This World Series?
This was the World Series when Max Scherzer played Monty Python's Black Knight to the Astros' King Arthur, the latter saying "But your arm's off!" while Scherzer, squirming out of another jam, insisted, "No, it isn't!"
This was the World Series when past and present formed a ghostly double image, Scherzer rising to help the Washington Nationals win Game 7 the way Walter Johnson rose from career twilight 95 autumns ago to help the Washington Senators win Game 7.
This was the World Series when home field advantage was a punchline. When the Nationals dropped prosperity like a bad habit, and welcomed adversity like a prodigal son. When they won a couple on the road and then were thoroughly dominated at home -- as if deciding, perhaps, they could make it harder on themselves if they really tried.
So they lost all three games in D.C. by an aggregate score of 19-3 and went back to Houston done like dinner. Except they weren't, of course.
They threw Stephen Strasburg at the 'Stros in Game 6 and won 7-2. Then, for Game 7, they sent out Scherzer, who had nothing but grit and by-God-no-you-won't stubbornness going for him. And they won 6-2.
In both games the Nats trailed early and rallied. In both games they got big home runs in the late innings. With the Series on the line, they simply refused to lose as stubbornly as their spiritual ancestors, the Senators, once refused to win,
It was as wonderful and baffling a World Series as has ever been played, the only one in history in which no one won a home game. We'll likely never see that again, especially in a seven-game Series.
On the other hand ...
On the other hand, the Nationals still have Strasburg and Scherzer. They still have Anthony Rendon and Juan Soto and the now-immortal Howie Kendrick. They still have the swagger of the drunken redneck who says, "Think I can't do this? Watch THIS!"
Think we can't blow an un-blowable lead in the World Series? Watch THIS!
Think we can't get embarrassed in front of our home fans? Watch THIS!
Think we can't go back to Houston down 3-2, outscore the Astros 13-4 and steal the Series from a team that won 107 games during the regular season?
Watch THIS!
Well ... we did.
And, damn, it was beautiful.
Thursday, October 31, 2019
Bowing to the obvious, sort of
Give the pashas who oversee professional collegiate athletics this much: They can indeed read.
This is especially true when the handwriting is as bright and legible, and the wall it's written on as imposing, as it is in this case.
And so the NCAA yesterday voted unanimously to allow student-athletes to profit from the use of their names, images and likenesses, on account of they didn't have much choice. The California law prohibiting state schools from punishing athletes for accepting endorsement money blew the NCAA's lovely fantasy world to shards, and other states were lining up to follow suit. And so the organization was faced with an untenable prospect: Making its member institutions break the law in order to keep their "student-athletes" from getting a cut of the enormous profits they generate.
So, the pashas caved. Well, kind of. Sorta-kinda.
What they did, actually, was say this: Yeah, OK, if we use you guys as billboards for your schools' apparel deals we'll cut you in on the take, because we've gotta. But only if it's the same sort of deal regular students would get, and only if it doesn't create a competitive imbalance, and only if it maintains the fiction that you're still Joe College and NOT, you know, dirty uncouth professionals.
OK. So they probably didn't say the latter. Not in those exact words, anyway.
But trying to keep pretending there's a substantive difference between Power Five football and basketball and what goes on at the next level is a fool's errand, as everyone except the NCAA seems to realize. That delusion clearly remains in place, even as the NCAA itself votes to effectively cripple it. It cannot bring itself to admit theirs is as much a multi-billion dollar corporation as any on Wall Street -- and that as such their "student-athletes" are in fact employees of the university, with all the rights and privileges pertaining thereto.
Thus this whole desperate long-way-around-the-barn parsing. You can profit from your labor like any professional, but not if it looks too much like you're a professional. 'Cause you're not. You're STUDENT-ATHLETES. This makes you different from PROFESSIONALS, because ... um, because ...
And there the logic train runs out of track.
Pretty obviously, all this doublespeak is the NCAA's way of caving to the inevitable without looking like it's caving to the inevitable. It's a half-measure designed to put the brakes on what it surely must know is coming, which is a clear break between Power Five athletics and everything else.
That break already exists, in essence. Rules for Division I and II athletics, and Division III athletics, already are different. So the next step is an easy one: Casting fiction to the wind and allowing FBS football and Division I basketball to operate fully as the professional enterprises they are, and making everyone else adhere to the student-athlete model to which they already largely adhere.
For the NCAA, that's clearly a bridge too far just yet. But the first span has gone up.
This is especially true when the handwriting is as bright and legible, and the wall it's written on as imposing, as it is in this case.
And so the NCAA yesterday voted unanimously to allow student-athletes to profit from the use of their names, images and likenesses, on account of they didn't have much choice. The California law prohibiting state schools from punishing athletes for accepting endorsement money blew the NCAA's lovely fantasy world to shards, and other states were lining up to follow suit. And so the organization was faced with an untenable prospect: Making its member institutions break the law in order to keep their "student-athletes" from getting a cut of the enormous profits they generate.
So, the pashas caved. Well, kind of. Sorta-kinda.
What they did, actually, was say this: Yeah, OK, if we use you guys as billboards for your schools' apparel deals we'll cut you in on the take, because we've gotta. But only if it's the same sort of deal regular students would get, and only if it doesn't create a competitive imbalance, and only if it maintains the fiction that you're still Joe College and NOT, you know, dirty uncouth professionals.
OK. So they probably didn't say the latter. Not in those exact words, anyway.
But trying to keep pretending there's a substantive difference between Power Five football and basketball and what goes on at the next level is a fool's errand, as everyone except the NCAA seems to realize. That delusion clearly remains in place, even as the NCAA itself votes to effectively cripple it. It cannot bring itself to admit theirs is as much a multi-billion dollar corporation as any on Wall Street -- and that as such their "student-athletes" are in fact employees of the university, with all the rights and privileges pertaining thereto.
Thus this whole desperate long-way-around-the-barn parsing. You can profit from your labor like any professional, but not if it looks too much like you're a professional. 'Cause you're not. You're STUDENT-ATHLETES. This makes you different from PROFESSIONALS, because ... um, because ...
And there the logic train runs out of track.
Pretty obviously, all this doublespeak is the NCAA's way of caving to the inevitable without looking like it's caving to the inevitable. It's a half-measure designed to put the brakes on what it surely must know is coming, which is a clear break between Power Five athletics and everything else.
That break already exists, in essence. Rules for Division I and II athletics, and Division III athletics, already are different. So the next step is an easy one: Casting fiction to the wind and allowing FBS football and Division I basketball to operate fully as the professional enterprises they are, and making everyone else adhere to the student-athlete model to which they already largely adhere.
For the NCAA, that's clearly a bridge too far just yet. But the first span has gone up.
Tuesday, October 29, 2019
An American rite. Or right.
Fans of the Philadelphia Eagles, not noted for their social graces, once booed Santa Claus.
No, that's not accurate, actually. They pelted him with snowballs.
But it's October and it was baseball and so Our Only Available President did not catch a nice fluffy curveball square in the snozzola the other night, the way Ralphie did from Scut Farkas in "A Christmas Story." So, yeah, it could have been worse.
The Grifter-in-Chief only caught a nice chorus of boos, when he showed up for Game 5 of the World Series in D.C. Oh, and a few chants of "Lock him up!", an acknowledgement that the President of the United States is as crooked as a dog's hind leg and pretty much always has been. Oh, and a banner that read "Impeach Trump.''
You'd think this was the end of the Republic, the way the pundits and Beltway cognoscenti carried on. Even some Democrats said we shouldn't be booing the President, on account of he's the President and we should respect the office, even if its current occupant has turned it into a hangout for various Luca Brasis and Clemenzas. And poor old Joe Scarborough, no fan of OOAP, tsk-tsked that this is not who we are as a nation.
To which Blob would reply: He's kidding, right?
Sorry, Joe, but this is exactly who we are as a nation. You think sports fans who throw snowballs at Santa Claus wouldn't boo a president who's being investigated for all manner of high and low crimes and misdemeanors? It's the toughest crowd there is, a sports crowd. Ain't no tea and crumpets in this locality.
So, really, what could OOAP have expected? You want applause, go to the opera. And stop conducting the people's business like a mafia don. And stop the juvenile trashing of anyone who calls you on your bullstuff.
Act like a damn president and not an 8-year-old. Then maybe you'll earn some respect.
Until then, Joe Scarborough and everyone else needs to quit pretending booing the president and chanting "Lock him up!" is disrespecting the office. It's not. It's disrespecting an occupant of that office who's earned that disrespect in spades.
You reap what you sow, in other words. Especially from the sort of crowd that's called their witless coach or hapless QB1 a hell of a lot worse.
Think OOAP got treated rough the other night?
Shoot. He was lucky.
He could have been Mitch Trubisky or Matt Nagy in Chicago on Sunday. Now that's rough.
No, that's not accurate, actually. They pelted him with snowballs.
But it's October and it was baseball and so Our Only Available President did not catch a nice fluffy curveball square in the snozzola the other night, the way Ralphie did from Scut Farkas in "A Christmas Story." So, yeah, it could have been worse.
The Grifter-in-Chief only caught a nice chorus of boos, when he showed up for Game 5 of the World Series in D.C. Oh, and a few chants of "Lock him up!", an acknowledgement that the President of the United States is as crooked as a dog's hind leg and pretty much always has been. Oh, and a banner that read "Impeach Trump.''
You'd think this was the end of the Republic, the way the pundits and Beltway cognoscenti carried on. Even some Democrats said we shouldn't be booing the President, on account of he's the President and we should respect the office, even if its current occupant has turned it into a hangout for various Luca Brasis and Clemenzas. And poor old Joe Scarborough, no fan of OOAP, tsk-tsked that this is not who we are as a nation.
To which Blob would reply: He's kidding, right?
Sorry, Joe, but this is exactly who we are as a nation. You think sports fans who throw snowballs at Santa Claus wouldn't boo a president who's being investigated for all manner of high and low crimes and misdemeanors? It's the toughest crowd there is, a sports crowd. Ain't no tea and crumpets in this locality.
So, really, what could OOAP have expected? You want applause, go to the opera. And stop conducting the people's business like a mafia don. And stop the juvenile trashing of anyone who calls you on your bullstuff.
Act like a damn president and not an 8-year-old. Then maybe you'll earn some respect.
Until then, Joe Scarborough and everyone else needs to quit pretending booing the president and chanting "Lock him up!" is disrespecting the office. It's not. It's disrespecting an occupant of that office who's earned that disrespect in spades.
You reap what you sow, in other words. Especially from the sort of crowd that's called their witless coach or hapless QB1 a hell of a lot worse.
Think OOAP got treated rough the other night?
Shoot. He was lucky.
He could have been Mitch Trubisky or Matt Nagy in Chicago on Sunday. Now that's rough.
A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 8
And now a special Halloween week edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the spine-tingling Blob feature of which critics have said "My spine is tingling!" and also "Aiyeee! Oh God, my SPIIIIIIINE!":
1. The Browns! Aiyeee!
2. Hello. My name is Mitchell Trubisky and -- Aiyeee! It's the ghost of Bob Avellini!
3. On certain nights, when the fog settles in the low places and a chill not altogether natural settles over the old river town, the dead rise and walk, shambling through the streets in a manner that barely suggests they were once human.
4. Oh, wait. That's just the Bengals.
5. "Yeah, I've seen 'em," whispered the old salt, cutting bait for another day on the water. "Late at night, out there on Biscayne Bay, when the moon's right ... they rise, the creatures. They rise and moan 'Tuuuuuaaa ... Tuuuuuaaaa ...'"
6. Oh, wait. That's just the Dolphins.
7. "Oh, my God," the Cardinals moaned, huddling together in fear. "It's ... it's ... DREW BREES! He's BAAACK!"
8. With a soulless chuckle, Fangios dripping blood, Vic Fangio drained the life from another Broncos drive with another run up the middle on third-and-5.
9. "Aiyeee!" screamed Joe Flacco.
10. "Aiyeee!" screamed the Jets fan, as Sam Darnold plunged another razor-sharp interception through his heart.
1. The Browns! Aiyeee!
2. Hello. My name is Mitchell Trubisky and -- Aiyeee! It's the ghost of Bob Avellini!
3. On certain nights, when the fog settles in the low places and a chill not altogether natural settles over the old river town, the dead rise and walk, shambling through the streets in a manner that barely suggests they were once human.
4. Oh, wait. That's just the Bengals.
5. "Yeah, I've seen 'em," whispered the old salt, cutting bait for another day on the water. "Late at night, out there on Biscayne Bay, when the moon's right ... they rise, the creatures. They rise and moan 'Tuuuuuaaa ... Tuuuuuaaaa ...'"
6. Oh, wait. That's just the Dolphins.
7. "Oh, my God," the Cardinals moaned, huddling together in fear. "It's ... it's ... DREW BREES! He's BAAACK!"
8. With a soulless chuckle, Fangios dripping blood, Vic Fangio drained the life from another Broncos drive with another run up the middle on third-and-5.
9. "Aiyeee!" screamed Joe Flacco.
10. "Aiyeee!" screamed the Jets fan, as Sam Darnold plunged another razor-sharp interception through his heart.
Monday, October 28, 2019
Bowled over
Here is how you know the college bowl landscape has become a country of the absurd, aside from the fact that teams with .500 records now routinely get a berth in the Credit Union Dot Com/Condiment Packet/Ragweed Bowl:
You know it when the title sponsor for a bowl turns out not to exist.
Yes, that's right, sports fans. It seems the new title sponsor for ESPN's New Mexico Bowl, DreamHouse Productions is, well, mostly just a dream.
ESPN has therefore dropped the non-existent sponsor as the sponsor, and gone in search of a new title sponsor. Several excellent candidates are available, the Blob has learned. Among them:
* The Leonard McCoy Institute for Country Doctors.
* Tom Slick's Thunderbolt Greaseslapper Auto Parts.
* Boardwalk Hotels, "The Place To Land When You Want To Go Broke."
* Trump Steaks.
* Trump University.
* Trump Casinos.
* Pretty Much Anything Owned By Trump.
And last but not least ...
* NewDream Productions.
You know it when the title sponsor for a bowl turns out not to exist.
Yes, that's right, sports fans. It seems the new title sponsor for ESPN's New Mexico Bowl, DreamHouse Productions is, well, mostly just a dream.
ESPN has therefore dropped the non-existent sponsor as the sponsor, and gone in search of a new title sponsor. Several excellent candidates are available, the Blob has learned. Among them:
* The Leonard McCoy Institute for Country Doctors.
* Tom Slick's Thunderbolt Greaseslapper Auto Parts.
* Boardwalk Hotels, "The Place To Land When You Want To Go Broke."
* Trump Steaks.
* Trump University.
* Trump Casinos.
* Pretty Much Anything Owned By Trump.
And last but not least ...
* NewDream Productions.
In-audible
Joe Flacco did not like the call. No, sir. Thought it was weak. Thought it smelled like surrender. Thought it was a big ol' 'fraidy-cat call by a bunch of 'fraidy-cat coaches who preferred hiding under their beds instead of trying to, you know, win a football game.
So, here's what Joe Flacco did, as his Broncos were clinging to a one-point lead that turned into a two-point loss to the Colts:
1. Ignored his helmet mike and said "Screw those lily-livers with their run-it-up-the-middle bulls*** on third-and-5. We're gonna throw the football and get the bleepity-bleep first down right here."
2. Ran the play as ordered, then complained about it afterward.
If you chose door No. 2, congratulations. You officially understand how things work these days in the National Fainthearts League.
Now, no one's ever going to mistake Joe Flacco for Joe Namath or Kenny Stabler or any other swashbuckling quarterback of yore. Those guys would have said "Screw that play," dialed up a pass and finished the Colts for good. That's because, back in the yore, quarterbacks actually had minds of their own. They were not slaves to scheme or probability or the prevent offense -- and their coaches understood that what they were seeing out on the field trumped what some coordinator was seeing from a mile up in the pressbox.
