A chilly day in the Bad Place, revised

In which the Blob, which earlier noted that it's right about as often as the Montreal Canadiens play home games in Dante's Seventh Circle Arena, returns the netherworld to its natural state.

In other words, after pointing out a couple of instances where I was (gasp!) right, here are a couple of things about which I've been proven wrong, or am about to be proven wrong.

First up: Your Los Angeles Lakers.

Whom the Blob sometime back said would probably make the playoffs this season, but hadn't suddenly become a favorite to win it all -- as a lot of folks opined after Anthony Davis joined LeBron in L.A. The Blob pooh-poohed this notion to a fare-thee-well. It said, yeah, A.D. is a game-changer, but not that much of a game-changer.

As someone once said: "Ahem."

Because, hey, look at this, the Lake Show is now 17-2. LeBron 'n' A.D. 'n' them have won 10 in a row. They're beating everyone like kettle drums.

So, OK, the Blob was wrong. Because not only have the Lakers become a favorite to win it all, they might be, at this early juncture, the favorite.

And speaking of favorites, or not ...

Come on down, you Indianapolis Colts!

Whom the Blob confidently predicted would win the AFC South even without Andrew Luck, because Jacoby Brissett is better than everyone thinks he is, and the Colts still had T.Y. and Marlon Mack and that O-line and a young, emerging defense.

What they didn't have, and what the Blob neglected to mention, was a decent supply of bubble wrap.

If they did, they wouldn't have had the injuries that have weakened them (including to Brissett and T.Y. and Mack and Eric Ebron), and they wouldn't be where they are, sitting at 6-5 after losing a critical divisional game to the Houston Texans. They're now a game back of the Texans, they've lost three of their last four, and later they have to play Drew Brees and the Saints in New Orleans.

On the other hand, they also have immensely winnable games against the Buccaneers, Jaguars and Panthers left. And the Texans still have to play the Patriots this weekend . So it could still happen.

But it's nowhere near the sure thing the Blob said it would be. So slot this pre-emptively into the "wrong" column, too.

And stand by as Hell gets toasty again.

Rivalry weak

Look, it's pretty much received wisdom in a lot of parts that, given enough time and opportunity, college kids -- not all, but some -- are apt to do dumb stuff. It's college. They're out from under the all-seeing parental eye. Time to smuggle a live goat into the president's office!

That's why a piece of the Blob (albeit a very tiny piece) feels the pain of Ole Miss wide receiver Elijah Moore this morning. In the annals of college football rivalries, after all, lots of dumbness has been perpetuated across the decades. But nothing quite this dumb.

What Moore did was, he cost Ole Miss its shot at beating Mississippi State in their annual Egg Bowl argument, which has been going on since 1904. Or pretty much did.

Mississippi State won the 116th Egg Bowl 21-20 when Luke Logan missed a 35-yard extra point attempt that would have tied the game and forced overtime. And the reason he was attempting an extra point from 35 yards is because Moore, after scoring the potential tying touchdown, celebrated by dropping to his knees and pantomiming a dog peeing.

Now, there are end zone celebrations and there are end zone celebrations, but this wasn't even a good end zone celebration. This was a flat-out bizarre end zone celebration, not to say an especially disgusting insult to a fierce rival (which, frankly, sometimes happens in these rivalry deals).

In any case, Moore was flagged for his indiscretion. The penalty was marched off. And the extra-long extra point that resulted missed, and Moore's insult backfired in the worst way possible.

Dumb. Really, really dumb.

But so college, somehow.

Thanks be

It's the day before the Day of Turkeycide, also the Day of Piecide, also the Day of Wait, What The Hell Is In This Jell-O Mold? It's a day when we pause to give thanks for all that we have, and for making it through another year on the high side of the dirt.

And so, here -- before we bow our heads in gratitude, even for that weird casserole Aunt Myrtle always brings -- are a few Blobbish things for which to be thankful:

* It's only Thanksgiving and college basketball is already insane.

Or maybe you thought Evansville beating Kentucky in Rupp Arena and Stephen F. Austin shocking Duke in Cameron Indoor was, you know, just business as usual.

Twice in two weeks now we've seen upsets we don't usually see until the first weekend of March Madness, and, man, it is glorious. Especially Duke losing at home to Stephen F. Austin last night, because, well, it's Duke, and also because the Blue Devils were a 27-and-a-half-point favorite.

That makes this the biggest upset in the last 15 years.

Great job, Dukesters!

* The NFL season is three-fourths over.

Rejoice, Lions fans, Bears fans, Bengals fans, Dolphins fans, Washington Football Club fans, Falcons fans, Broncos fans. Your suffering is almost over.

* It's only Thanksgiving and we can already say for sure that the Golden State Warriors will not be in the NBA Finals for the first time in eleventy-hundred years.

OK, so, probably will not. Maybe. Perhaps.

After all, it's still early in the NBA's season, which lasts as long as it would take Captain Kirk and his crew to reach Vulcan on impulse power. But the Warriors are 3-15 right now, dead last in the Western Conference, and they don't have Kevin Durant anymore, and they won't have Klay Thompson this season. So it's basically Steph and Draymond against the world.

The really bad news?

Steph and Draymond are both sidelined with injuries right now. And Steph's injury is a broken hand that is expected to keep him on the shelf for three months.

This means it's a brave new world out there, full of Clippers and Lakers and Nuggets and Bucks and even, oh my god, Suns -- who, if the season ended today, would be in the playoffs.

Fun times.

* It's only Thanksgiving and no one is debating whether Alabama or Clemson is the best team in college football.

This is because they're debating whether Ohio State or LSU is the best team in college football.

Which, you know, is refreshing.

Also, it's only 10 days until the Army-Navy game -- the rivalry that historically defines what the sport should always be, but so seldom is now that it's become the NFL with better fight songs.

And last but not least ...

* It's only Thanksgiving, which means it's still five months until my cruddy Pittsburgh Pirates commence losing again.

"Noooo! Not that again!" you're saying.

Oh, please. Here. Have some more of Aunt Myrtle's casserole.

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 12

And now a special Thanksgiving week edition of The NFL In So Many Words, a thankfully brief, if chronic, Blob feature which critics have called "a veritable feast of idiocy," and also "a turkey with all the trimmings, including giblets, whatever the hell they are":

1. Aww, look at Dwayne Haskins over there, taking selfies with the fans.

2. Aww, look at Joe Theismann over there, shouting at clouds and shaking his bony fist at those damn kids on his lawn and what-not.

3. "I AM SHOUTING AT CLOUDS AND SHAKING MY BONY FIST AT THOSE DAMN KIDS ON MY LAWN AND WHAT-NOT!" (Joe Theismann)

4. "OK, boomer!" (The fans taking selfies with Dwayne Haskins)

5. "Hey! He's not Boomer, I'm Boomer!" (Boomer Esiason)

6. (Also Chris Berman)

7. Meanwhile, the Bears are thankful for the Giants, the Washington Football Club is thankful for the Lions, and the Bengals are thankful this will all be over soon.

8. Also meanwhile, Lamar Jackson continues to never, ever, ever be a successful NFL quarterback.

9. "Well, he won't be!" (Mel Kiper Jr.)

10. "OK, boomer!" (Everyone else)

Fan of the year

And now, because it's Thanksgiving week, and because Chicago Bears fans have had to watch Mitch Trubisky deface the quarterback position the ENTIRE STINKIN' SEASON, the Blob offers up at least one guy wearing a Bears jersey who knows what's what.

