Rams and Bengals and Roman numerals and stuff

 So it's the Los Angeles Rams vs. the dragon-slaying Cincinnati Bengals in Super Bowl Some Roman Numeral Or Other, but you already knew that. The Blob will therefore dispense with the Emergence of Joe Burrow T-boning the Ascendance of Patrick Mahomes, or Matthew Stafford breaking the surly bonds of Lion-dom, or what the hell the Chiefs were thinking down there on the goal line at the end of the first half.

(Although seriously, what was Andy Reid doing, channeling his inner Pete Carroll? First-and-goal at the 1, nine seconds left and timeouts to burn, and you don't just line up and run the football? If Edwards-Helaire or McKinnon don't get in, you call timeout and kick the field goal. Easy-peasy, but nooooo.)

(And who didn't know in their bones that was going to come back to haunt the Chiefs? You knew it would. You just knew it.)

Anyway ... on to some other stuff:

*  No one with a serious grasp of faith believes God sits up there in his heaven on Sunday afternoons wearing a Roger Staubach throwback and flinging celestial popcorn at his big-screen when the Cowboys screw the pooch AGAIN. But something cosmic was surely going on yesterday.

Consider:

1. On Saturday, Johnny Fever from "WKRP In Cincinnati" (Howard Hesseman) passed away.

2. On Sunday, the Bengals shocked America by taking down Mahomes and the Chiefs.

I mean, come on. You don't think Johnny was pulling some strings somewhere?.

* Not to get provincial on y'all, but Rams vs. Bengals means a Fort Wayne showdown of sorts.

On one side, there'll be Rams wide receiver Ben Skowronek (Homestead High School). On the other, Bengals safety Jesse Bates III (Snider). 

Homestead vs. Snider, on the big stage. Live from Spuller Stadium. Get there early before the traffic backs up at Cook and Coldwater.

* For the second year in a row, the Super Bowl will have a home team. While America watches from Sofa Stadium, the Rams will play in Sofi  Stadium, their home digs. Which of course means only one thing to the Bengals, who have won their last two playoff games in the other guy's house.

They've got the Rams right where they want them.

* The last time the Bengals played in the Super Bowl, Ronald Reagan was still president, Donald Trump was still just a sleazy businessman, and no one had yet heard of Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, iphones or "YouTube sensation Your Name Here."

Also, Joe Burrow was minus-eight-years-old.

The Blob refuses to reveal how old it was, on account of the answer might tend to incriminate me.

* But I was 33.

I'm 66 now.

Which means I've lived half my life without seeing the Bengals in the Super Bowl.

I don't know how I've survived. 

Luck be a Brady

 So Tom Brady is apparently calling it quits (maybe ... or not ... yes, definitely), and all the Blob has to say is, why so soon? Three more seasons, he hits the 25-year mark and is eligible for the senior discount at Ponderosa.

OK, so I already posted that joke on another platform. And it's not that good, anyway.

In any case, if this truly is it for No. 12, he leaves as the undisputed No. 1 of all time, although the soreheads are floating a different narrative. Some of them are saying he's not the GOAT, but the LOAT --, as in, "Luckiest of All Time."

I've got news for those folks.

He's both.

This is because greatness and luck have the same father, always have and always will. The great ones make their own luck, but often it arrives with no assembly required. The great ones are great because they know what to do with it when it does.

And so, yes, Tom Brady lucked out in the Tuck Rule game, when the zebras turned a fumble into an incomplete pass. And he was lucky Pete Carroll had sawdust for brains and dialed up a pass on the 1-yard line in Super Bowl XLIX instead of just giving it to his human battering ram, Marshawn Lynch. And he was lucky the Atlanta Falcons decided "Naw, we ain't gonna run no clock" when they were up 28-3 with a quarter and a sliver to play in Supe LI.

Thing is, it wasn't the Falcons who drove the Patriots to 31 points in the last quarter and overtime of LI to steal the game. And it wasn't Pete Carroll who completed 37-of-50 passes for 328 yards and four scores to bring the Patriots back from ten points down in that Super Bowl.

I believe it was Tom Brady who did all that.

And it's not like he's the only lege who knew what to do when luck came calling, either. 

The 49ers' Joe Montana, remember, caught a break when Tim Krumrie -- the key to the Bengals' pass rush -- went down with a gruesome leg injury in the first of Montana's four Super Bowl wins. And is Terry Bradshaw of the Steelers missing one of his four rings if the Cowboys' Benny Barnes doesn't get flagged for pass interference in Super Bowl XIII, or if Jackie Smith doesn't drop a sure six in the same game?

Luck opened the door for both greats. And both made the plays necessary to walk through it.

So is Tom Brady the greatest of all time, with his seven rings and 876 nautical miles  passing and eleventy-hundred touchdown passes? Or was he just lucky?

Yes.

And, yes.

Mad for coordinators

 I don't know if Matt Eberflus is the answer to the Chicago Bears' chronic mediocrity. I don't know if there is an answer, short of strapping the McCaskeys to a rocket and shooting them into space.

What I do know is they sure do love them some coordinators in the NASH-unal FOOT-ball League these days.

"Coordinators, coordinators, coordinators" has become the NFL's "location, location, location" mantra this hiring season, narrowly beating out "retreads, retreads, retreads." The Bears traded one coordinator named Matt for another, plucking Colts defensive coordinator Eberflus to replace former Chiefs offensive coordinator Matt Nagy. Former Bills offensive coordinator Brian Daboll was just sentenced to hard time as the new head coach of the New York Giants.

And in Denver?

The Broncos have anointed former Packers offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett, mainly because they're trying to lure Aaron Rodgers away from Green Bay. Hackett and Rodgers were tight in the Bay, the thinking goes. So why not get them back together in Denver for a buddy film?

As for the retread part ... well, a bunch of failed NFL head coaches have been sitting for interviews elsewhere lately. Dan Quinn, evicted in Atlanta in 2020 and now defensive coordinator in Dallas, interviewed not only with the Bears and Broncos but with the Giants, Vikings and Dolphins. Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels, who crashed and burned as a head coach in Denver, is being pursued by the Raiders. 

Even Bill O'Brien, who wrecked the Houston Texans and is now Nick Saban's offensive coordinator at Alabama, interviewed for the head coaching vacancy in Jacksonville. Wisely, he's reportedly staying put with the better franchise in Tuscaloosa.

And Eberflus?

Lots of folks in Chicago are wondering if he's just Matt Nagy 2,0, or why the Bears would hire a defensive guy when they've got a a promising young quarterback (Justin Fields) who needs nurturing. The jury is obviously way out on on the first; the second doesn't really have a bearing on anything.

Nagy, after all, was an offensive guy, and he had no clue what to do with poor Fields. Conversely, defensive guys in the head coaching chair in Buffalo and San Diego don't seem to have impaired the development of Josh Allen and Justin Herbert, respectively. 

That's because they hired smart guys as offensive coordinators and quarterback coaches, who have more impact on a quarterback's development than the head coach. The head coach, in the NFL, is the CEO. It's the department heads who make the the thing go.

Which is why NFL teams are mad for coordinators, even if department heads don't always make the best CEOs. It's also why, where Fields is concerned, the most important man in Halas Hall will not be Matt Eberflus, but whoever he chooses as his offensive coordinator.

As the knight said to Indiana Jones: Choose wisely.

No Gurlz (Or Non-Players) Allowed

There are hardy perennials in Sportsball World, and one of them bloomed again this week. Bring on the You Never Played The Game brigade, boys and girls!

This time the brigade's point man was rockhead ex-quarterback Jeff Garcia, winging in  from 1955 to shake his bony fist and tell those damn Gurlz they were Not Allowed. That's because ESPN's NFL analyst Mina Kimes, a Gurl, said this week the 49ers have made it this far despite the play of quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo, who has been ... well, less than spectacular.

I mean, what else would you call 303 yards, no touchdowns and two interceptions in two playoff games so far? What else would you call quarterbacking an offense that generated zero, none, zilch-o TDs in the Niners' 13-10 win over the Packers last week?

Stellar?

 Well, Garcia seems to think Kimes had no right to point that out. And why? Because she never played the game. And if you didn't play the game, you've got no right to criticize anyone who does play the game -- especially if you're, you know, a woman.

Several of Kimes's colleagues immediately jumped to her defense, which of course got the Sportsball Neanderthals all butt-hurt. One of them, some dude named Bobby Burrack on some platform called OutKick, accused them of "shielding" her from criticism merely because they defended her, and claimed (as certain men invariably do) that Garcia's rant wasn't sexist.

Which begs a couple of questions, naturally.

First of all, if Kimes was being "shielded" from criticism, how come EVERYONE ON THE FREAKING INTERWHATSIT saw that criticism? And by going after Kimes's defenders, aren't the Bobby Burracks of the webiverse trying to "shield" Garcia from criticism?

That's a horse that pulls two ways, it seems to me.

And the other question?

If Garcia's criticism of Kimes wasn't sexist, why single her out? After all, dozens of male-type people who Never Played The Game have been saying the same things. What, he just went alphabetically or something?

