Irish ascending

I know how this goes now. We've seen it before, right?

Notre Dame looked good, very good, in ball-peening a top ten team last night, and now everyone's going to trample the throttle like Mario Andretti. You're going to hear This team could challenge for a national title here and Let's just go ahead and put up a statue of Ian Book there. Somewhere in there will be that old standard They really could run the table now, because isn't that what you always hear when Notre Dame mashes a quality opponent like Stanford by three touchdowns (and could have mashed it by more)?

Look. I get it. The Irish appear to have something going here. They come at you like a pack of wolves on defense, and in Book they've finally found a quarterback who can turn loose all the weapons they have on offense. That he was right there all along should have been obvious as far back as the bowl game nine or so months ago, but, oh, well.

Sometimes coaches are a little slow on the uptake. It happens.

And yet ...

And yet, the requisite word of caution must be spoken here: It was just one game.

It was one game against a Stanford team that needed a miracle to stay unbeaten against a "meh" Oregon team last week, and which had beaten a "meh" USC team before that, and otherwise had noshed on UC-Davis and San Diego State pastry. So who knows if the Cardinal was actually the seventh-best team in the country, or just a pretty good team riding for the inevitable fall.

That Notre Dame so thoroughly brought about that fall would seem to indicate the Irish are a level or two above pretty good themselves. That's really about as much as we can say about them right now.

This is a team that beat a Michigan team that itself has not turned out to be quite as good as people originally thought, an emerging theme of the Jim Harbaugh era in Ann Arbor. Yesterday the Wolverines nearly got taken down by a Northwestern team that did get taken down by Akron. Before that, they'd lost to Notre Dame and hammered all the people they were supposed to hammer. So who knows.

Same with Notre Dame. As good as the Irish looked last night, this is a team that got all it wanted from Ball State and Vanderbilt. It kicked around Wake Forest as Book feasted on one of the worst pass defenses in the country. Now it goes on the road to Virginia Tech, which has easily handled Florida State and previously unbeaten Duke but let Old Dominion -- Old Dominion! -- drop 49 on it.

Later, the Irish get a Syracuse team that nearly toppled Clemson yesterday.

So who knows.

Standard motto for every college football season in late September forever. You can look it up.

Rivalry week

And, no, we're not talking about college football, which you might reasonably have assumed because college football has all the best rivalries, or most of them, or at least those that involve mascots and fight songs and throwing stuff at said mascots, and pranking your rival by screwing with his card section in the stands and composing obscene lyrics for his fight song ...

 (Best of the latter:  Notre Dame's student section mangling the Michigan fight song by singing "Hail, hail, to Michigan, the a**holes of the world.")

Anyway ... no. This is not about college football.

This is about baseball.

Where those old and mortal rivals, the Cubs and the Cardinals, finish the regular season this weekend with the chance to ruin one another's day. If the Cardinals sweep or at least win the three-game set in Wrigley, they could cost the Cubs the NL Central title and (potentially) wind up playing them in the winner-take-all NL wild card game. If the Cubs sweep or at least win the series, they would likely keep the Cardinals out of the playoffs altogether.

Either way, it'll be sweetness squared for one fan base or the other.

As a devoted fan of sheer angst (and as someone who has no dog in this hunt), I favor seeing the Cardinals knock the Cubs into the wild card and then playing them in the one-game playoff. Can you imagine what torture that would be for both fan bases?  Nine or more innings of baseball, at the end of which your most implacable rival knocks you out of the playoffs?

"Jesus, NOT THE CUBS!" Cardinals Fan would wail.

"Jesus, NOT THE CARDINALS!" Cubs Fan would wail.

"Hey, at least your season didn't effectively end two months ago!" Pirates Fan would reply.

Pirates Fan being me, of course.  Who is simply jealous of both Cardinals Fan and Cubs Fan, and would like nothing better than to see them endure as much agony as possible.

Bitter? Whatta you mean, bitter?

Those damn women

You know the guy had one, back in the day. You just know it.

You know, when Jared Hensley was 8-years-old, he had a tree fort in his backyard. He and all his little goober pals used to hang out there, trading baseball cards and talking about how icky girls are. And just to drive home the point, they hung a crude sign over the tree fort's entryway.

NO GURLZ ALOUD, it read.

Now, Hensley isn't 8-years-old anymore, but plainly his inner 8-year-old is alive and well. The athletic director and assistant principal at Soddy-Daisy High School near Chattanooga, Tenn., he let the little fella out for a romp the other day, saying in a video for the student body that girls "pretty much ruin everything."

No, really. That's what he said.

As an alleged grownup.

As an alleged educator.

As a possibly chemically altered alleged educator.

(More on that later.)

In any case, the  context for this was Hensley announcing a ban on wearing athletic shorts, dress codes being a particularly stubborn nervous tic for regimes with a totalitarian bent, like school systems and the National Football League. No explanation is given, by Hensley or anyone else, why athletic shorts suddenly became an issue at Soddy-Daisy. Very likely there isn't one that makes a jot of sense to anyone outside the school system bubble. That's the way these things usually go.

Similarly, Hensley offers no explanation for why the athletic shorts ban is all the girls' fault. It just is.

"If you really want someone to blame someone, blame the girls," is all he says.

Well, and also, "Ask Adam, look at Eve -- you can really go back to the beginning of time."

(To which God no doubt replied, and not for the first time: "Wait, what?  Oh, for my sake. Look, don't be dragging Genesis into this. I thought I told you people to stop that. Not until you get the story straight, anyway.")

Anyway ... Ask Adam? Look at Eve?

I'm sorry, what?

Look. I guess the most a reasonable person can conclude is Hensley was trying to be funny, and didn't do a very good job of it. The other possibility is one to which the Blob has already alluded -- i.e., maybe the guy was half-lit on either adult beverages or some sort of Brain-Party-In-A-Softgel. This is probably unfair, but, really, can you read his comments (or better yet, watch the video) and not think the guy sounded less than Sunday-morning sober?

Then again, maybe he was just following the current national zeitgeist, given what's happening in Washington today. All those Republican good old boys watching their pet Supreme Court nominee (whom they clearly didn't vet very well in their rush to install him) getting hamstrung by a bunch of pesky damn women?  Think they're not a loud chorus of amens right now for Hensley's contention that Girls Ruin Everything?

They could, after all, wind up derailing Brett Kavanaugh, party boy/groper turned Supreme Court nominee. And Hensley, for saying dumb stuff about girls, got a an administrative sit-down for his misogynist manifesto.

Which, by the way, was titled "A Helping of Hensley."

Well. It was a helping of something. That's for sure.

A star is born

And this is what he looks like.

Just look at this young man, people. Does he not look like fun? Does he not look like the sort of guy you'd like to hang with? Is he not the greatest mascot in the history of mascots?

OK, so maybe not that, but he's sure getting major play on social media these days. If you've yet to be introduced, this is Gritty, the new Philadelphia Flyers mascot. He's a big ol' hairy googly-eyed ... something. Looks a lot like the offspring of Animal from Sesame Street, though Animal has allegedly denied paternity.

In any case, the Blob's rep as a mascot-friendly zone demanded it introduce you to Gritty. So here he is. The Blob eagerly awaits the day Gritty squares off against the big red blob that is Western Kentucky's mascot in a What The Hell Is That Thing mascot battle royale.

T-shirt guns at thirty paces, gentlemen.

Bonus NFL Week 3 moment

Because, boys and girls, this is how you stiff-arm someone.

Frankly, you watch this and you're kinda surprised Vance McDonald wasn't flagged for, oh, I don't know, excessive football-ness or something. But then you realize something: He's an offensive guy.

Here in Not-Your-Father's NFL, offensive guys can pretty much do what they want. Defensive guys, on the other hand ...