Come on down, Pumpkin Pie Guy!

I mean, how seriously awesome is this?

Dude smuggled an entire pumpkin pie (and Reddi-Whip!) into Soldier Field. No, I don't know how he did it. Must have somehow disabled the Pumpkin Pie Detector, then paid security to look the other way at the Whipped Cream In A Can Detector.

Man. Good thing he didn't try to smuggle in any yams.

I mean, would that have been your basic nightmare security scenario or what? Unfettered yams in a packed stadium? And what if there'd been crescent rolls involved?

Oh, the humanity. Or something like that,

In any case ... hell of a day for Pumpkin Pie Guy. He got his pie and ate it, too. And the Bears actually won for once, even if it was just the Giants so it didn't really count.

Bon appetit!

The stubbornness of culture

He slumped on a folding chair in the bowels of Memorial Stadium, head down, wine-dark cap and jacket darkened further by the afternoon's rain. Words came out of him in slow, soft syllables, like air leaking from a balloon. The weight of everything that had seemed possible pressed down on him like an invisible yoke.

Tom Allen, 2019, after Michigan 39, Indiana 14?

No.

Bill Mallory, 1986, after Michigan 38, Indiana 14.

And now you see it, do you not?

You see what Mallory was up against, what Lee Corso was up against, what Cam Cameron and Terry Hoeppner and all of them were up against, down where the southern Indiana hills blaze orange and yellow and crimson in the fall. It is institutional, what Indiana football is and was and seems always to have been. There have been some pretty good years and some better-than-pretty-good years and a whole lot of beige years, but in the end the mythical corner remains unturned.

You're still a school whose brand is basketball and whose true season begins, not ends, in November. You're still a school with one visit to the Rose Bowl in all its decades upon decades playing football in the fall.

And yet ...

And yet, it did seem possible this time, even for those of us who knew all the setup lines by heart. Allen brought an Indiana team to Saturday which had done things Indiana teams haven't done in decades, had instilled in it confidence and expectation. And waiting was a Michigan team that was good but not great -- a Michigan team that could be had if you caught it on the right Saturday.

And what better Saturday than the one before the Wolverines' great rivalry showdown with Ohio State?

Meanwhile Indiana had pushed No. 9 Penn State to the brink in Happy Valley a week ago, losing in the end by a touchdown. The Hoosiers were 7-3 for the first time since the Rose Bowl season 52 years ago, and were guaranteed a winning record for the first time in 12 years. And when they jumped out 7-0 and 14-7 on the Wolverines, it looked exactly like the dogfight all of the above seemed to promise.

And then ...

And then Michigan scored the last 32 points of the game, and it was just another blowout loss to somebody good.

And again we were reminded how stubborn culture can be, and what monumental lifting it takes to change it for keeps. Because this has been Indiana football all over for as long as memory holds, even in its bowl years: Good enough to beat the fair-to-middling teams, occasionally almost good enough to take down the heavyweights, but in the end ... not really.

It has been 33 years since that scene in the bowels of Memorial Stadium, but the tie that binds it to yesterday remains clearly delineated. I was a 31-year-old sportswriter then, and I am 64 years old now, but I can still see Mallory sitting there, still see that weight of dashed possibility. And I can remember how I led off my column that day.

Bill Mallory had thought he was done with these scenes forever ...

As Tom Allen did yesterday, no doubt. As Tom Allen did yesterday.

A chilly day in the Bad Place

The Blob is not one for tooting its own horn ("Right, you bring the whole orchestra," you're saying). But the last time it was right about two things at once, Chester Arthur was president, and what it was right about then was A) this baseball looks like it might catch on, and, B) Chester Arthur sure looks like a one-term president to me.

So indulge, if you will. Hell doesn't get parka weather very often, so it's important to make note of it when it does.

In other words, the Blob was right about Luka Doncic. And it looks like it was right about the NFL in Los Angeles, too.

Being right about Luka Doncic actually started a couple of years ago, when the Blob tapped into a YouTube video of the young Slovenian basketball phenom. Doncic was all of 17 years old then, and he was already playing in the top European pro league. And not just playing in it, understand, but dominating it.

The Blob took one look at that video and immediately thought it was looking at a young Larry Bird.  And thought Doncic, who was projected as a high lottery pick (which is why I was looking at the video), was going to be a Next Big Thing in the NBA.

"Yeah, but you never know with these European guys," some people told me.

"Trust me," I replied.

Well. Fast forward a couple of years, and Doncic is this: A whole bunch of stuff no 20-year-old in NBA history has ever been.

We're only 14 games into the season, for one thing, and already Doncic has seven triple-doubles. No 20-year-old has ever done that. He's averaging 29.9 points per game, and no 20-year-old has ever done that. He's also averaging better 10 rebounds, nine assists and 1.4 steals.

In the other words, he's exactly what the Blob saw on that YouTube video two years ago -- a young Larry Bird.

Meanwhile, in L.A. ...

Well, there is this.

And while I'm not one to say I told you so, I told you so. Back when crustaceous Rams owner Stan Kroenke kicked St. Louis to the curb, donned a pair of Oakleys and went winging off to Tinseltown, the Blob reminded everyone that L.A. was not and never had been an NFL market.

The Chargers began there before fleeing for San Diego as fast as their little Charger legs could carry them. The Rams never could steal Angelenos' hearts from the Lakers, USC football and the Dodgers (not to mention Malibu's tasty waves and the glories of Rodeo Drive). The Raiders came, saw and went back to re-conquer Oakland. The L.A. Express of the USFL, despite a glitzy brand of football led by quarterback Steve Young, played mostly to echoes.

But the NFL still lusted after L.A.'s beefy media market, and so back came the Rams. And back came the Chargers. And now, less than four years after the Rams moved back, here's a story telling us that the gaudy new Cathedral O' Sweat currently under construction as the two teams' new home may be the only thing that can save the NFL in L.A.

To which the Blob says: Like no one saw that coming.

Also: And it didn't take very long, did it?

"Not nearly as long as it took you to be right about two different things," you're saying.

Yeah, yeah.

Crappy Valley

It's been a decent stretch now since someone said social media was a force for good in the world, and by "stretch" I mean "since Al Gore invented the internet." Or, to put it another way, "never."

No, sir. Social media these days seems mainly the province of kooks, sundowning presidents and 30-year-olds who live in their parents' basements and spend all day retweeting bizarre conspiracy theories they hear on Fox News or from Devin Nunes.

Not sure where certain "fans" of Penn State football fall on that spectrum. I lean toward the latter, although I'd replace "bizarre conspiracy theories" with "death threats aimed at college students."

The college student in question here is named Sean Clifford, and he's the quarterback for the Penn State Nittany Lions. The Nittany Lions are 9-1 and ranked No. 8 headed into their big showdown with Ohio State this weekend. You'd think folks in Happy Valley wouldn't be at all crappy about that, but there's never been any accounting for the delusion of certain fan bases.

And so after Penn State's one loss this season to a very good Minnesota team, Sean Clifford was bombarded with nasty messages  -- including, yes, death threats. It got so bad, he told reporters this week, he deleted his social media accounts after the game.

"I usually delete it closer to games, but I completely deleted it after the Minnesota game," Clifford said. "It's kind of sad to say, but you know how fans sometimes get. ... It gets a little crazy. I was kind of, I guess, sick and tired of getting death threats and some pretty explicit and pretty tough-to-read messages."