Look. Mina Kimes needs no help from the Blob. She's gotten where she's gotten because she's smart and perceptive and she works her ass off. She's a summa cum laude graduate of Yale who cut her journalistic teeth as an award-winning business reporter before coming ESPN in 2014 from Bloomberg. 

I'd say someone with that resume could figure out a few things about football. But what do I know?

See, I Never Played The Game, either. Or Coached The Game. But you know how I always responded when people pulled that card on me?

"You're right, I didn't play or coach the game. But what I know about it (football, basketball, etc.) I learned from people who did. So if you're saying I don't know anything about it, they must not either."

Which brings us back, sort of, to the "shielding" of Mina Kimes, and who was doing the shielding.

One of the shielders, see, said this a few weeks back when another No Gurlz Allowed type went after Kimes: "Absolute trash. Mina is fantastic at her job and has earned everything she has at ESPN. I can also tell you that I have reached out to Mina a number of times so that she could teach me about the use of analytics in football."

The "shielder" who said that?

Jeff Saturday.

As in, "Six-time Pro Bowl center, four-time All-Pro and Super Bowl XLI winner with the Indianapolis Colts." That Jeff Saturday.

Stranger HOF things

 So Big Papi is in the baseball Hall of Fame, but not for the reason a bunch of folks are claiming. They're saying the writers voted for him because he's a good guy, and Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens are not, and that's why Papi is in and Bonds and Clemens, their final shot now exhausted, have been cast into outer darkness.

The Blob's official position on this is it's ridiculous.

Bad guys get into the Hall of Fame all the time, starting with the first HOFer, a raving sociopath named Ty Cobb. And if it's such a popularity contest among the voting writers, how did Ted Williams and Steve Carlton get in, considering how much they hated the writers?

Silly. Completely silly.

The whole idea, first of all, disses David Ortiz, suggesting as it does it was his winning smile and not his baseball skills that put him over the top. This is also ridiculous, because David Ortiz got in on merit, and would have even if he regularly threw stuff at, say, Dan Shaughnessy -- which he probably should have, given that Shaughnessy is the only Boston writer who didn't vote for Papi, a dick move if ever there was one.

And Bonds and Clemens?

Saying they didn't get in because they, too, warred with the writers is a simpleton's view that obscures the real reason they didn't get in. And the real injustice.

The Blob has long maintained that a Hall of Fame that doesn't include one of the top five players in history, and the best pitcher of his generation, is a Hall of Fame that doesn't accurately reflect the game's history. And if you've ever been to Cooperstown, that's a serious charge, because Cooperstown is a shrine to history.

But of course there's the PED thing, and Clemens' alleged affair with a 15-year-old girl, the latter of which would be far more legitimate grounds to keep out the Rocket. It just won't do to be putting accused statutory rapists in the Hall, no matter how many other miscreants of various stripes already reside there.

But the PED thing?

Well, that's a judgment based on innuendo and rumor, considering neither Bonds nor Clemens ever showed red for PED use. That they juiced is probably undeniable, but, still. Due process ought to mean something in this country, quaint as it seems to have become.

Look. If I'd had a vote, I'd have voted at least for Bonds, on the theory that he was one of the top five players of all time long before he allegedly got frisky with the Cream and the Clear. And in any case, denying Bonds and/or Clemens for doing something Major League Baseball didn't initially give a hang about seems unfair -- and opens up an enormous can of worms.

Because if you're going to deny entry to the juicers from baseball's Steroids Era, what do you do with all the players you've already voted in from the Greenie Era? And by that I mean, all the players in the '60s, '70s and '80s who gobbled amphetamines like M&Ms to help get them through day games after night games.

Don't tell me that wasn't better baseball through chemistry. Please.

In any case, Bonds and Clemens now join Pete Rose as baseball's most famous outcasts. Pete, of course, would be in already if he could just stop lying. I mean, how absurd is it to bar him for gambling when baseball is now all in on gambling?

I mean, MLB now has not one but two Official Sports Betting Partners -- DraftKings and BetMGM. Good grief, there's even a sportsbook setting up shop right outside Wrigley Field.

That sound you hear is an especially bitter cackle from Charlie Hustle.

David Ortiz, on the other hand, is just laughing that big laugh of his. As he should.

Frozen in the past

 You can't legislate the asshat out of people. Enlightenment, and simple human decency, has to come from within, not to get all Dalai Lama on ya or anything.

And so the other day I was watching that viral YouTube clip of Jacob Panetta of the ECHL's  Jacksonville Icemen making a monkey gesture at South Carolina defenseman Jordan Subban, who is black and the brother of the NHL's PK Subban. And it took me right back.

What's it been now? Twenty, 25 years?

Memory fails. But it doesn't fail enough that I don't remember the fans in Indianapolis dangling bananas over the glass to taunt the Fort Wayne Komets' Steve Fletcher all those years ago.

And so it goes, and so it goes. Dismayingly so.

You'd think in 2022 people would be better, the way Star Trek imagined humans would be in its hopeful vision of mankind's future. That seems impossibly quaint now, of course. We're still, some of us, the same bunch of racist s***heads we've always been.

Hence Panetta and his monkey gesture, a timelessly vile meme. If you watch the vid, you can also hear the fans chanting the n-word at Subban -- lineal descendants, as it were, of the fans in Indy with their bananas.

And ain't that charming.

The Icemen, God bless 'em, did what they could. They cut Panetta with blinding speed, just as the San Jose Barracuda of the AHL immediately suspended forward Krystof Hrabik after he made the same monkey gesture at another black player, Boko Imama. It's safe to say neither Panetta nor Hrabik will ever find gainful employment in professional hockey again.

I wish I could also say this means we'll never see the Subbans and Imamas subjected to racism on the ice again. But I can't.

We live in a world, after all, where a member of congress (the sensationally knuckleheaded Lauren Boebert) can openly slur Muslim colleague Ilhan Omar, snidely wisecracking that she wasn't scared of Omar because "she wasn't wearing a backpack" -- a broad hint that Omar, because she's Muslim, is probably a terrorist. Because, you know, they all are.

And Boebart's fellow Republican congress critters? Did they publicly reprimand her?

Oh, hell no. They just shrugged. 

Boebart's constituents, meanwhile, no doubt chuckled, and will now vote for her even more enthusiastically.

I'd like to think otherwise. But I see the Former Guy eagerly stoking white resentment over imagined wrongs, and I see his acolytes following suit just as eagerly, and ...

And, well. This ain't Star Trek's America, boys and girls. Let's just say that.

Now, maybe that's just the natural pessimist coming out in me. But you know what?

Looks to me like it's not just hockey that's frozen in the past.

Earth pays a visit

 Come on, now. Admit it. Part of you saw this coming, right?

Thursday night, the bust-out W against those (bleeping) Purdues, Phinisee With The Phinisher joining Watford For The Win in the pantheon. And those banners at one end of the Hall suddenly looking not so much like artifacts from the days of the Crusades.

Sunday afternoon, and ...

Earth to your Indiana Hoosiers: Welcome back.

And what you take away from Michigan 80, Indiana 62 is the Big Ten is a mean old place that does not allow for either celebratory hangovers or giddy assumptions -- the assumption in this case being that the Hoosiers had revived the program and all would be well from here on out.

Well ... no. It doesn't work that way.

Michigan came in a struggling 8-7 basketball team, but a basketball team with a lot of kids who can play the game off its feet when they're right, and finally they were right Sunday. Hunter Dickinson scored 25 points and dominated the Hoosiers on the low blocks. Stickout freshman Caleb Houstan added 19, including five threes on seven attempts. The Wolverines jumped out to an early 17-7 lead and it never got much better for Indiana.

And Robert Phinisee?

Thursday's hero scored two points on 1-for-5 shooting in 18 minutes.

In that, he was the perfect reflection of the Hoosiers, who perhaps learned yet another lesson to file away for future reference: Heroics don't automatically transfer from one game to the next, and past performance does not guarantee future results, especially in a conference which grinds down everyone in the long January-to-March slog. 

Which is to say, Mike Woodson has taught this team to compete, and even to win. Now comes the part about winning consistently and putting whatever happened last time behind you, whether it's a bust-out W or a bust of an L.

Sunday afternoon, Earth paid a visit.

Wednesday, Penn State does likewise.

The grind goes on. And the education.

Perfection

 The weekend lived off two little words, until we wore them out. Two little words that were were never going to be enough, and yet somehow were all that were necessary.

The two little words were, "No way."

No way Patrick Mahomes could take his team 45 yards in 13 seconds to keep Kansas City's season alive. 

No way Josh Allen could throw a seed 19 yards to Gabriel Davis -- between two defenders, on 4th-and-13 -- to keep Buffalo's season alive.

No way the Chiefs and Bills could score 25 points in the last 1:54, and then have to go overtime to settle it.

No way Mahomes could out-Mahomes himself, and Allen could out-Mahomes Mahomes. No way the NFL won't change its idiotic overtime rule, now that it deprived Allen of one last chance to out-Mahomes Mahomes.

No way Tom Brady could out-Brady himself by wiping out a 27-3 deficit -- only to see Matthew Stafford out-Brady Brady in the end. 

And, finally ...

