Anthem angst, Part Infinity

 The outer boundaries of the American mind are where no man (or woman) should ever go, but sometimes the Blob can't help itself. Lunatics fascinate me. They also make me see red sometimes, until I remember they're lunatics and can't help themselves.

Example for this morning: Remember all that super-patriot performance outrage that went on when a bunch of NFL players knelt with their heads bowed for the National Anthem in silent protest of racial injustice?

It's baaa-aack!

This time the Outer Boundaries got their shorts in a bunch because the other night the LSU women's basketball team WALKED OFF THE FLOOR DURNG THE NATIONAL ANTHEM. How disrespectful! How un-American! Why, they should have been immediately THROWN OUT OF THE TOURNAMENT!

As someone surely has said: And now for the reality check.

One, LSU's team did not walk off the floor during the National Anthem started. They were off the floor well before then.

Two, they were following the routine Kim Mulkey's teams have always followed, which is to leave the floor with 12 minutes left in warm-ups, go back to the locker room and, as Mulkey patiently explained later, go over their pregame stuff.

It wasn't intentional. It wasn't a protest. It wasn't a slap at the anthem or the flag or the troops or 'Merica. It was just a basketball team hewing to its normal routine the way every basketball team led by a detail-obsessed coach hews to its normal routine.

Now, I don't have the numbers to back this up, but I bet if you dug into it, you'd find a whole pile of teams that aren't on the floor for the National Anthem. Iowa was that night not because it's more patriotic or 'Merican or because its players were raised better, but because it was part of Hawkeyes' coach Lisa Bluder's routine. Every successful coach has one, and you mess with it at your peril.

Pageantry is pageantry, you see. But basketball is basketball.

So Mulkey took her team to the locker room, and Bluder didn't. And if you think that was some sort of protest approved by Mulkey, I'd love to know what you've been smoking. Because like a lot of authoritarian coaches, Mulkey's as right wing as right wing gets. She'd sooner cut off a limb, or one of her player's limbs, than let them intentionally kneel or turn their backs or raise a gloved fist during the anthem.

Now, as it turns out, LSU was thrown out of the tournament later that night. But it wasn't karma or cosmic forces or the ghost of George Washington coming down from on high to smite the Tigers with his righteous anger.

Nah. Mostly it was Mulkey putting Hailey Van Lith on Caitlin Clark, and Clark lighting her up for 41 points and nine threes and 15 assists. Mostly it was Iowa defending a little better at one end, and beating LSU down the floor before the Tigers could set up at the other end.

In other words, it was basketball that sent LSU home.

Just as it was basketball that took the Tigers off the floor and into the locker room  before the National Anthem was played, and America's lunatic fringe lost its damn mind.