Alien landscape

 Got a look the other day at someone's predicted finish for Big Ten football this fall, and at first glance I thought it was a preseason national poll. That's how absolutely alien it looked to my trained-but-not-yet-ready-for-this eye.

Eighteen schools. Eighteen. Ohio State and Michigan and Iowa and Indiana and Purdue, and  USC and UCLA and Washington and Oregon in there, too. And, yes, I know, it shouldn't have been so disorienting, because we've had a full year to get used to this odd new reality.

But, damn. Dee-yam. How are relics like me ever going to see this new normal as anything but abnormal, a humble little Midwestern conference transforming into what, on paper, looks like the AP top 25 until you eventually notice it's short seven spots?

Yeesh. I'm still shaking my bony fist about the Big Ten adding Rutgers and Maryland. The hell do I do about this?

I get used to it, I suppose, same as I got used to the Southwest Conference going away back in the before time, same as I got used to Penn State joining the humble Midwestern conference and Nebraska forsaking the Big 12 and its ancient rival Oklahoma to become a Big Ten school. Neither had any history in the conference, and Maryland and Rutgers for damn sure don't (Maryland will always be an ACC school to me, and I don't want to hear a word about it).

But USC? UCLA? Oregon and Washington?

This is too much for me, even though I fully understand the economics of it. But I am too old. My cultural memory banks are full to the top with all the times Woody and Bo took their stodgy Ohio State and Michigan juggernauts to the Rose Bowl and got stepped on by USC with its shiny modern ways.

 I still remember Don James and Washington beating Bo and Michigan in the Rose Bowl in 1978. Remember the UCLA teams of Tommy Prothro and Dick Vermeil and Terry Donohue. Remember when the West Coast was the West Coast and the Midwest was the Midwest, and each had its own distinct brand.

Now I look at this predicted order of finish in the Big Eighteen, and I see Oregon at No. 2, just behind Ohio State.

I see UCLA in there and Washington and USC, all mixed in with Michigan and Iowa and Indiana and Purdue. And Northwestern. And Michigan State. And Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, etc.

Purdue, alas, is predicted to finish in a tie for dead last with Michigan State.

And Indiana?

The Hoosiers come in at 12th. If the prognosticators are right, that means they'll probably be in the hunt for a bowl berth, which would be absolutely hilarious.

Think about it: The entirety of the old Big Ten playing in bowl games, and then some.

I can't. I just can't.

A star-spangled splat

 This just in from the world of men's soccer, where yesterday Ronaldo first cried and then rejoiced, and Ronaldo's young teammate made himself a legend, and there was joy in every heart in Panama and Uruguay:

Our boys still suck at this game.

Our boys, representing the United States of America, by god, last night crashed out of Copa America, the Western Hemisphere's version of the Euro Cup tournament that's being played simultaneously across the pond. Didn't even make the knockout round, our boys. Lost 1-0 to the Uruguayans to bow out of the tournament in the group stage.

This despite the fact American boys have been playing soccer since Pele turned them onto the game a whole pile of years ago.

This despite the fact there are youth soccer camps everywhere in the U.S. now, and youth soccer leagues everywhere, and everyone says the latest progeny of those camps and leagues are the "golden generation" of American men's soccer.

And, yes, this despite the fact the American women have been one of the top sides in the world for almost 30 years.

The men, however, still can't get out of their own way, golden generation or not. This is the same ballyhooed group of young talent that reached the knockout stage of the World Cup two years ago, suggesting the USMNT was on the cusp of breaking through into the game's elite. And why not? Who had more resources to develop talent than USA! USA!?

And then ...

And then came Copa America.

Where the USMNT played uninspired, un-creative soccer, and also dumb soccer. How else to explain Timothy Weah getting an early red card against group winner Panama, compelling the team to play shorthanded the rest of the match? How else to explain the on-field lapses that led to a 1-3 group record?

The answer to that for a lot of folks is USMNT coach Gregg Berhalter, and some of the blame for the team's star-spangled splat certainly belongs to him. But he's only the latest coach who couldn't milk consistency from the USMNT. And so at some point it has to be the players who are the problem -- which, to their credit, the players acknowledged after last night's loss.

