Em-Bear-assment

 Eventually, you just feel sorry for the Chicago Bears. If the initial stages of Bears fandom are delusion ("With Caleb Williams, we could be a Super Bowl contender!"), enlightenment ("Gee, Caleb plays like a rookie sometimes") and disillusionment and self-loathing ("Why do I let them do this to me every year? Why?"), then surely the final stage is pity.

Garnished generously with sad laughter, naturally, and an occasional Tourette's burst of "&%$# McCaskeys!"

This brings us to yesterday in Soldier Field, where the 13-1 Detroit Lions embarrassed Da Bearz 34-17 with the greatest of ease. Jared Goff stitched them for 336 yards and three touchdowns through the air, and Jahmyr Gibbs gashed them for 109 yards and a score on the ground. 

That wasn't the most embarrassing part, however. 

The most embarrassing part happened three minutes into the third quarter, when Goff, Gibbs and the Lions offense made the Bears look like the Washington Generals with a trick play straight out of the Harlem Globetrotters playbook.

What happened was, Goff took the snap and pretended to stumble as he dropped back. At the same time, Gibbs pretended to fall down. 

And then?

Then Goff abruptly straightened up and threw a 21-yard touchdown ball to tight end Sam LaPorta, wide open behind the thoroughly suckered Bears D.

Shortly thereafter, the cameras caught Goff and the rest of the Lions yukking it up on the sideline, amused  and perhaps a little astonished that their epic goof actually worked. And there you had it: This lost Bears season summed up in one image.

Their opponents aren't just beating them, you see. They're laughing at them.

That fits, because the season has been one long standup routine for the Bears, who fired a head coach mid-season for the first time in franchise history and still can't get out of their own way. Their defense can't defend. Their offense can't, um, offend. And their O-line can't protect Williams, who's spent a good chunk of the season running for his life like Dr. Richard Kimble in "The Fugitive."

Through 15 games, Williams has been sacked a league-high 60 times, a Bears franchise record and just 13 adrift of David Carr's NFL season record of 73. That's a big reason, though hardly the only one, why the Bears are now 4-11 and have lost nine straight games.

What's bizarre about that is, very quietly, Williams is also having an historic season for a Bears rookie QB.

In Sunday's loss, for instance, he completed 26-of-40 throws for 334 yards and two touchdowns, and tucked it and ran six times for 34 more yards. It was his fourth 300-yard passing game this season, and his ninth straight game without an interception.

On the season, he's thrown for 3,271 yards on 62.2 percent accuracy, with 19 touchdowns and just five picks. Nothing to laugh at there, certainly.

Even if, you know, everything else is a knee-slapper these days.

"Belong" this

 Well, well, well. And what have we here, on this fine three-days-before-Christmas morning?

Penn State 38, SMU 10.

Texas 38, Clemson 24.

Ohio State 42, Tennessee 17.

Kinda makes Notre Dame 27, Indiana 17 look like a nail-biter, doesn't it?

Kinda makes you wonder what Kirk Herbstreit, Colin Cowherd, Lane Kiffin and the rest of the SEC public relations staff are going to say now on the subject of belonging, considering they so clearly decided Indiana was some dweeb who snuck into the College Football Playoff wearing cargo shorts and Crocs-with-socks.

You remember what they all said, right?

After Indiana struggled so mightily against a superior Notre Dame team, Herbie called Indiana "outclassed" and said it was "not a team that should have been on that field." Cowherd, that frequently dizzy twit, said he didn't care how the CFP was configured going forward so long as Indiana was never again invited. And Kiffin -- the head coach at Ole Miss, and one of many SEC bellyachers --  made some snarky comment on the Magic Twitter Machine about how he really enjoyed such a competitive game.

And then ...

And then, Penn State rocked SMU by 28. And Texas beat Clemson by 14 and was in cruise control much of the day. And Ohio State ... wait, this can't be right, can it, Lane Kiffin?

The Buckeyes smacked around a 10-2 SEC school by 25 points? Same Buckeyes who also blew out Indiana, but by two points fewer?

Goodness. Maybe SMU, Clemson and Tennessee also were teams that shouldn't have been on that field, right, Herbie? Maybe the CFP going forward also should never include those three programs ever again, right, Colin?

Um, Colin? Herbie?

Hmm. Perhaps some rethinking is in order.

Perhaps now is the time to suggest that on a given day, and it can pretty much be any day, virtually any team in the country can look like it doesn't belong. Indiana brought its B-minus game, maybe it's C-plus game, to South Bend, and was never really in it against a Notre Dame team that was better anyway. These things happen sometimes.

Fun fact: In the last six CFP championship games, the average margin of victory has been 27.8 points. Twice the team on the losing end -- Alabama both times -- was ranked No. 1. The Crimson Tide lost those games by 15 and 28 points, respectively.

 Strange. But I don't recall anyone saying  'Bama "shouldn't have been on that field" then. Or that the Tide should never again be allowed in the CFP.

Meanwhile, here's an Indiana team that came in 11-1 with 10 of those wins by double digits. The only "W" that wasn't by double digits was against Michigan -- who went on a few weeks later to beat the Ohio State team that beat Indiana.

Friday night, the Hoosiers closed out an historic 11-2 season in which their only two losses were against two top-ten teams.

You know who can't say that?

Alabama, a three-loss team so many were caterwauling should have gotten inside the velvet rope despite two of its three losses coming against .500 teams. And poor Lane Kiffin's Ole Miss Rebels -- whose three losses were to LSU, ranked 13th at the time; unranked Florida; and a 4-8 Kentucky squad.

Memo to Kiffin and any and all 'Bama apologists: You want to make the CFP, don't lose three games to mid competition. And especially don't lose to a 4-8 team.

Because you know who didn't do that?

Indiana.

A matter of degree

 So, now we know, I guess. If football programs were canned goods down in the old bomb shelter, Notre Dame's would be a shelf or two higher than Indiana's at this point.

The big intrastate hoo-ha between went off in front of a capacity crowd and the entire nation last night, and it turned not to be much of a hoo-ha. Notre Dame rolled the Hoosiers 27-17, and it was never really a contest. The Irish, demonstrably better up front on both sides of the ball, simply lined up and did what they do, and the Hoosiers mostly were helpless to stop it.

It was a 27-3 blowout when Riley Leonard stuck it in the end zone one last time with 4:50 to play, after which Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman started dipping into his reserves and defensive coordinator Al Golden mostly packed away his pass-rush schemes. So Indiana quarterback Kurtis Rourke threw a touchdown pass to Myles Price and a two-point conversion to Elijah Sarratt, Indiana recovered an onside kick, and Rourke threw another touchdown pass to Omar Cooper Jr. with 25 seconds left to make it, as they say, respectable.

Didn't fool anyone who watched the show in its entirety.

Truth is, this one was on its way to over when Jeremiyah Love burst through a seam and fled down the sideline for the game's first score four minutes in, because Indiana never got even again. Love went on to 108 yards on just eight carries, the Irish run game ground out 193 yards on 5.5 yards a pop, and Notre Dame hogged the ball for 11 more minutes than Indiana.

Indiana fans will point out it might have been a different game had Indiana cashed an early pick of a Riley Leonard pass by D'Angelo Ponds, but the Hoosiers didn't. Sarratt got them close with an acrobatic grab of a Rourke throw, but then Rourke threw into coverage and Xavier Watts intercepted for Notre Dame at the 2-yard line.

You know what happened next: Love motored cross-country from Touchdown Jesus to Six City, and the Irish had the lightning bolt they needed to seize command.

Rourke finished the night 20-of-33 for 215 yards and the two garbage-time scores, but the Irish defensive front sacked him three times. Leonard ran for a score and threw for a score and was sacked once. So call the quarterback battle a draw.

Of everything else, you can say this: It's a matter of degree.

In one season, Indiana coach Curt Cignetti has turned a chronically blah football program into a very good football program. But the Hoosiers are not quite where Notre Dame is yet.

No shame in that. No reason to think Cignetti won't get the Hoosiers there, either, and perhaps beyond.

When it was done last night some dopey people weighed in with some dopey takes, including an Associated Press columnist named Matt Hayes who wrote Indiana had no business in the CFP. This ignored the obvious fact that had the CFP left an 11-1 Big Ten team out of a 12-team bracket, it would have been even sillier than Hayes' assertion.

No, the Hoosiers belonged. But belonging is, again, a matter of degree. And those degrees hardly ever remain static.

Notre Dame, 12-1 and headed to the Sugar Bowl two years after going 8-4 and losing their first two games in Freeman's initial season, can attest to that.

And your winner is ...

 Curt Cignetti says he hopes it snows a foot-and-a-half up in South Bend tomorrow night, but that's just Coach Cig. If demeanor were a color, brash would be the dominant one on his palette.

So he's no help.

Neither, because I checked, is the actual weather report for Friday night: Cold (in the 20s) and windy at kickoff, with possible snow showers. Doesn't sound like one of those lake-effect blizzards that so favor South Bend in the winter will make an appearance.

Besides, as Coach Cig points out, it was cold, windy and snowy for the Bucket game, and Indiana tattooed helpless Purdue like a speed bag, winning 66-0 as quarterback Kurtis Rourke threw for 349 yards and six touchdowns.

What to do, what to do.

My gut, which usually determines these things, has been a gutless punk since the IU-Notre Dame College Football Playoff matchup was announced. It's finally telling me something now, but it's being pretty timid about it.

"Come on, enough verbiage," you're saying now. "Out with it. Who's gonna win?"

Well, if I had to pick at this point ...

"You have to. So, who will get the honor of being dropkicked by Georgia in the quarterfinals?"

Well ... I say Notre Dame. 

I say Notre Dame, because, first of all, the Irish are at home. Also, if it's cold and windy, they're the more likely team to run it down the defense's throat, because that's kinda been their identity all season. Also-also, their own defense has been the rock upon which they've built their 11-1 season -- a season in which they pummeled two then-undefeated teams (Army and Navy), and delivered mortal beatdowns to almost everyone else on a schedule that was step or so better than Indiana's. 

On the other hand, Indiana didn't lose to Charlotte or Florida International or any of its other early-season snack cakes. But Notre Dame did lose (at home, no less) to Northern Illinois, a so-so MAC team that was supposed to be one of  ND's snack cakes.

Of course, that happened three-and-a-half months ago. It's as relevant to what will happen tomorrow as Gus Dorais throwing down-and-outs to Knute Rockne.

So what will happen?

My gut tells me, timidly, that Rourke will be fine when he has time to throw, which won't be nearly as often as he's used to. That will give a slight quarterback edge to ND's Riley Leonard, whose legs give him that advantage. Notre Dame's secondary will slow Indiana's superb receiver corps but won't shut them down completely; the Irish will have success grounding-and-pounding because the O-line will wedge open cracks for Leonard and running backs Jeremiyah Love and Jadarian Price; and Notre Dame consequently will wear down Indiana in the second half to rack the W.

Call it, I don't know, Notre Dame 33, Indiana 24. Or 33-26. Something like that.

