The self-harm of spite

 This morning we begin with a Woody Allen quote, or a Fielding Mellish quote if you prefer the character out of whose mouth it came, or "that one quote from 'Bananas'" if you can recall the name of the film but not the source of the quote.

In any event, to quote Allen/Mellish, what we saw in Denver yesterday was a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham.

What we saw in Denver was a practice squad wide receiver trying to play quarterback in what the league insisted on calling an official NFL game.

The practice squad wide receiver was Kendall Hinton, and on the day he threw nine passes and completed three, two of them to the wrong team. He took roughly half the snaps in a 31-3 loss to the Saints. Running backs Phillip Lindsay and Royce Freeman took direct snaps the rest of the time, which made the Broncos' offense somewhat, um, predictable.

No doubt by now you're asking "Mr. Blob, why would the NFL allow such a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham to go on? Why wouldn't they just move the game like they've moved so many others affected by the Bastard Plague?"

For the answer, we turn to Broncos defensive back Kareem Jackson.

"I guess they felt like they had to make an example," he said, acknowledging that the flaunting of league COVID-19 protocols by the Broncos' quarterbacks was, well, kinda stupid.

If so, even more stupid was the NFL's decision to make a joke of their product, simply out of spite.

Because, look, if Jackson's right, and the league was trying to make an example of the Broncos, it's a textbook example of spitting into a hurricane. The target of your disdain might get a tad damp, but you get a faceful of expectoration.

A more thoughtful approach would have been to move the game and dole out a handful of fines, along with a stern warning that if the Broncos decided to be so cavalier about the Plague again, it could cost them draft picks. Instead ...

Instead, they handed the Saints, locked up in a fight with Tampa Bay for the NFC South title, a virtual automatic W. That couldn't have made the Buccaneers too happy, given that they were in the process of losing to the Chiefs at roughly the same time.

That's a potential two-game swing. And now the Saints are 2 1/2 games clear in the division.

In any event, NFL officials can thank God that, on Saturday night, Mike Tyson and Roy Jones Jr. fought to a "draw" in their old-dude Sorta Brawl On Geritol. 

Which meant Broncos-Saints wasn't the weekend's only farce.

Unraveling

I don't know how you know when the stitching has come too much undone. Is it when you can see through the fabric as if it were milky glass? Or is it not until the fabric at last begins to fall apart in your hands?

So many questions, here in the Year of the Bastard Plague. So few answers, because when has there been a year like this since before almost any of us were born?

A few items from Sportsball World, as we lean hard into the Season of Christmas Music Until You Want To Just Scream:

* Because of the Plague, the Denver Broncos have no roster quarterbacks available today for their game against the New Orleans Saints.

* Because of the Plague, the Ravens-Steelers game has been moved twice and will now be played Tuesday, maybe, although the Ravens now have 17 players or staff members who've tested positive.

* Partly because of the Plague, the Indianapolis Colts will be without five starters today.

* Because of a massive outbreak in Santa Clara County, Calif., officials have prohibited all contact sports, which means the San Francisco 49ers have to find another place to practice and play their next two home games.

* Because of a similar outbreak among the Ohio State Buckeyes, the best team in the Big Ten is now in danger of not playing enough games to be eligible for the Big Ten championship. They've already had two games canceled; one more and they're out.

On and on and on. And so the landscape shifts, subtly at first and then seismically. And so the Plague alters situation, and through that alters outcome.

And again, I don't know. How bad does it have to get before the NFL or the Big Ten just shut everything down, at least temporarily? How ludicrous must  the circumstance before someone finally just says "Ah, to hell with it, this is ridiculous"?

Where is the line? Or is there one?

I'd think an NFL team being forced to play with none of their roster quarterbacks might be a tipping point. I'd think another NFL team being forced to abandon its own stadium might be, or one of the four teams currently in line for the College Football Playoff being in peril of missing its own conference title game might be.

Instead, all I know is this: There should be a giant asterisk attached to all of it. Like, one so big you mistake it for the rising sun.

Because, listen, someone's going to win the CFP and the Super Bowl, and when they do it will be impossible to ignore the extenuating circumstances. It's all unraveled so much, and the unraveling has so unleashed a cascade of situations that never would have happened otherwise, that it's not just the elephant in the room but an entire herd of them. 

And so, the asterisk. Or maybe just the year itself, because "2020" has become an asterisk in its own right.

Thus you can say the Pittsburgh Steelers or whoever are "Super Bowl Champions*", or it can just read "Super Bowl Champions, 2020." Ditto with Alabama or Notre Dame or whoever wins the CFP.

In any case, you gotta do something to indicate this was not like any year, any season, ever. History demands its accounting, after all.

Or so says the Blob*.

(* Written in 2020)

Bellyachers

OK, so maybe he wasn't whining. Maybe he was just making an observation, albeit a silly one, and it only sounded like whining.

But goodness gracious, the Nebraska Cornhuskers lost again, and here was their head coach and former icon quarterback, Scott Frost, attributing the snapping issues of his center to Iowa players clapping on the sideline. Said it might have confused poor Cameron Jurgens, and that's why he kept snapping the ball all cattywampus.

So football players clapping on their own sideline is an issue now for the Cornharrumphers? What's next, demanding a recount of the latest loss, this one 26-20 to the Hawkeyes?

Bad enough that the Huskers are 1-4 now and looking nothing like what Nebraska is supposed to look like on a football field. But they're also whining about it, and that is especially unbecoming.

Whining about players clapping. Whining about the Big Ten initially shutting down the season, and threatening to temporarily bolt to the Big 12, which Nebraska couldn't do and stay in the Big Ten. Whining, when the conference finally relented and announced a late-to-the-party season, about their schedule. 

Whining about one of its games being canceled because of the Bastard Plague, and hunting around for an alternate opponent -- which the Cornhuskers were told they also couldn't do but tried to do anyway.

At which point the Big Ten was probably regretting not letting them just go ahead and bolt to the Big 12. 

Good lord. Somewhere now, if I'm very still, I can hear old Bob Devaney stomping around up there in X-and-O heaven, wondering WHEN THE HELL his mighty Nebraska Cornhuskers turned into a bunch of BELLYACHING CANDY ASSES.

Things were different in Lincoln in Coach Bob's day. He rounded up a bunch of square-jawed farmboys named Bob and Dave and Jeff and Bill, and he made sure some of them were so big they could block out the sun, and they went around mashing people into odd shapes and sizes. They didn't whine and bellyache and cry like toddlers; they made everyone else whine and bellyache and cry like toddlers.

And they certainly didn't make excuses when Bob or Dave or Bill botched the snap. No, sir. They benched him and brought in another Bob or Dave or Bill, and went right on murderlizing whatever poor Whosis State they were playing that week.

Clapping on the opposing sideline?

That would have just made 'em laugh.

Instead, here in 2020, it's the opponents who are kinda-sorta laughing.

Never heard of that," Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz said when a reporter brought up Frost's complaint/excuse. "If a player on the field was doing it, I get that. But what are we talking about? The next thing you know, we're going to be treating this like golf."

Well. Maybe at Nebraska, at least.

A few brief thoughts, Turkey Day edition

 And now, just in time for your next Pie Break, a special holiday edition of The NFL In So Many Words, of which the critics have said nothing because they didn't know it was coming. Also their mouths are still full of pie:

1. God, the Lions are awful. Can't we get someone else to play football on Thanksgiving for once?

2. God, the Cowboys are awful. Can't we get someone else to play football on Thanksgiving for once?

3. Combined records of the four teams that played on Thanksgiving: 15-29.

4. Combined number of viewers who turned off the games before they were over to watch "Elf," "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" or "Christmas Vacation":  I don't know, but it was a lot. A LOT.

