The Republic of the SEC

 SEC commissioner Greg Sankey dropped a warhead the other day at the conference's preseason football soiree, and all the Blob has to say is, it's not like we haven't seen this before. Bunch of southerners talking about secession?  Old news, baby.

Yet that's what we've got here, because the warhead Sankey dropped was admitting that, hell, yes, the SEC might just go out on its own, and for much the same reasoning South used back in 18 and 61: Because a Union isn't working for them. The Union, in this case, being the NCAA.

Which admittedly has made total hash of college athletics here in the new age of NIL and unrestricted transfer portal warfare, to the extent that the college game is now just the pro game without any guardrails. The high-end talent goes where the money is, and, unlike the NFL or NBA or MLB, it can go there two, three, four times in four years if it wants to.

Free agency on that other level at least has some rules. Not so in the NCWildWest.

Which is why the SEC, or at least its leadership class, is seriously contemplating telling the NCAA to go fly a kite. And to form, I don't know, the Democratic Republic of the SEC or the Kingdom of Sis-Boom-Bah or the Confederate State U.'s of America or some such thing.

This of course would blow the current college construct to matchsticks, and it's a measure of just what a cluster that construct has become that a good chunk of America would say, "It's about damn time." And unlike that previous secession, it wouldn't carry the seeds of its own destruction from the jump.

The SEC could pull it off, see. It has the beefiest network in its corner (ESPN); its TV numbers are consequently the biggest; and you can't dial up March Madness, the College Football Playoff, or any other tournament in the revenue sports without tripping over six or eight SEC schools.

So, yeah. The Democratic Republic of the SEC could do its own thing -- and by its own rules, which it no doubt figures it could enforce better than the NCAA enforces its rules. If in fact it actually has any worth the name anymore.

A noble sentiment. But what happens then?

This is where the reception gets a bit fuzzy.

If the SEC goes out on its own, how long would it be before the other super conference -- the Big We-Can't-Count Ten -- breaks away, too? And if that happens, whither the Big 12, the ACC and so on? And speaking of the ACC, what would Notre Dame do if its longstanding deal with NBC either didn't survive the big shakeup, or would at least be significantly altered? 

What if Stonewall Jackson had been at Gettysburg?

Questions upon questions. For instance, if the SEC breaks away, would it stage its own March Madness? Its own CFP? Would it entice schools from the NCAA to participate with cash on the barrelhead and other incentives? And if it did, would the NCAA retaliate by trying to poach SEC schools for its tournaments by saying, fine, play with yourselves if you like, but wouldn't you rather be national champs?

Because you know the NCAA would claim whoever won its March Madness or CFP would be the REAL national champions, and not just champions of the Democratic Republic of the SEC.

"Nuh-uh!" you could imagine Sankey and the SEC responding.

 And there we'd be, with two different schools calling themselves national champs. Why, we'd be right back to the days (in football at least) when the AP poll declared one team the national champion, and the coaches' poll declared another team the national champion.

Voila: Dueling "We're No. 1!" bumper stickers.

Which actually was kinda fun, come to think of it.

Hmm.

The LeBron Watch

 So, then ...

Spain won the World Cup over a bunch of butt-hurt toddlers from Argentina.

A guy named Ryan Fox won The Open Championship by dunking a birdie putt on the 72nd hole ... after playing Royal Birkdale12-under across the last three days ... to become the first New Zealander to win the Open since Bob Charles way back in 1963.

The Boston Red Sox have won 14 straight games. Some guy is winning a bike race over in France. Caitlin Clark put up 45 points and 10 assists for the Indiana Fever the other night.

And still we don't know where LeBron James will be playing basketball this season.

"So?" you're saying now.

Also, "Is this like The Decision, only more annoying because LeBron's 41 years old now and it really doesn't matter where he plays basketball next year?"

Also, "In other words, who cares?"

The Blob's answers, in order: "What do you mean 'so'?" ... "Maybe" ... "'Who cares'? I'll tell you who cares -- Adam Silver."

Who is, of course, the commissioner of the NBA, and who the other day issued a public statement about the free agent negotiations of a single player. I can't say if this was unprecedented, but it was fairly extraordinary. And it demonstrated once again that LeBron James is one of the two or three greatest players in the history of basketball, and certainly the most significant player of his generation.

What Silver said, essentially, is LeBron needs to quit screwing around and tell everyone where his landing spot is for next season, which presumably will be his last. That's because where he lands will impact NBA scheduling, his auld-lang-syne season obviously requiring premo TV dates. So it would be nice to know which team to pencil in for those dates.