Well. In Not-Your-Father's NFL, they wind up like William Hayes of the Dolphins. In other words, they tear their ACLs trying not to make actual body contact with quarterbacks while tackling them, because actual body contact is now illegal when it comes to quarterbacks. It's a protect-the-merchandise thing, like putting Ming vases behind bulletproof glass.

What a world. What. A. World.

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 3

And now this week's edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the interminable Blob feature various residents of the Alex Jones Home For The Perpetually Loony have called "a foul Democratic plot to bring down Brett Kavanaugh/Donald Trump/America Itself," and also "further proof that Hillary murdered Vince Foster":

1. Patrick Mahomes!

2. Is having the greatest start to a career since Patrick Mahomes.

3. Wow, the Bills are terrible, just terr--

4. Oh. Wait.

5. Wow, the Lions are terrible, just terr--

6. Oh. Wait.

7. Wow, Fitzmagic can't lose, he just can't lo--

8. (See 4 and 6 above.)

9.  Meanwhile, Patrick Mahomes!

10. Yes, again. Because, damn, have you seen that kid throw?

Time warp

There he was again, wearing that strutting come-at-me-bro red shirt, and this time it was not just some quaint nod to olden times. This time it was an actual portal to those times, and for one golden afternoon we all lived there.

For one afternoon, George W. Bush was still in the White House, chained to a bloody slog in Iraq that made a mockery of his "Mission Accomplished" braggadocio. LeBron James was still a kid phenom in Cleveland. The Red Sox still hadn't won a World Series since Model Ts were the rage, and Peyton-vs.-Tom was still the NFL's best rivalry, and Tiger Woods ...

Well. Tiger Woods was still the greatest golfer on the planet, sending everyone else into cringe mode every time he teed it up.

The kids today don't do that anymore, but they got a taste of what it was like this weekend. They got to see vintage Tiger, circa 2003 or 2004. They got to see a man step into the Wayback Machine and bring back the game he used to have, a game so impeccable in judgment and execution it looked like a different game altogether from the game everyone else was playing.

Against the most gifted crop of golfers in four decades, a 42-year-old man with a surgical back and knees and ankles took a five-stroke lead into Sunday, and somehow that meant exactly what it meant a decade-and-a-half ago: That all y'all are playin' for second. He wound up winning by two strokes -- no one even seriously challenged him, same as the old days -- and if Justin Rose hadn't dunked a birdie putt on 18, he'd have won more than a golf tournament for the first time in five years.

He'd have won the FedEx Cup, too, emblematic of the Tour championship.

Think about that for a second. He came within a roll or two of a golf ball of beating a whole pile golfers younger, fitter and decidedly un-blinded by his aura, after essentially being off the Tour for two years. And after all manner of eulogies had been written for his career.

Which means this is the part where the Blob admits it was wrong, wrong, wrong. ("Like that's news," you're saying.) The Blob, after all, has been shoveling dirt on Tiger's grave for a long time. It has said Tiger Woods' career was on a long quiet slide to oblivion, that he likely would never won another golf tournament, let alone a major. It has said that we were witnessing the inevitable lingering sunset that comes with age and injury. It has said he had become an irrelevant back marker, and that it was amazing that even as such he continued to be the sort of rock star golf very rarely sees.

And then this weekend happened. And he was a rock star in full flower again.

Hyperbole in all matters is such a thing now you hesitate to say what Woods has done this summer is one of the more remarkable athletic feats of its time, but it is. Because golf is such a ridiculously difficult game to play well consistently, let alone play transcendently, very few golfers with Tiger Woods' history of injury and absence ever revisit whatever peak they once commanded. They may reach back for a round or two here or there, but it never lasts. And it certainly never lasts most a summer.

That's what Woods has managed to do, and because of it we must all now reconsider the parameters of what is possible in this game. When Jack Nicklaus won the Masters at 46, it was regarded as perhaps the most amazing achievement in history; what Tiger Woods has done, challenging week after week after such an extended absence, is like Nicklaus winning the Grand Slam at 46.

So how long does it last?

Hard to say. The Blob is not fond of being burned twice, so it's not prepared to say anything is impossible at this point. If Woods stays healthy, this weekend showed he can still dominate even this landmark generation of golfers. Which means he could definitely win another major or two.

Whether or not he catches Nicklaus, however, remains problematical. In three months, after all, he'll be 43. The landmark generation of golfers isn't going anywhere, and more are coming. And the human back, once damaged, remains a fragile instrument, particularly for a golfer.

And now comes a sound, from somewhere in the vicinity of the next tee box.

It is Tiger Woods. He is laughing.

A few brief thoughts on Saturday's America*

(* -- Stolen from the legendary Dan Jenkins, who used "Saturday's America" as the title for a collection of his Sports Illustrated college football pieces. One of the best  book titles ever.)

Anyway ... time now for the Blob to steal its own widely reviled feature, The NFL In So Many Words, and apply it to a college football Saturday. Because you know what they say: You can never have too much of a good thing ...

("Yes! Yes, you can!" -- Thoroughly alarmed Blobophiles everywhere.)

1. The Hoosiers!

2. Are who we thought they were!

3. Hey, look! It's Purdue!

4. (I mean, it looks like Purdue. OK, kinda. I mean, they're laminating somebody. So who knows.)

5. Hey, look! It's Brian Kelly!

6. Finally located Ian Book. Found him in a storage closet with a couple of used Heismans and Rudy's old practice jersey. Said "Oh, yeah, this guy. Forgot we had him."

7. Ohio State 49, Tulane 6.

8. Sample headline: Urban Meyer's Return From Horrible Punishment Saves Buckeyes From Certain Defeat (Insert eyeroll emoji here.)

9. Alabama 45, Texas A&M 23.

10. Oh, wait. This post is about college football.

Damage control

Buffalo plays at Maryland and Tulane lands in Ohio Stadium this afternoon, which means the Big Ten gets two more chances to prove it's not just a handy tool for raising the profiles of small fry. That, has, after all, been it's higher purpose so far this year, at least by most available evidence.

Although "The Big Ten: The Underdog's Friend" is not a brand the conference likely is comfortable with. Nor is "The Big Ten: We Elevate Akron So You Won't Have To."

It was Northwestern who did that a week ago, by losing to, yes, Akron. Nebraska, meanwhile, gave Troy its own theme for this year: "We Beat The Cornhuskers In Lincoln, So There."

Ditto Temple beating Maryland, South Florida beating Illinois, BYU beating Wisconsin -- Wisconsin! -- in the mighty fortress of Camp Randall Stadium, and perennial Big 12 sadsack Kansas (which counts as an underdog even if it's in a Power 5 conference) beating Rutgers, also on the road.

Oh, yeah. And don't forget Eastern Michigan beating Purdue in Ross-Ade Stadium a couple of weeks back, too.

(Sample theme for that one: "Ypsilanti, The Football Town West Lafayette Wishes It Were.")

In any case, this has not exactly raised the Big Ten's own profile as The Best Conference In America, which some people, mostly in the Midwest, keep insisting it is. The sneering from up north at the paper tiger that is the SEC has been notably muted by the proceedings so far.

And so it's with likely relief that, of the seven Big Ten games being played today, four of them will be conference games. Needless to say, that's the best defense possible against more pillaging by the Troys and Akrons. Only Buffalo and Tulane are inside the gates this time, and it's incumbent upon Rutgers and Ohio State to repel them.

They probably will, of course. Tulane would seem especially doomed, on account of Urban Meyer returns to the sideline today after three weeks in which he suffered mightily for coddling yet another miscreant. His Buckeyes, after all, only went 3-0 in his absence while outscoring their opponents 169-62. It's hard to imagine how much more cruel poor Urban's punishment possibly could have been without involving thumbscrews.