Alas, those days are done. It's a coaches' game now, and that's a fact. And so all Joe Flacco could do was complain.
"I just look at it like, we’re now a 2-6 football team and we’re afraid to go for it in a two-minute drill, you know?” he said. “Like, who cares if you give the ball back to the guys with 1:40 left? They obviously got the field goal anyway.
“And once again: We’re a 2-6 football team. And it just feels like we’re kind of afraid to lose a game ... I just felt like, what do we have to lose? Why can’t we be aggressive in some of these situations? That’s kind of how I feel about a lot of the game today.”
He's absolutely right, of course. But saying so after the fact doesn't answer the essential question here, which is "If you hated the play that bad, why didn't you just channel Joe or Kenny and audible out of it?"
The answer: Because obviously he didn't have that option. Or at least didn't think he did.
Crazy game.
So, here's what Joe Flacco did, as his Broncos were clinging to a one-point lead that turned into a two-point loss to the Colts:
1. Ignored his helmet mike and said "Screw those lily-livers with their run-it-up-the-middle bulls*** on third-and-5. We're gonna throw the football and get the bleepity-bleep first down right here."
2. Ran the play as ordered, then complained about it afterward.
If you chose door No. 2, congratulations. You officially understand how things work these days in the National Fainthearts League.
Now, no one's ever going to mistake Joe Flacco for Joe Namath or Kenny Stabler or any other swashbuckling quarterback of yore. Those guys would have said "Screw that play," dialed up a pass and finished the Colts for good. That's because, back in the yore, quarterbacks actually had minds of their own. They were not slaves to scheme or probability or the prevent offense -- and their coaches understood that what they were seeing out on the field trumped what some coordinator was seeing from a mile up in the pressbox.
Alas, those days are done. It's a coaches' game now, and that's a fact. And so all Joe Flacco could do was complain.
"I just look at it like, we’re now a 2-6 football team and we’re afraid to go for it in a two-minute drill, you know?” he said. “Like, who cares if you give the ball back to the guys with 1:40 left? They obviously got the field goal anyway.
“And once again: We’re a 2-6 football team. And it just feels like we’re kind of afraid to lose a game ... I just felt like, what do we have to lose? Why can’t we be aggressive in some of these situations? That’s kind of how I feel about a lot of the game today.”
He's absolutely right, of course. But saying so after the fact doesn't answer the essential question here, which is "If you hated the play that bad, why didn't you just channel Joe or Kenny and audible out of it?"
The answer: Because obviously he didn't have that option. Or at least didn't think he did.
Crazy game.
Sunday, October 27, 2019
Remember when ...
... your Houston Astros were toast, flambe, chauvinist-pigs-on-a-spit (thanks for that, Brandon Taubman!) in this man's World Series?
Yeah, well, they whupped the Washington Nationals 8-1 last night to tie the Fall Classic at two wins apiece. They've outscored the Nats 12-2 so far in the Nats' home yard. And tonight they again send to the bump Gerrit Cole, who's no doubt aching to prove his Game 1 loss was a gargantuan fluke.
So who's in trouble now?
* Remember when ...
... Notre Dame was going to go up to the Big House and drive a stake through the Jim Harbaugh Era at Michigan? When it still held out a glimmer of hope of pole-vaulting into the College Football Playoff? When coming in at No. 8 in the polls did not seem weird at all?
Yeah, well, Harbaugh's Wolverines crushed the Irish 45-14 last night in a driving rainstorm, and there went the latest Domer delusion. Michigan pushed the Irish all over the field, ran on their defense at will, and gave the Notre Dames not a sniff on the other side of the ball. The Irish even made Shea Patterson look like an actual quarterback, a not inconsiderable feat.
This from a Michigan team that got embarrassed a few weeks back by Wisconsin, which itself got embarrassed Saturday by Ohio State a week after jacking around and losing to Illinois.
See ya in the Chicken Sandwich Bowl, Irish.
* Remember when ...
... Alabama and Clemson were the best college football teams in the country, by, like, nautical miles, and everyone wished someone could at least give the Crimson Tide and Tigers a game?
Yeah, well, anybody looked at Ohio State these days?
The Buckeyes laminated Wisconsin 38-7 yesterday, looking like a football team that has no intention of losing anytime soon. Their defense held Jonathan Taylor, maybe the best running back in America this year, to 52 yards on 20 carries. Wisconsin scratched out just nine first downs, 191 total yards and 83 rushing yards. The Badgers averaged just 2.4 yards per rush, despite fielding one of the best offensive lines in the country.
Meanwhile, 'Bama and Clemson stayed unbeaten by rolling over two more overmatched opponents. Which does not mean either one would relish facing the Buckeyes anytime soon.
Not if they're paying attention, anyway.
Yeah, well, they whupped the Washington Nationals 8-1 last night to tie the Fall Classic at two wins apiece. They've outscored the Nats 12-2 so far in the Nats' home yard. And tonight they again send to the bump Gerrit Cole, who's no doubt aching to prove his Game 1 loss was a gargantuan fluke.
So who's in trouble now?
* Remember when ...
... Notre Dame was going to go up to the Big House and drive a stake through the Jim Harbaugh Era at Michigan? When it still held out a glimmer of hope of pole-vaulting into the College Football Playoff? When coming in at No. 8 in the polls did not seem weird at all?
Yeah, well, Harbaugh's Wolverines crushed the Irish 45-14 last night in a driving rainstorm, and there went the latest Domer delusion. Michigan pushed the Irish all over the field, ran on their defense at will, and gave the Notre Dames not a sniff on the other side of the ball. The Irish even made Shea Patterson look like an actual quarterback, a not inconsiderable feat.
This from a Michigan team that got embarrassed a few weeks back by Wisconsin, which itself got embarrassed Saturday by Ohio State a week after jacking around and losing to Illinois.
See ya in the Chicken Sandwich Bowl, Irish.
* Remember when ...
... Alabama and Clemson were the best college football teams in the country, by, like, nautical miles, and everyone wished someone could at least give the Crimson Tide and Tigers a game?
Yeah, well, anybody looked at Ohio State these days?
The Buckeyes laminated Wisconsin 38-7 yesterday, looking like a football team that has no intention of losing anytime soon. Their defense held Jonathan Taylor, maybe the best running back in America this year, to 52 yards on 20 carries. Wisconsin scratched out just nine first downs, 191 total yards and 83 rushing yards. The Badgers averaged just 2.4 yards per rush, despite fielding one of the best offensive lines in the country.
Meanwhile, 'Bama and Clemson stayed unbeaten by rolling over two more overmatched opponents. Which does not mean either one would relish facing the Buckeyes anytime soon.
Not if they're paying attention, anyway.
A football team at last
The ghost of I.M. Hipp Past was not stalking the grounds, on this afternoon five days before a Halloween. There would be no Nebraska I-backs wading through a pile of inert objects posing as the Indiana defense, no 69-17 smoking craters with scraps of smoldering Hoosier jerseys lying about.
Nope. This time, 69-17 was Indiana 38, Nebraska 31. In Lincoln. In the temple of Bob Devaney, Tom Osborne, all those guys.
If you put a title on it, it would be Hey, Look, It's A Football Team, and also (of course) You Ain't So Hipp No More, I.M. Which of course refers to the Nebraska I-back who scorched the Hoosiers two straight years back in the long ago -- 1977 and 1978, when Nebraska won 31-13 in Lincoln behind 254 yards from Hipp, and then 69-17 the next year in Bloomington, when Hipp scored four times and ran for another 123 yards.
Not that any of the Hoosiers who beat the Cornhuskers yesterday will remember any of that, of course. Which is probably a good thing, because lighting a candle to your football past tends to be counterproductive when your past is already a dumpster fire.
No, this football team is too busy living in the now to wallow in the then, and good for it. A lot of us (OK, most of us) rolled our eyes to the heavens when the yearly hype started up about these Hoosiers -- the hype that promised This Team was Going To Be Different, a real boy, Pinocchio, with blockin' and tacklin' and all that other football stuff.
Well. The Hoosiers are now 6-2 going on 7-2, with Big Ten bottom-scraper Northwestern lugging a 1-6 record to B-town next week. After that they've got Penn State, Michigan and 2-6 Purdue to finish out, so (realistically) we're looking at 8-4 and a berth in some bowl a step or so above Radial Tire or Garden Implement.
Not that Tom Allen's crew wouldn't take a Radial Tire or Garden Implement, mind you.
The Hoosiers, after all, haven't played in any sort of bowl in three years, even though there are so many bowls these days you can pretty much get into one with a couple of boxtops from your favorite breakfast cereal. And this is the first time they've gotten to six wins in October since 1993, before Facebook and Twitter and incriminating Instagram photos.
To be sure, this was not one of your great Nebraska teams Indiana dispatched yesterday, and they still (mostly) can't stop anybody, a chronic staple of Indiana football. But attention must be paid, and credit must be given when due.
Even I.M. Hipp would agree with that.
Nope. This time, 69-17 was Indiana 38, Nebraska 31. In Lincoln. In the temple of Bob Devaney, Tom Osborne, all those guys.
If you put a title on it, it would be Hey, Look, It's A Football Team, and also (of course) You Ain't So Hipp No More, I.M. Which of course refers to the Nebraska I-back who scorched the Hoosiers two straight years back in the long ago -- 1977 and 1978, when Nebraska won 31-13 in Lincoln behind 254 yards from Hipp, and then 69-17 the next year in Bloomington, when Hipp scored four times and ran for another 123 yards.
Not that any of the Hoosiers who beat the Cornhuskers yesterday will remember any of that, of course. Which is probably a good thing, because lighting a candle to your football past tends to be counterproductive when your past is already a dumpster fire.
No, this football team is too busy living in the now to wallow in the then, and good for it. A lot of us (OK, most of us) rolled our eyes to the heavens when the yearly hype started up about these Hoosiers -- the hype that promised This Team was Going To Be Different, a real boy, Pinocchio, with blockin' and tacklin' and all that other football stuff.
Well. The Hoosiers are now 6-2 going on 7-2, with Big Ten bottom-scraper Northwestern lugging a 1-6 record to B-town next week. After that they've got Penn State, Michigan and 2-6 Purdue to finish out, so (realistically) we're looking at 8-4 and a berth in some bowl a step or so above Radial Tire or Garden Implement.
Not that Tom Allen's crew wouldn't take a Radial Tire or Garden Implement, mind you.
The Hoosiers, after all, haven't played in any sort of bowl in three years, even though there are so many bowls these days you can pretty much get into one with a couple of boxtops from your favorite breakfast cereal. And this is the first time they've gotten to six wins in October since 1993, before Facebook and Twitter and incriminating Instagram photos.
To be sure, this was not one of your great Nebraska teams Indiana dispatched yesterday, and they still (mostly) can't stop anybody, a chronic staple of Indiana football. But attention must be paid, and credit must be given when due.
Even I.M. Hipp would agree with that.
Friday, October 25, 2019
No experience required
Look, I don't know. Maybe this is Theo Epstein's Gerry Faust hire, and maybe it's the Boy Genius getting his mojo back.
All I know is, David Ross is pretty clearly what the Cubs have been missing since 2016, the glue guy who gave direction and occasional tough love to a clubhouse full of young'uns. The Cubs won the World Series the last time Ross was in that clubhouse, and they've put up diminishing returns since. So maybe Epstein looked at that and said, "This is the missing piece."
To be sure, he's got as much major-league managing experience as Faust had college coaching experience when Notre Dame handed him the reins to its storied football program. In fact, he's got no managing experience anywhere, not even with the Walnut Street Walnutters of the Grover's Corners Sandlot League. He's never even been a coach at any level.
So it's understandable veteran observers of Cub fender-benders past would regard this as just another left turn into traffic. "That's so Cubs," they are perhaps saying. And also, "Here we go with the College of Coaches again."
But maybe Theo, who's admittedly lost a bit of his shine these past three years, actually has recovered a smidge of it here. It's worth considering.
That there are red flags bloomin' everywhere with this hire is obvious. How does Ross go from being clubhouse buddies with many of these players to being the guy who sets the lineup every day and chews their tails on occasion? Having most recently played for Joe Maddon, and managed not at all, how much does he lean on Maddon for his managerial style and strategizing? Have the Cubs just hired Joe Maddon Lite?
All legit questions. However ...
However, it's worth noting that Ross, given his seniority in a young clubhouse, wasn't so much a buddy as a de facto assistant manager, back in 2016. And he's a former catcher. Former catchers are historically adept at making the transition from diamond to dugout. So ...
So, we'll see. I think this could work out better than a lot of people suspect. Or at least not be the disaster some of the notoriously skeptical faithful foresee.
But then, I thought Gerry Faust would work out.
All I know is, David Ross is pretty clearly what the Cubs have been missing since 2016, the glue guy who gave direction and occasional tough love to a clubhouse full of young'uns. The Cubs won the World Series the last time Ross was in that clubhouse, and they've put up diminishing returns since. So maybe Epstein looked at that and said, "This is the missing piece."
To be sure, he's got as much major-league managing experience as Faust had college coaching experience when Notre Dame handed him the reins to its storied football program. In fact, he's got no managing experience anywhere, not even with the Walnut Street Walnutters of the Grover's Corners Sandlot League. He's never even been a coach at any level.
So it's understandable veteran observers of Cub fender-benders past would regard this as just another left turn into traffic. "That's so Cubs," they are perhaps saying. And also, "Here we go with the College of Coaches again."
But maybe Theo, who's admittedly lost a bit of his shine these past three years, actually has recovered a smidge of it here. It's worth considering.
That there are red flags bloomin' everywhere with this hire is obvious. How does Ross go from being clubhouse buddies with many of these players to being the guy who sets the lineup every day and chews their tails on occasion? Having most recently played for Joe Maddon, and managed not at all, how much does he lean on Maddon for his managerial style and strategizing? Have the Cubs just hired Joe Maddon Lite?
All legit questions. However ...
However, it's worth noting that Ross, given his seniority in a young clubhouse, wasn't so much a buddy as a de facto assistant manager, back in 2016. And he's a former catcher. Former catchers are historically adept at making the transition from diamond to dugout. So ...
So, we'll see. I think this could work out better than a lot of people suspect. Or at least not be the disaster some of the notoriously skeptical faithful foresee.
But then, I thought Gerry Faust would work out.
Fall Crass-ic
It's late October, and that means the World Series, and that also means, oh my God, a baseball team from Washington D.C. could actually win the whole chalupa. The Nationals beat both of the Astros' nuclear arms (Gerrit Cole and JustinVerlander) on the Astros' own turf, and now they're headed to D.C. with a 2-0 lead in the Series and, oh my God, this could actually happen.
This is completely crazy. It's also karma, of a sort, cosmic payback for jackass Astros' exec Brandon Taubman taunting women reporters in the 'Stros clubhouse by loudly crowing about how great it was to have girlfriend-beater Rafael Osuna on their roster.
Well, neener-neener-neener. Take that, ya bums.
But enough about the karma. Let's talk about the crazy.
That the Crazy People have had themselves a week is both obvious and disturbing, in the sense that it's become such a numbingly every-week occurrence. Crazy is apparently our new normal in America, and so when the Crazy People physically obstructed lawful testimony in a lawful impeachment proceeding, it wasn't nearly as shocking as it should have been.
Mob rule and goon tactics: Apparently that's just how a certain species of Congress critters rolls these days in service to their mad king. All that's missing are the torches and pitchforks.
And now, no doubt, you may be asking this: "But Mr. Blob, what do the Crazy People have to do with the Fall Classic?"
Well, nothing, directly. But it bears mentioning, as a cautionary tale, that the Crazy People have a whole crazy constituency cheering them on -- and at least one of them is, yes, a Major League Baseball umpire.