On the other hand ...

On the other hand, Indiana 33, Notre Dame 26 could happen, too. 

Told you my gut's a weenie.

Three-for-all

 Quietly, sort of, the Milwaukee Bucks won the NBA's in-season tournament last night, beating the Oklahoma City Thunder 97-81 in the NBA Cup finale. This was remarkable for three reasons, at least one of which might have something to do with why it happened quietly.

One, the Bucks are now just 14-11 on the season after a horrendous start. Two, the Thunder -- who might in fact be the best team in the league so far -- are now 20-5.

Three, the Bucks won by 16 despite the fact only half their shots were 3-point attempts.

Chucked it 81 times, 41 of them from inside the arc. The remaining 40 tries were from Threeville.

"Wait a minute, Mr. Blob," you're saying now. "You're saying 40 three-balls qualifies as 'only'?"

The Blob's response: You haven't been watching the NBA much lately, have you?

Forty three-balls, in today's NBA, is pedestrian. Even more pedestrian are the paltry 32 attempts the Thunder hoisted -- which is probably just as well, because Oke City only made five of them. Five-for-32. You could blindfold an 8-year-old, spin him around five times and he'd likely shoot better than that.

But enough about alleged professionals who can't stick the jumper.

The real issue, one NBA commissioner Adam Silver is just now getting around to addressing, is not about the "5" part in the aforementioned stat, but the "32." Which is to say, when 32 three-balls is considered ordinary, you've got a product that's become far less interesting than it should be.

What you've got is a product leaning perilously toward monotony: The drive, the kick, the three. Or, the drive, the kick, the miss, the putback. Or, the drive, the no-kick, the take-it-to-the-tin-and-either-dunk-it-or-miss-the-layup.

Rinse. Repeat. 

This is the modern NBA, and more and more people, apparently, are finding it repetitive and boring. In the modern NBA, with few exceptions, post play is an archeological study. The mid-range jumper, unless it's off the break, increasingly is becoming one. 

(This is not to say the Blob totally agrees with the prevailing sentiment. Personally, I like the more free-flowing game the league plays now. That's because I'm old enough to remember the NBA of the Bad Boys and the Pat Riley Knicks, and I don't remember it fondly. It was ugly basketball, all clutch-and-grab and the big fellas mud-wrestling on the low blocks. Occasionally, to keep us from nodding off, Michael Jordan would fly through the air with the greatest of ease.)

Where was I again?

Oh, yeah. Today's NBA.

It's become such an arc-centric three-for-all,the NBA's defending champs, the Boston Celtics, are threatening to shatter the league record for most 3-point attempts in a season. The Celtics are averaging a shade more than 51 tries per game. Averaging. That's 19 more attempts than the Thunder got up last night in one game.

This was never the intent when the dear departed ABA introduced the 3-pointer to what was then a plodding, fusty pro buckets landscape. Initially, it was called a "home-run ball", because, like a home run, it wasn't supposed to happen that often. Conceptually, it was a novelty intended to keep a potential blowout close, or to close it out.

Note the use of the word "novelty."

Some numbers: In 1970-71, to randomly pick a season, the champion Utah Stars led the ABA with 613 3-point attempts. That works out to 7.5 per game. The league as a whole averaged 6.1; the Indiana Pacers, even with sharpshooter Billy Keller in the lineup, averaged a measly 4.9.

Now here come the Celtics, jacking 51 per. Almost makes you wish for the old mu-wrestling days.

OK. So not really.

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 15

 And now this week's edition of The NFL In So Many Words -- the Blob you can set your calendar by (because it always knows when it's Tuesday), and of which critics have said "The only date I care about is the date when this insult to my intelligence ends", and also "If it's Tuesday it must be Stupid Day again":

1. It's Tuesday and Josh Allen just threw another touchdown pass.

2. It's Tuesday and another Lion just got hurt.

3. Oops, make that two Lions.

4. Aaaand there goes another.

5. In other news, the Bears!

6. Lost again, 30-12 to the Vikings. Scored one touchdown. Same blecch, different day.

7. "It's Tuesday and they're still the #@&%!!! Bears." (Bears fans)

8. "It's Tuesday and we're still trying to figure out how the Falcons and the Raiders wound up on Monday Night Football." (America)

9. Speaking of which, it's Tuesday and the Raiders are still losers, the Giants are still losers, and Patrick Mahomes is no longer running for his life on account of he went down with a high ankle sprain and now is merely limping for his life.

10. "It's Tuesday and I still don't have an offensive line than can block sunlight."  (Patrick Mahomes, to himself, probably)

Rocky Mountain Low

 We took the train west through the Rockies to the coast a year ago, and it was a lovely trip: One postcard landscape after another reminding us what a vast and stunning country this is, and how often we don't slow down long enough to appreciate that. Sometimes the leisurely pace is the best pace.

Aaaand, sometimes the train derails and provides a different kind of insight.

This tortured analogy is brought to you this morning by your Indianapolis Colts -- a certified train wreck with feet, but not much of an arm and even fewer functional hands. As we did a year ago, see, the Colts ventured out to the Rockies yesterday. Unlike us, however, they missed out on the majesty. 

What they found instead was a lot of physical comedy and a 31-13 loss to the Denver Broncos that made you surprised when you looked at their record and saw it was 6-8 and not, say, 4-10.

Here are a few things that happened on the way to loss No. 8. Feel free to hum "Yakety-Sax" as you read:

* Jonathan Taylor, no raw rookie, gave away a 41-yard touchdown run when he executed the touchdown football-drop before actually reaching the end zone. The ball rolled out of bounds and Denver took over on the touchback.

* The Colts' Country Crock receiving corps butterfingered another pile of passes, which was again a factor in quarterback Anthony Richardson's 17-of-38, 172-yard 36-passer-rating day.

* Speaking of Richardson, he did what he does: Threw a few lasers that made you say "Wow!", then threw a few balls so atrociously off-target it looked as if the intended receiver was the ghost of Don Hutson. He also gifted the Broncos two interceptions. 

* After the Broncos had jetted past the Colts like they were backing up, Colts coach Shane Steichen sealed for them with some truly baroque goofiness: A gadget play in which Richardson lateraled to wideout Adonai Mitchell, who fiddled around and threw the ball back without really looking, which is why Broncos defender Nick Bonitto picked it out of the air and set sail for the easiest defensive score in history.

* Richardson scored on the Colts first possession, and Indy led 10-0 early. They led 13-7 and had 20-7 all dialed up until Taylor missed the end zone with the football. After that, they laid down and let the Broncos walk over them, giving up 24 straight points in the last quarter-and-change.

I don't know what you can take away from all that, except it was a Rocky Mountain Low that merely reiterated what we already knew about these Colts. One, they're not very good. Two, they're not very smart. Three, the hoped-for success of the Anthony Richardson Experiment becomes more unlikely by the week, if not by the hour.

Four ... they're not very good.

They are, in fact, that aforementioned train wreck, from the front office on down. General manager Chris Ballard might have gotten his man in the 2023 draft, but the Colts clearly had no clue what to do with him once they got him, because they've mishandled Richardson as badly as you mishandle a young player. They also botched the Steichen deal, handing him a quarterback who wasn't ready to play at this level and a roster almost as ill-equipped.

So, what now?

What now is this comedy of errors could still make the playoffs, believe it or not. They have three games left, and none of them are against the Lombardi Packers. In order, they get the Titans, the Giants and the Jaguars. That's a combined record of 8-34 if you're scoring at home.

So am I saying there's still a chance?

With this team? Nope.

A whole other thing

 This is not the Purdue you thought you knew, or maybe it is. Maybe you looked at Matt Painter's 2024-25 edition when he rolled it out, and guessed what might happen would happen now that the big fella was gone.

The big fella, Zach Edey, plays for the Memphis Grizzlies of the NBA now. He's no longer collecting rebounds like a kid collects Pokemon cards, if that's still a thing. He's no longer putting up double-doubles as if he owned the patent -- which is definitely not still in vogue in West Lafayette.

I say this because the for-now No. 11 Boilermakers lost to another lower-ranked team yesterday, this time 70-66 to No. 17 Texas A&M in Gainsbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis.

I say it also because once again one of the culprits was rebounding, which through 11 games Purdue's smaller, more athletic lineup doesn't do well at all. An asset has become a liability, or at least it has for the time being.

A&M, for instance, cleaned the Boilers 34-23 on the glass yesterday, and 16 turnovers didn't help Purdue's cause, either. Point guard Braden Smith took a brief trip to Nostalgia City, kicking it away six times as if he were still a callow freshman and not the savvy junior he is. Trey Kaufman-Renn, the Boilers' smaller, more athletic successor to Big Z, had more turnovers (5) than rebounds (4), and Smith's backcourt mates Myles Colvin and Fletcher Loyer had seven more TOs between them against A&M's pressure D.

The loss was Purdue's second in three games and third overall, and the culprits have been the same in each of their three Ls. Against Marquette, Penn State and A&M, they've been out-boarded 94-82; against those same three teams, they've also turned it over 55 times -- an average of 18 per, including a staggering 24 against Penn State.  

So the book on Purdue so far is go hard to glass, and pressure the ball defensively. That didn't work last year, obviously, and it probably won't work this year when Kaufman-Renn and Cam Heide are feeling it, Braden Smith is playing like Braden Smith, and sharp ball movement is getting Loyer -- who came into yesterday shooting 53 percent from Threeville -- open looks from the arc.

In other words: Don't expect every day to look like yesterday. Do expect to see fewer days like yesterday, as the Boilers get more comfortable with who they are now.

It may be a whole other thing now in Mackey Arena. Doesn't mean it has to be a much lesser thing, though.

Let's go bowling!

 The college bowl season kicks off today with the Cricket Celebration Bowl in Atlanta and the IS4S Salute to Veterans Bowl in Montgomery, Ala., and, man, I am stoked. Four hundred thirty-seven bowl games between now and Jan. 4! Every school that horsed around and put up a .500 season, and some that horsed around and didn't, on display in a spangled cavalcade of bowl-y bowl-li-

I'm sorry, what?

OK, OK. So I lied. Turns out there aren't 437 bowl games, even if will seem like it before the cavalcade of bowl-y bowl-iness is over. Actually there are only 42, if you count the Scooter's Coffee Frisco Bowl and the Bad Boy Mowers Pinstripe Bowl. Which of course I do.

Anyway, it all begins with Jackson State vs. South Carolina State in the Cricket Celebration, and South Alabama vs. Western Michigan in the IS4S Salute to Veterans. The latter is notable because Western is one of seven MAC schools who'll be going bowling this season. This despite the fact even my Ball State Cardinals, who were so lousy they couldn't have gotten into the Three-Day-Old Bowl of Wheaties Bowl if it existed, beat one of the seven -- Buffalo, who'll play Liberty in the Bahamas Bowl on Jan. 4.

Shoot. Old-timers like me still remember the days when the MAC was lucky to get one bowl bid.  And that was to the Tangerine Bowl, which barely counted.

