For the ages

Maybe you think you saw something, Mr. I-Was-There-For-Wilt's-100-Point-Game. Maybe you can still feel the cold sting of the rain the afternoon a rookie named Gale Sayers seemed to glide over the slop for one, two, three, six touchdowns. 

Maybe, even, you can still recall where you were when Reggie Jackson swatted three homers in Game 6 to clinch the World Series for the Yankees on Oct. 18, 1977.

Ladies and gents, may I submit another date for your consideration: Sept. 19, 2024.

On that night, in Miami, Fla., America saw a man do something no baseball player in history -- not even, I don't know, Slugger McGillicuddy back in 1872 or something -- had ever done.

He hit his 50th home run of the season and stole his 50th base. No one's ever done that before. No. one.

And actually, Shohei Ohtani did more than that. Like, a lot more.

He went 6-for-6 at the plate, for one thing.

Hit three home runs and two doubles.

Drove in 10 runs -- yes, you read that right -- as his Los Angeles Dodgers floor-waxed the impoverished Miami Marlins 20-4.

So, to review: 6-for-6, three homers, two doubles, 10 RBI. And, by the time he was done, 51 home runs and 51 stolen bases on the season.

I don't know how that stacks up with Wilt's 100 points or Gale's six sixes or Reggie's three taters in a World Series clincher, but I can venture one guess: The official attendance of 15,584 will grow exponentially with every passing year.

Before long, as with the multitudes who magically crammed the Hershey, Pa., bandbox the night Wilt got his 100, there will have been 100,000 people in LoanDepot Park last night. The place has a standing-room capacity of just 37,442, but no matter. Every man and woman in south Florida will swear he/she was there.

You know who actually was there, though?

Marlins manager Skip Schumacher. 

Who distinguished himself as a man of honor and respect for the moment, not to say respect for his game and its long, long history. He did this by refusing to intentionally walk Ohtani, thereby choosing not to be lily-livered about the whole deal.

Then he defended his decision postgame by basically saying, "What are you, nuts?"

"I think that's a bad move -- baseball-wise, karma-wise, baseball-gods-wise," Schumacher maintained of not walking Ohtani. "You go after him and see if you can get him out. I think out of respect for the game we were going to go after him ... He's doing things I've never seen done in the game before, and if he has another couple more of these peak years, he might be the best ever to play the game."

On a night for the ages, a comment for the ages.

Today in cognitive dissonance

 There may be more bizarre doings in our world right now than Brett Favre testifying before Congress on welfare reform, but the Blob is hard-pressed to think of any. And this is acknowledging the current presidential campaign, with Batman and Robin running around telling us what a craphole America is, and how commies and transgenders and degenerate brown savages are destroying the country.

Forget all that for a moment, if you can. Let's talk about the cognitive dissonance of Brett Favre wringing his hands over the state of the welfare state.

He's scheduled to do so next Tuesday, and it oughta be some show. This is because Favre is the guy who, after doing all that gunslinging for the Green Bay Packers, got himself mixed up in a Mississippi welfare scam in which $77 million in funds for poor families were instead funneled to, surprise, surprise, a bunch of country-club types. 

Favre's part in this, allegedly, involved putting the arm on public officials to find money for a new volleyball facility at his alma mater, Southern Mississippi. His daughter, (again, surprise, surprise) was on the team at the time. The university subsequently received $5 million in illicit monies from the welfare fund.

That's how Favre, who's not been criminally charged, wound up being named in a civil lawsuit attempting to recoup the misappropriated funds. Which I suppose does make him an expert witness about welfare fraud, if in a weirdly backassward way.

"Favre Tells Committee Welfare Fraud Is Bad, Really Bad." That's the headline that leaps into my head.

To be followed, because I never met a point I couldn't belabor, by several similar examples:

"Capone Calls Tax Evasion 'A Serious Problem'."

"Bonnie, Clyde Say Cars, Firearms Have Become 'Far Too Easy To Steal' For Criminals."

"Arnold Rothstein Claims Gambling On Sports Has Gotten Completely Out Of Hand; 'Why, A Guy Could Fix The World Series If He Wanted To.'"

And of course:

"Fox Bemoans Lax Henhouse Security."

Yeesh. What a world, what a world.

Head games

 You always hurt the ones you love, or so they say, but there's no instruction manual for what to do when the ones you love hurt you back. And there's for damn sure no chapter on how to stop loving them.

Tua Tagovailoa could sure use that chapter about now.