That would be one Rob Drake, who yesterday posted, and then swiftly took down, a tweet that said he was gonna go buy him an AR-15 and start a whole new "Cival (sic) War" if Our Only Available President is impeached. MLB is apparently looking into the matter, but it's important to understand there is more than one Rob Drake out there.
They are, after all, exactly the constituency the Crazy People were reaching out to with their Soccer Hooligans For 'Merica circus act yesterday. And that ought to be more than troubling.
That ought to scare the hell out of us.
Update: The Astros fired Taubman yesterday, a makeup call akin to closing the barn door after the horse was gone and running free like in that Michael Murphey song about a horse named Wildfire. Or, you know, something like that.
This is completely crazy. It's also karma, of a sort, cosmic payback for jackass Astros' exec Brandon Taubman taunting women reporters in the 'Stros clubhouse by loudly crowing about how great it was to have girlfriend-beater Rafael Osuna on their roster.
Well, neener-neener-neener. Take that, ya bums.
But enough about the karma. Let's talk about the crazy.
That the Crazy People have had themselves a week is both obvious and disturbing, in the sense that it's become such a numbingly every-week occurrence. Crazy is apparently our new normal in America, and so when the Crazy People physically obstructed lawful testimony in a lawful impeachment proceeding, it wasn't nearly as shocking as it should have been.
Mob rule and goon tactics: Apparently that's just how a certain species of Congress critters rolls these days in service to their mad king. All that's missing are the torches and pitchforks.
And now, no doubt, you may be asking this: "But Mr. Blob, what do the Crazy People have to do with the Fall Classic?"
Well, nothing, directly. But it bears mentioning, as a cautionary tale, that the Crazy People have a whole crazy constituency cheering them on -- and at least one of them is, yes, a Major League Baseball umpire.
That would be one Rob Drake, who yesterday posted, and then swiftly took down, a tweet that said he was gonna go buy him an AR-15 and start a whole new "Cival (sic) War" if Our Only Available President is impeached. MLB is apparently looking into the matter, but it's important to understand there is more than one Rob Drake out there.
They are, after all, exactly the constituency the Crazy People were reaching out to with their Soccer Hooligans For 'Merica circus act yesterday. And that ought to be more than troubling.
That ought to scare the hell out of us.
Update: The Astros fired Taubman yesterday, a makeup call akin to closing the barn door after the horse was gone and running free like in that Michael Murphey song about a horse named Wildfire. Or, you know, something like that.
Wednesday, October 23, 2019
Shelf life
The NBA season, which begins when the trees are still lit by October flame and ends roughly in the year Zager and Evans made famous ("2525"), got underway last night. Well, kinda.
I mean, there were games and all. But the guy everyone wants to see was nowhere to be seen, on account of he's already hurt.
That would be New Orleans Pelicans rookie Zion Williamson, who blew his meniscus in the last days of some weird superfluous creature the NBA calls The Preseason, and is on the shelf for the next six to eight weeks. In the four preseason "games" he played, Zion was everything we were told he would be, averaging 23 points, six rebounds and two assists in just 27 minutes a night. He shot an absurd 71 percent, mainly because he proved nearly unstoppable in getting to the rim.
If you watched him and didn't immediately think "a young LeBron James," you're not old enough to remember a young LeBron James.
On the other hand ...
On the other hand, it was The Preseason.
Which means the "games" were not, shall we say, indicative. In other words, no one was playing regular season defense, or even October regular season defense. They were playing preseason defense, which is NBA-ese for "Isn't the season long enough without this bull****?"
The answer to that, especially if you're Zion Williamson, is an emphatic "Yes."
Which is to say, what an utter waste, the NBA's most electric new draw hurting himself in a preseason game. Without that game, or The Preseason in general, he gives the Association a boffo curtain raiser. Now it'll be December before the curtain raiser is unveiled.
Just in time for Christmas, other words. I guess there's that.
I mean, there were games and all. But the guy everyone wants to see was nowhere to be seen, on account of he's already hurt.
That would be New Orleans Pelicans rookie Zion Williamson, who blew his meniscus in the last days of some weird superfluous creature the NBA calls The Preseason, and is on the shelf for the next six to eight weeks. In the four preseason "games" he played, Zion was everything we were told he would be, averaging 23 points, six rebounds and two assists in just 27 minutes a night. He shot an absurd 71 percent, mainly because he proved nearly unstoppable in getting to the rim.
If you watched him and didn't immediately think "a young LeBron James," you're not old enough to remember a young LeBron James.
On the other hand ...
On the other hand, it was The Preseason.
Which means the "games" were not, shall we say, indicative. In other words, no one was playing regular season defense, or even October regular season defense. They were playing preseason defense, which is NBA-ese for "Isn't the season long enough without this bull****?"
The answer to that, especially if you're Zion Williamson, is an emphatic "Yes."
Which is to say, what an utter waste, the NBA's most electric new draw hurting himself in a preseason game. Without that game, or The Preseason in general, he gives the Association a boffo curtain raiser. Now it'll be December before the curtain raiser is unveiled.
Just in time for Christmas, other words. I guess there's that.
Tuesday, October 22, 2019
A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 7
And now this week's quarterback-centric edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the seasonal Blob feature of which critics have said "It tastes just like candy corn!" and "Now in PUMPKIN SPICE!":
1. It's Tuesday morning and Sam Dar--
2. Crap. Intercepted aga--
3. Ah, for ... lemme finish the sentence, Sa--!
4. "Cool! Lemme try tha--" (Andy Dalton)
5. Aaron Rodgers. Jacoby Brissette. Patrick Maho--
6. Dammit, Sam!
7. Just tryin' to say, six touchdowns, four touchdowns, one owie.
8. "This Trubisky guy? He's gonna make everyone forget about me." (Jack Concannon)
9. "I was shooting for Bobby Douglass, but OK." (Mitch Trubis--
10. Sam!
1. It's Tuesday morning and Sam Dar--
2. Crap. Intercepted aga--
3. Ah, for ... lemme finish the sentence, Sa--!
4. "Cool! Lemme try tha--" (Andy Dalton)
5. Aaron Rodgers. Jacoby Brissette. Patrick Maho--
6. Dammit, Sam!
7. Just tryin' to say, six touchdowns, four touchdowns, one owie.
8. "This Trubisky guy? He's gonna make everyone forget about me." (Jack Concannon)
9. "I was shooting for Bobby Douglass, but OK." (Mitch Trubis--
10. Sam!
Monday, October 21, 2019
A less-than-zero proposal
It's nice and all that the NBA has decided to take fan behavior by the scruff of the neck, (so to speak), even though every time the Blob hears the words "zero tolerance," it also hears "we're too lazy to make a decision here, so we'll fix it so we don't have to."
Although, in this case, this isn't exactly zero zero tolerance. Or so it seems to the Blob.
Oh, sure, the new fan behavior guidelines are plenty stringent. You can't say racist stuff, obviously, the way they apparently have in places such as Utah and (big surprise) Boston. But the new guidelines stipulate you'll now also get tossed from your cushy courtside seats for talking about a player's mother, or his grade-point average in college, or anything else of a personal nature not related to basketball.
So you can say "My mother could have defended that shot better," but you can't say "Your mother wears army boots." Or you can say "Rotate down, you idiot!", but you can't say "And by 'idiot,' I mean 'so dumb you flunked Move-In Day at Whatsammata U.'"
Of course, knowing the entitled douchenozzles who generally occupy those courtside seats, the Blob can already hear the lawyers warming up their First Amendment briefs. No one cheapens that noble amendment more than some Joe CEO type who can't abide being told no, so expect some elevated legal discourse about an American's inalienable right to call Russell Westbrook's mother a streetwalker.
Well. The Blob has a solution for all this, and it would actually constitute the aforementioned zero zero tolerance.
Get rid of the courtside seats.
I say this not because Drake shouldn't be parading up and down the sideline alongside the Raptors' head coach, although he shouldn't be. I say this because the vast majority of recent player-spectator spats have emanated from the courtside seats.
So, get rid of 'em. Tear 'em right the hell out.
Make the Drakes and the Joe CEOs sit up with the rest of the great unwashed. They should never have been courtside to begin with, but the Lakers let Jack Nicholson sit down there and now everyone thinks they should sit down there.
Sorry, but no. The Blob clings to the antiquated notion that the playing field, and its immediate environs, should belong to the players and the players only. Sue me.
Of course, if the NBA were to get rid of those seats (and it won't, because they're a revenue stream, and we all know how the NBA feels about revenue streams), suing is exactly what would likely happen. It's that kind of world.
Requisite big sigh.
Although, in this case, this isn't exactly zero zero tolerance. Or so it seems to the Blob.
Oh, sure, the new fan behavior guidelines are plenty stringent. You can't say racist stuff, obviously, the way they apparently have in places such as Utah and (big surprise) Boston. But the new guidelines stipulate you'll now also get tossed from your cushy courtside seats for talking about a player's mother, or his grade-point average in college, or anything else of a personal nature not related to basketball.
So you can say "My mother could have defended that shot better," but you can't say "Your mother wears army boots." Or you can say "Rotate down, you idiot!", but you can't say "And by 'idiot,' I mean 'so dumb you flunked Move-In Day at Whatsammata U.'"
Of course, knowing the entitled douchenozzles who generally occupy those courtside seats, the Blob can already hear the lawyers warming up their First Amendment briefs. No one cheapens that noble amendment more than some Joe CEO type who can't abide being told no, so expect some elevated legal discourse about an American's inalienable right to call Russell Westbrook's mother a streetwalker.
Well. The Blob has a solution for all this, and it would actually constitute the aforementioned zero zero tolerance.
Get rid of the courtside seats.
I say this not because Drake shouldn't be parading up and down the sideline alongside the Raptors' head coach, although he shouldn't be. I say this because the vast majority of recent player-spectator spats have emanated from the courtside seats.
So, get rid of 'em. Tear 'em right the hell out.
Make the Drakes and the Joe CEOs sit up with the rest of the great unwashed. They should never have been courtside to begin with, but the Lakers let Jack Nicholson sit down there and now everyone thinks they should sit down there.
Sorry, but no. The Blob clings to the antiquated notion that the playing field, and its immediate environs, should belong to the players and the players only. Sue me.
Of course, if the NBA were to get rid of those seats (and it won't, because they're a revenue stream, and we all know how the NBA feels about revenue streams), suing is exactly what would likely happen. It's that kind of world.
Requisite big sigh.
Sunday, October 20, 2019
Your mascot mishap for today
OK, so not mascot, technically. But ... well ...
Well, this little mishap. The Sooner Schooner goes Boomer, or something like that.
Fortunately no one was injured when the schooner driver (pilot? wrangler?) missed his line going into the corner, and, uh, over she went. Back end got loose, as they say in NASCAR.
This could have been taken as a bad omen for unbeaten, No. 5 Oklahoma, but it wasn't on account of the Sooners were only playing West Virginia, whom they disposed of the way they were supposed to, 52-14. Jalen Hurts did not tip over rolling out to pass, and no Sooners were otherwise harmed in the making of this rout.
So all was good, except for the poor schooner. But as one of my friends and former colleagues put it, "At least the horses are OK."
To make the most important point.
Well, this little mishap. The Sooner Schooner goes Boomer, or something like that.
Fortunately no one was injured when the schooner driver (pilot? wrangler?) missed his line going into the corner, and, uh, over she went. Back end got loose, as they say in NASCAR.
This could have been taken as a bad omen for unbeaten, No. 5 Oklahoma, but it wasn't on account of the Sooners were only playing West Virginia, whom they disposed of the way they were supposed to, 52-14. Jalen Hurts did not tip over rolling out to pass, and no Sooners were otherwise harmed in the making of this rout.
So all was good, except for the poor schooner. But as one of my friends and former colleagues put it, "At least the horses are OK."
To make the most important point.
Revenge of the downtrodden
And so we will get the Nightmare on Nielsen Street, aka the World Series That Will Come For The TV Suits Like The Walking Dead.
In other words, we got us the Astros and the Nationals, y'all.
Darn those Major League Baseball people, anyway. If only they had a sign that read "You Must Be This Tall To Ride This Ride," then 5-foot-6 Jose Altuve does not take Aroldis Chapman into the seats in the 11th inning last night, and the 'Stros don't walk off with a 6-4 win that sent the ratings-monster Yankees off to their winter's sleep.
This is a shame, for those who judge the worth of a sporting event only by its TV ratings. For the rest of us it's the revenge of the nerds, or the stumblebums, or the downtrodden.
This is because before the Astros got good a couple of years ago, they'd won all of three playoff series and zero World Series since they were born the Colt .45s back in 1962. And the team they're playing, the Washington Nationals, are the spiritual descendants of the Washington Senators, whose legacy of entrenched crumminess stretched back to the early days of the 20th century.
The only time the Senators won a World Series, after all, Calvin Coolidge was president. And the last time they played in one (which was the last time a ballclub from the nation's capital has played in one), FDR was selling the country a New Deal.
So, you know, this is the Series of the chronic have-nots. It may not make any money for the teevees, but it's kind of a cool deal for those of us who still appreciate the ironies of history.
The best one here?
Neither contestant is where it used to be.
If some miracle had occurred back in the day when the Senators and the Astros were dependably awful, Washington would have been carrying the standard of the American League into the Series, and the Astros would have been the National League's representative. Now, of course, it's exactly the opposite: Washington, the traditional AL city, is the National League champion, and Houston, the traditional NL city, is the American League champ.
It is enough to make one's head spin, at least if one is of a certain age. Of course, if one is of a certain age, one's head spins a lot of the time these days anyway.
In any case ... play on, gentlemen.
In other words, we got us the Astros and the Nationals, y'all.
Darn those Major League Baseball people, anyway. If only they had a sign that read "You Must Be This Tall To Ride This Ride," then 5-foot-6 Jose Altuve does not take Aroldis Chapman into the seats in the 11th inning last night, and the 'Stros don't walk off with a 6-4 win that sent the ratings-monster Yankees off to their winter's sleep.
This is a shame, for those who judge the worth of a sporting event only by its TV ratings. For the rest of us it's the revenge of the nerds, or the stumblebums, or the downtrodden.
This is because before the Astros got good a couple of years ago, they'd won all of three playoff series and zero World Series since they were born the Colt .45s back in 1962. And the team they're playing, the Washington Nationals, are the spiritual descendants of the Washington Senators, whose legacy of entrenched crumminess stretched back to the early days of the 20th century.
The only time the Senators won a World Series, after all, Calvin Coolidge was president. And the last time they played in one (which was the last time a ballclub from the nation's capital has played in one), FDR was selling the country a New Deal.
So, you know, this is the Series of the chronic have-nots. It may not make any money for the teevees, but it's kind of a cool deal for those of us who still appreciate the ironies of history.
The best one here?
Neither contestant is where it used to be.
If some miracle had occurred back in the day when the Senators and the Astros were dependably awful, Washington would have been carrying the standard of the American League into the Series, and the Astros would have been the National League's representative. Now, of course, it's exactly the opposite: Washington, the traditional AL city, is the National League champion, and Houston, the traditional NL city, is the American League champ.
It is enough to make one's head spin, at least if one is of a certain age. Of course, if one is of a certain age, one's head spins a lot of the time these days anyway.
In any case ... play on, gentlemen.
Saturday, October 19, 2019
Your correspondence for today
Our Only Available President being the trendsetter he is, everyone's having great fun now parodying Fearless Leader's own unwitting parody, i.e. the letter he wrote to Turkey's president (presumably in crayon) begging him to please stop doing what Fearless Leader opened the door for him to do.
Call it "Official Correspondence Written The Way A 12-Year-Old Would Write It." And it has uses that extend far beyond Fearless Leader's own poor power to imagine.