But times have changed, and thank God for it. If they hadn't, we'd never have known how North Texas and Texas State matched up in the SERVPRO First Responder Bowl, or Miami (O.) and Colorado State in (I swear I'm not making this up) the Snoop Dogg Arizona Bowl. 

Not making up East Carolina-NC State in the Go Bowling Military Bowl, either. Or Arkansas State vs. Bowling Green in the 68 Ventures Bowl ... or Marshall vs. Army in the Radiance Technologies Independence Bowl ... or Polynomial State vs. the Franklin Pierce Institute for Removing Stubborn Stains in the Mushy Peas Salute to Horrible British Food Bowl.

OK, OK. So that last one I did make up.

Had you going there for a second, though, didn't I?

Go (to hell) team!

 Unless you are a serious NFL nerd, you've probably never heard of De'Vondre Campbell, the presumably soon-to-former linebacker for the San Francisco 49ers. You've probably also never heard of Jack Pyburn, a soon-to-be-former edge rusher for the University of Florida Gators.

If you're of a certain age and cranky disposition, though, you're gonna hate what I'm about to tell you about them. I know this because I'm of a certain age and cranky disposition, and it's got me shaking my liver-spotted fist at the clouds and spluttering all sorts of "consarn-its" and "dagnab-its."

Let's start with Campbell.

Who, last night, in a blah 12-6 loss to the Rams, was called upon to enter the game because Dre Greenlaw and Dee Winters were dealing with injuries, and the linebacking corps had therefore become dangerously thin. Allow 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan to take it from there.

"He said he didn't want to play today," Shanahan said.

Which is to say, Campbell refused to go into the game. Then he walked off the field at the end of the third quarter. As Leon the me-first jock in one of those old beer ads said when told there's no "I" in team, "Ain't no 'we' either."

Leon, of course, was only a parody played for laughs. De'Vondre Campbell is (or was, since the Niners are likely to launch him into space any minute now) an actual NFL player. And you know what he did was well beyond the pale because even some of his teammates were ripping him afterward, and professional athletes hardly ever rip one another publicly.

"It's one person making a selfish decision. I've never been around anybody that's ever done that, and I hope I'm never around anybody who does that again," Niners tight end George Kittle declared.

"That's some sucka stuff to me, in my opinion," cornerback Charvarius Ward agreed.

I have no idea if either Kittle or Ward has ever heard of Jack Pyburn. But while we're talking about sucka stuff, we should include him as Exhibit A for why sucka stuff isn't limited to the professionals.

Pyburn, see, is a Florida Gator who apparently doesn't care about being a Florida Gator anymore unless there's something in it for him. And by "something", I mean A) a guarantee of of $45,000 a month; B) a guaranteed starting position at outside linebacker, including a guarantee to be in the lineup on all third downs; and C) more snaps at the OLB spot.

Now, let's be clear here: All of the above has merely been reported. It might be true, or it might be only partially true. But it is true Florida said "nah" to the aforementioned requests/demands or reported requests/demands, so Pyburn -- second on the team in tackles this season -- is saying "Later, Gator" and entering the transfer portal.

"Gee, Mr. Blob," you're saying now. "Isn't he worried his credits won't transfer?"

Oh, you sweet innocent child. What makes you think Jack Pyburn (or anyone else jumping into the portal two or three times these days) cares about that? What makes you think he's an actual scholar who goes to class because he's in it for an education, and who thinks a college degree is worth more than the sheepskin it's printed on?

Silly you. That went out with disco.

It went out the minute universities discovered thar's gold in them there Saturday afternoons. It went out when they started paying their coaches like CEOs and cutting chunky deals with the teevees and apparel companies, and then started sending out their players adorned with the logos of those apparel companies. And it really went out when the kids started following their lead and decided to be as mercenary as the grownups.

Now the Jack Pyburns and De'Vondre Campbells are one and the same, driven by the same impulses that always drive people when they reach the monetary stratosphere. They go from "This is a team effort" to "Team? What team?" in an eyeblink.

And, yeah, I know, "team" is a concept virtually layered with mustiness. It belongs with raccoon coats, bathtub gin and sis-boom-bah. With few exceptions -- one of which happens tomorrow, when Army plays Navy and the idea of pulling together toward a common goal gets its yearly moment in the sun -- it's just not that world anymore.

Codgers like me might hate it. But I-got-mine is the flavor of the month now.

I wonder, though, if the De'Vondre Campbells and Jack Pyburns realize what they're losing by following the prevailing zeitgeist. Perhaps the NFL has become so self-serving itself that some team will pick up Campbell despite the stunt he pulled last night. But, perhaps not. Perhaps he blew up his career with five little words ("I don't want to play") and just doesn't know it yet.

And Jack Pyburn?

I wonder what happens in 20, 25 years to him and all the other kids jumping schools every time something doesn't work out. I wonder if they'll miss the bond old teammates share because they didn't stick around long enough to form one. I wonder which school they'll identify with when they grow old because they didn't identify with one when they were playing.

Will Jack Pyburn still consider himself a Florida Gator when he grows old? Or will he consider himself a Tiger or Sooner or Cyclone or whomever? These kids who've transferred two, three times, who is their alma mater? And will they regret, down the road, not really having one?

See, the thing is, you can say go to hell, team, if you like these days. But what price do you pay when the team says go to hell back?

That darn truth

 I feel for former Fox anchor Megyn Kelly. I really do.

It's gotta be a hard thing to sell your Persecuted White Girl script when your lead actor won't play along. 

It's gotta be a hard thing to hear Caitlyn Clark, the aforementioned lead actor, blow up your phony construct by telling Time magazine how phony it really is. Gotta be, I don't know, galling to hear her say the narrative you're pushing is complete bullstuff.

Which essentially is what Clark did when she pointed out how many black stars have contributed mightily to the WNBA, and that the fact she's getting so much credit is partly a function of white privilege. 

"I want to say I've earned every single thing, but as a white person, there is privilege," she told Time. "A lot of those players in the league that have been really good have been black players. This league has kind of been built on them. The more we can appreciate that, highlight that ... the more we can elevate black women, that's going to be a beautiful thing."

Couple of points about that:

1. Nothing about it is remotely untrue. 

2. Nothing about it is even remotely controversial unless you've got your head screwed on backward or have some bitter agenda to push.

Which brings us back to Megyn Kelly.

Who lashed out, well, bitterly, at Clark on the Magic Twitter Machine, saying she was "on the knee all but apologizing for being white and getting attention", and that her championing of black WNBA players was "Condescending. Fake. Transparent. Sad."

Couple of points about that:

1. In what known universe was Clark "apologizing" by acknowledging the obvious, which is that she's the white face of a largely black league?

2. And why is it condescending, fake, transparent and sad to talk up the WNBA's black players? Why would Megyn Kelly (and those of her ideological bent) find that so objectionable, unless ...

Well. We all know what the "unless" is here, right? Or it least what it sounds like?

It sounds like a time when basketball coaches had self-imposed quotas on players of color, because too many blacks on the roster risked offending their largely white fan bases. It sounds like the 1970s, when people were openly saying the NBA was too black, and that's why drug use was rampant because you know how black people are.

And never mind all the white people in Hollywood and elsewhere who were snorting mountains of nose candy themselves.

Look. I'm not gonna go Full Wackadoodle here and say Megyn Kelly and all the others howling about Caitlyn Clark's alleged betrayal should be fitted for white sheets and hoods. But when Caitlyn Clark promoting the black players in her league gets your back up, you invite some pretty awful analogies. And you've got no one to blame for that but yourself.

Or, you know, Caitlin Clark -- who's no longer your darling because the "Woke Negroes Basketball Association" has "conquered" her. 

Megyn Kelly didn't tweet that, by the way. Some other nutball did. So it goes.

Today in getting over it

 There are few things sadder in this life than people who cannot let stuff go. You know who I'm talking about: Those dreary humans who nurse grudges like family heirlooms, or who refuse to speak for years because of some beef grown so old it's become more mythology than fact. 

And, no, I'm not just talking about all those Georgians and Alabamans and Mississippians with "Fergit, hell!" stickers on the bumpers of their F-150s.

This morning, for instance, I'm talking about Mark Gastineau.

You remember him -- or, I don't know, maybe you don't. Back in the 1980s he was the linchpin of a fabled New York Jets defensive line known as the New York Sack Exchange. He became famous during that time for his elaborate dance moves whenever he took down a quarterback, which split America into two relatively equal camps.

"God, what an annoying tool" was one camp. "Dance, Gastineau, dance!" was the other.

 Anyway, one year Gastineau spent so much time in opposing backfields he rang up an astounding 22 sacks, which was in NFL record. It stood until Jan. 6, 2002, when Michael Strahan sacked Brett Favre to bring his season total to 22.5.

Favre may or may not have taken a dive on the play to help Strahan out. What the hell, it was the tail end of the last game of the 2021 season, the play was meaningless, no big deal. Right?

Wrong. Because then came 2023.

"Wait," you're saying now. "2023? The hell does 2023 have to do with something that happened in 2002?"

Well ... this is where we get to the sad part.

ESPN, see, just released a clip from an upcoming 30-for-30 about the Sack Exchange in which Gastineau confronts Favre at a 2023 autograph signing about deliberately trying to help Strahan knock him off the single-season sack record. Favre says he understands why Gastineau is upset (although behind closed doors he's probably saying, "God, what an annoying tool"), and says if  he took a dive, it wasn't directed at Gastineau. In all likelihood, Mark Gastineau never crossed his mind at the time.

That's not the point, though.

The point is, Mark Gastineau is 68 years old.

And in 2023 -- 22 years after the Favre-Strahan play, and 40 or so after Gastineau's glory days -- he's still all butt-hurt about it.

That's more than just sad. It's pathetic. Makes you want to shake your head and say "Geez, dude, you're 68 years old. Get over it. Go play with your grandkids or something."

Of course, those words would likely be wasted breath. They usually are with those who can't let stuff go, because ... well, because they can't let stuff go. If they could, they would have already.

Then again, this is coming from a guy who still refers to Francisco Cabrera as "Francisco (Bleeping) Cabrera" because his base hit kept my Pittsburgh Pirates out of the World Series in 1992. So there's that.

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 14

 And now this week's edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the occasionally odiferous Blob feature of which critics have said "So you're aware you're odiferous?", and also "Odiferous, hell. Ever just tell yourself 'God, I stink'?":

1. "God, we stink." (The Giants, now 2-11 after a dreary 14-11 loss to the also-fragrant Saints, their eighth straight)

2. "God, we stink." (The Raiders, also 2-11, after their ninth loss in a row, this time to the Buccaneers)

3. "Hey, don't forget us! We stink, too!" (The Jets, 3-10 after their fourth straight loss)

4. (Also the Bears, the Panthers, the Jaguars, the Titans)

5. "Well, THIS stinks." (Fans in Nashville, watching the aforementioned 3-10 Jags and 3-10 Titans wallow around in the NFL's Not The Game Of The week)

6. Meanwhile, Josh Allen!

7. Who ran for three touchdowns, threw for three touchdowns, and definitely does not stink.

8. (Although his defense does, because despite all that, the Bills lost 44-42 to the Rams)

9. "Hey, look, guys! I threw for three more touchdowns and 369 more yards and we didn't lose for once!" (Joe Burrow, after the generally stinky Bengals managed to be less hapless than the hapless Cowboys)

10. "God, we stink." (The Cowboys)

And now, the reset

 Say this for the athletic braintrust at Purdue University, on the morning after they made Barry Odom the school's 38th head football coach: They know all the words to that popular hindsight tune "We Shouldn'ta Oughta Done That, And We're Not Gonna Do It Again."

