Mug ya Blue

 In my mind this morning I'm out at Wayne High School, and I'm waiting for a phone call or a letter or an email. On the other end of the phone call or letter or email will be the NFL, ordering me to cease and desist.

This is because Wayne's school colors are powder blue and red.

Apparently that color combination is the sole property of the Nash-unal FOOT-ball League.

I say "apparently," because the league has threatened the University of Houston with a lawsuit if the Cougar football team again trots out powder-blue-and-red Houston Oiler tribute uniforms. The Cougars are to cut that shite out, because it seems the Houston Oilers and their colors belong to the NFL, even if the Houston Oilers haven't existed for more than a quarter century.

Owner Bud Adams moved them to Tennessee in 1997, where they were briefly the Tennessee Oilers before changing their name to the Titans. And so Luv Ya Blue was over in Houston, and now the NFL is engaging in Mug Ya Blue.

Threatening the University of Houston if they don powder-blue-and-red. Telling the Houston Texans, the Oilers ancestral descendants, they can't wear Oilers throwback unis, either, on account of the Titans are the actual Oilers -- even if they abandoned all that 26 years ago.

Me, I think a team that calls Houston home now has more right to the Oilers heritage than the Tennessee Titans do, seeing how the Oilers called Houston home for 36 years and were a charter member of the American Football League. If Bud Adams cared about any of that, why did he abandon Houston for Nashville, and then change the name of the team?

So only the franchise that decided it didn't want to be the Houston Oilers anymore gets to wear Oilers throwback gear. And the current franchise in the city where that franchise made most of its history is forbidden from doing so.

Makes perfect sense to me. How about you?

Listen, I get it. The NFL is all about protecting its brand, and the cash that flows from it thereof. This is true even if the brand, in this case, is about 99 percent cowflop. 

But what does the league get out of threatening the University of Houston, other than looking like a greedy over-lawyered bully? And if they're gonna go after a college, would they also go after, say, the Hog Wallow Junction Fightin' Oilers if the school colors were powder-blue and red and the school logo was an oil derrick?

You'd think they'd be smart enough to realize what a bad look that would be. On the other hand, it is the NFL.

Which in this case stands for "Never Forsake (the) Loot."

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 8

 And now a special Halloween edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the scaaarrry Blob  feature of which critics have said "Don't open that door! The scaaarrry Blob feature's in there!", and also "Aieeeee!":

1. "Aieeeee!" (America, forced to watch the Bears poop all over their Sunday night)

2. "Don't turn on Sunday Night Football! The Bears are in there!" (Also America)

3. And as the wind moaned around the eaves and a full moon rode the night sky like a ghostly frigate from the bowels of Hell, the Jets and Giants rose from their ancient graves and ...

4. ... roamed the countryside on legs that had all but forgotten the mechanics of walking.  Horrible to the sight with their rotting flesh, staring eyes and fleshless, clacking fingers, they moaned and gibbered with awful eagerness, beckoning the unsuspecting to watch them perform obscene abominations of the sacraments of football ...

5. ... until the unsuspecting cried out piteously and begged to be freed from their torment.

6. And, OK, so mainly they just said "What the (bleep) is THIS crap?"

7. Meanwhile, the Cowboys!

8. Lured the Rams into the Lair of Jerry and subjected them to all manner of vile torture, while America shuddered in revulsion at what they knew would come next ...

9. "Woo-hoo! Lookit us! We're GOIN' TO THE SUPER BOWL!" (Obnoxious Cowboy fans)

10. "Aieeee!" (America)

Stuck

 Light a candle this morning to Your Indianapolis Colts, who are exactly who we thought they would be before we were suckered into thinking they might be something else.

Remember? Remember when all the wise guys (including me) were talking about what a mess the roster was, and how this season was going to be a Learning Experience not only for prize rookie Anthony Richardson, but for the Colts in general?

Why, some people were saying they wouldn't win more than four games. 

Oh, yeah. That was me.

But then Richardson showed flashes and Zaire Franklin started tackling everything that moved, and Zach Moss turned out to be more than just a placeholder for the disgruntled Jonathan Taylor. And then Richardson went down but, hey, look, Gardner Minshew's throwing touchdown passes to Michael Pittman Jr., and Taylor's back, and ...

And stuff began to happen. The kind of stuff we thought would happen before we forgot we thought it.

Minshew started turning the ball over every time he blinked. The young secondary became the young-and-banged-up secondary, and even guys like Derek Carr started setting it on fire because the Colts' backup DBs turned out to be more Roddy McDowell than Ronnie Lott. 

Speaking of Carr, he picked on the Horsies yesterday for 310 yards, two touchdowns and a 133.3 quarterback rating, completing 70.4 percent of his throws. That was 45.7 points and 6.3 percentage points higher than his season averages so far.

So he got better in a hurry, and Alvin Kamara and Taysom Hill gashed the Colts for 122 yards and three scores on the ground, and the Saints won 38-27. It was the Horsies' third straight loss. And now they're 3-5 with the sadsack Panthers and Patriots next on the docket, and what do you do if you're them?

Some folks think it's time to pull the plug on the season, fire-sale the hell out of it at the trade deadline tomorrow, and look to next season. Because wasn't that how we all thought this should go back in early September?

On the other hand ...

On the other hand, they do have the Panthers and Patriots coming up. JT's doing JT things again. And there's a chance the front-line DBs will heal up, and that Minshew won't yak up the football the way he's been doing lately.

This is the very definition of stuck, if you're the Colts. So what do you do?

Hope you can win two winnable games and get to .500 through ten games, with an outside shot at squeaking into the playoffs? Or bail on the season and start looking to next year, when Richardson will be healed up and there might be a chance to do more than just squeak into the playoffs?

Even more crucial a question: Do you really at this point trust Chris Ballard to swing anything meaningful at the trade deadline? Or to engineer the 2024 draft any better than he's engineered his drafts so far?

Yeah, me neither.

And so we're back to our original starting point. Which is to say, the Colts really are exactly who we thought they would be.

Not very good.

Almost good

 Indiana did not save Tom Allen's job yesterday, on a warm rainy day in Happy Valley. But it probably solidified Brendan Sorsby's.

It was exactly that kind of "Yes, but ..." and "On the other hand ..." afternoon for the Allen's Hoosiers, who did not beat No. 10 Penn State but did not lose by 30 the way the Vegas wise guys thought. The Hoosiers lost 33-24, and it would have been 31-24 had Indiana not Indiana'ed it up there at the end, Sorsby taking a sack and fumbling into and through the end zone with 1:33 to play.

Safety, Penn State, Thirteen seconds after Drew Allard threw a 57-yard touchdown pass to save the day for the Nittany Lions  -- who gave up a 90-yard touchdown pass by Sorsby and then a 67-yard touchdown pass, and did not exactly find the open gate they were supposed to against the Indiana defense.

In fact, the Indiana defense picked Allard once, sacked him three times and pressured him into off-kilter throws a bunch of other times. All told they made six tackles for loss on the day, while limiting Penn State to a measly 132 yards rushing and 324 total yards, five fewer than Sorsby (13-of-19, 269 yards and three touchdowns passing) and the Indiana offense churned out.

So you can say, ungrammatically, that the Hoosiers were almost good, and Sorsby was ... gooder.

On the other hand ...

On the other hand, they still lost. 

Still did Indiana things, like turning the ball over twice at ruinous times. Still turned a 14-7 lead into a 17-14 halftime deficit in seven minutes. Still gave up the big play with 1:46 to play and score tied at 24.

Still remained winless in the Big Ten, and now Allen's conference record stands at 2-20 since 2021. That alone will be enough for Allen to be shown the door, unless the Hoosiers jump up, win out and get into a bowl game.

Could happen, I suppose, if the outfit that was tied with the No. 10 team in the country  with less than two minutes to play keeps showing up. I mean, it won't, but it could.

My natural pessimist's guess, based on years of watching Indiana football, is the Hoosiers will lose at home to Wisconsin next week to fall to 2-7. Because, you know, they're the Hoosiers.

Sometimes almost good. More often not.

October magic

 So, maybe you're not much into baseball anymore. The NFL has swallowed it whole. The World Series is just background noise to the Shield and big-ticket college football and basketball starting up and hockey starting up.

Maybe it even gets eclipsed by high school football, considering the geniuses who run baseball now decided to start the World Series on a playoff football Friday.

Too bad for you, in that case.

You could have seen one of those throwback moments that used to make the Series appointment viewing. You could have watched October magic happen the way it used to when they still played the World Series in the afternoons, under the burnished light of the October sun. You could have relived all the times you snuck your transistor radio into Mrs. Becker's class to listen when you were supposed to be conjugating verbs and such.

Game 1 brought all that back last night, including the part where you gave yourself away by shouting "Yes!" when the magic happened. Because, yes, the magic did happen.

Down 5-3 at home in the ninth, their bats muffled by the Arizona Diamondbacks' arms, the Texas Rangers suddenly rode again. 

First,with a man on, Corey Seager took D-backs closer Paul Sewald's 94-mph smoke for a ride into the right-field stands, tying the game with one out in the ninth. Then, in the bottom of the 11th, Adolis Garcia -- who doesn't seem to have swung and missed through the entire playoffs -- did it again, clubbing a walkoff home run to give the Rangers a stunning 6-5 win and a 1-0 lead in the Series.

It was the fifth straight game he'd homered, his record 22nd RBI in the playoffs, and first walk-off dinger in Game 1 of the World Series since a hobbled Kirk Gibson hit one of the most iconic home runs in Series history 35 years ago.

The Blob makes no claim to premonitions. But, weirdly enough, I was actually watching a clip of Gibson's blast and Vin Scully's legendary call of it ("And she's gone!") Friday afternoon. 

No, I don't know why. It just popped up on my YouTube feed. And there again was Gibson limping around the bases pumping his arm, and A's peerless closer Dennis Eckersley blanking following the ball as it sailed away, and the whole world, it seemed, going nuts.

Just a nostalgic wallow, I guess, as the 119th World Series waited on deck.

And then, several hours later, Seager and Garcia going deep with Game 1 on the line, same as in 1988.

You don't have to say it was that old October magic, echoing down the years. But I think I will.

A touch of Luka in the night

 I know how I describe this, if I'm whoever covered the Mavericks and the Nets last night. I steal from Grantland Rice.