So thanks for that, Mr. President. The Blob was looking for something to do today, aside from wondering why the pinstriped happy orifices from the Bronx don't just die already.
Anyway ... I bet NBA commissioner Adam Silver, to begin with, could benefit from OOAP's novel approach:
To: The Chinese Government
From: Adam Silver, commissioner of the National Basketball Association
Hey, you guys --
Come on, knock it off, will ya? We said we were sorry. A bunch of our guys -- OK, so LeBron, then -- told that creep Daryl Morey to board it up. What more do you want from us?
Look, don't be douchenozzles. Think how much your people will be shouting 'Woo-hoo, the Greek Freak!' if you allow the NBA access to your airwaves and consumers. Text you later!
Your buddy,
Adam.
Or how about the NCAA? Its whole rickety edifice is about to come crashing down thanks to that new California law, the one that enables student-athletes to actually get a cut of all the dough their universities are making off them by using them as billboards for their cushy apparel deals. Surely an OOAP-style appeal would make those pinko-liberal granola eaters see the wisdom of the NCAA's position that making enormous jing off student labor is OK as long as they get free books and stuff:
To: California Gov. Gavin Newsom
From: NCAA President Mark Emmert
Dear Gav --
Can I call you Gav? Is that OK?
Well, anyway, you know that deal you signed the other day? Maybe you don't know it, but it's really frostin' our cookies. Also, I don't think you know what giving our student-athletes legal access to all the cash we make off them will mean for them. They'll be employees, then, with all the rights and privileges pertaining! Surely you see what a disaster that would be, right?
So please, Gav. Don't be a jackwagon. Don't make us declare every student-athlete in Cali ineligible. We do that s*** all the time, ya know. And we'll do it again!
I'll call later.
Don't ghost me, bro,
Mark
And then, of course, there's the NFL, which has so bollixed up its rules no one recognizes an obvious catch when they see one anymore, or that there's a difference between an ICBM-grade helmet-to-helmet missile strike and incidental contact that naturally occurs when large men lunge at one another at the speed of sound. This has all landed unfairly on the game officials, and particularly on the poor Detroit Lions, who've been affected more than anyone by the refs' having to split microscopic hairs on every play. They need some relief, and an OOAP-style letter might be just the ticket:
From: The Detroit Lions
To: NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell
Yo, Ginger Hammer --
Whazza matter, the dealership screw you on that Ford Focus? Get stuck in traffic on Gratiot? Red Wings tickets didn't come yet?
Look, I know you guys are struggling big-time with the whole concussion thing. But why is it always us who get hosed by your dopey rules? Stop being a dillwad. You don't want people to think your league's as crooked as that jackass in the White House, right? I mean, people already think that, but why make it worse?
Figure it out. And put the cheesehead away, you look like one of those hilljacks from Green Bay.
Later,
The Lions
Call it "Official Correspondence Written The Way A 12-Year-Old Would Write It." And it has uses that extend far beyond Fearless Leader's own poor power to imagine.
So thanks for that, Mr. President. The Blob was looking for something to do today, aside from wondering why the pinstriped happy orifices from the Bronx don't just die already.
Anyway ... I bet NBA commissioner Adam Silver, to begin with, could benefit from OOAP's novel approach:
To: The Chinese Government
From: Adam Silver, commissioner of the National Basketball Association
Hey, you guys --
Come on, knock it off, will ya? We said we were sorry. A bunch of our guys -- OK, so LeBron, then -- told that creep Daryl Morey to board it up. What more do you want from us?
Look, don't be douchenozzles. Think how much your people will be shouting 'Woo-hoo, the Greek Freak!' if you allow the NBA access to your airwaves and consumers. Text you later!
Your buddy,
Adam.
Or how about the NCAA? Its whole rickety edifice is about to come crashing down thanks to that new California law, the one that enables student-athletes to actually get a cut of all the dough their universities are making off them by using them as billboards for their cushy apparel deals. Surely an OOAP-style appeal would make those pinko-liberal granola eaters see the wisdom of the NCAA's position that making enormous jing off student labor is OK as long as they get free books and stuff:
To: California Gov. Gavin Newsom
From: NCAA President Mark Emmert
Dear Gav --
Can I call you Gav? Is that OK?
Well, anyway, you know that deal you signed the other day? Maybe you don't know it, but it's really frostin' our cookies. Also, I don't think you know what giving our student-athletes legal access to all the cash we make off them will mean for them. They'll be employees, then, with all the rights and privileges pertaining! Surely you see what a disaster that would be, right?
So please, Gav. Don't be a jackwagon. Don't make us declare every student-athlete in Cali ineligible. We do that s*** all the time, ya know. And we'll do it again!
I'll call later.
Don't ghost me, bro,
Mark
And then, of course, there's the NFL, which has so bollixed up its rules no one recognizes an obvious catch when they see one anymore, or that there's a difference between an ICBM-grade helmet-to-helmet missile strike and incidental contact that naturally occurs when large men lunge at one another at the speed of sound. This has all landed unfairly on the game officials, and particularly on the poor Detroit Lions, who've been affected more than anyone by the refs' having to split microscopic hairs on every play. They need some relief, and an OOAP-style letter might be just the ticket:
From: The Detroit Lions
To: NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell
Yo, Ginger Hammer --
Whazza matter, the dealership screw you on that Ford Focus? Get stuck in traffic on Gratiot? Red Wings tickets didn't come yet?
Look, I know you guys are struggling big-time with the whole concussion thing. But why is it always us who get hosed by your dopey rules? Stop being a dillwad. You don't want people to think your league's as crooked as that jackass in the White House, right? I mean, people already think that, but why make it worse?
Figure it out. And put the cheesehead away, you look like one of those hilljacks from Green Bay.
Later,
The Lions
Friday, October 18, 2019
Standup bootlicks
There's a small part of the Blob -- the Liechtenstein of its body, if you will -- that feels sorry for NBA commissioner Adam Silver. He and his league bent over and said ah in the pursuit of a lucrative market over there in China, and everyone knows it, which is why he's trying so pathetically hard to make it look otherwise.
"Did not!" is pretty much the gist of it.
No, by God, the NBA stood up for American values over there in China, Silver maintained in an interview this week. The Chinese tried to get us to fire Daryl Morey, who bruised their tender feelings! But we said, heck, no, we're not gonna do that! Because we believe in freedom of expression here in the Association! Look at how many of our employees are bravely speaking out on this iss--
Well, OK. So they're all lickin' Chinese boot, too. (Dammit, LeBron!) But, darn it, there's a lot at stake here! And by refusing to fire Daryl Morey, even though it was strongly considered, like, two seconds after his tweet about the Hong Kong protests, we're takin' a significant financial hit!
Which I suppose is Silver desperately trying to make it look like the NBA isn't just another money-grubbing mega-corporation wedded to its bottom line, and only to its bottom line. It is exactly that, of course. Last week's cringing acquiescence to every humiliation heaped on it by the Chinese government -- the media restrictions, the canceling of NBA-sponsored events (including Silver's own news conference), the refusal to air NBA games -- spoke far more loudly than Silver himself yesterday. And deep down he surely must know it.
Poor guy.
"Did not!" is pretty much the gist of it.
No, by God, the NBA stood up for American values over there in China, Silver maintained in an interview this week. The Chinese tried to get us to fire Daryl Morey, who bruised their tender feelings! But we said, heck, no, we're not gonna do that! Because we believe in freedom of expression here in the Association! Look at how many of our employees are bravely speaking out on this iss--
Well, OK. So they're all lickin' Chinese boot, too. (Dammit, LeBron!) But, darn it, there's a lot at stake here! And by refusing to fire Daryl Morey, even though it was strongly considered, like, two seconds after his tweet about the Hong Kong protests, we're takin' a significant financial hit!
Which I suppose is Silver desperately trying to make it look like the NBA isn't just another money-grubbing mega-corporation wedded to its bottom line, and only to its bottom line. It is exactly that, of course. Last week's cringing acquiescence to every humiliation heaped on it by the Chinese government -- the media restrictions, the canceling of NBA-sponsored events (including Silver's own news conference), the refusal to air NBA games -- spoke far more loudly than Silver himself yesterday. And deep down he surely must know it.
Poor guy.
Wednesday, October 16, 2019
Naming wrongs
Just to prove that no failed idea ever dies (hello, trickle-down economics!), the new-and-improved-or-something XFL is conducting its draft this week. The eight teams are divvying up 560 players in 70 numbing rounds, most of whom you've probably never heard of.
The No. 1 pick in the draft, for instance, was quarterback Landry Jones. You may vaguely remember him from such popular hits as Backup Quarterback For The Pittsburgh Steelers, Backup Quarterback For the Oakland Raiders and Backup Quarterback For The Jacksonville Jaguars.
In any case, this is not about that. This is about who the eight teams are, and why nickname coolness is apparently only a thing in minor-league baseball and hockey.
The eight teams are the Dallas Renegades, the Houston Roughnecks, the Los Angeles Wildcats, the New York Guardians, the St. Louis Battlehawks, the Seattle Dragons, the Tampa Bay Vipers and the Washington (D.C.) Defenders. None of them are the Montgomery Biscuits, the Greenville Swamp Rabbits or the Amarillo Sod Poodles, but you can't have everything, I guess.
Not even originality, in some cases.
I mean, come on. The Houston Roughnecks? That's just another way of saying "the Houston Oilers." There's even an Oilers oil derrick in the logo.
The St. Louis Battlehawks, on the other hand, just sounds like a shot at the Cardinals, who abandoned St. Louis a couple of decades ago. Cardinals? Pfft. A Battlehawk would EAT your Cardinals. So there.
A Guardian, meanwhile, sounds like the descendant of a Titan, which was what the Jets were called before they were the Jets. A Dallas Renegade is a Dallas Maverick gone really bad. And so on.
Ah, well. I guess it was too much to ask all those creative minds in L.A. to come up with something more cutting edge than Wildcats, which is currently the nickname for only about 4,567 youth football teams across America.
Personally, I kind of like the Fightin' Spielbergs. But that's just me.
The No. 1 pick in the draft, for instance, was quarterback Landry Jones. You may vaguely remember him from such popular hits as Backup Quarterback For The Pittsburgh Steelers, Backup Quarterback For the Oakland Raiders and Backup Quarterback For The Jacksonville Jaguars.
In any case, this is not about that. This is about who the eight teams are, and why nickname coolness is apparently only a thing in minor-league baseball and hockey.
The eight teams are the Dallas Renegades, the Houston Roughnecks, the Los Angeles Wildcats, the New York Guardians, the St. Louis Battlehawks, the Seattle Dragons, the Tampa Bay Vipers and the Washington (D.C.) Defenders. None of them are the Montgomery Biscuits, the Greenville Swamp Rabbits or the Amarillo Sod Poodles, but you can't have everything, I guess.
Not even originality, in some cases.
I mean, come on. The Houston Roughnecks? That's just another way of saying "the Houston Oilers." There's even an Oilers oil derrick in the logo.
The St. Louis Battlehawks, on the other hand, just sounds like a shot at the Cardinals, who abandoned St. Louis a couple of decades ago. Cardinals? Pfft. A Battlehawk would EAT your Cardinals. So there.
A Guardian, meanwhile, sounds like the descendant of a Titan, which was what the Jets were called before they were the Jets. A Dallas Renegade is a Dallas Maverick gone really bad. And so on.
Ah, well. I guess it was too much to ask all those creative minds in L.A. to come up with something more cutting edge than Wildcats, which is currently the nickname for only about 4,567 youth football teams across America.
Personally, I kind of like the Fightin' Spielbergs. But that's just me.
National treasure
A baseball team from the nation's capital is in the World Series for the first time since 1933, and once again the leather-bound history of America's Passed-Time Pastime is on full display. No other sport in this country carries the weight of its history, tying together as it does soldiers in the Civil War scurrying to first base after putting a bat on a ball, and young men who were born more than 125 years later doing the same thing last night.
And so there will be all these retrospectives on the dear departed Washington Senators in the coming days, and how they were hopeless stumblebums for most of their decades. Walter Johnson, the truest immortal in the Senators' history, will be summoned from his long eternal sleep. People will talk about 1924, the only time the Senators ever won a World Series, and of course 1933.
When the Senators naturally got smoked in the World Series by Carl Hubbell and the Giants, four games to one.
These Nationals ancestors to those Senators have a whole fistful of Hubbells to throw at opposing hitters, which is largely why they're going to the World Series. Nuclear bats may rule the long summer, but nuclear arms rule the fall. The St. Louis Cardinals mustered all of six runs against the likes of Strasburg and Scherzer and Sanchez and Corbin, and they got four of them in their 7-4 loss in Game 4. Everything else was crickets.
The TV suits will hate the Nats being in the Series, especially if the Astros manage to knock out those pinstriped happy orifices from the Bronx. Cardinals-Yankees would have made them all richer, ratings-wise. But it wouldn't have been nearly as compelling as Washington vs. whoever for the first time since FDR, Dillinger and Bonnie and Clyde.
Plus, it's a much more endearing storyline. Forsaken by their superstar (Bryce Harper) for filthy lucre, the Nationals effectively said, "Yeah? Well, who needs ya, ya bum? Watch this."
You gotta love that. Even if the suits won't.
But to hell with em. Let 'em eat their Nielsens.
And so there will be all these retrospectives on the dear departed Washington Senators in the coming days, and how they were hopeless stumblebums for most of their decades. Walter Johnson, the truest immortal in the Senators' history, will be summoned from his long eternal sleep. People will talk about 1924, the only time the Senators ever won a World Series, and of course 1933.
When the Senators naturally got smoked in the World Series by Carl Hubbell and the Giants, four games to one.
These Nationals ancestors to those Senators have a whole fistful of Hubbells to throw at opposing hitters, which is largely why they're going to the World Series. Nuclear bats may rule the long summer, but nuclear arms rule the fall. The St. Louis Cardinals mustered all of six runs against the likes of Strasburg and Scherzer and Sanchez and Corbin, and they got four of them in their 7-4 loss in Game 4. Everything else was crickets.
The TV suits will hate the Nats being in the Series, especially if the Astros manage to knock out those pinstriped happy orifices from the Bronx. Cardinals-Yankees would have made them all richer, ratings-wise. But it wouldn't have been nearly as compelling as Washington vs. whoever for the first time since FDR, Dillinger and Bonnie and Clyde.
Plus, it's a much more endearing storyline. Forsaken by their superstar (Bryce Harper) for filthy lucre, the Nationals effectively said, "Yeah? Well, who needs ya, ya bum? Watch this."
You gotta love that. Even if the suits won't.
But to hell with em. Let 'em eat their Nielsens.
Tuesday, October 15, 2019
Quoth the craven ...
Well, not "Nevermore" in this case.
More like, "Well, it's a complex situation."
Or, "(Some people) are either misinformed or not really educated on the situation."
Or, "Dammit, there's an IMMENSE PILE OF CASH at stake here."
Of course, no one in the NBA would ever say No. 3 out loud. No. 2, however?
LeBron James just said it.
Said Houston Rockets' GM Daryl Morey was "either misinformed or not really educated on the situation" when Morey sent out a mild tweet of support for Hong Kong protestors, which got the Chinese all lathered up and sent everyone in the NBA into DefCon 1 cringe mode. Because, yes, there is an immense pile of cash to be had in the Chinese market, which is why the Association spent a week letting itself be humiliated in every way possible by the Chinese government.
And now here was LeBron, who has actually spoken out on non-basketball issues when it didn't stand to dent his wallet, saying, well, gosh, it's not up to poor old misinformed, uneducated us to comment on Chinese politics. Because after all, we're all just basketball players/coaches/execs.
Which of course is exactly the opposite of what he said when right-wing harpy Laura Ingraham was telling him to "shut up and dribble" after LeBron spoke his mind about Our Only Available President. Of course, criticizing OOAP was not going to jeopardize piles of cash, for him or anyone else in the Association.