Which is to say, Barry Odom actually has a resume. Ryan Walters, the braintrust's last hire, did not.

Two years ago they rolled the dice on a dynamic young defensive coordinator who had never been a head coach, and, as frequently happens, his skills did not transfer. So the braintrust struck up the aforementioned tune, and went looking for a resume guy.

Odom's who they found -- and the resume he brings with him more than suggests he knows what he's doing as a head coach, on account of he's been one. Been one in the SEC, for goodness sakes. Been one at UNLV, where he turned a sorry falling-down program into a winner in just two seasons.

Sorry falling-down program ...

Hmm.

Sound like anyone we know?

Why, goodness gracious, yes it does. That's Purdue to a "T" right now, coming off that smoking crater of a 1-11 season. It was so bad it got Ryan Walters fired after just two seasons. It was so bad recruits were fleeing their commits because, well, why wouldn't they; so bad Walters had hardly any other recruits locked up before the early signing period last week.

Odom inherits a wreck, in other words. Then again, it's nothing he hasn't seen before.

At UNLV, he inherited a program that had been to one bowl game in the previous 22 seasons. It hadn't had a nine-win season in 39 years, and in the three seasons before Odom's arrival it had gone 0-6 in the Covid year, 2-10 and 5-7. The Runnin' Rebels hadn't had a winning season since 2013, when they needed a bowl win to finish 7-6.

In Odom's first season, the Rebels went 9-5 and finished first in the Mountain West. This fall, they're 10-3 and lost in the Mountain West title game to Boise State.

So in two seasons, Odom managed to do something that hadn't happened in Vegas since Ronald Reagan was in the White House. And he did it twice.

This does not mean he'll perform the same magic in West Lafayette, of course. The Big Ten is a whole different animal than the Mountain West, and the recruiting and transfer portal-ing is on a whole a different level. Darrell Hazell, remember, came to Purdue as a miracle worker, too, a man who in two seasons turned a perennial MAC loser (Kent State) into a nationally ranked 11-3 team that reached the conference championship game.

Hazell was in his fourth season at Purdue when he was fired six games into the 2016 campaign.  He never won more then three games in a season and departed with an overall record of 9-33.

However.

However, Odom's experience to date has been very different. For one thing, four of his six years of head-coaching experience happened at Missouri in the SEC, where he finished .500 (25-25) but won more games every year except the last, when the Tigers went 6-6. 

So, you know, there's that.

Whether it will be enough remains to be seen.

Match games

 Oh, they are crafty ones, these men in suits who are the gatekeepers for the College Football Playoff. Why, just looked what they did yesterday, when they unveiled the first 12-team CFP bracket with, presumably, a herald of trumpets and all the proper flourishes.

They gave us Indiana vs. Notre Dame. That's what they did.

They gave us the matchup everyone in these parts wanted, and don't even try to tell me it was just a smile from the football gods or mere happenstance that made it happen. My suspicious mind, working overtime as it always does, will always believe the men in suits played match games with the seedings until they got IU-at-ND. Of course they did.

Notre Dame was slotted fifth in the final CFP poll and Indiana eighth, but they wound up the 7-vs.-10 game in the bracket. This despite the fact neither team played last week (and so didn't lose), while Texas lost the SEC title game to Georgia and Penn State lost the Big Ten championship game to Oregon.

Notre Dame, at 11-1 and ranked as high as third in the other relevant polls, therefore would logically have seemed at least a 6-seed. But, nah. Penn State (11-2) got the 6-seed -- and was somehow still ranked fourth in the final CFP poll despite the loss to Oregon.

So, yeah. You can't convince me there wasn't some jacking around going on to get Indiana against Notre Dame.

That happens on Dec. 20 at Notre Dame, and it promises to be a lot more interesting than the last time the teams met, 33 years ago. Jerome Bettis was playing for the Irish then Vaughn Dunbar was his opposite number for Indiana. They're, respectively, 52 and 56 years old now.

So it's been awhile. Notre Dame brushed the Hoosiers aside 49-27 that day in 1991, but it might as well have happened in 1291 for all the relevance it has to 2024. Notre Dame, for instance, is on its fifth head coach since then. Indiana is on its seventh. 

Both are 11-1 this time around, and both have their skeptics. Indiana has for the most part crushed everyone it's played except Ohio State, but most of the people the Hoosiers crushed were eminently crushable. Notre Dame, on the other hand, has that increasingly bizarre loss to a middling MAC school (Northern Illinois), but they've crushed almost everyone else on a schedule less crushable than Indiana's.

So, who knows. But the good news is, now we'll all have a reason to  guess.

Thank you, crafty men in suits. Thank you.

Ghosts of Conferences Past

 Sunday morning now after the big Championship Weekend in college football, and spirits walk restlessly among us. Apparently you can kill certain conferences deader than dead (or steal major chunks of their lifeforce), but, like Michael Myers, they will rise again to terrorize poor Jamie Lee Curtis or whatever.

Remember the Pac-12, for instance?

Sure you do. USC, UCLA, Stanford, various Ducks and Sun Devils and Huskies and Beavers. All just a memory now, with half the conference defecting to the Big Ten (The Big Ten! Those ancient Rose Bowl archenemies!), and the rest scattering to the Mountain West or Big 12 or wherever.

Except.

Except did you see what happened yesterday?

The Oregon Ducks, a Pac-12 refugee, beat Penn State to win the Big Ten championship.

The Arizona State Sun Devils, another Pac-12 refugee, slapped around Iowa State to win the Big 12 championship.

Texas, which fled the Big 12 for the SEC, lost in overtime to Georgia in that conference's championship game. SMU, formerly of the American Athletic Conference, reached the ACC title game before losing to Clemson.

So to review: Two teams from a dead conference hoisted another conference's trophies;  two strays played for the championship of the conferences that took them in.

You can call that parity or water seeking its own level or just the SEC, ACC and Big Ten stealing football programs from their rightful owners, but the Blob prefers to call it something else. Especially in the case of Oregon and Arizona State, I just think of it as the Ghosts of Conferences Past getting revenge on their usurpers.

All these years after Bo and Woody 'n' them, and the Big Ten still can't beat the Pac-12 in the big one. And just when the former thought it was safe from the latter when the Rose Bowl stopped being an exclusive Big Ten-vs.-Pac-12 deal.

Oregon 45, Penn State 38 last night?

Somewhere Anthony Davis is doing his end-zone knee dance again ... and Jim Plunkett or Warren Moon or Andrew Luck is throwing another touchdown pass ... and Ricky Marcus Bell-Allen is gobbling up miles of real estate out of  Student Body Right.

Rattling their ghostly chains all the while.

Bill College

I don't know what to make of the reports Bill Belichick has interviewed for North Carolina's vacant head coaching job, except that maybe he's bored out of his mind. Or maybe because he's dating a 24-year-old, he figures he's down with the younger generation and can relate to Today's College Student.

(Some quick mental images: Bill doing a kegstand at a Kappa Dabba Doo rush party ... Bill, his hair dyed Carolina blue, crowd-surfing at a pregame pep rally ... Bill bopping across campus in board shorts, flip-flops and a Slipknot concert tee. Or maybe J. Cole)

Anyway ...

Anyway, my more serious theory, if indeed I have one, is Bill has surveyed the college football landscape and thought "Hell, this is just the NFL in drag. I can do this." Because let's face it, college football pretty much is the NFL in drag.

Consider:

1. Players, through NIL, are being paid outrageous sums of money.

2. Coaches (or "educators", as they so quaintly used to be called) are being paid outrageous sums of money.

3. Free agency is a thing, and, thanks to the absence of player contracts and the virtually unregulated transfer portal, is even more free than it is in the NFL.

4. Network deals are gargantuan, sponsor deals are gargantuan, the entire construct of big-time college football and basketball has become almost wholly divorced from the academic mission of the universities they represent. They pay mere lip service to that now, and "North Carolina" (or "Alabama" or "Texas" or "Georgia") is just the brand they sell.

It all must look like common ground to Belichick, so why not give the college game the old college try? And if Buddy Bill McElroy decides to bail on him because Baylor or Arizona State offered him a chunkier deal, how would that be different from Tom Brady bailing on him for Tampa Bay?

He'd just recruit (draft) another stud freshman, or convince another Buddy Bill to transfer to UNC (the Patriots) from Whatsamatta U. (the Jaguars).

Of course, he wouldn't want to let Buddy Bill get away to Duke. That would be like Brady signing with the Jets instead of the Buccaneers.

OK. So, sort of.

College Football Protestin'

 Three days now until the College Football Playoff  bracket reveal, and everyone's gripin'. Miami's gripin' there's no way a three-loss Alabama squad should be ranked above them. The  Big 12 commish is gripin' there's no way the champion of the Mountain West (Boise State) should get an automatic bid over his conference's champ.

How could three-loss Clemson still get in? How could the Big 12's two title-game contestants, Arizona State and Iowa State, be out until one of them wins this weekend? And DAMMIT INDIANA STILL HASN'T PLAYED ANYONE.

Well ... let me say this about that.

Ain't it grand?

Like a lot of folks I wondered how expanding the CFP from four teams to 12 would affect the college game, but turns out it's affected it like a shot of penicillin affects the creepin' crud. It's made a lot more games a lot more relevant, especially late-in-the-season games. It's given college football a narrative that changes with every week, and therefore keeps our attention riveted. And schools that before now would be looking forward to some Radial Tire/Chicken Sandwich/Lawn Implement Bowl are still in the mix for the Big  Square Dance -- or so their fan bases believe.

The upshot of all this is everyone's arguing again. Which to me has always been the bone-and-blood of the college game.

It's what I miss most about the old days, when New Year's Day had a distinctive storyline that unspooled as the day went on. Did Great Big Deal U. losing in the Cotton Bowl open the door for Just As Big Deal U. to win the national title in the Rose Bowl? Or would Hey We're Big Too U. claim it by winning the Orange Bowl?

Terrific stuff. It was especially terrific in years like 1966, when Notre Dame won the national title while unbeaten Alabama and Penn State said wait a minute, you haven't played us yet. Or when AP and UPI came up with dueling national champs.

All this College Football Protestin' has revived some of that, and I love every whiny morsel of it. Major nostalgia hit is what that is. And remember the part about making more games more relevant?