Know what's even sadder?

That some people will read that quote and think the kid's a big wuss.

"Pretty tough-to-read messages"? Come on, son.  Man up. Sticks and stones, and all that.

That sort of thing.

Of course, many more people, being in their right minds, would be appalled that a young man was getting death threats and various other vulgarities over a football game. That sort of lunatic perspective has always been out there, but social media has made it free range.

Being an idiot with impunity has never been easier, and God bless the interwhatsis for that. It's the greatest facilitator of human crackpottery yet devised.

You'd hope either Clifford or Penn State coach James Franklin would have acknowledged this, but classiness got in the way. And so the most Clifford would say was "you know how fans sometimes get," while Franklin merely (and rather pointedly) thanked the program's positive fans and lamented the state of society these days as "concerning."

Just once, though, the Blob would love to read one of these stories and see Coach Slobberknocker saying this: "Let's face it, some of our fans are morons."

Just once. Please.

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 11

And now this week's edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the lying, conniving, perjuring, stonewalling Blob feature of which critics have said "So?", and "Who cares!", and also "Yeah, but it's not like this is the only crooked Blob out there":

1. "How dare Colin Kaepernick control his own workout! Who needs him?" (The NFL)

2. "Uhhhh ..." (The Chicago Bears)

3. The Colts!

4. Looked incredibly well-rested after their week off.

5. "Hey! They didn't take a week off! They played us!" (The Miami Dolphins)

6. "Uhhh ..." (America)

7. "Hold my beer." (The Bengals)

8. Meanwhile, it's Tuesday morning and Phillip Rivers just threw another interception.

9. "Wow, is he just the worst ever?" (America)

10. "Hold my beer." (Mitch Trubisky)

A salute to redundancy

Home truth: You hear the train coming long before you see it. You know that scene in "Stand By Me" where the boys are gingerly making their way across the railway bridge, and Gordie senses something and kneels down and wraps his hand around the rail, and feels the vibration of the as-yet-unseen train?

This is kind of like that.

This is me kneeling down and wrapping my hand around the metaphoric rail, and feeling the vibration of disfavor. This happens sometimes. You type something knowing as you do it people are going to take it the wrong way.

And so, this: I don't understand why the NFL found it necessary to declare Sunday a military appreciation day.

Oh, sure, I get it. But I don't, you know, get it.

This is because, from where I'm sitting, every NFL Sunday is Military Appreciation Day. After all, there has always been an unnerving symbiosis between football and the military, the former taking so much of its terminology from the latter. Hence the endless martial parade of giant American flags and military flyovers and live bald eagles wheeling gracefully over end zones, and Salutes to the Troops.

Understand, I'm not saying there's anything inappropriate about any of that. Our servicemen should be recognized for their service, and often. But there's a fine line between recognition and quasi-worship, and more and more we seem to be a nation shading toward the latter.

This is not to say Saluting the Troops has become almost a secular religion in this country. That's probably going too far. But when the NFL sets aside a Sunday to do what it already does every Sunday, you wonder if perhaps Saluting the Troops hasn't become just more excess in a nation devoted to excess in all things.

See, as much as all those khaki team hats you saw on NFL sidelines Sunday were a nice tribute, they also carried a whiff of appropriation. I often wonder what veterans really think about athletic teams playing dress-up in military camo. The vets, after all, earned that camo. So do they consider it an honor, or trivialization?

I suspect at least some see it as the latter. But of course I could be completely off-base about that.

Which is why I can hear that train, a-comin' down the track.

Meanwhile, in NASCAR, Part Deux ...

Those Guys ran the last race of the NASCAR season in Homestead, Fla., yesterday, and Kyle Busch won, which means Kyle Busch is your 2019 Monster Energy Cup champion.

(Had to think for a minute before coming up with the title sponsor. It's been the Winston Cup, it's been the Nextel Cup, it's been the Something, Something Cup, and now it's the Monster Energy Cup. Next season, who knows, it'll probably be the Velveeta Lucky Charms Medicare Supplement Cup.)

But I digress.

Back to Busch, who also won the title in 2015, and who yesterday led a 1-2-3 finish for Joe Gibbs Racing. This neatly bookended the team's 1-2-3 finish at the Daytona 500, and got everyone thinking mystical thoughts about karma on account of Gibbs losing his son J.D. to a degenerative neurological disease last year.

Everyone pretty much dedicated the season to J.D., and look happened: 1-2-3 to start the season, 1-2-3 to end it, Busch wins the title, JGR wins an incredible 19 of the 36 Cup races. You never want to be so trite as to say ol' J.D. was pulling the strings up there in the good place, but it's as decent an explanation as any.

At any rate, Busch won yesterday because Kevin Harvick didn't have the car to muscle with him on the long runs, and the other two members of the final four -- Busch's JGR teammates Denny Hamlin and Martin Truex Jr. -- fell victim to a couple of really boneheaded mistakes in the pits.

Truex got taken out of it because his crew somehow managed to put the tires on the wrong side of the car, and he had to come back in to get them switched. Hamlin's crew, meanwhile, tried to make his car more aerodynamic by putting a piece of paper over the grill.

All that did was make the car overheat, however. And Hamlin had to come back in to get the paper removed.

Gotta wonder who among those two pit crews will find a pink slip in their lockers today. Talk about spoiling the celebration.

Saturday's juxtaposition

Two snapshots from another autumn Saturday in America, revealing the sway of fortunes that make college football the absorbing spectacle it is:

Tua Tagovailoa on his hands and knees, head down, gold chain drooping across one cheek, his crimson helmet with the white "13" on the side lying discarded a foot or so away.

Jalen Hurts standing on the sideline in the Texas night, helmet off, hands behind his back, smiling a deeply satisfied smile as an Oklahoma interception caps the greatest comeback in OU football history.

Two quarterbacks.  Two crossed paths. A juxtaposition spinning out one fascinating narrative.

It begins in Atlanta, Ga., almost two years ago, with a football arcing across the plastic sky of  Mercedes-Benz Stadium and landing in posterity. That was Alabama freshman Tua Tagovailoa evading the hungry Georgia pass rush to find DeVonta Smith from 41 yards out for the touchdown that handed the national championship to the Crimson Tide.

Tagovailoa wound up throwing for 166 yards and three touchdowns in the second half of that game, leading 'Bama back from a 13-0 halftime deficit. And watching from the sideline?

Jalen Hurts, the quarterback Tagovailoa replaced at halftime.

The latter won the 'Bama starting job that night, while Hurts, who had himself led the Crimson Tide to a national title, played the good soldier from the sideline the next season. Never uttered a discouraging word as the Tide again reached the national championship game, where they lost to Clemson.

After which, Hurts, a graduate senior, transferred to Oklahoma for a final whirl as a college football player.

Fast forward to Saturday, and one more reversal of fortunes.

There was Tua down on the ground in Starkville, Miss., his hip dislocated, his season over, Alabama's shot at the College Football Playoff perhaps over, too. And there was Hurts in Waco, Texas, leading the Sooners back from a 28-3 deficit on the road at undefeated Baylor with four touchdown passes in the final three quarters.

Two quarterbacks. Two divergent paths. Two ships passing in the night again, one last time.

Your completely cynical tale for today

Once upon a time there was a quarterback named Colin Kaepernick who started kneeling quietly for the national anthem to protest racial inequality, particularly with regard to African-American interactions with the police.