Outlined against an October roof of a basketball arena, a game of H-O-R-S-E rode again. And Luka Doncic won it ...

Because, really, who's gonna match what Luka did with 26 seconds to go last night and his Mavs tied with visiting Brooklyn?

What he did was fling up a half-hook, half-what-the-hell-throw from beyond the 3-point line, with the Nets Dorian Finney-Smith draped over him like a rain suit. And Luka ... well, made it rain.

The ball left his hand, sailed on a sub-orbital arc, and banked in high off the glass to give the Mavs the lead and the eventual W. It might have been the most amazing make anyone in attendance ever saw, and put the exclamation point on Doncic's 49-point night. And it was one of four threes he made in the last 2:59.

Here's what it looked like. Finney-Smith joked Luka didn't call bank, but Luka joked he said it in Slovenian so Finney-Smith wouldn't understand.

Craziest thing about it?

Finney-Smith, who used to play with the Mavs, wasn't even that surprised.

"I've seen it a million times," he said. "He plays around and he honestly works on those shots. I feel we should have not let him get the ball back. That probably would have been the best option. S***, he couldn't even see the rim and he made that mug."

And Luka?

"I don't know how I made it," he said.

Yeah, right.

"That is absolutely disgusting"

You go, Mike Brown. Put your heart out there on your sleeve and let it speak.

Maybe you didn't see this the other night, after Brown's Sacramento Kings opened the NBA season. Likely he'll get the usual "Stick to sports" and "What does a basketball coach know about anything" in response, as if politicians wearing AR-15 pins on their lapels and regurgitating gun lobby bullet points know anything more.

To hell with that. Everything Mike Brown said the other night about what was happening again in America was true. Straight from the heart and true.

Another crazy person, this time in Lewiston, Me., going on a killing spree at a bowling alley and a bar? And not just any crazy person, but a crazy person with military training lugging a military-grade weapon?

And so another 18 or so dead, another 14 or so wounded, and two more ordinary American places turned into combat zones. And more blah-blah-blahing, more empty words,  the new Speaker of the House -- a right-wing extremist named Mike Johnson -- saying the problem is not military-grade weaponry too easily getting into the wrong hands, but "the human heart."

Well. Last I knew, the human heart couldn't pull a trigger. It can guide the hands that do, but without those hands and without the ordinance they cradle, all those dead and wounded in Maine wouldn't be dead and wounded today.

It's absolutely disgusting, as Brown said. It's sad, as he also said. And it goes on and on without letup, as he also said, because no one does a damn thing to try to slow it down.

I mean, it's the human heart doing it all by its lonesome, right?

And, yes, that's a snide and cynical thing to say. But I've got nothing else at this point. Like Mike Brown I am disgusted and weary and sick to death of the killing, of families mourning loved ones simply because they decided to go to school or a movie theater or church or the grocery store -- or a bowling alley or a bar.

We get the country we deserve, I say, every time some crazy person ups the body count. And clearly we live in a country now that considers periodic slaughters the price we have to pay for a constitutional amendment that was never intended to mean what the more fringe elements have decided it means.

So there will be Thoughts and Prayers and the usual hand-wringing and excuse-making from the gun nuts in Washington, who seem to have gotten the idea Moses brought the Second Amendment down from Mt. Sinai on stone tablets. Who seem to think you can't take any steps to make it more difficult to identify and hamper other prospective slaughterers without desecrating the Sacred Second.

And so this slaughterer will join the pantheon, and more innocents will die, and the vigil candles will gutter out at the blood-soaked sites of our latest carnage. And, as Mike Brown said the other night, nothing will happen except the next Slaughter of the Month or Week or Season.

And the usual suspects in Washington?

They'll proudly keep wearing their AR-15 pins, even as AR-15s and their ilk continue to mow down the citizenry. Some of them, incredibly, will pose with that weaponry on their Christmas cards. And they'll continue to tell us that a nation with more concealed and open carry laws than ever will be safer if only more people buy more guns.

Yes, it's disgusting. And consider this my disgusted surrender. We get the country we deserve, as I said. So be it.

I just have one question.

With more people buying more guns, and mass shootings now just a regular American thing in spite of that, when exactly do we get safer?

Par for the porcine

 Raise a glass this a.m. to the humble javelina -- Wild West cousin to the pig, eater of grubs and worms and such, destroyer of the misplaced works of man. 

You're no pig in a poke, Jave. You're a pig-like creature out to punish the greed and hubris of human beings.

Saw several posts on the Magic Used-To-Be-Twitter Thingy yesterday about javelinas going, well, hog wild on a golf course in Arizona, tearing up all those artificially green fairways in search of the yummy morsels that lie beneath. And all I thought was, man plans, God laughs.

This is because man thought it would be a good idea to build golf courses in the desert for all the folks who retire there, and now the javelinas are giving them what they deserve. And also a message.

Goes kinda like this: Hey, dummies, you don't want us plowing up your phony greenery, DON'T BUILD GOLF COURSES IN THE DESERT. Who told you that would be even half-bright?

A very good question, especially now that the Southwest is drying up and golf courses there require, like, gallons and gallons of water to maintain. Plainly put, the water's no longer there for such wasteful luxuries,  or soon won't be.

Look. I know conservation isn't a big deal to the developers who build these alien landscapes -- it's all about cashing in on that retiree dough --, but sooner or later even they have to wake up to what's happening. Don't they? 

I have been to the desert Southwest a number of times, and what I've noticed is how many of the wiser heads there have landscaping that conforms to the natural elements: cacti, gravel, desert plants that require little to no water. Makes a stark example of their neighbors who insist on maintaining the grassy yards they had back in the Midwest or wherever.

I say turn the javelinas loose on 'em. Nature reclaiming its own, right? 

A Series of unforeseen events

 Well, OK, then. Diamondbacks vs. Rangers it is.

And somewhere America just said "Who?"

And somewhere else a network executive just flipped over his mahogany desk and screamed "How the HELL do I sell THIS?!"

And somewhere in the rustling pages of history the '69 Mets are chortling, and the '14 Boston Braves are snickering, and the '60 Pirates are busting out laughing.

Because this is a World Series Of Unforeseen Events. And nobody saw the Mets, Braves or Pirates coming, either.

In like fashion we've got the Rangers, who won all four games in Houston in the ALCS, including games 6 and 7. And we've got the Diamondbacks, who went back to Philadelphia down 3-2 the Phillies in the NLCS and won games 6 and 7 in Philly to reach the Series.

The Rangers won 90 games during the regular season, 11 fewer than the Orioles, whom they swept in the divisional round. The Diamondbacks won 84 games, 16 fewer than the Dodgers, whom they also swept in the divisional round. 

Two summers ago, the Diamondbacks lost 110 games and finished dead last in the NL West, 55 games out of first. Two summers ago, the Rangers lost 102 games and finished dead last in the AL West, 35 games out of first.

Now?

Now, they're in the World Series, but unless you're a dedicated seamhead, you've never heard of anyone on either roster.  Although the rookie sensation for the D-backs, Corbin Carroll, is worth getting to know, as is Adolis Garcia of the Rangers, who almost singlehandedly wrecked the Astros.

Anyway, this is your World Series. The TV ratings will be lower than, ahem, a diamondback's belly, but the baseball might be fun. 

The Blob says Rangers in seven. Or, you know, not.

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 7

 And now a special "What th-?" edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the norm-defying Blob feature of which critics have said "What th-?", and also "There he goes again, defying norms and being all anarchist-y! What madness will  he unleash next?":

1. "This madness! Bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha!" (The cruddy New England Patriots, after beating the allegedly splendid Buffalo Bills even though the Bills have Josh Allen and the Patriots only have Mac Jones, Mac N'Cheese, someone like that)

2. "What th-?" (The Bills)

3. "The next Tom Brady my a**!" (The cruddy Minnesota Vikings, after picking draft-afterthought-turned-star Brock Purdy twice in a 22-17 win over the allegedly splendid 49ers)

4. Meanwhile, Tyson Bagent!

5. Comes out of nowhere (OK, so tiny Shepherd University, which is next door to nowhere) to lead the cruddy Bears to a 30-12 lamination of the Raiders.

4. "Make fun of my school, will ya!" (Bagent)

5. In other news, Ravens 38, Lions 6.

6. "What th-?" (Lions fans)

7. 'But I thought we were supposed to be good!" (Also Lions fans)

8. In further other news, the still-splendid Chiefs whipped the always-let-you-down Chargers 31-17 as Patrick Mahomes threw for 424 yards and four scores.

9. "Hey, look, it's Taylor Swift again!" (America)

10. "I mean, hey, look, the norm, finally!" (Also America)

Zebra shenanigans

 You'll have to talk a long time to sell me on the latest conspiracy theory in Indianapolis, which is that the NFL had it out for the Colts yesterday because it wanted the Browns to win.

I mean, the Cowboys, I could see. One of the New York teams, maybe. I could even buy the Bears if it hadn't been almost 40 years since they'd done anything besides trip over their own feet.

If the league really has been pushing them, that's some epic ineffectiveness right there. 

But the Browns? Cleveland? You mean the city the NFL thought so much of they let Art Modell abandon it?

Uh, no. Must be another reason the Colts got hosed not once but a couple of times on the Browns' winning drive yesterday.

I've seen the main hose-ery in question, and, yeah, it's pretty damn egregious. P.J. Walker threw a souvenir to the fans beyond the end zone and the Colts' Darrell Baker Jr. was nicked for pass interference for grabbing the arm of Donovan Peoples-Jones, the intended receiver.

Or at least, he was allegedly the intended receiver. Considering the trajectory of the pass, it might have been Yuri Gagarin. Or maybe Neil Armstrong was open up there in the Sea of Tranquility. They were the only ones who could possibly have made a play on the ball.

So, yeah, the Browns got a gimme first-and-goal, and then Kareem Hunt plowed into the end zone with 15 seconds to play, and we wound up with Browns 39, Colts 38 instead of Colts 38, Browns 33. And everyone in Indy began screaming they got robbed because of the absurd call in the end zone, and also the maybe pass interference call on Baker a play earlier that wiped out a strip sack and fumble recovery for the Colts.

I haven't seen that play. But people I know to have level heads in these matters say Baker did get a bit grabby trying to stop Amari Cooper in the end zone. 