So, OSU likely turns back the Tulane incursion. As for Buffalo at Rutgers, that one's in the lap of the gods. It's Rutgers, after all, and Buffalo, another of those pesky MAC schools. One more likely theme is already percolating.

"The Big Ten: Gateway To The Mid-American Conference."

Works for me.

Update: As almost predicted here, Buffalo crushed Rutgers 42-13. The Big Ten should really start picking on conferences its own size.

Ah, memories ...

And now a quick riffle through the memory book, in honor of the Cleveland Browns winning a football game for the first time since Grover Cleveland was in the White House, Cleveland Gary was still totin' pigskin and The Cleveland Show was still a thing ...

Remember Dec. 24, 2016?

That's the last time the Browns actually won a football game until last night, when they beat the Jets 21-17.

And remember two weeks ago, when people who weren't visibly insane actually thought the Jets were going to be Not The Jets because the Lions couldn't get out of Matt Patricia's way?

Remember a day ago, when people who weren't visibly insane thought Sam Darnold was better than Baker Mayfield?

Remember 12 or so hours ago, before the Jets blew a 14-0 lead by Being The Jets, and Darnold rallied the Being The Jets with two interceptions in the last 90 seconds, and the Being The Jets took a bunch of stupid penalties, and the Being The Jets got suckered by the same play with which the Eagles suckered the Patriots in the Super Bowl?

Remember a couple of minutes ago, when it occurred to the Blob that things don't get anymore Jets-y than getting suckered by the Browns?

Remember a couple of seconds ago, when it also occurred to the Blob that, knowing the way Clevelanders drink (and probably did, epically, into the skinny hours this morning), you could destroy an entire American city right now (7:33 a.m.) by flying low over C-town with a massive boombox blasting Judas Priest?

Now that would be memorable.

System-atic

Lots of buzz among the sports talk yappers today about Ian O'Connor's Bill Belichick book, particularly the part where one former assistant (who didn't have the grapes to identify himself, naturally) saying that the prevailing opinion among the staff was that Belichick's system was virtually quarterback proof.

Which is to say, there were about 15 guys in the league they felt they could plug into Belichick's system, and they could deliver a Super Bowl.  Not five Supes like Tom Brady, but at least one.

This has been taken as a knock on Brady, whom even the Patriots-averse Blob acknowledges as the greatest QB in NFL history. But maybe it isn't really.

The Blob, see, has its own theory about so-called "system quarterbacks."  It may not be much of a theory, but it's still a theory.

It involves the notion that, in some sense, almost every NFL quarterback is a "system quarterback."

That's because it's the NFL, not your backyard, which means no one is kneeling down drawing up plays in the dirt (except, you know, maybe in Detroit these days.) No one is running a square-out to the oak tree. No one is designing a triple flea flicker followed by a throw to the quarterback, who's running a wheel route to the hydrangea. No NFL playbook's Xs-and-Os involve Gerald the all-time center sneaking downfield and hiding behind Mom's prized rosebush at the back of the end zone, then leaping out to catch a stealth touchdown pass.

No, sir. In the NFL, every team has a system. Some are admittedly more effective (and discernible) than others, but they all have systems. And for those teams who have a solid No. 1 at quarterback, they're all tailored to that quarterback's specific skill set.

Even the QBs famous for their magnificent improvisations -- like, say, Brett Favre -- still operated within some sort of offensive framework. Whether you were Favre or John Elway or Dan Marino or Peyton Manning, the offense you commanded (except, again, maybe in Detroit right now) was designed to take advantage of what you did best.

For instance, it wouldn't make much sense to design an offense to stretch the field if you had a QB who didn't have the arm to consistently throw deep. But if you did, that's what your offense might look like. And you went after burners on the outside to play wide receiver in that offense.

Brady?

He's been enormously successful in an offense designed to give him the optimum chance to be enormously successful. Yet he still had to execute it, and he has.

How's that different than anywhere else?

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 2

And now this week's edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the recurring Blob migrai-- er, feature of which critics have said nothing, on account of they "stopped reading it years ago" and "have moved onto the new Predator remake, which is almost as putrid.":

1. "Mmmmmiss it! Noonan!"

2. The voices in Vikings kicker Daniel Carlson's head Sunday.

3. Also the voices in Browns kicker Zane Gonzalez' head.

4. "You're fired!"

5. What both heard Monday.

6. "Tag! You're it!"

7. What the voices in Clay Mathews' head should have said instead of "Hey, look! Vikings quarterback Kirk Cousins! You should tackle him!", because he tackled him, and then he got flagged for tackling him.

8. "Hey! That kinda looks like defense!"

9. The voices in Colts' fans heads Sunday as the Colts played actual defense.

10. "Oh, no! It's Khalil Ma--!"*

(* -- Complete this sentence and whose voice was saying it. Hint: Russell Wilson.)

The view from below

Time now to check in on baseball's irredeemable sad sacks, the Baltimore Orioles, saddest of all creatures on earth who are not actively dead at the present time.

The good news: The end of the O's-For-Heaven-Sakes' season is just 13 games away.

The bad news: The O's-For-Heaven's-Sakes would have to win seven of those games just to get to 50 wins for an entire baseball season, which is not going to happen.

At 43-106 after 149 games, the O's-For-Heaven's-Sakes are not just a train wreck. They are a British-Commandos-Blowing-Up-The-Bridge-On-The-River-Kwai train wreck.

In any case, they have made themselves home in the Grand Canyon of cellars, the O's-For-Heaven's-Sakes. As of today, September 17, they are 59.5 games behind the first-place Boston Red Sox in the AL East. This means they are out of first by a staggering 40 percent of their total games played. And yet that's not even their most jaw-dropping feat.

That would be the fact that, not only are they 59.5 games out of first, they're a full 24 games out of next-to-last.  Twenty-four games out of next-to-last.

Which means they could win all the rest of their games, and the next-to-last Toronto Blue Jays could lose all the rest of their games, and the O's-For-Heaven's-Sakes would still finish last by 11 games.

Oh for heaven's sake.

Quittin' time

Look, it's not like it's the first time this has happened. OK, so it is.

Kind of.

At least in the (channeling Howard Cosell inflection) NASH-anol FOOT-ball League.

What happened was, veteran defensive back Vontae Davis abruptly announced his retirement yesterday. And when we say "abruptly," we mean "abruptly."

Or maybe you think changing into his street clothes at halftime, saying he was done with pro football and walking out of the Buffalo Bills locker room was a well-planned and thoughtfully conducted exit.

That's what Davis did, and really, it almost makes you feel for the Bills a little. First they so botch their quarterback situation they wind up with one rookie project (Josh Allen) and one Nathan Peterman (Nathan Peterman) to man the post. Now Vontae Davis just up and quits on them.

At halftime. Of an actual game.  

And, yes, this thing has happened before, though the Blob can't think of it happening in the NFL. The most notable instance the Blob can think of happened in Fort Wayne, in the Continental Basketball Association, which was not the NFL. A Duke refugee playing for the Fort Wayne Fury, Thomas Hill, quit at halftime of a game. Took off his uniform, put on his streets and vamoosed. Coach of the team looked around at his bench coming out of halftime and was all like, hey, where's Thomas?

"Thomas took himself off the roster," someone responded. Or something like that.

Again, this was the CBA, not the NFL. Stuff like that happened a lot. The Fury once lost a player during an airport layover. Flew to Chicago, boarded their next flight, and ... hey, where's Thomas (Big Ham) Hamilton?

Turns out he went home. The Fury were one game away from elimination in the playoffs, and they made the tactical mistake of changing planes in Thomas Hamilton's hometown. Apparently the season was over enough for him.