No way four playoff games could end up as walkoffs -- three by field goals, one by Mahomes-to-Travis-Kelce in OT.

Maybe this wasn't the greatest weekend of playoff football the NFL has ever put out there. But it's Monday morning now, and a greater one has yet to show up for roll call.

Four games. Three Ws by the visiting team. Three field goals as time expired to win; another field goal to force overtime; two No. 1 seeds going down in one day.

All of it capped by Sunday night, when Mahomes and Allen played the quarterback position as well as two men can play, under the most pressurized of circumstances.

The numbers only tell part of the story, but they're a part worth noting. Mahomes completed 33-of-44 passes for 378 yards and three scores, and ran seven times for 69 yards and another score. Allen was 27-of-37 for 329 yards and four touchdowns, all to Gabriel Davis; he ran 11 times for 68 yards. 

Twice in the last two minutes, Allen drove the Bills to go-ahead scores with their season teetering. Mahomes matched him with a scoring drive and a game-tying drive in the same space of time. It was like watching Ali and Frazier, only with a surgeon's scalpel instead of blunt-force trauma.

Consider: Between them, Mahomes and Allen threw 81 passes and lugged the rock 18 times. That's 99 snaps in all. And yet neither threw an interception and neither lost a fumble.

Ninety-nine snaps, zero turnovers. With their seasons on the line. No way they can do that. No way.

Those words again.

The hometown die

 Sunday morning now, and the headlines write themselves. I mean, come on, now ...

Snowflakes 1. Q-Aaron 0.

Niners Immunize Green Bay.

Packers Lam-Blow Another.

Well, Isn't That Special (Teams)

Meanwhile, in Nashville ...

Who Dey? Dis Is Dey.

You've Been Burrow-ed.

Crash Of The Titans.

And the best one: 

This Is Why Country Music Is So Sad.

Look. It's not like the home teams didn't try. Tennessee rigged the ticket transfer system in an attempt to keep Who Dey Nation from taking over Nissan Stadium in all that ugly-ass tiger-stripe orange. The Packers threw winter at the 49ers -- 14 degrees and zero windchill, plus second-half snow. Nothing worked.

In the end, the Titans, top seed in the AFC, scored 10 points in the second half to erase a 16-6 Bengals lead, then lost it when Logan Wilson intercepted Ryan Tannehill with 20 seconds left just as it seemed Tennessee was driving toward a clinching field goal. Instead, it was the Bengals' rookie kicker Evan McPherson who banged through a 52-yarder as time expired to send Cincinnati to the AFC title game for the first time in 33 years.

And in Green Bay?

The Packers blew it. Straight up blew it.

They were up 10-3 with five minutes to play, and then they weren't. First the Niners blocked a punt and Talanoa Hufanga scooped it up and ran it in to tie the score at 10-10. Then, on the Niners next possession, Deebo Samuel got a crucial third down at the Packers 38 on third-and-7, and -- again, as time expired -- Robbie Gould, who's never missed a playoff attempt, kicked the winning field goal from 47 yards out.

Niners 13, Packers 10. First time since 2010 both No, 1 seeds got upset on the same day. Fourth time Aaron Rodgers has lost to the 49ers in the playoffs, against zero wins. It's the most playoff losses without a win by a starting quarterback against one opponent in 72 years.

It might be the first time ever two playoff games ended in exactly the same way on the same day -- a game-winning field goal as time expired. The Blob is not enough of a stat-head to say for sure.

In any case, the hometown try was the hometown die yesterday. Which should put both Kansas City and Tampa Bay on high alert today.

Onward.

Dey scared

 You hate to label an NFL playoff team chicken, especially one that loves to bludgeon you with Derrick Henry 25 or 30 times a game. But the Tennessee Titans ought to be available in original recipe or extra crispy.

This is because the Titans decided to change their rules on ticket transfers this week, on account of their own fans frequently get out-fanned by visiting fans and they're hosting a team with a particularly rabid fan base. The Bengals are coming, see, and Who Dey Nation is likely to come with them. So to avoid seeing their home field go tiger-stripe orange for today's AFC divisional playoff game, they decreed this week no one could sell their tickets until 4:30 p.m. yesterday.

"We want Nissan Stadium to be two-tone blue," explained Titans' VP of Ticketing, Brooke Ellenberger, somewhat dumbly giving away the game.

Now, the Blob generally has no dog in these hunts, but the Titans blatantly trying to gin up their home-field advantage by keeping out visiting fans has it rooting solidly for the Bengals today. Because what the Titans are doing is plain dirty pool. Plus, it's chicken as all get out, as noted.

Look, you want to do everything in your power to get your fans out, more power to you. But to suddeny change your rules in an attempt to micro-manage your home-field advantage is contemptible. Plus it's a major diss on your fan base, which clearly the Titans think cannot be relied upon at crunch time.

If I were one of those inclined to wear two-tone blue to games in Nashville, that would piss me off something fierce. And maybe motivate me to prove the Titans wrong.

Which makes me think the Titans might be playing a longer game here than I realize.

Nah. They're just chicken.

Thirsty no more

 Of course they stormed the court. You beat Those People from West Lafayette for the first time in ten tries, in a state where beating 'em in basketball still means a hell of a lot more than beating them in football, it's just what you do.

And so Jaden Ivey's shot at forcing overtime flicked off the glass, spun around the iron and fell off, and the rush was on. Indiana 68, No. 4 Purdue 65, y'all. And the Assembly Hall floor disappeared beneath a blanket of yowling humanity.

This was the first signature W for Mike Woodson, who knows all about both beating and losing to the Purdues. And its signature moment, embossed for all time, happened when Rob Phinisee took the inbounds pass, got a thudding screen from Race Thompson, and drifted to the corner, where he launched a 3-pointer for the ages.

There were, what, 17 seconds to play? And down the well Phinisee's shot splashed, taking Indiana from 65-63 down to 66-65 up, ahead for keeps. 

Watford For The Win, meet Phinisee With The Phinisher.

And, sure, there was irony in the fact it was Phinisee the Lafayette guy who hit the dagger three to take down his hometown school, but there was maybe more irony in the fact it was a Lafayette guy who so often couldn't hit water if he fell out of a boat. His shooting struggles are by now legendary, and a big reason why he comes off the bench now in Bloomington.

But rivalry games frequently put their full weight on the most unlikely of heroes, and so there you go. IU All-American Trayce Jackson-Davis got in heavy foul trouble early, played just 11 minutes and scored four points; Rob Phinisee came off the pine to play 26 minutes, make 8-of-13 shots and 4-of-7 from the arc, and score 20 points.

The last time Phinisee scored 20 points in an Indiana uniform?

Try "never." His previous high was 18, and the second and last time he did that was almost a year ago to the day, on Jan. 21, 2021, against Iowa.

Perhaps it's giving more credit than is due, but maybe it took Mike Woodson to bring Thursday night out in him. Maybe it took a guy who fought the Purdues tooth-and-nail back in the day to get Indiana to fight them tooth-and-nail again. And certainly, last night, it took Woodson's kids to give Candy Stripe Nation something to brag about besides those five championship banners -- ancient as the Bayeux Tapestry at this point, and calling to mind not Rob Phinisee but some musty triumph waged by medieval knights.

Speaking of droughts. 

Of which one, finally, is over, its survivors thirsty no more.

The Spy Games

 The Winter Olympics are just a couple of weeks away now, which should fill the Blob with joy because the Blob loves it some Winter Olympics. This is mainly because the Booger Yourself Up quotient is very high.

You've got downhill skiing and luge and luge-for-the-even-more-insane, aka, skeleton. There's an event for people who, as kids no doubt, used to jump off the roofs of their houses (ski jumping). There's an event for people who like to mix firearms with oxygen debt (the biathon), and short-track speedskating, which is a little like NASCAR at Martinsville, only with switchblades.

It's all glorious fun if you're a big fan of calamity, which the Blob is. But somehow this time around the Blob can't muster the customary enthusiasm, even if it knows there'll be curling involved.

This is because it's in Beijing, China.

And the Chinese are notorious for their human-rights violations.

And no spectators from outside the country will be allowed on account of the Bastard Plague.

And, oh, yeah: The Chinese especially enjoy hacking other people's technology. They're as fond of doing it as the Russians, those fascist jackholes.

Therefore, because no one trusts the Chinese not to spy on the athletes while they're in Beijing, four nations -- the U.S., Great Britain, Canada and the Netherlands -- have taken the extraordinary step of advising their athletes to leave their phones at home and take burner phones instead. This might make it harder to keep in touch with their families, but it also means the Chinese won't be monitoring their phones and stealing their personal stuff.

And isn't that a hell of a note.

The whole philosophy behind the Olympic Games, after all, is that sport can bring nations together in mutual respect, no matter their ideological differences. It's largely a fantasy, of course, but that's the ideal. 

Now the nations will come together again in Beijing, but hardly in mutual respect. With very good reason, they'll come together with mutual suspicion of the host.

Citius, Altius, Fortius, We-Don't-Trust-You-ius. 

Now there's an ideal for ya.