So let's call that one borderline. And let's also point out that neither happens if the Colts don't let the Browns get close enough to be throwing the ball into end zone to begin with.

They took over possession at their own 20 with 2:35 to play. Two incomplete passes brought up third-and-10. Make the stop there, and it's over.

Instead, the Colts gave up a 30-yard completion to midfield. 

Then they gave up a 13-yard run to the Colts 37.

Then they gave up a 17-yard completion to the 19.

There was still 1:36 to play when that happened. Which means the Colts had yielded 61 yards in less than a minute.

And, yes, then the shenanigans happened, and it wasn't the first time. NFL officiating has always been less than stellar, and not just when the Colts are playing the Browns. A bit later Sunday, the Rams got hosed on an egregiously awful spot that gave the Steelers a first down enroute to a 24-17 victory. 

According to those who saw it, Kenny Pickett came up about half a continent short on fourth down. But the spot said "First down, Steelers."

So, yeah. It doesn't just happen to the Colts. 

Although you'd play hell trying to convince anyone in Indianapolis today.

Bad call report for today

 The two worst calls in college football yesterday both happened in the Big Ten, one of them a REALLY boneheaded call and the other a call the rulebook says wasn't a bad call.

The latter happened in Iowa City, where a go-ahead punt return to the house by the Hawkeyes was wiped out when officials ruled the kid who ran it back waved for a fair catch. This meant Minnesota won 12-10 and got to claim Floyd of Rosedale, the bronze pig that goes to the winner of Iowa-Minnesota game each year.

(Also the most hilariously awesome rivalry trophy in college football. And, no, the Blob will entertain no arguments to the contrary.)

The problem here is the kid in question, Cooper DeJean, only made a vague sort of waving motion with his left arm, as if signaling to shoo everyone else away from the punt. 

He didn't raise his hand and wave it. He didn't make any motion that even remotely resembled a traditional fair catch signal. Yet, according to the rulebook, any waving motion constitutes a fair catch signal -- even if the signaler immediately takes off running, as DeJean did.

Here's the video of the play. You decide.

And while you're deciding, let's head over to East Lansing, Mich., home of the most can't-get-out-of-its-own-way school in the country, Michigan State. You'll remember MSU for employing a sexual predator (Larry Nassar) for literally decades, and most recently for having to fire its $10-million-a-year football coach, Mel Tucker, for masturbating on the phone with a woman who'd come to MSU to talk about sexual harassment. 

Last night the Spartans greeted arch-rival Michigan wearing head-to-toe black, a bad call that apparently intimidated the No. 2 Wolverines not a bit, considering they floor-waxed Sparty 49-0. But the real bad call happened before the game, when some genius thought it would be a good idea to ask a trivia question about Hitler and put his photo up on the Jumbotron.

This in the wake of Hamas' attack on Israel. This in the wake of an accompanying outbreak of anti-semitism in America, most notably on the nation's college campuses.

Part of it has been the unfortunate by-product of pro-Palestinian rallies, which are fine and proper given Israel's long apartheid rule of  the 2 million Palestinians in Gaza. Right-wing reactionaries have muddied the waters by spinning those rallies as "pro-Hamas" or "pro-terrorism",  even when they've called only for peace in the region.

Problem is, some of the rallies have been rife with the sort of anti-semitic rhetoric that could have sprung whole-cloth from Germany in the 1930s. And college administrators have let it happen because they either agree with it or consider it untouchable "free speech."

Me?

Hell, I'm just astounded these bastions of supposed left-wing indoctrination -- even Harvard, for God's sake! -- could have been harboring so many Hitler Youth without anyone knowing about it. 

And, yeah, OK, I'm being facetious, if only a little. I'm also willing to give the college kids a pass on some of it, on account of they're college kids and college kids are not fully formed adults with fully formed cognitive abilities.

Also, a lot of them either don't know history or have never been taught it correctly.

That said ... putting Hitler's face seven leagues tall on the Jumbotron in this environment? 

Yeesh. Way to read the room, dummies.

The stubbornness of beige

 Listen, don't ask me who Indiana football coach Tom Allen runs out there at quarterback today. Harry Gonso, for all I know.  Babe Laufenberg. Some other relic from IU's exceedingly beige football past.

Here's what I do know: Beige is a damn stubborn thing to wash out of a football program, at least for any length of time.

Not all that long ago Tom Allen had people excited about Indiana football, which takes some doing at a place where football traditionally has been something to do until they roll out the basketballs. He took the Hoosiers to the Gator Bowl and then the Outback Bowl, won 14 of 21 games in a two-year stretch and had his players calling him the best coach in America on national TV.

America fell in love with the guy. LEO (Love Each Other), Allen's mantra, became a thing. Finally Indiana football looked like it wasn't going to be Indiana football anymore.

And then ...

And then the Hoosiers went 2-10 in 2021. 

And then 4-8 last year.

And now they're 2-4 with Rutgers coming, and it's almost Halloween and Allen still can't decide on a starting quarterback. He tried Brendan Sorsby and then he tried Tayven Jackson and then he tried Sorsby again, and now ... 

Now, who knows. Allen's keeping it a secret until whoever it is trots out to the huddle today.

And Indiana, on his watch, has gone back to being Indiana. The Hoosiers are now 8-22 under Allen since those two semi-glorious seasons, and we're back to the Lee Corso era, the Cam Cameron era, the Gerry DiNardo era.

Since John Pont took the Hoosiers to their only Rose Bowl in 1967 -- an improbable run he couldn't duplicate even though Gonso, John Isenbarger and Jade Butcher were still around for two more seasons -- only Bill Mallory has won with any sort of consistency in B-town. Mallory coached Indiana for 13 seasons, taking them to six bowl games and going 69-77-3. Take away his first season, when he went 0-11 with someone else's players, and he actually had a winning record: 69-66-3.

No one has come close to that since.

And it's not that Indiana hasn't had players, or doesn't have them now. The Hoosiers have always had players. It's just that they haven't had enough of them, and weren't likely to recruiting against Michigan and Ohio State and Michigan State and Iowa and Wisconsin and later Penn State.

Starting next season, you can add USC and UCLA and Oregon to the mix. Which is another way of saying the path away from beige isn't getting any easier.

Allen's managed to lure some talent to Bloomington despite all that, but, again, not enough talent. In the meantime, he's gotten rid of defensive coordinators and offensive coordinators, and the consequence is a program that seems to have no direction -- or at the very least has forgotten what that direction is.

People keep saying a school with the resources Indiana has ought to have a decent football program, and maybe they're right. But when you hardly ever have had a decent program, resources don't mean a lot.

Corporate college football doesn't have much use for tradition these days, but tradition still sells a program like nothing else. And it's damned hard to sell kids in 2023 on a tradition that peaked almost  60 years ago.

So, here we are. Allen's magic has vanished, and he's on his way out like every IU coach eventually is on his way out. The only question is when -- after this season if some moneybags alum ponies up the gargantuan lump it would take to buy Allen out now, or after next season when the lump will be considerably smaller.

And then the search will be on for a replacement. And the talk will be about how crucial it is for Indiana to lure a big name to Bloomington, or an up-and-coming name, or anyone, really, who can finally scrub the beige out of the program for good.

In the meantime, a raucous crowd turned out in Assembly Hall last night for Hoosier Hysteria, Indiana unveiling its men's and women's basketball teams with the usual glitter and hype and a concert by the band Gucci Mane. 

So Indiana's still got that going for it.

U of Malfeasance

 It's probably reactionary at this point to say Michigan football coach Jim Harbaugh looks more like Bill Belichick every day. And not in a good way.

It's probably reactionary to say it's a darn shame the winningest college football program in history has become one of those renegade outfits, like SMU in the '80s or Dollar Bill Self's Kansas basketball program right now.

And it's probably reactionary to joke that "U of M" now stands for "University of Malfeasance."

Wolverine Nation would likely take offense to that. Bob Ufer, the legendary Michigan play-by-play announcer, would likely kick the traces in his grave and haunt the reactionaries with his famous cry of "Meeee-chigan."

All that said ...

Well. Let's just say it's not a good look when the NCAA comes snooping around your program twice in one year.

Harbaugh already served a university-imposed three-game suspension (if you call sitting out three cupcakes a suspension) this season for recruiting shenanigans during Covid, and for his subsequent lack of cooperation with NCAA investigators. Now -- Harbaugh's program is being accused of its very own Spygate -- i.e., sending around a snoop to the games of future opponents to try and steal their sideline-to-huddle signals.

That doesn't sound like a big deal. But it's been illegal for almost 30 years.

The accused snoop, it seems, is an ex-Marine trained in, well, shall we say espionage techniques or something like them. He decided to approach his job as a low-level assistant by employing, if not the techniques, at least the philosophy behind. (Hint: It basically works out to "Know your enemy.") Harbaugh claims to know nothing about any of this, but, hell, isn't that what every head coach says when he gets caught with his hand in the cookie jar?

Anyway, Michigan is undefeated, untried -- they haven't beaten anyone worth a tinker's damn yet -- and now is under suspicion. And you wonder how much patience its administration will have if this sort of thing keeps happening.

My guess is a lot, considering the halfhearted wrist tap the school gave Harbaugh for the Covid deal. Also they're paying the guy a ginormous wad to do what he's doing, which is keep Michigan in the top five and get them to the College Football Playoff on the regular.

A school with Michigan's regal legacy can put up with a lot as long as Coach delivers the latter. All it has to do is keep throwing the word "integrity" out there and proving it still knows how to spell it.

In the meantime, the U of Malfeasance plays at in-state rival Michigan State tomorrow night. I'm sure Sparty's got the signs and catcalls all ready.

The injury quandary

 Look, Tom Brady isn't wrong when he says the NFL creeps closer to flag football every day. He just sounds ridiculous saying it, being that he's Tom Brady.

After all, he can't credibly say the game has gotten soft when no one -- no one -- was treated more softly than he was during his long and momentous career.

Don't Touch Tom wasn't just a meme during all that time; it was practically a league edict. Even last year, during his final season, an Atlanta Falcons pass rusher named Grady Jarrett was flagged for ... well, for sacking Brady with a routine tackle that was frankly pretty gentle.