That's it for today, boys and girls. Go eat some more pie.

So, anyway, thanks

Happy Turkeycide Day, everyone, and here's hoping the bird comes out juicy and succulent, and the stuffing is savory, and the pumpkin and pecan and (for me) sugar cream pie holds out against the expected onslaught.

I'd like to say a few words of thanks, at this time. I'd like to thank 2020 for some stuff.

Yes, I know. It's been a pill, 2020. It's been the weirdest, stupidest, vilest year that ever took a can of paint and scrawled a giant penis on a calendar. And it's especially been a nasty son of you-know-what to Sportsball World, because it's killed so many of our treasured icons.

Just yesterday, for instance, it killed off Maradona. Maradona, for heaven's sake, god of soccer, who wasn't even that old (60). 2020 just doesn't take a day off, I swear.

But I'd like to give thanks to it anyway.

I'd like to give thanks that 2020 didn't let the cheatin' Astros win the World Series, which would have been intolerable considering it's taken Tom Seaver and Al Kaline and Lou Brock and Bob Gibson from us, among others.

I'd like to give thanks we got a Masters, even though it was weird; and an Indianapolis 500, even though it was weird; and college football, even though it continues to be weird.  2020 could have wrecked all of that, too, but it left the backdoor cracked just enough so clever people could make it kinda-sorta happen. So there's that.

I'd like to give thanks there will be state championship high school football in Lucas Oil Stadium this weekend, in spite of everything. Blue ribbons will go around some necks, and red around others, and there will be joy and heartbreak and tears and laughter, and the culmination of a hard strange season beneath the bright lights and closed sky.

I'd like to give thanks for Patrick Mahomes and Tom Brady and Kyler Murray and Lamar Jackson, who are all still playing. I'd like to give thanks for the New England Patriots, who are  finally, finally discovering how the other half lives. 

I'd like to give thanks for the Detroit Lions, because Thanksgiving wouldn't be the same without crummy football, and for the Dallas Cowboys and Washington To-Be-Renamed-Laters for the same reason. I'd like to give thanks the To-Be-Renamed-Laters are going to be renamed later, at long last. And I'd like to give thanks for the Chicago Bears' continuing run of beige at the quarterback position -- because in a year without normal, pining for the days of Bob Avellini or Jack Concannon or Bobby Douglass is as close to normal as a Bears fan can get.

I'd like to give thanks for bubbles, and for bubble screens. For alternating cries of "The Colts are terrible!" and "The Colts look like a Super Bowl team!", depending on the week. For the ability, in an America awash in a killer virus and political corruption and all manner of presidential lunacy, to be able to push all that aside because, down a score with no timeouts and the clock running out, our idiot coach called a five-yard route to the middle of the field on third-and-10.

Thank God, in the midst of all 2020's chaos, we can still throw stuff at our TVs and call Coach a moron. Because there is comfort in that, surely.

So thanks, 2020. But don't get too full of yourself. You kill off another sports icon, and we'll boot your decrepit ass out the door before you even see Christmas.

I mean, this is 2020. I bet we can do that.

Pandummies

He's the highest-paid public employee in his state, but that's not why Dabo Swinney is catching a raft of stuff this week.

He's catching a raft of stuff because he's behaving like what he is, which is a football coach.

And so here he is, going all Coach Slobberknocker because Florida State abruptly called off its game last Saturday against Swinney's Clemson Tigers. Coach Slobberknocker 'tweren't happy about that, because dadgum it, it was time to buckle the chinstraps and get after it. And you can't do that if you're gonna be a buncha fraidy cats about some pandemic whatcha.

I suppose it's mere fancy to think it, considering how much they love their football in South Carolina. But shouldn't this be the part where someone reminds Coach that if he's gonna be the highest-paid public employee in the state, he should start acting in the interests of the public?

Because, listen, while Coach Slobberknocker was ranting and raving -- yesterday he was still at it, saying Florida State should forfeit the dadgum game -- it's worth pointing out that Florida State, of all people, did the responsible thing here. Seminole Nation has rather famously behaved cavalierly itself when it had football games to win, but common sense scored the upset this time around.

This time around, Florida State canceled the game Saturday morning after learning a Clemson player had tested positive for the Bastard Plague the day before. And not only that, he'd been symptomatic the entire week.

And yet he'd still been allowed to practice by Coach Slobberknocker. Because, football. 

This meant who knows how many others among the Clemsons had been infected, and that's why Florida State pulled the plug. The Tigers would have been tough enough to handle without having to take on the Four Horsemen of Respiratory Distress, too. And it seemed especially irresponsible with Thanksgiving break coming and students on college campuses headed home.

Then again ... irresponsibility seems to be a thing these days in the age of 'rona.

Out in South Dakota, for instance, they just spent close to a million dollars on an ad campaign promoting tourism to the state, an idea so appallingly bad only South Dakota's famously yee-ha governor, Kristi Noem, could have dreamed it up. The virus is spiraling again everywhere, hospital resources are strained to the breaking point, but, hey, folks, let's get travelin'. Cram yourselves aboard one o' them sky tubes and wing off to our lovely state!

And never mind that South Dakota is a 'rona hotspot right now -- a direct consequence of Governor Slobberknocker sneering at all that sissified mask-wearin' and social-distancin' and temporary lockin'-down.

For instance: Just yesterday, the state recorded more than a thousand new cases. Considering South Dakota contains about 12 people, this might be regarded as alarming. But, sure, come on out!

As for Coach Dabo ... well, as noted above, he's a football coach. Not only that, he's a football coach at a school he's built into perhaps the pre-eminent power, along with Alabama, in the game. Which means what he's in charge of is Clemson Football Inc., and his job is to generate revenue for that entity.

And you can't generate revenue if you don't play. Priorities, don't you know.

Yeesh, It's a wonder the apes haven't taken over and put Dr. Zaius in charge.

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 11

 And now this week's edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the sometimes indecipherable Blob feature of which critics have said "Mrxyz 1247!", and also "His handwriting is atrocious! It's practically indecipherable!":

1. First half: Packers 28, Colts 14. Second half: Colts 20, Packers 3.

2. "Mrxyz 1247." -- Colts coach Frank Reich, explaining.

3. "Hey! Where did the Rams come from?" -- America.

4. "We came from mrxyz 1247, by way of bflspmrtk 13590." -- the Rams.

5. In other news, Kirk Cousins threw for 314 yards, three touchdowns and zero picks. So there.

6. And the Vikings still lost to the cruddy Dallas Cowboys, at home.

7. "It's utterly indefgsu4261 how we do this!" -- Cousins.

8. In still other news, the Patriots lost to the cruddy Texans, the Dolphins panicked and benched Tua and the Jets scored 28 points.

9. Of course, they also Jets-ed around and lost anyway.

10. "Finally! Something decipherable!" -- America.

That parochial thing

Bishop Luers is headed back to the state finals this week for the first time in eight years, which is a great story when you consider the Knights were 3-6 in the regular season and getting ball-peened by everybody for awhile, losing three games by 34, 25 and 38 points, and three of their last four by 10, 37 and 22.

But head coach Kyle Lindsay and his staff got their kids' heads right for the playoffs, and the Knights commenced being a team that wouldn't take an L. And now they're playing Western Boone Friday for the 2A title, and, like I said, it's a hell of a story and congrats to everyone down there at the corner of Paulding and Clinton.

Of course, being a parochial school, it was inevitable that by showing up downstate again, they'd once more get dragged into that whole parochial -schools-have-an-unfair-advantage silliness.