As for Thomas Hill, well, you go from playing for national titles at Duke to playing in the minor leagues in some Midwestern backwater, it's gotta be a comedown. Man, I played with Bobby Hurley, Grant Hill and Christian Laettner. We were college hoops royalty. What the (bleep) am I doing in Fort Wayne, Indiana?

Or something like that.

I imagine the same sorts of things were wheeling through Davis' mind yesterday. He's 30 years old, which in the NFL today increasingly is Pro Football Rest Home territory. He'd played 10 years and 121 games in the league. He was on his third team -- and it was Buffalo, for God's sake.

I don't know if that factored into his abrupt departure. But it likely didn't sway him from it.

No, I have a feeling he'd suddenly decided he'd had enough. It happens. Pro football is such a physically destructive occupation it takes a great deal of passion for the game to play it. So when the flame goes out, it tends to go out in the blink of an eye.

Although halftime of a game is a bit quicker than the blink of an eye.

He should have at least finished out the game. He should seen the thing through. And he definitely shouldn't have left his teammates hanging.

Then again, they're in Buffalo. They've already been left hanging. 

September dreams

Faithful Blobophiles ("Stop saying that!" you're saying) know that one of the fun things the Blob likes to do occasionally is pop Optimism Balloons. This is a mean thing to do, it acknowledges. But sometimes it also saves over-eager fan bases from the inevitable crushing disappointment.

And so we come to the Indiana University Football Hoosiers, who yesterday handled the Blob's Ball State Cardinals so easily the latter barely uttered a peep, let alone a chirp-chirp.

The final was 38-10, and everyone said that looked pretty darn good considering the Cardinals had given Notre Dame all kinds of fits a week ago in Notre Dame Stadium. Maybe, just maybe, the Hoosiers were That Good. Maybe this was going to be the year they reached the mighty summit of eight or nine wins and invited comparisons to the glory days of Bill Mallory.

No one was heard to shout "Rose Bowl, baby!" But you know at least a couple people were thinking it.

Well, the Hoosiers were pretty impressive yesterday. And they did go down to Florida and beat Florida International handily (38-28) in their opener -- a Florida International team that went 8-5 last year. And then they came home and edged Virginia 20-16 in a monsoon.

So what does all that mean?

Um ... well ...

Probably not all that much.

Hammering Ball State yesterday, for instance, meant hammering a team that was ripe for it. The Cardinals are stupidly young -- they have just nine seniors on the roster -- and were coming off the kind of superhuman effort young teams rarely are able to duplicate back-to-back. Especially on the road against another Big Five conference opponent.

So, take 38-10 for what it was: A win over a team coming off a hugely emotional game that no doubt led to a week of focus-sapping backslapping. Anyone betting they could be the same team in Bloomington they were in South Bend was a fool being swiftly parted from his money.

Truth is, we won't know who or what Indiana is for a month yet. By the end of the day on Oct. 20, we'll know if this is a team capable of great-for-IU things or just another IU team that started 3-0 and then ran into the reality portion of the schedule.

Between now and Oct. 20, after all, they play Michigan State, Ohio State, Iowa and Penn State. one of those (Ohio State) is on the road. Three are at home. And it all starts next Saturday in Bloomington, when Michigan State comes calling.

Until then, slow the roll down there in B-town.

Which, given the ongoing roadwork on the 37/69 extension, isn't much of a task these days.

Your Stop Digging moment for today

In which Urban Meyer's Public Relations Repair Tour visits ESPN for an interview with Tom Rinaldi, which ... well, doesn't exactly come off real well unless you're looking through scarlet-and-gray glasses.

(Which wouldn't do much for your eyesight, I wouldn't think. Things would look a trifle dim, I would think.)

In any case, Urban says he can't believe Courtney Smith would think he was enabling her husband by keeping him on after repeated incidences where the cops were called to the house to keep Zach Smith from tooling up on her, incidences that go all the way back to 2009 when Meyer and Smith were together at Florida. Why, he was only trying to protect the man's family by keeping him around.

Oh, and, no, Urban's wife really never told him about the texts from Courtney Smith detailing her husband's latest alleged beatdown in 2015. Nope, she said nothing, even though Shelley and Urban Meyer both had been involved in staging what amounted to an intervention for the Smiths back in 2009 and knew intimately the couple's history. Nope, she never said a thing.

Oooo-kay there, Urban.

And, yes, I did see that pig fly over Ohio Stadium the other day.

Stock tip for today

Remember all the usual suspects getting their shorts in a twist because Nike chose to use That Awful Black Person, Colin Kaepernick, to front its latest Just Do It campaign? Remember how everyone said using this guy -- blackballed by the NFL and supposedly radioactive -- was going to bring down the wrath of the Faketriot in Chief and the rest of the super-patriots?

Because, oh my God, he'd spit on the flag and cursed loudly during the national anthem, thereby disrespecting our troops.

 OK. So he only knelt quietly during the national anthem.

And, OK, so a whole lot of the troops said they didn't feel disrespected at all by that.

And, OK, so that was because the reason he was doing it -- because he didn't think it was right African-Americans were getting killed by law enforcement in situations where they shouldn't have been getting killed -- didn't seem all that controversial to them.

And yet, the Faketriot in Chief kept trying to make it about disrespect. Kept calling the African-Americans who followed Kaepernick's lead -- sometimes actually kneeling with their hands over their hearts -- SOBs. And now Nike was going to use this guy to deliver its latest inspirational message?

A spate of burning Nike gear spread across the land. A boycott was declared. Nike was going to pay for this affront, and pay dearly.

You remember all that. Right?

Well ...

Yesterday, Nike stock closed at $83.47.

It was, um, a record high.

Your moment of foreboding for today

In which the Boston Red Sox record their 100th win in their 146th game, the fastest to do that since 2001.

When the Seattle Mariners did it on their way to an astounding 116 wins.

And then didn't even make the World Series.

Because they were knocked off by ... the Yankees.

Rest easy, Red Sox Nation.

Oh, and here's some soothing musical accompaniment.

Time out for some perspective

Look, I get it. I grew up here, too, you know.

So when an NBA video game comes out that contains a clip portraying Fort Wayne as a place where the weather stinks all the time and there's nothing to do and Indianapolis looks down on it because Indy has restaurants and malls and schools and stuff (also indoor plumbin', though the clip doesn't say that), we get all wrathy.

Yeah, it's infuriating. Yeah, it's the work of lazy hacks who don't know how to do satire -- i.e., by researching the subject so you can inject the nuggets of truth that make satire work. Whoever wrote this business clearly didn't do any such homework, because the clip, besides not being funny, is appallingly inaccurate.

This set off a predictable furor in the Fort, which (along with Indiana in general) has an inferiority complex a mile wide and fathoms deep. I was always reminded of this whenever Chicago columnist Mike Royko made sport of the Hoosier state. It used to make my relatives mad as hell, and they always wanted me to retaliate with a column of my own.

"Nah, I'm not doin' that," I'd always say.

"Why?" they'd ask.

"'Cause I think Royko's column was hilarious. And pretty much true," I'd reply.

Needless to say this response did not go over well.

Ditto with the video game thing. We can get all mad about it, but let's do this, too: Keep our eye on the ball.

Fort Wayne (and the Mad Ants) are prominently featured in a video game that sells all over the world. All. Over. The. World.

That's called publicity, folks. And there ain't no such thing as bad publicity.

As my former colleague and the dean of Fort Wayne sportswriters Justin Cohn so ably reminds us here.

Listen to the man. Because he's dead-on right.

The Crickets 400

You could say the Brickyard 400 -- aka, Now Just Another NASCAR Race -- caught a break this weekend. In an inside-out, Brickyard 400 sort of way, of course.