Well, when Indiana played Purdue in the Old Oaken Bucket game last weekend, there's was a level of suspense -- tiny, but it was there -- that would have been missing without the expanded CFP. The loss to Ohio State, coupled with IU's admittedly pallid strength of schedule, meant the 10-1 Hoosiers could possibly have been an odd man out if they didn't sufficiently pave the 1-10 Boilermakers. 

Of course, it would have been ridiculous to keep out an 11-1 Big Ten team. But if IU came out flat, and the Boilers decided to put up a fight ...

Nah. The Hoosiers came out to prove a point. The Boilers came out like congealed gravy. The result was an historic 66-0 rump-roasting that punched the Hoosiers CFP ticket and earned Purdue coach Ryan Walters a bus ticket out of  town.

Without the CFP, who would have cared outside of Bloomington and West Lafayette? It would have been just another dreary Bucket beatdown -- albeit administered by Indiana this time and not by Purdue, as has often been the case in a rivalry the Boilers still lead 77-42-6.

And now people can resume griping about Indiana's SOS. And of course much else.

One more time: Ain't it grand?

Golden battiness

 I am no strict baseball constructionist, that species of fan who thinks the designated hitter marked the dawn of civilization's fall. But neither am I a baseball agnostic.

In other words, I'm fine with the DH. I'm also fine with the pitch clock, and limiting pitching changes, and all other tweaks baseball has added recently to speed up its numbing stem-winder plod.

Those changes have shaved a considerable number of minutes from the average length of a game -- a good thing here in the go-go 2020s. We may pine occasionally for what we imagine was the more leisurely pace of the good old days, but that doesn't mean we want our baseball games to outlast entire epochs in the march of time.

Three-and-a-half, four hours to play nine innings is too much foot-dragging even for nostalgia buffs like me. Get on with it already.

However. 

However, some things are just too contrived even for the Blob's relatively enlightened stance.

Abolishing the shift, a legitimate defensive strategy since Moses was throwing his two-seamer, crosses a line that shouldn't be crossed, in my opinion. Ditto the "ghost runner" employed now in extra innings, because I think if a man is out there standing on second base, he should damn well have better done something to get there.

Even that, however, is not as egregious an affront to the game as the latest gimmick being tossed around in baseball's boardrooms: The Golden At-Bat.

In essence, the Golden At-Bat would be a one-time-only maneuver that would allow a team to insert a designated hitter into the batting order whenever it felt like it. In other words, if the Dodgers were trailing by a run or two in the bottom of the ninth, it could send Shohei Ohtani to the plate no matter who was next in the order.

Theoretically, this means Ohtani could get two at-bats in a row. Imagine the nightmares an opponent's closer would have about that.

And, sure, I get the appeal. The Golden At-Bat would add a whole new layer of strategy to a game whose strategy has always been one of its draws. When does manager "Biff"  Biffington use his Golden At-Bat? Does he save it for the later innings? Or, if his team jumps out to a lead, does he use it earlier in hopes of putting the game out of reach?

Inquiring minds would want to know. Well, not really, but we can pretend.

Now, I'm not going to go all cranky old guy here and wonder what some of the old timers would have thought of all this. The old timers thought moving on from the deadball era was too radical a move. So we already know they're turning the air blue somewhere in the Great Beyond.

(Although, honestly, Ty Cobb and the Babe and maybe even Honus Wagner might have liked the idea of the Golden At-Bat. As long as they were the Golden At-Bat, of course)

No, what I'm going to do instead is say baseball wants to be very careful about gimmickry like the Golden At-Bat. They're treading perilously close to a place where baseball becomes not baseball but some loony mix of the WWE, Hollywood Squares and a carnival midway. 

Now batting as the Designated Celebrity, Charles Nelson Reilly! He'll be swinging a giant plastic bat at a beach ball thrown by ace closer Ace Closer, who'll simultaneously try to guess Charles Nelson's weight!

And you thought the '24 White Sox were a joke.

Flag football

 Tuesday morning after the big holiday weekend, and Curmudgeon Boy has broken his surly bonds again. Someone left the gate open, and now he's out there roaming free in my brain and, who knows, probably leaving little Curmudgeon Boy piles in places he shouldn't.

Which is to say I've been listening to the chatter about the Michigan-Ohio State brawl, and the other brawls that broke out in college rivalry games over the weekend, and it's brought out the cranky old guy in me. And also all the cranky old guy bromides.

Such as: Winners, act like you've been there before.

And also: Losers, accept your fate with humility and no loud noises.

This goes back to Paul Brown, the original Curmudgeon Boy of football, who once said when you win say very little, and when you lose, say even less. 

Not anymore, apparently.

Now the winners can't wait to rub salt in the wound after rivalry games, and the losers are no longer disposed to put up with it. This betrays a general lack of discipline on the part of both, even though the Blob tends to side with the losers in this matter. It takes less discipline to taunt than it does not to respond to it.

Which brings us to this whole flag-planting business.

Two geniuses from Michigan decided it would be a good idea to plant a giant M flag on the Ohio State logo after upsetting the rival Buckeyes in Columbus, touching off the brawl we've all seen on TV by now. This happens all the time now in rivalry games -- remember Baker Mayfield planting an OU flag on the same Buckeyes logo years ago, after Oklahoma upset the Buckeyes? -- and it's a disgusting phenomenon.

Winners win with class. The ones who don't are only losers in disguise. Thus sayeth Curmudgeon Boy.

But, nah. The two Michigan geniuses decided instead to rub it in with the flag business, and further decided it would be an excellent idea to do it with the Buckeyes still milling around at midfield. Especially considering how bitter this rivalry is, what did they think was gonna happen?  The Ohio State players were just gonna say "Ha-ha, good one, Wolverines"?

Of course not. An Ohio State player ripped the flag away, both teams waded into one another, and it took cops with pepper spray to break it up. Meanwhile, Florida players were fighting with Florida State players after the Gators tried to plant a flag on the Florida State logo in Tallahassee, and North Carolina and North Carolina State players were throwing down after the Wolfpack tried to plant a flag on the Tar Heels logo.

Enough, people. Enough.

Look. No one appreciates a good college football rivalry more than the Blob, and the more enmity the better. Michigan and Ohio State certainly didn't invent the latter on Saturday afternoon; go back 50 years, and you'll see Woody Hayes tearing up sideline markers in a fit of rage during the Michigan game, and coasting across the state line on fumes because he refused to buy gas in Michigan. 

Great stuff. But Woody and his splendid doppelganger Bo Schembechler at least had the good sense to get their teams the hell off the field after Ohio State-Michigan games. Sherrone Moore and Ryan Day, not so much.

Moore you can partly understand, because his team had just scored a jaw-dropping upset and were, as they say, in the moment. No such excuse for Day, who stood and watched as his players waded into the Michigans. 

One would have thought, considering what he's said in the past about how special is THE Ohio State University, that he would have been reminding his players what they represented, and to conduct themselves accordingly. Perhaps by grabbing a facemask or two to get the point across.

And Moore?

Same message to his Wolverines. Delivered the same way if need be.

The good news here is the Big Ten refused to put up with all the nonsense, and dropped a $100,000 fine on both schools.  And given what happened elsewhere, the NCAA may waken from its slumber long enough to ban planting flags on rival logos.

Curmudgeon Boy would be A-OK with that.

He'd also be A-OK with coaches controlling their players. But I suppose that's too much to ask these days.

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 13

 And now this week's edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the "Hey, look" Blob feature of which critics have said "Hey, look, here comes that idiot again," and also "Hey, look, only about a month left of this torture":

1. Hey, look, it's Tuesday morning and Browns quarterback Jameis Winston just threw for another gazillion-bazillion yards, and also threw another touchdown pass.

2. Also another pick-six.

3. Also another completion to Browns wideout Jerry Jeudy, who caught, I don't know, 50 balls for infinity yards in the Browns' 41-32 shootout loss to the Broncos.

4. "Actually it was only nine balls for 235 yards, but thanks for noticing." (Jerry Jeudy)

5. "Hey, look, I ran for another two scores and we won again!" (Colts quarterback Anthony Richardson)

6. "OK, so it was only the Patriots, and it was only by a point, but still." (Also Anthony Richardson)

7. "Hey, look, I'm out of a job!" (Former Bears coach Matt Eberflus)

8. "Hey, look, I'm about to be suspended!" (Texans defensive back Azeez Al-Shaair, after his vicious helmet-to-helmet late hit on a sliding Trevor Lawrence, although it doesn't look quite as vicious or late until you see it in super-slow motion)

9. "Hey, look, two wins in a row, baby! We're back on track for THE SUPER BOWL!!" (The Cowboys)

10. "OK, so it was only the Giants, but still." (Also the Cowboys)

Sunk cost

Purdue got the first part right Sunday, painful as it must have been. It swallowed the ten or so million necessary to buy out football coach Ryan Walters' contract, and showed him the road out of West Lafayette.

You go 1-11 and winless in the Big Ten, these things will happen. You lose by a combined score of 132-7 to the two other football majors in your state, these things must happen.

A catastrophically bad Purdue team did that, losing 66-7 to Notre Dame at one end of the season and 66-0 to Indiana in the Old Oaken Bucket game at the other. In between there were some 56-7 and 49-10 wipeouts, as well as a stray 35-0 or two. But it was the Notre Dame and Indiana capitulations that did in the short-lived Walters regime.

Together, they served as bookends to what is possible when you make the right hire. The contrast with Purdue, who made the wrong one, was simply too stark to be tolerated another second.

And so, less than 24 hours after the surrender in Bloomington, Purdue declared Walters a sunk cost and ponied up the cash to send him on his way. Meanwhile, in South Bend, Marcus Freeman has the Irish 11-1 and cruising into the College Football Playoff; downstate, meanwhile, Curt Cignetti has the Hoosiers 11-1 and cruising toward the same.

There were some grumbles among the Domers when Brian Kelly blew town and Freeman was elevated from within to replace him, but hardly anyone is grumbling now. And Cignetti has energized an IU program even more chronically beige than Purdue's, which at least has a few Drew Breeses and Bob Grieses in its woodpile.

It also has the right hire in its history, if that means anything. Joe Tiller was the right hire, even if hardly anyone in the Midwest had heard of him when he landed in West Lafayette. Jeff Brohm was the right hire, even if the siren call of his alma mater (Louisville) lured him away.

And Ryan Walters?

Walters looked like the right hire, at least initially. He'd never been a head coach in the Big Ten before, but neither had most of the coaches in the Big Ten before they became coaches in the Big Ten. What he was, by all accounts, was a defensive genius who, as defensive coordinator at Illinois, turned the Illini into one of the most fearsome Ds in America.

But he turned out to be a disaster, an epic fail who made other recent epic fails (paging Danny Hope; paging Darrell Hazell) look like Vince Don Lombardi-Shula by comparison. Now athletic director Mike Bobinski and the same people who hired Walters must go back to the drawing board, two short years after they blew it big time.

