Combine time!

 Tomorrow in Indianapolis begins the NFL's annual Festival of Analysis Paralysis -- aka, the NFL Combine -- and the Blob can barely contain its excitement. This is because one of its favorite things is ridiculing perceived silliness, and the combine is nothing if not silly a great deal of the time.

For the next week, we'll see large men in shorts running, large men in shorts jumping, and large men in shorts being poked, prodded and measured in what evokes uncomfortably a slave auction in the antebellum South. Words like "tight skin", "waist-bender" and "burst" will be thrown around. Half the invited quarterbacks won't show up, because ... 

Well. Because the combine has very little to do with whether or not they can actually play football.

This goes for the running backs, the wide receivers, the edge rushers, and the O-linemen, too, of course. That's not really what the combine is about, after all.

 In an era when teams have warehouses of video on prospective draft picks, everyone has already identified who can play and who can't. Usually they've even broken it down into smaller increments, like who can will be an impact player right away, who projects to be an impact player with the proper coaching, and who will be Mr. Irrelevant -- i.e., the last player taken in the draft.

No, the combine is largely a stress test to see who can maintain his cool through a week of intense, numbing and sometimes pointless scrutiny. It's a bit like that part in "The Right Stuff" where the prospective astronaut pool is weeded out via a lot of humiliating physical and psychological tests. 

At least the NFL has decided to rein in the humiliation part. That's why GMs are now prohibited from asking prospects if their mothers were prostitutes, or if a prospect was gay. Also gone is the utterly useless Wonderlic test, which measured precisely nothing.

Some of the best players in NFL history posted some of the worst Wonderlic scores. And vice-versa. So, out it goes.

Too bad, in a way. The Wonderlic was so easy to make fun of, after all.

Now we'll just have to make fun of how excited everyone gets over some right tackle's 40 time. And wonder, as we always do, why we shouldn't be paying more attention to his 10-yard time, seeing how 10 yards is going to be the farthest he ever runs most of the time.

Ah, but enough of that. Let's line up those big hosses, and stop with the nitpicking. It's go time, baby.

Or, you know, some kinda time.

Standards, Part Three

 Or "Part Infinity," apparently.

Hate to bang yet again on those basketball folks at Alabama, but, gee, they make it so easy. They stick their face out there and it keeps running into my fist.

Hear what happened yesterday?

At No. 2 'Bama's first home game since star freshman Brandon Miller did not get so much as a talking-to for helping facilitate capital murder, he got a rousing ovation from the 'Bama crowd. Then a teammate jokingly patted him down (for a gun, get it?) as he was introduced.

Making light of a young mother's murder. What a great idea.

In fairness, 'Bama coach Nate Oats kinda-sorta decried the patting-down thing in the postgame (The Crimson Tide, with Miller scoring 24 points, beat Arkansas 86-83). He said it was "inappropriate" and would not happen again.

Inappropriate?

Try, "Complete bulls***", Coach. Also try, "The player involved will no longer be part of our program.”

Oats didn't say either of those things, of course. I mean, it's almost March, for cryin' out loud.

Priorities, you know.

Baseball the way it should be

 Well, then. I guess baseball really is serious about this pitch clock deal.

This after a spring training baseball game between the Boston Red Sox and Atlanta Braves ended in a 6-6 tie yesterday because Cal Conley of the Braves horsed around too long during his at-bat. 

The bases were loaded and Conley thought he'd just drawn a game-winning walk when, oops, the shot clock buzzer went off. Or, you know, something like that.

Actually, the ump called him out on a third strike because Conley wasn't set in the batter's box when the pitch clock wound down below eight seconds. Under the new rules, that's the designated time for the batter to be set between pitches.

Conley couldn't believe it. The fans booed. But you know what?

I love it.

Oh, I don't love that it ended the game, but then again, it was only a spring training game, so who cares? No one, which is why it ended in a tie. Had it had been a regular season game, only the inning would have been over.

The relevant point here is baseball is finally, finally doing something to return the sport to its roots -- i.e., make it the fast-paced, no-futzing-around game it was when it became the National Pastime. The Braves and Red Sox managed to play nine innings of baseball, including an astounding 17 pitching changes, in just under two hours and 40 minutes. 

Now that, folks, is baseball the way it should be. Hoorah.

Post-mortems, and stuff

 Certain things become obvious, as the energy hisses out of  Mackey Arena and Indiana runs its high-falutin' rival off its own floor:

Jalen Hood-Schifino is a first-round draft pick who will never have a sophomore season at IU.

Zach Edey is the Big Ten and National Player of the Year because even in defeat, you can't stop him.

Purdue needs more than Edey to win; Indiana needs Trayce Jackson-Davis but doesn't NEED need him, if you catch the drift.

And, finally … 

Indiana is not sneaky good. It's just good now, and if there's a negative in that it's that the Hoosiers have lost whatever element of surprise they had.

This after Jackson-Davis scored zero points in the first half last night, and yet it was Purdue that was in trouble. The Boilers led just 38-34 at the break, and Hood-Schifino was the best player on the floor with 23 points on his way to 35. This was foreshadowing if you were at all paying attention.

Because then the second half commenced, and Indiana splashed a couple threes, and Trey Galloway stole the ball and laid it up at the other end. And, poof, the Purdues were done. The Hoosiers hit 'em with a 19-5 salvo to open the half, Jackson-Davis got into the flow as a rebounder (eight boards) and facilitator (seven assists), and the Hoosiers won at Mackey -- and swept their higher-ranked rivals -- for the first time in a decade.

Unavoidable conclusion: Purdue has the POY. Indiana has the better team.

The Hoosiers have Jackson-Davis, they have Hood-Schifino, and they have enough other pieces that -- when they're right -- they can make you pay for focusing on the Big Two. They're looking at a 3 or 4-seed in Da Tournament right now, and they'll be the 3 or 4-seed no one wants to see if they play the way they did last night.

Purdue?

The Boilermakers have lost four of their last six and are beginning to look like a team that left its best basketball behind it in January. Their resume still might ensure them a 2-seed, but when two of your three wins in February have come against the worst team in the Big Ten (Ohio State) and a "meh" Penn State team, it doesn't inspire a lot of confidence.

Prediction: Edey gets Purdue to the Sweet Sixteen, where its season ends.

Other prediction: Indiana gets to the Sweet Sixteen, too. And then ...

Well, who knows? The Hoosiers have laid down some flat efforts at some odd times this season. It's the only reason I'd hesitate to say they're Elite Eight at least right now.

In any event, it's going to be an interesting tournament. I mean, just look at what happened yesterday.

Unranked Arizona State beat No. 7 Arizona on 'Zona's home floor with a 60-foot heave at the buzzer.

A 9-20 Florida State team rallied from 25 points down in the second half and shocked No. 13 Miami on, you guessed it, a 3-pointer at the buzzer.

 An underachieving North Carolina team knocked off No. 6 Virginia by eight.

Iowa, trailing by 13 with a minute-and-a-half to play, made 6-of-9 threes -- including four in a row in the last 32 seconds -- to force overtime and beat Michigan State, 112-106.

A wild day, capped by IU asserting itself as the best team in the state. Wilder days to come.

Standards, Part Deux

 And in the further adventures of the smash new basketball series "Clueless In 'Loosa," our heroes continue to be Clueless, while finding it shocking, somehow, that Stuff Happens.

In this week's further adventures ...

* Alabama's freshman star Brandon Miller -- off the hook for delivering a gun to a former teammate, who then handed it to a buddy, who then allegedly committed capital murder with it -- scored a freshman-record 41 points the other night, including the winning shot in overtime as No. 2 'Bama staved off an upset bid at South Carolina.

In a spectacular self-awareness fail, Alabama fans were reportedly enraged when South Carolina fans chanted "Lock him up, lock him up" at Miller. This was of course entirely predictable, and it was entirely Alabama's fault because it painted a target on Miller by allowing him to play in the first place. 

Way to throw the kid to the wolves, guys! Gold stars all around.

* Conventional wisdom says the first rule of getting out of a hole is to stop digging. But fie on conventional wisdom, says Alabama coach Nate Oats. Nobody wins in March without being bold, and Oats (and Alabama) are all about winning in March.

And so, after saying Miller had done nothing wrong the other day, and then clarifying it with a statement that essentially said the same thing, what did Oats do?

He kept talking!

This time he said he and the university had been taking the whole Miller thing "very seriously from Day 1." Then he said they all feel they've "done the right thing in this case."

Well ... it's obvious they're taking something very seriously down there in Tuscaloosa.

Like, you know, March. The Big Dance. Alabama's best shot at cutting down the nets on the first Monday in April since, well, forever.

Two things, Coach Oats:

1. Stop talking.

2. Don't get all indignant when rival schools use your self-serving inaction against you. In an increasingly vicious fight for talent, coaches exploit any opening they can. And Alabama has given them an opening you could drive Jupiter through.