 It got rained out, you see.

Which pushed it to Monday, which meant it wouldn't be going head-to-head with the first NFL Sunday of the season, which at the very least meant you might be able to find it on one of the screens in your favorite sports bar -- a circumstance that wouldn't have happened otherwise.

Of course, the Monday date doomed it to its likely lowest attendance ever. Which is saying something considering how attendance has been steadily sliding downhill for the last decade.

On the other hand, there was actually some pseudo drama at the end this time, if only because a late crash bunched the field for a restart with three laps to run. This enabled Brad Keselowski to pass Denny Hamlin for the lead on the next-to-last lap. In the numbingly monotonous Tournament of Roses parade that is the Brickyard, that qualified as Goosebump City.

And who knows? Maybe it did actually make a few screens in a few sports bars.

Not the one I was in, late Monday afternoon. Walked in and sat down to watch the closing laps after work, and on one screen there was NFL Monday Night preview stuff, and on another screen some highlights from the Sunday games, and on yet another screen the replay of Notre Dame-Ball State  from Saturday.

I thought about asking the bartender if she could switch one of them to the race. But I'm a Ball State grad, and the Cardinals played bravely in Notre Dame Stadium on Saturday, and so ...

And so, I watched Riley Neal instead of Ryan Blaney.

And didn't miss a thing, sadly.

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 1

And now the long awaited end of the hiatus, which kinda rhymes with "hate us," which is what you're saying now because the Blob is bringing back The NFL In So Many Words, the long-running feature that's been hailed as "stupid," "incomprehensible" and "so bad just reading it will make you dumber than Matt Patricia.":

1. Matt Patricia!

2. (Will now shave his beard to avoid detection in Detroit, and also to look more like his predecessor, Jim Caldwell, who at least never lost 48-17 at home to the freaking Jets, for God's sake, who were starting a freaking rookie quarterback, for God's sake. And making him look like Joe Freaking Namath, for God's sake.)

3. Meanwhile, Jim Caldwell be all like "What? I'm fired? For Beard Guy? Really?"

4. Hey, look! It's Willis Reed limping onto the court again!

5. Oh, sorry. That was Aaron Rodgers, limping out to beat the Bears again. Our bad.

6. Hey, look! It's the Great Jon Gruden!

7. Oh, sorry. It's just Jon Gruden, Some Dude Who Won A Super Bowl Eleventy-Hundred Years Ago. Our bad.

8. Meanwhile, the Browns!

9. Tied, dammit! Tied!

10. Take that, doubters.

As Luck wouldn't have it

More on the NASH-onal FOOT-ball League tomorrow, when the Blob again inflicts it's universally despised annual feature, The NFL In So Many Words, on an uncaring world. But first ...

First, an Andrew Luck update!

The good news is, he threw the football 53 times and his arm didn't fall off.

The better news is, he completed 39 of those throws for 319 yards and two touchdowns, with one interception.

The bad news is, he threw the football 53 times because the Colts have no running game whatsoever.

The worse news is, the Colts gave up 17 points in the fourth quarter and blew one at home to the Bengals, 34-23.

Which undoubtedly made Andrew Luck feel worse than he would have if his arm had fallen off.

Un-chair-itable

I can tell you what I'm seeing this morning, in the wake of Naomi Osaka's coming-out moment. It has nothing to do with the gracious, stunningly talented 20-year-old Japanese tennis player, and so you're forgiven for thinking the Blob has slipped a cog.

("Wouldn't be the first time," you're saying).

Anyway, Osaka overwhelmed Serena Williams 6-2, 6-4 in the U.S. Open women's singles final yesterday. It was impressive. It perhaps heralded the turning of a page in women's tennis. And yet all I could see was John McEnroe.

Standing with his hands on hips.

All that '70s hair springing Medusa-like from his headband.

Screaming at the chair umpire.

"(You're the) pits of the world!" McEnroe is shouting.

I don't recall the chair umpire docking him a game for that. Although admittedly it has been close to 40 years.

I do recall that when a seething Serena Williams told chair umpire Carlos Ramos he was a "thief" for docking her a point for a couple of infractions, one legit and the other absurd, Ramos did dock her a game. And thereby injected himself into Naomi Osaka's moment in a manner that should preclude him ever sitting in the chair again for a Grand Slam final.

Look. There's no question Serena let her emotions get the best of her in that moment. There's no question she should have been docked for smashing her racquet in frustration at one point. There is, however, completely a question that it should have been her second infraction, given that the first -- that she was receiving coaching because her coach made a gesture she never even saw -- was ridiculous, because it happens all the time in every single match.

But to dock her a game for talking back? Especially when male players don't get penalized in the same way for doing the same thing?

That's the argument Serena made post-match, and it's pretty hard to argue with it. That there was more than a breath of sexism in what Ramos did seems undeniable. Ditto that he allowed his emotions to get in the way just as surely as Serena did.

In any event, by doing so he committed the sin of sins for a sports official: He made it about him. His ruling incited the crowd, which was already pro-Serena. It spoiled Osaka's moment at the end, as boos reigned down on her head and she wept. Some of this might have happened without Ramos doing what he did. But when he failed to do what a good chair is supposed to do -- defuse situations, not exacerbate them -- he certainly intensified it.

And all because a woman talked back to him.

And the woman in question?

When last seen, she was putting an arm around Osaka's shoulders as she wept. Then she addressed the crowd and, essentially, told them to knock it off with the booing.

In other words, she was doing what Carlos Ramos didn't do: Defuse the situation.

His job, in other words.

Chirp-chirp!, The Sequel

In which the Blob was wrong about his Ball State Cardinals, only not really, because if they did NOT shock the damn world, they did rock Brandon Wimbush's world a few times, and maybe gave Knute Rockne's statue a couple of facial tics here and there, and ran around the hallowed Notre Dame turf without soiling it or leaving unsightly chalk outlines on the premises.

In other words, they lost.

But not, you know, 66-7 or eleventy-hundred to 13 or anything like that.

No, sir. The final was 24-16, and if the Cards really didn't cause the Irish any moments of true alarm, they did cause a contusion or two, particularly defensively. Running back James Gilbert ran for 72 yards. Quarterback Riley Neal played with guts and verve and a defiant stubbornness. And the gambling, blitzing Cardinals D took on Wimbush and the Irish offense and earned at least a draw.

Sacked Brandon four times, the defense did, and picked him three times. Hurried him four other times. Recorded 10 tackles for loss. Absolutely stuffed the Irish run game, yielding just 2.8 yards per carry.

I don't know what this will do for Mike Neu's program going forward. But I do know it certainly couldn't have hurt to show up and play the way the Cardinals played in front of a national TV audience. What kid wouldn't want to play for a program that displayed so much grit and want-to and plain old non-lay-down-ishness?

So good on ya, dear alma mater. You fought the good fight. Once again you showed the world -- as did Eastern Michigan, 20-19 upset winners just down the road at Purdue -- that you don't ever, ever, ever sleep on the Mid-American Conference.

As David Letterman was always so fond of saying: The cardinal is the fiercest of the robin-sized birds.

Chirp. Chirp.

Chirp-chirp!

Well, I've got my afternoon planned.

It's a five-item agenda that, OK, involves a fairly significant prison break from reality. But to hell with you and your guffawing. Loyalty is loyalty, even if it makes no sense. In fact I would argue it frequently makes no sense.

In any case, the agenda is this:

1. Sitting down on the couch.

2. Strategically placing snacks and libations within easy reach.

3. Turning on the TV.

4. Spending the next three-and-a-half hours watching my Ball State Cardinals SHOCK THE DAMN WORLD by pounding lumps on those candy-asses from Notre Dame. It will be ugly. It will be glorious. The statue of Knute Rockne outside Notre Dame Stadium will come to life and demand to know what the hell is going on. The statue of Frank Leahy will come to life, mournfully shake his head and say "Oh, lads." Fair Catch Corby will be seen to weep.

