

Oh, yeah, more CFP dough for more mid Power 4 teams ( and, OK, half a dozen or so Group Of 6 automatic bids). It’ll mean more games for the “student-athletes”  — the season for the national champions will now run uninterrupted from late August to mid January — and the death knell for a whole pile of radial tire, lawn implement and Snoop Dog bowls.

The latter might be the only upside to this, because let’s face it, the world does not need more of 6-6 Directional A&M vs.  5-7 East-Northeast Institute Of Breakfast Technology  in the Carquest Good-And-Plenty Bowl. Plus,  an expanded CFP will also mean the end of conference championship games, which are nothing but a way to squeeze more nickels from the “student-athletes anyway.

Now?

Now the Big Ten, SEC and Notre Dame will get to wring even MORE nickels from their hired hands. And if the Save College Sports or whatever it’s called passes, they’ll have antitrust protection and assurance the hired hands won’t be able to organize like any other workforce in America. Sweet!

As for me …

Well, I miss the days before colleges became Sis-Boom-Bah Inc. — the days of New Year’s Day bowl games and mythical national champions and $1,000 handshakes under the table.

It felt cleaner, somehow. And certainly more human.

Your nothingburger for today

 The WNBA just annoys the hell out of some people. Let’s begin with that home truth today.

Those some people — and you know who they are — see the league as too gay, too black, and mostly too full of women who speak their minds.  Thus, the Some People bash the WNBA as “woke” (because it celebrates diversity and inclusion, those evil Doublemint Twins), racist (look how those mean black girls pick on the white girls!) and … and …

Haters of America!

Yes, that’s the latest.

It’s the latest because the usual suspects — Outkick, Jason Whitlock, even Indiana’s Lieutenant Governor, Micah “I Don’t Like Much Of Anything” Beckwith — are feeding red meat to the masses again. And as usual it’s performance art so contrived and ridiculous you wonder when the hook comes out to drag them off stage.

See, they’ve noticed that both teams in the WNBA finals — the Atlanta Dream and the Golden State Valkyries — leave the floor prior to the National Anthem.  The usual suspects cry that this is a deliberate insult to our great nation, and proof that the WNBA Hates America.

If it didn’t, after all, the league would force these ungrateful opinionated women (Opinionated women! The horror!)  to remain on the floor and stand at attention for the anthem. Because, you know, freedom.

And now for the rest of the story, as they say.

The rest of the story is that, first of all, the Dream and Valkyries are not violating leagues rules, as the usual suspects claim. The rules only say that IF a team remains on the floor for the anthem, its players must stand in a respectful manner. But it’s up to the individual teams to decide whether or not they stay on the floor.

Some teams do. Some teams don’t. The Dream and Valkyries do not, and it’s not because they Hate America. It’s because that’s their pregame routine.

Period. End of story.

In fact, if the usual suspects took the time to check it out instead of trying to manufacture outrage, they’d learn the a LOT of basketball teams retire to the locker room before the anthem. This includes a lot of college teams — including Kim Mulkey’s women’s teams, and, back in the day, Bob Knight’s Indiana Hoosiers.

As far as I know, Micah Beckwith and the rest of the clowns never accused them of Hating America. (Although Mulkey, absurdly, came in for some criticism on this very point last year from a few peawits). This is because neither Mulkey nor Knight would ever be mistaken for “woke” lefties. They are, and were, about as red-blooded unawake America, Hell, Yeah! types as you’d ever find.

So, then. Enough of this nonsense. Just call this what it is: Your nothingburger for today.

In these times, after all, it seems we’re required to have at least one.