Referee Jerome Boger immediately dinged Garret for, as Boger put it, "unnecessarily throwing (the quarterback) to the ground." Which in most sane precincts just means the dude tackled him.

And yet now it's Brady lamenting that the game has gotten too soft? Tom freakin' Brady?

Puh-leeze.

On the other hand ...

On the other hand, again, he's not wrong. And the hell of it is, I don't know what the NFL can do about that, because guys keep getting hurt anyway.

Recently the league has decided it might ban something called "a hip drop tackle," which is basically just tackling a guy from behind. This is because they increase the risk of injury 25 times the rate of a standard tackle, whatever that is now.

Dallas running back Tony Pollard broke his fibula on one. Seahawks quarterback Geno Smith had to leave the game Sunday after being injured on one. And so on.

Meanwhile, the "hip-drop" didn't have anything to do with Anthony Richardson's season-ending shoulder injury, or Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson's shoulder injury, or the sore shoulder Bills quarterback Josh Allen is nursing, or the sore knee Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence is nursing.

In other words, guys keep getting hurt no matter what the NFL does. It's tackle football. Guys get hurt playing it, and always will -- especially in the NFL, where players are bigger, stronger, faster and generate more foot-pounds of force than they ever have.

So what's the solution, other than, well, flag football?

Already defenders are prohibited from tackling guys high, and tackling them low, and tackling them when they're not looking, and even tackling them too hard if the officials rule the tackle-ee was "defenseless." Now they're about to be told they can't tackle them from behind unless they stay on their feet and, I don't know, kinda water-ski behind them.

And, listen, I don't want to come off like one of those foo-ball knuckle-draggers who still mourn the days when Chuck Bednarik could knock Frank Gifford colder than a marble slab and then dance over him in glee. No one but the knuckle-draggers want to go back to those days.

First of all, there's way too many dollars at stake now to keep putting your stars on the sideline. On the other hand, flag football wouldn't exactly make it rain Benjamins, either.

It's a quandary for sure. And one for which I'm not sure there will ever be a satisfactory answer. 

AR to the OR

... and, well, there goes that season. And maybe another high-end draft pick.

Sorry. Seems the Blob's inner pessimist has the run of the joint today.

He's looking around, the sour old coot, and he's starting to wonder where Your Indianapolis Colts go from here. Yes, they've been better so far -- maybe even way better -- than all the inner (and outer) pessimists figured. Yes, Gardner Minshew is a hell of a backup quarterback. And, yes, Michael Pittman has blossomed into a premo WR1, and Zach Moss and Jonathan Taylor make a nifty 1-2 punch at running back, and Zaire Franklin is suddenly tackling everything in sight.

Oh, and Matt Gay can kick those field goals, by golly.

However ...

However, we saw all Sunday in Jacksonville how you beat this team.

Overplay the run. Make Gardner Minshew beat you. Pick on the Colts energetic but youngish secondary, the weak spot in a D that's solid everywhere else.

The result Sunday was Jville 37, Colts 20, as Minshew threw a trio of picks and the Colts averaged 2.6 yards per carry against a defense loading the box. And now?

And now it's Mnshew or bust the rest of the way, because the guy the Colts are banking on as their future seems headed for season-ending surgery on his throwing shoulder -- four starts into his career.

Thus you're allowed to wonder what the future looks like now. And whether it looks any different than the recent past.

Look. Anthony Richardson is by all accounts a remarkably grounded young man with a remarkable athletic skill set, and so you hope he makes a full recovery. You hope he doesn't lose anything throwing the football, and that he learns how better to protect himself when he uses the legs that are so much a part of his game.

You hope -- oh, how you hope -- the fact he got hurt in every single game he's played so far is just some weird anomaly, and not a sign he's the most dreaded word in the NFL dictionary.

That word would be "fragile."

I don't want that to be true. You don't want that to be true. Nobody who enjoys watching exceptional football players make exceptional football plays wants that to be true.

That of course would include Colts management, which has banked so much on this 21-year-old kid. Now they'll have to wait an entire year at least to see what the return on the investment will be.

For now, even if the Colts manage to prove him wrong the rest of 2023, my inner pessimist knows what he's looking at here. 

Call it a holding pattern. 

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 6

 And now this week's edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the incorrigibly unpredictable Blob feature of which critics have said "Goodness, I didn't see THAT coming!", and also "Why can't you be more predictable, like that nice Blob down the street?":

1. "Goodness, I didn't see THAT coming!" (Every NFL fan after the Browns knocked off the unbeaten 49ers and the Jets somehow took out the unbeaten Eagles, both while playing backup quarterbacks)

2. "Ha! See, we ARE SO going to the Super Bowl!" (Chronically delusional Jets fans)

3. "Yeah, but we're still the Browns." (Chronically realistic Browns fans)

4. Meanwhile, the Bears still stink, the Broncos still stink, the Patriots still stink.

5. "Hey, I thought this was supposed to be about unpredictability!" (The critics)

6. OK, fine. So how 'bout them Cowboys?

7. Beat the Chargers on the road a week after getting their lassos handed to them by the 49ers. Even did it while wearing those throwback unis from the early '60s when Eddie LeBaron was their quarterback and they were really cruddy.

8. "You know who's cruddy? The Giants are cruddy." (Giants fans)

9. "Goodness, I didn't see THAT coming!" (Giants fans, after the Giants came within an incompletion in the end zone of beating the Bills in Buffalo, a week after the Jaguars beat the Bills in London)

10. "Stupid London games!" (Bills fans)

A jolly bad idea

 Sometimes I think NFL commissioner Roger Goodell imagines himself as Sir Roger of Goodell, prancing around his palatial estate in jodhpurs and a red hunting jacket while waving a riding crop and shouting "Tally ho!"

Which is to say, the Ravens and Titans played another league game in London yesterday, this time in the home stadium of English soccer mainstay Tottenham Hotspur.

It was the third straight week an NFL game has been played in London.

And now come reports that Goodell and Co. are mulling the notion of someday playing a Super Bowl there.

Let me be probably not the first person to say "Jolly bad."

In American this translates to "Aw, HELL, no," and that's not just the Blob lapsing into a spasm of provincial Ugly American-ism. It's the Blob honestly wondering what Goodell's fascination is with the mother country, and why he thinks American football would ever be more there than just a pleasant diversion from Real Football, aka English Premier League soccer.

Things you are not likely ever to hear in Manchester, England: "Nah, I don't think I'll go watch City vs. United this Sunday. I'm gonna stay home and watch the Indianapolis Colts on the telly. I hear this Gardner Minshew chap is extraordinary!" 

Yeaaaah, not happenin'. I mean, doesn't anyone remember the World League of American Football, a mostly failed 10-year experiment not just in England but also in Spain, Scotland, the Netherlands and Germany? Have we forgotten the immortal Rhein Fire so quickly? 

A Super Bowl in London. Really?

Great, let's haul that whole circus overseas for the benefit of a demographic that, let's face it, is never going to embrace American football as fervently as the league's true fan base on this side of the pond. But, sure, let's screw them, all those crazy  dudes jumping shirtless onto card tables in the middle of the weekly Buffalo blizzard.

Congratulations fans of (your team name here)! You always wanted to go to the Super Bowl, and now your team is FINALLY in it! It'll cost you an arm and a leg, but it's a bucket list deal! So pay up!

Oh, and one other thing: We're playing the big game in London this year! Won't that be cool? Your team in the Super Bowl, plus London Bridge, Big Ben, all that historical s***! I guess that means you'll pony up the other arm and leg, too, amiright?

Oh, yeah. TERRIFIC idea.

Now, the inclination here is to say it'll never happen, but if there's one thing we should have all learned by now it's to never say never. Four years after fans recoiled at the thought of a dirtbag New York real estate crook driving the pace car for the Indianapolis 500, we elected him President of the United States. Compared to that, what's the championship of the premier U.S. sports league being played six hours away from the U.S.?

Which means kickoff would happen sometime around 12:30 in the morning London time, if the NFL wanted to catch the prime-time audience in the U.S.  Or you kick it off at 6:30 p.m. London time, which means it kicks at 12:30 p.m. Eastern time in the U.S. and the network that paid the GDP of Brazil for the rights loses its prime-time advertising rates.

Anyway ... it's a spectacularly cementheaded notion for any number of reasons. Which is why I suspect the league purposely leaked it as a trial balloon just to gauge the reaction.

I trust the reaction came through loud and clear, and not just from this precinct. Fingers crossed.

A smashing return

 OK, OK. So I didn't think it would be like this.

Remember yesterday, when the Blob predicted Notre Dame would be a different football team against USC than it was in the droopy loss to Louisville last week? That it would in fact prolly beat the 10th-ranked Trojans (and Heisman Trophy winner Caleb Williams), like, 31-28 or 33-30, something like that?

Well, color me a big stupid. 

I mean, not because the Irish lost, mind you. Because they won in a walk, 48-20.

I mean, 48-20 is how you beat a MAC school, or maybe Indiana on the rare occasions the Irish have scheduled the Hoosiers. It's not how you beat an old rival that came in ranked No. 10 and has a football tradition as proud as yours, and who until last night had been averaging more than 50 points per game.

Especially when you couldn't block, tackle or do all those football things against Louisville last week, and barely did them against Duke.

Apparently USC isn't as good as either. Because the Irish blocked, tackled and did every football thing imaginable to the Trojans, including some truly heinous things to Caleb Williams.

Williams swaggered into cold, wet Notre Dame Stadium with a chance to lock up his second Heisman, and instead the Irish made him look like Hiram Williams from down the street a-ways. Sacked him six times. Picked him three times and harassed him into untold bad reads. Beat up the USC offensive front to the tune of 11 total tackles for loss.

Did the same on the other side of the football, where the Irish simply lined up and slobber-knocked USC off the ball, with the Bus 2.0 (Audric Estime) crunching out 95 yards and two scores on 22 concussive carries.

It left everyone wondering just how counterfeit USC might be -- pretty counterfeit, it seems -- and just who the hell Notre Dame is. The Blob suspects the real Irish more resemble what we saw last night and against Ohio State than what we saw against Duke and Louisville, 

Don't think you'll see much of the latter after next week, when the Irish play Bye and get a much-needed breather from what has been a brutal eight-straight-week grind.

In any case, 48-20 was a sweet parting gift before that breather, and it fit neatly into the prevailing theme of the weekend as well  Which, if you gave it a title, would be something like "Them College Kids is CRAZY."

