Tall order

 Watched Purdue center Zach Edey drop 38 on the Michigan State Spartans the other day, and afterward Michigan State coach Tom Izzo seemed less than charitable about that. Hinted, in so many words, that how good does a team have to be when all it has to do is throw the ball into the 7-4 guy all the time?

Maybe Izzo didn't intend for it to come off that way, to give him the benefit of the doubt. But the trolls on the Magic Twitter Thingy who followed his lead definitely meant it when they started chirping that Edey ain't all that, he's just tall.

The Blob says this, having watched the guy play: Watch the guy play.

Yeah, he's tall. Yeah, he collects a lot of loose ends around the glass because of that. But if you think he just stands around out there collecting points, rebounds and dust -- if you think he doesn't have any skills -- you must have started watching basketball yesterday.

I didn't. And I noticed some things the other day:

* One, he's the first low-blocks player I've seen in quite a spell who's developed an effective hook shot as a major part of his arsenal.

No big man seems to do that anymore, except sporadically. And I don't know why, because it's a hell of a weapon. But until Edey started tossing them in on a regular basis, it was the eight-track tape of basketball moves. 

* Two, he regularly beats double teams because he's not afraid of contact. 

Michigan State consistently doubled him the other day, and he still went to the tin and scored. Part of that is because, yes, he's 7-4. But if he were just a very tall traffic cone, he couldn't do that.

* Three, when teams collapse on him, he's a pretty effective passer out of it.

I wouldn't say he's great at it. But he finds the guy who's got the open look more often than not. And the rest of the Purdue cast is very good at knowing what to do when teams collapse on Edey. Over and above everything else, this is a very smart basketball team.

* Finally, rebounds do not come to him because he's magnetized. 

His height is a huge plus, unquestionably, but he also goes and gets the ball off the glass. He's more aggressive than you think a 7-4 guy would be, or that the handful of players his size generally have been.

All of this makes silencing Edey a very tall order for most opponents.

I know. Dad joke.

Those games: Some thoughts

 OK, class. So what did we learn from yesterday's NFL conference championship games, which will give us the Eagles against the Chiefs in a couple weeks?

Let me write it on the board for you:

1. You can't win a great big honkin' football game without a quarterback. As Rocky J. Squirrel is fond of saying, "That trick never works."

2. You can, however, win a great big honkin' football game if your quarterback is playing on one leg, or a leg-and-a-half, or some other fraction of two legs. But only if your quarterback is named Patrick Mahomes, and he's got cojones the size of beer kegs.

3. You also can come thisclose to ruining an amazing game (speaking of the aforementioned) if you're an NFL officiating crew that couldn't find its hindparts with a  nationwide hindparts hunt.

4.  That said, when you hit a guy two or three steps out of bounds they're gonna throw a flag on you every damn time. So, you know, don't do that.

5. That also said, if you didn't feel something watching the poor kid who hit Mahomes out of bounds sobbing on the bench  -- Joseph Ossai is his name, and he's only 22 -- you might want to check your heart. 'Cause you don't have one.

In any event, it's the Eagles and the Chiefs in two weeks in whichever Super Bowl this is. And you've gotta like the Eagles even though they just beat a 49ers team that was fresh out of quarterbacks the whole second half.

No disrespect to the Iggles, but how hard is it to crush someone 31-7 when that someone loses its quarterback (Brock Purdy) to an elbow injury in the first half ... and then loses its only remaining quarterback (Josh Johnson) ... and then has to bring back the injured-elbow guy even though he can't throw?

Answer: Not very hard. All you gotta do is stop the run because there ain't no pass.

And over in the AFC?

The Blob got that one wrong just like a lot of America, although it did say you never want to turn your back on Mahomes. Yes, the officiating was horrible, and a lot of crucial calls went against the Bengals (although most were correct). But Mahomes was Mahomes -- which is to say, sublime.

First off, he was throwing mostly to backup and backup-backup receivers. And he was making throws he shouldn't have been able to make with limited push off the injured leg. And then, at the end, he sprinted eight yards for the first down that set up the winning field goal.

Trying sprinting with a high ankle sprain sometime. Tell me how it goes.

In the end, Mahomes threw the football 43 times, completing 29 for 315 yards and two scores. He had to, because it was the only way the Chiefs were going to beat Joe Burrow and the Bengals, who never took their foot off the gas, either. 

So, again: Never turn your back on the guy. And especially don't run your mouths all week about "Burrowhead" Stadium, or have the mayor of your city go on camera to talk junk about how Burrow was Mahomes' daddy because Burrow was 3-0 against him.

'Twasn't smart, Mr. Mayor. Just gave Mahomes an opening to go all legendary on your Bengals, and he took it.

All the way to Glendale, Ariz., and Super Bowl Whatever.

The hell I say

 So I have these two miniature football figurines on my bookshelf, one of which is Patrick Mahomes of the Chiefs and the other of which  is Nick Bosa of the 49ers. And they're daring me to pick against them today.

"Bet against me at your peril!" Tiny Mahomes is saying.

"You can't seriously think Mr. Destiny, Brock Purdy, is going to lose NOW,, do you?" Tiny Bosa adds.

Well ...

Well, I dunno. Far be from me to argue with figurines, but I'm goin' with Cincinnati and Philadelphia today.

I'm goin' with the Bengals because Joe Burrow can't seem to lose right now, and somehow he never loses to Mahomes. And that's a healthy Mahomes we're talking about, not High-Ankle Sprain Mahomes, whom the Blob suspects is going to be a lot more hobbled than he and the Chiefs have let on this week.

And the Eagles?

I'm goin' with them because ... oh, hell, I don't know. Because they've been the best team in the NFC all season, unless it was the 49ers. Because they're home. Because I kinda feel about Jalen Hurts at this point the way I feel about Mahomes, which is that you don't want to ever bet against him.

"But you just bet against him," you're pointing out now.

Well ... yes. Let's say I'm conflicted.

Let's say I still like the 49ers a lot, especially with Christian McCaffrey. And I still think Mahomes -- a healthy Mahomes -- is the best quarterback in the game, and even if he's only 50 percent today you still don't want to turn your back on him.

I think Brock Purdy has proved he's not just some remainder-bin crud from Iowa State, but ye gods, that Philly pass rush. I think it's crazy there are people I know, smart people, who think the Chiefs are ripe to get blown out, but God help me I see how it could happen.

So, let's call it Bengals 28, Chiefs 17.

And let's call it Eagles 24, 49ers 21.

"The hell you say!" Tiny Mahomes just sneered.

"The hell you say!" Tiny Bosa just jeered.

And so the ridicule begins.

Representin'

 We forget, sometimes. In an era when men and women chase the next big payday to play games for our amusement, we forget, or we don't believe, or we raise a cynical eyebrow because it's a cynical age, and that's just how we roll.

But last night we were reminded: Even mercenaries become attached to the cities and communities and people they are paid so handsomely to represent.

Hard to doubt or be cynical about that as Memphis Grizzlies coach Taylor Jenkins talked and talked last night, in the wake of a citizen of Memphis being beaten to death by five goons in police uniforms. A young black father named Tyre Nichols, 29, wound up crumpled on the pavement after a simple traffic stop. It was 20 minutes before he received any medical treatment.

He died three days later. In his last extremities, as the five goons rained fists, boots and batons on him, he cried out piteously "Mama."

That's exactly what soldiers often cry out when the life is draining out of them on the battlefield. But this was an American street in an American city, and Tyre Nichols was just an American citizen driving home after taking pictures of the sky.

And not long after the bodycam footage was released Friday, there was Taylor Jenkins, talking and talking and talking up in Minneapolis, both before and after the Grizzlies lost to the Timberwolves.

He said the interview with Nichols' mother moved him to tears. He said it was tough being on the road, and he wished he could "extend my arms through this camera right now to the family." He said the Grizzlies were "playing for our city that's going through a lot right now."

If you're one of those compelled by the cynicism of our times to roll your eyes at that, may I be the first to damn you thoroughly.

Because, yes, our mercenary athletes do form bonds with the communities in which they play, no matter how long they do so. The best of them reach out to those communities; they show up in soup kitchens and donate to local charities and visit sick kids in children's hospitals. Peyton Manning even has his name on one of the latter in Indianapolis, where he spent the prime of his career.

So, yes, they form attachments, the best of them. Some of them even become synonymous with the cities in which they play, like Drew Brees and New Orleans or Peyton and Indy. And those attachments never really go away, even if they wind up somewhere else.

Remember Freddie Freeman of the Dodgers, who spent most of his first roadie to Atlanta in tears because he'd played there for so long and his heart was still there? You might question why he left, if so, but life is far messier and complicated than some people tell you it is. If it weren't, regret would not exist.

And so, Taylor Jenkins talked on and on last night. The Grizzlies and the Women's National Basketball Players Association released statements. Phoenix Suns guard Chris Paul said something, and Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra, and Grizzlies guard Jaren Jackson Jr. tweeted "We are with you" to the Nichols family, and "To Memphis, we are hurting, too." 

And if you are compelled to roll your eyes at any of that, or to regard it as meaningless, or to assign to it some political agenda devoid of honest empathy or emotion ...

Well. You know what you can with that today. 

It's what Jaren Jackson and Ja Morant and a bunch of other Grizzlies do on a regular basis on the basketball floor.

Stuff it.

 

Women’s hoops: A brief thought

 So remember the other day, when the Blob mentioned a certain former journalist turned Bible-thumping wingnut and his misogynist take on women’s college basketball?