It got out in the open initially when the coach at Tipton made a passing reference to it after the Knights dispatched the Blue Devils 36-17 in the regional. And Kyle Neddenriep of the Indianapolis Star acknowledged it in a recent column, noting there's a possibility five private schools could win state titles this weekend, and that doubtless will get the whole business stirred up again.

In the past, some folks have suggested the private schools should have their own state tournament separate from the public schools. We'll probably hear some of that again this weekend if Luers, Indianapolis Cathedral, Indianapolis Roncalli, Indianapolis Chatard and Covenant Christian all win. 

The usual tired arguments about Unfair Advantages (i.e.: "Those private schools can recruit!") will be trotted out. The usual response from people like me -- "What are you, afraid to compete?" -- will also be trotted out.

And so one last time, boys and girls, for everyone who missed it the first half-dozen times: The notion that Luers or Bishop Dwenger or whoever "recruits" its football hosses is ridiculous, and irrelevant anyway in a town where the public school powers themselves have always wound up with hosses from suspiciously distant parts of the city. And when I say "always," that covers a lot of ground, considering I was born and raised here.

(And before I'm accused of some innate Luers/Dwenger/Catholic school bias: I was also born and raised a Methodist and graduated from New Haven High School. Try again.)

In any event, what I've always pointed out is the "recruiting" charge is nonsense, because if Luers or Dwenger or even Concordia were actually doing that, why do so many of the same surnames show up on their rosters year after year after year? Why do so many of their players wind up where their brothers did or their uncles or their fathers?

That makes this a family deal, or so it seems to me. And in the cases where it's not a family deal, the Blob can cite you numerous examples in which it was the families who recruited the school, not the other way around. 

Which makes sense because, in Luers' particular case, the Knights have 11 state football championship banners hanging from the rafters in their gym. And on the other side of the city, Dwenger has five state titles to its name.

So how much "recruiting" do you suppose Jason Garrett or Lindsay would have to do?

The obvious answer: Very little. Or none.

The Luers and Dwengers and Cathedrals and the rest win because they've always won, and winning feeds on itself. It's tradition, and tradition has always been the fuel for sustained excellence. Those little kids you see chucking a football around behind the bleachers and dreaming their dreams on game nights grow up to be the next generation of Knights or Saints or Irish. This is how it works and always has.

Segregating this wouldn't make high school football in the public schools better. It would only diminish whatever the kids at those schools achieve.

And who would want to see that?

Indiana zenith, Part Deux

 Welp. I was wrong.

What an idiot. What a fool. What a maroon.

I say this loudly, proudly, and twice for the people in the back. I say it because I wanted to be wrong. I wanted Indiana University to show us what we'd seen for four games wasn't a mirage, that this was (as we all suspected) an Indiana football program dealing from an entirely different deck than a whole lot of 4-0 Indiana teams in the past.

And so Ohio State 42, Indiana 35 over in Columbus, and the No. 3 Buckeyes were on their knees at the end thanking the football gods the Hoosiers spent more than a half acting as a double agent, intent as much on sabotage as success.

Show of hands here. When the Hoosiers went down 35-7 three minutes into the third quarter, weren't a lot of you saying "That stupid Blob guy. He was right. Indiana isn't ready to compete with the Ohio States of the world"?

I mean, other than the first part. I'm sure the Blob is not the first thing that popped into your mind.

("You got that right, pal," you're saying)

But then Michael Penix Jr. started throwing and Ty Fryfogle started catching instead of dropping, and weird stuff started happening. Like 491 yards passing and five TDs for Penix. Like 218 yards receiving and three touchdowns for Fryfogle, all in the second half. Like an Indiana defense that got the ball back for Penix nearly every time it needed to.

Like, oh, Indiana 28, Ohio State 7 from the 12:10 mark of the third quarter on. And the seven for Ohio State came on a pick six right after a drop cost Indiana a touchdown, a 14-swing that saved the Buckeyes.

Conclusions:

1. Ohio State is an elite program.

2. Indiana is not yet an elite program, but can sure play one on TV when it has to.

Previous Hoosiers would have rolled over and stuck all four legs in the air when it went down 35-7 to the No. 3 team in the country, on the road. But these Hoosiers are Tom Allen's Hoosiers, and there is no give-up in 'em. There is instead grit and fire and a willingness to keep the throttle floorboarded no matter what.

This is especially noticeable on the defensive side of the ball, where Indiana has historically been weaker in the knees. There are any number of years when Indiana has been able to ding the scoreboard with a fair amount of regularity; in turn, there are almost zero years when the defense hasn't done a serviceable imitation of a screen door on a breezy day.

To be sure, this defense got run on the way Ohio State runs on everyone, but it also bowed its back when it needed to. It intercepted Justin Fields, as good a quarterback as there is in America,  three times. It sacked him five times. It made him a lot more miserable than Ohio State's more celebrated D made Penix.

In the end, all of it meant Indiana's No. 9 ranking wasn't nearly as preposterous as some doubters suspected.  And it meant the Hoosiers might possibly be the second-best team in the Big Ten, or if not that the third best.

It also meant Indiana got it all kinds of right when it hired Tom Allen from within to guide the program. But of course you already know that.

Indiana zenith

 I want to be wrong about this. Let's get that straight right off the hop.

Also: I think what Tom Allen has done in Bloomington is amazing and pretty close to impossible, creating a culture of belief and family that has turned Indiana University's football program into a Program, and something more than just a side dish for basketball.

Also, also: I think equally remarkable is the way he's upgraded the talent level in B-town, particularly in the offensive line and defensive down seven, which are the areas that separate the elites from the, well, Indianas.

Indiana has always had skill players. What the Hoosiers have now are skill players AND the grunts up front who let the skill players do their thing.

All of which is why the Hoosiers are ranked in the top ten for the first time in over half a century.

All of which is why the biggest football game they've had in almost that long happens tomorrow in Columbus, Ohio, when they take on the No. 3 Ohio State Buckeyes.

What I feel about that is what I hope I'm wrong about.

What I feel -- queasily, in the pit of my stomach -- is that even though this Indiana team can go toe-to-toe with the Buckeyes, even should, somehow it won't.

I'd love to see it go down to the wire, and maybe beyond. I'd love to see Michael Penix, down there at the end, stretching for the pylon again for the W. I acknowledge that's possible. I acknowledge that's possible in a way it hasn't been for a very long time.

But I don't think it will happen. 

What I think will happen instead is Ohio State wins by a couple of touchdowns, and maybe more.

I don't know why I feel this way. I have no reason to believe this Indiana team -- coming off a thorough racking of Michigan and a no-doubt shutout of Michigan State in East Lansing -- won't rise to the occasion the way it has every time out so far this season.

But I can't help what I feel. Call it a hunch, or Indiana's beige football history exerting far too much influence -- to the point where if I close my eyes I can still Ted McNulty playing quarterback for Indiana instead of Michael Penix, and Dennis Cremeans or Ken St. Pierre lugging the ball instead of Stevie Scott.

Ah, the bad old days. There are so many of them, and they pile up on you. They make you refuse to believe what your eyes are telling you. They make you expect the other shoe to drop because the other shoe almost always has, and when it does it's almost always with an almighty thud.

I hope I'm wrong, waiting around for it this time.

I hope I look like an utter fool for doing so somewhere around 3:30 Saturday afternoon.

I hope to hear all of you saying "You're an idiot, Mr. Blob" about the same time.

I mean, not that it would be all that different than usual.

Bumfuzzlement

 So the NBA draft was last night, which completely blindsided me because it's November and the NBA draft is usually in the offseason in late June, but then again it's the offseason now because the NBA season or Weird Summer Thing or whatever it was just ended in October ...