Start with Friday night and the Moulder In Boulder, when Colorado blew a 29-0 halftime lead against a one-win Stanford team and lost 46-43 in two overtimes. Then move on to Saturday, when all sorts of form-trashing happened.

A week after the big win against ND, unbeaten and 14th-ranked Louisville was ball-peened 38-21 by unranked Pitt. Unranked Arizona clubbed No. 19 Washington State 44-6, at Washington State. No. 23 Kansas and No. 24 Kentucky were also blistered by unranked opponents -- Kansas by a touchdown at Oklahoma State, and Kentucky by 17 at home to Missouri.

Exhibit No. 2,347 why college football is great.

Today in Just A Feeling

OK, then, so bring it. I can take it.

Tell me the reflection off the Golden Dome has blinded me.

Pat me on the head and say, "OK there, Domer Homer."

Ask me if I always genuflect when I hear Rockne's name. Or if I sing the Victory March in the shower in the morning. Or if I'd like some pompons to go with that cute cheerleader outfit.

Point. Laugh. Ridicule away.

I'll still say I think Notre Dame beats USC tonight.

And, no, I have nothing of particular substance with which to back that up. I just have this, I don't know, feeling,

Maybe it springs from all the times I've seen past performance not guarantee future results, especially in college athletics. College kids are goofy. They do magnificent stuff, and then they do stupid stuff. They fail to show up, and then they show up like Patton's Third Army.

I say that having watched Notre Dame demonstrably not show up last Saturday night in Louisville, where Jeff Brohm's unbeaten Cardinals and a stadium full of maniacs howling for Notre Dame's blood were waiting.

People (or at least the keepers of Notre Dame lore) like to say every road game for the Irish is the home team's Super Bowl. That's not nearly as true as it was back when Notre Dame was winning national titles and dinosaurs walked the earth. But it was close enough for government work last week.

The result was a 33-20 rump-roasting for the listless Irish.

And now the Irish have an old and bitter rival coming, a rival that's also unbeaten and happens to have the best college football player in America in quarterback Caleb Williams. They're the nation's 10th-ranked team, and they've still got a shot at the playoff if they can run the table, and so the Trojans have much for which to play. Plus there's that whole old-and-bitter-rival thing.

None of which explains why I think Notre Dame somehow jumps up and gets them.

What does explain it, partly, is the fact USC's offense is unstoppable -- the Trojans are averaging 42.5 points per game -- but so is everyone else's offense against USC's defense. It's giving up 27 points per game so far, and it's been even more a swinging gate in the last three games, giving up 36.6 per against Arizona State (28), Colorado (41) and Arizona (41).

Notre Dame ought to be able work with that, if it brings the want-to it left at home last week. And history, recent and otherwise, says it will.

Marcus Freeman hasn't been around long enough to establish much of a coaching M.O., but his Notre Dame teams have shown some bounce-back after defeats. After the wrenching 17-14 loss to Ohio State this season, for instance, they outlasted a then-unbeaten Duke team on the road. And last year?

They followed up that embarrassing loss to Marshall with wins over Cal, North Carolina by 13 on the road, and 16th-ranked BYU. And after a loss to Stanford, they beat UNLV, 16th-ranked Syracuse by 17 on the road, and No. 5 Clemson by three touchdowns.

Based on all that, I can't imagine the Irish looking anything tonight the way they looked in Louisville.  Besides (speaking of history), this series is littered with the unexpected, Notre Dame jumping up and beating USC when it shouldn't and vice-versa. 

So the Irish have that going for them, as they say. And this feeling of mine, of course.

It tells me Notre Dame wins. It tells me the Irish squeak by 31-28, 33-30, something like that.

You may now commence the pointing, the laughing, all that.

Century clubbed

 So it's the Diamondbacks, the Phillies, the Rangers and Astros left in the World Series derby, and what's missing here, boys and girls? Whaaaat's missing?

"Hey, where are the Braves?" you're saying now.

Done.

"The Orioles? The Dodgers?"

Bye-bye birdies. Forgot to dodge.

Yes, that's right, America, all three of the baseball teams that won 100 games or more during the long hot summer are out, finished at Faber. Two of the three (the O's and the Dodgers) were swept by the Rangers and Diamondbacks, respectively. The other (the Braves, who led all of baseball with 104 wins) managed to win just one game against the Phillies, who finished 14 games behind the Bravos in the NL East.

The Rangers, meanwhile, won 10 fewer games than the Orioles. And the Dodgers couldn't win a single playoff game against the D-backs, who finished a whopping 16 games behind L.A. in the NL West.

Overheard in a hallway outside October:

Braves, Dodgers, Orioles: Yay! We won 100 games!

October: So?

Don't know if that means October really holds a healthy disdain for the status quo, but the Century Club got clubbed, and once again MLB proved when That Month rolls around, everything that happened before means squadoosh. Baseball might as well go straight from April to October and leave out all that noise in between.

I mean, how many times can you stand to watch the Red Sox play the Yankees if you live west of the Berkshires or the Triborough Bridge? Or, even worse, my Pittsburgh Cruds play anyone?

At any rate, it's on to the ALCS and NLCS, with just one division champion (the Astros) still standing. Me, I'm kinda rooting for the D-backs and the Rangers to make the World Series. That's nothing against the Phillies or Astros, mind you. It's because it makes me smile to think about the network suits tearing out their carefully gelled hair while screaming "We paid all this money for THE BLEEPING DIAMONDBACKS and THE BLEEPING RANGERS??" 

Beautiful.

Pride-less

 The NHL hasn't been able to get out of its own way for decades, so I'm not sure how the league banning Pride tape on sticks -- rainbow-colored tape worn during Pride month to show support for the LGBTQ+ community -- qualifies as news.

It's just the latest misstep in Gary Bettman's ongoing clown show.

The league even hauled out Big D ("distraction") as justification for the ban, and covered itself by decreeing you couldn't put special tape on your stick supporting ANY cause, including fighting cancer. But the Pride tape is the anchor tenant here, because there were players who refused to wear special Pride jerseys during Pride month on account of it was against their religion to support the gay/transgender community.

Thus the "distraction." Thus the NHL kowtowing to bigotry, and giving the lie to its so-called embrace of "inclusion."

I know that's a dirty word these days among those of a certain political/religious bent, and as a Christian I've never understood that. I even left my church because of its rejection of inclusion and embrace of anti-gay/transgender bigotry. I suppose the NHL would label that a "distraction," too, although it only seems to consider it a distraction when people claim religion as their reason for doing something.

 Boy, are Bettman and Co. in for an awakening.

Because it might have considered, but clearly didn't, how much of a "distraction" it would create by imposing this ban. Because I guarantee some players will be skating out there with Pride tape on their sticks in defiance of the ban, and then the NHL will have a public relations nightmare on its hands.

I can see the headline now: NHL Fines Supporters of Gay/Transgender Rights. 

And the floodgates of distraction will open.

Today in head-shaking

 Once upon a time she was America's Sweetheart, in the way tiny world-beating women's gymnasts are always America's Sweetheart. Now Mary Lou Retton is 55 years old (55! How is that possible?) and hooked up to a machine in a Texas hospital, unable to breathe on her own.

She has an extremely rare form of pneumonia. And she's been in the ICU for two weeks now.

That's not the head-shaking part of this, however. Although it's close.

The head-shaking part is learning Mary Lou Retton, America's Sweetheart, has no health insurance.

I find this almost impossible to believe. How can someone as prominent as Mary Lou Retton  -- someone who has presumably made a good deal of money off that gold medal she won in 1984 -- not have health insurance? And not only that, but not have the very best health insurance in a society that insists the quality of one's health care should be based on how much money one has?

It's an ass-backward system and always has been, inciting their own spasm of head-shaking from saner countries -- i.e., countries that have universal health care, which is every developed nation except the U.S. Only in the U.S. does America's Sweetheart have to depend on the kindness of strangers to defray her medical expenses.

Fortunately, there is no shortage of kindness for America's Sweetheart. So far 5,000 people have donated more than $275,000 in 24 hours. So good on them.

But every time I read that, I shake my head at the wrongness of it. Just as I shake my head every time I see a TV ad for Shriner's Hospitals or St. Jude's or any other health-care facility that must go to the public with their hands out to make sure children with disabilities or cancer get the care they need and deserve.

In a better world -- a better nation -- they wouldn't have to do that. In fact, they wouldn't even have to exist, because kids with disabilities or cancer would already be getting the care they need without having to depend on treatment centers funded by private donations.

Shaking my head again.

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 5

 And now this week's edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the illusion-shredding Blob feature of which critics have said "Ewww! Look at all that shredding!", and also "Couldn't have been more humane? Why all the gruesome shredding!":

1. "Heeey, wait a minute. I thought this was OUR year to go the Super Bowl!" (Cowboys fans, after the 49ers shredded Dallas 42-10)

2. (Also Bills fans, after the Bills lost to Jacksonville in London a week after shredding the high-flying Dolphins 48-20)

3. "Heeeey, wait a minute. Maybe Justin Fields ISN'T a bust after all!" (Bears fans, after Fields threw for 282 yards and four touchdowns in the Bears 40-20 shredding of the Washington Commanders)

 4. "Dammit, it's true. We really do stink." (Patriots fans, after the Saints shredded New England 34-0 in Foxborough, one week after the Cowboys shredded the Pats 38-3 in Dallas.)

5. "Fire Belichick!" (Also Patriots fans, just a few years after saying "Build a big-ass statue of Belichick outside the stadium!")

6. "We'll be just fine with Jordan Love." (Every Cheesehead in Packers Nation, prior to the season.

7. "Heeeey, wait a minute ..." (Every Cheesehead in Packers Nation, after Love threw three picks and put up a quarterback rating of 32.2 in a 17-13 loss to the sorry Raiders.)

8. "Joe Burrow sucks!" (Every Who Dey fan in Bengals Nation, after Burrow struggled mightily in the Bengals 1-3 start)

9. "Joe Burrow is BACK, baby!" (Every Who Dey fan in Bengals Nation, after the Bengals shredded Arizona and Burrow threw for 317 yards and three touchdowns)

10, "Heeey ..." (The rest of the AFC North)

Drama killer

 Max Verstappen wrapped up his third straight Formula 1 title over the weekend, concluding it with yet another victory in a season that seems to have been wall-to-wall victories.