The Miami Dolphins quarterback's brain got shaken and stirred again the other day, and now he's on injured reserve for at least the next four weeks. When he comes back after that -- if he comes back after that -- remains to be seen.

This is, after all, the third concussion of Tua's career, and they haven't been minor ones. At least one left him twitching grotesquely on the field. Little wonder, then, that this latest hit to the head has a whole lot of folks on the internet and in sports media suggesting maybe it's time Tua began looking for another line of work.

He only has one brain, after all. And what we know about concussions, despite the NFL's once-fervent efforts to deny it, is that concussions have a cumulative effect. The more you sustain, the more susceptible you are to sustaining them, and the greater likelihood that you wind up a mumbling wreck tortured by demons only you can see.

It's an immeasurably sad way to go, and we've seen it too many times. And no one wants to see it happen again down the line with Tua.

The sticking point, of course, is football itself, and how hard a thing it is to walk away from once it sinks its claws in you. Among the ones you love, it's the one you love more intensely than any other, and it's also the one that just as intensely doesn't love you back. 

Football is glory and brotherhood and the sort of shared sacrifice that makes that brotherhood impenetrably insular. If you're a part of it, it's impossible not to understand it; if you aren't a part of it, it's impossible to explain.

And yet always it will demand explanation.

Because, see, the other part of football is it hurts you. Hurts you every day. Hurts you really bad sometimes. Hurts you when you get out of bed in the morning, and when, if you're lucky, you sink down into sleep at night.

And still you play. And still you want to play, even when it's beyond reason you should.

Once upon a time, for instance, 49ers defensive back Ronnie Lott had part of his mangled pinkie finger amputated so he could stay on the field. Rams defensive end Jack Youngblood once hobbled through the playoffs on a broken leg. And Steelers DB Rod Woodson once suffered a season-ending knee injury he refused to acknowledge was season-ending, because he rehabbed so ferociously he made it back to play in the Super Bowl that season.

Normal people, outsiders, can only shake their heads at such things. I used to shake my head every time I heard a collision that sounded like two semis hitting head-on, or walked into a postgame locker room strewn with discarded tape and whatever else held the players together.  

Field hospital post-Gettysburg is what it was. Minus the amputated limbs, of course.

And now, here's Tua Tagovailoa, facing not amputation but possibly truncated cognitive function. Corporate prerogatives being what they are in the modern NFL, you want the Dolphins to declare him a sunk cost. You also want them, out of simple compassion, to tell him to consider what his life will be like when he's 50 or 55. 

But right now he's only 26 years old, and 55 is light years away. And football is still what football is to 26-years-olds who are mega-skilled at it: A game that makes you love it even as it takes a piece of you here and a piece of you there, and maybe your future just for the hell of it.

Plays head games with you, in other words.

In this case, quite literally.

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 2

 And now this week's edition of The NFL In So Many Words, aka The Blob Feature That Never Overreacts, of which critics have said "Oh, my God! It's the extinction event of Blob features! We're DOOMED! Doomed, I tell you!", and also "What he said! Aieee!!":

1. "We're DOOMED! Doomed, I tell you!" (Cowboys fans, after the Pokes were spin-cycled 44-19 by the New Orleans Saints, whom everyone said weren't supposed to be that good)

2. "Woo-hoo! We're 2-0! Super Bowl, baby!' " (Saints fans)

3. In other news, the Bengals, the Ravens and the Rams, hardy perennials all, remained winless after two weeks.

4. "Great, we'll never make the playoffs NOW. There's only 3 1/2 months left in the season!" (Fans of the Bengals, Ravens and Rams)

5. "That was the worst call in the entire history of football going back to before football was invented!" (Also Bengals fans, after a pass interference call on 4th-and-16 bailed out the stupid Chiefs and handed them a stupid walkoff field goal and a stupid 26-25 win and we hope you choke on it, losers!)

6. "Well, so much for this season. Looks like it's time to bench everyone and let the backups play." (The Colts, the Giants, the Panthers and several other 0-2 teams)

7. "Some people just talk about it. Some people do it." (The Panthers, who unlike the others, actually did bench bonus baby quarterback Bryce Young and will make journeyman Andy Dalton their QB1)

8. "Wait, what?" (Andy Dalton)

9. Meanwhile, the J-E-T-S Jets-Jets-Jets rallied to beat the Titans on the road, renewing the fan base's belief that Aaron Rodgers really is not 40 years old, but is actually 30 and in the prime of his career and therefore will lead the Jets to the Super Bowl that is, after all, THEIR SACRED DESTINY.