Caught off base

This begins with God's thermostat, on another gray January morning. In these parts it's supposed to do beastly things today, like back up all afternoon and leave windchill treads on a whole lot of winter-weary souls in the process. 

Which gets me thinking about the man and the boy.

It's an odd segue, admittedly. But not all that odd, as you shall see.

I found the man and the boy standing in the sun on a crushed-shell walkway one glorious morning, and baseball was happening all around them. This was sometime in the mid-'90s in Ft. Myers, Fla., on the sort of morning you get a lot of in Florida in late March, before the humidity ramps up and chases everyone either into the air conditioning or onto some white-sand beach.

The man and the boy were from up north somewhere (Chicago? Memory fails) and they were here because every year they were here at this time. It was their annual father-son ritual, they explained, to come somewhere warm during the last lash of winter to take in spring training. And if blue skies and temps nudging 80 and the sounds of baseball were all around them, could spring up north be far behind?

We stood there awhile, the three of us, and watched baseball players stretching on impossibly green grass. It was both thoroughly mundane and thoroughly wonderful.

And leave it to baseball to screw it up.

If this is the point in winter where you start wistfully savoring memories like the aforementioned, it's also, this winter, the point where you can begin mourning spring training. It's not going to happen this year. And the reason it's not going to happen is because baseball is dumb.

The owners, see, locked out the players the first part of December, before negotiations on the new collective bargaining agreement had even begun. No one had proposed anything. No one had filed a counter-proposal. The owners just thought it would be cute to launch a pre-emptive strike.

Then they sat around for a month before offering their first lame proposal, which they knew damn good and well the players would reject.

This is not good-faith negotiating. This is next-level stupid -- and every bit of it is on the owners this time.

They had a good thing going in the 2021, a bounce-back-from-'rona summer that ended with the Atlanta Braves shocking the world by beating the Astros in five games in the World Series. If you were a baseball fan, it whetted the appetite for 2022.

And then the owners said, "No soup for you."

Now there will be no father-and-son moments in the glorious sun in spring training, barring a miracle. And you can bet the owners will let this drag on into the season, too, while commissioner Rob Manfred, the owners' pool boy, wrings his hands and lets it happen.

Meanwhile, the NBA will play on, hogging all the thunder. And the NFL -- which eats MLB for breakfast every fall -- will say "Hey, look! It's combine week! Come see guys run sprints! And don't forget the NFL Draft, the best least event-y event in sports!"

Aye-yi-yi. The stupid, it burns.

The struggle, ongoing

 Eric Bieniemy was on the Kansas City sideline last night, coordinating the offense the way he has for the Chiefs since 2018. He's been an assistant in K.C. for nine years now. His first NFL assistant's job was 17 years ago, when he was hired as running backs coach by the Minnesota Vikings.

In 2007 and 2008, his top back, Adrian Peterson, led the NFL in rushing. As the Chiefs' OC,  he won a ring in 2020. He's 52 years old, and pretty much everyone in the NFL thinks it's high time the guy was a head coach -- especially considering some of the noodle-brains who have been head coaches during Bieniemy's time in the league.

Right now, the Bears, the Dolphins, the Vikings, the Texans and the Raiders all have head coaching vacancies.

So far, Eric Bieniemy has been interviewed a grand total of one time.

Maybe it's timing that's getting him passed over. Maybe it's that he's not the right fit, although plenty of teams have opted for plenty of horrendous fits in the last 17 years.

Or maybe, at least partly, it's that he's black. 

I bring this up not because I'm trying to start something, or to make people uncomfortable who clearly aren't interested in any narrative that makes them uncomfortable (See; All the hysteria about Critical Race Theory, the advanced law school study that allegedly is terrorizing your fifth-grader). I bring it up because it's Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and thus seems relevant.

These days King, and his legacy, get co-opted too easily by those who would have locked him up and called him a communist back in the day. They love his signature quote about a man being judged by the content of his character, but miss the part where he acknowledges that in 1960s America it was mostly wishful thinking -- i.e. a dream. 

And in 2022?

A lot has changed, but too much hasn't. If there are spiritual descendants of King still calling out racial inequality in 2022, the faction that damned him as an enemy of America has its own spiritual descendants. And they don't want to hear about the darker side of our racial legacy -- or about black America, period -- any more than their '60s brethren did.

And as for progress in judging a man by the content of his character in the NFL?

That work remains unfinished, too. In fact, after the firings of David Culley in Houston and Brian Flores in Miami this month, the NFL now has exactly as many black head coaches (one) as it did when Fritz Pollard became the first black head coach in NFL history -- in 1921.

And so the struggle is ongoing, and men like Bieniemy are part of it. A century and a year after Fritz Pollard, something the first black general manager in NFL history once said remains true.

If you're black in America, Ozzie Newsome observed, you have to be twice as good as everyone else to achieve the same things.

True when King led the marchers across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. True today, apparently.

Last call

 The best part about the NFL's wild-card weekend was not the brainless quarterback draw the Cowboys ran in the middle of the field with 14 seconds to play and no timeouts, nor the Bills turning the Patriots into a frozen treat, nor the Chiefs sending Ben Roethlisberger into retirement with a swift kick in the pants.

It was what Bengals coach Zac Taylor did after the Who Deys won a playoff game for the first time in 31 years.

What he did was, he hit the bar on the way home.

No, not to drink. To present the Bengals fans gathered there with a game ball.

Taylor stopped by the Mt. Lookout Tavern, a favored hangout for Bengals fans, on his way home from the Bengals' 26-19 win over the Raiders. There he made a brief speech and delivered a football with the team logo on it to the patrons, who were likely well-lubricated by that time.

And for those wondering "What about the league's Bastard Plague protocols?", he kept his distance and didn't stay long.

Now that's how you do a last call. And win the heart of a city.

Today in nitwittery, resolved

 Well, ain't this is a relief.

Looks like the hostage situation in Australia is over, as another Aussie judge rejected Novak "It's A 'Me' Thing" Djokovic's latest appeal to keep his unvaccinated self in the country. Which means he's finally going to release the Australian Open and come out with his hands up.

And so the tournament can now proceed without ONE GUY inserting a wrench into the works on behalf of, well, himself. Me, myself and I has rarely had a more stark display.

A decent human being would have bowed out gracefully days ago, for the good of the tournament and his game. Instead, he instigated a soap opera and got away with it, because Aussie Open organizers allowed him to. They even went so far as to include him in the tournament bracket while he was still throwing lawyers around.

Gutlessness vs. narcissism: We all know who wins that match. Every time.

Thankfully the Aussie legal system was, as it were, a much tougher draw.

Here's your Bill(s), Bill

 It was just yesterday that the Blob joked about watching Bill Belichick slowly turn into a Jack Nicholson-sicle in Windchill City, aka, Buffalo.

And then, it happened! 

Well, sort of.

Certainly Belichick's countenance was scarcely less frozen than Jack's after that 47-17 butt-kicking Josh Allen and the Bills administered to Belichick's Patriots last night. You don't get much more thorough laminations than going an entire NFL game without having to punt, which the Bills did. Seven touchdowns, one kneeldown, over and out.

Oh, and, an endless array of headline possibilities ...

Freezer Burn-ed.

Iced, Iced, Baby.

Ice Station Zero (Punts).

Osh-Josh My Gosh.

Allen Wrenched.

And so on, and so on.

I suppose this means people will now be hyping the Bills as the team to beat in the AFC, except if we've learned anything about the NFL this year is Jerry Glanville was right when he said it means Not For Long. Past performance guarantees nothing in the league, a reality this season has made clear with every succeeding week.

Team A crushed Team B one week, then gets crushed by Team C the next week. Happened all season -- including to the Patriots, who looked like (Oh, not, not AGAIN) a Super Bowl team while winning seven in a row back in October and November; then didn't when they lose three of their last five games.

Last night especially. The defense that looked so good a couple of months ago was a screen door vs. a summer breeze last night against Allen, who was 21-of-25 for 308 yards and five touchdowns and ran six times for 66 yards on top of it. 

And now?

Well, who knows. Maybe Allen is lights out next weekend, too, or maybe he and Bills will just be out. Ditto the Bengals, who gasped their way past the Raiders for their first payoff win in 31 years, which undoubtedly means they'll roll in the divisional round.

Onward.

And now ... windchill football!

 Ray Ratto of the Defector beat me to this, which is fine because he's Ray Ratto and I'm not. But the weather news out of Buffalo unleashed Ray's inner bony-fisted old man, and it's done the same for me, an actual bony-fisted old man.

The weather news out of Buffalo is this: It's supposed to be somewhere between Sweet Jesus It's Cold and My Toes Just Turned Black this evening for the Bills wild-card game against the Patriots.

Temps close to zero with windchills well below zero are forecast, which has prompted the Erie County Sheriff's Office to issue a public safety warning advising fans on how to dress  (although, being Buffalonians, I'm sure they already know how to dress). In any case, the Blob loves this. There's going to be nothing better than watching Bill Belichick slowly turn into a Jack Nicholson-sicle, then proclaim after the game that the weather "was not a factor."

Of course it will be a factor. And it should be, because this is football, not ballet.