Nobody cares about it, is basically what he said. Wondered why ESPN led with it the night before, and what the audience was for it.

Well …

Last night, No. 6 Indiana played No. 2 Ohio State in Assembly Hall. 

Indiana won by 13.

A tad more than 10,000 fans showed up.

People who’ve been around Assembly Hall for years said it was the loudest they’d ever heard the place.

Just to let the aforementioned wingnut know that, yes, there is an audience for this, and it's not exactly silent.

This week in kookery

 Hey, I'm with you, crazy people. I don't think Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, either.

I mean, if you watch the video, he kinda skipped. Or hopped. Or skip-hopped.

But sure, believe what you want, stitching together "evidence" that when put together amounts to a wisp of smoke. This is your time, crazy people. Your brethren and sisteren control an entire house of Congress, and will now be launching a veritable Investigationpalooza that will waste our tax dollars plunging down rabbit holes to prove Dr. Fauci is actually Dr. Mengele, and Joe Biden is a secret pedophile in league with socialist communist gay-grooming illegals.

Oh, and did you hear the latest about Buffalo Bills defensive back Damar Hamlin?

Turns out he’s actually dead.

 See, the docs and the government and, sure, Dr. Fauci, are covering it up because the COVID vaccine killed him and they're trying to keep it quiet. That's why no one has actually seen or heard from him since he went into sudden cardiac arrest and collapsed on that Monday night.

"But, Mr. Blob," you're saying now. "He's been seen and heard from plenty. He was even at the game last weekend when the Bills lost to the Bengals in the divisional playoffs."

Wrong, sheeple!

See, according to the crazy people, that was NOT ACTUALLY DAMAR. It was a BODY DOUBLE. Why do you  think he was all bundled up so you couldn't see his face?

"Because it was30 degrees and snowing like hell and he's still recovering from, well, basically dying?" you're saying.

Fools! It's because he's DEAD, and THAT WASN'T HIM!

"Oh, you're just making this up," you're saying. "Nobody's that nutso. Nobody's such a batshite kook they'd believe that."

To which the Blob responds, "Ahem."

"Wow," you're saying now, after clicking on the link above. "The crazy people really are crazy."

Yup.

Retirement blues

 Tom Brady got all mad at the media the other day because they keep asking him what he's gonna do next, and he dropped a couple of f-bombs in basically saying he doesn't know what he's gonna do next.

 This means he was either sick of the media asking (likely), or mad at himself because he really does have no idea what he's going to do next (possibly).

Rumors have him either retiring or going to Denver, Miami, Las Vegas, Carolina, San Francisco or wherever Sean Payton winds up. One social media guy even suggested Detroit as a possible desti-Brady-nation.

Well. As an old retired guy myself, I have a few suggestions should Rest Home Tom decide on the hang-it-up option:

1. Follow through on the conditional TV deal he allegedly has and make bazillions for saying stuff like "Ya know, this Patrick Mahomes guy is really good."

2. Throw himself full-tilt-boogie into organic farming so he can grow his own supply of all that weird crap he eats.

3. As a side hustle, launch his own diet plan:, Tom-O, which will be his answer to the Keto diet.

4. Create delicate figurines from the bones of his vanquished enemies.

5. Oh, wait. That was Conan the Barbarian.

6. Go to Bill Belichick's house, leave a bag of flaming poop on his front step and then ring the doorbell and run away laughing.

7. Speaking of pranks, walk down the street with an NFL official, bump into someone and have the official yell "Roughing the passer!" and throw a flag at the poor guy. Run away laughing.

8. Or ... call Peyton Manning's house, and when he answers say "Do you have Prince Albert in a can?"

9. Sit in a rocking chair on his front porch all day and gripe about how much softer players are now compared to when he played.

And last but not least ...

10. Take up whittling.  

Stuff about nothing

 So I got this call from my sister the other day, and she wanted to know why people were trashing all the NFL announcers, and what the hell is their problem, anyway?

"Well," I replied, somewhat lamely. "It's just what they do."

A bit later I started thinking about that.

Because, see, it is what "they" do. Meaning media/social media/people-who-think-they're-media-because-they're-on-social-media. 

They gripe. They whine. They yell. In this particular case, they don't like Tony Romo anymore because he talks to much (i.e.: He got too much praise early on) ... and they don't like Cris Collinsworth because he occasionally says dumb stuff ... and they don't like much of anyone calling the games these days, because, well, because.

Everybody hates everything, it seems. And I hate that.

This morning, for instance, a former journalist turned Bible-thumping fringe righty was carping about why ESPN was leading with two women's college basketball games last night, because NO ONE cares about women's sports. So what was the target audience? 

The implication was this was ESPN pushing its woke agenda on America -- "woke agenda" being fringe-righty chic these days for anything that happens to offend them. Which is pretty much everything that doesn't harken back to the glory days of the 1950s.

But to answer the former journalist's question, in this case ESPN led with women's buckets because one game (Iowa at Ohio State) was a showdown between two top-ten teams in which the No. 10 team (Iowa) handed the No. 2 team (Ohio State) its first loss of the season. I don't know about you, but this kinda qualified as news -- something the former journalist seems to have forgotten in his apparent zeal to keep those damn women in their place.

Meanwhile, in more stuff about nothing ...

Bills wide receiver Stefon Diggs was compelled to go on social media and defend his behavior in Sunday's playoff loss to the Bengals, because apparently the gripers didn't like it that he was over on the sideline demanding better play from his teammates. Diggs wondered on Twitter whether they thought he should be OK with losing. Diggs answered his own question with "Nah."

It was the correct answer, and his behavior was the correct response to the Bills' play. But of course the gripers had to make a whole thing out of it.

Look. I can go negative with the best of 'em. Do it all the time. Just yesterday, in fact, I made fun of the Cowboys losing to the 49ers, because they're the Cowboys and losing in the playoffs is their deal.

But in doing that, I failed to make it clear that the Cowboys lost mainly because the 49ers were simply a better team. Just as the Bengals were clearly a better team than the Bills.

The gripers, however, would prefer calling the losing teams playoff chokers. And I get that; it's a lot more fun to go that route, inaccurate though it usually is. It is for me, too.

But sometimes I just wanna say, "Shut up already."

Which makes me a griper, too, I suppose.

Class, dismissed

I was there the day Bruce Boudreau was fired.

Oh, not yesterday, mind you. Twenty-eight years ago.

It was December of 1994 and I was sitting with my back against the wall outside the Fort Wayne Komets locker room, waiting to talk to a couple players. Across the Allen County War Memorial Coliseum concourse, I saw Boudreau enter his office. Komets GM David Franke and team president Michael Franke followed him. 

A few minutes later, the door popped open and Boudreau, clearly agitated, scurried toward the building's exit. He was out the door and gone in an eyeblink.

Even a clueless dork like me could decipher what I was seeing: Boudreau had just been canned as the Komets coach.

At least they had the good sense to do it the way it should be done -- like pulling a tooth, and without torturing the man for weeks on end.

That's what the lame-ass Vancouver Canucks did to Boudreau this time, and I'm sorry if that sounds less than professional. But what the lame-ass Canucks did to Gabby is unacceptable. It would be unacceptable even if he weren't one of the best people in professional hockey, which he is and has been since the days when I covered him as a player and coach with the Komets.

Gabby was just getting started then, and I'm happy to say he emerged whole from the sting of losing the Komets gig. He went on to the NHL, where he won the Jack Adams Award as coach of the year with the Washington Capitals in 2008. In 16 seasons behind the bench in Washington, Anaheim, Minnesota and Vancouver, he's compiled the second-highest winning percentage in NHL history for someone who's coached at least 900 games.

But he could do nothing with the lame-ass Canucks, one of the NHL's most enduring clown shows. And so the Canucks fired him -- but not before humiliating him by publicly announcing they were shopping for his replacement before they'd even fired him.

This led, over the weekend, to the fans in Vancouver loudly serenading him with "Bruce! There it is!" during his last couple of home games. Visibly moved, Gabby tapped his heart in response.

So at least he goes out beloved and respected by everyone who matters -- the fans and his players, both current and former. No one else's opinion really matters in these deals.

Especially the lame-ass Canucks -- who, when presented with the opportunity to at least show some class in releasing Gabby, instead decided to go in a different direction, as management is fond of saying in these situations.

Class?

Nah. More like class, dismissed. 

Play of the day

 So the Bengals and 49ers are in and the Bills and America's Team are out, and I have to say, good job, Cowboys. You can always be counted on to flame out in the playoffs, and not only did you not disappoint, you brought cheer and gladdened hearts to us all in doing so.

Which is another way of saying "You brought hysterical laughter and “Omigod-what-the-hell-is-THAT?” to us all.

I refer, of course, to Dallas' Hail Mary steal of the dumbest play in NFL history, aka that weird formation the Indianapolis Colts dialed up in yet another loss to the New England Patriots in 2015. Apparently the aim was to confuse, and it did, but only the Colts themselves and everyone looking on. 

The ball, see, was allegedly never supposed to be snapped. But it was, and the play went to pieces like an exploding watch, which will happen when you've got everyone bunched on one side of the field and a non-center (Griff Whalen) snapping the ball to a non-quarterback (Colt Anderson) way the hell over there by themselves.

Well, guess what boys and girls?

The Cowboys lined up in almost the exact same way on the last play of the game last night.

Buncha guys over here. Buncha guys over there. And, right in the middle, all by themselves, running back Ezekiel Elliott snapping the ball to Dak Prescott.