No coach with any recruiting chops, after all, is going to think twice about sitting down with Mom and Dad, pointing toward Tuscaloosa and saying "You really want your son to go to a program where they let players fool around with guns?"

It's almost too easy. Because, see, these things have consequences, and this will surely be one of them.

 Consequences. What a concept.

Hey, look! It's that LIV thing!

College basketball has become AAU buckets with shinier shoe and TV deals, and looser morals. Aaron Rodgers has emerged from the dark (literally!) with a higher plane of consciousness, or at least more ideas for screwing with the Packers. And the NBA and NHL seasons keep going on and on and on against all logic.

So it's understandable you might have missed the news that LIV Golf  -- aka, "(Blood) Money For Nothin'" -- opens its second season today at some track down in Mexico.

The usual collection of burnouts, has-beens or back-nine-of-their-careers dudes will be on hand. So will the CW, the only network with whom LIV could ink a deal. Presumably they'll wedge the coverage between episodes of "Nancy Drew" and "Riverdale."

It'll be the usual exhibition of soulless, no-risk golf by a bunch of rich guys who won't be playing for a paycheck, because the paycheck (in the form of appearance fees) already will have been pocketed. But don't take my word for it.

Take the word of Washington Post columnist Sally Jenkins, one of the masters of the form and someone who's never been squeamish about eviscerating institutions that have it coming. Unfortunately for LIV Golf, this time it's them.

Check it out here. Apologize in advance if it's behind a paywall.

Uh-oh

 So, Michigan State clocked an uninspired Indiana team by 15 the other night in East Lansing, which was the first home game for the Spartans since Crazy Guy With A Gun decided to roam around campus shooting people, and thus it was a hugely emotional night and consequently a not at all surprising W.

But you know the Blob. It tends to see these things through a different lens, usually warped as hell and upside-down.

Which is why the first thing I did after seeing Michigan State 80, Indiana 65 was to look toward West Lafayette and think "Uh-oh, Boilers."

That's because the last time Indiana and Purdue met, it was four days after the Hoosiers had put up an uninspired effort and Maryland rolled 'em by 11 in College Park. Meanwhile, No. 1 Purdue had just disassembled Penn State by 20.

We all know what happened next, right?

Indiana came out like the bastard issue of Sharknado and Megatron, buried the Purdues under a 20-point halftime cave-in and then outgutted them down the stretch in a 79-74 upset in Assembly Hall.

Now here we are again.

Indiana-Purdue II.

Indiana coming off a double-digit loss on the road, four days ago.

Purdue coming off a 27-point disassembling of Ohio State.

Hmm.

I say Purdue still wins, because it's in Mackey this time and the Boilers will have had six days to rest up for it. But the convergence of events makes me also think something else.

Beware, Purdue. Be very Ware.

Standards. Or lack of same.

 OK, so maybe Alabama basketball coach Nate Oats is in a heap o' trouble now. Maybe.

But he's turned a football school into a basketball school, bringing the Crimson Tide to full flood just a couple of weeks ago, when the Tide went to No. 1 in the polls.

And a good chunk of the reason is standout freshman Brandon Miller, a 6-9 forward who's averaging 18.7 points and 8.0 rebounds for 'Bama.

And, hey, it's not like the police actually charged Miller with a crime, you know. Even if he did deliver a gun to one-time 'Bama hooper Darius Miles, who  gave it to his buddy, who then shot 23-year-old Jamea Harris to death with it.

But no harm, no foul for Miller. Something like that.

Which is what Oats said, and then "clarified" by essentially saying it again in a makeup statement, as Miller continued to be a member in good standing on Oats' roster.

I mean, come on. It's almost March, and the Tide has a shot at the Big Pulled Pork Sandwich. So I'm sure Miller will only get a stern talking-to, because no one wants to overreact at this crucial time, right?

Riiiiight?

Uh ... no. 

No, right would have been someone asking Oats what the hell his star player was doing fooling around with guns, even if it is Alabama. And Oats asking the same question of Miller just before either booting him off the team outright or suspending him indefinitely.

Of course, that might lead Miller to transfer-portaling to some other school with even fewer standards than 'Bama.

And that might hurt the continued progress of the program.

And also March ... Big Pulled Pork Sandwich ... all that.

Which is why Oats doesn't seem inclined as yet to punish Miller (except perhaps for that venerable dodge, "we're handling this internally"). And why he doesn't seem to be in a heap o' trouble yet, seeing how Alabama hasn't said a peep about suspending Oats, or, I don't know, maybe even firing him.

I mean, this isn't about taking Delta Chi's whole effing bar or getting arrested for drunk and disorderly or even stealing a sausage-with-extra-cheese from the pizza guy. This is about one of your players getting mixed up in a homicide, even if only peripherally.

You'd think someone in Tuscaloosa might take that seriously.

But, nah. One Shining Moment ain't down with that.

Noon buckets at the Y

 .... or, if you prefer its given name: The NBA All-Star Game.

Didn't watch a lick of it last night, but I hear it was a lot like watching Booger's five take on Steve-O's in make-it-take-it. First team to ten buckets wins, and Big Load (or just "Load") gets winners.

Out in Salt Lake City it was Team Giannis vs. Team LeBron, first team to 182 wins. Team Giannis won 184-175. Jayson Tatum scored an All-Star record 55 points to go with 10 rebounds and six assists. Team Giannis shot a ridiculous 61.8 percent and 43.9 percent from the 3-point arc. 

I'm just guessing here, but I suspect part of that was because of this one photo I saw.

It's a shot of Tatum caught in mid-air, just about to throw one down. His "defender”, LeBron James, is right there with him.

OK, so not THERE there. Actually he's just standing flat-footed with his hands raised half-heartedly, a safe injury-avoiding distance away.

And, yeah, I know it's an All-Star game, and nobody plays defense in an All-Star game. But at least once upon a time it wasn't Booger vs. Steve-O. At least it used to be the West vs. East, one conference playing for bragging rights against the other.

Team Giannis vs. Team LeBron? Why should I care about that?

You want me to care, at least a little, bring back West vs. East. And inject the sort of chaos of which the Blob is occasionally a fan, and about which it occasionally daydreams.

With the NBA All-Star Game, the daydream is this: What would happen if one All-Star -- it would only take one -- decided to play maniacal defense? Nothing else, just maniacal, playoff-level D?

Block everything that comes inside. Contest every three. Deny the basketball, go for the steal ... hell, maybe even pick up the ballhandler three-quarter court. 

Better yet, don't tell anyone he's going to do it.

You know what would happen, of course. The rest of the All-Stars would lose their damn minds.

They'd be yelling and pointing and getting up in the guy's grill, and then they'd start screaming at the refs. Eventually someone being maniacally guarded would throw the basketball at his tormentor in frustration.

It would be freaking hilarious.

And of course it could never happen. As soon as the guy D-ed up, LeBron or Giannis would take him out and plant him on the bench for the duration. 

But, hey. A guy can dream, right?

The triumph of Random Guy

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. When the Blob pointed out the other day how often the Daytona 500 gets won by outliers, it didn't mean THIS much of an outlier.

Ricky Stenhouse Jr.?

He's so random I didn't even mention him. 

In fact, if you shot me up with truth serum, I'd tell you I wasn't aware he was even still in the Cup series anymore.

But there he was at the end, getting the requisite push at the requisite time while everyone crashed behind him. The yellow came out, the checkers dipped, and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. won Daytona after a record 212 laps. 

It was a record 212 laps because, as usual, the best stock-car drivers in the world couldn't get through the last 10 laps without running into each other. Then couldn't get through the first green-white-checker without running into each other. And then they couldn't get through the second and final green-white-checker without running into each other, which is how Stenhouse won under yellow.

This is what happens in restrictor plate racing, as we all should know by now. It turns events like the Daytona 500 into the Wheel of Fortune, and why the most prolific winner in the race's history might just be Random Guy. 

Sometimes Random Guy is named Derrike Cope, whose 1990 Daytona 500 win was one of only two career wins in 429 Cup races. And sometimes he's named Michael McDowell, whose only Cup win, also in 429 starts, is the 2021 Daytona 500, which he won because Joey Logano and Brad Keselowski wrecked each other on the last lap.

Stenhouse, however, might out-Random both of them.

Until last night, he hadn't won a Cup race in five years, which encompasses 199 starts. He lost his ride with Roush Fenway Racing in 2019, and was picked up by tiny JTG Daugherty racing, co-owned by former NBA star (and one-time NASCAR analyst) Brad Daugherty. Stenhouse was the team's only entry in the 500.