Some people thought this was terrible. Against all logic, they thought Kaepernick was disrespecting not just the anthem but also the flag, the troops (alternate punctuation: THE TROOPS!!!) and even America itself. They were encouraged in this by the President of the United States, a morally bankrupt con man who scammed his way out of military service during the Vietnam War, but now regards himself as the sole arbiter of what is patriotic vis-a-vis the anthem, the troops, America, and so on.

This made the National Football League nervous, because the National Football League has long traded on a sort of window-dressing patriotism that features giant American flags and military flyovers and THE TROOPS!!! League officials were terrified that if these protests continued, people would stop watching football on Sundays and Mondays and Thursdays, especially with the President carrying on about it so.

This eventually led to Kaepernick being dropped by his team, the San Francisco 49ers. It also led to no one picking him up, even though Kaepernick had quarterbacked the 49ers to a Super Bowl and, in six seasons, had thrown for more than 12,000 yards and 72 touchdowns and averaged 6.1 yards per rush with 13 more touchdowns.

This made Colin Kaepernick much better than a goodly number of quarterbacks who already were on NFL rosters, but no team would touch him on account of they thought he would be too much of a "distraction" -- which translates to "we don't like his politics" in standard English. This obvious, concerted banishment was camouflaged by flimsy cover stories such as "He's not good enough," even though lame-os such as Nathan Peterman were still finding gainful employment in the league.

Eventually, this got to be an embarrassment for the NFL, too. And so they arranged a workout for Kaepernick. It will take place today, in the middle of the season. There is no explanation for this, other than the fact the NFL wants to put to rest the obvious fact it was blackballing Kaepernick.

Now the league will be able to say "See? We didn't blackball him. We even arranged a tryout for him!"

And no matter how cynical you think the telling of this tale has been, nothing is more cynical than that.

The end.

Welcome to the circus

There are a few things you can say about last night's Thursday Night Thunder, or Thursday Night Raw, or whatever other professional wrestling brand you find suitable for attachment.

One is that the NFL can't possibly ding Cleveland Browns linebacker Myles Garrett for a helmet-to-helmet hit, on account of Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Mason Rudolph wasn't wearing a helmet, on account of Garrett had ripped it off and was beating him with it.

Another is that it's a good thing there were no folding chairs at hand, or Garrett probably would have been beating Rudolph with one of those, too, ala Rowdy Roddy Piper ambushing Hulk Hogan back in the '80s.

Yet another is it's a good thing Devil's Island is no longer a going concern, because that's where Roger Goodell would be sending Garrett if it were.

You simply cannot rip off a player's helmet and hit him with it in the NASH-unal FOOT-ball League, a corporate monolith ssustained by violence, but, damn, son, not that kind of violence. You especially cannot rip off a player's helmet and hit him with it if he's a quarterback, because one of the NFL's strictest codicils is the Tom Brady Rule -- aka Hey, Stop Breathing On That Man, Can't You See He's (Insert Major-Product-Endorsing Quarterback Name Here)

So not only did Myles Garrett go all WWE on a guy at the end of the Browns' 21-7 win over the Stillers, he went all WWE on a quarterback. Yikes. Colin Kaepernick just scootched over to make room for him in NFL purgatory.

It will be interesting, to use just one appropriate word, to see how the NFL responds to this. At the very least you figure Garrett will get a record sitdown, even though Rudolph started the whole thing, and it was a 2-on-1 situation with Garrett the "1." And at the extreme end of things?

Well, here are a few possibilities:

* Mandatory attendance at a five-hour Power Point presentation on workplace safety.

* Mandatory attendance at Tom Brady's award-winning seminar, Why You Can't Hit Me. With guest appearances by Aaron Rodgers, Patrick Mahomes, Drew Brees and others.

* Mandatory attendance at an I'm OK, You're OK, Now Put Down The Damn Helmet seminar.

* Three months in the hole.

* Community service in various Pittsburgh sports bars.

Yessir. That'll learn him.

Lax-stros

Ah, the Houston Astros, those lovable scamps. It's probably too much to say they're the New England Patriots of baseball, but what the hell, we'll say it anyway.

"Hey, that's a cheap shot!" Tom Brady just cried.

"Mumble, mumble, no fair, mumble," Bill Belichick mumbled.

"Oh, sure, like (Astros GM) Jeff Luhnow's never gotten a special in a sleazy massage parlor!" an indignant Robert Kraft spluttered.

Actually ,,, Luhnow hasn't, as far as we know. But he does oversee an organization that employed misogynist punk Brandon Taubman, then smeared the reporter who outed Taubman for taunting her about domestic violence in the Astros' clubhouse, then eighty-sixed Taubman after it became apparent the reporter got the story right.

Too late, unfortunately. The damage was done, and the Astros came off looking like an organization that was staffed by hooting, drunken frat boys. Drunken frat boys who, according to former Astro Mike Fiers, also used a camera in center field to steal signs and relay them to Astros batters through a complex series of odd sounds.

This was a direct violation of baseball rules, and one more indication that the Astros' culture is notable mostly for its ethical laxity. That these same Astros have announced they will investigate Fiers' claims is the belly laugh of the year, if not several years.

Yeah, boy. Nothing like sending the arsonist to investigate his own fire, I always say. Or having Al Capone audit his own tax returns.

In any event, the Patriots must be looking on in awe.

Or perhaps envy.

Aces high

Well, now. If this isn't your ultimate Purple Nurple.

If this isn't your Evansville Purple Aces getting down there in the blue cavern of Rupp Arena for No. 1 Kentucky's breather game, and stealing the air from the place. If this isn't Evansville 67, Kentucky 64, a Chaminade-over-Ralph-Sampson kind of moment -- the kind of moment that gives college buckets their life and blood and sustenance, because who doesn't love their upsets?

Bucknell-over-Kansas and Mercer-over-Duke and UMBC-over-Virginia are what make March Madness mad, after all, and the very reason so many of us play hooky the first two days of Da Tournament to eat wings, drink beer and watch hoops. And so here came Evansville, a team that won 11 games last year and was picked this year to finish eighth in the Missouri Valley Conference, marching into Rupp and stealing the W from the Purple Aces' head coach's alma mater.

This is Walter McCarty's second season as the Aces' coach, and what a way to introduce it. This after re-introducing himself last year, because before he went off to play for UK he was a high school star at Evansville Memorial High School

Listen. I have covered a few games in Rupp's blue canyon, and it is nowhere you want to be if you're a visiting team. The place is, truly, wall-to-wall blue. Its 20,000 seats, every one of them occupied, stretch up and up toward the heavens. And the sound the occupants send down when the Wildcats are on a run is unearthly, a live thing you feel in your chest.

Now imagine if you're Evansville, which was no doubt paid good money to be the evening's entrée for John Calipari's latest crop of NBA lottery picks. And imagine what all that wall-to-wall blue sounded like as the Purple Aces, a 25-point underdog, kept leading and leading and leading and then -- oh, my God, what's this? -- were still leading with seconds left and the Wildcats hurrying up the court to try to force overtime.

And failing.

I imagine Rupp sounded about then like the Allen County War Memorial Coliseum sounded a few Novembers back, on the night when Indiana, then ranked No. 3, came to town to play IPFW. It was a home game for IPFW, but an Indiana crowd. The place was almost as red as Rupp is blue.

But then ...