It looked like something you drew up in the dirt playing backyard football with your buddies, with that one kid nobody liked playing alltime center. And the Blob can think of several possible explanations for it:

1. Dallas coach Mike McCarthy finally got tired of owner Jerry Jones constantly yapping "Come on, lemme call a play, lemme call a play!" and let him call a play.

2. They were trying to get Ezekiel Elliott killed, because the formation had him hiking the ball with three 49er pass rushers lined right on top of him. 

3. Chuck Pagano (the overseer of the Colts 2015 play) had been secretly hired as the Cowboys offensive coordinator before the game.

4. Dak said "Let's do something even dumber than last year!" -- a reference to the last play of the Cowboys' loss to the 49ers in 2022, when Dak inexplicably took off on a 24-yard scramble up the middle of the field with no timeouts and the final seconds bleeding away.

In any case, this year's play resulted in a short inconsequential completion, the clock ran out and the Cowboys lost to the 49ers again, 19-12.

Somewhere Tom Landry just threw down his fedora and uttered words no Christian gentleman should ever say.

Rub some dirt on it

 That was some old-school business we were looking at in Kansas City and Philadelphia yesterday, and I don't mean that in the facemask-jerking, water-denying, spitting, raging Foo'ball Coach way. I mean in the Jack Youngblood/Ronnie Lott way.

Remember those guys?

Jack Youngblood was a defensive end for the Los Angeles Rams who once played an entire postseason - including the Super Bowl -- on a broken leg (specifically, a fractured fibula). Ronnie Lott was a Hall of Fame defensive back for the San Francisco 49ers who actually had his broken pinkie finger amputated rather than undergo reconstructive surgery that would have kept him off the field.

Who does that?

Well ... a couple of guys. Kinda-sorta.

Listen, neither Patrick Mahomes nor Jalen Hurts yesterday approached the sort of extremes Youngblood and Lott did, and no one's saying that. But they both became members of the Rub Some Dirt On It club in divisional playoff victories.

Mahomes suffered what was apparently a high-ankle sprain in the first quarter against Jacksonville, and Chiefs head coach Andy Reid had to practically pry him off the field to go get it X-rayed. Then he returned in the second half and gritted the Chiefs to two scores they ultimately needed to turn back the Jaguars 27-20.

If you've ever had a high ankle sprain, you're shaking your head right now. You can't plant your foot to make certain throws. You can't really run. Yet somehow Mahomes ran and threw the Chiefs to the W.

And Hurts?

He was Hurts-in' too.

Still hampered by a sprained SC joint in his throwing shoulder that sidelined him for two of the Eagles last two regular season games, Hurts -- who had also been ill all week -- rubbed some dirt on it, too. Threw the ball 24 times, completing 16 for 154 yards and two touchdown. Ran nine times for 34 yards and another score. And the Eagles boat-raced the Giants, 38-7.

The best part, though, might have been when Hurts was asked on the sideline how he felt physically.

"Good enough," he replied.

Jack and Ronnie would be proud.

The old rah-rah

 I don't know much ("No kidding," you're saying), but I do know a few things. And here's one I know:

Trayce Jackson-Davis ain't no Jon Moxon.

Remember that scene in "Varsity Blues," when Moxon, the team's quarterback, gathers his West Canaan Coyotes in the locker room at halftime and gives them the old rah-rah? That whole "Let's be heroes" bit?

Corny as hell. But a little more inspiring than what TJD says he told the Indiana Hoosiers in a players-only meeting the other day.

What TJD told the guys, according to TJD, was just to relax and take it one game at a time, one possession at a time. If they did that, they'd be fine.

Not exactly Moxon/Herb Brooks/Rockne stuff. But somehow it seems to have worked.

That's because the Indiana team that had lost three straight and was playing like a bunch of goofs abruptly disappeared. A pack of killers emerged in its place. 

First the Hoosiers took apart an admittedly understrength Wisconsin team in Assembly Hall, 63-45. Then they laminated a streaking Illinois bunch over in Champagne-Urbana by 15, as TJD went for 35, nine and five. 

In those two games, Indiana has outrebounded its opponents 81-59 and harassed them into 42-of-118 shooting (35.5 percent). And suddenly the bunch of goofs were all "Hey, where did THESE guys come from?"

They've been so good, even the perpetually sour fan base has been compelled to dial it down to a dull roar. I'm sure they're just waiting for These Guys to go back to wherever they came from, because, you know, they're Indiana fans. And frankly there are no guarantees that won't happen at some point.

Basketball is a game of ebb and flow, after all, and in a season that stretches from November to early April it will ebb and flow plenty. Tom Izzo brings his Michigan State Spartans into Assembly Hall tomorrow, and they're always a tough takedown. And so who knows what happens if the game's tight and Izzo starts gnawing at the refs the way he's always allowed to do.

In other words: We shall see.

But at least the viewing ought to be fun now.

May the road rise to meet him ...

 ... which is part of a traditional Irish blessing, and that seems appropriate this morning, because this morning a man who has been Irish to the soles of  his shoes for 23 years begins the road to retirement.

This upon the news that Mike Brey will be stepping aside as Notre Dame's men's basketball coach at the end of this season, and what you can read between the lines of that is he's tired. He's got a team that surprised a lot of people last season in a good way, and now it's surprising a lot of people in a bad way.

Based on last year's 24-win, NCAA tournament run with a team that was expected to do nothing, see, the Irish were expected to do something this season. Instead they're 9-10 and 1-7 in the ACC, and Brey (according to insiders) can't seem to reach his guys anymore.

This likely isn't the only reason he's decided to hang it up, mind you. He is, after all, 63 years old and has been coaching a long time. And mostly doing so very well.

If Digger Phelps was Notre Dame buckets back in the day, Mike Brey is Notre Dame buckets now. He's won more games than any coach in the program's history (472). He's overseen 16 20-win seasons. He's taken the Irish to 13 NCAA Tournaments, including back-to-back Elite Eights in 2015 and 2016, 

When he inherited a program that had fallen down and couldn't get up 23 years ago, he immediately took it to three straight Dances. Even made it to the Sweet 16 in 2003.

So, the guy could coach. Perhaps just as importantly, he wasn't a dick about it.

He is, in fact, one of the best people in the profession, and you'll hunt a long time before you find anyone who says otherwise. Those of us who covered him, even if only occasionally, recognized instantly that here was not only a good coach but a good man. If the University of Notre Dame has ever had a better representative, I can't think of one.

Which means a school as fiercely protective of its public image as Notre Dame got not only a coach who could coach, but a coach who buffed that image to a high gloss. Talk about your luck of the Irish.

Talk about looking over at the Irish bench next season, and seeing an awful hole there.

A kick in the dreams

 News item: The Dallas Cowboys on Wednesday signed Tristan Vizcaino, a former University of Washington placekicker who’s 11-for-12 on field goals in his NFL career and last played this season with the New England Patriots, for whom he was 2-for-2 on field goals.

Vizcaino was signed as a backup to Cowboys placekicker Brett Maher, who missed four extra points last week in the Cowboys wild-card playoff win over Tampa Bay.

Well, that's great. Juuuust great.

Like the Cowboys didn't crush my dreams enough as a child when they were really good and won a few Super Bowls and we had to listen to all that America's Team crap from the world's most obnoxious fan base. Now they've gone and crushed another childhood dream by signing a backup for their placekicker, who's been afflicted suddenly with a raging case of the yips.

And, OK, so it wasn't exactly a dream. But it could have been if I'd thought of it that way.

Instead I just thought I was frittering away a little time when I took a football and practiced placekicking it over the hedge in the backyard. I was a champion fritterer, see. Nobody could fritter like me.

Besides, it wasn't like I could pretend I was Johnny Unitas or Gale Sayers. My average weight in those days was "hotdog wrapper."  I had the athletic ability of a footstool. And when I ran, tortoises gathered to laugh and point.

So, I kicked. Kicked and kicked and kicked. Got pretty good at clearing that hedge, too. I bet I could still do it if my 67-year-old leg didn't fall off first.

Like a lot of America, I watched Brett Maher miss extra points last weekend, and like a lot of America I figured I could do better. Especially with my extensive background in kicking footballs over hedges.

Ah, but now that's all gone. The Cowboys have signed a backup, and have no use for a 67-year-old who might or might not have a little muscle memory left.

The reality, of course, is I couldn't kick a football 12 yards anymore. I probably couldn't when I was a kid, either, but childhood illusions are strong and precious and reality wisely keeps its mouth shut while we're indulging those illusions. Only later do we realize (those of us who aren't on our eighth beer in a sports bar somewhere, anyway) that not only could we NOT outkick poor Brett Maher, we'd probably be lucky to reach the end zone from the NFL extra-point distance.

But let's just see Brett Maher or Tristan Vizcaino kick it over the hedge in the backyard. Let's see 'em do that.

Double standards

 Philadelphia Flyers head coach John Tortorella is who Walt Kowalski from "Gran Torino" would have been if Walt had been a hockey coach. He's grouchy, snarly and get-off-my-lawn-y, and he doesn't give a warm bucket of spit for your opinion about that.

Which is why it's hardly surprising he once said he'd bench any player who knelt quietly with his head bowed for the national anthem. 

But it's also not much more surprising he chose not to bench defenseman Ivan Provorov last night, after Provorov violated his contract by refusing to come out for warmups because the Flyers were wearing LGBTQ+ Pride Night warmup jerseys.

This is because it wasn't really surprising at all, given the disdain a certain species of American still has for gay folk. Frequently they use the Bible as a shield for this disdain. 