If the Blob were king of the world, see, it would decree all football games be played outdoors, because this is what God and George Halas and Curley Lambeau intended. Until the big TV money came along, it was taken as an article of faith that the elements were supposed to be an integral part of the game. After all, some of the most memorable games in the history were memorable because of the elements.

The Ice Bowl. The Fog Bowl.  The Blizzard Bowl between Ohio State and Michigan in 1950. The icier Ice Bowl between the Bengals and the Chargers in 1981, when the windchills approached Roald Amundsen Explores Antarctica levels.

"But Mr. Blob," you're saying now. "Lousy weather frequently makes for lousy football.  Shouldn't we get to see all the teams at their best?"

Hell, no, we shouldn't. It's the playoffs. I don't want to see the teams play in climate-controlled 72-degree comfort. I want to see them suffer, because at its core, football is all about suffering. The suffering is what makes it great, to paraphrase Tom Hanks' drunken manager in "A League Of Their Own."

So, yeah, bring on those windchills. Open the damn roofs. Make 'em play Man Football and not, you know, Video Game Football.

Ray Ratto and I are in full agreement on this. 

Of course, he's Ray Ratto, so he says it better. But you get the gist.

Today in nitwittery, Part Deux

 And now the latest from Down Under, where Novak Djokovic continues to hold the Australian Open hostage because he JUST WON'T GET THE DAMN SHOT.

Sorry for the caps. But this stuff just makes me lose my mind.

The latest on the Djokovic situation is the Aussies' revocation of his visa has been reinstated, which means we're back to Square One. Which means Joker stands to be deported because, again, he JUST WON'T GET THE DAMN SHOT.

Oh, and keeps lying about when his unvaccinated ass contracted the Bastard Plague, which apparently was before he attended a public event back in December. 

That's some next-level narcissism right there.

Of course, a healthy portion of blame for this mess must be assigned to the Australian Open organizers, a pack of mollycoddles who won't do what seems obvious because, well, it's Novak Djokovic, 20-time Grand Slam winner (and, ahem, big-money attraction). They could resolve all this in a heartbeat if they'd just say, "Fine, be that way, ya dummy",  kick him out of the draw and proceed without him.

Of course, they won't do that, because, again, it's Novak Djokovic.

Yeesh. For a sport that uses as many balls as tennis, these folks sure can't seem to find any.

Today in nitwittery

 (In which the Blob goes international, first to Australia and then to Africa)

Speaking of Down Under ...

The Australian Open tennis tournament is Under a whether delay, as in "it all depends on whether or not one guy decides to follow the rules or go home." 

That one guy is Novak Djokovic, who has 20 career grand slam titles and thus is one of the greatest male players in history. He's also a self-indulgent jackass whose unvaccinated status and refusal to abide by Australia's Bastard Plague vaccination statutes has now caused the organizers to delay the tournament.

Joker -- who supposedly had a visa exemption, but it turned out he didn't -- remains in Australia because an Australian court ruled the country couldn't just deport him the way it would, I don't know, anyone else. Australia, like much of the world, is struggling to contain an outbreak of the especially virulent omicron variant of the Plague -- and, unlike the U.S., doesn't mess around about it.

Well, unless it involves Novak Djokovic, one of those kooky anti-vaccine wusses who don't think the rules should apply to him. 

I say the organizers need to say "OK, fine," and proceed without him. Of course, because it's Djokovic, they probably won't.

Which is the whole problem.

* And now to Cameroon, where the whole problem was not the Plague but the fact a certain referee had apparently not been exposed to it, and so was free to ...

Well, I don't know what you'd call it. Not refereeing, that's for sure.

What happened in the Africa Cup of Nations soccer tournament was Zambian ref Janny Sikazwe -- who actually is regarded well enough to have been a World Cup ref in 2018 -- forgot how to tell time, which is sort of crucial in a soccer match. And so, with Mali leading Tunisia 1-0 in the 85th minute, he suddenly blew his whistle and declared the match completed.

The sticking point, of course, is that soccer matches last 90 minutes plus extra time.

Tunisia's side, naturally, threw a fit, after which Sikazwe changed his mind and ruled the match would continue -- only to again declare the match over in the 89th minute.

This after a half that included a penalty, a red card, two video reviews and a water break, which should have added several minutes of extra time. Sikazwe apparently decided the extra time was actually reverse extra time, which is why he declared the match over with 15 seconds remaining in the required 90 minutes.

But wait, there's more!

After everyone had left the pitch, done their media availability and dressed -- a 30-minute stretch, all told -- tournament officials decided to bring everyone back to replay the last three minutes and include the appropriate injury time. Tunisia, still miffed, refused. And so Mali won 1-0.

Nitwittery. It's contagious, too.

Bear-ly functional

 And now it's time to look in on Your Chicago Bears, who just fired head coach Matt Nagy and GM Ryan Pace in an effort to Clean House and embark on a Fresh Start ...

A "Fresh Start", of course, meaning, "A fresh start to once again go back in time 37 years to the season we cling to to this very day."

Yes, that's right, boys and girls. It's 2022 and the Bears are still doing the "Super Bowl Shuffle," a dance step that went the way of the jitterbug and the Charleston about the time Gorbachev said "Screw this, communism ain't workin' anymore."

In this latest chapter of Back To The Future, George McCaskey, whose family has owned the Bears since Bronko Nagurski was ramming his leather hat into people, has announced the next GM will answer solely to him. No more middleman! (i.e., no more Ted Phillips, who presumably will be banished to the basement with his favorite stapler). This train runs through George and George alone from here on out!

Of course, this was right after George told the assembled media he's just a fan and not, you know, a football expert. Which makes you wonder what he's been doing all this time since LITERALLY HIS ENTIRE LIFE has been spent around football.

If this does not exactly sound like a Fresh Start to you, well, congratulations, you're a Bears fan. Which means you already know what's going to happen: The Bears will bring in another alleged genius coach who'll continue to screw up poor Justin Fields, and the new GM, after consulting with George, will draft Mitchell Trubisky again because by God he reminds us of Bob Avellini.

And the 21st century will go on without them.

Unless, of course, George decides to report to George and suggest it's time to fire George.

Hey. A Bears fan can hope.

A landscape gone green

 Georgia won the football national championship last night for the first time since a Georgian (Jimmy Carter) was in the White House, so woof-woof-woof and go-you-Dawgs and all that. Georgia Rolled the Tide which had Rolled them a month ago, 33-18, scoring 20 unanswered points at the end to settle the issue.

It was exactly the sort of spectacle college football should be, with two sets of mighty scholars battling it out while taking a break from Shakespeare and chem labs. And all  for the glory of dear old Whatsamatta U., long may her groves of academe thrive!

Um, OK. So no.

No, this was as professional a display as you'll ever see, and it's getting more professional with every day. Even the halftime spread in the press box was evidence that big-boy college football is swimming in dough these days like Scrooge McDuck; instead of Boiler Dogs or Domer Donuts, the working media was served shrimp cocktail from Indianapolis's famous steakhouse, St. Elmo's.

I'm trying to place a dollar figure on that, in my head. I stopped because math is not my strong suit.

Whatever it was, it had to be considerable. And yet another small display of the opulence that belies the notion that these are just student-athletes playing for coaches who teach American History 101 on the side to make ends meet. 

Not anymore. These days the ends meet in the multiple millions, and the marquee coaches regularly jump ship from even the most storied programs -- (cough) Notre Dame (cough) -- for even more multiple millions. And the universities gladly pay those multiple millions, because there are even MORE multiple millions to be made if Coach can turn their programs into, well, Alabama or Georgia.

The consequence of this is the top programs have become wholly corporate enterprises, 'Bama Inc. and Georgia Inc. and Ohio State Inc. And if you're paying high-end corporate salaries to the coaches who are the CEOs of those programs, eventually the unpaid labor that sustains it all would demand a little profit-sharing.

Which is where we are now, with the introduction of the transfer portal and the Name and Image License rule that allows college football players to cut their own endorsement deals.

And if that was inevitable, so is what has happened since. College football is now an unrestrained marketplace, with players entering the transfer portal at head-spinning rates to follow coaches who bail on them for a bigger paycheck, and cutting endorsement deals that could pay them millions before they ever "turn pro." 

And now the next inevitable step in that process: Charlie Batch, an Eastern Michigan alum and former NFL quarterback, is offering now-former Oklahoma quarterback Caleb Williams a $1 million NIL deal with GameAbove Capital to transfer to Eastern. 

In other words, this is a rich alum doing what rich alums have always done under the table, which is pay players to come to their schools. The NIL now makes it all above board, because once players start marketing themselves, how is what Batch is doing anything but market forces at work?

The NCAA is likely horrified by this, but what can it do? It opened the door to all of it when it allowed college athletics to become a corporate enterprise, beholden to market forces itself. 

Once that happened, profit became the prime mover, as it is with any business. It's why the Big Ten added outliers like Maryland and Rutgers, because those schools gave it access to the lucrative East Coast TV markets. It's why there are 50 gazillion bowl games now, all tied to corporate sponsors. It's why there's a Big Ten Network and an SEC Network and an ACC Network, and broadcast deals that could choke a horse.

So what happens next?