And then ...

5. I'll wake up.

Once more into the ... something

And now for an idea whose time has come, and also gone. And gone. And gone. And ... gone.

That makes four "gones" by the Blob's sketchy math, which is how many times Fort Wayne has been down the rabbit hole known as indoor football. If you're scoring at home, there was the Safari/Freedom, the Fusion, the Other Freedom and the FireHawks. Weird stuff happened with all of them, but all of them eventually met the fate of pretty much every indoor football entity on the level a Fort Wayne is going to be involved in it.

Which is to say, it imploded. Or couldn't make payroll. Or got fleeced by snake-oil salesmen from out of state. Or, you know, died because every other franchise died around it and there was no one left to play.

This is what happens in indoor football, a niche sport even at the top level. On the Fort Wayne level, it's a niche-niche-niche sport, attracting the same sort of passionate but limited fan base indoor soccer did. This means it's not likely to attract any Rooneys, Maras or even a Jerry Jones to run the show and the teams. You're far more likely to get grifters, quick-buck artists and honest but under-capitalized civic leaders.

It's too early to tell which of these the ownership of the fledgling National Gridiron League best resembles, but Fort Wayne is taking the plunge again anyway. Four times burned is not enough, apparently, and so welcome to  the Indiana Blue Bombers, who'll play in the Allen County Memorial Coliseum for a construct in which there will be no franchises. The league will own all the teams.

And if you're saying here, "Oh, my God, it's Isiah Thomas and the CBA all over again," congratulations. You know your Fort Wayne minor league history, particularly all the infamous parts.

It was Isiah, after all, who bought the Continental Basketball Association, a 40-some-year-old concern of which the Fort Wayne Fury was a proud member. Within less than two years, Thomas had killed the league and fled -- proving that even if grifters are people you've heard of, they're no less grifters.

I hope this isn't another merry trip down that primrose path. But I'm a prisoner of history just as everyone is. So color me not just skeptical but wary.

As in "extremely wary."

In any event, there's already some strangeness to this. It starts, of course, with the team name: The Indiana Blue Bombers. Who came up with that? And why are they "Indiana" when there's another Indiana team in Evansville? What are they going to call that team? The Really Close To Kentucky And Illinois Whatevers?

All I know is, the Blob is something of a snob when it comes to nicknames, and "Blue Bombers" sounds like something you come up with when you've never stepped foot in Fort Wayne and know zip about the community -- which pretty much describes this situation. If anyone had asked, we could have come up with any number of names with some local flavor to them ...

1. The Fort Wayne Gimme Fives.

(Because this is the fifth go-around for indoor football, so why not?)

2. The Fort Wayne Downtown Arenas.

(Because, come on, tell me an indoor football team doesn't bolster that argument.)

3. The Fort Wayne Not The Cougars.

(A nod to the real football entity in town, the two-time defending national champion Saint Francis Cougars.)

4. The Fort Wayne Freedom.

(Just, you know, for the irony.)

And last but not least ...

5. The Fort Wayne Fightin' Madder-Than-Anthony Optimists.

(Because you pretty much have to be one of those at this point to think this will end well. Don't you?)

Welcome to the crossroads

It's a rare moment when The Now intersects with What's To Come, but tomorrow we're going to get it on a tennis court in New York. Maybe you missed it, but that's when Serena Williams, the greatest women's player in history, plays Naomi Osaka, the greatest tennis player yet to come, in the women's final at the U.S. Open.

The Blob will watch because it can't resist these sorts of intersections, when history is driving the bus on both sides of the net. I'd dust off that mossiest of clichés -- "the torch is being passed" -- but Serena seems remarkably stubborn about handing it over, and Osaka, who's only 20, has all the time in the world to wait until she does.

If you don't know her name yet, you're going to. Not only is she the first Japanese woman to reach a Grand Slam final, those who've seen her, and who know what they're looking at, say she has rare gifts and clubs the ball with stunning pace. And she's refreshingly honest and engaging.

Asked how she saved 13 break points in a straight-set erasing of Madison Keys in the semis, for instance, Osaka just laughed.

"This is going to sound really bad, but I was just thinking 'I really want to play Serena'," she said.

Well, she'll get her wish. Whether she's ready depends on how badly Serena wants to make history herself; if she wins, it will be her seventh U.S. Open title and 24th major singles title, tying Margaret Court for the most in tennis history -- both pre- and post-professional era.

Anyway, it's going to something to see. Even on a college football Saturday, in the middle of the first weekend of the NFL season.

Ode to a running back

Raise a glass this day to the most fortuitous knee injury in football history, because without it Buford T. Justice wouldn't have gotten his sheriff's car all boogered up.

Excuse me. I suppose I should explain.

See, an old Florida State running back died yesterday. His name was Burt Reynolds.

He was an athlete before he was the Bandit, driving Buford T. crazy in that black Trans-Am. He toted the mail for the Seminoles before he did it for the Mean Machine. And he did again as Billy Clyde Puckett in the worst adaptation ever of an iconic football novel, for which its director (Michael Ritchie) should have been sentenced to shooting used car ads in Pee Stain, Mississippi, for the rest of eternity.

But let's not talk about what that idiot did to "Semi-Tough."

Let's talk instead about Reynolds, who made the jump from athlete to actor after blowing out his knee at FSU, and (unlike so many others) made it stick. I don't know how you measure these things, but surely he's way up there in that poll. Arnold Schwarzenegger, yeah. Duane "The Rock" Johnson, sure. But Burt Reynolds?

He was the Bandit, by God. And, as Paul Crewe, he got to hit Ray Nitschke in the nuts with a football and live to tell about it. Ah-nold and the Rock never did that.

So here's to him, and here's to the glorious intersection between sports and Hollywood. There have been a lot of gruesome car crashes at that intersection -- Jim Brown's film career never worked out, and let's not even talk about O.J. -- but Burt Reynolds was the king, or one of them. And he never really lost his jones for football; he was a major donor to the FSU program over the years and for a time was part-owner of the Tampa Bay Bandits of the old USFL. So here's to him.

I'm sorry, what was that?

Gee, Buford T. I don't know. I think he went thataway.

(Pointing in the opposite direction he actually went).

Anti-Warrior

The other day the Blob jotted down some thoughts on Leland Etzler, the longtime Woodlan football coach who passed Sunday and who taught an entire community, not to say all of us who had the great good fortune to know him, how you go about being a football coach.

Keeping the game in its proper perspective, that's how you do it. Understanding that you are an example in ways that go far beyond 100 yards of turf. Understanding, too, that above all else, you are an educator, and that if what you teach is blocking and tackling, it's also lessons that don't have anything to do with the wing T or the 3-4 defense.

In other words, you are everything this guy isn't.

A grown-ass man threatening an 11-year-old? Over youth football, for God's sake?  Who does that?

And why should we be thanking him?

Because just as we need the Leland Etzlers to show us how it should be done, we need guys like this clown to show us how it shouldn't be. Both role models, in a sense, but occupying completely opposite poles of the earth.

I know which pole I'd rather spend time. I'm guessing you do, too.

Cinderella goes barefoot

If the shoe fits it puts the universe right, sends sunlight to even the dimmest corners, makes put-upon chroniclers of the human experience buy a round for the house, because it makes the chronicling so much more fun. Not to say so much easier.

