Lions in winter

 So remember the other day, when the Blob was having great fun at the expense of the Detroit Lions and their goofy new head coach?

Well, they also hired a new GM, Brad Holmes. And it's possible -- just possible -- he might actually know what he's doing.

For instance, didja see what he did yesterday?

He traded Matthew Stafford to the Los Angeles Rams for Jared Goff. Pretty close to an even-steven trade, right?

But there's more.

In addition to Goff, Holmes also slicked the Rams out of not one but two first-round draft picks. And he got a third-round pick besides.

So, to review: The Lions just traded a quality 32-year-old quarterback for a quality 26-year-old quarterback. And they got three draft picks, two of 'em first-rounders, on top of it. 

Not to go all Pollyanna on everyone, but isn't this the kind of deal the Lions used to be on the Rams end of? And doesn't that mean a competent human -- maybe even a more than competent human -- might be in charge of the front office now? I mean, possibly?

"Meh," Lions fan will say. "They're still the Lions."

Can't blame 'em for saying that. Can't blame 'em a bit.

Whine time

And to those of you already asking "Is this going to include more bitching and moaning about your bleeping-bleep Pittsburgh Pirates?" ... 

Well, yes. Yes it is. 

Here's a hall pass. You are excused to the library for the duration of this post.

Which, you bet, is today's edition of  Why Does God Hate My Baseball Team More Than Any Other Baseball Team? Also, What's So Special About The St. Louis Cardinals, God? Is It Because They're Called The Cardinals, Or Because Stan Musial Was One Of The Best Humans Ever To Play The Game?

Opinions vary, but for sure there's something unduly blessed about the stupid Cardinals. Who else gets an All-Star third baseman (Nolan Arenado of the Rockies) for, not even a song, but three bars of a song? The stupid Cardinals get Arenado for some minor-leaguers and one halfway decent pitcher, and -- get this -- they also get $50 million from the Rockies to help with Arenado's buyout.

That's not even three bars of a good song. That's three bars of "Watching Scotty Grow" by Bobby Goldsboro.

Cubs fans, of course, will do their usual sorrowful compare-and-contrast about this, because the Cubs have been the Rockies this offseason. They're practically giving guys away, like Yu Darvish, their best starting pitcher. The Big Reset is on for a team that, um, won a division title without it last year.

So Cubs fans will whine in their best woe-is-us why-does-God-hate-us fashion, and fans of the cruddy Pirates, like me, will LAUGH IN THEIR FACES. This is because, while the Cubs are owned by Joe Ricketts' bratty kids, at least they're not the Pirates owners.

Who have taken their team's nickname entirely too much to heart.

The Pirates owners, see, don't really want a major-league team. Major-league teams cost too much. So they're content merely to serve as a de facto farm system for actual MLB teams that are actually trying to win. They trade for minor-leaguers and develop them and then, when some of them become Gerrit Cole or Josh Bell, they trade them before they have to pay them real money. 

Then they put their latest Dollar General team out there and keep raking in their share of the MLB's TV dough, even though they're not putting an MLB product on the field. It's damn disgusting. 

And this is the part where I always think how awesome it would be not to be a Pirates fan. But no other team had Roberto Clemente, and the Pirates did, so here I am.

Boo-hoo for me.

Narrative-ly speaking

 We're two days away now from seven days until Super Bowl LV (for "Livin' Virtual," presumably), which means it's almost time now to stop talking about Arkansas upsetting UConn in women's buckets and Rutgers beating Michigan State by 30 freaking points in men's buckets.

(About that: Rutgers held the Spartans to 37 points and outscored them 41-17 in the second half. The Spartans shot 28.6 percent, and were 4-of-20 from the 3-point arc. And the most amazing stat of all is not any of that, but the fact the Spartans' leading scorer was Aaron Henry with seven points. It was like a boxscore from the 1930s.)

Now, where were we?

Oh, yeah. That Super thing.

As the game itself approaches with its usual glacial stateliness, it's time to put aside everything else and start crafting those all-important narratives the desperate media will use to while away the endless hours until kickoff. This is known as Hyping That Which Is Itself Hype, and it's a Roman numeral tradition.

So of course we'll get the Young vs. Old storyline, Tom Grandpa Walton Brady vs. Patrick Jim Bob Mahomes. Did you know Patrick was only five years old when Tom played in his first NFL game? Did you know Patrick's dad is only seven years older than Tom? Well, you do now.

The Young vs. Old storyline, of course, will naturally segue into the Passing The Torch storyline. Also the Mahomes Says He's Always looked Up To Tom Brady The Way All Young Quarterbacks Do. Also the inevitable Brady Legacy storyline, in which at least one contrarian will point out that Brady has lost almost as many Super Bowls as he's won ... and that he didn't win the five he's won because he always played like a god in them ... and, by the way, didja know he's only completed 55 percent of his passes in the playoffs?

You do now.

Somewhere in all of this there will be the Bruce Arians Appreciation storyline, which will of course segue into the Is Tom Brady Gushing About Bruce Arians A Veiled Shot At Bill Belichick? storyline. 

Which will of course lead to STILL MORE Tom Brady storylines ...

* Is Tom Brady The Greatest Team Athlete In Any Sport In The Entire History Of Team Sports? Discuss.

* Is Tom Brady Still A Fanboy Of That Crazy Guy Who Just Got Evicted From The White House, And If So Does It Tarnish His Legacy? Discuss.

*  What Are Tom Brady's Favorite Foods, And Why Are They All So Damn Weird? Discuss.

* Can We Talk To Gisele, Tom? Just For A Second?

* Tom Brady Says The Media Cannot Talk To Gisele, Proving He's A Giant Tool To Some In The Media.

* Is Tom Brady A Giant Tool, Like Some In The Media And A Lot Of Butt-Hurt New Englanders Now Say? Discuss.

And last but not least ,,,

* Is Tom Brady A Deep State Mole Who Is Not Human At All But A Cyborg Crafted By The Same People Who Built The Secret Jewish Laser From Outer Space? And if so, Will He Set Raymond James Stadium On Fire On Super Sunday The Way The Secret Jewish Laser Set California On Fire?

Discuss.

Memory's walk

 Today is another of Those Days, when detail is so sharp it can draw blood. Memory is a faithless companion sometimes -- what we think we remember is sometimes only a hazy scrap, lacking in context -- but on days like this memory's walk is as true as a razor's edge.

And so to January 28, 35 years ago.

You'll read about it today on the news wires and see it on social media and the teevees, because Jan. 28, 1986 remains a day that sears. It's a billowing white cloud in the blue Florida sky where the contrail of a rocket should have been, trailing party streamers of smoke as if this were some sort of macabre celebration. It's seven lives gone, like that, including a New Hampshire schoolteacher who was along for the ride.

It's the notion of American infallibility gone, too, in that same awful instant.

The moment the space shuttle Challenger blew up is the moment America paid for its assumptions, and the complacency that rides shotgun with assumptions. We assumed our space program was charmed, you see. We assumed it would never again have an Apollo 1 tragedy, that Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee dying in a cabin fire paid the bill in full 19 years less a day before the Challenger went up.

In the years between, we'd put men on the moon and brought back the crew of Apollo 13  and launched piles of shuttle flights, and everything worked out. And so we came to believe everything always would work out, and to think of shuttle launches as just another routine part of another routine day.

They are not, of course. They never are. And so when the Challenger blew up, it became one of Those Days, when memory is a razor and we remember what we were doing, what kind of day it was, Where We Were When We Heard The News.

When Dallas happened, I was on the bus home from school and the sun was shining in that low burnished November way, and two kids sitting behind me were talking about Kennedy getting shot with a rifle.

When Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, I was at home watching "Daniel Boone" and my parents were at the grocery and the network cut in with a news flash about a shooting in Memphis.

When Robert Kennedy was assassinated, it was a June morning and my friend and I had just awakened after camping out in his treehouse, and he turned on the radio and we both yelped "What?!" at exactly the same time.

I heard about John Lennon on the car radio as I drove to work in the predawn December darkness. And I heard about the Challenger in a bookstore in Anderson, In., on my day off.

It was two days after the Bears won the Super Bowl, the woman at the cash register had a radio on, and gradually the hushed tone of the commentators penetrated my usual bookstore fog. 

"What's going on?" I asked.

The woman at the register looked up. To this day -- razor memory again -- I can vividly recall the blank incomprehension on her face.

"I think the space shuttle just blew up," she said, softly.

Thirty-five years later I still hear her.

Hall of nothing

Serial jackass Curt Schilling almost got into the Hall of Fame yesterday. But it's not the Hall of Almost, so he didn't.

He came up 16 votes shy of entry, and no one else got any closer, which means there will be no inductees this year for the first time since Ike was in the White House. That's 61 years to you and me, kids.

This happened not because there was no one on the ballot worthy of induction. It happened because baseball writers are a persnickety bunch, and frequently fuss over irrelevancies the way biddies fuss over hands of canasta.

Example: The biddies fussing over Curt Schilling's politics.

To be sure, the guy IS a serial jackass, a lunatic fringe Trumpazoid who thought it was cool to cheer lynching journalists and storming the Capitol in the name of William Wallace or Paul Revere and the Raiders or whoever. But he could also  throw the hell out of a baseball -- which, unless he's doing a life stretch for first-degree murder, frankly is what matters most when you're considering whether a guy should be in the Hall of Fame.

Look. I get it. Schilling's a disgusting human being. And Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds -- who, don't look now, crept ever closer to induction yesterday -- are un-indicted alleged  juicers.

The Blob doesn't care. The Blob, if it had a vote, would have put a check mark beside all three of them.

Schilling?

Personally I couldn't care less if Schilling voted for Our Former Only Available President And Inciter Of Insurrection eleventy-hundred times, or if he thinks Democrats are emissaries from Hell who bake children into their pizzas. I care about what kind of pitcher he was, which in my estimation was good enough to get him into the HOF.

And Clemens and Bonds?

Whether they juiced or not, the documentation is pretty solid they both allegedly began doing so after they'd already put up Hall of Fame credentials. Also, amphetamines in the '60s, '70s and '80s -- which also enhanced performance, and which many an HOFer gobbled like M&Ms in those days.

And, yes, I know, the Hall has a morals clause. But no one's ever taken it seriously. There are drunks and racists and crooks and utter psychopaths in the Hall. Kenesaw Mountain Landis is in the Hall, and he kept black players out of Major League Baseball for decades. 