That was the good news, at least for Verstappen and his Red Bull team.

The bad news?

The bad news was that his sheer excellence -- call  him Mr. Drama Killer -- turned the 2023 campaign into the most paint-drying-est borefest it's been in some time. Which is saying something considering how much of a borefest it almost always is.

I mean, for awhile there you had Michael Schumacher and Ferrari winning every Grand Prix and then you had Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes winning seven straight F1 titles, and now here comes Verstappen and Red Bull with three in a row. And this season was the biggest injection of novocaine yet.

Between May and September, after all, no one except Max Verstappen won a Grand Prix. He reeled off 10 straight wins over the summer months, and at one point led 248 consecutive laps. That means between the Miami Grand Prix in May and the Austrian Grand Prix in July, no one but Max Verstappen led a single lap in F1 competition.

His win in Qatar yesterday was his 14th in 17 Grand Prix this season; with five Grand Prix left on the school he should easily break his single-season record of 15 wins, which he set just last year. The Blob and math have never been more than nodding acquaintances, but that adds up to 29 victories in a bit less than two seasons.

Not even weather can stop him, it seems. He led from the jump yesterday in heat so oppressive one driver (Logan Sargeant) had to retire with 17 laps to run, another (Alex Albon) was treated for extreme heat exposure and yet another (Esteban Ocon) actually vomited inside his helmet. Several other drivers reported nearly passing out in cockpit temperatures that reportedly soared well over 100 degrees.

Verstappen, meanwhile, routinely sailed on, winning by almost five seconds.

And now for the really bad news: Verstappen is still only 26 years old. And he just turned 26 less than a month ago.

Which means Mr. Drama Killer's spree may be just beginning.

Karma, and stuff

 It's a new week and a new week demands a new entry in the F Around And Find Out sweepstakes. That's the rule here at the Blob, anyway.

And so come on down, Sean Payton!

Remember last summer, when Payton, the new coach of the Denver Broncos, ripped his predecessor (Nathaniel Hackett) to the media and then ripped the team (the Jets) that hired Hackett as its offensive coordinator (the Jets)? Basically saying they were still the Jets, and that he, Sean Payton, couldn't wait to whomp on them at home in Week 5?

Yeah, well ...

Final score from Denver yesterday: Jets 31, Broncos 21.

And Nathaniel Hackett's offense?

Piled up 407 yards, averaged 6.6 yards per play and gashed the Broncos' D with the running game, as Breece Hall (177 yards and a six on 22 carries) led a 234-yard ground assault that averaged a staggering 7.3 yards per rush.

The Jets, oh, you bet, awarded Hackett a game ball.

And Denver?

The Broncos are 1-4 now. Their only win was in Chicago, and the Bears essentially handed that one to them in wrapping paper and a bow. Among their other losses: At home in Week 1 to a Raiders team that hasn't won since, and that 70-20 scorched-earth job in Miami a couple of weeks ago.

Karma, baby. It will jump up and bite you in the hindparts if you're not careful.

Lullaby in Louisville

 Sunday morning, and guess what time it is, boys and girls?

(At least in some precincts)

It's time to rev up the Notre Dame-Ain't-Nothin' Mobile and get that puppy rollin'.

It's time to haul out all the old favorites ("Typical Notre Dame, always overrated" ... "Notre Dame's the most over-hyped program in the country"), because the Irish flat-out got flattened in Louisville last night. Lost 33-20, and the only reason it wasn't 33-13 is because Sam Hartman threw a garbage-time touchdown pass to Mitchell Evans with 1:35 left.

By that time, the game was over. Hartman had committed five turnovers -- two lost fumbles and three picks. The usually robust Irish ground game had been squashed, mustering a puny 44 yards and 1.6 yards per rush. And a Louisville running back named Jawhar Jordan had left treadmarks all over the heretofore stout Notre Dame defense, rambling for 143 yards and two scores and averaging just shy of seven yards per carry.

In short, Notre Dame didn't look anything like the 10th-ranked team in the country. That would have been 25th-ranked Louisville, now 6-0.

The Irish are 5-2 now, and looking down the barrel of 5-3 when USC comes to town next week (although the Trojans barely survived Arizona in three overtimes last night). So, yeah, haul out the overrateds and over-hypeds. Might actually be legit this time.

Or ...

Or,  the Irish just didn't show up last night, for maybe the same reason USC didn't show up in L.A.

Maybe they were looking ahead. Maybe.

I say this because I didn't see remotely the same football team I saw against Ohio State, and Ohio State is presumably a better football team than Louisville. The defense that played so well against the Buckeyes for so long got pushed around like a stroller. The offensive front that provided all that push for Audric Estime -- aka, the Baby Bus -- and his pals couldn't move a footstool; Estime finished with 20 yards on 10 carries. And Hartman was sacked five times.

Oh, and then there were those five turnovers. Where was the Hartman who didn't commit a turnover against the Buckeyes, and who engineered a 96-yard go-ahead drive in the fourth quarter? Or the Hartman whose fourth-down, 17-yard scramble for a first down saved Notre Dame at Duke last week?

Either those were a mirage or last night was. Either the Irish defense that held Ohio State to 14 points and 126 rushing yards was a false front, or the defense that was a screen door for Jordan and Co. was.

I'm picking the latter in both instances. 

I'm thinking what I saw last night was a football team taking a nap in prime time on national TV.

You've heard of "Sleepless in Seattle"?

 This was the Lullaby in Louisville.

And I guess the only thing you can say about that, with USC coming, is this: At least they'll be well-rested.

Money talked

 Sooo, it's all good now, right?

Jonathan Taylor gets his money.

The Indianapolis Colts get their All-Pro running back.

His injured ankle is as good as new, presumably, after the longest rehab in the history of rehabs for a surgery that was supposed to take hardly any time at all to rehab.

An invisible man for much of training camp, the preseason and the first four games of the regular season, Taylor resurfaced a couple days ago to not answer questions for ten minutes. But he wore a huge smile throughout the whole fruitless interrogation, and now we know why.

Forty-million George Washingtons over three years (including $26.5 million guaranteed) will put a smile on anyone's face. And that's what Taylor got for his not-a-holdout holdout.

So he's happy, and the Colts are professing to be happy, because they're getting their pup -- he's still just 24 -- off the PUP (Physically Unable to Perform) list. They've singlehandedly pumped air into what had become a soft market for running backs, but now they've got Taylor and they've got 21-year-old  Anthony Richardson at quarterback, and that's a tandem they obviously think is worth the money.

As with all things Colts, we shall see.

We'll also wonder why the Colts didn't just re-do Taylor's deal back when Taylor was first asking for it be redone, if they really regarded him as the vital cog they say he is now. Could have avoided a crap-ton of drama if they had, after all. Or at least the appearance of drama to media types and various other observers.

The Blob's explanation?

That contract negotiations are an intricate dance with carefully proscribed steps and counter-steps, all of which take time and all of which the negotiating parties understand must play out. Hence all the performance-art drama while the Colts actually were sitting down with Taylor's people -- a process they're saying now had been ongoing for months.

In any event, Taylor's got his scratch and he's back in uniform, saying he's "proud to be an Indianapolis Colt" after months of hinting he'd be proud to be a Green Bay Packer or Miami Dolphin or virtually anything else. And probably we'll see him sometime today against the Titans.

Which means a team that so far has looked a bit better than advertised -- the Blob is now reconsidering its prediction the Horsies would win no more than four games -- will get  that much better.

But $42 mill better?

Again: We shall see.

... and still champion

 Well, golly gee willikers. Wonder what the Tough Guys are saying now.

Wonder what the macho keyboard surfers, the testosterone warriors, the Joe Swagger-ly Swaggers are going to write/say/do now that Simone Biles is the best gymnast in the world again. Wonder how they explain what she did in Antwerp, Belgium, yesterday, a bit more than two years after she woke up in Tokyo one morning with her confidence missing in a sport that is 99 percent confidence.

That happened at the Olympic Games in 2021, before the team gymnastics competition. Biles woke up with a raging case of what gymnasts call "the twisties", i.e., a sudden inability to orient herself in the air. Whatever it is that made her Simone Biles was inexplicably gone, and so she pulled out of the competition.

And here came the Tough Guys.

One columnist called her a "coward" in print and bragged that only he was brave enough to tell it like it was. Others wrote that she was letting her teammates down, was selfishly quitting because she knew she wasn't going to win this time, was mentally weak, was an all-time choker. 

But you know what?

None of 'em were fit to carry this slip of a woman's sequins.

She was, undisputedly, the greatest women's gymnast in history -- they'd even named individual moves after her -- and she'd been carrying that load since she was 16 years old. Like all elite gymnasts. she'd played hurt, once winning with broken toes. And she'd survived sexual assault by a vile creature named Larry Nassar, an alleged doctor unworthy of the title whom the gymnastics community wholly supported long after it became apparent he was a sicko.

Biles survived, and prevailed, through all of that. And then one morning it all piled up on her, and she knew in a way only she would that she just couldn't go.

And now it's 15 months later, and she stands on the top step of the podium again.

In the place where she first won the world all-around championship at 16, she did it again yesterday at 26. It's been barely a year since she came back to the gym. She's painstakingly rebuilt her shattered confidence and her once-fragile mental state. And she once again stands stop Everest.

A winner, as she's always been. And still champion.

Fierceness unbound

 They come now to tell me Dick Butkus is dead, and I tell them to get bent already. Dick Butkus can't be dead. Wouldn't he just wrap up death in a Bear hug and plant it like a turnip?

Or maybe like Bart Starr?

Hit ol' Bart so hard once, one of the tributes noted yesterday, that Starr wound up helmetless in Goofyville, wandering vaguely toward the wrong sideline. Hit a bunch of other Packers and Lions and Vikings like a truckload of bad intentions, too. Didn't so much tackle ballcarriers as swallow them, wrapping those long club-like forearms around them and flinging them disdainfully to God's green earth.

You can say Dick Butkus was the greatest linebacker in NFL history and get yourself in a hell of an argument, because Lawrence Taylor came along later and even Mike Singletary and Brian Urlacher in Chicago, among others. But if you grew up in the '60s in the middle of the country, you know there was never an LB more feared.