Wild guess, but I'm thinking that scenario might keep the alums awake at night. Especially the ones with deep pockets.

I'm also thinking this: Whoever Purdue hires, he'll need to blow into town like Hurricane Cig did downstate. If 66-0 didn't seal Walters fate, after all, the fact recruits were bailing on his program left and right surely did. With the early signing period looming, Walters had just five recruits still locked in.

So this will be a total reconstruct. And thus crunch time squared for Bobinski and Co.

They got the first part right. The hard part awaits.

Karma's a ...

 ... aaaand you know the rest of that one.

Karma is what happens when you do something you shouldn't oughta done, like running your mouth about how so-and-so sucks, and then having so-and-so stick it to you by punching in one last touchdown after the issue had long been decided.

That happened last week, in Columbus, Ohio, when Ryan Day and the Ohio State Buckeyes decided to school Indiana coach Curt Cignetti about why you don't say "Ohio State sucks," because Ohio State will remember it. And so the Buckeyes scored one last touchdown with seconds to play, and a 31-15 Indiana loss became a 38-15 Indiana loss.

And yesterday, also in Columbus, Ohio?

Ryan Day and the Buckeyes got theirs.

They were beaten again by their bitterest rival, Michigan, this time by the Woody/Bo score of 13-10. It was the fourth straight time the Wolverines had beaten the Buckeyes -- and this was the worst of all, because Michigan came in a beige 6-5, and the Buckeyes were 10-1 and ranked second in the nation.

By all rights, they should have pounded lumps on the Wolverines. Instead, they lost, and then got into an embarrassing brawl with the Michigans that security had to use pepper spray to break up.

(About that: Why were both teams still on the field? And what sort of brainiacs does Michigan have on its roster these days, considering two of them thought it would be a good idea to plant a giant "M" flag at midfield with the entire Ohio State team milling about? Of course the Buckeyes took offense. Which of course ignited the whole brouhaha.)

Anyway ...

Back to Ryan Day, the Buckeyes, and karma.

If karma paid back Cignetti last week, then karma paid back Day and the Buckeyes yesterday. You run your mouth, it comes back on you. You disrespect an opponent because the opponent ran his mouth, it also comes back on you.

Remember Will Howard, the Ohio State quarterback who taunted Cignetti -- aka, Coach Cig -- by pantomiming putting out a cigarette on the sideline as the game ended last week?

Yesterday he threw a touchdown pass. But he also threw two picks to contribute to the Buckeyes' loss.

Karma.

As for Indiana ...

Well, the Hoosiers embarrassed their own rival last night, laminating the worst Purdue team in recent memory 66-0. It was the first shutout of the Purdues for the Hoosiers since 1945, and Indiana's largest margin of victory in a Big Ten game ever. And it was like watching Joey Chestnut play with his food. 

The Hoosiers outgained Purdue 582 yards to 67. They out first-downed the Boilers 30-5. Kurtis Rourke threw six touchdown passes; Elijah Sarratt caught eight balls for a school record 165 yards; and, like Ohio State the week before, Indiana shamelessly ran it up on their helpless rival, with Rourke still slinging it deep in the game and Cignetti dialing up a fake punt for a first down with the score 38-0 and the game long over.

Then they took a knee at the end -- which looked like mercy, but which felt more like rubbing it in given the circumstances ("See? We didn't make it 73-0 like we coulda").

Which makes me wonder what misfortune will befall the 11-1 Hoosiers in the upcoming College Football Playoff, in which they surely will be included now. 

Because, you know: Karma.

Eberflushed

 Well, that didn't take long.

If you had Friday in the great Matt Eberflus Gets Flushed lottery, congratulations. You had some extra cash to spread around as you ventured out to Walmart for a gallon of milk, got caught in a firefight over a 90-inch TV and wound up in the emergency room after eating someone's elbow.

Black Friday ain't called that just for funsies, you know.

Certainly it was the blackest of Fridays for Eberflus, who became the Chicago Bears ex-coach less than 24 hours after overseeing the dumbest use of 30 seconds since a ShamWow ad starring that Vince guy. Botching a shot at upending the mighty Detroit Lions in the most in the most spectacularly numbskulled way possible was bad enough, but that it happened in front of the entire country on Thanksgiving Day was took much even for the Bears.

You've seen the lowlights by now: Down 23-20, the Bears had arrived at the Detroit 25 with 43 seconds to play and plenty of time to take shots at the W.  But then Bears stuff began to happen. 

First, a Caleb Williams pass to the Detroit 13 was wiped out by a penalty.

Then, Williams was sacked.

Then, with two downs, a timeout and 30 seconds still on the clock, Eberflus and Co. somehow forgot about the timeout they had, fiddle-farted around as the clock raced toward zero, and finally got off a snap with just six seconds showing.

Williams pass fell incomplete as the clock ran out, and the Lions were 11-1 for the first time in their history.

Today's multiple choice quiz: What were the Bears doing at the end for 24 of the 30 seconds they had left?

A. Debating who would win if Superman fought Lions coach Dan Campbell.

B. Discussing the relative merits/drawbacks of green energy.

C. Comparing the boss-ness of today's cars versus, say, a 1969 Pontiac GTO with a Hurst shifter and Ram Air IV engine.

A football team with its head screwed on straight easily would have gotten off three or four plays with 30 seconds and a timeout to do so. But, nah. These were the Eberflus Bears, who instead did the most Eberflus Bears thing ever.

After which the Bears did the most un-Bears-like thing ever: Fire a head coach in mid-season.

The Bears had never before done that, not once in their long, long existence. They hadn't  done it when they were still the Decatur Staleys and wore those leather hats with the earflaps. They hadn't even done it when Jim Dooley was the coach and the Bears covered themselves in gory by going 1-13.

That was in 1969. Dooley not only was still the Bears coach when the season ended, he was still the Bears coach the next season. The Bears kept him around until 1971, when he was finally fired after a second consecutive 6-8 season.

So, yeah, Matt Eberflus made history yesterday. He was so bad not even the Bears could keep him around for another whole season.

Probably not something he'll want to add to his resume, though.

Same IU. Different day.

There are two ways you can look at what happened to your Indiana men's basketball team in the Bahamas yesterday, which was basically the basketball version of falling asleep on a beach in the Bahamas and waking up with an epic sunburn:

You can look at it and say, "The hell was that, Indiana?"

Or you can look at it and say, "No, really, the hell was THAT?"

That was a rump-roasting, is what it was. Also a lamination, a floor-waxing, Wile-E.-Coyote-getting-run-over-by-an-Acme-truck.

The final was unranked Louisville 89, No. 14 Indiana 61, and that wasn't the worst of it. The worst of it was Louisville's first-year coach, Pat Kelsey, easing off the throttle the way you would against some Hyphen Directional Tech State.

With seven minutes to play.

With seven minutes to play, see, Kelsey began clearing his bench. This is because Louisville led by 38 points at the time. Had Kelsey decided not to let the Hoosiers up easy, the Cardinals might have won by 50.

As it was, it was still the worst loss by a ranked Indiana team against an unranked team in 70 years. according to Stathead. And why was that?

Because Mike Woodson's Hoosiers, who landed the No. 2 transfer portal class during the offseason, still played like Mike Woodson's Hoosiers.

Which is to say, the new guys still performed all of Indiana's old tricks. They were inexcusably careless with the basketball, turning it over a staggering 23 times. They guarded the perimeter the way Sgt. Schultz used to guard Colonel Hogan, resulting in 10 Louisville3-pointers. And they couldn't throw it in the ocean on their end, missing 13 of their 20 threes and shooting 33 percent overall.

The Hoosiers imported backcourt studs Myles Rice from Washington State and Kanaan Carlyle from Stanford to remedy a lot of this, but the remedy looked like the same old malady against Louisville. Among the three of them, Rice, Carlyle and Trey Galloway shot 1-for-15 and turned it over nine times while managing just two combined assists. Galloway in particular was wretched, going scoreless with one rebound, zero assists and two turnovers in 20 listless minutes.

And now?

Now the Hoosiers get No. 3 Gonzaga, which was upset in its game at the  Bad Boy Mowers Battle 4 Atlantis.

(No, really. That's the name of the tournament. You think I could make that up?)

In any case, what this means is it's not likely to get much better before it gets worse. And that means the heat is going to cranked up that much more for Woodson, who was already under fire from Indiana's perpetually crabby fan base because his boys don't, you know, play like Bob Knight's boys used to. Or like the fan base seems to remember they did.

Now, if you wanted to cut Woody some slack, you could say for all the talent he imported this year, talent isn't team. Presumably it's going to take awhile for that to happen, for the new guys and the old guys to become that one fist coaches love to talk about. So the inclination among the less rabid is to give it a few more weeks and then see what Woodson's team looks like.

However.

However, it should be noted that Louisville turned over nearly its entire roster this offseason, and has a new coach besides. And unfamiliarity with one another didn't stop the Cardinals from functioning like a machine at both ends. 

Therefore ...

Therefore, this dreary assessment: SIUDD.

Same IU. Different day.

The value of a Bucket

 So, OK, then. Tenth.

Tenth in this week's College Football Playoff rankings; 11th seed in the latest projected bracket. Still in, despite the fevered conspiracy theories of people like, oh, I don't know, me, for instance.

I was convinced the CFP had it in for your Indiana Hoosiers, that a millisecond after they walked out of Columbus with a 38-15 loss to Ohio State the pollsters would kick them out of the party. But, nah. Apparently whoever runs this deal doesn't hate the interlopers from Bloomington that much.

Tenth, they dropped Indiana to. Which seems just about right.

Know what else seems about right?

That the Old Oaken Bucket suddenly is more than just an unglamorous trophy fought over by a pair of in-state rivals who, let's face it, have their own share of un-glamour in their football histories.

But Indiana is 10-1 now and Purdue is 1-10, and, if the CFP playoff doesn't exactly hang in the balance, it's right around the corner from hanging in the balance. Should Purdue jump up and get after it against its most bitter rival, it could ruin IU's precarious hold on a playoff spot. 

An 11 seed, after all, lives next door to a 12 seed. And a 12 seed lives next door to an out-in-the-cold seed.

Think Purdue wouldn't want to make that happen? 

Think Indiana doesn't want to lay the wood to the Boilermakers because, well, they're the Boilermakers, but also because it needs style points to stay inside the CFP rope?

There was a lot of yapping about the CFP expanding from four to 12 teams this season, and as usual a fair amount of it was negative. But now the season is wrapping up, and look what a 12-team field has done for college football.

It's made more games involving more teams mean something. That's what it's done.

Certainly it's added value to an old oaken bucket, and a touch of drama to what promises to be singularly undramatic. By every conceivable metric, Indiana should be able to name its score against the hapless Boilers, but what if Purdue decides to put up a fight? How blowout-y a blowout will it take for Indiana not to slip again?

Will 40-7 do it? Or 50-14? Or, God forbid, what if it's only 42-20 or something?