Call me crazy, but this seems a bit more relevant to Hall of Fame qualifications than whether or not someone is a right-wing asshat. Yet there the Judge is.

And there Schilling and Bonds and Clemens should be. Enhanced nutjobbery or performance aside. 

Virtual-ity

Well, if this doesn't beat all. They're gonna let a NASCAR guy play in the Pro Bowl!

Also, Snoop Dogg!

And, look, I get it, the Pro Bowl is the Mr. Irrelevant of professional sports, so why not Bubba Wallace Jr. and Snoop? No one watches the Pro Bowl anyway besides sad cases in faded Tommy Kramer jerseys. Heck, let Drew Brees's kids play in it.

Oh, wait. They kinda did last year, tackling one another on the sidelines and occasionally running onto the field. 

No one cared, of course, 'cause it's the Pro Bowl. 

So, yeah, this Bastard Plague-inspired idea to play a virtual Pro Bowl this weekend is just the ticket. Instead of actually putting real players on a real field for the annual Greatest Spectacle In Injury Avoidance, they're going to have Bubba, Snoop, and a handful of actual NFL players play it out on Madden instead.

People who've watched Patrick Mahomes play already say the NFL looks like a video game. So why not make the Pro Bowl an actual video game?

In fact ... 

Well, here's the Blob's idea: Go completely vintage and play it on Tudor Electric Football. 

None of us who owned one of those things will ever forget the thrill of our running backs endlessly turning in circles 10 yards behind the line of scrimmage. Or how horrendously inaccurate the  passer guy was with that little piece of foam that was supposed to be the football. Plus, Passer Guy was like ten times bigger than the actual players.

It was like suiting up King Kong and putting him out there. And he threw about as well, too.

Yes, sir. Love to see Deshaun Watson (one of the Pro Bowl "players") complete a pass with that dude. Or Marshawn Lynch go into a foaming rage as he watches his running back turn in circles while his linemen perversely MAKE A FREAKING BEELINE FOR THE ENDZONE. 

"Dammit!" he'd say, because we all did.

Then he'd switch out the base of one of the said linemen for that of his running back. And watch again while his back still ran in circles and his lineman took off on a plumb bob-straight line again.

"What the HELL?!" he'd say.

Because we all did.

 

Yes, sir, by golly. Forget Madden and all those splendid graphics.

Give us this instead.

That guy again

 Look, I get it. You hate Tom Brady. There's a support group and a secret handshake and everything for it now.

If you live in New England, you hate Tom Brady because he acted with exactly the cold-blooded pragmatism you celebrate as the Patriot Way when Belichick ruthlessly cuts loose a loyal soldier once the returns diminish. And now he's in Tampa and it's all warm and WHAT THE HELL HE'S GOING TO THE SUPER BOWL WITHOUT US.

And if you live everywhere else?

You hate Tom Brady because he's smug and he's married to a supermodel and he lives in a freaking castle, and he looks better at 43 than you did at 23. And he still plays football better than 99 percent of the quarterbacks in the NFL.

Also, Deflategate. Also, now you've gotta watch him in the Super Bowl again, for the 10TH FREAKING TIME.

If that doesn't spoil the clam dip and loaded nachos, nothing will. You might as well drink your beer as warm as they do in weirdo England.

Still, attention must be paid this morning. It surely must.

It must be paid because 50 years ago a man named George Blanda had to fill in at quarterback for the Oakland Raiders, and he did all sorts of wondrous things. Threw touchdown passes and kicked field goals and led the Raiders to come-from-behind wins, and even played in the AFC title game -- where the Raiders lost to the Colts, but Blanda completed 17-of-32 passes for 217 yards and two touchdowns, and also kicked a 48-yard field goal.

Like Tom Brady, he was 43 at the time.

Unlike Tom Brady, he looked 43, or maybe even 53. Which prompted a lot of walker jokes and rocking chair jokes and retirement home jokes.

Brady, on the other hand, doesn't look like he's aged a day in the last 10 years. And he still plays like he did 10 years ago. It's as if he made a pact with the Devil in the womb, and now will play on and on, never visibly aging or slowing down.

Everyone who hates Tom Brady would find the latter easy to believe.

The rest of us ... well, come on. We know it's not the Devil that keeps him so eerily ageless, but all those kale/avocado shakes and energy bars made from the essence of a Brazilian rainforest or whatever.

In any case, it's time to appreciate him. He's the undisputed GOAT, and what he's managed to do this year at 43 cements it for good.

First, he didn't get the Bastard Plague. Second, he took a team that hadn't won more than nine games in a season for a decade and got them to the Super Bowl by being Tom Brady, and also by inducing Gronk and Antonio Brown and Leonard Fournette to join the party.

In Green Bay yesterday, he threw for 280 yards and three scores to give the Buccaneers the cushion they needed to hold off Aaron Rodgers and the Packers. He also threw three picks, which will happen when you're 43 years old and presumably human. 

But the main thing is, he won. Again. 

And is going to the Super Bowl. Again.

Hate that with every fiber of your being if you must. But marvel at it, too.

Season of the knockoff

 These are pale days for college basketball, and not just because the Bastard Plague has taken its vermin-infested sledgehammer to team schedules and conference races and even entire seasons in some cases. 

That would be bad enough if you could still hate the way you used to. But, nooooo.

See, it's the next-to-last Sunday in January, and Kansas has now lost three in a row. Kentucky is a sorry 4-9 after losing to Georgia. And Duke -- Duke! -- is a barely less sorry 5-5 after also losing again, this time to Louisville.

Man. Has Overdog Hate ever had more meager pickings than in this hollow winter?

The Blob would say no, because especially in Duke's case, the chronically haughty Blue Devils are more to be pitied these days than despised. What's the point of sneering at a .500 team? A team that scraped past 2-8 Boston College by one, in Cameron Indoor? A team that only beat Coppin State by 10, and so far has lost to unranked Louisville, unranked Pittsburgh, No. 16 Virginia Tech and No. 22 Illinois?

This is hardly the sort of resume that makes the Dukies worth your usual contempt. Where's Grayson Allen tripping people as the Blue Devils win again? Where's Christian Laettner stomping on a guy's chest and then, blankety-blank it, making the last-second shot that the networks will not quit showing during March Madness?

Yeesh. At 5-5, Duke is just someone else to ignore these days. The Blue Devils are a knockoff of their usual selves in this bleak season, same as Kansas and Kentucky. 

In their place, I guess you could always root (especially if you're an IU fan) against Kelvin Sampson and Houston, now 13-1 and ranked eighth in the latest Associated Press poll.

But come on now. That's just not the same.

The Lions' Dan

 Today four football teams better than the Detroit Lions play win valuable prizes, and also for a Super Bowl trip to Tampa. Which means this is probably as good a time as any to examine the sadsack-y Lions and what sort of sadsack-y things they're up to these days.

For one thing, the best quarterback in the franchise's history, Matthew Stafford, has finally had enough. 

For another, a couple of days prior the Lions introduced their new head coach, the Black Knight from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail."

OK, so Dan Campbell didn't exactly say you could cut off his team's arms and legs and they'll reply "Right! I'll do you for that!" But the former position coach did say his Lions would laugh if you punched them in the face (a frequent occurrence in Lions' history). And if you knock them down, they'll get up! And, and, aaaaaand, on the way up, they'll BITE OFF YOUR KNEECAPS!

No, really. He said that. Go watch the video, it's hilarious.

Not quite so hilarious is the fact both Campbell and the Lions openly admit he's not much for all that X-and-O junk, despite the NFL being an X-and-O, scheme-scheme-scheme league. To hell with that. Campbell, see, he's a motivator. Enthusiasm is his meat and drink. Getting the lads to play with heart and will and soul like Rockne used to, that's his deal. 

Also, he calls himself the Dude, like in "The Big Lebowski." Has it on his office nameplate and everything.

Now, none of this means Campbell won't get the lads to play for him up there in Detroit. They likely will for a time. The new-car smell that comes with a coaching change almost always tends to invigorate at first.

But history doesn't lie, and what history tells us is the rah-rah approach only goes so far in the NFL. Eventually players get burned out on it and stop responding to it. Eventually, you've also got to win some games, which has always been the best motivator of all.

This will be harder to do without Stafford, who's still only 32 and could very well wind up a few hours south in Indianapolis. So this means the Lions either take a quarterback with the seventh pick in the April draft, or go hunting in a trade/free agent market that, outside of Stafford and perhaps Deshaun Watson, is relatively thin.

Of course, however it turns out, it isn't likely to turn out. Every long-suffering Lions fan -- and no fans have suffered longer -- knows the reason why, and will repeat it with the usual complementary sigh: "It's the Lions."

Official team motto since 1957. No, really.

The Hammer

 One by one they leave us now, having lived their full measure for the most part. Tom Terrific and Tommy Dodger and Gibby and Lou.  Al Kaline, the Lord of Tiger Stadium. Don Sutton just a few days ago.

It's as if some great celestial Mom is throwing out our baseball cards, one by one by one. As if the childhoods of those of us of a certain age are being erased  -- because none of this lasts forever, and that includes childhood and the icons of childhood.

And now?

Now Henry Aaron, the most iconic of them all.

He passed Friday morning at 86, having lived his full measure, too. And what you can say about him is that Jackie Robinson opened Major League Baseball's door, but it was men like Henry Aaron who kept it open by walking through it -- and did it at a time when that simple act was fraught with peril.

And so today I'll remember the 755 home runs, and the April  night in Atlanta when he launched 715 into the Braves' bullpen to pass the Babe. But I'll also remember the stacks of mail he got on the way there, too much of it laced with death threats and racist poison. 

I'll remember how Henry Aaron endured this astonishing outpouring of hatred with dignity, but also how he kept boxes of those poisonous letters to remind him that in America a black man can never let down his guard. To remind him that walking through Jackie's door could get a man killed, and the moment you forget that could be your last moment.

In America, see, we can achieve great things, just like the Hammer did, but we can also be astonishingly ugly to one another. It's a country of both high-minded ideals and low-rent violence. The latter both casts a shadow on, and illuminates the  striving for, the former.

So, yes, I'll remember that high-octane swing and the way baseballs disappeared into the sky off the Hammer's bat. But I'll also remember that during his chase of the Babe, low-rent humans threatened to kidnap his daughter. I'll remember that Aaron had an armed bodyguard and checked into hotels under an assumed name as he crept closer to the record. I'll remember him hammering 715, and how when he reached his homeplate his mother enveloped him in a smothering hug.