Wonder if LeBron or anyone else in the league would finally stand up on their hind legs and speak out if the Chinese government was to just start slaughtering protestors wholesale. Better yet, wonder what they would have said in 1989 when this photo went viral during the Tiananmen Square uprising.
Your three choices:
A) "Well, see, that student was jaywalking ..."
B) "Those tanks had the right of way and were just peaceably making through their way through the square to pick up a gallon of milk on the way home from work."
C) "Sure, it looks like a lone student facing down a column of student-mashing tanks, but it's a complex situation and to comment on it would be either uninformed or not really educated."
Your correct answer is "D." As in, "All of the above."
More like, "Well, it's a complex situation."
Or, "(Some people) are either misinformed or not really educated on the situation."
Or, "Dammit, there's an IMMENSE PILE OF CASH at stake here."
Of course, no one in the NBA would ever say No. 3 out loud. No. 2, however?
LeBron James just said it.
Said Houston Rockets' GM Daryl Morey was "either misinformed or not really educated on the situation" when Morey sent out a mild tweet of support for Hong Kong protestors, which got the Chinese all lathered up and sent everyone in the NBA into DefCon 1 cringe mode. Because, yes, there is an immense pile of cash to be had in the Chinese market, which is why the Association spent a week letting itself be humiliated in every way possible by the Chinese government.
And now here was LeBron, who has actually spoken out on non-basketball issues when it didn't stand to dent his wallet, saying, well, gosh, it's not up to poor old misinformed, uneducated us to comment on Chinese politics. Because after all, we're all just basketball players/coaches/execs.
Which of course is exactly the opposite of what he said when right-wing harpy Laura Ingraham was telling him to "shut up and dribble" after LeBron spoke his mind about Our Only Available President. Of course, criticizing OOAP was not going to jeopardize piles of cash, for him or anyone else in the Association.
Wonder if LeBron or anyone else in the league would finally stand up on their hind legs and speak out if the Chinese government was to just start slaughtering protestors wholesale. Better yet, wonder what they would have said in 1989 when this photo went viral during the Tiananmen Square uprising.
Your three choices:
A) "Well, see, that student was jaywalking ..."
B) "Those tanks had the right of way and were just peaceably making through their way through the square to pick up a gallon of milk on the way home from work."
C) "Sure, it looks like a lone student facing down a column of student-mashing tanks, but it's a complex situation and to comment on it would be either uninformed or not really educated."
Your correct answer is "D." As in, "All of the above."
A few brief thoughts on the NFL, Week 6
And now this week's edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the litigious Blob feature of which critics have said "If I'm ever affected by mesothelioma, like a sudden inability to spell it, I'll call the Blob NOW!", and "Where'd this asbestos come from? Better call the Blob NOW!":
1. Oh my God, the Doophins are going to win a ga--
2. Oh.
3. Oh my God, after two straight losses the Cowboys are going to right the ship that will carry them in serene unmatched luxury to the Super Bowl, because they're playing the Jets and the Jets can't beat anyb--
4. Oh.
5. And speaking of sailing in serene unmatched luxury to the Super Bowl ... Hey, where did the Browns go?
6. Oh.
7. Remember when Sean McVay was a young genius?
8. Remember when Kyle Shanahan wasn't?
9. And speaking of Shanahan's 49ers ... let's not go overboard assuming they're actually any goo--
10. Oh.
1. Oh my God, the Doophins are going to win a ga--
2. Oh.
3. Oh my God, after two straight losses the Cowboys are going to right the ship that will carry them in serene unmatched luxury to the Super Bowl, because they're playing the Jets and the Jets can't beat anyb--
4. Oh.
5. And speaking of sailing in serene unmatched luxury to the Super Bowl ... Hey, where did the Browns go?
6. Oh.
7. Remember when Sean McVay was a young genius?
8. Remember when Kyle Shanahan wasn't?
9. And speaking of Shanahan's 49ers ... let's not go overboard assuming they're actually any goo--
10. Oh.
Monday, October 14, 2019
Toughness quotient
It's been a few days now, but the Blob would be remiss if it didn't recognize a fresh addition to that ever-expanding collection, People Who Are Tougher Than The Blob.
(Or you, too, for that matter.)
Come on down, Elena Delle Donne!
Who, in case you missed it, is the reigning MVP in the WNBA, and who finally got the Washington Mystics over the hump to claim the league championship with an 89-78 victory over the Connecticut Sun last week in the decisive Game 5 of the WNBA finals.
"What's so tough about that, if she's the best player in the league and all?" you're saying now.
("No, we're not. We're trying to sleep," you're actually saying.)
Well ... what's tough about that is Delle Donne played the last three games of the finals with not one, not two, but three herniated disks in her back. And yet in the deciding Game 5, she played 37 minutes and came one rebound away from a double-double, going for 21 points and nine boards.
You know how hard it is just to find a comfortable position in bed with a messed-up back, let alone run up and down a hardwood floor for 37 minutes and nearly put up a double-double in the finals of a professional basketball playoff? And do it in not one but three games?
Well, it's hard, lemme tell you. Or at least I imagine it is.
I mean, it's not like I've ever done it. Or you. Or ever could.
(Or you, too, for that matter.)
Come on down, Elena Delle Donne!
Who, in case you missed it, is the reigning MVP in the WNBA, and who finally got the Washington Mystics over the hump to claim the league championship with an 89-78 victory over the Connecticut Sun last week in the decisive Game 5 of the WNBA finals.
"What's so tough about that, if she's the best player in the league and all?" you're saying now.
("No, we're not. We're trying to sleep," you're actually saying.)
Well ... what's tough about that is Delle Donne played the last three games of the finals with not one, not two, but three herniated disks in her back. And yet in the deciding Game 5, she played 37 minutes and came one rebound away from a double-double, going for 21 points and nine boards.
You know how hard it is just to find a comfortable position in bed with a messed-up back, let alone run up and down a hardwood floor for 37 minutes and nearly put up a double-double in the finals of a professional basketball playoff? And do it in not one but three games?
Well, it's hard, lemme tell you. Or at least I imagine it is.
I mean, it's not like I've ever done it. Or you. Or ever could.
Sunday, October 13, 2019
Dress code violation
These are not the palmy days for the NCAA. California has called its bluff on the nifty jing-stacking misdirection play it's been running lo these many years, and now other states are lining up to follow suit. Soon the entire shuck-and-jive will come tumbling down, and the boys in Indy are running scared.
All NCAA pasha Mark Emmert can do is traffic in self-delusion, saying if states start allowing the "student-athletes" to profit from what their schools are so handsomely profiting -- the use of their images and bodies as billboards for chunky apparel deals -- then the "student-athletes" would become mere employees of the university. Of course, they already are employees of the university in everything but name, a reality Emmert surely gets but can't possibly acknowledge.
Case in point: What happened at Penn State yesterday.
What happened was, the Penn State players turned out for warmups wearing T-shirts that read "Chains, Tattoos, Dreads & WE ARE," a show of solidarity for teammate Jonathan Sutherland, the target of a Penn State alumnus' letter criticizing his dreadlocks. Penn State officials made the players take them off, on account of ...
Well. Here's the statement issued by Penn State: "While we are supportive of our students expressing themselves in a thoughtful manner, they are expected to wear team-issued apparel on game day. We asked our students to remove the shirts out of an abundance of caution for NCAA compliance."
Amended, non-BS translation: "While we are supportive of our students expressing themselves in a thoughtful manner, they are expected to wear team-issued apparel on game day of which the university gets its cut. We asked our students to remove the shirts because NCAA compliance dictates we're supposed to make a buck off what our student-athletes wear, and we didn't in this case."
In other words, the Penn State players were violating the office dress code. It's all right there in the employee handbook.
Er, the student-athlete handbook.
All NCAA pasha Mark Emmert can do is traffic in self-delusion, saying if states start allowing the "student-athletes" to profit from what their schools are so handsomely profiting -- the use of their images and bodies as billboards for chunky apparel deals -- then the "student-athletes" would become mere employees of the university. Of course, they already are employees of the university in everything but name, a reality Emmert surely gets but can't possibly acknowledge.
Case in point: What happened at Penn State yesterday.
What happened was, the Penn State players turned out for warmups wearing T-shirts that read "Chains, Tattoos, Dreads & WE ARE," a show of solidarity for teammate Jonathan Sutherland, the target of a Penn State alumnus' letter criticizing his dreadlocks. Penn State officials made the players take them off, on account of ...
Well. Here's the statement issued by Penn State: "While we are supportive of our students expressing themselves in a thoughtful manner, they are expected to wear team-issued apparel on game day. We asked our students to remove the shirts out of an abundance of caution for NCAA compliance."
Amended, non-BS translation: "While we are supportive of our students expressing themselves in a thoughtful manner, they are expected to wear team-issued apparel on game day of which the university gets its cut. We asked our students to remove the shirts because NCAA compliance dictates we're supposed to make a buck off what our student-athletes wear, and we didn't in this case."
In other words, the Penn State players were violating the office dress code. It's all right there in the employee handbook.
Er, the student-athlete handbook.
Saturday, October 12, 2019
Numbers game
1:59:40.2.
Remember those numbers, on this chill October morning. Imprint them on your brainpan. Balance them on your tongue. Swaddle them in bubble wrap and stuff them in a wall safe somewhere, because as of this morning they are not just numbers but the hieroglyphics of history, a mile marker along the human journey.
1:59:40.2.
That was the number flashing yesterday when Eliud Kipchoge, a Kenyan from Kapsisiywa in the Nandi Distict, crossed the finish line in Vienna after 26 miles, 385 yards of running. It was the first marathon ever run by a human being in less than two hours -- a number as iconic for marathoners as four minutes was for milers, and because of which 3:59.4 are the hieroglyphics of history, too.
That was the length of time it took a lanky English medical student named Roger Bannister to cover a mile on a breezy May afternoon 65 years ago, and it is almost impossible, in 2019, to conceive what a a jaw-dropping moment that was. There were serious people who seriously believed humans simply were not capable of running a mile in four minutes, that the heart would literally burst in the chest in attempting to do so.
But Bannister did, and lived, paced around a cinder track off Iffley Road in Oxford by fellow milers Chris Brasher and Chris Chataway. Kipchoge, too, had his rabbits, looping a six-mile course in an event specifically designed to attempt the two-hour marathon. Like Brasher and Chataway, they peeled off at the end to let Kipchoge wrestle posterity to the ground alone.
In doing so, he breached a barrier once thought to be every bit as impervious as the four-minute mile. I have, for instance, a dim memory of one of those movies-of-the-week from years ago, its title lost in the haze. Most of the plot I don't recall, except for the part about a maniacal distance coach who took a callow young Brit under his wing and drove him to attempt a two-hour marathon.
The young man failed, of course. Set a suicidal pace and then simply couldn't maintain it, finishing a physical wreck as his lunatic coach limped alongside taunting him. The moral was that some limits are simply too far beyond us, and that even to reach for them is the province of madmen.
Well. No more. Invoking Roger Bannister, Kipchoge set the record straight: "No human is limited."
Like 3:59.4, 1:59:40.2 proves it yet again.
Remember those numbers, on this chill October morning. Imprint them on your brainpan. Balance them on your tongue. Swaddle them in bubble wrap and stuff them in a wall safe somewhere, because as of this morning they are not just numbers but the hieroglyphics of history, a mile marker along the human journey.
1:59:40.2.
That was the number flashing yesterday when Eliud Kipchoge, a Kenyan from Kapsisiywa in the Nandi Distict, crossed the finish line in Vienna after 26 miles, 385 yards of running. It was the first marathon ever run by a human being in less than two hours -- a number as iconic for marathoners as four minutes was for milers, and because of which 3:59.4 are the hieroglyphics of history, too.
That was the length of time it took a lanky English medical student named Roger Bannister to cover a mile on a breezy May afternoon 65 years ago, and it is almost impossible, in 2019, to conceive what a a jaw-dropping moment that was. There were serious people who seriously believed humans simply were not capable of running a mile in four minutes, that the heart would literally burst in the chest in attempting to do so.
But Bannister did, and lived, paced around a cinder track off Iffley Road in Oxford by fellow milers Chris Brasher and Chris Chataway. Kipchoge, too, had his rabbits, looping a six-mile course in an event specifically designed to attempt the two-hour marathon. Like Brasher and Chataway, they peeled off at the end to let Kipchoge wrestle posterity to the ground alone.
In doing so, he breached a barrier once thought to be every bit as impervious as the four-minute mile. I have, for instance, a dim memory of one of those movies-of-the-week from years ago, its title lost in the haze. Most of the plot I don't recall, except for the part about a maniacal distance coach who took a callow young Brit under his wing and drove him to attempt a two-hour marathon.
The young man failed, of course. Set a suicidal pace and then simply couldn't maintain it, finishing a physical wreck as his lunatic coach limped alongside taunting him. The moral was that some limits are simply too far beyond us, and that even to reach for them is the province of madmen.
Well. No more. Invoking Roger Bannister, Kipchoge set the record straight: "No human is limited."
Like 3:59.4, 1:59:40.2 proves it yet again.
Friday, October 11, 2019
A little coachspeak
I don't know if Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr has any political aspirations, or if hygiene is too much his thing for him to start swimming laps in that cesspool. I do know he has some distinct advantages over the mad king who stumps around the White House these days, raving and holding conversations with Dick Nixon's portrait probably, and flinging playground taunts around the twitterverse.
Like, for instance, calling Steve Kerr out by name as a "scared little boy" for not commenting about the way China has humiliated Kerr's employer this week.
(The latest: The Chinese gummint shut down media access to the NBA teams playing in China, even canceling NBA commissioner Adam Silver's scheduled news conference. Silver and the NBA's China delegation, of course, acquiesced without a peep.)
In any event, Kerr showed up on the mad king's Radar O' Crazy because Kerr has been critical of his policies in the past, and also, like all the mad king's targets, because he's everything the mad king isn't. Which is to say, intelligent, articulate, sane and, most especially, a grownup.
Which is why Kerr's response to Our Only Available President's child-like insult sounded remarkably the way a grownup would talk about, well, a child. In other words, with humor and mild amusement and a grownup's well-little-Donny-will-grow-out-of-this-eventually perspective.
First he joked that if he'd been thinking, he'd have shown up for his presser on a tricycle, wearing a beanie with a propeller, in homage to OOAP's "little boy" comment. Then he said how weird it was to get called out by name by the President of the United States, while understanding exactly what was going on with that.
"You stop and you think, this is just every day," Kerr said. "This is just another day. I was the shiny object yesterday. There was another one today; there will be a new one tomorrow. And the circus will go on. It's just strange, but it happened."
Then he said this, and every word rang with the insight of a fully-realized adult:
"I was thinking about my various visits to the White House," Kerr said. "I've lived a privileged life and met, I think, the past five previous presidents prior to President Trump. The first one was in 1984, and Ronald Reagan was president. He invited my mom and me, six months after my dad [Malcolm] was killed in a terrorist attack. President Reagan and Vice President [George H.W.] Bush invited us into the Oval Office, spent about half an hour with us thanking us for my dad's service -- he was in education. Thanking us for my dad's commitment to American values in the Middle East. Trying to promote peace in the Middle East.
"And all I could think of last night was the contrast of what has happened in 35 years. There was no regard for whose side you were on politically. Political party, anything like that. It was just, you were an American. The office held such dignity and respect. Both from the people who were visiting and especially the people who sat inside it. It's just sad it's come crashing down. That we are now living this.
"I realize the horse was out of the barn a long time on this. But for me personally, this was my experience with, wow, has the office sunken low. My hope is that we can find a mature unifier from either party to sit in that chair and try to restore some dignity to the Oval Office again, and I think it will happen."
I hope he's right.