And so here last fall came NASCAR lifer Martin Truex Jr., scrounger of rides and middle-of-the-pack scuffler, putting on the glass slipper. It fit to the tune of eight victories and a Cup championship, and if that wasn't Cinderella enough he did it driving for an outfit called Furniture Row Racing, which was no one's idea of a heavyweight.

Until 2017, see, Furniture Row was a one-car team, and a scuffler itself. In its first 10 years fielding a Cup team either part-time or full-time, it won two races. It took 137 races for it to crack the winner's circle with Regan Smith in 2011. It took 148 more to do it again with Truex in 2015.

But the last two years it forged a working partnership with Gibbs and Toyota, and hammered out lucrative partnerships with 5-Hour Energy and Bass Pro Shops. And since the start of 2016, Truex has won 16 races carrying Furniture Row colors.

It was the ultimate little-guy-defies-the-odds story. Until it wasn't.

What happened, see, is the odds hit back, and now Furniture Row Racing is just another example of how hard it is to sustain success or even simple viability in motorsports these days. 5-Hour Energy pulled its sponsorship, and that was the end of the fairy tale. This week Furniture Row owner Barney Visser announced he was closing the doors on the race team at the end of this season, defending champion or no defending champion.

“This is not good for anybody," Visser said reluctantly. "The numbers just don’t add up. I would have to borrow money to continue as a competitive team and I’m not going to do that. This was obviously a painful decision to arrive at knowing how it will affect a number of quality and talented people. ... I feel that it’s only proper to make the decision at this time to allow all team members to start seeking employment for next year."

I would have to borrow money to continue as a competitive team ...

Think about that for a moment.

Think about what it means for NASCAR, with its diminished but still outsized presence on the American motorsports landscape, and a perspective still warped out of round by the outrageously unsustainable model of the mid-1990s to mid-2000s. Think about what it means especially heading into Brickyard weekend, the most visible barometer of NASCAR's descent from unassailable monolith to just another racing series with a healthy TV deal.

I would have to borrow money to continue as a competitive team ...

This is not the owner of Chico's Bail Bonds Racing saying this.

This is the owner of the defending Cup champion saying this.

If this Cinderella can't make a go of it in NASCAR these days, no other Cinderella has a ghost of a chance. Even the big boys -- the Gibbses, the Hendrickses, the Penskes, the Stewart-Haases -- have to scrounge and scuffle for sponsorship deals, all their power and connections notwithstanding. Furniture Row managed it because it had Gibbs preparing its cars for them and a couple of solid sponsors. But if one of those sponsors no longer finds it financially viable to put their name on even a Cup-winning car, how solid is any sponsorship for anyone?

Answer: Not very.

Which means everyone, even the big boys, will continue to do their own scrounging and scuffling.

Which means the business will continue to be a going concern, as in "going to be another roll of the dice this year."

Which means it's never going to be the sort of investment into which anyone sinks a fat chunk of change for the long haul.

Them's the facts, boys and girls. Them's always gonna be the facts.

And now it's on to Indy, where the organizers, desperate to stem the dwindling interest in an event that long ago lost its shine and novelty, decided to move the event from late July to early September. After almost 25 years, it seemed, they noticed the last weekend in July was usually hotter than the hinges of hell, and that's why people were staying away. Even though they hadn't until lately.

In any case, here's September, and here's Indy.

Where the forecast for this weekend is for temperatures in the 80s, with a chance of storms every day.

A chance of storms.

Mother Nature doesn't know the half of it.

Message sent

Nine words. That's what this is about, really.

 

Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything.

 

People will burn their Nike gear, because of those nine words. The super patriots, the ones who elect to see affront where none is being given, have already fired up #boycottnike on Twitter. They will cost the most corporate of entities market share because of those words, though it's doubtful such a monolith will be very much shaken by that. Our Only Available President, inconsequential though he is, will be sure to weigh in with some adolescent bloviation that distorts and distracts, because distortion and distraction are all he's got to offer.

 

Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything.

 

That's what shows on the screen over a black-and-white image of Colin Kaepernick in Nike's latest "Just Do It" campaign.

 

That's what will have OOAP and his ilk up in arms, even though it's exactly the sort of message they'd be glad to impart to their own children, and one no thinking human could see as anything but noble and right. Especially in a nation born on the belief of so many who did sacrifice everything.

 

But not this time. Not with Colin Kaepernick delivering the message, Colin Kaepernick who in his own small way has also sacrificed much for something he believes.

 

He's not right about all of it, mind you. He's said and done things he shouldn't have. But when he knelt with his head bowed during the national anthem because he didn't think it was right people of color were being killed in situations where they shouldn't have been, and receiving prison sentences white people do not for the same crimes, he was displaying exactly what is best about this country. And what has always been one of its guiding principles. 

 

Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything.

 

No sentiment is more American than that one.

 

And yet ...

 

And yet, because it is Kaepernick, and because what he is protesting is beyond the experience of those who don't look like him, it will be seen as something alien. It will be an occasion for outrage.

 

How dare Nike allow That Guy to deliver that message! How dare they!

 

And yet. And yet.

 

And yet, what he knelt to protest is happening. It is real. Just because it's not happening to you -- because  you were lucky enough to be born with a different pigmentation -- does not make it less so. 

 

We can debate the causes, and they are many. But we can't debate the fact that, if you are white, you're probably not going to get shot while reaching for your wallet. You're probably not going to get shot or beaten or choked to death simply for arguing with a cop. Your child is probably not going to wind up on a slab because he was playing with a cap gun in the park.

 

And if it does happen, you're probably going to get justice.

 

Kaepernick, and all those who followed suit, saw a fundamental unfairness in that. They saw a broken place in the American ideal. It's fair to debate whether or not the way they chose to protest  that is the right way, although doing it in the full glare of an NFL Sunday afternoon would seem to be the perfect way. And although OOAP's narrative -- that they were disrespecting America -- is as false as virtually everything else he says.

 

If the goal was disrespect, after all, there were a million better ways to do it: spitting in the direction of the flag, flipping it off, cursing loudly while the anthem is playing. But kneeling quietly with a bowed head? And in some cases with one hand over the heart?

 

Please.

 

Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything.

 

Well, Colin Kaepernick does believe in something. And, if not everything, he has sacrificed a career worth hundreds of millions. And, as have so many of his peers, he has spent millions to back up his Sunday afternoon symbolism with real Monday-through-Friday activism.

 

You don't have to see the America he sees, simply because it's not in your realm of experience. And you don't have to respect the way he's gone about trying to make that America great again, as OOAP and his acolytes are so fond of saying.

 

But you do have to respect his instinct to do it. And acknowledge that he's as fit as anyone to deliver this particular corporate message.  

A Warrior passes

They've put down a living room carpet out there, beyond the place where the semis used to moan through the gears toward Ohio in the old days. But the old days are gone.

U.S. 24 no longer skirts those Friday night lights behind a screen of trees at Woodlan High School; it runs south of Woodlan now, an easy run to Toledo that's four lanes wide these days. The field, too, is four lanes wide, in a sense: Pristine artificial turf from which the green never fades and maintenance -- like, yes, a living room carpet -- amounts to running a vacuum sweeper over it or some such thing.

Yet there are things that never change, out there at Woodlan. There are eternals every high school that's seen generations walk its halls contains, certain truths that remain self-evident.

Blocking and tackling.

August heat and sweat and the clatter of pads as rustling stands of summer corn bear witness.

The bark of a coach's voice, the scree of a whistle, names like Gerig and Ehle and Gerbers. And of course one other name who coached generations of the aforementioned, and which now proudly graces the front of the pressbox.

Etzler Field, it reads.

Because, yes, this is Leland Etzler's field. It is his field and his Friday nights and his school, you might say, in the way every school becomes synonymous with those who serve it long and faithfully and with a particular love that binds the two of them forever.