"Come on, LeBron," Silver said. "Poop or get off the pot."

OK, so he didn't actually say that. But the sentiment was there.

In response, of course, LeBron's close friend Rich Paul said King James will not be rushed, by Adam Silver or anyone else. He'll decide when he decides, and he'll go public with it when he goes public. This assumes he hasn't already decided where he's going, which a lot of NBA watchers suspect he has.

So perhaps this really is a sequel to The Decision, a ruinous public relations splatter that made LeBron appear incredibly self-absorbed, not to say high-and-mighty and I'm-LeBron-and-the-rest-of-you-peons-aren't, and who knows what all.

"What an a**hole!" was America's reaction.

And now?

"What an a**hole!" is both America's and Adam Silver's reaction.

(And, OK, again, Adam Silver never said that. But I'll put good coin down that he's thinking it, or something like it.)

In any event, LeBron ain't sayin' nothin', and there's nothin' even the commissioner of the NBA can do about it. Which makes the Blob imagine all sorts of ridiculous news items ...

NEW YORK, August 15 -- With LeBron James still not revealing where he'll play this season, NBA commissioner Adam Silver is busily working the phones trying to figure it out on his own.

"Is it you?" he asked the Philadelphia 76ers.

"Is it you?" he asked the Cleveland Cavaliers.

"Is it you?" he asked the Miami Heat, the Golden State Warriors, the New York Knicks, even the old Syracuse Nationals and Rochester Royals.

All of them declined to comment.

"Oh, come on, you guys!" Silver reportedly cried.

Or perhaps there'll be this ...

LOS ANGELES, September 3 -- LeBron James called a news conference today to finally announce where he'll be playing this season, as the entire NBA waited with baited breath.

"Looks like I'll be taking my talents to ... the Kentucky Colonels!" James announced.

And then, with an exaggerated wink: "Nah. Just messin' with ya. I just wanted to see if I could get you all out here."

"What an a**hole!" the assembled media cried.

"What an a**hole!" concurred Adam Silver.

And this time he meant it.

Espana!

 Generalissimo Francisco Franco may still be dead, but Spain is alive and well and, when last seen, was holding up the World Cup.

(Not to dredge up an ancient Chevy Chase bit or anything.)

Spain dunked defending champion Argentina 1-0 in extra time in the final yesterday, and consider it justice served. The best team doesn't always win in Sportsball World, but it surely did this time.

La Roja won because it's a precise and disciplined side that controls the ball and squeezes the life out of its opponents with the remorselessness of a python, or some other overheated metaphor. They spread you out and pounce on every ball that isn't as well-placed as theirs, and all of that was on full display Sunday against an Argentine squad that was mostly helpless against it.

Some numbers: In a game contested almost entirely in the Argentine end, Spain put 12 balls on goal to, incredibly, zero for Lionel Messi 'n' them. Only the brilliance of Argentine keeper Emiliano Martinez -- who made 11 saves, a record for a World Cup final -- kept it from being a blowout.

Spain did what Spain does, in other words. It made accurate passes an astounding 89 percent of the time, and compelled an increasingly desperate Argentina side to ugly up the game with ridiculous fouls and theatrical appeals to the game referee.

It wasn't a good look for the defending champs, nor was their unsportsmanlike postgame petulance. And Argentina paid for it, playing a man down for the 30 minutes of extra time after Enzo Fernandez was red-carded for two profoundly witless decisions. 

He drew his first yellow card for mockingly clapping after a foul call; then he drew the second, and his walking papers, for recklessly charging Spain's precocious 19-year-old center back Pau Cubarsi and flattening him with what amounted to a body block. Dumb and dumber.

Fernandez' red card happened three minutes into stoppage time. Eleven minutes into extra time, Nico Williams headed a slick backward pass from the end line to Ferran Torrez, who rocketed the only goal of the day into the top of the net.

Game, set and match for Espana, which is now 2-for-2 in World Cup finals. Incredibly, in eight games this time around, it surrendered just one goal -- against Belgium in a 2-1 quarterfinal win.

I know how most of us spell domination, in the wider world. But in the futbol world, on this warm July morning, it begins with "S".

A world united

The young man's name was Ishaan and he was wearing a Morocco soccer jersey, but today was not about Morocco. Today it was Colombia vs. Switzerland on the big screen in the back room of JK O'Donnell's here in the Fort, and Ishaan was rooting for Colombia.

"I put $20 on Colombia to win," he said proudly.

The seven or eight men and women dressed in Colombia yellow nodded and smiled when he said that. Then they went back to laughing and watching intently and moaning whenever Colombia -- which was forcing the action -- got a chance that came thisclose to a goal, but not close enough.