But their luck was in this day. Stenhouse shuffled his way up front from 31st on the grid,  managed to hang around up there, and got the jump on the last two restarts to win a race that saw Keselowski lead the most laps (42), polesitter Alex Bowman notch the first top-five finish for a Daytona 500 polesitter in 22 years, and 52 lead changes among 21 drivers.

Just about everyone loves this sort of Cinderella story, so just about everyone Stenhouse beat was happy for him. One of the only ones who wasn't was, big surprise, the chronically uncharitable Kyle Busch, who pointed out he'd have won his first Daytona 500 in 18 tries without the stupid green-white-checker overtimes, because he was leading at the 200-lap mark.

"Just par for the course," he groused after getting caught up in the second-overtime crash and finishing 19th. "Just used to it and come down here every year to just find out when and where I was going to crash and what lap I come to the care center. Who won? I don't even know who lucked into it." 

It was Random Guy, Kyle, aka Ricky Stenhouse Jr. Which, as you oughta know by now, is just how it works at Daytona a lot of years on the third Sunday in February.

This week in funny fails

 So everyone's up in arms about Tiger Woods' attempt at being funny the other day, when he slipped his friend and playing partner Justin Thomas a tampon after Woods outdrove him on a hole.

The usual suspects -- i.e., all those Alpha Alvins and Testosterone Timmys out there -- said lighten up, it was just a joke, and it was ridiculous Tiger apologized for it, even though he really didn't.

Women, meanwhile, wearily tried to explain yet again how tired they are of men implying that weakness is a woman thing. And how thoughtless it was to make yet another joke at their expense, seeing how it's women who in big ways and small have so often not been taken seriously.

The Blob's take on all this?

Seventh-grade boys gonna seventh-grade boy.

Which is to say, Tiger's joke was the epitome of seventh-grade boy humor -- or, more specifically, seventh-grade boy bathroom humor. It was the golf course version of the Millard Fillmore Middle School Second-Floor Boys Bathroom World Farting Championship.

I find that a lot funnier than the joke Tiger thought he was trying to make. Allegedly grown men behaving like seventh-grade boys are frequently hilarious, after all. That's when they're not annoying or scary or just plain sad.

Really, Tiger? A tampon joke? Weak. Try a grownup joke next time.

That sort of thing.

Also weak, of course, was his non-apology apology, the whole "If I offended anyone" shuck. As former Olympic star Michael Jordan pointed out, starting an apology with that phrase is no apology.

"But this is Tiger," he said.

Indeed. Years ago, when Tiger was still a dumb college kid just emerging as a generational talent, he told a supremely crude, supremely unfunny joke in the presence of heralded feature write Charles Pierce. Pierce included it in his profile of the young Tiger, and Tiger and his people got all upset about it.

Yeah, well. Welcome to big boy journalism, folks.

Thing is, all these years later, Tiger's sense of humor doesn't seem to have matured any. He's still the juvenile prankster, apparently. And now he doesn't even have the excuse of being young and dumb anymore.

Alpha Alvin and Testosterone Timmy no double would sneer at that line of reasoning, saying it's a man thing and Real Men understand that. So go melt your tears somewhere else, snowflake.

I'll be sure to remember that the next time some Alpha Alvin whines about the "emasculation" of men these days, and how alpha males are persecuted for their alpha-ness now by the woke mob.

Gee. Was that a snowflake I just saw?

Springtime, or something, for NASCAR

 I was driving home last night right at 7 o'clock, and there was still enough light in the western sky to frame some ragamuffin clouds. That's how I knew spring was more than rumor.

It hits 7 p.m. in these parts and it's still not full dark, that's about all the good you get from the hellscape of February. It's the month when you first hear the chirp of a bird or notice the angle of the sun is different -- or become aware, dimly, that twilight is dawdling a bit more than it did a month or even a week ago.

It's also the month when a bunch of loudmouth muscle cars bellow for your attention down in Florida, which for the Blob has always been a first robin deal.

The muscle isn't all Detroit iron now, but that hardly matters. Tomorrow a pile of that iron comes braying to the green in the Daytona 500, and the Blob will settle in for four hours of the only stock car racing it ever watches anymore.

I suppose this puts me in a demographic NASCAR doesn't like to think about, even as it obsessively thinks about it: People who've just lost interest in the product. 

Part of it's generational; the sport is still feeling the retirement of Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Jimmie Johnson and several more of the old guard with whom America grew comfortable across the last quarter century. Chase Elliott? Ross Chastain? Christopher Bell? William Byron?

Who are these guys, anyway?

And why, a week or so ago, were they racing on a temporary oval around the inside of the Coliseum in Los Angeles?

This was the latest attempt by NASCAR to re-gin up its product, and it illustrates the vicious circle in which the sport finds itself. The more market share, attendance and viewership dwindle, the more NASCAR tries new stuff, and the more new stuff it tries the more it feels like Hail Mary gimmickry. Races in football stadiums! Races on dirt (the Food City Dirt Race at Bristol)! Street races (the street race in Chicago on Fourth of July weekend)!

Shoot. They're even bringing back North Wilkesboro, an iconic old ghost NASCAR abandoned 27 years ago because the sport had supposedly outgrown it.

Now NASCAR's come crawling back, scheduling the All-Star Race at North Wilkesboro the weekend of May 19-21.

As for Daytona tomorrow ...

Well, as usual, the Blob has no clue who wins it. This is partly because it can't tell the players without a scorecard anymore, but mostly because it's a plate race and no one can predict a plate race.

Count on it coming down to the guy who gets the right push at the right time while the inevitable multi-car pileup happens behind him. Last year that guy was rookie Austin Cindric, son of Penske team president Tim Cindric. He didn't win another race all season and put up just five top five finishes and nine top 10s in the 35 remaining races.

In other words: Past performance does not guarantee future results when it comes to the Daytona 500. Outliers win as often as not, and they can come from anywhere. Cindric, for example, started 21st last year.

This year he starts sixth, outside of Row 3. Alex Bowman starts on the pole. Neither of these things mean very much.

That's because the winner will probably be someone else. William Byron, maybe. Ross Chastain. Bubba Wallace or Ryan Blaney or Chase Elliott or Brad Keselowksi, a 16-year Cup veteran who's won a lot of stuff but never the Daytona 500.

I'll pick him, in that case. Because why not?

Today in hand-sitting

 You gotta hand it to Dr. Derrick Gragg, vice-president for athletics and recreation at Northwestern University. Guy can pile it as high as an elephant's eye.

Northwestern released a statement with Gragg's name on it decrying what happened Wednesday night at Welsh-Ryan Arena, where the Wildcats were playing host to Indiana. One of IU's starters is Miller Kopp, who played three productive seasons at NU before transferring to IU. The Northwestern student section saluted him all night for that affront by yelling "F*** Miller Kopp!"

This was three days after yelling "DUI! DUI!" every time Purdue's Mason Gillis touched the basketball, because Mason Gillis did indeed once get charged with a DUI. 

"During Wednesday's game a line was crossed with repeated, explicit verbal hostility directed at a particular member of the opposing team," Gragg's statement read, after first praising the fans "particularly the students" for giving Northwestern such an enthusiastic homecourt advantage this season.

"The language used violated our collective commitment to sportsmanship and was offensive to many members of our community," the statement went on. "We cannot tolerate this type of behavior in our venues."

Except ...

Except they did tolerate it. Twice in three days, in fact.

Which makes Gragg's statement the sanctimonious load we frequently get from university officials, and a splendid example of covering for some equally splendid hand-sitting. Northwestern coach Chris Collins led that charge by lamenting he wished there was something he could have done to get the "F*** Miller Kopp!" chants to stop.

There was, actually.

He could have walked over to the scorer's table at any time, picked up the PA mic and told the crowd to knock it the hell off. Bob Knight did that once when the IU students were chanting "Bulls***! Bulls***!" The students complied, sort of, by changing their chant to "Bullcrap! Bullcrap!"

Which admittedly is pretty funny.

Look. The Blob generally has no issue with fans making life tough for an opponent. This ain't opera. And it's what makes a homecourt advantage a homecourt advantage.

But when you single out one player for abuse (even if you do it cleverly, and even if the kid is a turd like former Duke guard Grayson Allen), that's where the Blob gets off the bus. The trust-fund jackwagons at Duke were notorious for that, throwing pizza boxes at an opposing player who'd been arrested for stealing pizzas and, more famously, throwing condoms at Maryland's Herman Veal after Veal was accused of "unwanted sexual advances" -- for which he was eventually exonerated.

Northwestern's students seem to have taken up that mantle, at least to an extent. Once they were actually clever; the Blob's still remembers their chant while getting pounded like drums by Bob Knight's legions, a regular occurrence in those days. 

"That's all right, that's OK, you'll all work for us someday!" the NU students chanted.

"F*** Miller Kopp!" suffers greatly by comparison. Perhaps Northwestern has relaxed its entrance requirements.