Not as a spontaneous act, she said later. Because she was trying to shield him from whatever low-rent human might have been peering at him through a gunsight.

I'll remember that. And I'll remember the character it took to withstand it. 

I'll remember the time the young Henry Aaron was playing minor-league ball in the deep South, and some redneck pointed a shotgun in his face and said he'd shoot him if he dared play that night.

Henry Aaron played anyway.

Inadequate response

This was not exactly a gold-star week for women's basketball in the Horizon League.

In Michigan, Detroit Mercy received a letter from the parents of every player on the roster alleging a pattern of abuse by first-year coach AnnMarie Gilbert.

In Indiana, newspaper articles in the Indianapolis Star and the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette  reported remarkably similar allegations against Purdue Fort Wayne coach Niecee Nelson -- allegations that players and former players have been making to little effect for two years.

You'll hardly be surprised, given the last, that only one of the two schools had an appropriate response.

That would be Detroit Mercy, which suspended the remainder of the season pending an investigation.

Purdue-Fort Wayne, on the other hand, issued a release in fluent lawyer-speak that basically said "Yeah, we dealt with this a couple years ago." A lot of smarmy empty-calorie phrases provided the garnish, stuff  like "the health and well-being of (PFW's) student-athletes" and "conducted an additional review of the matter" and "Coach Nelson is very aware of the concerns raised by some of her students and has worked closely with Athletics' leadership to maintain a positive team environment and I'M SORRY WERE YOU SAYING SOMETHING?"

OK. So that last was not in the statement. That was just me talking.

This is also me talking: Both the Star and, in fuller detail, the Journal Gazette used as their source material 48 pages of statements from more than 20 people, most former players and their parents, alleging incidents of abuse by Nelson. That 48-page document was sent to Purdue officials -- among them Purdue University President Mitch Daniels, Purdue Fort Wayne Chancellor Ron Elsenbaumer and PFW athletic director Kelley Hartley Hutton -- in May of last year.

Forty-eight pages. More than 20 mostly former players and their parents. Eight months ago.

And yet, silence from PFW, until yesterday. Nelson continues to coach, having been cleared by the university's "investigation" in 2019. So far this season, her team is 0-12. Since being hired in 2016, she's 21-106.

So, to review: You've got a coach who's 21-106 in four-and-a-half seasons, and who's already been investigated (well, sort of) once for abusive behavior, and who's apparently learned nothing because a number of the former athletes interviewed by Vicky Jacobson of the JG arrived on campus AFTER the 2019 allegations.

Also, 21-106.

How many coaches with that kind of won-lost still have their jobs after 4 1/2 years? Even without all the other stuff?

Strange and stranger. And, yes, sure, these are still only allegations. Nelson of course denies all of it, and I suppose she could be completely blameless here -- although when more than 20 former players, parents and staff members are telling the same sorts of stories, it does tend to make those stories more credible.

In any case, after eight months to mull over 48 pages of serious allegations, issuing a release that addresses none of it is a laughably inadequate response. Detroit Mercy wins this one going away.

And Purdue Fort Wayne?

Can't win on or off the court, from the looks of it.

Out of nowhere

 Likely reactions to Indiana ambushing No. 4 Iowa last night ... by 12 ... in Iowa City:

1. "Wait ... what?"

2. "Wait ... WHAT??"

3. "Hey, isn't this the Indiana team everyone was telling us about in the preseason? Where do you suppose it's been?"

4. "Is that ... is that Robert Phinisee?"

5. "Where are the sadsacks who've lost eight straight to Purdue, and who's holding them hostage?"

6. "No ... no, that's not Indiana. That's some other team."

7. "That Archie. Does he have Fran McCaffrey's number, or what?"

And last but not least ...

8. "Indiana turned a corner last night, and gave us a peek at what Archie Miller's been telling us was there since the season began."

I don't know if some scribe wrote the latter after Indiana 81, Iowa 69. But I suspect someone wrote something along those lines.

Me?

I say it was a huge win for the Indianas, a season-defining win maybe. The Hoosiers put four players in double figures. They made 8-of-17 from the 3-point line -- and, no, that's not a typo. They outscored Iowa 50-32 in the second half, and that's not a typo, either.'

But the problem with college basketball is there's always a next game, and that game has the potential to define a season, too. So you can hope your Hoosiers have at last got their legs under them if you're an Indiana fan, but remember this: The next game is in 48 hours.

This time it's Rutgers, at 2 p.m. Sunday, in the Hall. And then a roadie at No. 7 Michigan a week from tomorrow.

That's the thing about corners, see. You turn one, there's always another waiting.

Next man up

 Well. Now this gets interesting.

Philip Rivers has decided 17 seasons in the NASH-unal FOOT-ball League is enough,and you can send his mail to Canton, Ohio, from here on out. The man's a first-ballot HOFer, and don't start with the "Well, he never got to a Super Bowl" nonsense.

In any case, best wishes and bon voyage to one of the good guys. And now today's Final Jeopardy Answer: "Who the hell knows?"

The question: "Who will the Indianapolis Colts' next QB1 be?"

Lots of people more plugged in than the Blob think it will be Matthew Stafford from the Detroit Lions, and I suppose Frank Reich the Quarterback Whisperer could work with that. Sam Darnold's name has come up, now that a new regime is moving in to oversee the J-E-T-S Jets-Jets-Jets. Carson Wentz, because he flourished under Reich in Philly and hasn't since. Or do they roll the dice in the draft, even though they're not likely to get a franchise guy with the 21st pick and they just took a young QB (Jacob Eason) who's still in grooming mode?

Beats me. All I know is there are two guys who aren't going to be the next man up at the man-under-center spot.

One is Deshaun Watson.

The other is Andrew Luck.

Don't laugh. I've heard both names in the last 24 hours.

That Watson's term of office in Houston has ended is all but certain, and because dreamers will dream, some people have. The Colts probably have the dough to get him, and how sweet would that marriage be? The Quarterback Whisperer getting his mitts on one of the NFL most dynamic talents?

But, nah, there's no way. The Texans, while dumb enough to ruin their relationship with Watson, aren't quite dumb enough to trade him within the division. That would be some epic dumb right there.

And Luck?

Yeah, somebody threw his name out there, too, but I think he was kidding. Every person with a working brain cell knows Luck has moved on from football. He was way too smart to play the game until he could no longer walk or remember his name, and it's doubtful he's lost any of those smarts since he did. So, again, nah.

That brings us back to where this started, with Matthew Stafford.

He's no Luck and he's no Peyton Manning, and maybe he's not even a 38-year-old Philip Rivers. But he's pretty darn good, and occasionally has been more than that.

Which of course is the problem.

Almost 20 autumns with a generational talent at quarterback -- first Manning, then Luck until he got beat to hell -- tends to ruin you for Pretty Darn Good And Occasionally More.  It's the polar opposite of  the situation in Chicago, where Mitch Trubisky still has his job in part because the bar for quarterback play is so historically low.

I mean, when you're the lineal descendant of  Jack Concannon and Bob Avellini and Peter Tom Willis -- or even of Jim McMahon, who won a Super Bowl with the Bears largely by handing off to Sweetness and throwing go routes to Willie Gault -- no one expects a lot. It's not as if you have a lot to live up to.

In Indy, of course, there is Mount Rushmore to live up to: Peyton and Johnny U. and Bert Jones and even Luck when he was healthy. Or Rivers, along with Manning soon to be the second and third Colts Hall of Fame quarterbacks.

The next man up?

Whoever it is, he'll just have to do.

Market forces

 Inauguration Day in America, which the less charitable among us would prefer to call Take Out The Trash Day, and the more hopeful among us would prefer to think of as America Gets Sane Again Day, perhaps naively.

In any event, Joe Biden gets sworn in at noon as our 46th President, and the first woman Vice-President in American history (Kamala Harris) gets sworn in, and the Outgoing goes wherever the hell he'll go to tend to his boundless resentment.

I guess that makes this as good a day as any to talk about economic theory, seeing how the more batshite of the Outgoing's party -- an unnerving percentage, frankly -- thinks America is about to enter some socialist hellscape in which more than just Chipper III and Skippy IV down at the Yacht Club get seconds on pie.

It's been a hard few weeks for some of the latter, certainly. Since the Outgoing invited the batshites to town and then turned them loose on the Capitol in a frightening assault on the workings of democracy, American industry has shown it's not terribly fond of insanity as a business model.

And so Twitter evicted the Outgoing and a lot of the other batshites, and a whole pile of companies severed ties with Crazy Pillow Guy's product, and Crazy Pillow Guy and an assortment of other right-wing knobs commenced squalling about it.

Said free speech was under attack.  Said the radical left was trying to "cancel" them. Said soon Joe Biden would be setting up re-education camps, just like the socialist/commie  threat to America he is.

What none of them will say, of course, is what they can't say: That this is just a free market economy doing what a free market economy does.

In a free market economy, see, nothing compels private companies to do bidness with people they think will cost them bidness. Theoretically, at least, they serve at the pleasure of the consumer (though sometimes they also endanger the consumer to cut costs). So if the Outgoing and his minions want to spout straitjacket lunacies about stolen elections and baby-eating Democratic pedophiles, they're perfectly free to do so. 

But they ain't gonna do it on my company's dime. No, sir.

And so we come to Kelly Loeffler, defeated Republican senator and majority owner of the Atlanta Dream of the WNBA. As one of the Outgoing's wingnut brigade, she got sideways with her own team when she objected to the WNBA's support for Black Lives Matter. Since most of her players are black, and most of them thought well of BLM's stance against racial inequality in law enforcement practices, this did not go over well.

In fact, it went over so un-well that the Dream players -- Loeffler's own employees -- actively campaigned for Rev. Raphael Warnock, her victorious opponent in the Georgia runoff.

And so it comes as little surprise that someone  is about to buy Loeffler out as the Dream's owner. The league won't say who it is, but apparently it's close to a done deal. And that, too, is a free market economy at work.

Which the Outgoing and his minions are foursquare behind when it works in their favor. But when it doesn't ...

Lord. Just listen to the squalling.

Men to boys

Imagine this, for a moment, if you're a male of the species who thinks your job is like a life stretch on Devil's Island:

You are a woman, first of all.

You are a foreign correspondent who's moved to the United States to cover baseball in Chicago, Ill.