The Blob is no seer in these matters, but it seems we're on the road to a great unraveling that will end with the Power 5 conferences splitting off and forming their own market-driven corporate structure. The NCAA is deathly afraid of this -- but, again, the NCAA has no one to blame but itself. 

That's the thing about greed, see.

 It has a way of turning on those it seduces. And its teeth are sharp.

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 18

 And now this season's final edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the elusive Blob feature that, every year, appears suddenly at the tail end of summer and then vanishes just suddenly as winter tightens its icy grip -- prompting critics to say "Damn, this grip is icy!", and also, "Hey, where'd he go? I wasn't finished abusing him in print!":

1. "Fire Matt Nagy!" (Bears fans)

2. "Fire Mike Zimmer!" (Vikings fans)

3. "Fire Brian Flores!" (Dolphins fans)

4. "You got it!" (Bears, Vikings, Dolphins ownership)

5. "But we beat the Bears!" (Mike Zimmer)

6. "But we beat the Patriots!" (Brian Flores)

7. "Come on, score!" (Steelers, Raiders fans as overtime goes to the last seconds)

8. "You got it!" (Steelers, Raiders)

9. In other news, the Browns beat the Bengals, the Dolphins beat the Patriots, the Lions beat the Packers, the Seahawks beat the Cardinals.

10. "So?" (The playoff-bound Bengals, Patriots, Packers and Cardinals)

Horse pucky

 No, no, no, you ninnies. It was the Jacksonville FANS who were supposed to show up as clowns, not YOU.

But, you know, signals get crossed sometimes. And so the fans showed up in greasepaint on Clown Day, and then the 2-14 Jaguars, who were supposed to be the actual clowns in this scenario, played like a real gosh-darn football team ...

And, well: Jacksonville 26, Indianapolis 11. Wait, what?

Cue the calliope music. Throw in some "Yakety-Sax." Look, is that Carson Wentz, Darius Leonard and the Colts O-line all trying to squeeze into that little car?

Apparently so.

Apparently this was the most ridiculous, unfathomable loss in Colts' franchise history, except Joe Namath saves that day for the Horsies. Joe Namath beat the mighty Colts 16-7 in Super Bowl III, becoming perhaps the only player in history ever to make the Hall of Fame because of one game. Someone named Matt Snell ran for 121 yards against the scariest defense in football. Jimmy Orr might still be waving his hands in the end zone, wide open if only Earl Morrall had seen him. Et cetera, et cetera.

Yesterday?

Yesterday the only thing on the line for the 9-7 Colts was a playoff berth.

Yesterday all they had to do was beat the worst team in the NFL.

Yesterday, somehow, they were down 26-3 until a garbage-time touchdown that came while the Jags were all high-fiving one another.

Super Bowl III was shocking. This was just inexcusable.

The table was set for the Colts to cruise into the playoffs after starting 1-4, a remarkable achievement. All they had to do was beat a meh Raiders team at home, and then beat a Jaguars team that had been practicing their off-season golf swings for about a month. Hell, the Patriots whipped 'em 50-10 last week, and the Patriots were already in the playoffs.

So of course the Colts jacked around and lost to the Raiders, 23-20.

And then ... well, I'm not sure "jacked around" is a strong enough term for what they did yesterday.

If it wasn't a straight laydown it was the next thing to one, and thank God for the Pittsburgh Steelers. A few minutes after the Colts' took the walk of shame to the visitors locker room in J-ville, the Steelers finally got around to beating the Ravens in overtime. That officially knocked the Colts from the playoffs.

Which was only right, because these Colts didn't deserve to make the playoffs.

The last two weeks, and especially yesterday, demonstrated their unworthiness, and never mind their seven Pro Bowlers or the 8-2 mid-season run that resurrected their season. A team that came into the Raiders game having just beaten two playoff teams -- the Cardinals on the road, the Patriots at home -- gagged when it mattered most.

Chief gagger, or one of them, was Carson Wentz, the quarterback the Colts gambled could regain his form of four seasons ago once he was reunited with head coach Frank Reich. Unfortunately, in the two games that were biggest, Wentz came up small.

Against the Raiders, he threw for just 148 yards and one touchdown and had a passer rating of  86.6. Against Jacksonville, he threw for 185 yards and the one pointless touchdown, threw an interception and lost a fumble, and was sacked six times. His passer rating, in the biggest game of the season: 74.6.

Conversely, Trevor Lawrence, his opposite number Sunday, had a passer rating of 111.9. In a game that meant less than zero for the Jags.

This is not to put it all on Wentz, mind you. The Jaguars scored 26 points and averaged 5.5 yards per play against the uninterested Colts D. They were 7-of-15 on third down. 

The last time the Jaguars scored 26 points in a regular-season game?

October 25. Of 2020.

And, yes, the Colts had some 'rona issues and they had some injury issues, but everyone has 'rona issues and injury issues right now. Try again.

Try. 

Now there's a word that might have come in handy yesterday.

The Harbaugh perennial

 Heard someone this week daydreaming about Jim Harbaugh being the next Bears coach, and saw a clutch of stories from various news sources saying there were a pile of NFL teams interested in hiring the Michigan coach, especially the Raiders.

Obviously it must be January again, I thought.

Because, listen, few things are hardier perennials than the Jim Harbaugh Courting Dance, which happens every year at this time when there are NFL teams looking for a new coach. Harbaugh's name always goes in the speculative hopper when that happens, because he was once an NFL coach himself and a successful one, having gotten the 49ers to the Super Bowl some years back.

The buzz is louder this time only because Harbaugh had a bang-up year at UM, beating Ohio State for the first time, winning the Big Ten for the first time and making the College Football Playoff for the first time.

Because of all that, lots of folks seem to think now would be the perfect time for him to grab the money and run back to the NFL. The Blob, of course, thinks differently.

The Blob thinks if there were ever a time when Harbaugh would have been most tempted to make the leap back to the pros, it would have been last year. 

Last year, see, was Harbaugh's eighth in Ann Arbor, and the evidence suggested he'd wasted those eight years. The Wolverines had lost to Michigan State again, and Penn State, and been crushed by Wisconsin. They'd even lost to Indiana, for heaven's sake.

Overall, they'd gone 2-4 in the Covid-shortened season. It was only their fourth losing season in 53 years.

Now?

Yes, now Harbaugh's a hotter commodity than ever. But he's also, finally, got the Michigan program where he wants it. Why leave Ann Arbor when Michigan is finally Michigan again?

The obvious answer, of course, is it's the NFL and it's the money, but every team looking for a coach right now is looking for a coach because it's a dumpster fire. A head coach in the NFL is usually just component in a rebuild. Unless the Raiders or whoever would make Harbaugh both coach and de facto GM -- and that's definitely possible -- it takes savvy ownership and an even more savvy front office to turn such an unwieldy vessel as an NFL franchise.

So where's the upside?

Look. The Blob has been dead wrong on these matters more times than not. It's used to wiping egg off its face when it declares so-and-so isn't going anywhere, and then so-and-so goes somewhere. And it never, ever, ever, learns from its mistakes.

And so remember where you heard this: Jim Harbaugh isn't going anywhere.

Don't forget to bring the eggs.

An outbreak of common sense

The NFL combine is a favorite target of the Blob's lampooning, in part because it's a full-on neuroses-fest in which scouts and team officials obsess over how fast an O-lineman can run farther than he'll ever have to in a game, and how a prospect reacts to bizarre questions about his mother.

Turns out the NFL itself has finally noticed how absurd it is, too.

The Shield gets a lot of stuff wrong, but the other day it got something right, rolling out sweeping new rules for the combine that, among other things, eliminates the ridiculous Wonderlic test and threatens teams with the loss of draft picks if they ask inappropriate questions in evaluating prospects.

Of the latter, the most famous examples involve the Miami Dolphins and Atlanta Falcons. Dolphins GM Jeff Ireland once asked Dez Bryant if his mother was a prostitute; a Falcons assistant coach once asked defensive back Eli Apple if he was gay. 

Neither question had a lick to do with how well Bryant or Apple could play football. Rather, they were deliberately designed to provoke a response -- and, here in Blob World, should have. 

One response would have had Bryant asking Ireland which street his mom was working these days, or perhaps Ireland winding up with some facial rearrangement.

The other would have had Apple responding, "Why, are you asking me out?"

The NFL finally has put the kibosh on that nonsense. Ditto the Wonderlic test -- which was designed to see how well prospective quarterbacks could think on their feet, but which became a running joke when it was revealed how low many of the league's greatest quarterbacks scored on it.

So that's gone, too. Which means, although we don't often get to say it:

Way to go, NFL.

Today in sportsmanship

 ... in which a Connecticut high school girls basketball team beat an overmatched opponent 92-4, which compelled the winners to apologize and suspend its head coach for a game.

This happened at Sacred Heart Academy in Hamden, Conn., a name to which all sorts of irony now attaches given the heartlessness displayed by its coach, Jason Kirck. What Coach did against Lyman Hall High School the other night, see, was the basketball equivalent of pulling the wings off flies. 