In any event, school officials, including the head coach, could have done something about what happened Wednesday. But they chose not to.

Collins could have told them to shut up. But he didn't.

The PA announcer himself could have told them to shut up. But he didn't

And NU officials could have directed security to duck-walk off the premises any fan caught chanting "F*** Miller Kopp!"

But they didn't.

Instead, they all sat on their hands.

I dunno. Sure sounds like tolerating to me.

Sanity has been postponed, Part Deux

So remember yesterday, when the Blob said tomorrow or the day after or next week there'll be another active shooter, and people will die, and afterward there'll be more decorative Thoughts and Prayers from the usual suspects?

Turns out I was right, sadly.

This time it happened at a shopping mall in El Paso, Texas, where yesterday, two days after an active shooter killed three people and critically wounded five on the campus of Michigan State University, two men walked into the Cielo Vista Mall food court and started shooting.

One man died. Three more were wounded. Shoppers and mall workers fled screaming or hid wherever they could. Usual Suspect Ted Cruz, a Texas Congress creature, weighed in with the usual decorative Thoughts and Prayers.

Thanks for nothin', Ted-O.

Because, see, now this madness has been going on for so long, and has become such a regular part of regular American life, that it's literally nothing new to some folks.

The shooting at the Cielo Vista Mall, for instance?

Happened right next door to the site of ANOTHER mass shooting four years ago, when some fringe wacko walked into Walmart and opened fire, ending the lives of 23 people.

And the shooting at Michigan State?

One student who sheltered in place during the two or three crawling hours when the active shooter was roaming the campus was Jackie Mathews. Ten years ago, she cowered in a classroom at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., while some crazy geared up like an Army Ranger slaughtered 27 people, 20 of them children.

Mathews still has PTSD from that, unsurprisingly. And the other night she was right back at Sandy Hook again, which means she'll have a whole new set of nightmares to deal with when she lays her head down at night.

As will Marie Hall, who works at a salad joint in the Cielo Vista Mall food court and hid in a walk-in freezer with several others.

"I didn't really feel safe (going to work) in the beginning because of the shooting in 2019," she told CNN. "It is definitely going to be more difficult to be going to work (now)."

No kidding. Used to be when you went to the mall or a grocery store or your Econ 201 class, you didn't wonder -- not even idly -- if you'd still be alive by the end of the day. But now?

Now it's unavoidable. Because as the Blob said yesterday, this is America, and America does what America does.

No matter how insane.

Sanity has been postponed

 They won't be playing basketball tonight in the Breslin Center, on account of this is America and America does what America does. Which is turn one constitutional amendment into a quasi-religion.

God (and his consecrated church, the Second Amendment) wanted Americans to have guns, apparently, all the guns they wanted. And if that means some college kid studying in his dorm room on a weekday February night has to die ... well, there are always going to be crazy people, and the best defense against them is to buy even MORE guns and arm everyone like the 82nd Airborne.

Sorry. But the normalization of insanity tends to drive me ... insane.

It's where we are now after yet another Active Shooter decided to resolve whatever was bugging him by taking a firearm -- hell, they practically grow on trees these days, just pick one -- onto the campus of Michigan State and ending the lives of three college kids, just because. And critically wounded five others, just because.

After which he ate his own gun, just because.

I don't know even know what to say about this anymore, frankly. Except that, yes, this is America, and America does what America does.

Tomorrow or the day after or next week, some other crazy all jumped up on the politics of aggrievement or plain insanity will pluck another gun off the gun tree, and more Americans will die because they decided to go to the grocery or take the kids to McDonald's for lunch or simply go to work on another workday.

And they'll die with their cheeseburgers and fries growing cold, or cowering under a desk crowded with the everyday debris of their everyday. 

And again the usual suspects will wring their hands and send out their decorative Thoughts and Prayers, and say there's nothing we can do to prevent these tragedies except run out and buy more guns. Because, you know, gun manufacturers gotta eat, too.

Wanna stop school shootings? Equip every teacher with a loaded weapon!

Wanna go to the grocery store without wondering if you're gonna get plugged? Don't leave the house without your trusty sidearm! Buy two, they're small!

This is our country now, boys and girls. It's the country we want, apparently, because we keeping sending it to Washington and our statehouses and installing it in positions of power.

Meanwhile, three college kids are dead when they shouldn't be.

Five more are fighting for their lives in the hospital when they shouldn't be.

And there'll be no basketball in Breslin tonight, no Tom Izzo working the refs, no white-clad Izzone having his back and giving the business to those poor jamokes from Minnesota.

Next to that game on the Big Ten schedule, it now says "Postponed."

You could say the same about sanity too.

Your new coach

 Your new coach, Indianapolis, is a former quarterback who's never been a head coach in the NFL, and who comes to Indy from Philadelphia, where he was the offensive coordinator for the Eagles.

Your new coach is a guy you probably never heard of until two days ago, unless you're an avid fan of the Eagles. Or unless you saw him on the sidelines during the Super Bowl the other day, from which he came directly to Indy to be introduced as your new coach.

Your new coach has been described as an offensive genius, a "savant', a guy who turned a young quarterback into one of the NFL's best, after which that quarterback led the Eagles to the Super Bowl. 

Your new coach ...

"Wait, wait, wait, waaaaiit," you're saying now. "Frank Reich is not the new coach of the Indianapolis Colts. He's the old coach, the one they fired at midseason so they could turn the team over to an ESPN analyst."

Yeah, but ... I'm not talking about Frank Reich.

Or maybe I am.

I dunno. It's kinda confusing.

Kinda confusing, because the Colts introduced Frank Reich again yesterday, only this time his name was "Shane Steichen." He's only 37, but everything Reich did in Philly, he did, too. And everything everyone was saying about Reich five years ago, they were saying about Steichen yesterday.

He has "great passion for the game and love for the players" (Philip Rivers, who was the Chargers QB when Steichen was in San Diego). He does wonders with quarterbacks (Norv Turner, the head coach in San Diego when Steichen was there). He has a great offensive mind and he's a good family man and, hell, he even succeeded Frank Reich as the Chargers quarterbacks coach in 2016.

He's Frank Reich 2.0, in other words.

Or, not.

I dunno. Like I said, it's confusing.

That's because the only difference I see between Frank Reich's news conference in 2018 and Shane Steichen's yesterday is the fact Steichen IS only 37, and Reich was ... not. So he's considered a rising star who's enormously respected, while Reich was a guy who'd been around for awhile and was enormously respected. 

That difference is why we should willing to give Steichen the benefit of the doubt here. It's why we should not assume he'll continue following the path Reich blazed, right up to the moment he gets fired so Jim Irsay can bring in another ESPN analyst.

A lot's going to depend on which quarterback the Colts select in the NFL Draft in April, and whether or not Steichen can craft an offense that enables him to succeed the way he did for Justin Herbert in San Diego and Jalen Hurts in Philly. The evidence suggests he can.

The mitigating factor, of course, is it's the Colts, and Chris Ballard is still the GM. As we've all seen, they could screw up Christmas morning.

Hopefully they won't this time.

Hopefully they give Frank Reich half a chance to work his magic.

Sorry. I meant Shane Steichen.

Today in grumpy baseball codger-y

 Pitchers and catchers report this week beneath the high sky of Arizona and the trade winds of Florida, and today in northeast Indiana it's supposed to hit 55 degrees. I even heard a bird chirping outside awhile ago.

I'm not saying one has anything to do with the other, mind you. But you never know,

Know what else I never knew?

That Major League Baseball could get even dumber if it really tried.

This upon the news that MLB will make permanent an experimental rule the Blob calls Beam Me Up To Second Base, Scotty, which involves starting every extra half-inning with a runner on second base.  This runner has done nothing to get there, mind you. He just magically appears on second, as if he were, yes, beamed up, or ralphed from Babe Ruth's spectral gut after the Bambino had inhaled too many hot dogs

It really is the dumbest thing ever. And that's coming from a guy who's never worshipped at the altar of Old Time Baseball as fervently as many of my generation do.

The pitch clock organized baseball is experimenting with, for instance. I'm all for it.

 Anything that speeds up what has become a glacial slog in too many cases is fine by me. I'd even be in favor of expelling from his at-bat any player who calls time to adjust his batting glove, wristbands or any other part of his wardrobe.

A nine-inning baseball game was never meant to last four hours. It didn't when baseball was in its infancy, and that's a big reason why it became the National Pastime to begin with.

But this second-base rule?

Ridiculous.

Look. I get it. It's supposed to shorten extra-inning games and protect the integrity of a pitching staff, something the players' union and coaching staffs are all for. Can't have a guy pitch three or four extra innings, after all, and then expect him to be ready for his usual spot in the rotation.

Which is part of why today's pitchers are as fragile as spun glass, in the Blob's opinion. It's not that they throw too much; it's that they throw too little. And they sit every time they feel a twinge or a tweak or (my favorite) "discomfort".