And part of me wishes it were him.
Like, for instance, calling Steve Kerr out by name as a "scared little boy" for not commenting about the way China has humiliated Kerr's employer this week.
(The latest: The Chinese gummint shut down media access to the NBA teams playing in China, even canceling NBA commissioner Adam Silver's scheduled news conference. Silver and the NBA's China delegation, of course, acquiesced without a peep.)
In any event, Kerr showed up on the mad king's Radar O' Crazy because Kerr has been critical of his policies in the past, and also, like all the mad king's targets, because he's everything the mad king isn't. Which is to say, intelligent, articulate, sane and, most especially, a grownup.
Which is why Kerr's response to Our Only Available President's child-like insult sounded remarkably the way a grownup would talk about, well, a child. In other words, with humor and mild amusement and a grownup's well-little-Donny-will-grow-out-of-this-eventually perspective.
First he joked that if he'd been thinking, he'd have shown up for his presser on a tricycle, wearing a beanie with a propeller, in homage to OOAP's "little boy" comment. Then he said how weird it was to get called out by name by the President of the United States, while understanding exactly what was going on with that.
"You stop and you think, this is just every day," Kerr said. "This is just another day. I was the shiny object yesterday. There was another one today; there will be a new one tomorrow. And the circus will go on. It's just strange, but it happened."
Then he said this, and every word rang with the insight of a fully-realized adult:
"I was thinking about my various visits to the White House," Kerr said. "I've lived a privileged life and met, I think, the past five previous presidents prior to President Trump. The first one was in 1984, and Ronald Reagan was president. He invited my mom and me, six months after my dad [Malcolm] was killed in a terrorist attack. President Reagan and Vice President [George H.W.] Bush invited us into the Oval Office, spent about half an hour with us thanking us for my dad's service -- he was in education. Thanking us for my dad's commitment to American values in the Middle East. Trying to promote peace in the Middle East.
"And all I could think of last night was the contrast of what has happened in 35 years. There was no regard for whose side you were on politically. Political party, anything like that. It was just, you were an American. The office held such dignity and respect. Both from the people who were visiting and especially the people who sat inside it. It's just sad it's come crashing down. That we are now living this.
"I realize the horse was out of the barn a long time on this. But for me personally, this was my experience with, wow, has the office sunken low. My hope is that we can find a mature unifier from either party to sit in that chair and try to restore some dignity to the Oval Office again, and I think it will happen."
I hope he's right.
And part of me wishes it were him.
Thursday, October 10, 2019
That darn D-word
No, sir. Uh-uh. Not on your granny's banana-cream pie recipe.
The Blob does not care how pitifully the ghost of Walter Johnson wheedles. It is immune to Frank Howard's menacing glower. It refuses to listen to the entreaties of, I don't know, some other guy, because after the Big Train and Big Frank the Blob has frankly exhausted its knowledge of old Washington Senators legends.
In any case, it is not going to roll out the D-word this a.m., despite what the Sens' spiritual descendants did in L.A. last night. Knocked the mighty Dodgers out of the playoffs, is what the Washington Nationals did. Beat 'em 7-3 in 10 innings even though the Mighty Dodgers, who were the best team in the National League all season by miles and miles, had ace Walker Buehler on the bump and were cruising 3-1 behind him with six outs to go.
But then, weird stuff started happening.
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts brought in noted playoff flop Clayton Kershaw to pitch the eighth, and Kershaw promptly gave up back-to-back solo home runs on consecutive pitches. Which is kinda hard to do if you think about it, even if you're not Clayton Kershaw.
Fast forward to the 10th, when Roberts sent out a reliever (Joe Kelly) for a second inning who hadn't pitched more than one inning at a stretch since August. Kelly promptly loaded the bases and then gave up a grand slam to Howie Kendrick, and that was your ballgame.
Now the Nats are in against the St. Louis Cardinals in the NLCS.
They're there even though they were trailing 3-1 in the eighth in the wild-card game against the Brewers, too, but got off that hook to advance to the divisional series.
They're there even though Bryce Harper doesn't play for them anymore, a circumstance that has to be killing Harper right now no matter what he says.
And so, yes, some will use the dreaded D-word phrase:
Team of destiny!
Uhhh, no. Not buyin'.
Not buyin', because this is baseball, and destiny (and momentum) lasts all of one night, usually, which is how long it takes to get to the next game and your opponent's next pitcher. Your opponent's next pitcher comes out throwing darts, there goes your destiny. Your opponent's manager doesn't succumb to brain cramps the way Dave Roberts did, the D-word is just shorthand for "done like dinner."
So, we'll see. The Blob, frankly, would love to see it. It would love to see the underdog Rays find a way to knock out the Astros tonight, too, and then go on to knock out those jamokes from the Bronx, and then, suddenly, we've got a Tampa Bay-Washington World Series.
Which would send a whole pile of TV execs screaming into the night.
And who wouldn't want to see that?
The Blob does not care how pitifully the ghost of Walter Johnson wheedles. It is immune to Frank Howard's menacing glower. It refuses to listen to the entreaties of, I don't know, some other guy, because after the Big Train and Big Frank the Blob has frankly exhausted its knowledge of old Washington Senators legends.
In any case, it is not going to roll out the D-word this a.m., despite what the Sens' spiritual descendants did in L.A. last night. Knocked the mighty Dodgers out of the playoffs, is what the Washington Nationals did. Beat 'em 7-3 in 10 innings even though the Mighty Dodgers, who were the best team in the National League all season by miles and miles, had ace Walker Buehler on the bump and were cruising 3-1 behind him with six outs to go.
But then, weird stuff started happening.
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts brought in noted playoff flop Clayton Kershaw to pitch the eighth, and Kershaw promptly gave up back-to-back solo home runs on consecutive pitches. Which is kinda hard to do if you think about it, even if you're not Clayton Kershaw.
Fast forward to the 10th, when Roberts sent out a reliever (Joe Kelly) for a second inning who hadn't pitched more than one inning at a stretch since August. Kelly promptly loaded the bases and then gave up a grand slam to Howie Kendrick, and that was your ballgame.
Now the Nats are in against the St. Louis Cardinals in the NLCS.
They're there even though they were trailing 3-1 in the eighth in the wild-card game against the Brewers, too, but got off that hook to advance to the divisional series.
They're there even though Bryce Harper doesn't play for them anymore, a circumstance that has to be killing Harper right now no matter what he says.
And so, yes, some will use the dreaded D-word phrase:
Team of destiny!
Uhhh, no. Not buyin'.
Not buyin', because this is baseball, and destiny (and momentum) lasts all of one night, usually, which is how long it takes to get to the next game and your opponent's next pitcher. Your opponent's next pitcher comes out throwing darts, there goes your destiny. Your opponent's manager doesn't succumb to brain cramps the way Dave Roberts did, the D-word is just shorthand for "done like dinner."
So, we'll see. The Blob, frankly, would love to see it. It would love to see the underdog Rays find a way to knock out the Astros tonight, too, and then go on to knock out those jamokes from the Bronx, and then, suddenly, we've got a Tampa Bay-Washington World Series.
Which would send a whole pile of TV execs screaming into the night.
And who wouldn't want to see that?
Wednesday, October 9, 2019
Money talks, and that whole thing
Look, what do I know. ("Finally! He admits it!" you're saying.) We've reached a point, in a nation that has lost its mind and its compass in service to a mad king, that the Blob wouldn't know a principled stand if it stood on the Blob's foot while wearing clown shoes.
So forgive me if I listened to what NBA commissioner Adam Silver said the other day, and heard nothing but the sound of a powerful man being knuckled.
Yes, OK, so he said the Association wasn't going to apologize for Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey giving an attaboy to protestors in Hong Kong, which got China's shorts in a twist. But then he said they were going to apologize for the reaction and bad feeling it provoked. So what exactly was the message here?
The Blob thinks it knows.
The Blob thinks it was all about dollar signs, because most of the time these things are. The NBA sees immense wads of cash in the Asian market, particularly China, which is why it's trying to cultivate that market. And so while it's nice and all that Silver is standing up, sort of, for his employees' right to speak their minds ...
Well. Ahem.
In the meantime, the Rockets owner issues a strongly worded disavowal of his own GM. And Silver is still headed to China, and the two preseason games scheduled there tomorrow are still on, even though the Chinese have retaliated for Morey's impertinence by canceling TV coverage of the games and pulling the plug on a couple of NBA Cares events in the country.
Sorry, but this doesn't look like much of a principled stand to me. This looks more like Silver sort of half-rising from his chair, muttering some squeaky words about freedom of speech, then quickly sitting back down before the Chinese can get torqued off again.
You know what would be an actual principled stand?
If the NBA were to respond to China's clear dissing of its goodwill tour by canceling the two scheduled preseason games. Because, listen, China isn't the only power player in the room here. The NBA, with its near-global reach, has some considerable weight to throw around, too.
So here's what the Association should say: "You want to get all pissy with us? Fine. You can all play soccer, then. We'd love to have the billions and billions your market presents to us, but it's not like we need it. We've never kept our people from speaking their minds, and we're not going to start now.
"Deal with it. Or not. Frankly, we really don't care."
I know, I know. That's not realistic. And it's not how the NBA got where it's gotten. And money is always, always, going to out-shout everything else, world without end, amen.
So neither Adam Silver nor anyone else affiliated with the Association is going to say anything remotely like that. They're just not.
But, damn. It would be beautiful if they did, wouldn't it?
So forgive me if I listened to what NBA commissioner Adam Silver said the other day, and heard nothing but the sound of a powerful man being knuckled.
Yes, OK, so he said the Association wasn't going to apologize for Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey giving an attaboy to protestors in Hong Kong, which got China's shorts in a twist. But then he said they were going to apologize for the reaction and bad feeling it provoked. So what exactly was the message here?
The Blob thinks it knows.
The Blob thinks it was all about dollar signs, because most of the time these things are. The NBA sees immense wads of cash in the Asian market, particularly China, which is why it's trying to cultivate that market. And so while it's nice and all that Silver is standing up, sort of, for his employees' right to speak their minds ...
Well. Ahem.
In the meantime, the Rockets owner issues a strongly worded disavowal of his own GM. And Silver is still headed to China, and the two preseason games scheduled there tomorrow are still on, even though the Chinese have retaliated for Morey's impertinence by canceling TV coverage of the games and pulling the plug on a couple of NBA Cares events in the country.
Sorry, but this doesn't look like much of a principled stand to me. This looks more like Silver sort of half-rising from his chair, muttering some squeaky words about freedom of speech, then quickly sitting back down before the Chinese can get torqued off again.
You know what would be an actual principled stand?
If the NBA were to respond to China's clear dissing of its goodwill tour by canceling the two scheduled preseason games. Because, listen, China isn't the only power player in the room here. The NBA, with its near-global reach, has some considerable weight to throw around, too.
So here's what the Association should say: "You want to get all pissy with us? Fine. You can all play soccer, then. We'd love to have the billions and billions your market presents to us, but it's not like we need it. We've never kept our people from speaking their minds, and we're not going to start now.
"Deal with it. Or not. Frankly, we really don't care."
I know, I know. That's not realistic. And it's not how the NBA got where it's gotten. And money is always, always, going to out-shout everything else, world without end, amen.
So neither Adam Silver nor anyone else affiliated with the Association is going to say anything remotely like that. They're just not.
But, damn. It would be beautiful if they did, wouldn't it?
Tuesday, October 8, 2019
Today's unrestrained venting, baseball division
The New York Yankees shoved the Minnesota Twins' season in front of a train last night, beating those sorry laydowns 5-1 to complete a three-game sweep in which they outscored the Twinkies 23-7 and made that bunch of lutefisk-eating white-flag wavers the only 100-win team in baseball history to get swept in the divisional series.
Ah, crap. Ah, shoot. Ah, a bunch of words I can't say here on a (mostly) family Blob.
I suppose this means we're gonna get these pinstriped happy orifices in the World Series now. Their starting pitching stinks but everyone in their bullpen is suddenly Mariano Freaking Rivera, and everyone in their lineup, even the freaking batboy probably, can hit the baseball a long, long way, and, yeah, yeah, here we go, start up the litany of lore again.
Stupid Yankees. And now they even get to rest up before the ALCS because the Rays jacked around and extended the Astros to a Game 4 last night.
May Lou Gehrig force Babe Ruth to eat so many hotdogs he explodes in a shower of processed meat fragments while the Mick laughs and Joe DiMaggio cuts a deal to buy the meat fragments, sign them and sell them for enormous piles of cash which he will then keep all to himself and not share with anyone, even Yogi Berra.
And to think I used to love October.
Ah, crap. Ah, shoot. Ah, a bunch of words I can't say here on a (mostly) family Blob.
I suppose this means we're gonna get these pinstriped happy orifices in the World Series now. Their starting pitching stinks but everyone in their bullpen is suddenly Mariano Freaking Rivera, and everyone in their lineup, even the freaking batboy probably, can hit the baseball a long, long way, and, yeah, yeah, here we go, start up the litany of lore again.
Stupid Yankees. And now they even get to rest up before the ALCS because the Rays jacked around and extended the Astros to a Game 4 last night.
May Lou Gehrig force Babe Ruth to eat so many hotdogs he explodes in a shower of processed meat fragments while the Mick laughs and Joe DiMaggio cuts a deal to buy the meat fragments, sign them and sell them for enormous piles of cash which he will then keep all to himself and not share with anyone, even Yogi Berra.
And to think I used to love October.
A few brief thoughts on the NFL, Week 5
And now this week's edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the proudly dis-associative Blob feature which critics inside its own head have called "full of great and unmatched wisdom", "keeper of the mighty flame of Great and Unmatched Wisdom", and "just incredibly wise, wiser than any other Blob, you can't believe how wise":
1. Packers 34, Cowboys 24: In which Jerry Jones' boys discover you can take the 2019 out of 1967, but you can't take the 1967 out of 2019.
2. "Dammit! Not again!" (Don Meredith)
3. "Mercy, why can't we beat those fellows?" (Tom Landry)
4. "Nyah-nyah, nyah nyah-nyah!" (Vince Lombardi, Bart Starr, Ray Nitschke, Jerry Kramer)
5. Hey, look, it's the Bears' defense! Those Jon Gruden humps will never go 97 yards for the winning score against the BEARS DEFENSE!
6. Ummm ...
7. Remember that one time when everyone was calling the Browns a sexy pick for the Super Bowl?
8. "Hey, we never said that. Uh-uh, no way, we said the 49ers were a sexy pick for the Super Bowl. Yeaaah, that's it." (Everyone)
9. "Yes! Our plan is working! We're gonna get Tua and NO ONE CAN STOP US!" (The Dolphins)
10. "Hold my beer." (Jets, Bengals)
1. Packers 34, Cowboys 24: In which Jerry Jones' boys discover you can take the 2019 out of 1967, but you can't take the 1967 out of 2019.
2. "Dammit! Not again!" (Don Meredith)
3. "Mercy, why can't we beat those fellows?" (Tom Landry)
4. "Nyah-nyah, nyah nyah-nyah!" (Vince Lombardi, Bart Starr, Ray Nitschke, Jerry Kramer)
5. Hey, look, it's the Bears' defense! Those Jon Gruden humps will never go 97 yards for the winning score against the BEARS DEFENSE!
6. Ummm ...
7. Remember that one time when everyone was calling the Browns a sexy pick for the Super Bowl?
8. "Hey, we never said that. Uh-uh, no way, we said the 49ers were a sexy pick for the Super Bowl. Yeaaah, that's it." (Everyone)
9. "Yes! Our plan is working! We're gonna get Tua and NO ONE CAN STOP US!" (The Dolphins)
10. "Hold my beer." (Jets, Bengals)
Monday, October 7, 2019
Who were those guys?
OK, first off this morning: No, I don't know what that was.