And it just so happens it's 2016, which means you get to ride shotgun with history. You get to cover the Chicago Cubs the year they win their first World Series in 108 years, the summer of all summers in Chicago, Ill.

Except ...

Except one day in August you get another unsolicited text from a guy who's been sending you unsolicited texts all season.

This time it's a photo of an erect penis.

The penis in question belongs to Jared Porter, the Cubs director of professional scouting, and he's not asking what she thinks of his latest find. It's the culmination of a series of texts he's sent her all summer trying to, I don't know, harass her into a meaningful relationship in the creepiest way possible, I guess.

OK, first off: What is it about men and dick pics? Do they think this is how women want to be courted in the 2000s? Does it ever actually work, if so? And do they send them because men have some biological anomaly that stops their brains from developing once they get to seventh grade?

The answers are apparently, doubtful and apparently.

Also, as a former Sportsball journalist, there is this: What the bloody freaking hell? Again? 

It's 2021, people, which means women have been regulars in Sportsball press boxes for more than half a century.  Melissa Ludtke sued for and won the right to get into the Yankees clubhouse in 1978, 43 years ago. It's been 31 years since Lisa Olson sued the New England Patriots after some of them waved their business in her face while she was trying to do her job in their locker room (again with the penises!). And still, still this goes on.

And that's not even the half of it. Ask any woman sportswriter how many times she's been disrespected or slighted or been otherwise reminded she's a woman, so what does she know about sports? Most of them will have a tale or two to tell.

Look. I did the sportswriter thing for 40 years, and I still freelance a bit. In that time, I've known or worked with a fair number of women colleagues. Almost all of them were tougher and sharper than I am, because they had to be.

In all that time, I can count on one hand the times I can say I actually saw any of them treated differently than their male counterparts. This is not because it didn't happen. This is because, as one of the male counterparts, my radar likely didn't register it.

But I know the stories, and they go on to this day. Five decades on from Melissa Ludtke, women sports journalists still get told by Twitter Neanderthals to go bake cookies and make babies. Occasionally some knuckle-dragging cretin will kick up a fuss about them being in the locker room. Also: Dick pics.

This is because Boyz II Men had it backwards, basically. The more accurate band name would be Men II Boyz.

At its core it's a power thing, of course, which is why it se ems such a hardy perennial. The difference is men occasionally get shamed or fired for it now, at least if they've been dumb enough to be particularly dick-ish about it. And so I'm guessing Jared Porter has some fast talking to do to his bosses these days, now that he's confessed to what he did in 2016.

His bosses are no longer the Cubs, by the way. They're the Mets.

And Jared Porter is their GM.

Update: Make that was their GM. That didn't take long. Mets showed Porter the road a day after he admitted being a horny exhibitionist. These things will happen.

What's in a walk

I don't know if this is the last we'll see of  Drew Brees on a football field. Body language lies sometimes, even if it's not as good at it as politicians and assorted other hucksters.

But that sure looked like a valedictory walk down there in New Orleans last night.

Tampa Bay had picked him three times and Brees' season was over on the skinny end of a 30-20 score, and here he came, headed for the tunnel. What fans were there put their hands together for him. Brees kept walking. He raised his fist and then his eyes to acknowledge them, and you could see his face kind of working with the emotion of it, and he kept walking.

The fans kept putting their hands together. Brees kept walking, fist raised. And then, just as he stepped out of the end zone and into the tunnel, he turned his head and looked back.

It was just one look. And it didn't last but a second or so. But the magic Twitter machine and several other social media machines immediately seized on it as One Last Lingering Look Back At His Decorated Career.

Maybe it was. Maybe it was just social media trying to craft the sort of neat hospital-corners narrative it seems to crave. I can go either way on it. 

All I know is this: If that was a valedictory walk, and that look back was imbued with some special significance, the curtain is coming down on something remarkable.

Drew Brees, remember, was never supposed to do what he did. The book on him was he was too short, which is why he didn't go until San Diego took him in the second round of the draft. Then he tore up his shoulder and the Chargers crated him up and shipped him off to New Orleans the way you take a broken piece of furniture to the dump.

Of course, some stuff happened after that.

The broken piece of furniture got better, first of all, and then it got legendary. And now, after 20 seasons in the NFL, there are all these numbers: 80,358 passing yards and 571 touchdowns and a dozen 4,000-yard seasons and five 5,000-yard seasons, and 13 Pro Bowls. And of course a place in the New Orleans community unsurpassed by any athlete's in any community.

Yes, he's still short. I am 6-1 or right next door to it, and I'm a smidge taller. I knew this when Brees was drafted, because I'd been in the same room with him numerous times at Purdue. I also knew this from covering him there: Whoever decided his height mattered had clearly not watched him play very much.

He also got tagged as a mere product of Joe Tiller's spread offense, a system quarterback who only thrived because of the system. Of course, if you think about it, every successful quarterback is a system quarterback to some extent. But it was one more strike against him.

Twenty years later, though, he's still around. At 42 this fall, he threw for 2,942 yards and 24 touchdowns while sitting out a month of the season with 11 broken ribs -- 11! -- and a punctured lung. Yet there he was again last night, answering the bell. 

Maybe that bell has rung for the last time. The walk and the look, for all social media perhaps embellished it, seemed at least to hint as much.

But if it has, what beautiful music it's made.

Coin flips

Andy Reid might look like Tennessee Tuxedo's sidekick Chumley, or the smalltown sheriff's deputy who stumbles on the serial killer's first victim in an episode of "Criminal Minds." But he's a regular freaking Jason Bourne on a football sideline.

And so down there at the end Sunday in Arrowhead Stadium it came to fourth-and-inches for Reid's Kansas City Chiefs, and once again you could hear the man's cojones clanking. With  Patrick Mahomes concussed and a backup (Chad Henne) who'd barely played since the Johnson administration -- the Andrew Johnson administration -- Reid said "Meh." He dialed up a Henne throw to Tyreek Hill anyway.

It worked to perfection, of course. Henne threw, Hill caught, the surging Cleveland Browns were completely bumfuzzled, and the Chiefs got the first down and the 22-17 victory.

"What a gutsy call by Andy Reid!" everyone said.

And it was.

It was also an unnecessary call, and thus a really dumb call that wasn't dumb only because it worked.

And, yeah, sure, it showed how much faith Andy Reid has in his players, and how much faith they have in him, and yada-yada-yada. But on fourth-and-inches, the play is a quarterback sneak, because on fourth-and-inches a quarterback sneak is as close to a guarantee as you're gonna find on a football field.

Look. The Blob will never fault a coach for rolling the dice. The Blob, in fact, has nothing but contempt for the fainthearts who always play the percentages. They might look and talk like the kind of guys who kill and eat their own food with a side of testosterone, but when it's guts-up time they fold like laundry. 

And yet it bears mentioning there's a flip side to every coin, and the flip is sometimes a very near thing. And so, second-guessers that we all are, if Henne throws a souvenir into the stands on that play, no one is saying "What a gutsy call!" We're saying "What the hell was he thinking?"

You know how I know this?

Because that's what I was saying on the play where Mahomes was concussed.

Again it was fourth-and-inches; again the smart play was a quarterback sneak. But Reid dialed up a horizontal play instead of a vertical one -- i.e., some sort of triple option keeper that not only failed to get the first down but also got Mahomes whacked in the head. He wobbled to his feet barely conscious, and never came back again.

So you tell me. Was that a gutsy call, or a really, really dumb one?

I know which door I choose.

Urban renewal?

They'll separate some more wheat from chaff this weekend in the NFL playoffs, with the Packers vs. Rams, Josh (the Bills) vs. Lamar (the Ravens), the Chiefs vs. the Browns and Grandpa Walton (Tom Brady and the Buccaneers) battling Walter Brennan (Drew Brees and the Saints) for seconds on tapioca.

But that's not the marquee news out of the NFL this week.

The marquee news is the Jacksonville Jaguars have won this year's Big Splashy Hire award.

The 1-15 Jags went out and landed them some Urban Meyer, who won three national titles at Florida and Ohio State and a whole pile of games while he was at it. Consensus seems to be that he's not just another college icon destined to be not-so-iconish in the NFL, but the rare college icon who can bring a winner to J-ville.

Doubtless this is because Meyer was at Florida and Ohio State, where football is as  professional an enterprise as it is in the NFL. The head coach functions in those places as much as a corporate CEO as a whisle-slingin' FOOT-ball man drawing Xs-and-Os in the dirt. At places like Florida and Ohio State, the head coach has coordinators for that stuff.

So maybe Urban comes in and retools the Jags into a respectable NFL franchise again, or at least a reasonable facsimile of the Gators or Buckeyes. Or ...

Or maybe the track record wins again.

The track record for college icons trying on the NFL, see, is not stellar. It includes Nick Saban (15-17 in two seasons with the Dolphins), Chip Kelly (fired by both the Eagles and 49ers after going 26-21 with the former and 2-14 with the latter), and Steve Spurrier (12-20 in two seasons with Washington). Also, Lou Holtz, who quit 13 games into his one season with the Jets after going 3-10.

Of course, Lou Holtz was a long time ago. People will argue the college game and the pro game were universes unto themselves in those days, and that's no longer true -- not even on the field, where college and pro systems are remarkably similar these days.

It's a decent argument. But in Meyer's case, there's also this: At both Florida and Ohio State, he eventually walked away because the constant stress ruined his health.

This is because he was a platinum-grade obsessive-compulsive for whom winning was oxygen, which is why he was perfect for both Gainesville and Columbus. In both places, winning wasn't a problem, because nine times out of 10 he had the better players. And players ultimately decide whether or not you win on any level. 

Of course, being expected to win nine times out of 10 -- or 10 out of 10 -- does wear on you eventually. This is especially true if you're as intense as Meyer seems to be. Which is why you have to wonder how long a guy like that can last in the NFL, where the job is even more a 24/7/365 grind and where Meyer, so obsessed with and used to winning, is going to lose more than he used to.

If losing one or two times a year in Columbus wore on him, what's it going to be like in Jacksonville, where he'll assuredly lose many more times than that?

It's why the Blob sees Meyer lifting the Jags to their feet and making them competitive, perhaps sooner than you think. And then abruptly stepping away again, also sooner then you think.

In any event, enjoy him while you got him, Jacksonville. Because he could be gone before you know it.

Feud fail

Purdue beat Indiana again last night, and also water is wet, dogs have fleas and the Earth revolves around the sun. 