"Wow, Mr. Blob," you're saying now. "That sure sounds like grumpy Old Time Baseball codger-y to me."

Yeah, well ... perhaps I've misrepresented myself a bit. But this whole Beam Me To Second deal is too newfangled even for a fairly progressive codger like me.

For starters, it messes with the stats, which baseball reveres like the Dead Sea scrolls. If the first batter up in extras hits a dinger now, he gets not just one RBI but a second, wholly unearned one. And if he singles to right or doubles into the gap, he gets an RBI he wouldn't have in any inning preceding the 10th.

This artificially plumps up a guy's numbers. And I thought baseball HATED artificially plumped-up numbers. Isn't that a major reason voters give for keeping all the Steroids Era guys out of the Hall?

Just sayin'.

Meanwhile, in Evanston ...

 Twice in eight days now. 

And so, in West Lafayette, the question among hysterics is this: "Is it time to panic now?"

And also: "Oh, great, here we go. It's late February and time for the Boilers to fade like a cheap Polaroid again."

And also: "I KNEW Painter never shoulda started two freshmen in the backcourt. That's just ASKING for it!"

What the Blob says is this: Calm down, Alice.

Yes, after two-thirds of a season looking invincible, the Purdue Boilermakers have lost two of their last three and exposed their Achilles heel: They're susceptible to pressure D. They kicked the ball away seven times in the first eight minutes and 16 times all told in the loss at Indiana a week ago Saturday. And against a damn good Northwestern team in Evanston yesterday?

Sixteen more turnovers, as the Wildcats copied the Beat Purdue blueprint: They brought backcourt pressure and doubled 7-foot-4 Zach Edey as hard as the law allowed.

The result was five turnovers combined by the freshman guards, Braden Smith and Fletcher Loyer. And six by Edey -- who also had five against Indiana.

In other words, the two freshman guards don't seem to be the main issue with Purdue's propensity to turn over the ball. It seems to be teams doubling Edey and forcing him to handle the ball in traffic, 

He's still going to get his points and rebounds, and did Sunday, going for 24 points and eight boards. But Purdue blew an eight-point lead in the last 3:36 and was outscored 17-3 in the last four minutes as the Boilers didn't make a field goal after Edey's jumper with 3:55 to play.

In that same span, the Boilers turned it over five times -- twice by Smith, twice by Edey and once by Loyer.

Here's the thing, though: I’m guessing Matt Painter was probably paying attention to all that.

I’m guessing, in fact, that he's going to find a counter or two to what teams are doing to Purdue now. This is because he's one of the best coaches in the country, and that's what the best coaches do. It's a game of adjustments, after all. You adjust to us; we adjust to your adjustment.

So, no, it's not time to panic yet. Let's see what happens in Maryland this week. Let's see what sort of adjustments Painter makes. Let's see if those adjustments work.

Let's see.

The game, the call and stuff

 OK, so, first off: That little voice from yesterday is in my ear again. 

It's saying "Told ya."

And, yeah, it did, and I ignored it, and Patrick Mahomes made me pay. Patrick Mahomes was better than the fearsome Eagles defense. Patrick Mahomes screwed up his ankle again and still conjured 24 second-half points in yet another miracle comeback. Patrick Mahomes is the Sith Lord of football, or maybe the Jedi warrior who takes him down.

And so, 38-35, Chiefs.

And so, kudos to Mahomes and Travis Kelce and Juju Smith-Schuster and Isiah Pacheco and Nick Bolton, and also to Jalen Hurts and the Eagles, who were pretty impeccable themselves. They counterpunched whenever the Chiefs punched in the second half, until defensive back James Bradberry briefly grabbed the back of Smith-Schuster's jersey inside the 15 with fewer than two minutes to play.

Flag. Fresh set of downs. Ballgame.

"What a lousy way to ruin a great game!" America howled.

True.

"That game deserved a better ending!" America wailed.

Also true.

"The NFL handed it to Kansas City AGAIN!" America, or at least some of it, complained.

Not true.

Bradberry did that, actually. Grabbed the jersey. Admitted he did it. Was hoping the zebras wouldn't see it.

But they did, and the flag came out, and the Chiefs got what they needed to run the clock down to nothing and kick the chippie field goal to win it.

And, yeah, the end left us all flat, but the Blob has never bought into the whole the-officiating-decided-the-game thing, and it won't start now. Truth is, for every sketchy call in every game that changes its flow, you can find a million other things that helped send that flow down its course to begin with. Happens all the time.

For instance, what happens if the zebras don't rule the second fumble Bolton returned for six an incompletion, wiping out the score?

What happens, for that matter, if Hurts doesn't just flat out drop the football on Bolton's previous scoop-and-score?

What happens if the Eagles don't allow a Super Bowl record 65-yard punt return in the fourth quarter to set up the easy six for Mahomes and Co., putting the Chiefs up by eight?

Truth is, if you want to say this game turned on one play, it was Bolton's fumble return. Without it -- and maybe also without Bolton's eight solo tackles -- the Eagles win by four. Everything else was pretty much equal: Mahomes with his 182 yards and three touchdowns passing, plus a couple of crucial gimpy scrambles; Hurts with his 70 yards and three touchdowns rushing and 302 yards passing. 

A football game pivots on a multitude of fulcrums. A correct if weak call is only one.

A few more thoughts:

* The people who said Bolton would have to have a great game to give the Chiefs a shot were dead on. He had the game of his life, and the Chiefs won.

* The usual suspects hit their cues perfectly, hollering "Wokeness!" because a black woman (actress Sheryl Lee Ralph) soulfully belted out "Lift Every Voice and Sing" before the national anthem, which was impeccably sung by a white guy (Chris Stapleton) and thus duly praised. Yet the same crowd never used to utter a discouraging word when the late Florence Henderson would sing "God Bless America" before the national anthem every year at the Indianapolis 500.

They don't even bother with the dog whistle anymore, these folks.

* I thought the halftime show was fine, though I wasn't its target demographic and the costuming and sets made me want to shout "Renew! Renew!" (See: "Logan's Run"). Again, right on cue, the usual suspects hated it.

And last but not least ...

* Bradley Cooper and his mom (T-Mobile), Binky Dad (Kia) and the Disapproving Rock Stars (Workday). #commercialbowl

Da Prediction

 "Don't do it," the little voice is telling me.

It's in my ear, whispering again, and I know I should listen, I know I'm damn fool if I don't, I know all my logic and common sense and sober analysis are as a sounding brass (so the Bible says) ...

"Don't. Do it," the voice whispers again.

But ...

"DON'T," the voice fairly hisses.

And then: "Ever ... pick ... against ... Mahomes."

This is sound advice, because when it's magic vs. analytics, I'm almost always going to go with magic. I've even crafted a sort of logic for it this time: If  Patrick Mahomes can go out there on one leg and somehow beat a Bengals team that was demonstrably better on paper, what will he do today in the Superb Owl, when his bum leg isn't quite so bum? Against, again, another team that's better on paper?

It's a seductive line of reasoning, and it's backed by the idea that the better-on-paper team, the Philadelphia Eagles, kinda got in on a pass two weeks ago. Pretty hard to lose to a team without a quarterback, after all. Pretty hard not to win in a walk, in fact, which the Eagles did by beating QB-less San Francisco 31-7.

However.

However ... I keep thinking about the fact Mahomes still won't be 100 percent today. And about the fact the Kansas City Chiefs are much more banged up than the Eagles. And about that fearsome pass rush of the Eagles, and that clingy secondary that makes it hard for receivers to get open, and what happens if Mahomes gets hit, because it's a virtual lock he'll get hit at some point tonight.

I can see him re-injuring the ankle and hobbling through the rest of the game.

I can see Philly completely taking away the Chiefs' depleted receiving corps.

I can see Jalen Hurts doing just enough Jalen Hurts things, and I can see history, too, because there's another voice in my ear telling me if history says you never pick against Mahomes, it also says something else.

Which  is, the best defense usually fares pretty well in the Super Bowl. From the early Packers to the '69 Jets to the '70 Chiefs to the Pittsburgh Steel Curtain to the Dallas Doomsday to the Bears 46, and right on down the line to the Seattle Legion of Boom and others.

The Eagles are this year's version of all that.

And so: Eagles 27, Chiefs 20.

"You're a fool!" the little voice snarls.

Yeah, well. Woudn't be the first time.

Historical convergence

 It occurred to me the other day that Superb Owl Sunday falls on February 12, which is also Abraham Lincoln's 214th birthday, which gets me to thinking about historical convergences and what position Abe would have played if he'd ever played in the Superb Owl.