Butkus and Gale Sayers were the only reason to watch the Bears in those days, but they were a hell of a show even when the Bears lost, which was often. Sayers gave us ballet,  and then Butkus gave us blunt force trauma. They were artistry unbound and fierceness unbound, the yin and yang of Chicago football in those days.

As with a lot of men who brought pain on the football field, Butkus' warrior mentality contained within it the seeds of his own downfall. All those fierce hits eventually ruined his knees, and by 1974, he was gone from the game. He was just 31 years old.

And now both he and Sayers are gone from the mortal coil, and again those of us of a certain age are compelled to mourn our childhood. And to provide one more piece of evidence of Butkus' deathlessness, or at least the deathlessness of his example.

Because you know what happened last night, hours after Dick Butkus passed?

The Chicago Bears finally won a football game. 

Crushed the Washington Commanders on the road, 40-20, snapping a 14-game losing streak stretching back three weeks shy of a year. Justin Fields had his best game as a Bear, throwing for 282 yards and four touchdowns -- three to DJ Moore, who caught eight balls for 230 yards. And the defense sacked Washington quarterback Sam Howell five times, made six tackles for loss and forced a couple of turnovers.

You might say they were ... fierce.

You might say it was karmic the way it happened, that somewhere in the night Dick Butkus was stalking the Great Beyond an-

Oh, but that's just silly. Just silly.

Isn't it?

Counterfeit innocence

 We find our martyrs in the oddest places these days. Some of us do, anyway.

Just now the misogynists and other usual suspects are taking up for poor Trevor Bauer, the former Los Angeles Dodger pitcher who apparently likes beating up women during sex, and who settled with one of his accusers out of court yesterday.

This was seen as some sort of vindication by the usual suspects, even if it was merely an agreement between two parties who realized they couldn't win their respective suits. No matter. The usual suspects immediately hung poor Trevor on a cross, declaring he'd been ill-used by Major League Baseball (which frankly did go over the top with its initial suspension, eventually being forced by the courts to reduce it), and was as pure as the blood of the lamb.

"MLB should issue a formal apology and IMMEDIATELY REINSTATE HIM!" they howled. "His accuser was nothing but a gold-digger who should go to prison for lying!"

And also: "Every so-called journalist who tarred and feathered our boy in print should beg his forgiveness in print!"

I guess that includes me, sort of. Although the Blob wouldn't exactly be anyone's first choice for shouting from the rooftops.

Back when all of this happened with Bauer, see, I called him a sick twist. There'll be no mea culpa from me for that. He is a sick twist.

If he weren't, his original accuser wouldn't have wound up in the emergency room after their encounter with head trauma and vaginal bruising so bad medical personnel with decades of experience said they'd never seen the like of it.

If he weren't, three or four other women in various parts of the country wouldn't be accusing him of sicko acts remarkably like those described by his original accuser -- including such niceties as strangling them into unconsciousness.

If he weren't, Bauer wouldn't himself have admitted to "rough sex" with his accuser, claiming that he only did what she asked him to do. 

Now, we'll never know for sure if that's true. But even if it is, and his accuser indeed lied about it (and dropping her lawsuit in return for Bauer dropping his proves exactly nothing), it hardly means Bauer isn't a sick twist. Because if some woman said "Hey, Trev, beat me up and strangle me while we do it, 'cause I get off on that," what normal human wouldn't say "Ewww, what?"? 

Unless he got off on it, too, of course.

So, yeah: Sick twist.

And until the other cases involving Bauer are investigated, no apologies, no reinstatement, no nothing. And no making him some sort of half-assed martyr.

Because this tale isn't finished yet.

Peacock-ed

Old guy in a Purdue sweatshirt. Let's begin there this morning, shall we?

Old guy in a Purdue sweatshirt (or Indiana sweatshirt ... or Ohio State ... or Michigan State ... doesn't really matter) sitting in front of his TV set on a winter's night, watching Zach Edey post up some poor schlub from Whatsamatta U. Outside, it's so cold the old guy can feel it in his bones, the way he feels almost everything in his bones these days. Gettin' old ain't for sissies, and that's the name of that tune.

Anyway, he and the missus are watching their Boilermakers. They've kicked in to get the Big Ten Network so they can, even though they're on a fixed income and discretionary spending comes dearer every year. But they've gotta have their Boilers, so they pay up.

Old guy in a Purdue sweatshirt.

That's who I'm thinking about today. That's who the Big Ten and a lot of other corporate athletic entities stopped thinking about a long time ago.

See, I'm reading this press release here, and it's telling me the Big Ten and Peacock, NBC's online streaming service, have joined forces to take a little more away from folks like my old guy. Peacock, the release tells me, is partnering with the Big Ten for exclusive rights to more than 30 Big Ten basketball games this winter. 

Six of those will be Purdue games. Five will be Indiana games, including Purdue-Indiana in Assembly Hall on January 16. The release makes this sound like the neatest deal ever.

Me, I just wonder when old guys in their Purdue sweatshirts will have nothing to get them through the cruel winters -- crueler every year, when you get up there in years -- except reruns of "The Big Bang Theory."

"But it's just pennies to buy these games!" you're saying now. "Just pay it and quit you're bitchin'!"

Yeah, well. Easy for you to say.

Me, I want to know when enough is enough, if you're the Big Ten. The Big Ten Network is already sluicing a river of money into the conference's pockets, and that will only go up once USC, UCLA and Oregon come aboard next year. That will give the conference access to the New York TV market (Rutgers), the L.A. market (UCLA and USC) and everything in between. 

Now they've got this deal with NBC, and with it Peacock. How much is enough? When do these vandals decide to stop continually getting in people's pockets for more, more, more?

Look. I get it. I'm a cranky old guy myself, shaking my fist at the damn neighbor kids. Cable has been taking dollars out of people's pockets for decades, and now the streaming services are, and this is just the world, old-timer. Welcome to modern times.

Again, I get it. Shoot, I'm on four or five streaming services myself nowadays. It is what it is.

But here's the thing: I can afford to be on four or five streaming services. Lots of folks can't.

And the hell of it is, a lot of those folks are some of the most devoted followers of the Big Ten and its member schools. They grew up listening to Purdue or IU or Michigan State or Ohio State games on the radio, because back then there were only the three major networks and you didn't get but a couple games a week on TV.

Now there's all this technology, but for them it might as well be the old days again. They're back to a handful of games on "regular TV", just like when Rick Mount was dusting that falling-out-of-bounds jumper from the corner. 

Or when George McGinnis was muscling in a layup in the old fieldhouse at IU. Or when  Magic was dropping a dime on Greg Kelser for the Spartans in Jenison Fieldhouse, that dear old relic.

Of course, that was back when conferences saw college athletics as just college athletics, and not some gussied-up ATM endlessly pumping out tsunamis of cash.

And you, old-timer, sitting there in your Purdue sweatshirt while the wind moans around the eaves like all the devils of hell? 

Pay up or shut up. 

Long time coming

 Something happened yesterday on the first day of the baseball playoffs, but maybe you missed it in the midst of Aaron Rodgers snidely calling Travis Kelce "Mr. Pfizer" because he did a TV ad for the Covid-19 booster, or Trevor Bauer being martyr-ized  by misogynists and assorted other usual suspects.

(Another Blob for another day)

What happened was, the Minnesota Twins beat the Toronto Blue Jays 3-1 in Game 1 of their AL wild-card series.

A guy named Royce Lewis, once a No. 1 draft pick but lately just an unfortunate soul beset by injury, hit two home runs to power the win.

Starting pitcher Pablo Lopez took care of business on the mound with the help of four arms out of the pen.

And, oh, yeah: Under a gray lid of sky, a game that is its past once again got to wallow in it.

The Twins, after all, had lost a record 18 straight playoff games. 

It hadn't won a playoff game since 2004, when George W. Bush was president, and it hadn't won a home playoff game since 2002. Royce Lewis was 3 years old then. Lopez was 6. Jhoan Duran, who sealed the W with a hitless ninth out of the pen, was 4.

When Duran sent the last Blue Jay back to the dugout, it ended the longest playoff drought in North American professional sports. No team in any sport had lost 18 straight playoff games.

Baseball, as has been noted, eats this sort of thing for lunch and dinner. It's what makes the game unique, because no other American sport carries the weight of its history nor is more mindful of that weight. It's one of the reasons the game has struggled in the new millennium, because it spends so much time genuflecting to the past it often neglects its future, and even its present.

But it had its day yesterday, as the Twins had theirs. It even came dressed for the part.

Know what Pablo Lopez wore to the ballpark yesterday, for instance?

He wore the throwback jersey of his childhood hero, Johan Santana.

Who happened to be the last Twins pitcher to win a playoff game before Lopez ascended the bump yesterday, looking to lasso history on an overcast October day.

And all of baseball applauded.

Pecking order

OK, so first the obvious: This is a renewal that never should have had to be renewed.

And now the pretty much obvious: John Calipari is still what Colonel Sanders coats in 11 secret herbs and spices and fries up for the masses.

It's childish and bad form to call a man chicken, but since no one does childish and bad form like the Blob, we'll allow it. Also it has the advantage of being true in this case.

See, Indiana and Kentucky are going to play each other in basketball again after a 14-year hiatus that happened because both schools were stiff-necked and, yes, a little chicken. Indiana didn't want to play its part of the home-and-home away from Assembly Hall, and Kentucky didn't want to play in Assembly Hall.  So they parted company like a bunch of big weenies.

You can blame both parties for that, but mostly Kentucky. Also Christian Watford.

It was Watford, after all, who hit Watford For The Win in the Hall in 2011, when Indiana upset then-No. 1 Kentucky. Indiana fans stormed the court. The replay ran on a seemingly endless loop. "Watford for the win!" -- Dan Shulman's memorable call -- became almost as iconic in Indiana as Al Michaels' "Do you believe in miracles? Yes!" was in the wider world.

Watching the Call and the Shot over and over apparently drove Calipari up a wall. Because he refused to play in Assembly Hall ever again, which precipitated the shutdown of the series.

Well, it's back now. But here's the thing: While Indiana will be playing two games in Rupp Arena, and the teams will also play a game in Lucas Oil Stadium. But there won't be another meeting in Assembly Hall until 2028.

By which time Calipari, now 64, may well have retired.