That's pretty much the state these days of one of college basketball's most ancient blood feuds. It might still be a feud, but right now only one side is bleeding.

That would be Indiana, and the Hoosiers bled plenty last night in Assembly Hall, a haunted house full of coronavirus echoes and musty glories. Indiana was outshot, outfought and outscored by the Purdues, 81-69 -- the fifth straight win for Matt Painter's crew in the Hall, and the sixth straight loss for Archie Miller vs. Painter.

In four-plus seasons at Indiana, he's yet to beat him.

This has the perpetually out-of-sorts Hoosier fan base even farther away from Sorts, and it's getting harder and harder to dismiss them as merely lost-in-the-past grumps. The Hoosiers are now 8-6, despite all the preseason hype about how Miller had more weapons at his disposal than he'd ever, ever had. And yet: 8-6.

Seems like they've been 8-6, on the way to 18-14 or something, for four years now. 

Purdue, meanwhile, keeps beating them, and now it's adding up to some real history. The Boilermakers have beaten Indiana eight straight times now, and the last time they beat the Hoosiers that many times in a row the stock market crashed, the Feds sent Capone up the river and FDR was fist-fighting the Great Depression. In other words, it was from 1929 to 1935, when the Purdues beat Indiana nine straight times.

And the last time either team had a streak like this against the other?

That would be between 1949 and 1955, when Indiana won 13 in a row.

So this is some serious echoing-down-the-years Purdue is up to now, and maybe it's time to put the narrative to rest that this rivalry is perpetually Purdue's blue collars vs. Indiana's blue chippers. Fact is, Purdue gets its share of guys who can play, too. But truth is truth, and the truth here is those five  national championship banners in Assembly Hall, relics though they are, will always paint an extra coat of hype on Indiana's recruits.

Indiana is Indiana. Purdue is Purdue. Which, hype or no hype, right now means Purdue wins.

They won last night because Trevion Williams was a beast down low and their shooters knocked 'em down long and short, hitting 53 percent overall and 11-of-17 from beyond the arc. Williams finished with his usual 22 and 10; Brandon Newman, Eric Hunter and Jaden Ivey were 7-of-9 from three; and the Boilers outboarded Indiana 38-30.

And the Hoosiers?

Couldn't hit water from a boat again, despite all those alleged marksmen they have in stock. They missed 15 of their 18 three-ball attempts in their own barn, and logic suggests you've got to be trying to be that bad. That left it up to Trayce Jackson-Davis again, who once more went one-against-the-world with 25 points. Race Thompson had a 13-10 double-double and Armaan Franklin had 14 off the bench, and that was about it. 

Miller, meanwhile, can thank the 'Rona once more, because once more it kept the faithful away from the Hall. Lord knows what a waterfall of sound would have come thundering down from on high had the place been full.

And not a good waterfall of sound, either. No indeed.

Trade talk

Pop quiz for today, and, yes, I know it's early, and, yes, I know you didn't study, and, OK, JUST SHUT UP ALREADY, because you're starting to sound like a Republican lawmaker being asked to go through a metal detector.

In other words: STOP WHINING.

There. Better. Now, here's the pop quiz:

What are the chances someone will say "There were no losers in this trade" in the wake of the four-team deal that sent James Harden to the Nets, Victor Oladipo to the Rockets, Caris LeVert to the Pacers, and some other guys and a bunch of draft picks somewhere else?

A. Zero.

B. One hundred percent, because someone always says this.

C. One hundred percent if there were also buy-one-get-one-free garlic knots involved.

D. I SAID ZERO.

The correct answer is "E," Not a friggin' chance because no one can figure out four-team deals.

Which is the Blob's general position on these types of deals, because it doesn't have a mind uncluttered enough to sort out all the particulars. It's why I'm lousy at cards; I can never remember what's been played well enough to make the right play myself. So I always lose and then get invited back, because every card game needs its pigeon.

All I know about this deal is the headline stuff, which is Harden going to the Nets and Oladipo going to the Rockets and LeVert going to the Pacers. Plus the Rockets get three first-round picks from the Nets across the next six seasons, and Cleveland's first-round pick next year, and Cleveland's 2024 second-round pick.

Which to the Blob sounds like the Rockets made out like the crew from Oceans 11, and the  Pacers made out OK, too, because they got rid of a guy who didn't want to be there for a halfway-decent guard. The Nets, meanwhile ...

Well. They made out like the Nets.

Yeah, they got James Harden, but they sold the deed to the Ponderosa to get him. And what are they really getting?

Another guy who needs the ball. That's basically it.

This wouldn't be a problem if the Nets didn't already have Kyrie Irving, who needs the ball himself, and Kevin Durant, who kinda likes to have it in his hands sometimes, too. This is not likely to improve Kyrie's disposition in particular; he's already torqued at the Nets for hiring Steve Nash as their coach without consulting him first, and he and KD reportedly barely speak. Now you're gonna throw another nuclear Type A into the mix?

Whoa. The New York media's in for some fun times.

Of course, the Blob could be wrong. ("Stop the presses!" you're shouting). This could all work out, magically, and the Nets could emerge as the next Superfriends team and roll over the rest of the NBA (Even LeBron!) like a big wheel. And come June they'll be hoisting the Big Trophy, and we'll all be writing about how, somewhere, Billy "Whopper" Paultz and Bill Melchionni and John Williamson and a bunch of other legacy Nets are smiling.

Nah.

More ado about nothing

Bless every little heart down there in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. They sure do know how to keep their priority hats on straight.

While the rest of the country was still reeling over last Wednesday's Putsch For Trump, when American democracy was attacked by a fascist mob in the name of their perpetually aggrieved instigator, the spiritual descendants of Dan'l Boone had their minds right.

No, sir. They didn't foam at the mouth over what Arnold Schwarzenegger, a native of Austria, aptly compared to Kristallnacht in 1938, when rioting goons engaged in acts of terror designed to look like spontaneous acts of rage. They saved their outrage for John Calipari and the Kentucky basketball team, who knelt quietly for the national anthem a couple days later in response to this stain on their nation.

Why, the very idea. To the ramparts, self-styled patriots!

And so we had a Kentucky sheriff posting a video of himself burning his Kentucky T-shirts. We had a massive backlash on social media. We even had Kentucky legislators proposing to defund the university, taking tax dollars away from "unpatriotic recipients."

To sum up: The players and coaches kneeling in response to what turned out to be a planned assault on the seat of American government were the ones insulting America, not those other guys.

Chew on that for awhile.  I'll wait.

And while I do, allow me to express how endlessly weary I am of all this. Kneeling quietly for the national anthem -- often with the head bowed -- is not nor was it ever intended to be a slur against the song or the flag or, God forbid, The Troops. Anyone with his head screwed on straight understands this, because if it were intended to be a slur, it would be a profoundly puny one. 

I mean, I can think of any number of more effective ways to display one's disdain for America, were that the goal. Shouting "(Bleep) this song!" over the anthem. Shooting the double bird at the flag. Choreographed mooning during one of Sportsball America's innumerable Salutes To The Troops.

But kneeling quietly? 

I always thought of that as a posture of reverence. But apparently it's not the right posture of reverence for the occasion, according to the self-styled patriots. There are rules for this, apparently -- even in an allegedly free country.

Which last week came under attack from American brownshirts egged on by a malign Mad King, and who not long before were being given the old fist pump by some of the very legislators they would put under siege.

Meanwhile, John Calipari had to explain for the umpdillyicious time that, no, this wasn't about The Troops. And the president of the university had to issue a statement defending their students' right to express themselves.

Aye-yi-yi..

Strategic rejection

It's a tough gig these days, being Our Only Available Completely Nutso President For One More Week. He can't even give stuff away.

He wanted to give New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick the Presidential Medal of Freedom, same as he gave it to the racist radio guy and that squirrely debunked debunker Devin Nunes. But Belichick said "Nah."

These things will happen when the For-Now Occupant's malignant fantasies incite an attack on the seat of government by fascist goons who beat a cop to death while chanting "USA! USA!" Ain't patriotism great?

So Belichick released a statement saying that in light of the aforementioned, he'd forgo the pleasure of accepting the Medal of Freedom at this time. The For-Now Occupant, it seems, is more radioactive than Chernobyl these days. Even the most bootlick-y of his bootlicks are figuratively fleeing the bunker now, somehow appalled by the inevitable endgame  their slavish embrace of Trumpian delusion unleashed.

You've never seen such backpedaling, even from the Washington Football Team's DBs. Ain't expedience grand?

The Blob, meanwhile, is left to contemplate the difference between Belichick's statement, and what Belichick might actually have said. The latter, surely, was less eloquent and expansive than the former. In fact the Blob imagines it was very like the response Darth Hoodie gave on Super Bowl Media Day in 2012, when some radio guy from Boston showed up waving a red plastic tricorn hat.

"Bill, will you put this on?" Radio Guy hollered.

Belichick just stared at him.

"No, I'm not doing that," he said, in his most dismissive growly way.

You heard the man, Mr. President.

Quantifying GOATs

 That Heisman Trophy guy played little more than a half, and still his team won by four touchdowns.

The quarterback, a career backup until this year, threw for 464 yards and five touchdowns.

The running back lugged it 22 times for 79 yards and a score, and caught a pass for another score, and the offense piled up 621 yards and 33 first downs and had the football for an eternity, or whatever 37 minutes and 26 seconds constitute.

So maybe the quarterback, Mac Jones, was right when he called your 2020 national champions, the 13-0 Alabama Crimson Tide, the greatest college football team ever. But only for now.

Look. It's impossible to argue that the 'Bamas weren't especially juggernaut-y this season. They didn't lose a game. No one but Florida came closer to them than 15 points. And in the national championship game, which the 'Bamas won 52-24 over Ohio State, their Heisman Trophy winner, wide receiver DeVonta Smith, left the game with a hand injury early in the third quarter.

By that time, of course, he'd already caught a dozen balls for 215 yards and three scores.

And after that, all Alabama did was outscore the Buckeyes 17-7 the rest of the way.

This against an Ohio State team that was itself undefeated, and that destroyed No. 2 Clemson 49-28 in the Sugar Bowl. 

So, OK, then. Maybe this Alabama team is the greatest ever. 

The problem with these pronouncements, however, is there's no way of actually quantifying this. If Alabama was as dominant this season as few college football teams in recent memory, that memory also includes several other of Nick Saban's teams at Alabama Football Inc., and the 1971 Nebraska Cornhuskers. and the 1969 Texas Longhorns, and a few scattered Notre Dames and Miamis and Oklahomas and Ohio States. 