(Don't laugh. One year on Media Day, when the actual Media is overrun with Nickelodeon foofs, Downtown Julie Brown and sock puppets asking questions of the Superb Owl participants, someone asked Chicago Bears tight end Desmond Clark what position Chewbacca would have played. I'm serious. I was sitting right there when the guy asked it.)

Anyway, I'm thinking Abe, with his height and renowned wrestling prowess, would have been a great edge rusher. He also had huge hands, so, I don't know, maybe he could have been a nifty possession wideout. This of course is the purest conjecture, as history doesn't reveal if Abe could catch a cold with his huge hands, or had the speed to create separation.

So I guess we'll never know if Abe was actually Julian Edelman 1.0. 

We'll also never know who Abe would have rooted for as he settled in with a plate of wings, a bowl of pork rinds and a sixer of Old Style (he was from Illinois, after all). Although the fact both quarterbacks are black for the first time ever might have prompted him to contemplate (speaking of historical convergences) the symmetry of this particular Supe being played on his birthday.

My first thought is he'd have been rooting for the Chiefs, as a Midwestern guy. He also had a thing for unconventional generals; he once dismissed rumors of Grant's drinking by saying "I can't spare this man. He fights." Which makes me think he would have loved Patrick Mahomes finding new and inventive ways to get the football downfield.

I can't spare this man. He completes passes sidearm while he's horizontal.

That sort of thing.

On the other hand ...

 On the other hand, Jalen Hurts might be even more unconventional than Mahomes, considering the Eagles actually have designed run packages for him. Plus the Eagles are, well, the Eagles, the national symbol of Lincoln's Union. Plus, Missouri was a border state and Pennsylvania was solidly Union.

Also, John Reynolds was a Pennsylvania man ... and he was killed on Day 1 at Gettysburg by a Confederate sniper (maybe from Missouri!) ... and Gettysburg is in Pennsylvania ... and so is Philadelphia. And Philadelphia is where they signed the Declaration of Independence and the Liberty Bell got its crack and, speaking of cracked, where everyone is an Eagles fan.

Hmmm.

On second thought, Abe would likely be rooting for the Eagles. With a big ol' cheesesteak from Pat's or Geno's and his feet up on his desk in the Oval, at least until Mary showed up and told him to get his feet off the desk, what kind of prairie hick are you, anyway.

Ah, yes. You can just see it, can't you?

No book-learnin' allowed

 There are a lot of reasons I don't live in Florida.

I'm not a fan of gators, giant pythons, mosquitoes the size of B-17s and various other outsized creepy-crawlies, to begin with.

Also sharks.

Also jellyfish.

Also crazy ex-presidents, cavalier attitudes toward killer pandemics and sopping humidity for half the year.

I do like history, however. And Florida doesn't.

Florida would rather our schoolkids be taught that Washington really didn't ever tell a lie, and Davy Crockett died swingin' old Betsy at the Alamo, and America is an unblemished place built by unblemished white guys with their unblemished bare hands.

Any book that says different, Florida will pull out of school libraries rather than allow impressionable children to read it. Because that might lead to children perhaps learning about people Florida would rather they not.

People like, say, Roberto Clemente.

Friend of mine posted a news story out of Florida the other day that reported how a Duval County school district (i.e.: Jacksonville) pulled a children's illustrated book about Clemente off the shelves because it mentioned Clemente faced racism when he was coming up as the Hispanic Jackie Robinson. This violates the edict of the Human History Eraser, Florida Gov. Ronald DeSantis, who's decided "wokeness" (whatever he thinks that is) is indoctrinating our children with vile ideas about, you know, equality and stuff.

"Only I get to indoctrinate our children!" sez Eraser Ron.

OK, so he didn't say that, but he might as well have. And it wouldn't provoke any reaction from me other than weary contempt except that this time the symbolic book burners went after the Great One.

If you know me, see, you know I revere Roberto Clemente. I became a Pittsburgh Pirates fan because of him. The den in our home is all but a shrine to him. He was the best rightfielder who ever lived -- don't even go there with me, you'll lose -- and also a humanitarian, a civil rights advocate and a proud Puerto Rican who blazed the hard trail for all the Latin-American players who've enriched baseball since.

He was a hot-damn American hero, is what he was. And his struggle to be accepted in the face of, yes, racism is an integral part of his story.

In Florida, however, that's a part of the story that's verboten for children of a certain age. Might make them feel bad or something.

My position on that is children for whom the book is intended aren't going to feel bad if they learn Roberto Clemente had to overcome racism. They're more likely to feel bad if the school cafeteria replaces Pizza Day with Broccoli Day.

But, sure. Have at it, Florida. 'Cause everyone knows book-learnin' is bad for kids, unless it's book-learnin' approved by Eraser Ron.

God give me strength.

The further adventures of Aaron

 And now, 80 hours or so before the Superb Owl, it's time to play How I'm Spending My Offseason for all of those who aren't playing in the Superb Owl.

You there! Aaron Rodgers! What are you gonna do?

I'm gonna go off to a small house in the middle of nowhere to sit by myself in the dark for four days!

Come on, Aaron. Quit screwing around.

No, really! That's what I'm doing! It's called a "darkness retreat' and it's going to help me decide whether I want to retire or jerk the Packers around for another offseason!

Aaaaa-ron ...

I'm serious!

And he is, folks.

Yes, the strangest man in the National Football League really did say on Pat McAfee's radio show this week that he's going off to take part in a "darkness retreat", which really does involve sitting alone in a small house for four days and nights almost completely isolated from human contact and external stimuli. Just a man sitting in the dark for four days, alone with this thoughts.

This would be regarded as bizarre behavior for anyone who's not a Tibetan monk or Kwai Chang Caine, except that it's Aaron Rodgers. Sitting alone in the dark for four days probably doesn't come close to redlining the weirdness factor for a man who last offseason took part in an ayahuasca ceremony capable of producing hallucinations. 

"I'm really looking forward to it," Rodgers told McAfee of his isolation retreat.

To each his own, the Blob says to that. But it's going to be really interesting to hear what he has to say when he emerges.

"Zuul tells me I'm the keymaster and must go play for the New York Jets," is one thing you can imagine him saying.

Remember where you heard it first.

Summiting Everest

 He broke the unbreakable record on a step-back jumper in the third quarter, and then the tears came. His mom and his wife and his kids came down from the stands. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the man just surpassed, came onto the floor to congratulate him.

And LeBron James wept.

Wept, and acknowledged how weird this was, how surreal, how becoming the NBA's alltime leading scorer isn't something a guy thinks about when he picks up a basketball for the first time.

Wept, and said how special it was to be in the presence of greatness, talking not about himself but Kareem, whose 38,387 points had stood as the NBA's unconquerable Everest for 39 years.

"To be able to stand in the presence of such a legend as great as Kareem, it's very humbling," LeBron said, having summited that Everest.

His 38 points last night was the 10th 30-point game he he's had in 17 games since he turned 38 two days before the new year. He's gone over 40 five times in those 17 games. There's never been anything quite like it, this sustained excellence that seems to go on and on and on without letup.

And of course, the haters -- and there are more than a few -- will say "Yeah, but ..."

Yeah, but he's a drama king and a spoiled mega-rich athlete and he has opinions, for God's sake, and isn't shy about expressing them.

Yeah, but he called our Lord and Savior President Trump a bum.

Yeah, but ... but ... but ...

Enough, people. Enough.

It's time to acknowledge that LeBron James is the greatest player in NBA history, unless it's MJ or Kareem. It's time to acknowledge that, for all his rich-guy arrogance and entitlement (shocker!), he doesn't show up on police blotters, is by all accounts a good husband and father, and has done enormous good with his vast wealth.

And all the rest of it?

Hey. Haters gonna hate. 

And look especially small and petty now in doing so.

I got your promotion right here

 The guy who thought this up. That's who I'm lighting a candle for today. 

I'm uttering a few words of comfort for this poor dope, who apparently went to a brainstorming session one day and, left his brain in his office. Forgot he was in, you know, Indiana. Said this, or something like it:

Hey, we're gonna have a Ball State hat night, an IUPUI hat night and an IU hat night. Let's have a Kentucky Wildcat hat night for all the Kentucky fans here in Indiana! Back the Blue!

Yikes.

And so will come to pass Kentucky Hat Night at an upcoming Indiana Pacers home game, and shortly afterward will come the ceremonial Rain of the Kentucky Hats, sailing down on the Gainbridge Fieldhouse floor like a flock of bluebirds. Later, those who held onto their UK hats will gather in Monument Circle with a jug of lighter fluid for the ceremonial Witch Hat Burning, which is how people on this side of the Ohio River refer to Kentucky fans when they're trying not to use bad words.

And, OK, so the Blob will stop with the jokes here, and even give the Pacers the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they heard from a lonely cadre of UK fans, holed up in a remote cabin like some weird religious cult. Maybe they heard them say "Hey, what about us?" And maybe they decided, well, we're a team of the people, and these are people.