He reportedly sent his team out there to press and fast-break even after the issue had long been decided.  God only knows why. Maybe he was channeling the evil Cobra Kai sensei from "The Karate Kid."

Sweep the leg, girls ...

Yeesh. 

Now, at this point you might be asking "Why were these teams even playing one another, Mr. Blob?" It's an excellent question, and the answer is "Because they're in the same conference." Also, there's no mercy rule in Connecticut, which means the teams didn't play with a running clock once the score reached absurd levels.

None of this explains what valuable life lessons Sacred Heart's coach thought he was teaching by doing what he did. Nor does it explain the valuable life lesson the Blob would have imparted to his players -- which is "When authority is clearly insane, defying authority is the noblest path."

Now, it's probably too much to expect 15-, 16- or 17-year-old girls to defy their Coach, because sports is a top-down dictatorship and that's ingrained in athletes from a very young age. But wouldn't you have loved to have seen a little passive resistance in this case?

Like, instead of pushing the ball up the floor at breakneck speed when you're up 50-0, you deliberately slow it down juuuuuust a step or three. Or, oops, blow a layup or two. Or go all Bobby Plump and tuck the ball under your arm while the clock runs down.

Maybe some of that did happen. Maybe a brave soul or two spoke up and said "Coach, why are we still pushing the ball upcourt?" Or suggest that deliberately embarrassing an opponent is not, you know, sportsmanlike.

Of course, Coach would likely have immediately benched anyone who did any of the above. So, no, it probably didn't.

But wouldn't it have been great if it had?

Name Game time!

Exciting news from the NASH-unal FOOT-ball League's Washington Football Team, which has been generic since the team's foof owner, Daniel Snyder, was forced to drop its previous name, the Racist Slurs, because all his sponsors were dropping him.

The team will unveil its new nickname and logo on Groundhog's Day. That's only three or so weeks away!

So, the same day the groundhog sees his shadow and we have sixteen more years of nuclear winter is the same day the Football Team renames itself. This is huge here at the Blob, which loves nothing more than coming up with suitable nicknames (and mascots!) for athletic teams.

Unfortunately, some of the finalists have already been identified, and they're BORING. You've got all the predictable candidates, like Commanders and Admirals and Armada and Brigade and Sentinels and Defenders and, of course, Presidents.

Blah. And why are there so many military suggestions for a team in our nation's capital? I know we fetishize our military here in the US of A -- look how many of our tax dollars we throw down the bottomless pit of defense -- but I'd like to think Washington D.C. stands for more than just being able to blow people who annoy us off the face of the Earth. Another Blob for another time, perhaps.

In any event, the Blob, as you knew it would, has some alternatives it finds more suitable, even if none of them would ever be considered:

* The Fightin' Matlocks, Attorneys At Law.

Because the Washington Football Team is going to need some Matlockin' now that we know about all the slobbering misogynist creeps their front office has been harboring. Oh, yeah, and pimping out their cheerleaders, that was some outstanding work, too.

Suggested mascot: A giant Andy Griffith with a briefcase in one hand and a wad of hush money in the other.

* The Fightin' Bob the Builders.

Because apparently the Washington Football Team needs some, seeing how FedEx Field became MedEx Field after a railing collapsed Sunday and dumped a bunch of fans on top of some photographers and Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts. Which means the Washington Football Team not only harbors sexual predators, its stadium is a dump, too.

Expect more litigation.

Suggested mascot: A giant Andy Griffith wearing a Bob the Builder hardhat.

* The Fightin' January Sixers.

In honor of the failed Yahoo Coup a year ago today. Few things would represent our nation's capital better than saluting the freedom-loving Americans who tried to violently disrupt the certification of a democratic election. 'Merica!

Suggested mascot: Wingnut representative Lauren Boebert with a giant papier mache head,  waving a couple of guns in the air.

Oh, wait. She already does that.

* The Fightin' Logos

Because another thing that represents our nation's capital are the corporate shills who buy the favor of our elected representatives, and the willingness of those representatives to be bought. Someone once said they should all wear sponsor patches like NASCAR drivers so we would know exactly in whose pockets they reside, so why not a football team named  the Logos?

Every week the team could wear the logo of a different special interest. You could have Oil and Gas Week and Gun Week and Silicon Valley Week and Pharma Week. You could even have Putting Small Local Businesses Out Of Business Week, sponsored by Wal-Mart and a passel of other big-box entities.

Suggested mascot: Remember the talking bill from "How A Bill Becomes Law"? That.

And last but not least ...

* The Redskins

Except instead of a Native American, the logo (not original with the Blob, mind you) would be a redskin potato. The mascot would be a giant papier mache potato named Tuber Tommy, who would engage other root vegetables in a race at halftime (Tommy would always win, of course, after various shenanigans). And instead of the tolling bell you hear at Colts games when the home team defense is on the field?

The PA system would break out "Monster Mash" instead.

Come on. You know you love it.

Geno the graceless

The Blob once observed that if Notre Dame really wanted to win a national championship in football again, the school should hire women's basketball coach Muffet McGraw as its football coach. 

After all, she was the best coach on campus. And as a two-time national champion, she knew the way.

I point this out as full disclosure that this is a precinct with a definite Muffet McGraw bias. And so you should take that into account when I say what I have to say this morning.

Which is, Geno Auriemma is a graceless jerk.

He's also the best women's basketball coach in history not named Pat Summitt, and the dynasty he's built at UConn is perhaps the last true dynasty in American sport. It's also not a wholly owned subsidiary of ESPN, despite what Muffet said as a guest on Kate Fagan's and Jessica Smetana's podcast the other day.

Fagan and Smetana asked Muffet if UConn had an "outsized" influence on women's college basketball, and Muffet, now an analyst for the ACC Network, said absolutely it did. Of course, she then went on to say what UConn has done is "amazing," and how the Huskies are the standard for everyone else in college buckets (including for Notre Dame), and how everyone is trying  to "emulate" them.

That's when she stepped in it.

"But I think it goes over the top with ESPN," she said. "That is Connecticut's network. Notre Dame has NBC. Connecticut has ESPN."

OK, first off: The ACC Network is owned and operated by ESPN. So it's Muffet McGraw's network now, too.

Secondly, most of UConn's games are not broadcast by ESPN, but by SNY. And the conference tournament for the Big East, of which UConn is a member, is a Fox property, not an ESPN property.

All of which Auriemma pointed out in his rebuttal to McGraw's comments. And if he'd stopped there, he'd have been fine.

But Geno can't help being Geno. So he had to go full jerkwater.

"I guess Muffet's bored," he all but sneered. "I guess she doesn't have a whole lot to talk about. Usually when she was coaching, when she did talk, nobody listened anyway. I guess she figures she's got a platform now."

He didn't stop there, of course. He pointed out that 11 championships (UConn) are more than two (Notre Dame), because he learned that from Sesame Street. He even got in a shot at the Irish football program, saying, "I'm just glad we don't go 30 years between winning championships. So maybe NBC ought to help them a little more."

Look. I get it. Geno felt compelled to defend his program, even though Muffet praised his program to the skies. But then to get personal about it and say "nobody listened" when she talked as a coach at Notre Dame went beyond the pale -- something Auriemma's always been good at.

Not to mention he was as wrong as wrong gets. Plenty of people listened to Muffet McGraw when she was Notre Dame's coach.

The last time the Irish were in the Final Four, in 2019, for instance, someone asked about why she wasn't hiring men for her coaching staff anymore. And her answer was that there was no dearth of coaching opportunities for men in women's basketball, but there was for women.

"When you look at men's basketball, 99 percent of the jobs go to men, why shouldn't 100 or 99 percent of the jobs in women's basketball go to women?" she wondered. "Maybe it's because we only have 10 percent women athletic directors in Division I. People hire people who look like them. That's the problem."

She went on to say that maybe all the girls who play sports in America now should have more role models to look up to when it comes to leadership. There aren't enough of them, she said. When does that change, she asked, and those role models become the norm and not the exception?

Lots of people listened to what she had to say that day (including the Blob), no matter what the asshat in Storrs thinks. And they listened because people do sometimes actually listen to truth-tellers, and that was some absolute stone truth she was laying down.

For Geno Auriemma to belittle all that because Muffet McGraw was wrong about the whole ESPN-UConn thing was classic Geno. Which is to say, classically boorish. 

I would say it was beneath him. But past performance proves it wasn't.

The dumbest thing you'll read today ...

 ... comes from Chip Towers of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Congratulations, Chip!

The astute Mr. Towers points out here that, by golly, it gets cold in January in Indianapolis, where the CFP national championship game between Georgia and Alabama will be played Monday. Like, really cold (Eighteen degrees on Friday, Chip says. That's COLD!). Also, there's much more to do in, say, Louisville, which is where some Georgia fans are opting to stay because, you know, Indy is all penguins and glaciers and British explorers dying of exposure and stuff.

I'm trying hard to think of something Louisville offers in January that Indianapolis doesn't. Nope, sorry. Got nothin'.

But, wait, there's more!

Mr. Towers also points out that lodging will be much, much cheaper in Lullville, and ticket prices for the national championship game will be SO EXPENSIVE YOU CAN'T BELIEVE IT.