I suspect it won't be, because IU coach Curt Cignetti does not seem like a man who lets 'em up easy. If he could drop 75 or 100 on Purdue, he'd do it. Especially with what's at stake here.

I'm gonna say that doesn't happen. I'm gonna say IU wins 52-7, 55-10, something like that. Enough, presumably, to keep those teams crowding the Hoosiers' bumper -- a two-loss Clemson team, perhaps, or (God forbid) even three-loss Alabama -- from overtaking them. 

Anyway ... we'll see. And won't the seeing make Saturday worth the while?

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 12

 And now a Thanksgiving week edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the grateful Blob feature of which critics have said "I'd be grateful if you'd shut up already", and also "I'd be grateful for a rocket we could load this into and shoot it into the sun":

1. "Hey, look! We won a game! Thank you, football gods!" (Cowboys fans)

2. "Let's see 'em keep us out of the Super Bowl NOW!" (Also Cowboys fans)

3. It's Tuesday morning and Saquon Barkley just ran off tackle for another 23 yards against the Rams.

4. "OK, you can stop now!"  (The Rams, gashed by Barkley for 255 yards in a 37-20 loss to Barkley's Eagles)

5. "'Preciate it!" (Also the Rams, after Barkley said, "Oh, wait, it's Tuesday" and finally stopped)

6. "Thank you, football gods!" (Daniel Jones, who no longer is a quarterback for the sorry 2-9 Giants, who were embarrassed 30-7 at home by the Buccaneers)

7. (Also Gardner Minshew, who broke his collarbone in a 29-19 loss to Denver and now no longer has to quarterback the sorry 2-9 Raiders)

8. Meanwhile, the Browns!

9. Are thankful for snow, lovely snow, 'cause without it they never would have beaten the Steelers, on account of the Browns are sorry and the Steelers are not.*

10. (*According to Steelers wide receiver George Pickens, anyway)

Uniform-ity

 Watched a bit of the Colts-Lions game yesterday, and of course the Colts lost. The final score was 24-6 -- about right for a game between a "meh" team, and a team circumstantial evidence suggests is the best in professional football right now.

But the crabby old guy who lives inside me suggests there might have been something more esoteric involved in the outcome.

"You're gonna wear THAT?" he said, as the teams lined up for the opening kickoff. "No wonder you're going to lose this game."

Crabby Old Guy's comments were directed at the Colts, who broke out alternate uniforms for the occasion. Head-to-toe blue, to be specific, with black helmets.

The head-to-toe blue Crabby Old Guy could live with. The black helmets, however ...

"The Colts should never wear black helmets," he crabbed. "Never, ever, ever, ever."

This of course is a recurring theme for C.O.G., but it's not a blanket condemnation. The alternate uni thing has been around for awhile now, and C.O.G. gets that its purpose is to widen the revenue stream. He even thinks some of the alternates are sorta cool.

The Bears, for instance, broke out their 1930s Bronko Nagurski line -- orange stripes on the helmets, old-timey socks and jerseys -- for their game Sunday with the Vikings. These being the Matt Eberflus Bears, of course, the throwback duds didn't infuse them with Bronko Power. They still jacked around and lost per usual.

C.O.G. also has no quarrel with the unis Army and Navy unveil every year for what's annually the most iconic rivalry game in college football. This year, for instance, Navy is honoring its Jolly Rogers fighter squadron with helmets designed to look like flight helmets. Pretty awesome.

On the other hand ...

On the other hand, the crabby old guy who lives inside me thinks Oregon should maybe think about wearing the same uniform combination more than twice a season, just for  branding's sake. And he has a few thoughts about what Notre Dame should do with the unis it showed up wearing for its Shamrock Series tilt vs. Army in Yankee Stadium Saturday night.

My suggestion: Make a bonfire out of them. And the sooner the better.

Those things were awful, and not just because the gold lame numbers and stripes didn't go well with charcoal gray. Elton John can pull off gold lame, but a storied football team, not so much. Saturday night's all right for fighting, indeed.

The main problem, however, was that between the gold lame and the ancient gothic typeface, you couldn't read the numbers. This drives the ink-stained wretches who occupy press boxes batty. Or at least it always did me.

(The worst: The trend toward outlined white-on-white, black-on-black or dark-primary-colors-on-black jersey numbers. If I weren't opposed to capital punishment, I'd say whoever thought those were a good idea should ride the lightning. But I'll settle for life without parole.)

Anyway, I felt deeply for anyone who was covering Army-Notre Dame. Of course, I got that N.D.'s duds were a celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Four Horsemen game immortalized by Grantland Rice ("Outlined against a blue-gray October sky ..."), and that practicality will always take a backseat to Notre Dame's fervent embrace of its football hagiography. But good grief, people.

"Somebody should do jail time," Crabby Old Guy observed Saturday night, trying to tell if that was a gold lame 78 or a gothic 76.

I bet even Granny Rice would agree.

Things we know now

 So, alrighty, then. Ohio State is better.

But we knew that, right?

Yesterday the Buckeyes were better on offense, better on defense, better on special teams. To the tune of 38-15 -- a certified, can't-spin-it rump-roasting -- they were better. 

But we knew that.

Would have been a brighter day for Indiana if the Hoosiers hadn't turned it over in the red zone, or given up a back-breaking 79-yard punt return by Caleb Downs that put Curt Cignetti's team down two scores three minutes into the second half. Would have been a brighter day if the Buckeyes hadn't all but shut down Kurtis Rourke, and all but silenced IU's gaudy offense.

But they did. Rourke passed for 68 yards. The Hoosiers ran for 85 more. That's a measly 153 total yards if you're keeping score at home.

And the Hoosiers lost. Lost big.

Because they did, the people who vote in the College Football Playoff poll will have all the excuse they need today to push Indiana, with its tissue-y strength of schedule, down the elevator shaft and out of the playoff.

We know that, too.

What saves Indiana, or might save it, is some other stuff that happened yesterday. Ole Miss, ranked ninth, jacked around and lost to Florida. Alabama, ranked seventh, was floor-waxed by Oklahoma, 24-3, and now has three losses. Both of those schools were playoff-bound until yesterday.

Elsewhere, Colorado lost at Kansas, so the Buffaloes won't be moving up. Neither will BYU, which lost for the second straight week after starting the season 9-0. Neither will Texas A&M, upended in four overtimes by Auburn.

So that helps. A little. Maybe.

On the other hand, maybe nothing helps. Maybe Indiana goes on next week and beats a sorry Purdue team briskly about the neck and head with the Old Oaken Bucket, and it won't matter.

Maybe an 11-1 Big Ten team gets left out of the CFP anyway. It would be absurd on its face, an absolute howler, but it could happen.

One more thing we know.

No ties need apply

 Once-beaten, sixth-ranked Notre Dame meets unbeaten, 19th-ranked Army in Yankee Stadium tonight, and you know the ghosts are gonna be walkin'. How could they not, considering Notre Dame-Army goes back to the beginning of time?

And so that chill whisper in the air will not just be late November leaving its calling card, but Knute Rockne making up stories about the Gipper the way he did against Army in '28. The Four Horsemen will be outlined against Touchdown Jesus or whatever, same as in the '24 meeting. And Johnny Lujack, Leon Hart, Glenn Davis and Doc Blanchard will be out and about, reliving the epic 0-0 tie in '46.

Me?

I have a vivid imagination, as you can no doubt tell from the above.

Regardless, I don't think the Irish vs. the Black Knights of the Hudson will be the epic it ought to be, even if it is their highest-profile meeting in seven or eight decades. I don't think it will be the absolute paving the Irish laid on then-unbeaten Navy a few weeks back, but I do think Notre Dame will win comfortably.

Of course, this does not keep me from kinda-sorta wishing for another 0-0 tie, just for the sake of historical convergence. I mean, that would be cool, right?

"Absolutely not," says Notre Dame.

"No freakin' way," says Army.

"What are you, nuts?" says NBC, and Domer Nation, and every member of West Point's long gray line stretching back to Lee and Grant and Custer 'n' them.

Aw, gee. You guys are no fun at all.

Friday night slights

 They'll play a high school game at Luersfield tonight between the Bishop Luers Knights and Garrett Railroaders, just like there'll be high school football games in Mishawaka and Merrillville and Warsaw and a handful of other places.

It's semistate week in Indiana, see, and the 24 schools who are left will be playing for the chance to play for a state title next week. Moms and dads and aunts and uncles and grandmas and grandpas will huddle in the cold bleachers and cheer for the best of their progeny's dreams to come true.

Also, Purdue will play Michigan State in a Big Ten football game in East Lansing, Mich.

This will be exactly one week after Purdue's basketball team knocked off No. 2 Alabama in Mackey Arena -- a marquee game that had no business being played on a Friday night in the middle of the Indiana high school football tournament.

So says the Blob, anyway, which tends toward the curmudgeonly but never more so than with this ancient gripe.

To wit: Friday nights should belong to the high schools. The colleges need to butt out.

Now, I know this is not a new phenomenon, college football and basketball on Friday nights. But that doesn't make it any less wrong. Especially in basketball, but increasingly in football, too, the colleges already play every other day of the week. They've gotta have Friday night, too?

No, they don't, the greedy bastids. No, they don't.

Look. I get how threadbare an argument this is, because a college game on a Friday night isn't going to keep anyone away from a high school game. There's almost literally no crossover. No one who tuned in Purdue-Alabama last week was going to a high school football game anyway; nor are any of those moms and pops and aunties and uncles venturing out to Luersfield tonight going to miss Purdue-Michigan State football, 'cause they likely wouldn't have watched it even if they'd stayed home.

But it's the principle of the thing, see. It's the optics, as people like to say, of the colleges horning in on the one night a week that should belong to the high schools, when they already have six other nights to choose from.

I covered a pile of college football and basketball in my almost 40 years as a working sportswriter, and a bunch of  Super Bowls and Final Fours and big-deal motorsports events, besides. But high school Friday nights always held a special place in my grubby scribe's heart. In fact I might have more scrapbook memories from those nights in Anderson's fabled Wigwam, or on football fields in Berne or Kendallville or Monroeville or Fort Wayne, than I do from what might be termed "the big stuff."

So, yeah. Friday nights are kinda sacrosanct to me. And so go ahead and call me an old man shouting at clouds if you like, because that's exactly what I am on this subject.

Dadgum it.

Burying Indiana

 The Blob is not a big conspiracy guy, so you won't get much from me about killer vaccines, 5G eating our brains and the public schools turning our kids gay and transgender. I leave those dark fantasies to the brainiacs who see nefarious plots in virtually everything, even when they're easily explainable by saner folk.

However.

However, there's a persistent notion buzzing around in my head right now, and I can't quite common-sense it away.

It involves Indiana University's football team, currently 10-0 and headed for a great big mega-humongous showdown against Ohio State two days from now.

It also involves what I've been hearing for the last week or so, and at a volume that seems to increase exponentially by the day.