So why not?

Sounds good in the boardroom over coffee and Krispy Kremes. Outside in the real world, however ...

Well. Do we need to remind the Pacers that Indiana and Kentucky stopped playing one another 11 years ago because they couldn't even agree on where the annual game should be played? Indiana wanted to keep playing alternate years in Assembly Hall; Kentucky wanted to play at a neutral site (like they used to in the old Hoosier Dome). Neither would budge.

The Blob's take on that: Both of 'em were chicken.

In any event, that sort of enmity tends to resonate. And we all know what happens when you feed that enmity.

Flying hats. Burning hats. That sort of thing.

Truth is, it's usually a bad idea to hand fans anything flightworthy when they come to a game. I'm reminded here of the infamous Ice Scraper Incident at a Fort Wayne Komets game many years back, when the fans got ice scrapers as part of a promotion as they entered the arena. This led to the Incident, also known as the Rain of Ice Scrapers when things didn't go the home team's way.

And who could forget the epic Rain of Hockey Pucks back n 1972, when the Philadelphia Blazers of the old WHA passed out red souvenir pucks to commemorate the team's inaugural home game?

The Zamboni broke through the ice during pregame resurfacing, and the game had to be canceled. Disappointed fans, thoughtfully pre-armed, unleased a Red Death of souvenir pucks on the ice as the players fled for the safety of the locker room.

The good news for the Pacers here: At least the hats are non-lethal.

Small blessings.

Let the storylines begin

 Today begins the hype-iest hypefest of hype in American sports, Superb Owl Week, aka Super Bowl Week for those officially licensed to use the words "Super Bowl." Which of course no one can who didn't pay the GNP of Albania to buy commercial time on Superb Owl Sunday.

The Blob thinks this is the next thing to extortion, frankly. It also thinks, as a card-carrying Civil War nerd, that if we're going to call it Superb Owl Week, the official logo should be a silhouette of Union general Winfield Scott Hancock. 

Hancock, see, was known as Hancock the Superb during the Late Unpleasantness. He also ran for president some years after the war, but lost to James Garfield. Garfield went on to be assassinated a few months later, although Hancock didn't have anything to do with that.

Anyway ...

On with the festivities!

Which for the media this week will involve beating to death several storylines, the way the media does when it has so much time on its hands to write about just another damn football game. 

First off,  there'll be the Two Black Quarterbacks For The First Time In Super Bowl History storyline. How's it feel to be a black quarterback playing against another black quarterback, Patrick Mahomes? What about you, Jalen Hurts? Is this CRT Gone Wild, and will the Human History Eraser, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, fly out to Arizona with a cease-and-desist order?

Let's move on then, to the Two Brothers Playing In the Super Bowl storyline, starring Travis Kelce of the Chiefs and Jason Kelce of the Eagles. How's it gonna feel if you beat your brother, Travis? How's it gonna feel if you beat YOUR brother, Jason? And will Mom Kelce be pissed at whichever brother beats the other, like when they were kids?

Travis, get off your brother. And give him his ball back. 

That sort of thing.

Speaking of that sort of thing, how about the Andy Reid Playing The Team He Once Coached storyline?

Will he feel a tinge of regret if he beats the Eagles, whom he coached to four conference championships and one Super Bowl between 1999 and 2012? Will his mother yell at him for being so mean to a city that was so nice to him for 14 years? Or will he say, "Yah, neener-neener-neener, ya bums!"?

An entire nation breathlessly awaits the answers.

Or, you know, not. I vote not.

Rivalry rising

 You saw this coming from 90-some hours away, and from three states away. Remember? Tuesday night in College Park, Md.?

Your Indiana Hoosiers turned turtle that night against the Maryland Terrapins.

The final was Terps 66, Indiana 55.

Everything the Hoosiers didn't do that night told you what they were going to do come Saturday.

They didn't shoot, missing 35 of their 56 shots (37.5 percent) and eight of 11 from the 3-point arc. They didn't defend, forcing Maryland to turn it over just five times. The never led after falling behind by eight at halftime, and, besides Trayce Jackson-Davis (20 points, 18 boards) and Race Thompson (11 and four). no one else did much of anything.

You knew right then what No. 1 Purdue was in for Saturday.

You knew because everything about Tuesday in College Park screamed this was an Indiana team looking ahead to the next stop, and that there would be an almighty reckoning when it got there.  And then Saturday came -- and, sure as sunrise, here came a wholly different Indiana, tearing at its rival's lofty status while Assembly Hall bellowed and rocked and became Assembly Hell again.

All of it shook the previously unshakeable Boilers, who were 7-0 on the road before Saturday. They kicked the basketball away an astounding seven times in the first eight minutes as Indiana rampaged to a 21-10 lead and a 50-35 halftime lead. 

The Purdues got it down to a single point in the second half, because they're the Purdues and there's no give-up in 'em. But Jalen Hood-Schifino, cool as early spring, took to the tin for a crucial layup with 25 seconds to play, and not long after here came the red wave, making the floor disappear beneath a sea of slap-happy humans.

"Aw, how cute, they're storming the court like a little brother should after beating big brother," all the Boilerheads said, presumably.

"Hey, we beat the No. 1 team in the nation for the first time in a decade, and it was Purdue besides. So, hell, yes, we're storming the court," the slap-happy humans presumably replied.

And, sure, it's a cliche anymore, storming the court, but the cliche says if you're ranked No. 21 and you beat No. 1, it's not just appropriate but practically required. Indiana did it with the best half of basketball it's played in recent memory, and it did it by displaying a grit too long missing when Purdue came after the Hoosiers in the skinny minutes.

In the end, Indiana couldn't stop the unstoppable one, Zach Edey, who went for 33 points and 18 rebounds for Purdue and scored 18 of his total in the second half. But TJD dropped 25 points, seven rebounds and five blocks on the Purdues, and Hood-Schifino (16 and two steals) and Trey Galloway (11 and three steals) rattled the Boilers' cages, and Purdue wound up turning it over 16 times against Indiana's pressure.

And lost, 79-74, for only the second time this season.

Lost to Indiana, which hung its sixth W in its last seven games.

Lost to Assembly Hell -- even the players said so -- as the floor disappeared and this rivalry became everything it deserves to be but hasn't been for a very long time.

Twenty days from now, they meet again in Mackey.

And now an entire state is looking ahead.

Trigger(ed) happy

Look, I don't know what's going on right now. A fever in the brain, maybe. Viral stupidity. Lack of adult supervision, especially among the adults.

But here are a few items that have popped up in my Sportsball feeds the last few days. You tell me if there's a common weave to them all.

Item: In Vermont (as the Blob talked about yesterday), a bunch of so-called grownups brawl on the floor during a middle-school basketball game, and one of the brawlers dies.

Item: In South Bend, a high school basketball game between city rivals Washington and Riley degenerates into a wild melee that requires half the South Bend police department to quell and ends what was supposed to be Senior Night at Washington.

Item: In St. Charles, Mo., Eastern Illinois' leading scorer takes a swing at an opposing fan in the first half of an 80-67 loss to Lindenwood.

Aaaand, item: In Minneapolis, five players are ejected after a fight between Mo Bamba of the Orlando Magic and Austin Rivers of the Minnesota Timberwolves sparks yet another brawl.

None of these incidents are connected, of course. Or maybe all of them are.

Maybe they're connected because this is a country on a hair trigger these days, and it's on a hair trigger because its leaders apparently want it that way. When half of Congress is actively insane and seems to enjoy encouraging the rest of us to participate in their insanity, everyone winds up perpetually outraged. And mostly over absurdities.

So the country's either crazy or pissed off or both, and that spills over into Sportsball World. When self-control is sneered at as cowardice,  and indulging our worst impulses lifted up as some sort of half-assed virtue, how could what's happening in Vermont and Indiana and Missouri and Minnesota not be connected in some visceral way?

Once upon a time we dubbed a player or coach "Rabbit Ears" who was trigger(ed) happy, and held up he or she to unanimous ridicule. Regarded them as weak-ass punks, because that's what they were. 

In which case, there sure seems to be a lot of weak-ass punks out there these days. Including a certain ex-President of the United States, I might add.

That NBA fight in Minneapolis, for instance?

It started, Rivers said later, because "I just didn't like the way (Bamba) was talking to me" from the bench. No doubt the fan at whom Kinyon Hodges of Eastern Illinois took a swing said something Hodges didn't like, either. And you can pretty much figure the brawls in Vermont and South Bend started because someone said something someone else didn't like, and then someone threw a punch, and it escalated from there.

To which the Blob says "What are you all, five years old?”

Look, the Blob would never hold itself up as a paragon of maturity ("No kidding," says Mrs. Blob). But I got my share of nasty phone messages and emails during my columnist days. Got heckled a few times, too.