Yeesh. Who can make heads or tails of this anymore?

I'm all bumfuzzled, as Bobby Bowden used to say. Which means all I know about the NBA draft is one of Tom Crean's guys (Anthony Edwards) was the top pick, which was kinda cool because I always thought Crean got unduly roughed up by the delusional Indiana fan base.

Also, James Wiseman went No. 2, and that was kinda cool because he and Penny Hardaway and Memphis got unduly roughed up by the NCAA, which said Wiseman couldn't play because Hardaway knew Wiseman before he became Memphis' head coach or some such thing.

Hey, it's the NCAA. It's not like it has to make sense or anything.

Anyway, that's all I got on the NBA draft, and that's the Bastard Plague's fault. It stuck 2020 in a blender and hit puree, and now up is down and November is June and everything is as un-moored as Lindsey Graham and Rudy Giuliani and that whole crowd. 

I hear rumors, for instance, that Thanksgiving is a week from today, but who knows. It could be the Fourth of July and we'll all be outside blowing stuff up and giving turkey hotdogs a Viking funeral on the grill.  Which'll it be, Cousin Eddie, stuffing or potato salad?

Of course, this would mean Thanksgiving and Christmas were in August and September, and we missed both of them. Bad news for the kids and Santa; good news for all of us who didn't want to spend time with Cousin Eddie or your crazy Trumper brother-in-law, or your even crazier sister-in-law who thinks Covid-19 is a commie plot and Hillary and Joe Biden eat babies for breakfast.

In any event, on the off chance next Thursday actually is Thanksgiving, we'll be committing the usual turkeycide. And I'll still be trying to figure out who the Indiana Pacers took with their only pick.

Word is it was Cassius Stanley from Duke, but it could have been Bob Netolicky for all I know. That kinda time, boys and girls.

Leavin' time

 Wizards are just like us mortals, it turns out. They may not have an expiration date, but their shine sure does.

This might be why Theo Epstein is weighing anchor and leaving the north side of Chicago, or it may not be. In any case, he's done what he can do. The man who engineered the end of 86 years of dramatic suffering in Boston came to Chicago and did the same thing, against much greater odds. After all, the baseball gods only tormented the Boston Red Sox; the Chicago Cubs, they completely neglected.

But Theo came in and built the Cubs into a World Series champion, ending 108 dry and mostly irrelevant years. The Cubs have not been back since, the Series receding from them every subsequent year like an ocean liner vanishing over the horizon. Not even the resident wizard could find a way to sustain the magic.

This in no way suggests Theo's powers are in decline, because he has made the Cubs a consistent winner, and there might be more dazzle in that than in the gleaming wonder of 2016. For 108 years, after all, the Cubs' signature was long stretches of helplessness interrupted by brief periods of OK-ness. If they'd had a team coat of oarms, it would have been Eddie Miksis or Bob Ramazzotti booting a ground ball in front of the College of Coaches, rampant on a field of beige.

Those Cubs are not these Cubs. On Epstein's watch, after all, these Cubs have won a World Series, reached the NLCS three times and made the playoffs in five of the last six seasons. After missing the playoffs last year, they rebounded to win the NL Central in 2020 under first-year manager David Ross, one of the heroes of the 2016 World Series.

But it's been mostly diminishing returns in the playoffs since 2016: The Cubs reached the NLCS in 2017, lost in the wild-card round in 2018, missed the playoffs in 2019 and lost again in the wild-card round in 2020.

None of this can explicitly be laid at Theo's feet, but it does suggest his wizardry has lost some of its potency after nine years on the north side. A change of venue, therefore, would seem the best remedy for that -- for both the wizard, and for the team that so benefited from his skills.

Sometimes the magic works, and sometimes it doesn't. That's what Old Lodgeskins said at the end of "Little Big Man."

Theo's version was to repeatedly observe that baseball executives are good for about ten years in one place, and then it's time to move on.

Both are right. And both amount to the same thing.

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 10

And now his week's edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the constantly interrupting Blob feature of which critics have said "How ru--", and also "This is the silliest bunch of ongoing nonsense I've ever rea--":

1. Well, Tom Brady is finally showing his a--

2. Oh.

3. The Colts coulda had Tom Brady, but instead settled for decrepit old Philip Ri--

4. Oh.

5. The Seahawks are going to the Super Bowl! Russell Wilson is unstopp--

6. Oh.

7. Boy, is that desperation, or what? Kyler Murray scrambling around trying not to get sacked, heaving one deep into triple cove--

8. Oh.

9. Also "Wow, De'Andre Hopkins. Just wow."

10. Come on, it's the Lions. Matt Prater isn't going to make a 58-year field goal with no time on the clock to win the ga--

Humans, being

 This was the off-kilter Masters, the hanging-on-the-wall-crooked Masters, the Masters Guaranteed To Drive Obsessive-Compulsives Right Over The Edge.

The season was wrong, the silence was wrong ... even the drama was wrong, because Dustin Johnson was so impeccable, so imperturbable, there wasn't even anything to provoke the usual roars even if there'd been spectators there to roar.

The man simply drained the life out of this Masters with four days of unerring golf, going 65-70-65-68 to finish a record 20-under and win the green coat by five strokes. Augusta has rarely been staked out so cruelly or rendered so helpless to one man's skill.

Instead, it saved whatever measure of retaliation it could find for one of its most notorious tormenters.

Tiger Woods, as we all know, has won the green jacket five times, most notably last year. But not on Sunday. On Sunday, he played a quite different role: Object lesson for why golf can be a perfect bastard sometimes.

In 10 excruciating strokes he turned the last bend in Amen Corner into Holy S*** Corner, butchering the par-3 12 the way Harvey the air conditioning repairman would at Whispering Stump Golf Course and Arcade. 

First he floated an 8-iron off the tee that landed on the green but kicked back into Rae's Creek.

Then he took a drop and hit another shot that landed on the green and kicked back into the water.

Then he took another drop -- and this time, just to switch things up a little, his shot flew the green and landed in one of the bunkers behind it.

After which he botched the shot out of the sand, and the ball scooted across the green into, you guessed it, the creek again.

Finally he got his eighth shot to stick on the green, then two-putted for his 10.

I don't know about you, but if I ever played No. 12 at Augusta, this is exactly what would happen to me. You, too, I imagine.

And so the strangest thing about the strangest Masters ever was not its emptiness or the hermetically-sealed vacuum in which it was played, or its seasonal dysfunction. It was the realization that, for one brief moment, Tiger Woods was us and we were Tiger Woods.

Humans all, in other words.

Hell to the victors

Dreary days right now for the kids in the yellowjacket-striped helmets. This is not at all the Big they were counting on when they came to play in the Big House, with the ghosts of Fielding Yost and Bo and all the other leges looking on.

No, they are not the Champions of the West or any other point on the compass, these Michigan Wolverines. What they are is grist for the likes of Wisconsin, which ground them like hamburger last night, 49-11, in the aforementioned Big House. The only upside for Michigan is the Bastard Plague guaranteed there weren't 110,000 witnesses there to see it.

So it's an empty Big House playing home to an empty program these days, and that must unavoidably fall on the head of the presumptive savior, Jim Harbaugh. Michigan threw a bank vault at him to lure him from the NFL, and the sense was the Wolverines finally got it right.

Harbaugh was the hottest of commodities, after all. And he was a Michigan Man. He had smarts and he had swagger and, OK, so he was a trifle on the odd side -- but didja see what he did with the 49ers?

Jim Harbaugh would beat those cocky degenerates from Columbus, by God. He would humble Ohio State and all their dopey buckeye-wearing fans. He would ...