That's what Provorov did last night, saying wearing the Pride warmups violated his religious beliefs. And Tortorella backed his play.

Suddenly he was talking about admiring Provorov for being "true to himself and his religion," and how he, Tortorella, admired him for that. Which is fine.

But it does bear asking where this understanding and admiration were for those who were protesting racial injustice.

That, too, was inspired in some cases by religious conviction, as the entire American civil rights movement was energized and morally grounded from the pulpit. Difference is, those who were kneeling partly because of that conviction weren't as vocal about it as those who use it as an excuse to refuse service to gays in local businesses.

Perhaps if they had been, they wouldn't have been booed so loudly by all those brave patriots in the stands.

But, nah. The Blob is not usually so cynical, but it does recognize that double standards are as American as apple pie.

This is why the NBA punished Muslim player Mahmoud Abdul-Rouf (nee Chris Jackson) years ago after Abdul-Rouf  refused to stand at attention for the national anthem, citing his own religious beliefs. No one defended his right to choose, nor talked about how they admired him for being true to himself and his beliefs. 

These days, thankfully, the NBA would likely be far more respectful of Abdul-Rouf's religious conviction, although I doubt the Brave Patriots would be. They'd likely still boo, given the toxicity of our society and the hostility toward Muslims in particular in certain quarters.

(Don't think so? Consider congress critter Lauren Boebert, who once joked at a rally she wasn't afraid of Muslim representative Ilhan Omar because Omar wasn't wearing a backpack -- implying that if she had been, it likely would have contained a bomb, because of course all Muslims are potential terrorists. This was a member of Congress saying this.)

Look. All I know is this: There are religious convictions of all stripes in this nation, because that is one of its founding principles. And so there shouldn't be a difference between how we view one from another.

I know. Dream on, right?

Old guy loses. Film at 11.

 And so again the Black Knight scene from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" pops into my head, because that's the way the Blob rolls. There's nothing in its known universe that can't directly be tied to either Python or "Star Trek", and that's all there is to that.

Which brings us to Tom Brady this morning.

Did you see what he did last night?

He threw 66 passes. Sixty-six.  

It didn't help, of course, because the Buccaneers got booted from the playoffs anyway. The Cowboys whupped 'em 31-14, and Dak Prescott threw four touchdown passes while presumably saying "See, I do not always suck in the playoffs."

Still, Brady throwing 66 passes at the age of 82 or whatever was the story of the night as far as the Blob is concerned. It's a wonder his arm didn't fall off -- which of course is where the Black Knight comes in.

America: (pointing at Brady's arm): But your arm's off!

Brady: No it isn't.

America (pointing again): What's that, then?

Brady: 'Tis but a scratch.

In any case, Brady threw 66 passes, the Bucs ran the football just 12 times, and now they're both gone. Old guy loses; film at 11. 

Which of course begins the Tom Brady Retirement Watch, enhanced with speculation that he'll join Sean Payton wherever he lands for one last whirl, or perhaps returns to New England and convinces Gronk to come with him for a final nostalgia tour.

And can't you just imagine THAT scenario?

Brady: Come on, Gronk! We're getting the band back together!

Bill Belichick: The hell you say.

Can't wait.

Go Blue

 ... and, no, not THAT blue.

The blue we're talking about is University of Michigan blue, which Jim Harbaugh has chosen over Indianapolis Colts blue and Carolina Panthers blue and every other kind of blue as he once again has decided to remain in Ann Arbor.

So, another offseason of stringing Michigan along with NFL dalliances is in the books. I keep wondering what Michigan's players must think of this yearly ritual. And what they say to themselves the first time Harbaugh walks back into the locker room.

Oh, hey, you're still here? How was your trip to Denver, COACH?

This time, see, Harbaugh chatted with the Panthers and actually interviewed with the Broncos. As far as I know, though, he never even contacted the Colts, his professional alma mater. And what's that tell you, Blobophiles?

"That Indy is so radioactive right now he treated it like Prypiat in the Chernobyl contamination zone?" you're saying.

Yes, you could draw that conclusion.

"That Jim Irsay might ACTUALLY be strongly considering making Jeff Saturday all-time coach, the way you used to make your cruddiest player all-time center in backyard football?"

Well, now that Harbaugh's out of the picture, it does reduce Saturday's competition.

"That Irsay might possibly be clinically insane for even giving this a random thought?"

Hey, I'm not a psychologist, but ...

But there must be a reason Harbaugh never publicly expressed interest in the Indy job. And it can't because the hot dogs in Michigan Stadium are better.

Your sobering thought for today.

Sunday funday

 OK. So that was fun, right?

Three NFL wild-card games, three games decided by a touchdown or less. Sometimes the National Football League actually DOESN'T make a hash of things, although the game officials can always be counted on to try.

And hail, in two of those games, to the losers, who were not supposed to scare the favorites like that. Miami went into Buffalo with a third-string quarterback and damn near knocked the Bills out of the show, finally losing 34-31 because the Fins couldn't get a play off in time on their last possession. Up until then, they gave the Bills all they wanted.

And in Cincinnati?

Same deal. The Ravens came in without Lamar Jackson and almost knocked out Joe Burrow and the Tiger Stripes. They were a couple of inches away from retaking the lead with 12 minutes to play when the Bengals knocked the ball out of Ravens back up quarterback Tyler Huntley's hands as he dove for the six, and defensive end Sam Hubbard scooped the loose change and took it 98 yards the other way for the winning score.

Bengals 24, Ravens 17.

Meanwhile, in Minnesota ...

Did someone just call Daniel Jones an elite quarterback?

Sure I heard it from somewhere after Jones threw for 301 yards and two scores and ran for 78 more yards, leading the wild-card Giants to a 31-24 win over the NFC 3-seed Vikings. This continued the Vikes' long tradition of pooping the bed in the playoffs, and sent the Jints back east to play the Eagles for the third time in less than six weeks.

They lost 22-16 in Philly on the last weekend of the regular season. They also lost 48-22 at home on December 11. Which of course means only one thing.

Bet the Giants.

But, this being the NFL, first check out who the game officials are.

Wait ... what?

One of the best things about sports is that, for every pond-scum Trevor Bauer or maniac youth coach they spring on us, they occasionally reward us with a Too Dumb For the Movies moment. "Oh, come on, that's not targeting!" becomes "Wait ,,, what!?", and it's pure magic.

In varying degrees, this happened three times yesterday in three places.

 In Bloomington, In., your Indiana Hoosiers, unranked and looking like a face set on fire and put out with a track shoe, transformed into a real basketball team. The Hoosiers had lost three straight, two in embarrassing fashion, but yesterday they got 18th-ranked Wisconsin down there in Assembly Hall and beat them like a dozen egg whites.

The final was 63-45, and it wasn't that close. In the second half in particular, the Hoosiers got up in the Badgers' grills and stayed there, harassing Wisky into 32 percent shooting including 5 of 24 from the 3-point arc, which Indiana had defended not at all in a 19-point loss at Penn State Wednesday. 

Trayce Jackson-Davis did Trayce Jackson-Davis things. Jordan Geronimo put up  double-double. Jalen Hood-Schifino scored 16. And Indiana turned it over just eight times.

This might or might not have had something to do with the brutal three-hour practice Indiana coach Mike Woodson put the Hoosiers through Friday, having grown weary of watching them soil the game of basketball. In any case, his team didn't look anything like the pale imitation of the previous three games.

Meanwhile, in Knoxville, Tenn. ...

Fifth-ranked Tennessee played host to unranked and struggling Kentucky, which was coming off a three-point home loss to .500 South Carolina and a humiliating 26-point lamination at Alabama. So what happened?

Kentucky remembered it was Kentucky. That's what happened.

The Wildcats led by seven at halftime and won by seven, 63-56, a "Wait ... what!?" emergence from nowhere as startling as Indiana's. And yet ...

And yet, that was just the appetizer for what happened in Jacksonville, Fla., Saturday evening.

Whatever happened was, Trevor Lawrence came out for his first NFL playoff game and immediately stepped on a certain appendage. The former Clemson star with the flowing Ronnie "Sunshine" Bass locks threw three interceptions in the first quarter. He threw another before halftime. And before you knew it, the home team was down a 27-0 well to the Chargers.

That's when the game entered Too Dumb For The Movies territory.

Because here came Trevor Lawrence in the second half, and wait, what?! Somehow still in touch with his composure, the kid started completing passes all over the lot, and the Chargers' lead shrunk. First it was 27-7 and then it was 27-14 and then it was 30-14, 30-20, 30-28. And then Lawrence, who by that time had thrown four touchdown passes -- three in the second half -- was taking his Jaguars on a 10-play, 61-yard drive that ended with Riley Patterson's game-winning field goal as time expired.

It was like watching Rocky get pummeled by Clubber Lang and then coming back to pummel Lang in the rematch in "Rocky III", speaking of Too Dumb For The Movies.  Lawrence's first half: 10-of-24, 77 yards, one touchdown, four picks. His second half: 18-of-23, 211 yards, three sixes, no picks.

You couldn't sell that script on any movie lot anywhere in the world. Not a chance.

But, damn, wasn't it glorious?

Welcome to the conundrum

 So, I guess this is the part where the Blob is expected to pick this weekend's NFL wild-card winners, but since I don't have any dogs in any of the hunts I don't much care who the winners will be.

But just for the heck of it, let's say the 49ers, the Chargers, the Bills and the Vikings. 

That leaves the Cowboys at the Buccaneers on Monday night. And welcome to the conundrum.