I almost never engaged, either in person or remotely. In fact, if it happened in person, I'd either chuckle or wouldn't react at all. This is because nothing drives a heckler crazier than being ignored.

So how come so many others don't seem to know that these days?

Beats me. But the other day I was texting with a friend in Vermont about that middle-school basketball brawl, and I told her about the brawl in South Bend, and she texted back this: Wow! Something is so wrong.

She's got that right. 

This week in tragic stupidity

 Words fail for what happened the other day in Alburgh, Vt., hard by Lake Champlain and the Canadian border. I suppose "tragic" works because a man died suddenly and he was only 60, and it's always tragic when death comes like that.

Of course, "stupid" works, too. And, yes, I know how cold that sounds.

But Russell Giroux died, and it wasn't after he'd done something selfless or thoughtful or even just everyday. It was after Russell Giroux, a grown-ass man, got involved in brawl with a bunch of other alleged grownups.

At a basketball game.

A junior high basketball game.

And so, in today's latest episode of Adults Behaving Like 5-Year-Olds, the Blob presents for your consideration a basketball game between Alburgh and St. Albans -- a basketball game between 13- and 14-year-old boys.

No details have emerged as to what caused a bunch of grownups to spill onto the court and begin throwing down, but does it really matter? I mean, who does that at a kids basketball game? 

When I was in middle school at dear old Village Woods, I went to a few basketball games. I don't recall seeing anything that would have compelled me to run out on the floor and start wailing on people. I mean, it was middle school. We were all too busy  dissecting frogs in Mr. Lee's biology class to get in fights at a stupid basketball game.

And for grownups to do that?

Yeesh. 

And, so, yes, it's tragic what happened to Russell Giroux. If you're at all human, your heart goes out to his family and friends.  But somehow I think there'll be at least one irreverent soul at the funeral who'll look around, shake his head and mutter a single word under his breath:

"Dumbass."

Those darn gurlz

 Yesterday was National Girls and Women In Sports Day, an occasion for celebration in most quarters but something altogether different in the precincts of the perpetually aggrieved. This is America in 2023, sadly. We can't have nice things without some jackass trying to ruin them.

And so certain politicos of a certain vile stripe used the occasion to once again attack transgender Americans, saying by gosh-and-golly we're not gonna to let THOSE weirdos take over women's sports -- and never mind there's absolutely zero evidence transgender athletes actually are doing so.

There are, you see, only a handful of transgender athletes participating in women's sports nationally. And none of them are exactly "taking over." So this is all just another made-up outrage batty politicos use to keep the perpetually aggrieved pulling the right levers in the voting booth.

Did I say "perpetually aggrieved"?

Let's move on, then, to the troglodyte corner of the Magic Twitter Thingy, which chose yesterday to indulge more No Gurlz Allowed nonsense. This time the trogs got all exercised because ESPN's website flagged a breaking news item about WNBA star Breanna Stewart jumping from the Seattle Storm to the New York Liberty. Gurlz basketball over Tom Brady! How despicably "woke" of them!

Except ...

Except, as usual, it was a whole lot of bull pucky.

The Stewart item, see, had been proceeded by a Brady breaking news item. By their very nature, those items only stay at the top of the site for a short period of time. Then they go into the site's Top Headlines file.

And so not long after the Stewart breaking news item, the lead stories on the site were all about Brady. That they weren't earlier is because, well, someone had to write those stories. They don't just instantly appear out of the ether.

You'd think the troglodytes, some of whom claim to be journalists, would understand that. But acknowledging as much would have ruined their narrative, which is that Woke ESPN keeps trying to shove Gurlz Sports down America's throat even though they suck and America doesn't care about them.

Let me tell you something about that, from the perspective of someone who remembers when there were no Gurlz Sports.

This goes back to 1977, when the Indiana girls high school basketball tournament was in its infancy. It goes back to a certain winter's afternoon in a high school gym in Lapel, In., a go-to-market town halfway between Anderson and Noblesville. And it goes back to the Lapel girls and the Frankton girls playing in the local sectional.

My memory isn't what it used to be, honestly. But it seems to me there were approximately 47 jump balls and as many fouls in what could be only be described as a parody of basketball.

I was 22 years old then.

When I got out of the sportswriting biz for good, I was 65 and had covered dozens of girls basketball games in the interim. And what I covered in 2010 or 2014 or 2017 bore no resemblance whatsoever to what I saw in that gym at Lapel in 1977.

What I covered later was skill and passion and by-God basketball. What I saw was a bunch of athletes for whom Title IX opened the door when their grandmothers were playing, and who had learned how to play the game at a high level in the decades since.

Which tends to happen once you provide people with opportunity.

And what National Girls and Women In Sports Day was actually celebrating, no matter how much the jackasses tried to ruin it.

The GOAT says 'bye, Part Deux

 And this is the part where the Blob says this: Call me in 40 days.

If, in 40 days, Tom Brady does not announce he's coming back to the Buccaneers or going off as a senior-citizen-for-hire to Las Vegas or San Francisco or (dare we say it?) Indianapolis, then I'll believe he's not goofing us again. I'll believe, since this is Groundhog Day, that we're not reliving 2022 one more time.

Remember that?

On February 1, 2022, Rest Home Tom retired. Forty days later, he said, "Just kidding!"

On February 1, 2023, Rest Home Tom retired again. For good this time, he says.

To which the Blob says: We'll see.

But just in case he means it this time, let's pause to appreciate the greatest there ever was -- and, please, don't waste a drawn breath trying to debate it. Super Bowls are a lousy metric by which to judge a quarterback's career, but when you've been to 10 of them and won seven, the weight of numbers does tend to tip the scales in your favor.

Especially when the weight of numbers goes far beyond just how many rings adorn a man's hand.

Here are  some numbers: In 23 regular seasons, Brady threw for 89,214 yards, which means he threw for 50 miles in his career. That's five miles farther than the distance from Fort Wayne to Marion if you're keeping score at home.

Also, he threw 649 regular-season touchdown passes, 78 more than anyone else in NFL history. Also, he threw for 13,400 yards and 88 touchdowns in the playoffs, 6,061 more yards and almost twice as many touchdowns (43) than anyone else in history. 

Last season, at 45, he threw for 4,694 yards and 25 touchdowns. Only Patrick Mahomes and Justin Herbert passed for more yards.

And yet, it was an awful year for him. His team stunk. His wife left him. He looked thin and unhealthy and miserable most of the time. He's never been the joke-iest guy in the world, but his public countenance this season was dour even for him. Week after week, he looked like a welder who'd just come off his 10th straight third trick on the truck line.

If there's conclusive evidence that he really means it this time, this season might be it. Why would he want to go through that again?

Guess we'll find out.

Pro Bowl time!

 ... in which the Greatest Spectacle In Groin-Pull Avoidance has been replaced by Beach Blanket Bingo.

Or in other words: Skills competitions, some flag football, and, I don't know, maybe a hotdog-eating contest or two.

It's all a lavish experiment to keep alive an event that should have died years ago, because no one cares and no one watches except for those sad cases who still wear their Doug Plank jerseys and preface everything by saying "You know, the 1985 Bears ...".  Even the Pro Bowlers themselves are unenthused, which explains why so many marquee names won't be there but Tyler Huntley will be.

Tyler Huntley! Because a guy who threw two touchdown passes all season filling in for the injured Lamar Jackson deserves his week in the sun, too.

Seriously, no one since the Eagles' Mike Boryla (who?) in 1975 has thrown fewer touchdown passes and made the Pro Bowl. Huntley ranked 48th among NFL quarterbacks in that category, which is quite a feat when you consider there are only 32 teams in the NFL. This means Huntley finished behind not only all the starters but 15 other backups and backup-backups.

But he's in, because Josh Allen has an owie and bowed out. Ditto Patrick Mahomes (Super Bowl), Tua Tagovailoa (concussion), Justin Herbert (shoulder), Jackson (knee) and Joe Burrow, who might just not be into it after that heartbreaking loss in the AFC title game.

So, yeah, Tyler Huntley. Which at the very least gives ammunition to every father who ever stoke the dreams of his athletically-challenged son.

Dad: Son, if you keep practicing, someday you, too, could make the Pro Bowl!

Son: But, Dad, I'm 5-2, I can't throw a football 12 feet and I have the athletic ability of a lawn chair. 

Dad: That doesn't matter, son! If TYLER HUNTLEY can do it ...

Of course, by the time Dad's son is old enough, the Pro Bowl probably will be down to a hotdog-eating contest.

That, and Competitive Sunbathing, Pin The Lei On Bill Belichick  and Best Hair -- which will be won every year by Trevor "Ronnie 'Sunshine' Bass" Lawrence, because, hey, he's Ronnie "Sunshine" Bass.

Works for me.