The chicken.

Of course, it goes without saying letting the series go dark for 14 years because of what you could call Calipari's "pecking" order was totally ridiculous.  IU-Kentucky might not have been IU-Purdue or Duke-North Carolina, after all, but it was damn close. Two schools with 13 national championship banners between them, and only 180 miles and the Ohio River to separate them? How could they not knock heads and pedigrees every year?

This might have been what Mike Woodson was asking when he arrived in Bloomington, which is why he said Indiana and Kentucky needed to start playing again straightaway. He had an athletic director in Scott Dolson who was fully on board, and who also had a close relationship with Kentucky AD Mitch Barnhart. 

And so, here we go. The series resumes in 2025 in Lexington. And if I'm Mike Woodson, I know who I'm inviting to sit on the Indiana bench next to him.

Christian Watford.

Who else?

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 4

 And now this week's edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the memorable Blob feature of which critics have said "Who are you? I don't remember you", and also "The only thing memorable about this is how forgettable it is":

1. Remember when the Dolphins were a lock for the Super Bowl, Tua was a lock for MVP and Mike McDaniel was a lock for Coach of the Year?

2. "Heh." (The Bills)

3. Remember when "Who Dey?" was a thing?

4. "What Dey?" (Bengals fans)

5. Remember when the Patriots and Steelers were good, the Browns D was impenetrable and the Texans were the worst football team in the history of football teams?

6. "Yes! OK, no." (Patriots fans, Steelers fans, Browns fans, Texans fans)

7. Remember when Justin Fields was having a breakout game?

8. "Yes! OK, no." (Bears fans, prior to and then after the fourth quarter)

9. Remember when the Packers could beat the Lions? 

10. "Heh." (The Lions)

The future, glimpsed?

Don't know how many folks out there tuned in the Toy Story Funday simulcast of the Jaguars against the Falcons yesterday, but if you didn't YOU MISSED IT. And by that I mean, you missed what might be the future of football as it will exist somewhere about the time Captain Kirk is seeking out new civilizations whose scenery he can chew.*

(* Gratuitous "Star Trek" reference)

What the producers did was, they equipped the Jags and Falcons with sensors that, I don't know, transmitted technical stuff to a bunch of animated figures who mimicked the real players movements in real time. The Falcons and Jaguars (even Trevor Lawrence) were presented as squatty little guys with huge helmets playing the game on Andy's bedroom floor.

Slinky the Dog was the yard marker. The grappling hook from the arcade placed the football between plays. Zorg was in there somewhere, and Rex the T-Rex punted. I'm still wondering why they didn't put him in the game as the tight end so he could "short-arm" balls across the middle.

Anyway, it was lots of fun. Here's what it looked like.

Now imagine if this is what the actual game will look like in the future.

Because, listen, one of these days football players, who are not squatty little animated figures, are going to be so big, athletic and fast in real life that the game will be impossible to play due to attrition. We're already seeing players going down in batches every week; the effective life span of a running back is down to three or four seasons at best, and more and more players are quitting the game in their late 20s or early 30s because they want to be able to walk and remember their names when they're 45 or 50.

Already this season Aaron Rodgers is done and Nick Chubb is done, and they won't be the last. Human evolution being what it is, it won't be long before you're losing a Rodgers or a Chubb every week. By week 10 or so there'll be no one left to play the games.

Either that, or they'll have to resort to flag football. Some people think they already have.

The alternative is Toy Story Funday. Only every week, with no corresponding live humans playing at the same time.

"Oh, that's ridiculous," you're saying now. "You can't be serious."

OK, so I'm not. I think. Maybe.

Although how great would it be to see Travis Kelce rendered as Rex, getting open up the seam and short-arming Patrick Mahomes' passes while a squatty little Taylor Swift with a huge head cheers from an Arrowhead suite?

I can see it already.

AI to the rescue

 "Wait ... what?" you're saying now.

Also, "I thought you hated AI."

Also, "I thought you said you hated AI because, and I quote, 'Machines can't write.'"

Well ... that's true.

I do hate AI. And machines can't write. And AI writing programs are a joke.

However ...

However, I'm scrolling through my Magic Twitter X Marks The Spot Thingy this morning, and I'm seeing a post from this poor guy who had to write something about the Chicago Bears latest crime against football, and he's saying he doesn't know what else there is to say about the Bears that hasn't already been said.

Well, I think AI could actually help this guy. And any other poor ink-stained wretch who had to write about what they saw in Soldier Field yesterday.

What they saw was the Bears blow a 28-7 lead over a team (Denver) that lost 70-20 last week in a little over a quarter.

What they saw was the Broncos win 31-28 on a field goal with less than two minutes to play, after which Justin Fields threw a pick to end it.

What they saw was Bears coach Matt Eberflus set it up with one of the most excrement-for-brains play calls ever. 

Fourth-and-1. Go-ahead field goal right there. Instead, Eberflus decides to go for it, but in a really stupid way.

Does he let Fields, his best athlete and a guy who's signature skill is being really good with his legs, keep it on a read option?

Aw, hell, no. He gives the ball to some other guy and runs the exact same line plunge that got stuffed on third down. And of course it gets stuffed again.

Now the Bears are 0-4, and I'm feeling for the pressbox guys. I mean, how do you write the Bears Hit Bottom story when you've already written the Bears Hit Bottom story?

You let AI do it. Because at this point, does it really matter?

And so imagine opening up your Chicagoland online publication this morning and reading this:

Opponent Defeats Chicago Bears

CHICAGO -- A visiting opponent defeated the Chicago Bears yesterday in a National Football League football game. The final score was 31-28.

It was the first victory of the season for the visiting opponent (team name here). The Bears record is now 0-4. 

The game was tied at the opening kickoff but soon both teams scored. (Bears quarterback name here) threw four touchdown passes. (Visiting opponent quarterback name here) threw three touchdown passes.

The Bears led 28-7 toward the end of the third quarter, but soon the score was tied and DAMMIT EBERFLUS WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU THINKING??

OK. So that last part would not be in the story. Although I bet there's some algorithm that would allow you to insert it. 

So ya got that going for ya, Bears fans.

Alternative programming

 Today the hideously winless Chicago Bears play host to the even more hideously winless Denver Broncos, and I'm here to answer your obvious question: "Mr. Blob, what else would be a better viewing experience?"

Lucky for you I have this list here:

1. The Most Deadly Boring Catch.

In which two guys with cane poles sit on the end of a pier, hoping for a nibble. Tension mounts as they debate the better choice of bait: Nightcrawlers or bee moths.

2. I Dream Of Jeanine Pirro.

Angry right-wing person emerges from a bottle to deny you three wishes and complain about liberals, drag queens, the mainstream media and the weaponized justice system that's persecuting President Trump just because he's as crooked as a dog's hind leg. 

3. The Hysteria Channel.

See No. 2.

4. Friday Night Lights.

Because at least Matt Saracen isn't Russell Wilson or Justin Fields.

5. Survivor.

Because unlike the Broncos or Bears, someone's guaranteed to survive.

6. I Shouldna.

Special Bears/Broncos edition of a new game show in which contestants vie to see who has the most pitiful regrets.

This week's entries:

"I shouldna popped off about Nathaniel Hackett." (Broncos coach Sean Payton)

"I shouldna taken this job." (Bears coach Matt Eberflus)

"I shouldna drafted Justin Fields." (Bears GM Ryan Poles)

"I shouldna gotten mad at Pete Carroll and left Seattle." (Broncos QB Russell Wilson)

"I shouldna lived this long, because if I hadn't I wouldn't have to watch this team." (Virginia McCaskey)

7. Goodfellas.

Because if you're gonna watch guys get whacked, better Joe Pesci than the Bears and Broncos.

8. Unsolved Mysteries.

In which unexplained phenomena is explored, such as "Why are the Colts playing with the roof closed on a perfect fall afternoon?", and also "The Broncos and Bears: Why?"

9. Famous American Disasters.

Included: Custer's Last Stand, the Ryder Cup, Bears-vs.-Broncos.

And last but not least ...

10. The Andy Griffith Show.

Because at least Aunt Bee's turnovers are delicious.

Escape velocity

 Sunday morning, and I'm still trying to decide where this one goes in the pantheon. Somewhere between Win One For The Gipper and Joe Montana Kicks The Flu's Ass, I'm guessing. 

The Four Horsemen might be in there somewhere. Hanratty-to-Seymour. Catholics Beat Convicts; Reggie Ho To The Rescue; Ara Picks Out A Tie.

Well, no. Not that last. Audric Estime ruined that one.

With a measly 31 seconds on the clock last night down in Durham, N.C., see, Estime did not do what Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman wanted him to do. What Freeman wanted him to do was play it safe, ala Ara: Fall down on the 1-yard line and let the Irish burn the clock down to cinders before kicking the game-winning field goal.

Aw, HELL, no. Estime saw daylight, and he ran to the daylight. Thirty yards to the end zone as the Duke students, who'd been gearing up to swarm the field, watched in dismay. Final score: Notre Dame 21, Duke 14.

And, yeah, there was some lore involved. 

Somewhere in the pantheon it will say Sam Hartman and Irish got the ball on their own 5 with less than three minutes to play and every trust-fund jackwagon in Dukedom howling mightily, and off the Irish went. Pretty soon it was fourth-and-16 with under a minute left, and the Blue Devil mob was lapping at the edges of the field,

And then ...

And then, Hartman took off running. 

Somehow he got 17 yards on the scramble, just enough for a fresh set of downs and  a few extra breaths. Twenty seconds later Estime rumbled to the end zone, and Notre Dame survived with an echo-down-the-years finish that likely will conveniently omit the fact the Irish never should have needed such a finish.

They were up 13-0 and the defense was stuffing the Dukies like a thanksgiving turkey, and then they weren't. Suddenly it was Duke staging the comeback, scoring twice in the second half to take a 14-13 lead, and set up the Hartman/Estime heroics.

In dramatic lore, as old Grantland Rice used to say, it will likely go down as The Scramble And The Ramble. Or Go Sam Go followed by Stop Audric OK Don't. Or, if you're Duke, which has its own stash of lore: Dammit We Blew It.

In any case, another week, another heart-stopping finish for ND. At this rate they'll soon be known as the Cardiac Kids.

Well, no. That one's been used.