("We didn't think you would," you're saying.)
(And also: "I mean, it's not like we come here for answers or anything.")
Anyway ... to reiterate, I have no idea what that was out there in Arrowhead Stadium last night. A Colts defense with parts falling off of it -- missing, among others, stud linebacker Darius Leonard -- slaps a pair of cuffs on Patrick Mahomes and the most explosive offense in football? Marlon Mack and his bum ankle run all over the Chiefs' D? In Arrowhead?
The hell was that?
Well ... it was either the Colts some crazy people still think will win the AFC South (hand in the air here), or, I don't know, the NFL just messing with us the way the NFL tends to do on occasion. No one saw this coming, and especially no one saw the final score coming, which was 19-13. You beat the previously unbeaten Chiefs, it's gonna be, like, 45-42, right?
Nineteen-to-thirteen sounds like an Ohio State-Michigan score from the days when Bo and Woody were running their tailbacks off-tackle eleventy-hundred times. It sounds like guys wearing leather hats wallowing around in the mud with other guys wearing leather hats while Red Grange occasionally breaks a long-gainer.
But this wasn't any of that.
No, this was Digital Age football, Voice Recognition/Eye Scan football, Mahomes and the Chiefs playing pinball with the scoreboard. They came into Sunday night averaging 33.7 points per game, but the Colts sacked Mahomes four times and held the Chiefs to 36 yards on the ground. Mack, meanwhile, gashed K.C.'s vulnerable run D for 132 yards on 29 carries, and Jacoby Brissette once again did nothing to get the Colts beat.
This a week after the Horsies let a Jon Gruden team walk into Lucas Oil and whip them, a sad effort that was far less about Gruden's Oakland Raiders than it was about the Colts. The Raiders put up 31 on the Colts in the Colts' own house. The Chiefs, a quantum better offensive team, managed only 13 against those same Colts in their own house. Go figure.
Here's what the Blob figures: The Colts are still a fairly young team, and fairly young teams do stuff like this. They are, by their very nature, inconsistent, prone to what-the-hell-was-that highs and really-what-the-hell-was-THAT? lows. And so this season figures to be a continual tug of war between Good Colts and Bad Colts.
We got Bad Colts last week. We got Good Colts this week. And next week, when the Texans come to Indy?
Hey. Flip a coin.
("We didn't think you would," you're saying.)
(And also: "I mean, it's not like we come here for answers or anything.")
Anyway ... to reiterate, I have no idea what that was out there in Arrowhead Stadium last night. A Colts defense with parts falling off of it -- missing, among others, stud linebacker Darius Leonard -- slaps a pair of cuffs on Patrick Mahomes and the most explosive offense in football? Marlon Mack and his bum ankle run all over the Chiefs' D? In Arrowhead?
The hell was that?
Well ... it was either the Colts some crazy people still think will win the AFC South (hand in the air here), or, I don't know, the NFL just messing with us the way the NFL tends to do on occasion. No one saw this coming, and especially no one saw the final score coming, which was 19-13. You beat the previously unbeaten Chiefs, it's gonna be, like, 45-42, right?
Nineteen-to-thirteen sounds like an Ohio State-Michigan score from the days when Bo and Woody were running their tailbacks off-tackle eleventy-hundred times. It sounds like guys wearing leather hats wallowing around in the mud with other guys wearing leather hats while Red Grange occasionally breaks a long-gainer.
But this wasn't any of that.
No, this was Digital Age football, Voice Recognition/Eye Scan football, Mahomes and the Chiefs playing pinball with the scoreboard. They came into Sunday night averaging 33.7 points per game, but the Colts sacked Mahomes four times and held the Chiefs to 36 yards on the ground. Mack, meanwhile, gashed K.C.'s vulnerable run D for 132 yards on 29 carries, and Jacoby Brissette once again did nothing to get the Colts beat.
This a week after the Horsies let a Jon Gruden team walk into Lucas Oil and whip them, a sad effort that was far less about Gruden's Oakland Raiders than it was about the Colts. The Raiders put up 31 on the Colts in the Colts' own house. The Chiefs, a quantum better offensive team, managed only 13 against those same Colts in their own house. Go figure.
Here's what the Blob figures: The Colts are still a fairly young team, and fairly young teams do stuff like this. They are, by their very nature, inconsistent, prone to what-the-hell-was-that highs and really-what-the-hell-was-THAT? lows. And so this season figures to be a continual tug of war between Good Colts and Bad Colts.
We got Bad Colts last week. We got Good Colts this week. And next week, when the Texans come to Indy?
Hey. Flip a coin.
Sunday, October 6, 2019
We got your oversight right here
We are living in times of absolution without accountability, and damn are they interesting. Bizarre and a tad scary, but interesting.
Over here you've got an attorney general who doubles as Our Only Available President's chief fixer, telling us there's nothing to see here in the Mueller Report, nope, nothing at all, even though there was plenty to see there.
You've got OOAP himself absolving himself of any wrongdoing in using American foreign policy the way Vito Corleone used Luca Brasi ... then saying, well, even if it was wrong (and I'm not saying it was) look over here at what my political opponents are doing .. then saying, OK, so maybe it was wrong, but it was all Rick Perry's idea, anyway, so why are you blaming me?
And then there's that bit of slickery the folks at Kent State University pulled the other day.
Remember that whole business back in September, when KSU officials chased off a couple women's field hockey teams in the middle of a game KSU was hosting, because it was time to fire off a few Silver Salutes next door in advance of Kent State's football game?
The women were rightly pissed, the national women's field hockey association weighed in, and KSU officials apologized profusely.
Whether they actually meant it, or were just doing damage control to make it all go away, remains open to question. Especially now.
On Friday, see, according to the Bangor Daily News in Maine (one of the field hockey teams run off was from the University of Maine), Kent State’s Office of Compliance, Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action announced it could find no violation of Title IX, nor any evidence of gender bias in the September incident.
This was, to say the least, a completely shocking development. Shocking, I tell you! Why, I can't think of a single other time in human history when an institution investigated itself and absolved itself. Can you?
At the very least, it would have produced some memorable headlines. Right?
Fox Investigates Henhouse Break-In, Finds "No Evidence" Of Fox's Involvement.
Lance Armstrong Drug-Tests Lance Armstrong, Comes Up Completely Clean.
East German Judge Who Gave The American A 3.0 On Her Floor Routine Rules The Score "Entirely Legitimate" After Interrogating Himself.
That sort of thing.
Of course, I'm sure in this case, everything was entirely ABOVE BOARD and LEGITIMATE, DAMMIT. You can rest assured of that.
Over here you've got an attorney general who doubles as Our Only Available President's chief fixer, telling us there's nothing to see here in the Mueller Report, nope, nothing at all, even though there was plenty to see there.
You've got OOAP himself absolving himself of any wrongdoing in using American foreign policy the way Vito Corleone used Luca Brasi ... then saying, well, even if it was wrong (and I'm not saying it was) look over here at what my political opponents are doing .. then saying, OK, so maybe it was wrong, but it was all Rick Perry's idea, anyway, so why are you blaming me?
And then there's that bit of slickery the folks at Kent State University pulled the other day.
Remember that whole business back in September, when KSU officials chased off a couple women's field hockey teams in the middle of a game KSU was hosting, because it was time to fire off a few Silver Salutes next door in advance of Kent State's football game?
The women were rightly pissed, the national women's field hockey association weighed in, and KSU officials apologized profusely.
Whether they actually meant it, or were just doing damage control to make it all go away, remains open to question. Especially now.
On Friday, see, according to the Bangor Daily News in Maine (one of the field hockey teams run off was from the University of Maine), Kent State’s Office of Compliance, Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action announced it could find no violation of Title IX, nor any evidence of gender bias in the September incident.
This was, to say the least, a completely shocking development. Shocking, I tell you! Why, I can't think of a single other time in human history when an institution investigated itself and absolved itself. Can you?
At the very least, it would have produced some memorable headlines. Right?
Fox Investigates Henhouse Break-In, Finds "No Evidence" Of Fox's Involvement.
Lance Armstrong Drug-Tests Lance Armstrong, Comes Up Completely Clean.
East German Judge Who Gave The American A 3.0 On Her Floor Routine Rules The Score "Entirely Legitimate" After Interrogating Himself.
That sort of thing.
Of course, I'm sure in this case, everything was entirely ABOVE BOARD and LEGITIMATE, DAMMIT. You can rest assured of that.
Saturday, October 5, 2019
Last kicks
The name doesn't always jump to the tongue, except within the bubble of his beautiful game. Between beers at your local hang, bring up the best athletes ever to come out of this middle-sized Midwestern city, and his name is never first.
But eventually someone will mention DaMarcus Beasley.
That he should surface more readily than he does is a measure not of him but of the provincial tastes of American sports fans, and that's a shame. We love our football, our basketball, our baseball, despite the latter's slow eclipse. Soccer is the world's sport, not ours, though more and more of us are warming to it.
So here's to it this morning, and to DaMarcus Beasley, too.
A Fort Wayne kid, a South Side Archer, he plays his last professional match Sunday for the Houston Dynamo of the MLS, after a career virtually unmatched in American soccer. At 37, this is his 20th professional season. He has played 11 seasons in the MLS, and played nearly a decade overseas in England, Scotland, Germany, the Netherlands and Mexico. And he is the only male player in American history to play in four World Cups.
He is, in other words, a legend in American soccer. Maybe moreso within his sport than any other athlete to come out of this city.
He is also one of the reasons the game thrives in the Fort, providing both a stellar example and a physical presence through his camps and schools. That he carries himself with dignity and class doesn't hurt that process, either.
And so in the days before his final game, Beasley sat down and wrote a farewell letter to his game, and posted it on his social media platforms. The Blob could summarize it, but it would be a poor effort. Instead, here's the text in its entirety:
Just another kid with dreams. Dreams like everyone else of one day becoming who they see on TV (or for me on VHS tapes). I have been so blessed to have had some of those dreams come true. Playing in a World Cup. Playing professionally on the same team as my big brother. Playing in Europe, scoring in the Champions League. Playing against my soccer idol Ryan Giggs in the Manchester derby (although I dreamt of playing alongside him one day, lol) I have so many fond memories of my 20 year career, a lot of ups and a lot of downs. All the challenges I have faced, sacrifices I have made, I wouldn't change for anything. I know one thing for certain I wouldn't have done any of this without the help of my FAMILY, my FRIENDS, my TEAMMATES and COACHES. The continued support I got from each of you was a blessing. You all pushed me to be a better player and a better human being. I wish I could thank everyone personally. You have no idea how much you all have meant to me throughout my journey. I have loved every minute of playing this beautiful game. I have given it my all and more! It has brought me and my family to places we would only dream of going!
Lastly I would like to say thank you to football (soccer). You have given a boy, now a man, a joy that can never be taken away. It's a true love I have for this game and I wouldn't be me without it!
Thank you all!!
DaMarcus Beasley
Right back at ya.
But eventually someone will mention DaMarcus Beasley.
That he should surface more readily than he does is a measure not of him but of the provincial tastes of American sports fans, and that's a shame. We love our football, our basketball, our baseball, despite the latter's slow eclipse. Soccer is the world's sport, not ours, though more and more of us are warming to it.
So here's to it this morning, and to DaMarcus Beasley, too.
A Fort Wayne kid, a South Side Archer, he plays his last professional match Sunday for the Houston Dynamo of the MLS, after a career virtually unmatched in American soccer. At 37, this is his 20th professional season. He has played 11 seasons in the MLS, and played nearly a decade overseas in England, Scotland, Germany, the Netherlands and Mexico. And he is the only male player in American history to play in four World Cups.
He is, in other words, a legend in American soccer. Maybe moreso within his sport than any other athlete to come out of this city.
He is also one of the reasons the game thrives in the Fort, providing both a stellar example and a physical presence through his camps and schools. That he carries himself with dignity and class doesn't hurt that process, either.
And so in the days before his final game, Beasley sat down and wrote a farewell letter to his game, and posted it on his social media platforms. The Blob could summarize it, but it would be a poor effort. Instead, here's the text in its entirety:
Just another kid with dreams. Dreams like everyone else of one day becoming who they see on TV (or for me on VHS tapes). I have been so blessed to have had some of those dreams come true. Playing in a World Cup. Playing professionally on the same team as my big brother. Playing in Europe, scoring in the Champions League. Playing against my soccer idol Ryan Giggs in the Manchester derby (although I dreamt of playing alongside him one day, lol) I have so many fond memories of my 20 year career, a lot of ups and a lot of downs. All the challenges I have faced, sacrifices I have made, I wouldn't change for anything. I know one thing for certain I wouldn't have done any of this without the help of my FAMILY, my FRIENDS, my TEAMMATES and COACHES. The continued support I got from each of you was a blessing. You all pushed me to be a better player and a better human being. I wish I could thank everyone personally. You have no idea how much you all have meant to me throughout my journey. I have loved every minute of playing this beautiful game. I have given it my all and more! It has brought me and my family to places we would only dream of going!
Lastly I would like to say thank you to football (soccer). You have given a boy, now a man, a joy that can never be taken away. It's a true love I have for this game and I wouldn't be me without it!
Thank you all!!
DaMarcus Beasley
Right back at ya.
Friday, October 4, 2019
The long fadeaway
You don't have to love the times you live in to acknowledge their home truths. Or even to acknowledge the home truth of all the home truths.
Which is: Stuff happens.
Electricity put gaslight out of business which put whale oil out of business. The Model T turned the horse-and-buggy into a quaint anachronism. We've got sliced bread now, and everything after has been the greatest thing since.
And so I don't particularly mourn the days when (yes, children) ink-stained wretches were actually ink-stained wretches. Newspaper grunts used to write their stories on typewriters. We ripped copy from the old clackety-clacking AP ticker. There was something we called the mojo wire -- a machine with a roller that you fed copy into page-by-page -- that magically transmitted a four-page story in, I don't know, 15 minutes or so.
It was the wonder of the age.
Now, of course, all of that is a drawing on the cave wall. Technology has swallowed it whole. It has killed the daily newspaper, or all but, in community after community. We will all be poorer for it, and our businesses and elected officials more free to duck public scrutiny. But again: Stuff happens.
Like, say, the demise of Sports Illustrated. Or at least its eclipse.
Half the staff got laid off yesterday, on account of SI has decided to replace them with Maven, a service that offshores the work of staff writers and the like. In other words, it's a service for contract work. And that sucks. It does.
Here's the thing, though: Sports Illustrated hasn't been Sports Illustrated for a long while anyway.
The most dismaying aspect of yesterday's news, for instance, was that for those of us of a certain age, the names of those affected rang no bells. Scrolling through a list of tweets from staff writers who were let go, I recognized almost none of them. And that's primarily because I no longer subscribe to SI, nor even read it much.
This was not the way it was when I was growing up, mind you. SI was appointment reading then, a cavalcade of glittering bylines that influenced an entire generation -- my generation -- of sports journalists.
We all wanted to be Dan Jenkins, to write and live life with his flair and swagger. We wanted to craft the sort of literature Frank Deford did. Later on, we envied Gary Smith his ability to unspool a narrative that could punch you in the gut, and to write with the polish and style of a Jeff MacGregor.
As a kid who early on decided sportswriting was my thing -- those of us can, do, and those of us can't, write about it; that whole thing -- I was no more immune to SI's influence than anyone. I papered the walls of my bedroom with SI covers. I devoured everything Jenkins or Deford of Curry Kirkpatrick wrote. As a young sportswriter, my work was shamelessly derivative of all the SI heavyweights; my evolved style still contains faint whispers of all of them.
But again, and yet again: Stuff happens.
And so half the staff of SI is gone today.
And I recognize very few of their names.
Sign of the times. Hateful though they are.
Which is: Stuff happens.