I don't want either team to win.

What I want is for a massive wormhole to open up and suck Dak Prescott and 87-year-old Tom Brady into an episode of "Star Trek" where Dak and Brady meet their teenage selves and offer words of wisdom.

"Don't listen to Jerry. He's so full of s*** he squeaks," Dak will say

"Don't listen to Gisele. Be as weird and narcissistic as you want, and keep playing until the rest home people come to take you back to your room because you've wandered off again," Brady will say.

See, I don't like the Cowboys, and I don't much like the Bucs. Mainly that's because whoever wins will mean either another week of Jerry spew or another week of how's-Tom-Brady-doing-this-at-45 spew. And frankly I'm sick to death of both.

Yes, I know, Brady's the GOAT and it's amazing he's still playing at an intermittently high level and don't bet against him, blah-blah-blah.

Yes, I know, Jerry's the king of owners, which is why the media always goes to him for postgame quotes even though the Cowboys have Dak and some other guys and a head coach whose name escapes me because the media's still talking to Jerry.

Charlie McCarthy, I think it is. Or Mike McCarthy. Something like that.

Thing is, I'm heartily weary of all of it. Just this week, I've heard yet more blather about why Dak can't win when it counts, and read another tidbit about Brady refusing to sit out a meaningless game last week because, well, he's TOM BRADY and no one's going to play a down at quarterback unless, he, TOM BRADY, is on a ventilator.

"OK, Tom." Bucs head coach/handpicked flunky Todd Bowles presumably said, meekly. "Please don't hit me no more."

I hope Brady runs out of gas in the second half because he didn't take a load off last week, and the Bucs lose 42-12.

Only that would mean the Cowboys win, and we get another week of Jerry.

Yeesh.

Hoosiers adrift

 Caught a little of Indiana's loss to Northwestern the other day, and the first thing I wondered was how I missed the re-hiring of Archie Miller. The second thing I wondered was who these guys were, because they sure didn't look like the guys who took apart North Carolina a couple of months ago.

On the offensive end, people wearing the same jerseys Indiana wore that day were dribbling into double teams and leaving their feet with no apparent thought to what they were going to do now that they were stuck in midair. Result: Turnover.

And on the other end?

No recognition. No cutting off passing/driving lanes. No help-side sliding to stop penetration.

Pretty much, the defense amounted to letting guys go and hoping Trayce Jackson-Davis could make the block. Pretty much the offense was TJD taking it to the tin or Jalen Hood-Schifino sticking the three.

And so Indiana lost by one after trailing virtually the entire game ... against Northwestern ... in Assembly Hall. 

And then ...

And then, on Wednesday, the Hoosiers went out to Happy Valley and lost by 19 to Penn State.

They did this, mainly, by consistently failing to defend the arc, even though the players acknowledged it was something they worked on in practice. The Nittany Lions said "Don't mind if we do" and impaled 'em with 18 threes.

And now certain elements of Hoosier Nation, never noted for its patience, are saying Mike Woodson can't coach and his players don't try and why did we hire this guy to begin with?

Forgetting, of course, that when Indiana did hire him, they were all saying "Finally, we got a Bob Knight guy!"

A year and a half later the Mike Woodson Hoosiers look a lot like the Archie Miller Hoosiers, and part of that is Woodson's fault and part of it is a lot of people's tendency to gild the lily when the uniforms say "Indiana." The Hoosiers were a sexy pick to win the Big Ten because Woodson reeled in one of the best freshman classes in the country; now they're 1-4 in the conference and, except for Hood-Schifino and the occasional Malik Reneau sighting, the freshmen are holding down the end of the bench.

If they're all that, why aren't more of them playing?

Why can't Indiana shoot any better than it did last year, except sporadically?

Why, if the offense had a band name, would it be TJD And Them Others?

Lots of people say now, when they didn't then, that it's because Woodson doesn't know the college game and can't coach it. Last I looked, though, it's the same game the NBA plays, only with less skill. Guys shoot. Guys rebound. Guys defend, occasionally.

It's not like the NBA's playing soccer and the colleges are playing badminton. It's still basketball.

What's different is the culture, and maybe that's what Woodson hasn't gotten yet. He keeps complaining about how his guys don't compete hard enough, apparently forgetting that he could do something about that as head coach. Bench some folks. Tell the folks who replace them that if they don't compete hard enough or execute what they practiced, he'll bench them, too.  

As Crash Davis said in "Bull Durham": They're kids. Scare 'em.

Woodson comes from an NBA culture where he was dealing with grown men, and he treated them accordingly. At Indiana, he's dealing with, yes, kids, who in some cases are less than a year out of high school. Maybe he needs to start treating them just as accordingly.

"But Mr. Blob," you're saying now. "They are missing two of their starters and best defensive players. And you can't go all Bob Knight on kids today, because they'll just enter the transfer portal and go somewhere they'll be more coddled."

True. But players get hurt all the time, and the best coaches tinker and X-and-O and find ways to adjust. And no one's suggesting going Bob Knight on 'em. Sir Bob of Knight was a brilliant coach, but he was also a bully who frequently blurred the line between discipline and abuse.

That stuff won't fly today. And it shouldn't have then.

What will work is establishing a culture of accountability and standards. That doesn't happen overnight, and I happen to think it's still a work in progress for Woodson. So I also think whatever funk the Hoosiers are in now is reversible.

March is two months away. If Indiana is still adrift then, we'll talk. 

Play of the year

 The NFL playoffs begin this weekend, but the Play of the Day -- or week, or month, or year, really, even though we're only a dozen days into it -- is already taken. It happened in Buffalo yesterday, and it was announced via a small, quiet news item that somehow shouted with God's own voice.

Damar Hamlin was released from the hospital.

Nine days after he essentially died twice in a game against the Bengals, he went home.

I don't what you can say about that except that someone's hand is on that young man's shoulder, and that prayer is powerful, and that prayer and superb medical care make a hell of a tag team.

An entire country was praying for Damar Hamlin, and the docs in Cincinnati knew their business, and now he's home.

Nine days after he flat-lined not once but twice.

Seven days after he awoke from induced sedation.

Six days after his breathing tube was removed.

By the time the latter happened, everyone in America knew the name of this backup safety for the Buffalo Bills. They'd heard about his charity, Chasing M's, and poured millions into its coffers. They'd learned what a decent young man he apparently is.

Nine days. Seven days. Six days.

Nothing you see in any sporting venue this weekend or the next or any weekend from now until the end of 2023 will ever match it. A football move? Shoo. This was a life move.

All the sports-yap poodles were yapping about it yesterday, but no one said it better than analyst Marcellus Wiley, himself a one-time Bill. A guest on Dan Patrick's show, Wiley said he could just hear what the talk in the locker room must be like, irreverent as it tends to be.

Something about trolling guys who were rehabbing injuries by saying "You've been out (however many weeks) with a knee injury? Man, dude died twice and recovered in NINE DAYS. Come on!"

And then they'd all laugh.

And shake their heads in wonder, one more time.

A miracle on West 56th Street ...

 ... in which Indianapolis Colts GM Chris Ballard gets up in front of the media for the last time this season and says he knows he's "failed", but if you fail and you keep trying -- even though failure in the NFL is "not allowed" -- wondrous things can happen.

... in which Jeff Saturday says hell, yes, he's a candidate for the permanent head coaching job, and that he has lots and lots of ideas -- tons of ideas! -- for changing things at the Colts complex on West 56th Street, and never mind that his 1-7 record as interim coach was the worst record for an interim in 22 years.

... in which Ballard says hell, yes, Saturday will be interviewed for the position, and how the decision on the next head coach will be his, and never mind it clearly was owner Jim Irsay's idea to bring in Saturday as interim to begin with.

... in which ... in which ...

Oh, to heck with it.

The only wondrous thing that's going to happen with this bunch now is how wondrously Ballard will screw up their first-round pick, aka the Quarterback Pick. 

And how wondrous will be the changes Jeff Saturday makes after he gets in the room with Ballard and Irsay and convinces them to remove the "interim" from his job title.

And how it will be a miracle on West 56th Street if the Colts can convince anyone competent to take the head coaching job once Anyone Competent discovers what an absolute s***show this franchise is right now.

Colts fans can light votive candles hoping Jim Harbaugh can be convinced to come to Indy, but why would he want to? He'd be taking over a team with an overpriced offensive line that can't block a sunbeam, and with a corps of largely anonymous receivers devoid of a go-to gamebreaker, and with a star running back coming off a high-ankle sprain that shut him down for the last three games of the season.

Also, he'd be taking the job without knowing who his quarterback of the future will be. And with Irsay and Ballard picking that quarterback.

Irsay, who picked an interim coach who oversaw an historic fourth-quarter collapse against Dallas and an historic blown lead against Minnesota in back-to-back games.

Ballard, who admits he's failed but somehow still has his job after saying no one is allowed to fail in the NFL.

Ay-yi-yi.

Cursed

 The best women's basketball team in America is not No. 1 South Carolina or No. 2 Stanford, or even No. 4 UConn. It's over there on UConn's bench, wearing street clothes.

That's Azzi Fudd, Paige Bueckers, Ice Brady and Aaliyah Edwards over there. Head coach Geno Auriemma, too, at least in spirit.

He's actually at home, felled by a nasty virus that has kept him away for four games. Longtime assistant Chris Dailey is coaching the team now while she presumably chants incantations to ward off evil spirits.