None of them were speaking English. 

Yet all of them seemed to understand whenever Ishaan expressed admiration for the way Colombia played this game of futbol, which of course is why we were all here in the middle of the afternoon on a Tuesday.

"Colombia's really good," Ishaan declared, and the men and women in their Colombia gear all nodded as if to say, "Thanks. And you're damn right we're good."

Something occurred to me just then.

It occurred to me that this World Cup business has been great for the human business, because it's knocked down all those flimsy, artificial barriers of language and culture and ignorance. In English or Spanish or German or Portuguese -- in French, Korean, Persian or Norwegian -- there is a universality to a man kicking a ball to another man. In every language on the planet, there's a way of saying, "That IDIOT! How did he misplay THAT ball??"

It's the mossiest cliche in the forest to say sports stitches us together like few other things, but we've seen the truth of it in close-up in America this past month or so. Foreigners our float-brain leaders encourage us to fear and loathe in other contexts have, in the context of the World Cup, seen the real America. And they have embraced it as readily as the real America has embraced them.

The Tartan Army of Scotland taking over Boston, and Boston returning the favor. The Clockwork Orange of Netherlands discovering barbecue in Kansas City. Another town in Kansas -- Lawrence -- embracing the Algerian team and fans as if they were its own.

We have learned about each other, in other words. And about ourselves in the process.

The Scots and Dutch and Norwegians and Algerians, first of all, have learned not just about barbecue and (go figure) ranch dressing; they've learned that Americans are not the worst of us.  We are not the bigots and xenophobes and bullying loudmouths who regrettably have become the official public face of our country here in the second Trump abomination. 

We are not Those Asshats, in other words. And Those Asshats do not speak for us.

So hooray for the Tartan Army, decorating Boston statuary with traffic cones and drinking up all the Sam Adams. And hooray for Norway's Erling Haaland, the Viking-est Viking ever, and the Viking row the Norwegian team and fans did everywhere they went.

Hooray for Lionel Messi and Kylian Mbappe and Mohammed Salah and Lamine Yamal, and for Switzerland's Breel Embolo and England's Jude Bellingham -- whom the English fans in their face paint and chain mail and Three Lions costumes saluted with a chorus of "Hey, Jude" after his two-goal performance against Norway, because of course they did.

Hooray, finally, for Ishaan in his Morocco jersey and the Colombian fans in their Colombian jerseys in the back room at O'Donnell's. I don't speak Spanish, regrettably, and I don't know how much English they knew. But we understood one another anyway.

Because when I got up to leave and said "Good luck",  they smiled and nodded and gave me a thumbs-up. For one small sliver of time, we were a world united.

Blessedly so.

Kickin' it with history

 England plays France today in the World Cup third-place game, and the history geek in me could not be more geeked. This is the Seven Years War and the Hundred Years War and the Second Hundred Years War all wrapped up in a tidy corner kick, or perhaps a setpiece starring Harry Kane or Kylian Mbappe.

"That's just silly, Mr. Blob," you're saying now. "France and England haven't made war on each other in decades. This is just another soccer match between two strong European sides."

Is it, though? Is it REALLY?

Because the Blob's over-caffeinated imagination (and confirmed history nerdity) envisions something else when the French and English square off today. 

Like, if Mbappe scores for France, will he taunt the Brits by shouting "Cornwallis ... paging Lord Cornwallis ..."?

And if Kane or Jude Bellingham score for England, will the English fans pantomime shooting arrows while chanting "Agincourt! Agincourt!" in a mocking sort of way?

Will the French respond by raising a banner that reads "We Killed Nelson And We're Not Sorry"? Will the Brits retaliate by raising a white bedsheet that reads, "National Flag Of France"?

Oh, the insults will fly then ...

"You lost India to a guy in a loincloth!" the French will mock.

"Thanks for the Northwest Territories! Nice of you to surrender them to us!" the English will reply.

"Hastings!" "Waterloo!" "They shall not pass!" "Vini, vidi, Vichy!"

On and on.

"Silliness," you're reiterating. "Pure, undiluted silliness."

Yeah, well. Sorry not sorry.

Cruds alert!*

(* -- Pittsburgh Pirates not included.)

(*-- Because my Buccos are a .500 baseball team now, and we're already more than halfway through July. So kiss my Rennie Stennett/Iron City/Primanti Brothers hindparts, y'all.)

Now where was I?

Oh, yeah, cruds and their cruddiness. Which today features not your Colorado Rockheads, not your New York Mutts, but an exciting new entry in the Cruds Alert pantheon.