10. "Wait, what?" (Aaron Rodgers)

Another stupid analogy

 The Indianapolis Colts went up to Green Bay yesterday and managed to cough out 10 entire points, which meant Packers backup quarterback Malik Willis, signed like an hour before gametime or something, only had to cough out 16 to get the W in Lambeau Field.

The good news is the Colts defense allowed only 16 points, and quasi-rookie quarterback Anthony Richardson (come on, he is a quasi-rookie) actually completed 50 percent of his 34 passes for 204 yards, which was better than last week against the Texans.

The bad news was the Colts defense also got paved like an interstate highway by the Packers run game, which gashed its front seven for 261 yards on a staggering 53 attempts, right at five yards a carry. This means it generally took the Packers just two handoffs to either move the sticks or put them right on the doorstep of moving the sticks.

Which likely explains why they were successful on third down 10 times in 17 tries. Third-and-short does make life easier on NFL Sundays.

And Richardson?

The bad news is he completed just 50 percent of his passes in a league whose rules so favor the offense even the journey-est of journeymen routinely complete 60 percent of their throws. AR, with his skill set, is anything but a journeyman, and his arm is a bazooka. Unfortunately, right now it's a bazooka all the damn time.

Which means he can uncork the 65-yard-on-a-dime throw that makes you grab your head in amazement, but then makes you grab your head in dismay by missing the open 10-yard slant. He also occasionally thinks, like Uncle Rico, that he can throw a football over those mountains -- or, in this case, right through mail slots and louvered windows.

This means he  makes really bad decisions with the football on occasion.

Which in the NFL tends to lead to interceptions, like the three he threw yesterday.

The Blob last week noted all this, and also noted AR's ability to tuck it and run over people because he's bigger, faster and more athletic than the people he runs over. This led me to compare him to Bobby Douglass from the late-'60s Bears -- who also had an ungovernable bazooka for an arm, and who was also big and strong occasionally ran over people.

Anthony Richardson, I concluded, was Bobby Douglass 2.0. right now. Kinda like Robert Patrick was Arnold 2.0 in the second "Terminator" flick.

"What a stupid analogy!" you're saying now.

Maybe so. But it's what I've got right now.

What the Colts have got, right now, is an 0-2 start and a dazzling physical specimen who's yet to become a dazzling quarterback. And of course the Blob's possibly harebrained analogy.

In other words: Stay tuned.

Orange horror, Part Deux

 So remember last week, when the Blob instructed all you eager fresh-faced learners out there ("Eager fresh-faced what?" you're saying) about the bad juju that comes with ill-conceived color schemes?

That was in response to the Cincinnati Bengals rolling out head-to-toe screaming orange for their season opener, then proceeding to lose at home to the expected-to-be-blech New England Patriots. The obvious lesson is when you dress not for success but to sear people's retinas, the football gods gonna come slap you around.

Fast forward to last night, when the Chicago Bears opted to go all-orange themselves in Houston against the Texans.

It wasn't quite as in-your-face as the Bengals a week ago, but somewhere in the Great Beyond it no doubt made the restless spirit of George Halas throw things and snarl "We look like a bunch of god**** clowns." This turned out to be especially true of Chicago's offensive line, which played like the Seven Blocks Of Sunkist as the Texans rinsed the Clockwork Orange Bears 19-13.

The O-line's job was to protect rookie quarterback/valuable acquisition Caleb Williams, and it protected him the way a screen door protects you from a hot summer breeze. While Williams generally was much sharper than last week in getting the ball out of his hand, he still got sacked seven times. 

Of course, the kid also threw two picks when he remained upright, and averaged just 4.7 yards per attempt on 23-of-37 passes. That added up to 174 yards -- better than last week's anemic 96 yards and sub-50 percent completion rate, but not by much.

In other words: The education of Caleb Williams continues.

In further other words: But nor for long if the O-line continues to specialize in the Lookout Block (as in, "Look out, Caleb!").

Also, the orange horror has to go. I realize alternate unis are yet another hefty money grab for NFL teams, but sometimes practical considerations must outweigh the impulse to vacuum up every stray dollar on the sidewalk. And this is one of those times.

Bad juju, all that orange. Tellin' ya.

Proof of life, or something

 The good news from California this morning is the boys of '67 can finally stand down. They no longer can lord it over all who came after them in the football desert that is Bloomington, In., and odds are they're pretty happy about it.