I'm trying hard to think of somewhere else that wouldn't be true if that somewhere else were the site of the national championship game.

Nope, sorry. Got nothin'. 

Fortunately for any warm-blooded Georgians or Alabamians, Lucas Oil Stadium, the game site, has a retractable roof. And everyone's been assured it will be closed, which means the game-time temperature will be 72 degrees or so.

"That's COLD!" Chip says.

OK. So he didn't.

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 17

 And now the first 2022 edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the Blob feature of which critics have said "Maybe it won't be as stupid this year," and also, "Oh, please, it's going to be just as stupid as ever":

1. "AIEEE! AIEEE!" (Baker Mayfield, running in terror from the Steelers' pass rush, which sacked him nine times in the Steelers' 26-14 win)

2. Live look at the Steelers' pass rush chasing Mayfield.

3. Live look at Mayfield.

4. Meanwhile, the Bengals' Joe Burrow!

5. Is clearly NOT Akili Smith. Or David Klingler. Or A.J. McCarron. Or Turk Schonert.

6. "Yay! We didn't draft any of those guys this time!" (Bengals' fans)

7. "We're gonna clinch a playoff spot today! We're gonna clinch a playoff spot today!" (Colts fans)

8. "Dammit!" (Also Colts fans)

9. The Giants got embarrassed by the cruddy Bears. The Jets almost knocked off the Buccaneers, but of course didn't. Combined record: 8-24.

10. "Yay! Six weeks until pitchers and catchers report!" (New York football fans)

Damaged goods

 You won't get a lot of locker-room moralizing in these precincts on what Tampa Bay wideout Antonio Brown did yesterday. That tire's all out of tread here.

Mostly what you'll get is sadness.

If you follow the NFL and you don't live a hermit's life, you know what I'm talking about. Miffed that he'd been benched, AB stripped off his jersey and his pads and walked off the field bare-chested in the middle of the Buccaneers' come-from-behind victory over the Jets, waving a peace sign at the fans.

Walked off the field, and -- once more -- out of the game.

Tampa Bay head coach Bruce Arians made that clear in the postgame, tersely saying AB was "no longer a Buc." It was abundantly clear that after the civil lawsuit accusing him of forcible rape Brown settled last spring, and the vaccination record he faked, and what happened yesterday, Arians had had enough. And you couldn't blame him, because who'd ever seen anything like that before?

Not me, and I covered Sportsball World for almost 40 years as a professional sportswriter. But what I saw when I watched the video was perhaps not what everyone saw.

What I saw was a drowning man.

A drowning man who keeps clutching at anchors instead of life jackets.

That Antonio Brown has needed professional help for a very long time has been clear for an equally long time, and his bizarre exit yesterday made that as clear as it's ever been. He's an enormously gifted wide receiver with an enormous capacity for self-damage -- the former of which has largely prevented him from dealing with the latter. 

This is because professional football is a bidness, and bidnesses are all about maximizing returns. And so if Antonio Brown can help you win football games, you overlook everything else. That's what the Buccaneers did when they signed him, thinking the grounding presence of Tom Brady would somehow magically solve AB's obvious issues.

It worked for awhile, but yesterday, or something very like it, was always in the cards. Pro football, like any professional enterprise, is very good at shedding assets when they stop being assets. And so off Antonio Brown goes -- off the sideline, through the end zone, out of the stadium, out of the one thing in the world that has kept him at least marginally centered.

A drowning man. And no life jackets in sight. 

Generational echo

Today the Blob could let his inner curmudgeon out to play, growling about how it JUST WASN'T RIGHT that every major bowl game, including the Rose Bowl, was swallowed up by ESPN on New Year's Day, or how CONSARN IT we couldn't even watch the NHL Winter Classic because THAT was aired on TNT, and how because of that a lot of us creaky oldtimers missed out on a lot of cool stuff.

Like, literally, the coldest Winter Classic in history, in which the St. Louis Blues beat the Minnesota Wild, 6-4.

Like, maybe the wildest Rose Bowl in history, in which Ohio State beat Utah 48-45 and put up video game numbers, like quarterback C.J. Stroud's 573 passing yards and six touchdowns, and receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba's insane 15-reception, three-touchdown, 347-yard day.

The inner curmudgeon won't grumble about any of it. That's because ESPN college football commentators Kirk Herbstreit and Desmond Howard already did it for him.

Both of them got to get-off-my-lawning about all the players who were skipping their schools' bowl games to protect themselves for the NFL Draft, which became an even more relevant issue later in the day when Ole Miss quarterback Matt Corral -- a projected first-round draft pick -- went down with an injury in the Sugar Bowl. Herbstreit and Howard went full These Kids Today on all of it, crabbing about how players in 2021 just don't love football the way they did, because 30 years ago neither of them would have dreamed of skipping a  bowl game.

Of course, 30 years ago, bowl games actually were a reward for a successful season, not participation trophies the way so many are today. But Herbie and Desmond didn't mention that.

They also didn't mention that these sorts of old-man rants are hardy perennials, generational echoes that have repeated themselves since Rutgers and Princeton first decided to fight over a pig's bladder. Why, the Blob, through the miracle of blatantly making stuff up, has dredged up actual fake quotes to prove this ...

The forward pass? Pffft. Players today have it so soft. In our day we employed the Flying Wedge, and players actually DIED for the game. Kids today just don't love the game enough to do THAT. -- Hiram T. "Skull-Cracker" Abercrombie, Yale '02

The Notre Dame box? Pffft. In our day we didn't resort to a lot of la-di-da trickery to win games, or danced around like that nancy boy Red Grange. We lined up and went at each other like MEN. Kids today don't love the game enough to do THAT. -- Franklin "Slobberknocker" Abrams, Army '13

Lookit that Sammy Baugh, throwin' the pigskin all over the field! My God. I thought this was football, not BALLET. In our day only GIRLS threw the ball around like that. We tucked it in the crook of our elbows and ran off tackle 52 times a game, the way God intended. Kids today don't love the game enough to do THAT. -- Monty "Bronco Nevers" Fleenor, Minnesota '26.

The triple option? What's this crap? In our day we didn't fake people out and run away from 'em. We lined up and hit people in the mouth, and the coaches didn't give us any of these pansy water breaks, and we used to play with broken legs and stuff because in OUR day, they'd run you off the squad if you got hurt. Kids today don't love the game enough to do THAT. -- Griff "Gruffer Than Gruff" Griffin, Texas '57.

And so on, and so on.

And, sure, everything above is parody, but Herbie and Desmond were themselves a parody. And as wrongheaded as they could be, because if These Kids Today didn't love football, they wouldn't be NFL Draft prospects to begin with. What, Herbie and Desmond think that just magically happened? That a whole lot of hard work and sweaty equity, and, yes, love of the game, didn't go into it?

Ridiculous. 

But don't take my word for it. The better commentary on all this comes from Phillip Bupp of Awful Announcing, who took Herbie and Desmond to the woodshed in definitive style. Every word of is the stone truth.

Enjoy.

Competition fail

 Well, that wasn't fun.

Another year, another turn of the odometer, and what's changed? NOTHING. College football is still just the SEC and them others. 

Friday it was Alabama 27, Cincinnati 6 in the Cotton Bowl, and Georgia 34, Michigan 11 in the Orange Bowl, and what was that you were saying about expanding the College Football Playoff? Why? So 'Bama can nail-gun some undefeated schmo from the Mountainous Terrain Conference 57-3 in the opening round?

I mean, we couldn't even get a competitive semifinal game in a four-team playoff. What would a 12-team playoff look like?

I'll tell you what. It would look like women's college buckets a decade or so ago.

Back in that day there was UConn and Tennessee and Notre Dame, and occasionally a Baylor or South Carolina. Mostly, though, there was UConn, which periodically hauled off and won eleventy-hundred straight games, and who was in the Final Four so every-year the Huskies had their own corner booth by the window.

The first round of the women's March Madness was a joke in those days, with the Huskies beating some poor 16-seed 97-35 and what-not. There were no 12-over-5 upsets on the women's side. Their bracket was so chalky it made you sneeze.

Now, of course, things are little different. UConn is still UConn, sort of, but the women's game is much more competitive now. Occasionally an unranked team will beat a ranked team -- or even a No. 1 team, as unranked Missouri did the other day against No. 1 South Carolina.

College football still has a ways to go to reach that enviable point. 

Oh, there was a lot of talk that Michigan might actually knock off Georgia, which had been the top-ranked team all year until Alabama embarrassed it in the SEC title game. And some folks were gulled into believing Cincinnati might actually be good enough to make 'Bama draw a labored breath.

But, nah. 'Bama rolled over the Bearcats like they were the Muncie Central Bearcats. And all the SEC title game loss did was cheese off the Bulldogs, who beat Michigan like it was Michigan Tech. It was a 34-3 game until Michigan scored a garbage-time touchdown late in the fourth quarter -- by which time Georgia head coach Kirby Smart was already game-planning for the rematch with 'Bama.

So, woo-hoo, we get another SEC tilt in the national title game. Oh, goody.

I might watch a play or two. But that's about it.

Not a big fan of reruns, you see.