It's that Indiana is a 10-0 poser who shouldn't be included in the 12-team College Football Playoff, even though the Hoosiers are ranked fifth and seeded seventh right now in the latest CFP mock bracket. This makes me suspect that the handful of people who are saying this are trying to influence whoever votes in the CFP poll, and might in fact be speaking in proxy for some of them.

This in turns makes me suspect something else: That the CFP voters can't wait for Indiana to lose Saturday so they can bury the Hoosiers without a funeral.

Now, the Hoosiers might not actually lose Saturday, because as the Blob has noted before, this is unlike any other Indiana team that's trundled down the pike. They're good. They're legit good, with an elite quarterback and an elite wide receiver corps and a bunch of good running backs, and interior lines that are everything IU's interior lines have rarely been, which is big and strong and physical.

So, yeah, the Hoosiers could win, and then go on to run the table against a godawful Purdue squad. They probably won't, because Saturday's game is in Columbus and Ohio State for once will be taking the Hoosiers very seriously. So let's say, I don't know, the Buckeyes win by a couple of scores.

Watch what happens in next week's CFP poll. Watch Indiana freefall from No. 5 to 13 or so in one mighty plummet, and miss out on the playoff of which a few talking heads say they're unworthy.

At issue for those folks is Indiana's strength of schedule, which isn't great. The Big Ten  indisputably is down this year, and the Hoosiers didn't exactly plow through a murderer's row in the run-up to conference play. It was a pinch of Charlotte and a dash of Florida International and a soupcon of Western Illinois, none of whom would ever be mistaken for Alabama or Georgia or Texas.

Here's the thing, though: They've beaten everyone who's been put in front of them, and usually by a lot. It's hardly their fault the teams that were put in front of them turned out not to be very good this fall. You play who you play, and that's all you can do.

Indiana has done that. So has Notre Dame, for that matter. So has, say, Boise State.

The Irish are 9-1 and ranked sixth right now. Boise State is also 9-1, and if the playoff began tomorrow, the Broncos would get a first-round bye. Hardly anyone is uttering a peep about that, even though both schools haven't exactly waded through a pile of 'Bamas and Georgias and Texases, either.

With the exception of 15th-ranked Texas A&M and then-unbeaten Navy, N.D.'s schedule has been six shades of beige, and of course the Irish lost to Northern Illinois, a middling MAC school. Boise State, meanwhile, has played all of two ranked teams since its only loss to No. 1 Oregon.

One is Washington State, currently ranked 25th. The other is 23rd-ranked UNLV.

Yet the Broncos are a shoo-in, and the Irish are too if they win out as expected. But if Indiana loses to Ohio State and then makes Crabby Patties out of Purdue, some say the Hoosiers should miss the show even though they'd be 11-1.

Let me say this about that, as Dick Nixon used to put it: A College Football Playoff that leaves out an 11-1 Big Ten school is a College Football Playoff unworthy of being taken seriously. It is, in fact, a damn joke.

Best get the laugh track warmed up, in that case.

Old guy rules

 It's been a tough go lately for those of us in the late autumn of our years, because our old-coot powers have been diminished by proxy. Sour 40-year-old coot Aaron Rodgers is playing like the sour 40-year-old coot he is. Fifty-eight-year-old Mike Tyson fought like a 58-year-old against Jake Paul (but raked some serious cabbage for that farce). And so, and so forth.

On the other hand ...

On the other hand, we've still got Alex Ovechkin.

The Great 8 is 39 years old now but still schooling the kids out there in the National Hockey League, or at least he was until he banged knees with Jack McBain of Utah last night, and went down with a lower-leg injury that will keep him out of the lineup for a bit. So his pursuit of the uncatchable -- Wayne Gretzky's career total of 894 goals -- is on the shelf until further notice.

"Why do you say Gretzky's 894 career goals is uncatchable, Mr. Blob?" you're saying now.

Because until Ovie started playing like he was 19 again, it pretty much was.

Last season, see, he was playing like the literal graybeard he is, and Gretz's 894 was still in a galaxy far, far away. But something happened in the offseason. The Blob doesn't now what it was, exactly, except to speculate that somewhere Ovie got hold of some magic old-coot potion that, like spinach for Popeye, transformed him into Super Coot.

Until he went down last night, see, his Washington Capitals had played 18 games so far this season. Ovechkin had scored 15 goals in those 18 games -- the 14th and 15th coming last night, when he uncorked a pair of seeing-eye rockets that originated in 1997 or something. That gave him 868 career goals, just 26 adrift of Gretzky.

It also gave him his 100th career multi-goal road game, 17 more than anyone in history.

So raise your glass of Ensure to the man, fellow coots. I can't speak for any of you, but I feel an extra spring in my step this morning. 

Although that could just be a touch of the rheumatiz.

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 11

 And now this week's edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the swaggeringly vindicated Blob feature of which critics have said "Not so fast with that 'vindicated' business, asshat", and also "Why don't you swagger on over here and let my fist vindicate your face?":

1. "Get rid of ME, will you? Ha! I'm as timeless as the three rivers!" (Mike Tomlin, whose Steelers are now 8-2 and first in the AFC North a year after people were ready to run him out of Pittsburgh)

2. "Get rid of ME, will you? Ha! Joe Flacco can sit his wrinkly old ass down because I'm back, baby!" (Demoted Colts quarterback Anthony Richardson, who returned to the Horsies' lineup and had his best game as a pro in a 28-27 win over the Jets)

3. "Get rid of ME, will you? H- Oh, wait ..." (Daniel Jones, after the Giants finally benched His Royal Cruddiness in favor of, um ... Tommy De Vito?)

4. "Hey, what's with the question mark? And enough with the Danny De Vito jokes, ya bums." (Tommy De Vito)

5. In other news, the Chiefs!

6. Lost to Josh Allen and the Bills, which means they won't go undefeated, which also means a bunch of old coots with walkers and such once again get to say they're still the only undefeated team in NFL history.

7. "Suck on that, Rozelle!" (The old coots, aka the 1972 Miami Dolphins)

8. "Wait, what?" (Also the coots, upon being reminded Roger Goodell, not Pete Rozelle, is now the commissioner of the NFL)

9. "Yes! No more Aints for us! We're movin' up to the big time!" (Various paper bags, excited at the prospect of being donned by fans of the Dallas Cowboys after America's Team pooped on the carpet in front of their home fans and the entire country in a 34-10 loss to the Texans on Monday Night Football)

10.  "See? We're not the only ones who suck!" (The Jaguars, the Browns, the Raiders et al)

Un-Bearable

 OK, so maybe it's not just Aaron Rodgers who owns the Bears. Maybe it's the entire Green Bay Packers franchise, for whom Rodgers was playing that time he beat the Bears and taunted the Ditkaheads with his infamous declaration of ownership.

I say this after the Bears blocked and tackled and ran and passed their ancient nemesis to a standoff in Chicago yesterday, only to lose 20-19 when the Packers swatted a last-second, game-winning field goal attempt into oblivion.

You could almost hear the late Dikembe Mutombo, the czar of blocked shots, cackling at the sight. You could also almost hear the Packer who blocked the kick, Karl Brooks,  snarling, "Get that weak s*** outta here!"

And you likely could hear the wailing and gnashing of teeth from Winnetka to Naperville because FOR GOD'S SAKE THE BLEEPITY-BLEEP BLEEPING PACKERS BEAT US AGAIN.

The hell do the Bears have to do to beat these cheese eaters? Raise Bronko Nagurski from the dead? 

After all, everything they had to do to win Sunday, they did. Caleb Williams, last seen being flattened like Wile E. Coyote run down by an Acme truck, completed 23-of-31 passes for 231 yards, ran nine times for 70 more yards and was sacked only three times. Four Bears receivers caught at least of four of Williams' throws, led by D.J. Moore (7 for 62 yards) and Rome Odunze (6 for 65). And the Bears led 19-14 with under five minutes to play.

Still, they lost. In the most Bears way possible.

First, Jordan Love led a desperate Packers drive that ended with him plunging one yard for the go-ahead score with 2:59 showing. Then Williams led the Bears right back down the field to set up Cairo Santos -- who'd already made a 53-yarder -- with a 46-yard kick to win it.

And then ...

A blocked field goal as time expired? Really?

"Aw, hell, he prolly woulda missed it anyway," disgusted Bears fans are likely saying this morning.

The fatalism is well-earned, certainly. The loss, after all, was the Bears 16th to the Packers in the last 17 meetings, and a record 11th straight. In a series that goes back 103 years, neither team had ever won 11 straight until Sunday; the last time the Bears beat the Packers was 2018, when Donald Trump was in the White House the first time.

Fun fact to know and tell: Packers head coach Matt LaFleur has never lost to the Bears. He's 11-0 lifetime.

Complementary fun fact to know and tell: That of course means Bears coach Matt Eberflus has never beaten the Packers. He's 0-for-5 in the closest thing the NFL has to an actual rivalry.

"Another reason to get rid of Eberflush," Bears Fan is likely saying now.

And also: "So if the Packers own us, does that mean the McCaskeys are finally out?"

At last a silver lining.

Of contracts and such

 One of my best friends grew up in the Detroit 'burbs, and, because Detroit is Hockeytown, his family has had Red Wings season tickets since goalies started wearing masks or something. A long time, in other words.

Anyway, for years, their seats were next to an odd duck named Bob, whose chief characteristic was a virtually impenetrable pessimism. No matter how bright the silver lining, Bob never lost sight of the cloud. He therefore became known as Black Cloud Bob.

Which is taking the long way around the barn to say I guess you could call me his spiritual kin today.

The other day, see, Indiana University handed first-year football coach Curt Cignetti $64 million (and potentially $72 mill) to continue coaching the Hoosiers through 2032. This is on account of the fact Cignetti is 10-0 right out of the box and has the Hoosiers ranked fifth in the country, their highest ranking since the Rose Bowl season 57 years ago.

All the reports on this development have said essentially the same thing: Indiana has "locked up" Cignetti with a long-term deal.

My take: This is great news. But locks can be picked.

This is not to say Cignetti, at 63, is going anywhere any time soon. But coaches' contracts aren't worth the paper they're printed on these days, which means the "locked up" part is only theoretical. Some high-gloss program comes calling with a bigger wad, Coach Locked-Up will become Coach Jailbreak before you can blink twice. 

It happened to Notre Dame three years ago, when Brian Kelly kicked out a window and escaped to LSU. And if it can happen to Notre Dame, it can surely happen to Indiana.

Of course, the whole idea of extending a coach's deal is to put a firewall between the coach's current school and any potential poachers. The longer and fatter the deal, the more a competing school (or pro team) would have to pay to buy out a coach's contract.

 That was undoubtedly Indiana's goal in making Cignetti not only one of the highest-paid coaches in the Big Ten, but the highest-paid employee in the school's history. That, plus Cignetti's age, should almost certainly keep even the wealthiest poachers at arm's length.

Still ...

Still, almost certainly is only almost certainly. So it could happen. Has before, after all.

In which case, I guess you can call me Black Cloud Ben now.

Or, you know, a few less printable names.