Heck. Go back far enough, and you can throw in the Doc Blanchard/Glenn Davis Army teams, too.

College football in 2020 is vastly different from college football in 1945 or 1969 or even the 1980s, of course, so it's likely this Alabama team would have little problem with many of the aforementioned teams. Players now are bigger and fasters and stronger by quantum leaps than even 20 or 25 years ago. So it's a fool's errand to try to compare teams from such vastly different eras of the game.

All you can do, really, is measure how dominant a team was relative to its era. And these 'Bamas are definitely in the team photo in that regard.

And now it's on to the next era.

Ohio karma?

Wait ... what?

The Browns did what?

The Cleveland Browns. The Browns whose fans eat dog biscuits and Alpo. "The Drive" Browns, "The Fumble" Browns, the Brian Sipe/Earnest Byner/Fair Hooker Browns.

Those Browns?

Those Browns went into Heinz Field, hung 48 on their eternal tormentors in black-and-gold, picked Big Ben four times? Embarrassed the hated Steelers ... in the Steelers' house ... IN THE PLAYOFFS?

Oh, you bet. First playoff win in 26 years, prompting the over-used (and often misused)  term "long-suffering" to make an appearance. Also prompting fresh appraisal of the redemptive power of the diss -- and whether it might be transferrable.

Here's the deal: JuJu Smith-Schuster caught 13 balls for the Steelers  last night, but he never got as loose as he did mid-week, when he opened his mouth and dumbness fell out. Asked about the Browns, he said they were "the same Browns team I play every year." Called them "nameless gray faces." Said "the Browns is the Browns."

That last sounded a lot different when Browns quarterback Baker Mayfield was shouting it sometime around 11:30 last night. It sounded, in fact, like something the Browns might frame and hang in their facility this week, or adopt as some sort of mantra or Gregorian chant.

The Browns is the Browns! The Browns is the Browns! The Browns is the Browns!

Yeah. Could definitely happen.

And that brings to mind another team from Ohio, which is playing a kinda big football game itself this evening. 

Alabama coach Nick Saban is a lot smarter than Clemson coach Dabo Swinney, so he hasn't pulled the JuJu that Swinney did before the national semifinal games. Someone asked Dabo if he regretted never ranking the Ohio State Buckeyes in the top ten in the coaches' poll because they'd only played six games, and he said, no, he didn't regret it a bit.

This likely didn't sit well with Buckeyes, who were tired of hearing that only-played-six-games crap. So they went out and beat the Clemsons like a mess of egg whites, 49-28.

Now the 7-0 Bucks get 12-0 Alabama for the national championship, and everyone expects the Crimson Tide to roll like a tsunami. The 'Bamas are almost three-field-goal favorites, which doesn't seem right considering how badly Ohio State embarrassed the other half of ClemBama Football Inc. So maybe the Buckeyes follow the lead of that other team from Ohio, and take the 8.5-point spread as a diss that fuels another mighty upset.

That's probably a silly notion, thinking the Browns' karma is somehow communicable. But everything else seems to be these crazy days, so why not the Big K?

The Browns is the Browns!

7-0 is 7-0!

Could work.

The Reich stuff. Or not.

 So here's what happened with the Indianapolis Colts yesterday out in sunny Buffalo -- there are actually a few hours of daylight there during January, despite what you've heard -- in the AFC wild-card playoffs:

* Philip Rivers threw for 309 yards and two touchdowns with no interceptions and no sacks against one of the gnarlier defenses in the league.

* Jonathan Taylor scratched out 78 yards and a score against that same D, and the Colts' O-line generated enough push for them to average 5.4 yards per carry as a team.

* The Colts lost 27-24, and Frank Reich is the dumbest coach in America.

Sorry, folks. But as they used to say on Our Only Available Kicked-Off-Twitter President's former Twitter account: That last is in dispute.

The 27-24 loss is not, and Rivers throwing the ball out of bounds twice on the last possession is not (apparently a heinous crime against football, to hear some tell it). And the clock management on the last possession is not.

"Clock management", as in, "A German shepherd could have managed the clock better than Frank Reich did on the last possession."

Which is true. Also true is the Colts took some peawitted penalties across the afternoon, and no playoff team has ever done that before. Also true: They got away with a turnover on the last possession and still couldn't get close enough to force overtime or win the thing outright.

Here's what isn't true: That Frank Reich is therefore the dumbest coach in America and needs to be fired.

Overreaction is always most untamed in the immediate aftermath of a playoff loss, particularly a playoff loss that could have been a win. Folks just ain't at their most rational then, particularly folks who paint their faces in their team's colors and don funny hats and the throwback jerseys of old punters and taxi squad quarterbacks. You just can't talk sense to people like that.

So it's probably a fool's errand for the Blob to try to tell the Horsie set to slow the roll this morning. No, Frank Reich has not left any indications to date he's the second coming of Noll or Shula or Belichick or even Tony Dungy. But neither is he Kevin Gilbride or Frank Kush or pretty much every Lions coach going back to Wayne Fontes. 

Under Reich's hand, after all, the Colts went from 7-9 to 11-5 this season. They ranked ninth in the league in scoring offense and 10th in scoring defense. Had the Texans not gagged against the Titans in the last game of the season, the Colts would have won their division.

Did they lose some games they should have won, like the first Jacksonville game and (maybe) Buffalo yesterday? Sure. Did Philip Rivers turn out to be Philip Rivers and not Tom Brady? Absolutely. Should Rivers have not thrown the ball away twice on that last possession?

Well ...

Well, I suppose he could have thrown it into coverage instead and gotten picked. Or waited for a few more precious seconds to drain from the clock and then thrown it away.

In which case the game would have been over a lot sooner, and the Horsie set would have been saying "Why did he throw it into coverage like that? Why didn't he throw it out of bounds right away instead of letting the clock run? I thought Reich was the quarterback whisperer! How come he didn't teach Rivers not to do that?"

I don't know. Because Frank Reich is the dumbest coach in America?

Sorry, but nah. Nah.

Aspiring tool-ery

OK, 2021. So what's your deal?

"I CAN SO be just as big a dirtbag as 2020"?

"Hold my beer, 2020"?

"Which part of your brand new carpet do you want me to barf/poop/drain the lizard on?"? 

Because, listen, we're only eight days in, and already you're being a giant tool. Hooterville Coup Attempt and Tommy Lasorda checking out in one week?

Yes, that's right, folks. Tommy Dodger has shuffled off, and there goes another part of the Blob's Sportsball childhood. He was 93, which means at least he lived the full complement. And  he lived long enough to see the Trolley Dodgers win the World Series one more time, so he had that going for him.

Tommy belonged to a different time in baseball, a time before the National Pastime had Passed its Time. He belonged to a time of Kirk Gibson hitting limp-off homers and Jack Buck not believing what he just saw, and fierce rivalries involving Those People In Cincinnati. He belonged to Steve Garvey and Ron Cey and Fernandomania and Bill Buckner before his legs went away.

Nobody was doing creatine or HGH or the hard PEDs then. But they were gobbling amphetamines like M&Ms to get them through day games after night games, which was a difference only in perception. 

Tommy?

Tommy was mainlining tripe and pasta, mostly, and filling the vital role of Baseball Celebrity Manager. He hung with politicians and Hollywood types out there in Chavez Ravine, and nightly held court for the media. He talked and talked and talked and talked, Tommy did. Once, famously, he talked for an impressive length of time using barely a word any of the beat guys could print.

All of that obscured the fact Tommy knew his baseball, too. On his watch, Dodger Blue averaged 76 wins across 21 summers, took four National League pennants and won the World Series twice. 

You either loved Tommy or despised him, depending on which side of the Ohio line you were on. But you always knew he was there, and baseball's collage in those years wasn't complete without him.

Now he's just another piece of a gone past. 

Wipe that smirk off your face, 2021. 

Analogies, and other stuff

 The rats are finally leaping overboard, and pardon the Blob for thinking mean thoughts about that. Something about hoping there's a national shortage of lifejackets, and also that the rats have forgotten how to swim.

But it's hard to summon much charity for people who cheered mightily for Our Completely Nutso Only Available President when he was steering the Titanic into the iceberg, and now are suddenly appalled at how cold the water is.

So Elaine Chao is gone and Mick Mulvaney is gone and the Edukashun secretary, Betsy DeVos, is gone, saying the President of the United States has just gone too far this time. After four years of enabling a lunatic, they're shocked -- shocked, I tell you! -- by the fact that, oh my God, THIS MAN REALLY IS CRAZY.

You could feel only a rich disdain for that if there also weren't a kernel of hope in it.

The Blob's position is that Wednesday's attack on American democracy was both the high-water mark and beginning of the end of Trumpism as a political force in America, and it's possible that's my inner Pollyanna talking. But when even the suckiest of suck-ups are suddenly fleeing from Trump like Jason Voorhees is after them with a chainsaw, it at least suggests some political Rubicon has been crossed. 

It suggests, to me anyway, that after Trump has been stripped of his presidential bully pulpit for awhile, his hold over the Republican party will have been greatly diminished. There will still be a healthy complement of Q-Aninnies in Congress, but they'll have been reduced to the drooling curiosities they always should have been.

I  know, I know. I should stick to sports -- where hope springs eternal, even if you're an IU basketball fan hoping your Hoosiers learn how to make threes one of these days.

Speaking of sports  ...

Time for a screeching 45-degree turn.

This involves those Cabinet rats floundering in the icy water, and how often in America we resort to sports analogies to explain what nothing else can as clearly explain. That happened in the Magic Twitterverse today, when some wag tweeted that all these folks jumping overboard with two weeks left was "like 3-5 LSU self-imposing a bowl ban."

As usual with most sports analogies, that hits it right on the screws. And it inspires the Blob to conjure up a few others:

All these Cabinet creatures deserting at the 11th hour is ...

1. Like Coach "Leave No Witnesses" Kittenstrangler, who once delighted in beating weaker teams 76-3, invoking the mercy rule with his own team down 76-3 in the fourth quarter.

2. Like  Coach Kittenstrangler, seeing all he's got coming from the JV are two 150-pound tackles and halfback Merle "Glacier Foot" Derpy, abruptly retiring to "spend more time with my family."

3. Like the school administration, having seen Merle "Glacier Foot" Derpy run, deciding to drop football because "the concussion issue has just made it too dangerous for our children."