He would go 0-5 against the Buckeyes, as of this fall.

He would lose 62-39 and 56-27 in their two most recent meetings.

He would go 37-5 against unranked teams. 9-3 against teams ranked outside the top 10 -- and, after last night, 2-13 against teams ranked in the top ten.

In other words, Michigan under Harbaugh can still whip the schlubs and the sorta-goods. But it gets its lunch money stolen by the marquee programs.

That would appear to now include unbeaten, top-ten-ranked Indiana, which thrashed the Wolverines 38-21 last week and, in doing so, demonstrated it now has better athletes than Michigan at some positions. It's even better up front, which is where Michigan has traditionally separated itself from the Indianas.

Play that back in your head again: Indiana is now better up front than Michigan. And up is down, left is right, the moon and the stars are green cheese with sprinkles.

Jim Harbaugh, meanwhile, has gone from savior and the Right Hire to making some folks wonder why they ever dumped Brady Hoke for him. Hoke's teams were not up to Michigan standards, either, but at least they'd put up a fight for him. Harbaugh's Wolverines flat-out quit on him last night.

So where do you go from here, if you're Michigan?

The easy answer is to admit that Harbaugh was another failed experiment, and you ship him back to the NFL, where he frankly seems a better fit anyway in retrospect. That's easier said than done, though, especially in the Plague economy. These things will happen when you throw major green at a guy and now face a major buyout as a result.

Still, you've got to figure that if Michigan keeps circling the bowl, Harbaugh will be gone.

The bad news about that?

Brady Hoke's gainfully employed back at San Diego State now.

The vanishing, continued

This year, man. This sorry, benighted, black-hearted scourge of a year.

Paul Hornung, now? Really, 2020?

A calendar year cannot hate, but rationality flees the room when it takes the Golden Boy and Gale Sayers and Don Shula and Tom "Mr. 63-Yard Field Goal" Dempsey, and Jim Kiick and Willie Wood and Pat Dye and Johnny Majors and a bunch of others I'm probably forgetting.

And that's just football. That's just one corner of one segment of one certain generation's memories, vanishing in dribs and drabs until this lousy son-of-a-biscuit 2020.

Now it's a flood tide, and so, yeah, add Kobe and John Thompson and Eddie Sutton and Curley Neal, and Tom Seaver and Bob Gibson and Lou Brock and Al Kaline, too. Add  Chadwick Boseman, even, who wasn't Jackie Robinson but played him in the movies.

On and on and on. And so pardon me if I shake my fist and yell at the clouds, because with every death rationality slips a little further away, and mortality digs its sharp elbow a little deeper into my ribs.  

Yes, I know a calendar year cannot hate, but 2020 hates those of us of a certain age anyway. I'm convinced of it. It hates the athletes and coaches we grew up watching. It hates the Sports Illustrated covers with which we used to paper our bedroom walls. It hates our childhoods, dammit, and so it's determined to make them vanish, piece by piece.

I know, I know. This is just life. People grow old, and their minds and bodies betray them, and they die. And that's all that's happening here, because the generation of athletes who brought joy and richness to our youth is well into that aforementioned process. 

So maybe the vanishing is no more pronounced this year than any other. Maybe it only seems so, because this year has been particularly bizarre and twisted and sometimes bug-eyed insane.

And now it's taken Paul Hornung, and there goes another piece of childhood. There goes a particular Thanksgiving when snow coated the grass in a thin wet skein of white, and my uncle and cousin and I went out into the barnyard to skid around in it.

We had a football, and one of us was Bart Starr, and one of us was Boyd Dowler. The other, of course, was Paul Hornung -- No. 5, Notre Dame icon, business end of the fabled Green Bay Packer sweep.

We ran it over and over that day, slipping, sliding, falling, pretending Jerry Kramer and Fuzzy Thurston were out there leading the way for us. And now Paul Hornung runs it forever in some world far better than this.

See ya, No. 5.

And bite me, 2020.

Viral ongoing-ness

You remember what they said, right? The Q-Crazies, the Kool-Aid drinkers, the Trump Navy and its mobile infantry in their weirdly ISIS-looking pickup trucks?

They said the Bastard Plague would vanish like a whorl of smoke on Nov. 4 if Joe Biden beat their boy in the election.

They said it was just a lot of politically-driven nonsense, that almost a quarter of a million Americans weren't dead because of it, that it was completely under control because, by golly, their boy said so.

Well. It's Nov. 13, and Joe Biden is the president-elect, no matter what delusions the Mad King is currently entertaining. And you know what?

The  Bastard Plague is still with us.

And now it's coming for college basketball.

The season hasn't even begun, and already Tom Izzo has shown red for the Plague, and Seton Hall and Connecticut have both halted men's basketball activities because of it, and the Ivy League, always the radical in these matters, has already canceled its winter sports. Covid-19 cases are soaring all over the country again -- most notably right here in good old Indiana -- and hospital capacities are reaching critical mass again, and isn't it amazing how it's just disappeared?

Right. If this is disappearing, a guy standing naked on a street corner in Times Square is utterly invisible.

Truth is, this is going to get worse again before it gets better, just like the people who actually know what they're talking about said it would once the weather starting getting cold and chased everyone inside. Which means empty football stadiums are going to give way to empty gyms and arenas, and the weirdness will continue to attend our favorite games.

We all hoped it would just magically go away with the turning of the calendar to a new year (or with an election, according to the cynics and crazies.) But no dice. The college basketball season  is going to look a lot like the college football season, with the possibility it might look even worse.

More outbreaks. More canceled/postponed games. More home courts stripped of their mystique and their advantage and their red-line decibel counts.

Now there's a real disappearance for ya. 

A seasonal dysfunction

The weirdness waylays you sometimes, like a blackjack to the cerebellum. One second you're walking down a well-lit street and everything looks normal and safe and utterly everyday; the next, you're down and there's a blackness coming over your vision, and 2020 is making off with your wallet.

And so here I am two weeks before Thanksgiving, looking at this photo.

In it, a bunch of white-clad caddies are lugging golf clubs up a green fairway with a bunch of golfers in khakis and logo shirts walking beside them. And yet something is not ... right. 

The quality of the sunlight looks wrong, casting shadows from an angle that reminds you we're a scant six weeks from the northern hemisphere's shortest day. In the foreground, the leaves of a tree have gone all gold and bronze. And in the background, up there in front of the golfers ...

It is all a somber green, when there should be a riot of color. The bushes behind the famous green are just, well, bushes. The azaleas that make them a celebration of spring have long gone into hiding, and, whap, here comes that blackjack to the cerebellum.

It's time for the Masters, the photo says.

With winter coming, and not summer.

Today it begins, and there's talk of Tiger and Jack and Bryson and Brooks, and a symmetry that does not extend to the calendar. The symmetry is all about Tiger and Jack: If he successfully repeats his stunning feat of 19 months ago, Brandel Chamblee tells us, Tiger, who's ranked 33rd in the world now, will have his sixth Masters title. And it will come 23 years after his first.

When Jack won his sixth Masters in 1986, it also came 23 years after his first. And he was also ranked 33rd in the world at the time.

So there's that: A potential roundness to a weekend that will be anything but in all other ways.

The season is wrong. The landscape is wrong. Even the atmosphere is wrong, because without spectators, there will be none of those fabled roars going up through the pines when Tiger or Rory or DJ or some other favorite son Mapquests a putt on 16 or kicks Amen Corner in the grapes with birdie-par-birdie.

So, yes, more weirdness here in 2020. Thank you for that, Bastard Plague, the Bastard that keeps in Bastard-ing.

One thing, though.