But then, IPFW jumped out to an early lead. The IU fans sitting around me practically yawned. Ah, well, no worries. Let 'em have their fun. Hoosiers will wind up winning by 20.

But then ...

But then, IPFW kept leading. And kept leading. And kept leading. And suddenly we were neck-deep in the second half and -- oh, my God -- IPFW was still leading.

The IU fans became first restive, and then quiet. And then really quiet. Eventually, they started to boo.

Shortly thereafter, as it became apparent the Mastodons were going to do the inconceivable, they lapsed into the utterly predictable: They started bitching about the officiating.

I can't say if that was the precise progression in Rupp. But I bet it was close.

I also bet a few adult beverages were imbibed down in the lower left-hand corner of Indiana last night. Think I'd win that one.

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 10

And now this week's edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the longstanding Blob feature of which critics have said "How has this been standing so long? Are there wires holding it up?", and also "Siddown already, nobody likes a showoff ":

1. It's Tuesday morning and the tanking-for-Tua Dolphins are now 2-0 in November.

2. "Crap!" (The tanking-for-Tua Dolphins)

3. "Wait, we lost to the DOLPHINS?!" (The Indianapolis Colts)

4. "Wait, we lost to the DOLPHINS?!" (Every Colts fan in America)

5. It's Tuesday morning and the also-tanking-for-Tua Bengals are now 0-1 in November after going 0-4 in October and 0-4 in September.

6. "Crap!" (The Dolphins)

7. "Wait, we lost to the DOLPHINS?!" (Every Colts fan in America, still)

8. Meanwhile, the Saints lost to the bad word, bad word, really bad word Falcons. The Bears beat the Lions. And Mitch Trubisky was better than Bob Avellini for once, better than Gary Huff, even,  better than the IMMORTAL PETER TOM WILLIS.

9. "Crap!" (The Saints)

10. "Crap!" (The immortal Peter Tom Willis)

Numbing pedantry, Part Deux

By now it is the wonder of the age, why the NCAA isn't walking around on stumps.

After all, humans (and human constructs) only have two feet. And the NCAA has emptied the chambers into both multiple times.

Its grand mythology -- and the grand delusions that support it -- are already crumbling like ash between its fingers. And yet its pashas persist in punishing the help for violating rules that become more divorced from reality every day.

You already know about Chase Young, the Ohio State football star who's apparently going to get a four-game sitdown because he was loaned money so he could fly his girlfriend to the Rose Bowl. This is not much different than any other college student getting a loan from a friend or benefactor, but whatever. He's a revenue-generating athlete, so he's not allowed to do what other college students do.

The NCAA decrees this because it doesn't want its "student-athletes" to be treated differently than  other college students.

Keep repeating that sentence. It might eventually make sense.

And then there's James Wiseman, who'd be playing in the NBA right now if not for the NBA's ridiculous you-must-be-19-to-ride-this-ride rule.

Wiseman is a Memphis basketball player who was the No. 1 recruit in the country this year, and if the world were a saner place he wouldn't even be subject to the NCAA's upside-down logic. Instead, for one token year, he's compelled to occupy the giant waiting room that is Division I basketball. As with any NBA-ready baller, he'll enhance the quality of the product by doing so.

So what does the NCAA do?

It tells him he can't play.

It tells him he can't play because his coach, Penny Hardaway, once coached a Memphis high school for whom he wanted Wiseman to play. But Wiseman's family couldn't afford to move, so Hardaway, unbeknownst to Wiseman, kicked in for moving expenses. An admittedly shady deal, but not all that unusual in high school athletics.

Here's why the NCAA got involved: Because, almost ten years before, Hardaway, a Memphis grad, had given money to his alma mater. Which, according to the NCAA, made him a booster. And therefore he was a Memphis booster paying for the kid's moving expenses, not a high school basketball coach paying for the kid's moving expenses.

This constituted an illegal recruiting inducement, in Bizarro World. Even though Hardaway wouldn't become Memphis' basketball coach for two more years.

Wiseman continues to play for Memphis, because a judge issued a restraining order allowing him to do so. And Hardaway, and the school's athletic department, basically told the NCAA to piss off.

This may bring down the wrath of the pashas eventually, or it might not. The important thing is, Wiseman, forced to play college buckets for a year in the first place, gets to play. The NCAA doesn't get to punish him for something he never should have been punished for to begin with.

In some places this might be called justice.

In some places.

For those who served, and serve

It is Veteran's Day again, and also Armistice Day, when the war that regrettably did not end all wars ended four years of wholesale and largely pointless slaughter. And so we pause to thank those who went off to that war, and other wars, and came home broken and shattered and damaged in ways the rest of us can't see, because no one who has seen war ever returns untouched by it.

So thanks to them, and thanks to those who, God forbid, may one day go into the cauldron themselves. They do it so we don't have to, and that's a debt none of us ever will have enough to repay.

Here is something I wrote three years ago, about all that. The year is different. But the sentiment remains unchanged:

Every year on Veteran's Day I go back there, in my mind. It's been 14 years now since I toured the American sector of the Western Front in France, where the war that did not end all wars, but only ignited endless others, was fought out by American boys in the autumn of 1918.

November 11, the day the guns fell silent, will always be Armistice Day as much as Veteran's Day to me because of that. It ended a war that is mostly forgotten to us now, even though some 54,000 Americans died in six months there and countless others brought nightmares home from it that would last a lifetime. There are neat green cemeteries from the Argonne to Thiaucourt  there now, row upon row of white crosses arrayed in the geometry of remembrance. And, amid the fields of wheat and crumbling old pillboxes and the scars of ancient trenches, there is an immense white dome of marble few Americans ever visit.

I always wonder why that is so, when I think of that place on Veteran's Day. And I always will.

It's an old bromide that we can never thank our veterans enough for their service, and yet somehow we always fall short. If we remember what they did for us in Normandy or Fallujah or on Iwo Jima or Okinawa, we just as readily forget sometimes what they did in Belleau Wood or Frozen Chosin or the killing fields of the Ia Drang Valley. And, more shamefully, we especially forget when they return home.

I have met my share of veterans, in my four decades as a journalist. I have met Korean veterans and Vietnam veterans and, once, 20 years ago, a vet who survived both Tarawa and Okinawa in World War II. And I have met a man who, when he was 23 years old, was shooting down Nazi jets over Europe in a P-51 Mustang.

That particular gentleman's name was Chuck Yeager. Perhaps you've heard about what he did later on, something involving the sound barrier.

In all cases, they are men who've seen and done things no human being should ever see or do, and they will talk about those things only with the most extreme reluctance. It is not that they don't remember. It's that they are unfailingly polite, and don't wish to burden us with old fantastical tales. It feels too much like bragging about things no one should ever brag about.

Everyone who has ever experienced war in closeup knows that last. They leave the bragging to fools and charlatans who, when it was their turn to serve, hid under their beds. One of them, a  swaggering gasbag of no great merit, famously mocked a decorated Vietnam War POW for being captured. But of course Our Only Available President has only the greatest of respect for our veterans.

I won't think about him today. I'll think instead about the no-big-deal humility of Chuck Yeager, and the quiet dignity of the Korean War vets I met 20 years ago. And of so many other men and women of so much more quality and consequence.

Thanks, all of you. Thanks for you service, and  for your example.

Meanwhile, in NASCAR ...

Or to put it another way: Oh, right. Those guys.