You could be forgiven for thinking something dark is stalking the grounds in Storrs, Conn. these days, looking to make Linda Blair's head spin around again. Bueckers and Brady are both out for the year with various ACL and patella tears. Fudd is out for another couple of weeks, possibly, with a knee injury of her own. And Edwards fell over some chairs last week and injured her foot, and so now she's out, too.

It's gotten so bad UConn had to cancel its Sunday game against DePaul, because the Huskies didn't have the seven healthy scholarship players required by the Big East to play a game. And unless they get at least one back by tomorrow, their scheduled game with St. John's will be a wash, too.

The Blob's mental acuity admittedly fails it occasionally. But I can't remember a similar circumstance that didn't involve COVID.  

 I'm tempted to think this is payback for all those national titles UConn has won, and for Auriemma's resulting, and sometimes off-putting, arrogance. But I don't believe in curses, unless it's the Curse of the Andrettis at Indianapolis, which none of the Andrettis believe in, either.

(And, no, I don't count Michael's five wins as a car owner. In case you were wondering.)

Anyway ... I don't believe in curses.

But just to be safe, I'm not planning on visiting Storrs anytime soon.

Dawg food

Well … at least it wasn't eleventy-hundred to zilch. Because yesterday I said it wouldn't be, and by God it wasn't.

It was only, um, 65-7.

Sixty-five to seven, a certified rump-roasting, and by the end I swear Georgia was sending n the late Vince Dooley to play quarterback. Herschel Walker and his poor scrambled brain was the running back, unless it was Charlie Trippi. Some guy wearing a papier mache Bulldog head was pulled out of the stands to play wide receiver.

Oh, look. He just scored.

Just about everyone with a University of Georgia connection scored before it was mercifully finished, and TCU lay as smooshed as a lot of folks figured the Horned Frogs would be. Turns out they were as overmatched as it looked on paper. Even the TCU players admitted afterward the Bulldogs were on a different level.

So score one for the on-paper crowd, and go ahead, laugh at those of us who got caught up in all that Horned Frog mythology. Destiny, schmestiny, as it turned out. Stetson Bennett and  Brock Bowers and all the rest knew what you could do with your destiny.

The numbers are painful. Georgia ground out 32 first downs; TCU managed just nine. The Bulldogs piled up 589 total yards; TCU scraped out just 188. The Dawgs were 10-of-14 on third and fourth down; the Frogs converted 2-of-13.

If nothing else it was Exhibit A for why the CFP is expanding the playoffs to 12 teams, because it at least will give all the Power 5 conference champions a place at the table before Georgia, Alabama, Ohio State and Michigan inevitably square off in the Final Four. No outliers like TCU need apply, because they'll have been disposed of during the first round or the quarterfinals.

Although it would be fun to see a TCU make another magical run occasionally before getting steamrolled by reality. Call me a romantic.

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 18

 And now this season's final edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the enduring Blob feature of which critics have said "Really? We don't have to ENDURE it any more, bwah-ha-ha-ha?” and also "Final? You mean as in, FINAL?":

1. "Hey, check it out! We FINALLY eliminated Aaron Rodgers from the playoffs, bwah-ha-ha-ha!" (Your new favorite NFL team, the Detroit Lions)

2. ",,, bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!" (The Lions, still laughing)

3. "The hell are we thinking?" (The Indianapolis Colts, after erasing a 24-14 deficit to go ahead of the Houston Texans 31-24 with 3:33 to play)

4. "Don't worry! We got this!" (The Colts defense, allowing Davis Mills to take the Texans 83 yards in 14 plays, throw a touchdown pass to Jordan Akins with 50 seconds to play and throw to Akins for the two-point conversion that cemented a 32-31 win)

5. "Yay! We’ve got the No. 4 pick now!" (Colts fans)

6. "Yay! We’ve got the No. 1 pick now!" (The Chicago Bears, who did their bit by losing to the Vikings)

7. "The hell were you thinking?" (The Texans to Lovie Smith, whom they fired hours after the Texans' win)

8. Meanwhile, Nyheim Hines!

9. Runs back not one but two kickoffs for touchdowns in the Bills win over the Patriots.

10. "The hell were we thinking?" (The Colts, who traded Hines to the Bills in November)

Prediction time!

 TCU and Georgia play tonight for the College Football Playoff title, and I'm compelled to say  they're doing it at the wrong place and the wrong time. The game's in L.A. at 7:30 p.m. Eastern time, which is rush hour on the west coast. And it's on the wrong day besides.

College football's a Saturday game and its season should end on a Saturday. Especially if it's going to end in L.A.

"But Mr. Blob," you're saying now. "What about the Saturday NFL games?"

Play 'em on Sunday, the way God intended. Where's it say in the Gospel According To Goodell that there must be a handful of NFL games on Saturday on the last weekend of the regular season?

Anyway ...

On to the prediction!

In which the Blob predicts Georgia will win. Unless it doesn't.

This the spell these TCUs weave, see, especially after taking down Michigan in the semis in a game the Horned Frogs were supposed to lose 55-7 or something. People have been saying they aren’t that good all year long, and all the Frogs and their rub-some-dirt-on-it quarterback Max Duggan have done is shrug and keep on winning.

Now they're playing for a national championship, and the ghosts of Sammy Baugh and Davey O'Brien and the fictional TCU icons created by the late Dan Jenkins (himself a TCU grad) are rising up. Billy Clyde Puckett is saying Georgia ain't nothin' but toothless guys named Cooter marrying their cousins. Shake Tiller is saying football is meaningless, but nonetheless, GO FROGS.

All of this strongly tempts the Blob to say to hell with it and pick TCU. 

Now, I know the Frogs aren't going to win, especially with their leading rusher dinged up so badly he might not play. I know magic or destiny or what-not has an expiration date, if they exist at all. And I know, even if Georgia was one botched kick away from not even being here, that the unbeaten Bulldogs never have two off games in a row.

The only close call they had in the regular season was against Missouri, when they had to come from behind to win 26-22.

The next week they floor-waxed Auburn 42-10.

Now, TCU isn't Auburn. TCU is way better than Auburn, and never mind all the SEC-besotted folks who think every school in the conference is a mighty giant bestriding the Earth. 

They aren’t. Fact is, there were plenty of sucky teams in the SEC this year. Auburn (5-7) was one of them. Hell, they barely beat Texas A&M, for heaven's sake.

Nonetheless, logic must prevail. Georgia will win.

But not eleventy-hundred to zilch. Call it 38-30, as the Bulldogs get way up and Duggan leads a stirring TCU comeback that falls short.

Sorry, Billy Clyde 'n' them.

Life cycling

 I don't know what Los Angeles Rams head coach Sean McVay decides to do after today, but I do know I've never seen anything quite like this. Thirty-six seems a trifle young to be having a mid-life crisis, after all.

And yet, hell, why not?

This is a question too few people ask themselves these days, and we're a poorer society for it. In the Blob's humble opinion, America on the whole works too many hours for too little reward with too little mulling of what the heck we're doing and why we're doing it. What used to be defined career tracks in a better America have become just a hamster-wheel grind for the Man in too many cases.

 The Man gets absurdly rich; the hamsters get laid off so the Man can get even more absurdly rich. And so it goes, and so it goes, as Kurt Vonnegut used to say.

This doesn't exactly describe where Sean McVay is right now, but it does provide some context. He was one of the brightest young minds in the National Football League when the Rams made him their head coach in 2017, and five years later he was won the Super Bowl at 35. Now what?

Now McVay apparently will take some time off to consider that. If his career trajectory so far suggests he sticks around for the next 20 or 30 years to become some Rushmore figure in the NFL coaching pantheon, it's only a suggestion for McVay. That sets him apart from virtually everyone else who's ever trundled down this particular pike.

Hard to imagine a young Vince Lombardi or Tom Landry or Don Shula taking time off to do a little life cycling at 36, after all. But this is a different time and a different America, and McVay is a different cat. And good on him for it.

In the last year, he's won a Super Bowl and gotten married and had goo-gobs of dough thrown at him to come sit behind an analyst's desk and jawbone. It's a lot to process, and so McVay is going to take some time to process it. 

This indicates he's a man with some perspective, and not your average hamster. There's no hamster wheel quite like the NFL coaching hamster wheel, after all. Excessive scurrying is not only encouraged; it's not even considered scurrying. Which ain't normal, unless you consider it normal to sleep in your office so you can rise at zero dark thirty every morning to watch more game tape.

McVay may or may not have done his share of that, or something like it. He's also watched it go for naught this season as half his team got hurt and the Rams have limped to a 5-11 record going into the season finale at Seattle. That alone might make a man question why he's grinding away at this endless wheel.

That McVay's actually asking that question, apparently, sets him apart. And makes you think he might be, you know, normal, even if his profession isn't.

Discipline fail

There are some odd rituals in the Church of the Old School, and one of them is the deification of suffering. Remember that time Coach set up trashcans at both ends of the floor and made us run gassers 'til we puked? Remember when he yanked on our facemasks so hard our necks hurt for a week? Remember ... remember ... remember ...

And then the chuckles, the fond shakings of the head (Those were the days, boys!), as if sadistic coaches were a beloved heirloom who set their generation apart from These (Soft As Butter) Kids Today.

Odd, as I said. Damned odd.

Also, the sort of thing that makes Old School congregants sneer and laugh when they hear about what happened at a small Division III school in suburban Chicago the other day.

What happened was, Concordia University Chicago temporarily removed its men's basketball coach, Steve Kollar, after he conducted a disciplinary practice so brutal it sent five players to the hospital. This happened, allegedly, after some of the Concordians broke curfew during a trip to California, and it resulted in Concordia having to postpone two games over the weekend because ... well, because half the team was in the hospital.