For an entire community on the eastern edge of Indiana, Leland Etzler was everything a high school football coach was supposed to be, and much more. He passed Sunday afternoon at the age of 78, but his example of how you coach young men and how you live your life will go on forever. All those Gerigs and Ehles and Gerbers -- everyone who's lived the last half-century or so in Woodburn -- carry it with them. They pass it along to the next generation; they find themselves repeating things Leland Etzler said to them decades ago in those electric minutes just before kickoff.

This will happen when a man clumps up and down one school's sideline for 43 years, which is what Etzler did at Woodlan. He broke in as an assistant junior high coach back in 1962, and he was the varsity head coach from 1965 to 2004. He came in with Kennedy and went out with Bush the Younger, clumped up and down that sideline through Vietnam and Watergate and the Gulf War and 9/11. The Beatles became the BeeGees became Pearl Jam became Jay-Z, and still he was there.

I got to know Leland fairly late in all that, and a finer man and educator and just plain by-God example I never met. Now when I hear the words "high school football coach," I think of Leland. When I hear "pillar of the community," I think of Leland. Long before it was a living room carpet, when it was just God's own grass that gleamed dew-wet beneath the lights on Friday nights, that field was Leland's field. He guarded it jealously, watching over it with the eye of an art critic inspecting a Monet or Gauguin.

He was doing that early one morning when I drove out to Woodlan for a first-day-of-football-practice column, some span of years ago. The sun had just cleared all that head-high corn to the east, bringing with it giants' shadows and the promise of thick August heat. Leland was keeping a close eye on the grounds crew as they groomed his field, fretting a little, maybe, hoping for some rain. The season, after all, was only a couple of weeks away.

Presently we made our way back to the blockhouse that comprised Woodlan's locker room, and stood outside talking as Leland's latest crop of Woodlan Warriors straggled in by ones and twos and sometimes threes and fours. This is where, on this day or another -- too many years have flown to pinpoint the exact date -- I noticed some sort of wooden contraption that looked homemade.

Turns out it was.

Turns out Leland had built it himself. I don't remember what it was for, but he'd seen a need and had gone home and committed some carpentry, cut the wood and fastened it together and brought it out here to serve Woodlan High School and the Woodlan High School football program.

That's what a guy did, after all, when Woodlan High School and Woodlan football had been his charge to keep for four decades. It's what made Leland Etzler synonymous with both, when the lessons he imparted and the example he set had become as much a part of it all as those100 yards of manicured grass and every brick in the place.

Because, see, Leland Etzler was not just a warrior, coaching all those young men in their navy jerseys and white helmets with the blue numbers on the sides to 287 wins and a state championship game appearance in 1981. Ultimately he was much more than that.

Ultimately, he was also a Warrior.

Nightmare scenario

Just had this crazy-bad dream in which my baseball team, the relentlessly underwhelming Pittsburgh Pirates, traded the face of their franchise, Andrew McCutchen, to the San Francisco Giants.

That was awful enough. Then the Giants turned around and traded Cutch to the bleeping bleep-bleep Yankees, for God's sake, insufferable scourge of all things decent and American.

So now Mr. Pirate, whose bobblehead graces a shelf in my office at Manchester University, would soon be wearing those bleeping bleep-bleep pinstripes.

"Oh, my God, I think I'm going to pu--" I said.

Thankfully I woke up before I could finish that sentence. Or the act.

Wait ... What?

A few wildly premature thoughts

So, Notre Dame 24, Michigan 17 on the first full Saturday of the college football season, and now we know what we know. We know NOTRE DAME IS GOING TO WIN THE NATIONAL TITLE!

Also, FIRE JIM HARBAUGH!

Yes, as surely as day follows night, it's time for that storied tradition in Sportsball World (college football division), Overreaction Sunday. In which the Blob looks at the very first games of the new season and extrapolates completely ridiculous conclusions, and also some that may not be as ridiculous as they sound.

Ready ... set ...

Go:

1. Notre Dame Is Going To Win The National Title!

The itch to over-hype the Irish after a juicy win is one more than a few folks (including, ahem, the Blob) simply can't avoid scratching, so of course it's going to happen this time, too.

First things first: It was a pretty impressive win, especially on the defensive side of the football. New defensive coordinator Clark Lea's D reduced Michigan and its ballyhooed new quarterback Shea Patterson to little more than a squeak; the Michigan offense didn't find the end zone until two minutes remained in the game, and Patterson was harassed all night by a Notre Dame front seven that beat the Michigan O-line briskly about the head and neck, and was every bit the equal of Michigan's much-more-hyped defensive down seven.

Take away the kickoff return touchdown, and Michigan managed just 10 points against the Irish D. And it managed only a field goal until very late.

On the other hand ...

On the other hand, after two impressive scores on its first two drives, Notre Dame's offense didn't do a whole lot, either. Brandon Wimbush was terrific early and then, well, not really. In the second half, the Michigan D all but silenced the Irish, allowing one lonely field goal, five almost as lonely first downs and 67 pretty-damn-lonely-themselves yards.

So ... slow the roll, folks. At least a little, and at least for now.

2. Fire Jim Harbaugh!.

In which the Man Who Would Return The Wolverines To Greatness came up wanting again on the big stage, and in a way that didn't inspire a lot of confidence. The Wolverines lost their starting safety to an undisciplined head hit, flubbed the snap on a field-goal attempt and made hash of clock management late as they tried desperately to get back in a game they'd hardly been in.

Not an impressive showing for the Man Who Would Blah-Blah-Blah. The loss dropped Harbaugh's record to 1-6 against Michigan's fiercest rivals (Ohio State, Michigan State and Notre Dame), leveled the Wolverines' record at a pedestrian 9-9 across their last 18 games and seemed to herald another fine 8-5 or 9-4 autumn.

Not exactly what the Michigan faithful expected when Harbaugh breezed into Ann Arbor full of hope, promise and -- perhaps -- a bit of helium, given the results so far.

On the other hand ...

On the other hand, the hot seat doesn't look all that toasty to the Blob just yet. So stay tuned.

3. Appalachian State Should Immediately Apply For Membership In The Big Ten!

Because, you know, it beat Michigan once, and damn near beat No. 10 Penn State yesterday. The Nittany Lions needed a late Trace McSorley touchdown pass to force overtime, then got an interception in the end zone to seal a 45-38 victory.

On the other hand ...

On the other hand, they're still Appalachian State. So, there's that.

4. Penn State Is Going To Be Terrible Without Saquon Barkley, Just Terrible!

Because, you know, they almost lost to Appalachian State.

On the other hand ...

On the other hand, Appalachian State's program has won over 550 games, claimed three national FCS titles and appeared in the FCS playoffs 20 times. And last year the Mountaineers went 9-4 and shut out Toledo 34-0 in the Dollar General bowl.

So it's not like they're, you know, Whatsamatta U.

5. Cole McDonald Is Going To Win The Heisman!

Don't know who Cole McDonald is?

 Well, he's the quarterback at Hawaii. And last night he threw for six touchdowns in a 59-41 win over Navy. Which of course makes him the Heisman frontrunner. Just hand the stiff-arming little goober to him now.

On the other hand ...

On the other hand, he's the quarterback at Hawaii. Which is not Alabama. Or even Ohio State.

Speaking of which ...

Last but not least:

6. Stop! Urban Meyer Has Been Punished Enough!

Which, OK, is not an overreaction. It's just sarcasm.

Because Ohio State 77, Oregon State 31.

Oh, how Urban must have been agonizing as he thought how easily it could have gone the other way if the teams had played for, I don't know, a hundred years or so. Oh, how he must have been regretting, to the depths of his soul, coddling a wife beater all those years.

On the other hand ...

Well. You know.