At the end of all that uncharacteristic green this weekend, someone will don a green jacket.

And that bit of green will look absolutely right. Absolutely.

Employment blues

There have been worse hires, one supposes. I mean, look who we hired four years ago to defile the People's House.

But the White Sox booting Rick Renteria, who molded a promising young team into a playoff team -- the Sox' first in 12 years -- and then dusting off 76-year-old Tony LaRussa was one of the odder adventures in personnel management. Yes, he was a Hall of Famer (more on that later), but he hadn't filled out a lineup card in nine years. And again: 76 years old.

Of course, he's also tight with White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf, so there you go. It's not what you know, it's who you know, and all that.

Then again, what the White Sox knew when they hired LaRussa makes this even more ridiculous.

See, the day before the Sox officially hired him -- the day before -- LaRussa was tagged for driving under the influence in Arizona. And the Sox knew about it. Presumably they also knew about the details of the arrest, which involved LaRussa trying to big-time the cops by flashing a ring and announcing he was "a Hall of Fame baseball person" while being shoveled into a squad car.

This was a variation on the time-honored "Don't you know who I am?" stratagem, and it's amazing how often it works. And by that I mean, it's amazing that it hardly ever works, and yet people keep employing it anyway.

So not only have the White Sox hired a 76-year-old relic, they've hired a 76-year-old relic with  a DUI charge hanging over his head. It's the second for LaRussa, who pleaded guilty to misdemeanor DUI in Florida 13 years ago.

Good job, Sox. Gooood job.

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 9

And now a special quarterbacks-only edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the audible-happy Blob feature of which critics have said "Again with the audibles! Geez!", and also "If he starts in with that 'Omaha! Omaha!' thing I'll just DIE" ,,,

1. Having now pulled Ben DiNucci and Garrett Gilbert from the "Hey, That Guy From 'Castaway' We Thought Was Dead Just Turned Up!' list, who will play quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys next?

2. Garrett Morris.

3. Tommy Joe Zeke Bratkowski Garrett.

4. That one quarterback from "Friday Night Lights."

5. That other quarterback from "Friday Night Lights."

6. "Gee, Drew Brees doesn't look old at all!" (Tom Brady, enviously)

7. "Gee, we coulda had Tom Brady!" (Colts fans, wistfully, while watching Philip Rivers)

8. It's Tuesday morning, and, yep, Patrick Mahomes is still Patrick Mahomes.

9. It's Tuesday morning, and, yep, not even Joe Flacco could keep the Jets from Jets-ing it up.

10. Final Jeopardy answer (in honor of Alex Trebek) to No. 1 on today's list: Garrett Roger Staubach Garrett.

Meanwhile, in NASCAR ...

 And here the obligatory response from the American public: "They're still playin'?"

Well, yes, they are, or were until yesterday, when Chase Elliott took the final checkered flag of the season out in Phoenix, and Jimmie Johnson took his final checkered flag ever. It was one of those moments of pleasing symmetry we see too little of in sports, or frankly anywhere.

Elliott, 24, son of Awesome Bill From Dawsonville, became the third youngest driver to win the NASCAR Cup Series title, and certainly one of the most popular.

Johnson, 45. seven-time champion for Hendrick Motorsports, stepped off the stage on the same day Elliott, his teammate and protege, stepped onto it.

Now that is one neat scenario, boys and girls. Not a single rough edge or whopperjawed corner to disrupt it.

It's also a day when NASCAR could likely say "Let's see our overly demanding fan base find something to bitch about with this." Because not only is Elliott the successor to Dale Jr. as NASCAR's most popular driver, the image of him hugging his departing mentor in Victory Lane likely will become a part of NASCAR's promotional montages for years to come.

Which of course means there will no doubt be some sadsacks out there who will say "Yeaaaahh, wait a minute." They'll point out, as they invariably do, that the whole deal was a little too perfect, implying that NASCAR rigged the whole thing to give it a grand ending to a bizarre and unsettled year.

But phooey on them. This was not a day for cynics and cranks, so best to usher them back to the dark corners from whence they scuttled.

No, sir. This was a day for youth served, and for age honored. NASCAR -- or any sporting entity, really -- doesn't get many like 'em.

Good on ya, young Chase.

Here's to ya, Sir Jimmie.

Take a bow, both of you. NASCAR, too.

One Saturday in the fall, the Indiana Edition

You know Indiana's a basketball state because Bob Knight and Gene Keady and Rick Mount and Steve Alford, and also because that Milan thing, and also because Oscar and Crispus Attucks and Marion and Muncie Central and a bunch of other stuff.

But yesterday it wasn't the comforting round symmetry of a basketball that captivated Hoosiers. It was that weird funny-looking thing called a - what it is again? - football.

Down in Bloomington, Indiana University, not historically competent with that weird funny-looking thing, picked it up and shoved right down Michigan's gullet, 38-21 -- a result regarded as an upset by delusional folks in Michigan who failed to notice Indiana was ranked 13th, and right now is a much better football team than the Wolverines in every way. 

If Michigan had beaten the Hoosiers, in fact, that would have been an upset. And when's the last time you could say that, aside from never?

Meanwhile, up in South Bend ...

Well, up there, Ian Book's name just entered the Lore Lair at Notre Dame alongside those of Tom Clements and Joe Montana and Tony Rice and Terry-Joe Hanratty-Theismann. And that's because Ian Book and the Irish hauled off and beat No. 1 Clemson 47-40 in two overtimes.

It was the first time Clemson had lost in the regular season in 37 games, and the first time the Irish had beaten a No. 1 since Shawn Wooden knocked down Charlie Ward's final pass 27 years ago, and the Golden Domes took down Bobby Bowden and Florida State.

Last night, Book passed for 310 yards and scurried away from the Clemson pass rush for 68 more, as Notre Dame took a 23-13 halftime lead, blew the 23-13 halftime lead, and then went into guts-up mode to tie it with 22 seconds left in regulation on Book's touchdown throw to Avery Davis.

Then they scored in overtime, scored again in the second overtime, and sacked Clemson quarterback D.J. Uiagalelei  on consecutive downs to seal the deal.

So Book gets a statue now and Kyren Williams does for his 140 yards rushing and three scores, and Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah for leading a defense that limited Clemson's workhorse back Travis Etienne to 28 yards, forced three turnovers and spent half the night in Clemson's backfield.

(And, please, none of this "Well, Clemson didn't have Trevor Lawrence." No, they didn't. They had another five-star quarterback, and all Uiagalelei did was go 29-of-44 for 439 yards and two touchdowns. So they didn't noticeably suffer at that position.)

In any event, this was a statement win for Notre Dame, and the statement was "We're good enough now to put up statement wins instead of statement losses." Also, "We're good enough now not to reward our head coach with a 10-year contract extension just because he came close to beating a No. 1 team," which is what happened with Charlie Weis 15 years ago when the Irish almost beat USC.

Well, "almost beat" just became "beat." And so you could almost forgive everyone in Notre Dame Stadium losing their minds and swarming the field postgame. It will be interesting to see, a couple of weeks hence, how much of a statement moment that was for the Bastard Plague.

But, hey. When you're Notre Dame and it's been three decades since you were, you know, Notre Dame, these things will happen. And when you're Indiana and it's been 33 years since you beat Michigan, and the only other time before that was 53 years ago ...

Well. It doesn't really matter if Michigan is pretty sad these days, and if all the shine has worn off Jim Harbaugh and revealed him to be just another hump in $8 khakis. It's still Michigan.

The Wolverines may not be the Wolverines anymore, but Indiana isn't Indiana anymore, either. And Notre Dame isn't "Woo-hoo, we almost beat USC!" anymore, either.