And you can hear the Old Schoolers revving up already, can't you?

More tales of puking in trashcans. The reverential invoking of that scene in "Miracle" -- largely apocryphal, by the way -- where Herb Brooks makes his players skate Herbies until they drop after a lackadaisical effort in an Olympic warmup game. Perhaps there would even be a mention or two of the Junction Boys.

Don't know that story?

Well, it happened in 1954, in the middle of the worst drought in Texas in decades. The new football coach at Texas A&M dragged his team to a heat-seared pimple in a countryside dying of thirst, and put them through 10 days of hell so brutal 80 of his 115 players quit and one almost died of heat stroke.

The coach who did that was Bear Bryant.

The players who survived were forever after known as the Junction Boys. A man wrote a book about them, and the book got made into a movie starring Tom Berenger as the Bear, and the whole insane business became something just this side of noble.

As for the real Bear Bryant, he admitted years later that he was a damn fool to do what he did. Because for God's sake someone could have died.

It was a discipline fail just like what happened at Concordia was a discipline fail, And someday, if he's at all a man with some self-awareness, Steve Kollar will perhaps look back and call himself a damn fool, too.

Here's hoping.

A-portaling we will go ...

 Big news from Transfer Portal World this week, and no, it's not that it malfunctioned and turned former Ball State running back Carson Steele into a Good Carson and an Evil Carson on his way to UCLA. You remember that episode of "Star Trek," right?

("Enough, Mr. Blob," you're saying now. "We get it. Every time you hear 'transfer portal' you think of the transporter on 'Star Trek.' And, by the way, the episode you're thinking of is 'The Enemy Within', and it involves a transporter malfunction that splits Kirk into Good Kirk and Evil Kirk.")

Yes, that's exactly the episode I was thinking of!

But I digress.

("All the time," you're saying)

What I really want to talk about is Wake Forest quarterback Sam Hartman, last seen taking his 12,967 career passing yards -- second only to Philip Rivers in ACC history -- and entering the transfer portal for his final year of eligibility. And guess where he materialized?

No, not Ball State, you ninny!

He materialized at Notre Dame, which immediately gets a significant upgrade at the quarterback position. Drew Pyne? Tyler Buchner? Posers. Hartman is the real deal, by all accounts. And he's only gone a-portaling once, which ought to qualify him for college football sainthood these days.

Since the NCAA said, "Ah, screw it, do what you want" and let players transfer any time they felt like it and allowed schools to buy them via NIL deals, college football has been like Congressional Republicans trying to elect a speaker. It's been chaos and madness and Rep. Matt "Frat Boy" Gaetz (aka, "the most punchable face in America") almost getting punched in the face. 

Which would have been the No. 1 sports moment of the week. But again I digress.

Point is, the NCAA did the right thing, but it did it all kinds of wrong. From too many rules we've migrated to NO rules -- which means a recruit's "commitment" to a school isn't a commitment at all, and the transfer portal has turned all of them into wandering vagabonds eternally looking for a better NIL deal or a better starting job or a better shot at a title.

Let's take one guy as an example.

Kedon Slovis was the Pac-12 Freshman of the Year in 2019 as a quarterback at USC, but after two great seasons he got hurt and lost his starting job to Jaxson Dart for awhile and then, in December 2021, announced he was entering the transfer portal.

He wound up at Pitt, where this season he started all 11 games and threw for 2,397 yards and 10 touchdowns. Then, just a year after he entered the transfer portal, he entered it again, this time deciding to play his last season of eligibility at BYU.

So, basically, Pitt got themselves a Rent-A-Quarterback for one season. And now Slovis is on to his third college in three years.

(And here I'm compelled to wonder how all this moving around affects his education. Do all his credits transfer? Does that even matter anymore?)

Oh, and the aforementioned Jaxson Dart?

He entered the portal when new USC coach Lincoln Riley brought Heisman Trophy winner Caleb Williams with him. He could last be seen at Ole Miss, where he threw for 2,975 yards and 20 touchdowns this season.

Just a sophomore, you may still find him at Ole Miss next year -- or not, the way these things go nowadays.

You know that old saying? The one that says you can't tell the players without a scorecard?

Never been more true.

Sanity attack

 Damar Hamlin continues to make remarkable progress from his frightening brush with death, awake and alert and communicating through written notes. One of his first was to ask who won the game Monday night, which is all kinds of awesome.

So there's your first victory for today.

Your second?

The National Football League having a rare attack of sanity.

The league announced the Bills-Bengals game postponed after Hamlin's cardiac arrest ll not be finished, which is the only decision it really could have made. Cincy and Buffalo will just have played one fewer game than everyone else, as if anyone will notice or as if it will matter a jot.

It won't. Both teams had already clinched their respective divisions anyway, and if canceling the game means one or the other will get one fewer home game in the playoffs ... well, so what? My aging brain may be admittedly fuzzy in these matters, but I can't recall the last time you could definitively say home field advantage actually was a real factor in the NFL postseason.

You could, in fact, argue that it has less an impact on the outcome than in any other sport. Remember that year it was colder than a well-digger's heinie in Green Bay and everyone thought the Giants would just curl up and die? Or how about the 49ers coming into frozen tundra country last year?

The Giants  won. The Niners won (a week after beating Dallas in Dallas). And since we're talking about the Bengals here, how about having to go to both Tennessee and Kansas City?

That was last year, too, and, hey, look at this: The Bengals won in Nashville. Then they won the AFC title game in Arrowhead, one of the most intimidating home fields in the league.

So, yeah. Tell me how crucial it would have been to scramble the entire schedule just to give someone an extra home game.

Instead, the show will go on, because corporate monoliths as massive as the NFL tend to create their own inertia. Near-death events can't stop them. Inconvenient circumstances arising from those near-death events can't stop them. Hell, not even New Year's Day could stop the NFL from the swift completion of its appointed rounds.

Sportsball World just moved New Year's Day to January 2.

Damar Hamlin almost died that day. 

Six days later, the monolith will just keep grinding along. It's what monoliths do.

Hoosier Gnashin'

 Your Indiana Hoosiers head west tonight to Iowa City, and woe betide if they soil themselves against the Iowa Hawkeyes. That would surely unleash the Lost In The Past Division of the Get Off My Lawn Corps of the Hoosier Nation Army.

You know who I'm talkin' about: The minority of folks who wrap themselves in those five moldering banners at one end of Assembly Hall and wail that these Hoosiers are NOT the Hoosiers of Saint Bob of Knight. And that they're soft and whiny and don't play hard, and did we mention soft?

"You're all worthless and weak!" they cry, channeling their inner Niedermayers.

"The hell are you talking about, Mr. Blob?" you're asking now (and not for the first time).

I'm talking about a handwritten note Indiana's All-American center Trayce Jackson-Davis got after the Hoosiers failed to show up against Kansas and lost by 22. It was not the Hoosiers' proudest moment, admittedly. It was also not that they didn't get trucked by a better team, because they did.

(Arizona, same deal. Arizona, in fact, might be the best team in the country right now. We'll see in March.)

In any case, there's still no excuse for what some creature named Tim Weaver wrote to Jackson-Davis, which TJD subsequently made public by posting a screen grab of it on Twitter.

First he said TJD was "a horrible leader" (and underlined it!). Then he said head coach Mike Woodson was a horrible leader, too. Then he said he hated the way they "cried" to the refs instead of "getting back on D" ... and that IU had been "soft for years" and this was the "softest team yet" ... and that "you guys don't even seem like you care anymore."

Credit TJD with maintaining his sense of humor after reading this garbage, even puckishly thanking Weaver for his "words of encouragement." Not sure the Blob would have been so even-tempered.

What I do know, from decades of experience covering IU buckets, is that Tim Weaver is clearly still carrying a torch for Saint Bob. "Getting back on D" is the giveaway, although the entire tone is a marker, too.

Here's what I think about that: "Fans" like Tim Weaver aren't worth the name. And they are some sad individuals, pining for a glorious past with the selective memory reserved for those who do that.

I also think their tongues would be mopping the floor if they had to play one possession the way Trayce Jackson-Davis plays possessions. And that they'd be the first (and loudest) whiners if they were subjected to the kind of hard fouls that D-I basketball players routinely absorb in 2023.

Everyone's job is always harder than you think it is, and that includes the job of being a college basketball player. No one who plays the modern game at the level Indiana plays it is "soft." If they were, they wouldn't be playing at the level Indiana plays it.

For instance, I don't recall anyone calling Trayce Jackson-Davis soft when he took it to Armando Bacot of defending national champion North Carolina. Or when he went for 30, on 13-of-16 shooting, in a road win at Xavier, which subsequently took down No. 2 Connecticut.  

Oh, and that Kansas game?

TJD only scored 13 points, but he blocked nine shots taking on the Kansas bigs pretty much by himself. Which doesn't sound to me like he didn't care, but what do I know?

I'm not one of the loud, but thankfully small, number of Tim Weavers in Hoosier Nation.

Or Hoosier Gnashin' (Of Teeth), in their case.

The dating game

 Michigan is out, finished at Faber (or, for non-"Animal House" fans, the College Football Playoff), and that can mean only one thing. 

It's time for The Dating Game!

In other words, it's time again for the wooing of Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh, who took the San Francisco 49ers to the Super Bowl and the NFC championship game in consecutive years and then went back to his alma mater in Ann Arbor, where people have been expecting him to return to the NFL as soon as he taught the Wolverines to win again.