4. Like the administration then kicking Glacier Foot off the non-existent team for "that armed robbery thing" which "set a bad example for our children once we started losing games 76-3."

5. Like Tom Brady leaving the Patriots once they weren't good anymore.

Oh, wait. That actually happened.

The banality of madness

I suppose this is where we say it again, on the day after a sitting president and his congressional surrogates incited a treasonous assault on the seat of American government. Or maybe we've said it so much these past four years we no longer need to say it, because it's become like some empty pleasantry which requires only a similar response.

Hey, how are ya?

Great, you?

That sort of thing.

And so when we say "Unbelievable!" now we don't really mean it, because after four years of  Donald John Trump anything is believable.

And when we we say "I never thought I'd see the day ...", we don't mean it, either, because we have seen that day at some point, and this day is just the next one we're going to see.

So I won't say either of those things about what happened in Washington yesterday, when domestic terrorists in service to the delusions of the President of the United States stormed the Capitol in an attempt to disrupt the mechanism of democracy. And which they succeeded in doing for awhile, because the law enforcement charged with keeping them from doing so instead pulled aside the barricades and took selfies with them, like some bouncer behind a velvet rope who recognizes a buddy in the crowd.

I'd say the whole thing was appalling, but that word too has lost its juice in these four mad years.

What I'll say instead is what we saw yesterday is what an attempted coup looks like in countries to which America has always felt swaggeringly superior. Why, we'd never allow such riffraff to threaten our democratic institutions, because our democratic institutions are inviolable and enduring. We do self-governance better than anyone, by God.

And then yesterday happens, and we discover we're just as vulnerable to lunacy as anyone if we put the lunatics in charge.

America elected a deranged, faithless degenerate four years ago, and he was so adept at  spinning his mad fantasies that a frightening number of Americans became just as deranged as he is. Nonsense most Americans once would have laughed out of the room instead became articles of faith for people who used to know better. Political thought once considered the province of fringe loonies and full-tilt racists became instead the bulwark ideology of certain senators and congress critters.

And so it was hardly unbelievable that when America roundly rejected  the Mad King after four years of nuclear crazy, the Mad King and his mad acolytes would spin one last gargantuan fantasy about a stolen election -- thereby undermining faith in the very foundation of American democracy.

There's not a scrap of truth to any of it, of course, which is why the courts (Trump appointees in many cases) have roundly rejected it, at times with rolled eyes and utter contempt. But the deluded believe what they believe. And all it takes is a wink and a nod from the right guy to set them on the path to full-on insurrection.

Even here, boys and girls. Even in America.

The good news, if there is any, is that the Mad King finally pushed the envelope too hard  even for some of his supplicants yesterday. In turning loose the mob on Congress itself, he scared 'em green. And so it was the Vice-President and DoD that finally called out the National Guard, essentially 25th amendment-ing the Mad King if not officially doing so.

Hours later, after the mob had been dispersed (without the gestapo tactics that were used last summer against protesters with a different political stance, naturally), Congress reconvened and did what it was going to do anyway. And without the opposition of some of those who had opposed it previously, and who had therefore egged on the mob to begin with.

That they were suddenly appalled by what they'd unleashed betrayed either an impressive lack of self-awareness, or an equally impressive capacity for hypocrisy.

In any case, the thing got done. And the Mad King has finally acknowledged his defeat, promising a peaceful transition.

He's a little late to the party on the latter, of course. And if he'd acknowledged what was obvious two months ago, there might actually have been a peaceful transition.

Then again, if he had done so, that would have been unbelievable.

Situational liquidity

A wide receiver won the Heisman Trophy last night, which was great because it shouldn't always be the Heisman Quarterback Trophy, and it had been 30 years since a wide receiver won the thing so it was more than high time.

So congratulations to DeVonta Smith of Alabama Football Inc., which had two Heisman finalists (quarterback Mac Jones was the other). Clemson Inc. quarterback Trevor Lawrence was also a finalist, and so was Florida Inc. quarterback Kyle Trask.

If you're sensing a theme here, take a seat in the company boardroom and grab a cruller. You've discovered that college football is just another Amazon or Microsoft, and only Power Fives get to trade on the big board.

College football at the Alabama-Clemson-Ohio State level is about money, surprise, surprise, and it always has been to some extent. This is because some of its fans are crazy people, and some of them are richer than any crazy person ought to be. So they periodically haul out wads of cash and buy out Coach Slobberknocker, because Coach only won 10 games last year and that just doesn't cut it at dear old Southern Northeast Tech State University -- or, as the rich alums call it, "the University."

So they kick Coach Slobberknocker  to the curb and money-whip the University into hiring Coach Ricky "Horse Collar"  Fleastomper from that hyphen school in the Midwest, who will surely win them multiple national titles and turn SNTSU into a Football Inc.

Three years later, they're buying him out to hire Coach Myron "Headslap" Dogkicker from Feelin' Poorly State.

And so it goes, and so it goes. And so we come to the University of Texas, which just hired Alabama Inc. offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian as its third head coach in seven years. This is because the previous head coach, Tom Herman, only won 23 of the 36 games he coached and only got the Longhorns to some off-Broadway bowl games.

That wasn't good enough for the crazy rich alums at Texas, who are crazier and richer than most. You wear all that burnt orange and those serving-tray belt buckles with Texas Longhorns on 'em, you want more for your money. You want Darrell Royal and Dana X. Bible and national championships and a guaranteed butt-kicking every year of those sorry yokels over at A&M.

So they're likely the ones who'll bankroll the lion's share of Tom Herman's buyout, which will be $15.4 million for Herman himself and $24 million total for Herman and his staff. This on top of the $34 million Texas will be shelling out over five years to Sarkisian, who failed rather notoriously as a head coach at USC, and less notoriously at Washington. In seven years as a head coach, he's a remarkably beige 46-35.

No matter. UT will still pony up just shy of $60 mill to buy out Herman and bring in Sarkisian, because Crazy Mr. Belt Buckle is tired of going to root vegetable bowls.

None of this would be so heinous, or a more stark illustration of just how warped Football Inc.'s priorities have become, if Texas hadn't also laid off 35 athletic department employees and temporarily cut the pay of 300 others to cover losses tied to the Bastard Plague pandemic. I'm sure the folks who were pink-slipped are pleased as punch that their former employer somehow scraped together all that dough when it was pleading poverty mere months ago. Oh, you bet.

One wonders what would have happened if Crazy Mr. Belt Buckle had decided to kick in a few bucks to keep all those people gainfully employed. Now that would have been serving the University.

On the other hand, none of those folks who got shown the road were gonna help the Longhorns beat A&M. Gotta keep your eye on the ball, right?

That Philly thing

You had to feel for Nate Sudfeld. Not only was the former IU quarterback rumblin'-fumblin'-stumblin' around out there -- these things will happen when you haven't take a snap in three years -- but he was at ground zero for a kerfuffle not of his kerfuffling.

At issue (and what continues to be at issue, because 24/7 media feeds on stuff like this for days now) is why Eagles head coach Doug Pederson would yank starter Jalen Hurts and put in Sudfeld, his QB3, with the Eagles trailing only 17-14 to the Washington Football Team.

That 17-14 lead eventually became a 20-14 win and a divisional title for the Washington No-Names. And everyone got all mad because, with Sudfeld doing all that rumblin'-fumblin'-stumblin', it looked as if Pederson was throwing the game to improve the 4-11-1 Eagles' draft status. 

Disrespectful, people called this. Making a joke out of Hallowed Football. Why, the very idea of an NFL team not giving its best, even in the last game of the season!

You can't see it, but the Blob just rolled its eyes so far back in its head it can see its frontal lobes.

Because, listen, while Pederson was giving Sudfeld some reps (and perhaps handing the Washington No-Names the division), over in Cleveland a bunch of front-line Steelers, including Ben Roethlisberger, were sitting too. They sent Mason Rudolph out there as their Nate Sudfeld, and the Steelers lost to the Browns.

Which of course handed the Browns a playoff berth for the first time in 18 years.

So who was tanking worse?

Oh, you can argue what Pederson did was worse because he was trying to improve his team's draft prospects, and by doing so he kept the Giants from winning the division in a tiebreaker and making the playoffs. But when he took out Hurts, the former Alabama star was 7-of-20 passing for 72 yards and an interception. His passer rating was 25.4.

This does not sound like someone who was going to magically lead the Eagles to victory, either. So why not play Sudfeld?

Besides, the Steelers deciding to rest Roethlisberger and others perhaps altered the  playoff landscape, too. Because if the Browns don't win, they don't make the playoffs.

This is not to put the Steelers on blast, understand. Teams whose playoff status can't be improved with a win in the last game frequently rest their starters. It's no big deal, and actually is the prudent course.

All the Blob is saying is what the Eagles did differs very little. And therefore is no big deal itself.

Well. Except in 24/7 Media World, that is.

The hoops come home

"I'll make it."

-- Jimmy Chitwood

And he did, of course. It's what we do in Indiana.

Jimmy Chitwood makes the shot and Larry Bird makes the steal and dish that takes down the Pistons (who themselves are from Indiana), and Oscar Robertson comes to Milwaukee to help Kareem win his first NBA title. Steve Alford shoots Indiana University to a national title. Damon Bailey puts 40,000 people in the Hoosier Dome for a high school basketball game, and, over in Lebanon, a shoot-the-lights-out kid named Rick Mount is the  first high school athlete ever to grace the cover of Sports Illustrated.

Basketball is what we do here. Better'n anybody, more legendarily than anybody, more cinematically than anybody.

Once upon a time the citizens of a burg named Onward over in Cass County squared off against the state police to keep their high school open, because it was being merged into nearby Walton. That was about basketball, because Onward and Walton were fierce rivals, and there was no way the folks in Onward were going to send THEIR kids to school with THOSE sons-of-biscuits. 

Besides, Walton always bought the refs over there. Why, everyone in Onward knew it.

And everyone in America knows this: If you're gonna put the NCAA Tournament in a bubble, that bubble might as well be in Indiana.

And so Da Basketball Tournament comes to Da Basketball State, and listen, it's no big thing. Indiana has played host to the Final Four so many times -- even the women's Final Four -- it can do it in its sleep. It's played host to the largest single-day sporting event in the world (the Indianapolis 500) for the last 110 years. Think it can't handle the entire NCAA Tournament one time?

Of course it can. 