Come on down, you Don't-Say-Sacramento Athletics!

The Athlessics were riding a nine-game losing streak going into last night's clash with the "meh" Washington Nationals, after which it became a 10-game losing streak. And not just any 10-game losing streak, boys and girls!

No, this one was achieved with a football-score 23-4 loss to the Nationals, the Athlessics  apparently having scored their points on two safeties. The Nats, meanwhile, got four touchdowns, er, four hits and eight hundred yards, er, eight RBI from AndresChaparro in the win.

The A's, meanwhile, now are 41-56 and just 31/2 games clear of the AL West cellar, which is occupied by the horrific Los Angeles Angels, who are the worst team in baseball right now by a percentage point or two.

But at least the Angels (Mange-els?) have a home city. The Athlessics are not allowed to. In the standings they're just the "Athletics", because apparently MLB regards Sacramento not as a real MLB city, but as a B&B or Super Eight or something as the A's make their eventual way to Las Vegas.

Insult added to injury, if you ask me. And boy are the Athlessics good at injury, if nothing else.

Bloviators in the wind

 (In which the Blob, like Andy Dufresne, once again crawls through half a mile of s***-smelling foulness to escape Sportsball World. Those who wish to leave the room know the standard protocol.)

Sometimes the cross you bear for being from Indiana is having to admit you're from Indiana. We remain, after all, the state that once tried to legislate the value of pi.

Therefore, this morning, I declare this: Yes, I am from Indiana.

And, yes, one of my senators is the illustrious Jim "Bag O' Hammers" Banks, who recently joined several other bags of hammers to venture into the realm of satire without realizing it.

Here's what Jimbo said: "Every Summer, Canada burns. Every summer, we have to deal with their heavy smoke & hazardous air quality. Every Summer, they tell us they'll take action to fix this mess & they never do. Our patience has run out, the time for excuses is over, & if they won't fix this, we will."

Before you ask, no, this is not The Onion. Or Babylon Bee or an Andy Borowitz post or that of any other satirist. Jimbo and his fellow bloviators in the wind actually said this.

Being a former journalist, I can already envision the headlines.

Banks Decries "Invasion" Of Canadian Wildfire Smoke; "This Aggression Will Not Stand, Man," He Says, Unwittingly Quoting The Dude.

Banks Demands Canada Put The Damn Fires Out; Says "We Can't Breathe," Unwittingly Quoting George Floyd.

And so on.

In any event, Banks and his fellow BOHs say it's merely a matter of better forest management on Canada's part, and if the hosers refuse to to do it, why, the U.S. will step in and do it for them. We are, after all, masters at forest management. It's why, every Summer, we have only 13 times more wildfires than Canada does, producing mega-volumes more smoke.

Of course, Banks doesn't address that. And he doesn't say exactly how the U.S. would "step in and do it for them." Do we send in the 82nd Airborne to seize Canada's forestry service? Invade western Canada with an army of patriotic Americans wielding giant brooms? Build a wall of mammoth industrial fans to blow all that Canadian smoke back across the border? ("Mass deportation NOW!" you can imagine the MAGA crowd howling).

Now, I'm not saying the wildfire smoke isn't bad. It is. Even here in Fort Wayne, hundreds of miles from the fires, you can both see it in the air and smell it right now. It's frankly pretty crazy it's this bad this far away.

But what do Banks and the rest of the clowns want to do, start a war over it? Demand that Canada control the jet stream or we will? And what about the smoke from our own wildfires?

Because Canada isn't the only place that's burning this summer. So is Minnesota. And that smoke's blowing northwest to southeast, too.

Look. I know Banks and the rest of the dopes think they can control nature, but there's a long and disastrous history of what happens when humans try. Especially when the humans in question are our elected pinheads, and what they come up with is as vague and frankly absurd as this is.

 See, the bottom line here is you can't stop wildfires from happening, because they've been happening for millennia with or without forest management. You can't stop their smoke from riding the wind, because, well, it's the wind. And the bad part is they're only going to get worse as the planet warms and folks like Jim Banks deny human activity has anything to do with it.

Because climate change doesn't exist, you know. It's all a myth cooked up by commie socialist fascist libtards to keep America from being great.

So there goes one solution, or at least a mitigation, that might actually work.

Another, of course, is sending American crews to Canada to help fight the fires -- just as Canada (and Mexico) has done for us. But, nah, we'd rather threaten people. Because that's what our muscle-y new America is all about these days.

Unfortunately, as Bag O' Hammers and his ilk demonstrated this week, some of that muscle is in their heads.

Now about that jet stream ...