We may still love the way a basketball looks when it sluices cleanly through nylon. But Saturday, the weird funny-looking thing had itself a day.

Reel time

 And now they're sucking me in again, and here we go. I cannot defend myself, not against Rockne and Leahy and Marchy Schwartz, not against Bertelli and Rice and the Baby Bombers, Hanratty and Seymour. 

There stands George Gipp, beckoning from the pool table. There are the Four Horsemen, riding me down at the finish line. Walt Patulski is collapsing the pocket on me from one edge; Ross Browner is bringing it down from the other.

And so I must succumb.

I must be seduced by those Irish eyes, batting at me with such allure.

I must consider that Notre Dame maybe ... possibly ... might have a shot at beating No. 1 Clemson tonight.

I know, I know. We've down this path before. Once again we've been reeled in by big wins over Pitt or Louisville or Florida State. Once again we think this time is finally the Irish's time, after three dry decades.

And then they go out and get whomped 42-20 or something.

Ah, but this time ...

This time Clemson comes into all that lore and statuary and irresistible Notre Dame-ness without the best player in college football, quarterback Trevor Lawrence, who's been felled by the Bastard Plague. They're playing a true freshman quarterback (D.J. Uiagalelei). And they're coming off a struggling come-from-behind win, at home, over a decent-but-not-great Boston College team.

The Irish, 6-0 and ranked No. 4, await.

Cue the clip of Herb Brooks telling the U.S. Olympic hockey team, "This is your time."

Or ... not.

Not, because after his team fell behind B.C. by 18 last week, Uiagalelei gave a very un-freshman-like shrug and went to work. He led the Clemsons all the way back, throwing for 342 yards and two touchdowns and busting a keeper for 30 yards and another score. And suddenly everyone remembered that D.J. Uiagalelei was a five-star recruit from California, that he stands 6-4 and weighs a robust 250 pounds, and that he's an extraordinarily confident young man.

I don't know if all of that adds up to another whomping for the Irish, and more embarrassment for me. But I do think this Irish team can hang with the Clemsons this time, and maybe add another chapter to all that Notre Dame lore.

Argh. There I go again.

Declaring victory: Some examples

 And so, as we await an electoral outcome that now seems inevitable  -- and watch with dismay as the Mad King becomes utterly, incontrovertibly unhinged in response -- the Blob has found at least some meager humor in the situation. 

It's this whole business of the Mad King insisting we stop the vote count because he's losing.

(And as a corollary, the frightening sight of a President of the United States implicitly egging on his supporters to disrupt the electoral process, and his surrogates backing his play. Lou Dobbs literally called for mob rule in Philadelphia. Tucker Carlson, that yammering twit, reminded viewers that Trump supporters own most of the guns in America, an all but open call for armed insurrection if the Mad King isn't summarily declared the victor.)

Speaking of which ...

Speaking of which, the Mad King has already declared himself the victor. In a display of full-on derangement last night, he claimed to have won states that still haven't been decided, and at least one state (Michigan) that already has been decided in favor of Joe Biden. It was like watching Hitler in the bunker at the end, moving imaginary armies around a situation map as the Russians tightened the noose on Berlin.

Disturbing as those images are, it does make it easy to make fun of Our Only Available Impeached Diseased Crazy-As-A-Bedbug President. And to imagine, as a lot of folks already have, how sporting events in particular might be different if everyone adopted his perspective ...

1. "Woo-hoo! 65 laps in and I'm leading! Where's that bottle of milk?" (12-time Indianapolis 500 champion Mario Andretti)

2. "Bobby Thomson is NOT a legitimate member of the Giants roster, so he can't bat and the game is over. We win the pennant! We win the pennant! We win the pennant!" (The 1951 National League champion Brooklyn Dodgers)

3. "Christian Laettner is NOT a legitimate member of the Duke Blue Devils. Plus he's a giant douche nozzle. So that shot does not count, and it's on to the Final Four, boys!" (The 1992 East Region champion Kentucky Wildcats)

4. "Everything that happens after the first quarter is bulls**t." (The six-time NBA champion Sacramento Kings)

5. "I win first game, so still champion. Nyet to you, spoiled little crying boy Bobby Fischer!" (1972 world chess champion Boris Spassky)

6. "What happens on this last drive DOES NOT COUNT because John Elway has a face like a horse. We win!" (1986 AFC champion Cleveland Browns)

7. "That fumble DOES NOT COUNT because Earnest Byner totally didn't mean to do it. We win!" (1987 AFC champion Cleveland Browns)

8. "We're up 3-0, so this series is over. Besides, anything that happens after this will just be the Red Sox cheating their asses off like usual. We win!" (2004 American League champion New York Yankees)

9. "There is no way we lost to the stupid Mets. NO. WAY. They must have cheated. So we claim the title!" (1969 World Series champion Baltimore Orioles)

And last but not least ...

10. "That wasn't 10 seconds. No way that was 10 seconds. Illegal count! Illegal count! I win!" (Any number of tomato cans throughout history after being knocked out in the ring)

Jacked up

 Contrary to what you might think, the Blob will sometimes say good stuff about the NCAA (See: Previous post). But it only does that so it can turn around and bash the soulless corporate automatons who exist for the sole purpose of helping member schools line their pockets.

See: This post.

Which begins with the UMass women's tennis team, not exactly a high profile launch point. But they've become Exhibit A for the NCAA's soulless automaton-y, not to say its willingness to do stuff that makes no earthly sense to anyone with an ounce of sanity or common decency.

See, what happened to the UMass women's tennis team back in 2017 is it hauled off and won the Atlantic 10 championship for the first time in 15 years. It was an especially sweet story because UMass' coach, Judy Dixon, was retiring after 25 years. So her young women gave her a sendoff she'd never forget.

And then, of course the NCCAs got involved. Or as one of Dan Jenkins' characters, T.J. Lambert, called them: "The g*****n, shirt-liftin' NCAAs."

The NCAA discovered that UMass had mistakenly reimbursed two of the UMass players for a phone jack they never even used. It came to $252, and it was a simple clerical error. UMass dutifully self-reported it and imposed a $5,000 fine on itself.

The NCAA rewarded this act of forthrightness by putting UMass on probation and vacating two years of UMass women's tennis victories -- including the 2017 conference championship.

This is how the NCAA looks after "the well-being of the student-athlete," one of its favorite shibboleths. Not to mention the way it honors a longtime coach for 25 years of service to those student-athletes, and to NCAA athletics.

What's wrong with these people? What in God's name is wrong with these people?

A W for democracy*

 (*With a little push from the NCAA and the Southeastern Conference.)

Which is to say, Mississippi went to the polls like everyone else Tuesday. And wonder of wonders, they did the right thing. 

No, the state didn't go for president-elect Biden. That was a bit too much to ask.

What it did do was go for a new state flag that finally, finally, severs ties to a racist traitor nation that took up arms against the United States.

With a robust 68 percent of the vote, Mississippians kicked to the curb the old flag, with its Stars and Bars in the corner as a sort of wink to white supremacy. The new design voters approved is red, yellow and blue with a magnolia blossom circled by stars on a field of blue in the center. It's quite lovely, actually. 

And, yes, the NCAA and SEC had an indirect hand in it.

Both athletic entities told the state some months back that until Mississippi stopped running the old flag up the pole, there would be no more conference or NCAA championship events conducted on state soil. This did not get Mississippians right in the feels, but in a much more effective place: Their wallets.

No NCAA or SEC events, none of the dough that comes with them. Thus the old flag became not just an embarrassment to the decent people of Mississippi, but an economic liability.

Strange how quickly state officials got off their humps when that happened.