In any case, the hard truth has once more been borne out: We're not a soccer nation, at least on the men's side. Hell, we're not even much of a baseball nation anymore.

We're a basketball nation. We're a football nation. That's what we are, men's side.

Meanwhile ...

Meanwhile, a real soccer nation, Portugal, reached the quarterfinals of Euro 2024 yesterday.

They beat Slovenia on PKs, 3-0.

They beat Slovenia even though Slovenia's goalkeeper made a stunning save on the legendary Ronaldo on a free kick late in extra time, prompting Ronaldo to break down in tears.

But then it got to PKs, and Ronaldo buried his, and Portugal's keeper -- Diogo Costa, playing in his first international tournament -- did the almost unheard of, stopping three consecutive Slovenian attempts to send Portugal to the next round.

Great game. Great moment. 

Maybe someday we'll have a moment like that. Maybe.

Narrative fiction

Sometimes I think life is a made-for-TV movie that takes more liberties with the truth than a Mel Gibson historical epic. I especially think this when I watch Caitlin Clark play basketball.

No, not because I think her game's a big ol' fake. That's quite real, and it's translated way better to the pro level than some people who profess to know basketball thought it would. 

It's because of this whole "hate" narrative. 

I'm starting to think that's as phony as Mel somehow being a plantation owner in South Carolina in the 1770s whose black workforce was free and not enslaved. Or mostly as phony.

Didja see what happened in Phoenix yesterday?

Sure you did. The Indiana Fever beat the Sun, 88-82, and Clark put up 15 points, 12 assists and nine rebounds. One more rebound and she'd have become the first rookie in WNBA history to record a triple double.

Know what else happened?

One of her alleged haters, 42-year-old Diana Taurasi, hugged her before the game. And had some very kind words for her afterward.

"It's amazing what Caitlin's been able to do in her career so far," Taurasi said in a piece by Michael Voepel of ESPN. "The one thing that I really love about her, she loves the game. You can tell she's put the work in ... It's been a lot of pressure, a lot of things thrown at her, and she keeps showing up and keeps getting better every single game."

This from one of Caitlin's alleged haters, jealous of all the attention she's gotten because she was the league's top draw before she even stepped on the floor. 

This from someone tagged as a bitter old fossil because she said "Reality is coming" when Clark was setting all those scoring records at Iowa a few months back.

Well ...

According to Voepel, Taurasi's been saying that, or something very like it, about every hotshot rookie who's come down the pike in the last 20 years. Which makes me think a lot of the hate/resentment/jealousy narrative we've been sold is a load of snake oil.  

This is not to say the narrative's completely false; I'm sure there is a fair amount of resentment of Clark in some quarters. But I also suspect a lot of air is being pumped into the "hater" storyline by people with their own agendas -- some of them monetary, and some of them not so.

The whole Clark/Angel Reese rivalry thing, for instance, is surely monetary and therefore largely beneficial to both the two players and the WNBA. Nothing creates exposure better than personal enmity or perceived personal enmity; look how the Bird-Magic rivalry was largely responsible for saving the listless NBA in the early 1980s. Jealous of one another's success, they made Celtics-Lakers appointment viewing for most of a decade.

Clark and Reese, same deal. How much jealousy and resentment has do with their budding rivalry (and how much of it is pure eyewash) is immaterial. What matters is there's enough meat on that bone to sell it to a public that's always hungry for conflict.

Me?

I suspect Reese and Clark don't despise one another nearly as much as it appears. I suspect it's as amplified as the poor-white-girl-getting-picked-on-by-the-haters narrative being pushed by those who love to pretend white people get a raw deal these days.

Yes, it's true Clark's getting knocked around a lot out there. But it's also true rooks routinely get knocked around; it's all part of the initiation process. And if she's indeed being targeted, her alleged tormentors aren't doing very good job of it.

I say this because she's only the fifth most-fouled player in the WNBA so far this season. If she were truly as picked on as some people say, wouldn't she be No. 1?

Something to think about.