Those Guys were in Phoenix yesterday, while you were watching the Colts lose at home to the Dolphins and the Giants and Jets battle for the title of Cruddiest Football Team In New York. Denny Hamlin won, dominating the race and managing not to screw up the inevitable three-laps-to-go restart. This means the playoff final four is set for the season finale at Homestead next week.

The final four are Hamlin, Kyle Busch, Kevin Harvick and Martin Truex Jr.

Even though Hamlin has won six races this year, the Blob thinks it will come down to Busch and Harvick. This is because Busch and Harvick always seem to be in the final four, and the Blob always thinks it will come down to the two of them.

So, there you go. You're all caught up. You may now resume watching Eric Ebron drop passes and Adam Vinatieri miss extra points.

Regime change

Think I saw your Heisman Trophy winner down in Tuscaloosa yesterday, and his name wasn't Tua. And he wasn't a quarterback for Oklahoma named Baker or Kyler or Jalen, either.

His name was Joe.

He plays quarterback for LSU.

And what he did, this Guy Named Joe, was go into the thundering cauldron of Bryant-Denny Stadium and set Nick Saban's mighty legions on fire. Torched the Alabama Crimson Tide for 339 yards and three scores on 31-of-39 passing, Joe Burrow did, as the Tigers hung 46 points on the Tide in a 46-41 win. It was LSU's first win over Saban in the last nine tries, and, at least for now, knocked Alabama out of the College Football Playoff picture.

For which we should be sending Joe Burrow and the rest of the Tigers a decorative fruit basket, or some such thing.

This is because college football should never be as easy to predict as sunrise, but that's what was happening. For the last few years it's been Alabama and Clemson and all them others, to the point where the only questions left to ponder at the front of every autumn was who was going to play in what Chicken Sandwich/Radial Tire/Military-Industrial Complex Bowl. The two seats at the national championship table, it seemed, were already occupied.

Well ... not so much.

Oh, defending national champion Clemson is still undefeated and untried, and the Tigers will likely be back on the CFP grid this week as a consequence of 'Bama's fall. But for the first time in awhile, the best-team-in-the-country debate is not confined to South Carolina or Alabama.

The best team in the country right now, it's pretty clear, is Ohio State, which dropped a 73-14 nuclear device on poor Maryland yesterday. And if the Buckeyes aren't the best team in the country, then LSU is.

Meanwhile there are all these others out there scrambling for position, some of whom have arrived deliciously from left field.

I mean, who saw Minnesota coming? And what the hell is going on down in Champaign-Urbana?

The Golden Gophers took down No. 4 Penn State 31-26 yesterday, and now they're 9-0. The Gophers haven't been 9-0 since 1905. They haven't won even a share of the Big Ten title since 1967. And the last time they won a national title, if you want to dream big up there in Minneapolis, Dwight Eisenhower was in the White House.

That was 1960. Vietnam and the Beatles and Muhammad Ali hadn't really happened yet. November 22 was just another date on the calendar. So was September 11.

And in Champaign-Urbana, meanwhile, University of Illinois Fighting Illini football was the usual cruddy self it had been since Red Grange left for the Bears.

But strange things are happening there under Lovie Smith's watchful eye, like getting down 28-3 to Michigan State and then roaring back to win 37-34. It was Illinois' fourth straight win, and it meant Lovie's boys have somehow jacked around and gotten to 6-4 on the season. This doesn't sound like much until you realize Illinois only won nine games combined in the previous three seasons. Two years ago, they were 2-10.

So, yes. Weird stuff -- weird, wonderful stuff -- is happening these days, and hooray for it. Indiana, for instance, is 7-2 and looking squarely at 8-4, minimum. Indiana hasn't gone 8-4 in 26 years.

Weird. Wonderful.

Numbing pedantry

There are some things I don't understand in this world, and many of them involve the NCAA. They are the grand masters of nitpickery, King Pedant I in a land where inconsequence is consequential. What matters to them is an endless source of puzzlement to everyone else.

And so we come this morning to a young man named Chase Young, and another round of puzzlement.

For the uninitiated, Young is a defensive end for the Ohio State Buckeyes, and he might just be the best college football player in America. The kid is a one-man wrecking crew, a stick of dynamite flung into the middle of opponents' best-laid plans. Remember when Mike Tyson said "Everyone's got a plan until they get hit."? That was Chase Young he was talking about.

Which is why Maryland is no doubt thanking the stars that Chase Young will not be playing football today.

When the Buckeyes take the field against the Terrapins, Young will not be among them, and not because he's hurt. He's being held out because of a potential NCAA violation that, like a lot of NCAA violations, gets sillier the more you contemplate it. But King Pedant I will not be swayed by mere common sense. Silliness is his royal prerogative.

Here's the deal: Last summer a "family friend' floated Young a loan. He says he paid it back. But the "family friend" is someone Young, a junior, admits he's only known since before his freshman year at OSU. So it can reasonably be assumed that the "friend" is an OSU booster of some type or description.

Now, you might be asking yourself here why this is a big deal, if Young indeed paid back the loan. It's an excellent question. Another excellent question is why the NCAA might consider this an "impermissible benefit," which by its criteria is any benefit not available to students who aren't  providing cheap labor for the university's athletic department.

After all, again, Young paid back the loan (assuming he's telling the truth, and why would he tell such an easily exposed lie?). He was also already at Ohio State, so it's not like the loan was some sort of recruiting inducement. And if the NCAA regards this as an "impermissible benefit," it must be prepared to state with absolute certainty that no regular OSU student since the beginning of time has ever been floated a loan by a family friend or benefactor.

This is, of course, absurd. Regular students get loans all the time from friends or family or benefactors. I did. You did. Pretty much everyone you know did.

So where is the violation here? And why is Chase Young being punished for doing something college students do all the time?

This doesn't sound to me like he's getting special treatment because he's a student-athlete. Or maybe he is.

After all, he's the only one being told he can't play today.

Saturday's America*

(* - With apologies to, and acknowledgement of, the late, great Dan Jenkins, who titled a compilation of his best Sports Illustrated college football stuff  "Saturday's America.")

Anyway ... Saturday's America will be in Tuscaloosa, Ala., tomorrow, and it will only be everything that makes Saturday's America the best America. It will be undefeated and No. 2 LSU against undefeated and No. 3 Alabama, and Denny-Bryant Stadium might actually sway a bit trying to contain it all.

The place will be a crimson madhouse, in other words, at least where it's not a purple-and-gold madhouse. The Tide will Roll, and the Tigers will Geaux. At some point Nick Saban might be seen to smile. At some point Ed Orgeron might say something a person not fluent in Southron Foo-ball Co'rch can understand. Even Our Only Available President will be there, which is the surest indicator of all that this is as Saturday's America as it gets.

The 'Bama student council has threatened its constituency within an inch of its season tickets not to give OOAP a hard time, exactly the sort of strong-arm freedom-of-speech muzzling of which OOAP would undoubtedly approve. That the council has since backpedaled madly from this stance likely doesn't make the gesture any less appreciated by the distinguished guest. These are his kind of people, by God.

And this is what college football has that the pro game doesn't: An Event that doesn't happen only at the end of the season, but square in the heart of it.

The Sunday game doesn't get what the college version gives us in October or November or December, because in the NASH-unal FOOT-ball League the games are just games, and the only Event happens the first weekend in February. They don't echo down through the decades, the way Notre Dame-Michigan State '66 does, or USC-UCLA '67, or Oklahoma-Nebraska '71. Or any number of Michigan-Ohio States, Texas-Oklahomas, Auburn-Alabamas, Yale-Harvards.