Or, you know, not so strange.

The Morning After. A sampling.

"GAAAAH!" -- America.

"But why is the rum gone?" -- America channeling Jack Sparrow.

"Are you gonna eat your tots/leftover cold pizza/leftover congealed nachos?" -- America channeling Napoleon Dynamite.

"Bloody damn Americans!" -- America's allies.

"Oops." -- America's pollsters.

"Jeezly crow, Mildred! This thing's closer than a flea on a tick's leg!" -- Someone somewhere in America right now, surely.

"Now don't get yourself all worked up, Merle. You know what the doctor said." -- Mildred.

And, finally ...

"GAAAAH!" -- Me.

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 8

 And now a special Election Day edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the within-the-margin-of-error Blob feature of which critics have said "Hey, I didn't vote for this!", and also "Neither did I! My God, the Russians are up to their shenanigans again!":

1. Voted Most Likely To Completely Lose His Mind, Javon Wims delivered a big right hand, and then another big right hand, and then the league delivered a big right hand.

2. Voted Most Likely To Say "Neener-Neener-Neener" To His Critics, Philip Rivers again spread the ball around, threw three touchdown passes and didn't throw any dumb picks.

3. Voted Most Likely To Say "Neener-Neener-Neener" To Bill Belichick And The Patriots, Tom Brady threw two more touchdown passes -- one to Gronk, just to rub it in! -- and led the Buccaneers to another W.

4. Voted Most Likely To Have A Beer Dumped On Him In Chicago, Matt Nagy again rolled out a Bears offense that looked like something the Decatur Staleys left in a dumpster.

5. Voted Most Likely To Answer To "Who's That?", Ben DiNun ... DiNo ,,, oh, hell, that one guy who's playing quarterback for the Cowboys now. DiNucci, that's it.

6. Voted Most Likely To Say "What The Hell, Titans?", folks in Nashville said "What the hell, Titans?" as their not-too-long-ago unbeaten team lost to the ... the, um ... Bengals.

7. Voted Most Likely To Perpetually Disappoint, Cam Newton did some more Cam things, like fumbling, as the Patriots again looked like the Jets dressed up as the Patriots for Halloween.

8. Voted Most Likely To Continue Treading A Numbing Path Of Total Excellence, Patrick Mahomes and Russell Wilson blah-blah-blah, touchdown-touchdown-touchdown, win-win-win.

9. Voted Most Likely To Lose At Home To The 1-5 Viki- ... Wait, the Packers lost at home to the 1-5 Vikings?

10. Voted Most Likely To Most Likely Find A Remote Location To Hide Out Tonight ...

11. Me.

The election post

We're all on pins and needles right now because it's the eve of election day (alternate title: "The Most Important Election Ever-Ever-Ever") so the Blob has decided to take you away from all that.

Sorta. Kinda. Well, maybe.

No, as we wait to see if some form of sanity returns to America, or if our Mad King prevails again for four more years of fun, frivolity and crazy people in pickup trucks, the Blob thought he'd tell you who and what he's voting for. But not in the way you're thinking.

(Vis-a-vis the way you're thinking: I voted already. Three weeks ago. And you already know who I voted for, even though I'm not going to tell you.)

(Hint: I like sanity.)

But I digress.

The voting I'm talking about involves my long career as a sportswriter, and stuff I would vote for if they put it on a ballot. It doesn't exactly amount to a political philosophy or a party platform, unless a lot of the boards in it are loose. It's just some stuff I found I liked, or didn't, in my 38 years on the job.

For instance, I vote the death penalty for anyone who utters the words "Boy, looks like we're headed for overtime" in a pressbox. (See also: The guy in the pressbox who says "Boy, this game is moving right along" in the sixth inning/third quarter/second half)

I vote for Boiler Dogs over Domer Dogs, and the chili at Notre Dame, and the porkburgers at Churubusco. And the butterfly pork sandwiches on Pork Day at Purdue.

I vote for gates at high school football fields to be no higher than eight feet, because it was all I could do to scale the eight-foot gate at Heritage High School when I got locked in one night.

I vote it's entirely acceptable to hiss "Noonan! Miss it!" in the pressbox when a kicker is lining up a potential game-tying field goal with two seconds left on the clock, or if a basketball player is on the line with free throws to tie in the same situation. 

I vote for whatever TV exec came up with the idea of 9 p.m. starts for college basketball games to be beaten briskly about the head and neck with Flintstone-sized clubs.

I vote, for President, for whoever came up with the Brees Box at Purdue. It got us quotes from Drew Brees on the field immediately after a game, instead of having to wait an hour for the notoriously dithering star to emerge from the locker room.

I vote for more flyovers of B-17 bombers and P-51 Mustangs at the Indianapolis 500 -- the coolest 500 flyover in the four decades I covered the race.

I vote for Media Day at the Super Bowl to actually be Media Day. No clowns on unicycles, weirdos in superhero costumes or people conducting interviews with sock puppets allowed.

I vote for more Mike Leach postgames, and fewer Bill Belichick postgames. For more Tony Stewarts, and fewer "The Bardahl Little Debbie Snack Cakes Kleenex Chevy was super today." For more plain old Rose-Orange-Sugar-Cotton Bowls, and fewer Chicken Joint/Huge Soulless Loan Sharking Institution/What The Hell Is A Vrbo bowls.

I vote for sane deadlines, no blank screens staring back at you on said deadlines, and brilliant ledes on command for all my brethren still fighting the good fight out there.

I salute you, ladies and gentlemen. Write good.

Conspicuous silence

Four, five days along now, and still I wait. I am not a patient man, but I'm willing to be this time.

Because sooner or later they'll say it, right? They always do, right?

Shut up and dribble.

Shut up and play.

Keep your politics to yourself.

Nobody cares what you think, you're just someone who puts a ball through a hoop or throws one or catches one. And stand up for the national anthem, dammit.

Heard it all before, right? And always from the usual suspects.

But it's been four, five days now since Jack Nicklaus, golfer, tweeted his support for Our Only Available Impeached Diseased President. And since Brett Favre and Jay Cutler, football players, did the same. 

And, look, that's fine, and not at all surprising. Jack Nicklaus is a rich white conservative businessman OOAIDP made richer with his tax-cut windfall. And Favre and Cutler are rich white former football players, and the only voting block more reliably right-wing than that are NASCAR drivers.

And yet ...

And yet not a peep out of Laura Ingraham or Tucker Carlson or some other OOAIDP mouthpiece.

They had plenty to say when LeBron James or Colin Kaepernick or some other jock got political, and see above for what it was they said. But now, a conspicuous silence.

Interesting. 

Not to say illuminating.

Because, listen, we all know if it ain't your ox being gored, everything's copasetic. And so we haven't heard a peep from any right-wing blowhole about a golfer and two football players getting political, because they got political in support of the right guy. And we won't hear a peep of condemnation for what happened in Texas the other day, when a bunch of OOAIDP's goons tried to run a Biden-Harris campaign bus off the road.

OOAIDP loved that, by the way. Thought it was the greatest thing he'd ever seen.

But let a guy kneel to protest people of color getting shot when they shouldn't, or a bunch of other folks take to the streets to protest the same, and boy howdy. Then it's "law and order" from the most lawless president in history. Then they're all a bunch of looters and rioters and firestarters and, oh my God, ANTIFA!, and they deserve it when some psycho kid with a military-grade weapon starts shooting them.

In fact, they'll raise the psycho kid to sainthood, practically. Claim he's the victim, not the people he crossed a state line to shoot. 

In any case, here I am, waiting.

Just to be on the safe side, though?

I won't hold my breath while I'm doing it.