Electricity put gaslight out of business which put whale oil out of business. The Model T turned the horse-and-buggy into a quaint anachronism. We've got sliced bread now, and everything after has been the greatest thing since.
And so I don't particularly mourn the days when (yes, children) ink-stained wretches were actually ink-stained wretches. Newspaper grunts used to write their stories on typewriters. We ripped copy from the old clackety-clacking AP ticker. There was something we called the mojo wire -- a machine with a roller that you fed copy into page-by-page -- that magically transmitted a four-page story in, I don't know, 15 minutes or so.
It was the wonder of the age.
Now, of course, all of that is a drawing on the cave wall. Technology has swallowed it whole. It has killed the daily newspaper, or all but, in community after community. We will all be poorer for it, and our businesses and elected officials more free to duck public scrutiny. But again: Stuff happens.
Like, say, the demise of Sports Illustrated. Or at least its eclipse.
Half the staff got laid off yesterday, on account of SI has decided to replace them with Maven, a service that offshores the work of staff writers and the like. In other words, it's a service for contract work. And that sucks. It does.
Here's the thing, though: Sports Illustrated hasn't been Sports Illustrated for a long while anyway.
The most dismaying aspect of yesterday's news, for instance, was that for those of us of a certain age, the names of those affected rang no bells. Scrolling through a list of tweets from staff writers who were let go, I recognized almost none of them. And that's primarily because I no longer subscribe to SI, nor even read it much.
This was not the way it was when I was growing up, mind you. SI was appointment reading then, a cavalcade of glittering bylines that influenced an entire generation -- my generation -- of sports journalists.
We all wanted to be Dan Jenkins, to write and live life with his flair and swagger. We wanted to craft the sort of literature Frank Deford did. Later on, we envied Gary Smith his ability to unspool a narrative that could punch you in the gut, and to write with the polish and style of a Jeff MacGregor.
As a kid who early on decided sportswriting was my thing -- those of us can, do, and those of us can't, write about it; that whole thing -- I was no more immune to SI's influence than anyone. I papered the walls of my bedroom with SI covers. I devoured everything Jenkins or Deford of Curry Kirkpatrick wrote. As a young sportswriter, my work was shamelessly derivative of all the SI heavyweights; my evolved style still contains faint whispers of all of them.
But again, and yet again: Stuff happens.
And so half the staff of SI is gone today.
And I recognize very few of their names.
Sign of the times. Hateful though they are.
Thursday, October 3, 2019
Infamy's curse
Posterity does not play fair, sometimes. These things you learn when it's October and the light goes all burnished and slanting, and pumpkin spice emerges like a super-virus to ravage everything but oil additives and jock-itch powder.
Which brings us, kinda-sorta, to an unfortunate young man named Trent Grisham.
You may not be familiar with the name just yet, but posterity will ensure you'll never forget it from now until pumpkin spice causes the earth to cease turning. Posterity owns him now, see, and not in a good way. It owns him in the way it owns Bill Buckner, and Alex Gonzalez, and Leon "Wickets" Durham, and -- reaching way back -- Fred Snodgrass and Fred Merkle.
An astute baseball observer will recognize all of them as men who had the colossal misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and, in less time than it takes to flick an eyelid, did the wrong thing. And forever after, no matter what heroics they went on to perform, posterity will forever be rolling through their legs or under their glove or dropping untouched in the outfield meadow.
This happened to Grisham, a promising rookie with the Milwaukee Brewers, just the other night. The Sudsies were cruising along, leading the home-standing Nationals 3-1 in the bottom of the eighth in the National League wild-card game. But then their closer, Josh Hader, failed to fulfill his job description, allowing two Nats to reach base with two outs. And then ...
Well. And then, Juan Soto drove a Hader offering into right field, where Grisham was waiting. In that eye-flicker of a moment, he decided to charge the ball in an attempt to throw out the tying run at the plate.
Alas, in the next eye-flicker, the ball juked to the right. Grisham missed it clean, and all three runners scored, turning the Brewers' 3-1 lead into a 4-3 deficit and, eventually, a 4-3 loss.
This being baseball's dopey postseason setup, the Brewers' season was over. They battled for six months and 162 games to get into the playoffs, and it was over in a matter of nine innings and a few hours.
And Trent Grisham?
Posterity kicked the unoffending young man right in the grapes. He didn't even get a chance in Game 2 or Game 3 to redeem himself, because there isn't a Game 2 or Game 3. Which there ought to be because baseball isn't the NFL or the NCAA basketball tournament, something you'd think the people running baseball ought to realize but don't.
And so, for Grisham, posterity had this to say:
Welcome to Club Dread, kid. You're gonna love it here. We'll get Gonzalez and the two Freds to show you around. Merkle can tell you how much he hates that phrase "Merkle's Boner." Gonzalez can tell you how grateful he is to poor Steve Bartman, who took all the heat for the epic 2003 Cubs choke Gonzy started with that booted double-play ball. Snodgrass can drop his favorite joke on you, which is, "At least I'm not that other Fred."
Pisses off Merkle something fierce. Every damn time.
Yeesh.
Which brings us, kinda-sorta, to an unfortunate young man named Trent Grisham.
You may not be familiar with the name just yet, but posterity will ensure you'll never forget it from now until pumpkin spice causes the earth to cease turning. Posterity owns him now, see, and not in a good way. It owns him in the way it owns Bill Buckner, and Alex Gonzalez, and Leon "Wickets" Durham, and -- reaching way back -- Fred Snodgrass and Fred Merkle.
An astute baseball observer will recognize all of them as men who had the colossal misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and, in less time than it takes to flick an eyelid, did the wrong thing. And forever after, no matter what heroics they went on to perform, posterity will forever be rolling through their legs or under their glove or dropping untouched in the outfield meadow.
This happened to Grisham, a promising rookie with the Milwaukee Brewers, just the other night. The Sudsies were cruising along, leading the home-standing Nationals 3-1 in the bottom of the eighth in the National League wild-card game. But then their closer, Josh Hader, failed to fulfill his job description, allowing two Nats to reach base with two outs. And then ...
Well. And then, Juan Soto drove a Hader offering into right field, where Grisham was waiting. In that eye-flicker of a moment, he decided to charge the ball in an attempt to throw out the tying run at the plate.
Alas, in the next eye-flicker, the ball juked to the right. Grisham missed it clean, and all three runners scored, turning the Brewers' 3-1 lead into a 4-3 deficit and, eventually, a 4-3 loss.
This being baseball's dopey postseason setup, the Brewers' season was over. They battled for six months and 162 games to get into the playoffs, and it was over in a matter of nine innings and a few hours.
And Trent Grisham?
Posterity kicked the unoffending young man right in the grapes. He didn't even get a chance in Game 2 or Game 3 to redeem himself, because there isn't a Game 2 or Game 3. Which there ought to be because baseball isn't the NFL or the NCAA basketball tournament, something you'd think the people running baseball ought to realize but don't.
And so, for Grisham, posterity had this to say:
Welcome to Club Dread, kid. You're gonna love it here. We'll get Gonzalez and the two Freds to show you around. Merkle can tell you how much he hates that phrase "Merkle's Boner." Gonzalez can tell you how grateful he is to poor Steve Bartman, who took all the heat for the epic 2003 Cubs choke Gonzy started with that booted double-play ball. Snodgrass can drop his favorite joke on you, which is, "At least I'm not that other Fred."
Pisses off Merkle something fierce. Every damn time.
Yeesh.
Free pressed
Watched a clip of our raving lunatic in chief bullying a Reuters reporter yesterday -- even dragging the poor president of Finland into his tantrum -- and, lord, did it take me back. Suddenly I was again wedged into one of those tiny school desks in the bowels of Assembly Hall, and a certain bear of a basketball coach was lumbering into the room, and ...
And, well, stuff happened.
Guy would ask a question.
The lumbering bear, name of Bob Knight, would sneer and say something like "Well, if you understood anything about basketball ..."
Another guy would ask another question.
The lumbering bear would sneer again and say something like, "You saw the play. Why are you asking me to describe it? Aren't you capable of describing it?"
Sometimes the lumbering bear would get pissed off by all these dumb reporters asking dumb questions and just stalk off. Sometimes he wouldn't show up at all. One particularly memorable time, after a stirring overtime win against arch-rival Purdue, he showed up, launched into a soliloquy about fishing, then floated serenely out of the room.
Never said a word about the game. Obviously was trying to make a point, I guess, but none of us could figure out what it was, which of course made us just as dumb as Knight always said we were.
Understand, these aren't complaints, or even whining, a skill sportswriters master early on. None of us expected anything more nor less from our interactions with the lumbering bear. He was what he was: An endlessly fascinating, deeply flawed, deeply intelligent man. And, like the Raving Lunatic, a bully.
He's gone into eclipse now, amid rumors of failing health. And that's a shame, if true. Bully or not, he was frequently right about certain things, and his voice in those matters is missed.
Plus, he was never boring. I can't speak for any of my sportswriting contemporaries, but for me that was always a bigger plus than you'd think.
In any event, watching the Raving Lunatic savage that reporter for doing his job -- he was respectfully asking a followup question, which is standard news conference procedure -- got me to thinking not only about Bob Knight, but about how often powerful people who aren't used to being questioned fail to understand the role of the press in a free society.
Which is, it's our job to question them. It's our job, particularly where the President of the United States is concerned, to hold them accountable, no matter how loathe they are to be held accountable. That is especially crucial when you have a president who is as unfamiliar with accountability as this one.
In the end, Supreme Court justice Hugo Black saw it most clearly. In an opinion written after the Supremes ruled newspapers in America indeed had the right to print the Pentagon Papers, he said this: "The free press was to serve the governed, not the governors."
Just so.
And, well, stuff happened.
Guy would ask a question.
The lumbering bear, name of Bob Knight, would sneer and say something like "Well, if you understood anything about basketball ..."
Another guy would ask another question.
The lumbering bear would sneer again and say something like, "You saw the play. Why are you asking me to describe it? Aren't you capable of describing it?"
Sometimes the lumbering bear would get pissed off by all these dumb reporters asking dumb questions and just stalk off. Sometimes he wouldn't show up at all. One particularly memorable time, after a stirring overtime win against arch-rival Purdue, he showed up, launched into a soliloquy about fishing, then floated serenely out of the room.
Never said a word about the game. Obviously was trying to make a point, I guess, but none of us could figure out what it was, which of course made us just as dumb as Knight always said we were.
Understand, these aren't complaints, or even whining, a skill sportswriters master early on. None of us expected anything more nor less from our interactions with the lumbering bear. He was what he was: An endlessly fascinating, deeply flawed, deeply intelligent man. And, like the Raving Lunatic, a bully.
He's gone into eclipse now, amid rumors of failing health. And that's a shame, if true. Bully or not, he was frequently right about certain things, and his voice in those matters is missed.
Plus, he was never boring. I can't speak for any of my sportswriting contemporaries, but for me that was always a bigger plus than you'd think.
In any event, watching the Raving Lunatic savage that reporter for doing his job -- he was respectfully asking a followup question, which is standard news conference procedure -- got me to thinking not only about Bob Knight, but about how often powerful people who aren't used to being questioned fail to understand the role of the press in a free society.
Which is, it's our job to question them. It's our job, particularly where the President of the United States is concerned, to hold them accountable, no matter how loathe they are to be held accountable. That is especially crucial when you have a president who is as unfamiliar with accountability as this one.
In the end, Supreme Court justice Hugo Black saw it most clearly. In an opinion written after the Supremes ruled newspapers in America indeed had the right to print the Pentagon Papers, he said this: "The free press was to serve the governed, not the governors."
Just so.
Wednesday, October 2, 2019
Welcome to your alternate universe
So, Cody Sol, a longtime Fort Wayne Komet who was extremely active in the community, is now in camp with the hated Toledo Walleye. And A.J. Jenks, a big part of why the hated Walleye are the hated Walleye, is in camp with the Komets.
I don't have the words to describe this, exactly, except to say it's kinda like that episode of "Star Trek" where matter and anti-matter take human form and battle to the death. In any case, contemplating it for any length of time is sure to make heads explode in both teams' fan bases. And in a weird way, it also unites these two opposing factions in common cause.
We're talkin' reactions here, see. Which the Blob imagines sound pretty much like this:
KOMETS FANS (last year): You suck, Jenks!
KOMETS FANS (now): Y'know, "suck" is such an ugly word ...
Meanwhile, in Toledo ...
WALLEYE FANS (last year): You suck, Sol!
WALLEYE FANS (now): Y'know, "suck" is such an ugly word ...
Or, you know, something like that.
I don't have the words to describe this, exactly, except to say it's kinda like that episode of "Star Trek" where matter and anti-matter take human form and battle to the death. In any case, contemplating it for any length of time is sure to make heads explode in both teams' fan bases. And in a weird way, it also unites these two opposing factions in common cause.
We're talkin' reactions here, see. Which the Blob imagines sound pretty much like this:
KOMETS FANS (last year): You suck, Jenks!
KOMETS FANS (now): Y'know, "suck" is such an ugly word ...
Meanwhile, in Toledo ...
WALLEYE FANS (last year): You suck, Sol!
WALLEYE FANS (now): Y'know, "suck" is such an ugly word ...
Or, you know, something like that.
Tuesday, October 1, 2019
A few brief thoughts on the NFL Week 4
And now this week's edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the boffo Blob feature of which critics have said "It's boffo!", and also "It's MUNDO boffo!", and also "I have no idea what 'boffo' means, but this is the boff-iest!":
1. Gardner Minshew is the most boffo Hero Backup ever!
2. ("Hey, what about us!" -- Assorted other Hero Backups, like Keenan Allen, Chase Daniel and the Great Two-Headed Hero Backup, Teddy-Taysom Bridgewater-Hill)
3. ("And me! Don't forget me!" -- Jacoby Brissette, Hero Backup Alumnus)
4. Meanwhile, Eddie Pineiro.
5. Just kicked a field goal out of Soldier Field, across Lakeshore Drive and into the space-time continuum, where it emerged in 1895 and SAVED FOOTBALL by inventing the forward pass and declaring "When a guy catches the football in the end zone, has both hands on it, has both feet down and/or takes a step before the ball, oh my God, moves or gets stripped, THE PLAY IS OVER AND IT'S A BLEEPING TOUCHDOWN."
6. (See: Lions, Chiefs, Sunday afternoon.)
7. "Wait, I can't do what?" (Vontaze Burfict)
8. "But I thoug--" (Also Vontaze Burfict)
9. It's Tuesday morning and the Bengals are still an emerging new favorite for the NFL's Boffo Awfulness title.
10. "Hey! Quit horning in on our boffo awfulness!" (The Dolphins)
1. Gardner Minshew is the most boffo Hero Backup ever!
2. ("Hey, what about us!" -- Assorted other Hero Backups, like Keenan Allen, Chase Daniel and the Great Two-Headed Hero Backup, Teddy-Taysom Bridgewater-Hill)
3. ("And me! Don't forget me!" -- Jacoby Brissette, Hero Backup Alumnus)
4. Meanwhile, Eddie Pineiro.
5. Just kicked a field goal out of Soldier Field, across Lakeshore Drive and into the space-time continuum, where it emerged in 1895 and SAVED FOOTBALL by inventing the forward pass and declaring "When a guy catches the football in the end zone, has both hands on it, has both feet down and/or takes a step before the ball, oh my God, moves or gets stripped, THE PLAY IS OVER AND IT'S A BLEEPING TOUCHDOWN."
6. (See: Lions, Chiefs, Sunday afternoon.)
7. "Wait, I can't do what?" (Vontaze Burfict)
8. "But I thoug--" (Also Vontaze Burfict)
9. It's Tuesday morning and the Bengals are still an emerging new favorite for the NFL's Boffo Awfulness title.
10. "Hey! Quit horning in on our boffo awfulness!" (The Dolphins)
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