Well, he has. The last two seasons, Michigan has gone 25-3, won the Big Ten title twice, beaten Ohio State twice and reached the CFP twice. So, you know, it's time to bail for the En Eff Ell again.

We went through this last year, when Harbaugh apparently had the Vikings job locked up until he flew out to Minneapolis and found out he DIDN'T have the Vikings job locked up, and went back to Ann Arbor in a huff. Apparently he thought he was going to Minnesota for a coronation, not an actual interview, and when he found out otherwise the deal fell through.

Now?

Well, now, despite mucking it up against TCU, he's churning in the rumor mill again. Reports have Indianapolis coveting him and Denver coveting him and Carolina coveting him. A league source says, in fact, he's already talked with the Panthers.

The Broncos?

At least he'd have Russell Wilson to resurrect there.

The Colts?

At least he'd have ... well ... uh ... hmm.

Not sure what appeal that job would have at the moment, other than the fact he played for the Colts and Jim Irsay likes him and therefore he'd throw goo-gobs of dough at him to come save the franchise he's all but ruined. And I suppose if the Colts sign another Quarterback of the Future, Harbaugh the alleged quarterback whisperer would be there to bring him along.

But let's face it, the joint is a major fixer-upper right now. Carolina, on the other hand, is 6-10 and beat division champ Tampa Bay once, and, a week ago, whipped up on a Lions team that had won six of its previous seven games coming in. Plus, the Panthers are playing in a trash-can division that would put the playoffs within easy reach. 

So maybe local media isn't just indulging the spin cycle when the Queen City News reports Harbaugh has "sincere interest" in the job.

In any event, let's bring our contestant out to start asking his questions, Chuck Woolery!

Bachelor No. 1, would you describe yourself as A) a dumpster fire, B) a Hazmat site, or C) a crime scene ...

Let the game begin.

What matters

 They worked on the kid for a good 10 minutes, while around them an entire stadium held its breath. Hank Williams Jr. and all his rowdy friends never whooped about THIS on their Monday nights, aw, you bet. No one goes to an NFL game and expects to see CPR On Two, after all.

But that's what happened last night.

With 5:58 to play in the first quarter of a Monday Night Football game between Buffalo and Cincinnati, Bengals wide receiver Tee Higgins caught a pass, turned up field and lowered his shoulder. He hit Bills safety Damar Hamlin square in the chest with it. Both men went down; both men got up. 

Then Hamlin went down again. This tends to happen when your heart stops beating.

Struck at the precise angle and precise millisecond to trigger full cardiac arrest, Hamlin lay there while medical personnel performed CPR on him for what felt like hours. The entire Bills team knelt around him. Players from both the Bills and Bengals were seen openly weeping.

Finally, Hamlin's heart started beating again. They gave him oxygen and loaded him onto an ambulance and took him to the hospital, where he was sedated and intubated and remains in critical condition this morning.

Meanwhile, the ponderous mechanism that is the National Football League creaked and groaned toward a decision that should have taken about two seconds.

An hour after Hamlin was taken off the field -- an hour -- the game finally was postponed.

Credit, first of all, Bengals coach Zac Taylor for recognizing what had to happen. The Bills defense was actually preparing to go back on the field when Taylor crossed over to the Bills side and conferred with Bills coach Sean McDermott, and then with the game officials. After a time everyone left the field and went back to their respective locker rooms to talk it over.

And there they stayed. 

No one was going back on that field, and it didn't matter how long it took Roger Goodell to decide the game would be postponed. The game was postponed from the moment everyone left the field. The coaches and players had already made that decision for the commissioner.

Which, of course, was at once both as it should have been, and a reflection of what happens when stark reality intrudes upon the game's testosterone illusions. The NFL is a world populated by young men at the peak of their physical lives, and if they understand how incredibly violent that world is -- how subjecting themselves to it for even a short period of time can sometimes ruin the rest of their lives -- they also believe in their own invincibility.

Torn ligaments and broken bones and concussions?

Just part of the game, and rub some dirt on it.

A healthy young man suffering cardiac arrest and (essentially) lying dead on the field for minutes?

Hey. Nobody signed up for that.

Life and death had intruded rudely on the NFL's cotton candy world of sanitized, monetized violence, and it's a measure of just what a fantasy all that is that it took the league an hour to understand this (bleep) wasn't normal. And to at last understand what matters in the grand scheme, and to do the human thing.

As for last night's game, who knows how the NFL will work it around to finish the thing. But you know it will, because the Show is all, and must therefore go on.

Whether it's worth caring about right now or not.

(New Year's) Day trippin'

 So you're telling me yesterday was New Year's Day, but where's your evidence, smart guy? Because I think today is New Year's Day.

I mean, I'll turn on my TV this morning, and what'll I see?

The Tournament of Roses parade, BUDDY.

And later on?

The Cotton Bowl. The Vrbo Missing A Vowel Citrus Bowl (with Your Purdue Boilermakers!). The Rose Bowl (with the San Gabriel Mountains!).

Also, the Blob's now-favorite New Year's Day tradition, the NHL Winter Classic, will be coming to us from Fenway Park. The Boston Bruins will do battle with the Pittsburgh Penguins, everyone will wear toques and such, it'll be loads of fun.

So go ahead, smart guy. Tell me this ain't New Year's Day.

(Smart guy points at calendar that says January 2)

Yeah, OK, so you got me there. But if all the stuff that usually happens on January 1 happens on January 2, doesn't that make January 2 New Year's Day?

It does where the Blob lives.

Yesterday?

That was just Sunday. 

Same old NFL (Ooh, look, the Colts and Bears are flinging poo at the game again!). No President's Trophy floats. No Tulane vs. USC in the Cotton Bowl; no Utah vs. Penn State in the Rose Bowl; no Patrice Bergeron skating where the Red Sox  kicked around double-play balls all summer.

Sunday.

Yeah, it was January 1, but it wasn't New Year's Day. It was some sort of ripple in the celestial stream, a pause in the linear march of time. Twenty-four hours passed, but they didn't count. At midnight, the great timepiece of the universe reset.

I mean, if we can Spring Forward and Fall Back every year, who's to say it's not possible?

Not me. I'll be watching outdoor hockey instead. Or wondering how a second-rate bowl like the Missing A Vowel Bowl managed to sneak into New Year's Day. Or wondering why they played the Orange Bowl on December 30 and the Sugar Bowl on New Year's Eve.

Oh, right. Because even on Really New Year's Day, ESPN had to clear air time for their precious NFL Monday Night Football -- as if anyone still cares after 17 numbing weeks, especially when the competing teams (the Bills and the Bengals) have already locked up their respective division titles.

Ah, well. You can't have everything, I guess.

Not even on New Year's Day.

Games worth the name

 Welcome to 2023, boys and girls, and what a parting gift college football gave us with which to kick 2022 out on its treacherous ass. Two College Football Playoff semifinals ...  two insane scorefests ... and a little something for everyone.

For TCU fans, a great big neener-neener-neener to all the folks who'd been trashing the Horned Frogs for the last month, saying they were imposters, fake-ID-wielders, a high school team that was going to get embarrassed on national TV by Big Boy Football, aka the Michigan Wolverines. Final: TCU 51, Michigan 45. Take that, haters!

For Michigan fans, a close enough score and enough horrendous officiating for them to blame it on the zebras and claim their Wolverines were actually the much better team, even though they weren't on this night. Never led, couldn't stop TCU and quarterback Max Duggan when it mattered -- or even when it didn't, frankly.

For fans of the Indianapolis Colts, a moment's pause to consider whether or not they really would want to see Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh come back to coach their sidewalk splatter of a franchise. Two first-and-goal situations that yielded no points, a clutch of head-scratching decisions ... not exactly one of Jimbo's better coaching jobs, to be sure.

For the vilest and most unhinged corners of the interwhatsis, a young man named Noah Ruggles, served up on a platter with all the appropriate  garnish after he duck-hooked a 50-yard field goal attempt that would have saved Ohio State from blowing the Peach Bowl to Georgia. Pile on, kids! Suggest all sorts of sick punishments! Call the kid a choker while you sit on your couch brushing Doritos crumbs off your Billy Buckeye duds! Fun for the whole family!

For those Ohio State fans NOT demanding Ruggles be drawn and quartered and have his severed limbs sent to the four corners of Ohio, another chance to bash head coach Ryan Day. His team blew not one but two two-touchdown leads and, leading 38-14 with a quarter to play, was outscored 18-3 in the fourth quarter. And with 24 seconds to play and the Buckeyes on the Georgia 32, he dialed up a couple of nothing plays that lost a yard, leaving poor Ruggles with a 50-yard attempt instead of, say, a 35 or 40 or 45-yard attempt. 

And for those Ohio State fans NOT demanding Day we drawn and quartered and his limbs sent to the four corners of Ohio, the observation that the Georgia comeback began pretty much the moment Ohio State receiver Marvin Harrison Jr. exited the game with a concussion. Harrison had scored two touchdowns and caught five balls for 106 yards. Do the Buckeyes get outscored 18-3 in the fourth if Harrison is still on the field? Are they a lot closer than the 33 when Ruggle lines up that kick? Reasonable people might think so.

So ... yeah. Something for everyone. And now TCU vs. Georgia for the national title, immediately giving more fuel to the doubters who say Georgia will mash the Horned Frogs into amphibian goulash by 30 or 40 or 50 points.

The Blob doubts it. But if so, we'll always have yesterday.

Two games worth the name, in other words.