It takes an Event to lure a sitting president, and it's not like the first time this has happened. Presidents, including this one, have attended the annual Army-Navy game, college football's best and truest rivalry. And 50 years ago this fall, another president, one Richard M. Nixon, showed up in little old Fayetteville, Ark., on the first weekend of December, because Texas and Arkansas were going to wrap up the first 100 years of college football with, fittingly, the latest regular season game of the century.

Texas was unbeaten and ranked No. 1, Arkansas was unbeaten and ranked No. 2, and the Razorbacks damn near got 'em. Woo Pig Sooey led the Longhorns 14-0 in the fourth quarter before Texas quarterback James Street galloped 42 yards for a touchdown, Danny Lester picked off Bill Montgomery in the end zone, and Texas coach Darrell Royal riverboat-gambled on a rare deep pass to tight end Randy Peschel to set up the tying score.

Then the exquisitely named Happy Feller came on to kick the decisive extra point, and Texas escaped, 15-14.

All of those names, and more, are etched in gold in the Texas football catechism now, just as Bill Montgomery and Chuck Dicus are etched in gold in Arkansas'. And that entire gray day is pressed firmly between the pages of a memory book that, as of this fall, is fat with 150 years of such pages.

Notre Dame-Michigan State '66 is in there, Bubba Smith vs. Terry Hanratty 'n' them. USC-UCLA '67, O.J. Simpson vs. Gary Beban. Nebraska-Oklahoma '71, and Johnny Rodgers' epic punt return. A thousand others, including Notre Dame-Florida State '93 and Notre Dame-USC '05, both of which the Blob attended as a working journalist.

Nothing like either day, in the Blob's experience. They were parking cars in Mishawaka four hours before kickoff in '93. And Notre Dame Stadium has rarely made the sound it made down at the end in '05, No. 1 USC on the ropes as night came down hard and Matt Leinart tried to think as the roar beat down on him like surf on a rocky shore.

I was down on the N.D. sideline, in those last minutes, along with a pile of others. Joe Montana stood just off to my right. Andy Reid was somewhere in the crush. The entire mad place was an indrawn breath as the football came off Leinart's hand and sailed into the night ... and Dwayne Jarrett caught it downfield ... and then, a couple of hectic plays later, Reggie Bush pushed Leinart into the end zone.

I swear I felt the place sway, when that happened. I swear I did.

Hell freezes over

Which is another way of saying, "Remember this date."

Which is another way of saying, "Wait ... what?"

Which is another way of saying "Wait ... what? You're saying the College Football Playoff people actually got their first poll right, mostly?"

Well, yes, actually. They did.

Here are the top four teams in the first CFP poll, released yesterday: Ohio State, LSU, Alabama and Penn State.

Here is where defending national champion Clemson is ranked, even though the Tigers are as undefeated as the four teams just named: Fifth.

This is right, mostly. This is just, mostly. This is the stars in their courses, shining brightly.

I know. The Blob had to break out the smelling salts, too.

But as much fun as it is to bash the CFP when it gets stuff wrong, it's simple fairness to acknowledge when it gets stuff right (mostly). And Ohio State, LSU, Alabama, Penn State and Clemson, in that order, is right. Mostly.

The Blob has been saying for awhile now that Ohio State is the best team in the country, and pretty clearly so. And, hey, look who's No. 1 in the first poll! Ohio State!

LSU, meanwhile, is exactly where it belongs at No. 2. Alabama might actually be ranked a tad high at No. 3, seeing how the Crimson Tide has gotten fat on a pile of Whatsammatta U.'s. They'd have gotten fat on the Little Sisters of the Poor, too, but the Little Sisters of the Poor didn't have an open date on their schedule.

Unbeaten Penn State at No. 4, on the other hand, acknowledges what everyone not guzzling flagons of the SEC Kool-Aid already know: That top to bottom, the Big Ten is the best conference in the country this year. And Clemson?

The Tigers got no marks for what happened last year, which is the way it should be. And they got dinged for playing even more Whatsamatta U.'s than Alabama has, and for almost, just about, pert near losing to one of them.

Squirmed past North Carolina by a skinny point, the Tigers did. North Carolina, which right now sits at 4-5 on the season after losing to a "meh" Virginia outfit. So no soup for you, Clemson -- although after 'Bama and LSU knock heads this weekend, there likely will be.

Can't wait to see when the CFP folks next get it this right.

Assuming we all live that long.

Indy sells in

(In which the Blob reposts something it wrote for its former employer, the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette,  explaining why Roger Penske buying the Indianapolis Motor Speedway is a good thing, and does not mean it will become Penske Motor Speedway or that Penske is guaranteed to win the 500 every year from now until judgment trump. Although he pretty much already does that.)

Begin with the photo, on this seismic day.

Like all photos it stops time in its tracks, but there is a timelessness to it that seems only to exist at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. It’s in black-and-white, but the sky, you can just tell, is bluer than blue. Puffy white clouds ride it. It’s a lovely May afternoon in 1946, 1947,  men in fedoras and topcoats striding past the vendors outside Gate 5.

Tony Hulman had owned the place no more than a couple of years when that photo was taken, and considerable history still waited to unspool. The Speedway hadn’t killed Bill Vukovich yet. Seven-year-old Mario Andretti wouldn’t see America for eight years. A.J. Foyt Jr. was a brash kid tearing up jack down in Houston, Texas.

And Roger Penske?

Roger Penske was 10-years-old. He wouldn’t set foot in the place in the photo for four more years.

Today he owns that place, or at least his entertainment company does. For the first time in 74 years, the Speedway no longer belongs to the Hulman family. And if there is a certain queasiness that attends that – a sense that some great invisible page is turning out there in the cosmos – there is also this: At least it’s Roger Penske.

If the Hulmans were going to hand the keys to someone who wasn’t named Foyt, Penske was going to be the guy. He first came to Indy as a teenager in 1951. He’s been putting cars in the Indianapolis 500 since 1969. And his drivers have won 18 500s since.

He owns the joint, if anyone actually can. And now he OWNS it, too.

And if you’re asking yourself here how this cannot be a massive conflict of interest, yourself has his mind right. Of course it is -- or least has the potential to be.

Here’s the thing, though: It’s not all that unusual an arrangement in motorsports, which has always been somewhat indiscriminate about its bedfellows.

Penske’s company, for instance, both owned and raced at Michigan International Speedway for 26 years, and also owned racks in Rockingham, N.C., Nazareth, Pa., and Fontana, Calif. In 1999, that side of his business (Penske Entertainment) merged with International Speedway Corp. – which owns a fistful of NASCAR tracks, and which was founded and is still affiliated with the France family.

Which also founded and runs, well, NASCAR.

It’s all shamelessly incestuous, in other words. But if that raises legitimate concerns because it is, after all, Indy … it is, after all, Indy. It is motorsports’ most precious heirloom. And who would you entrust with that heirloom more than Roger Penske, who not only understands the weight of its history but has contributed so much to it?

It’s why he called both Foyt and Andretti before closing the deal, because their names are as synonymous with the Speedway as his. It’s why he finally moved on the deal to begin with, because he couldn’t bear the thought of some clueless outsider getting his mitts on the place.