Come March, then, they'll play every game of the Madness in Indiana, at Lucas Oil and Banker's Life and Hinkle and the Fairgrounds, and also Assembly Hall and Mackey Arena. And here in the Fort, we'll get the entire NCAA Division III show.

Basketball is what we do here. Ever since Naismith put up the peach baskets and, not very long after, Crawfordsville won the first state high school tournament.

Homer Stonebraker and Wingate came along after that, and then Franklin's Wonder Five and John Wooden and Dave Dejernette and Jumpin' Johnny Wilson and on and on. Bill Garrett led Shelbyville to a state title and then broke the color line at IU. Dejernette and Willie Gardner and Oscar and Hallie Bryant and a bunch of others did the same, essentially, for the high schools. And then came Judi Warren and LaTonya Pollard and the girls.

And one night at one of the Indy Final Fours some years back, sitting at a table with a bunch of the national sportswriters who were there to cover the event, talk got around to what everyone thought of Indianapolis as a Final Four venue. Eventually Bob Ryan of the Boston Globe weighed in.

"I love Indianapolis," he said. "They could hold the Final Four here every year as far as I'm concerned."

Or the whole blamed tournament?

Sure. Why not?

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 16

And now the last edition for this season of The NFL In So Many Words, the departing-for-now Blob feature of which critics have said "Well ... bye" like Curley Bill Brocius in "Tombstone," and also "Don't forget to close the door behind you when you leave. We're not heatin' the outdoors here, ya know!":

1. "Yay! We made the playoffs by losing to the Packers by three scores!" (The Bears)

2. "Yay! We get the Bears in the first round!" (The Saints)

3. "Yay! We made the playoffs for the first time in 18 years by beating the Steelers' backups!" (The Browns)

4. "Yay! We get the Browns in the first round!" (Ben Roethlisberger and the rest of the Steelers' starters)

5. "Yay! We made the playoffs by beating the worst team in football!" (The Colts)

6. "Now we get to go to Buffalo in the middle of January to play one of the hottest teams in the NFL!" (Also the Colts)

7. In other news, the Jets locked up Adam Gase's severance package with a loss to the cruddy New England Patriots.

8. "Yay!" (Adam Gase, probably)

9. "Yay! Unlike my cruddy former team, I get to keep playing next week against the cruddy Washington Football Team!" (Tom Brady)

10. "Hey! We won our division, ya know!" (The cruddy Washington Football Team)

Dissed

 No, no, no, Indiana. This is not how you do it.

You can't complain long and loudly about being dissed by your conference, and then fail to back it up.

You can't slyly cover up the Big Ten logos on your uniforms -- really (wink), it wasn't intended as a shot at the conference (wink, wink) -- and then go out and show the world exactly why the conference dissed you.

You can't say you should have been in a New Year's Day bowl game instead of those posers from Northwestern, and then lose to a sub-.500 team in the bowl game you so publicly were unhappy about playing.

And, yes, your quarterback (Jack Tuttle) played with a separated shoulder, which was brave on his part and stupid on the Indiana coaching staff's part. But, still

Still, you lost your bowl game to a 4-5 football team.

Lost to Ole Miss 26-20 in a game Indiana never led, and maybe now it's time to re-examine the Hoosiers' pregame strategy of bellyaching about having to play in the cruddy Outback Bowl against cruddy Ole Miss. I don't know if coaches still do this -- it seems kind of hokey and old-timey rah-rah in the corporate 2020s -- but I can imagine Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin wallpapering his locker room with that stuff. 

Looky here, men. These Indiana people think it's an insult to have to play us. They think we're not fit to shine their shoes. They think they're just gonna come in here and garage-sale us like we're, I don't know, Directional Hyphen U. or something. What do YOU think about that, men?

No, sir. Likely not the smart play for Indiana, even if the Big Ten did diss them because they were, you know, Indiana, and Indiana's never been good at football. So that 6-1 record, why, it's just a big ol' fluke.

If only Indiana could have proved otherwise.

But it didn't.

Which reminds me of that scene in "Brian's Song" after Piccolo gets sick and the Bears dedicate the Rams game to him, and then of course they lose. After which Piccolo reminds them that, hey, dummies, if you dedicate a game to someone, you're then supposed to win the game.

Precisely.

C. F. P(unked).

Well, the Sort Of Rose Bowl and Sort Of Sugar Bowl are in the books now (the College Football Playoff having co-opted both of them), and here's what came out of that whole business:

* Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly, whose Fighting Irish beat the spread because they only lost by 17, was feeling pretty salty about that in the postgame. Said he was tired of the media narrative that the Irish did not have as many athletes as the Alabamas, Clemsons and Ohio States of the world, and that they occupied a spot one shelf below them. 

And never mind that Alabama had just proved both things to be true. Never mind that.

* Clemson coach Dabo Swinney, sitting on a pillow because his hindparts were still tender from the butt-kicking Ohio State had just administered, was feeling pretty salty, too. Said, no, he didn't regret voting Ohio State 11th in the coaches poll because they'd only played six games. Nope, didn't regret it at all.

What he didn't say was whether he regretted not voting his Clemsons, like, 22nd or something, given that Ohio State had just dropped half-a-hundred-minus-one on 'em and Justin Fields had punked them for six touchdown passes.

Presumably he didn't regret it, being in such a clearly delusional mood and all.

* Can we please not hear anymore about how neither Notre Dame nor Ohio State belonged in the CFP?

The Buckeyes proved beyond a doubt they belonged by laminating Clemson Football Inc. by 21. And if the Irish were never really a threat to Alabama, neither would either of the other two teams whose cause so many so loudly advanced.

Cincinnati?

Choked away an 11-point lead and lost the Peach Bowl to a Georgia team that in turn lost its two biggest games (Alabama and Florida) by 17 and 16 points, respectively.

Texas A&M?

Lost to Alabama by 26 while Notre Dame lost by 17.

Case closed.

The year in preview

And so, as we bid 2020 a fond farew-

No. Wrong. Try again.

And so, as we CRAM 2020 INTO A MERCURY CAPSULE WITH 10,000 FIRE ANTS and LAUNCH IT INTO A SLOWLY DECAYING ORBIT which will end with it being CONSUMED IN A FIERY RE-ENTRY ...

Much better.

At any rate, 2020 is finally gone, the crazy murdering old bastard. It's time to look ahead to 2021, which probably will suck just as hard, only in different, even more bizarrely sucky ways. But since no one wants to hear that on January 1, we'll move on to the Blob's annual New Year's Day tradition: Predicting all the stuff that won't happen in 2021.

In January, ClemBama Inc. does not fail to win the College Football Playoff title, beating BamaClem Inc. 112-110 in 14 overtimes and coaxing a rare smile from head coach Nick Dabo Saban-Swinney. A confused America does not fail to react by saying "Which one is he again?"

In other news, Our Only Available Impeached Outgoing President does not shut up already about how the American people robbed him of a second term.

In February, the Chicago Bears do not win the Super Bowl. Neither do the Indianapolis Colts, the New York Jets, the Jacksonville Jaguars or the Los Oakland Raiders. Head coach Jon Gruden (aka, The Greatest Living Barely .500 Coach In NFL History) does not shut up already about that, either.

In other news, Our Only Available Impeached Outgoing President does not fail to barricade himself in a West Wing broom closet with Josh Hawley, Rudy Giuliani and a box of moldy Triscuits, and does not fail to blubber incoherently as he does so.

In March, March Madness does not happen for the second year in a row. Sideways Upside-Down State Tech does not knock out Duke in a 14-over-3 upset, therefore, and Indiana does not lose in the second round again. Which means Indiana fans do not claim the firearchiemiller.com domain name, and do not accuse FireArchieMiller of deliberately sabotaging their hallowed program by teaching all his Indiana kids how to brick threes.

In other news, Our Only Available Impeached Outgoing President, now down to his last Triscuit, does not fail to send Hawley out for some Big Macs and fries, after which he does not fail to push Hawley out of the broom closet, slam the door and shout "You never liked me!"

In April, the Masters organizers do not fail to bar spectators (Excuse me: "patrons") again as a Bastard Plague precaution. They also do not tell anyone they secretly did it not because of the Plague, but because the patrons are a pain in the ass who never properly genuflect at the Cathedral of Pines, and are always doing appalling things like cheering and leaving pimento cheese sandwich wrappers everywhere and lugging around those (bleeping) little collapsible stools.

In other news, Our Only Available Impeached Outgoing President does not fail to attempt to send Rudy out for more Big Macs. To which Rudy, having seen what happened to Josh Hawley, does not fail to say "Ha! I ain't fallin' for that one, Mr. President!"

In May, Takuma Sato does not win the Indianapolis 500 again. Neither do Scott Dixon, Josef  Newgarden, Will Power, Alexander Rossi, any of those guys. This is because Roger Penske does not allow the race to be run, saying, "Meh. I like August better. More sweat."

 In other news, Our Only Available Impeached Outgoing President does not fail to rant and rave and weep tears of rage as the Secret Service bodily drags him out of the West Wing broom closet. Rudy Giuliani does not file another lawsuit to stop this, saying instead it was all for the best because "the President was starting to get pretty rank, to be honest."

In June, July and August, fans do not flock to the NBA Finals, the Stanley Cup Final, Major League Baseball or Wimbledon. This is because the NBA, NHL, MLB and tennis people forget to announce that fans would be permitted again in their arenas/ballparks/Centre Courts.

In other news, the fans do not fail to shrug and say "Meh. We like watching 'The Queen's Gambit' for the eleventy-hundredth time better anyway."

In September, college football does not start up again, or maybe it does, or maybe it does in some places, or maybe it only does at ClemBama Inc. and BamaClem Inc., being the only college programs that matter anymore.

In other news, college football fans do not fail to shrug and say "Meh. We like watching old Notre Dame Football Highlights with Lindsey Nelson better anyway."

In October, the NBA does not start up again, or does not continue last season, or does not do whatever the hell the NBA is doing these days. 

In other news, basketball fans do not fail to shrug and say "Meh. We like watching reruns of 'Matlock' on continual streaming better anyway."

And last not least ...

In December, we do not wish 2021 a fond farewell. 

We do not usher it politely out the door. We do not present it with a laurel and hardy handshake. We do not even cram it into a Mercury capsule with 10,000 fire ants and launch it into a slowly decaying orbit, because that would be cruel. 

No, sir. We only send it up with 1,000 fire ants.