Maybe he’s seen that photo, too, that stopped eternal instant. And understands, as few others do, just how eternal it is.

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 9

And now this week's edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the helpful Blob feature which gives Joe Namath prescription coverage, rides to medical appointments and even delivers nutritious meals!:

1. "Oh my God! We lost to the Dolphins!" (The New York Jets)

2. "Dammit! Quit messing with our shot at Tua!" (The Miami Dolphins)

3. It's Tuesday morning and the Bengals are still winless.

4. "Hey! No fair! We had the bye this week!" (The Bengals)

5. Bye 28, Bengals 7.

6. "Missed it by that much." (Maxwell Smart)

7. (Or, you know, Adam Vinatieri)

8. "At least we lost to a good team." (Tom Brady)

9. "Shut up, Brady." (Aaron Rodgers)

10. "Yeah, shut up, Brady." (Philip Rivers)

Feets, don't deviate now

The National Football League is the Miss Shields of professional sports.

It's always telling its players to write ... a THEME. It's always collecting their fake teeth with its face set in a humorless frown. It's always giving Baker Mayfield a C+ on his theme, and telling them their guilt will gnaw at them for goading Mitch Trubisky to freeze his tongue to that metal pole, and fretting endlessly about margins, margins, margins.

And you better tuck in that shirt and wear the right shoes, too, mister.

The Needless Folderol League imposed its groupthink on Browns receivers Odell Beckham Jr. and Jarvis Landry for the latter yesterday, on account of they wore cleats that caused thousands of offended fans to turn off their TVs and flee stadiums all over the league.

OK. So none of that happened. But it could have, darn it, because ... because ...

Because, well, OBJ and Landry were not properly shod. OBJ wore special white cleats done up to look like the Joker. Landry wore gold cleats with, yes, orange laces and Nike swooshes, but not the proper shade of orange. It was more Denver orange than Cleveland orange! Good God!

So he and OBJ were ordered to change cleats at halftime or not play the second half.

OBJ and Landry did so, but not without a fair amount of shaking their heads at the absurdity of their world. This is because they are rational humans who understand that conformity is all in that world, and minutiae its graven image. Lockstep is the only step. And comb that hair, buddy!

You would think a professional enterprise that no longer knows what a catch or a legitimate tackle looks like would have enough on its plate without obsessing over what shade of orange a player is wearing on his feet. But, nah.

Several years back, remember, the fussbudgets in the league office told Peyton Manning he couldn't wear black hightops to honor Johnny Unitas, the Colts icon who had just died. And OBJ was fined $14,000 earlier this season because he showed up for a game in pants that didn't cover his knees.

You could almost see Roger Goodell with a ruler in his hand, measuring the length of OBJ's pants the way fussy school principals used to measure the length of girls' skirts. I'm sorry. You'll have go home and change, Odell. And here's a note for your parents.

Yeesh. Where's Jim McMahon when you need him, wearing a headband with "Rozelle" written on it?

Like that wouldn't have driven Miss Shields bonkers.

A matter of perspective

A win is a win is a win is a win, or so the philosophers say. Of course, the philosophers also say other things, being philosophers and all.

Things like, "A win is a win only if you win a lot."

Things like, "And when you win a lot, you say 'a win is a win' because this time you jacked around and almost lost."

Things like, "A win is a win? Not here, brother."

"Here" being Bloomington, Indiana, where your Hoosiers played a game of football under the lights Saturday night and cast poor Northwestern into outer darkness, 34-3. It was Indiana's fourth straight Big Ten win, its longest conference winning streak in 26 years. The Hoosiers are now 7-2; it's the first time they've won seven games in 12 years.

So one thing they haven't done since the Clinton administration, and the other thing they haven't done since the George W. administration. To put in presidential terms.

That's a long thirsty spell even for Indiana football, whose record, Dan Jenkins once famously wrote, is right up there with Germany's record in world wars. So, no, a win is not just a win these days --, no matter what they were saying up in South Bend a few hours earlier.

There, the sons of Notre Dame were saying a win was a win, after, yes, jacking around and almost losing to unranked Virginia Tech. It took an 18-play drive in the last three minutes for the Irish to scrape  past, 21-20 -- a not-exactly-inspiring response to getting de-pantsed at Michigan last week.

Still, the Irish are 6-2 to Indiana's 7-2, even if they seemed a bit defensive about it after the fact Saturday. This will happen when you are Notre Dame, and used to winning. Losing a couple -- even winning one by the skin of your teeth -- feels like failure. Or if not that, at least starts up that old Domerville staple, Coach Slobberknocker Is Never Going To Win Us A National Title.

Meanwhile, Tom Allen loses a couple in Bloomington, and the statuary is on order. Because even though 7-2 doesn't look much different than 6-2, there is a vast difference in the sightlines. Which is why "We're 7-2!" sounds a lot different in Bloomington today than "We're 6-2!" sounds in South Bend.

Maybe Notre Dame needs to lose a few more, just for perspective's sake.

Kidding, Domers! Kidding.

This week in corporate hackery

Well, that's that, fans of weaponized snarkery. No more Hater's Guide to the Williams-Sonoma Catalogue for you.

Excuse me. Perhaps we should phrase that NO MORE HATER'S GUIDE TO THE WILLIAMS-SONOMA CATALOGUE FOR YOU in honor of its all-caps-loving creator, the cripplingly-funny Drew Magary.

Who's no longer at the sports/culture blog site Deadspin, on account of it's dead because the corporate hacks who own it now failed to understand what it was. What it was, was a lot of free-floating no-boundaries commentary and (occasionally) by-God journalism, most of which was sports-related but more than occasionally was not. The corporate hacks didn't get the "no-boundaries" part, and so they effectively killed the site.

The head corporate hack, new CEO Jim Spanfeller of something called G/O Media, got the ball un-rolling by firing off a memo this week that Deadspin was heretofore to stick strictly to sports. The staff reacted by resigning en masse in protest of this corner-office meddling. Spanfeller's astonishment at this only underlined how little he and the other corporate hacks understood the subversive milieu of the site.

Of course they all quit. None of them would have been at Deadspin to begin with if they were good soldier types.

In response, Spanfeller vowed to hire more people and keep the site alive, and that it will retain its renegade essence. This, of course, is laughable. The parent company for G/O Media is a private equity firm, which is the polar opposite of renegade. And so whatever Deadspin becomes likely will reflect that.

Which means no more Hater's Guide, one of the joys of the holidays for devotees of pure snark. For the uninitiated, it was Magary's lengthy, often profane takedown of frou-frou yuppie frippery, his Christmas gift to all of us. Of course, it had nothing to do with sports, which means it would have been an especially in-your-face violation of new corporate policy. But such a frontal assault on good old American materialism would likely not have sat well with the corporate hacks, either.

The union representing the fleeing staff members says G/O Media's edict represents a muzzling of speaking truth to power, and that's not an inaccurate assessment. The Blob could point out this is just another brick in the wall of dying American journalism, but that's perhaps chewing the scenery a bit. And of course it's merely a well-duh acknowledgement of a process that's been ongoing for awhile now.

Put it this way: Fewer media conglomerates owning more of media means fewer independent voices, and fewer independent voices means less freedom of the press -- a cherished American right to everyone but Our Only Available President and his acolytes, who regard it as a threat.

To be sure, it may be absurd to think of the death of a snark website like Deadspin as a blow to all of that. But you know what's troublesome about that?

That it might not be so absurd.