This is because the Hoosiers finally made it back to the Rose Bowl again. And, unlike the boys of '67, they won there.

Did I say won? I mean, won.

Whipped UCLA 42-13 in Pasadena last night, confirming for now everything Curt Cignetti has been telling us: That on his watch, these were not going to be the same old Indiana Hoosiers. They were going to attack on both sides of the football, and hit you in the mouth when necessary, and beat ... your ... ass. The old days of the reflexive inferiority complex were over. Football was no longer going to be a diversion to keep the alumni occupied until basketball season.

It's true the Hoosiers came into last night 2-0, but it was a Monopoly money 2-0. In Florida International and Western Illinois, Indiana beat up on Millard Fillmore Elementary and We're Even More Elementary Than Millard Fillmore Elementary. Western Illinois, after all, has lost 27 straight games, and has lost all three games this season by a combined 182-52 score.

Indiana strapped a ridiculous 77-3 beatdown on the hapless Leathernecks, and thus went west with much still to prove. A 2-0 record is better than an 0-2 record, sure, but what would the Hoosiers do when they faced a real football team?

Played like a real football team is all they did.

The defense swarmed and attacked and made UCLA quarterback Ethan Garbers run for his life, sacking him twice, picking him once and limiting him to 137 yards on 14-of-23 passing. It held the Bruins to 3.7 yards per rush, 238 total yards and stopped them six of eight times on third down.

And the offense?

Well, quarterback Kurtis Rourke was a real boy, too, throwing for 307 yards and four touchdowns on 25-of-33 passing. Six Indiana receivers caught at least three balls. Three caught touchdowns, with Ke'Shawn Williams snagging two.  The Hoosiers stacked 25 first downs, went 9-for-12 on third down, and piled up 430 total yards.

These were not, in other words, your usual counterfeit Hoosiers. Significantly so on defense, where the Hoosiers looked nothing like the welcome-mat Hoosiers of years past. Instead of waiting for the game to come to them, they took the game to Garbers and Co.

Now, let's be honest here: This was not a particularly strong UCLA team. They're not great. They may not even be good. But they're a major-conference school with resources, and they're in L.A.

Which means you can get athletes to come there if you even halfway try.

Which means Indiana winning 42-13 after a cross-country trip at least signals proof of life in B-town, and that times have changed. How much, as always, remains to be seen.

But for once, that looks to be the fun part.

Boiler down

 Welp. Notre Dame covered, at least.

Favored by 10, won by 59. A little dicey there, at least until they played the national anthem. 

After that, it was ... hell, I don't know what it was. What can you say, really, about Notre Dame 66, Purdue 7?

Maybe this: It's Sunday morning, and Notre Dame just scored again.

Maybe this: It's Sunday morning, and Purdue just missed another tackle.

Or maybe this: It's Sunday morning, and Angelo Bertelli is now playing quarterback for Notre Dame.

What the heck, everyone else had played quarterback by the time the clock mercifully ran out in Ross-Ade Stadium yesterday. I say "by the time the clock ran out" rather than "by the time the game ended," because the game had already ended a couple of hours before.

It ended the first time Jeremiyah Love broke a tackle and the first time Jadarian Price broke a tackle and the first time, I don't know, Ara Parseghian broke a tackle. It ended when Riley Leonard -- Riley Leonard! -- ran around end and juked -- juked! -- Dillon Thieneman to the ground and broke a tackle and finally stiff-armed -- stiff-armed! -- one last Boilermaker on the way to Six City.

By that time it was 21-0, and halftime was still a ways off. Later, Leonard would break a couple more tackles and run for another score, and Purdue quarterback Hudson Card, running for his life, would try to throw a pass with his left hand and Irish defender Boubacar Traore would walk in with the easiest pick-six in human history.

Then Price slalomed 70 yards through a collection of turnstiles, and it was 42-0 and over. That happened at the tail end of the first half, when the Irish were only trying to run out the clock.  And the Purdues still couldn't tackle 'em.

Anyway, after that, Leonard, who ran for 100 yards and three scores and threw for 112 yards in the first half, sat down for good. Steve Angeli came on to throw two touchdown passes, and then Kenny Minchey came on to run for another score, and then Bertelli, er, C.J. Carr came on to finish the game.

It was the biggest blowout in the 88 meetings of this quasi-rivalry, which goes back to the last months of the second Grover Cleveland administration (1896). It was also the worst loss, period, in the history of Purdue football, which goes back to the middle of the first Cleveland administration (1887). 

So perhaps yesterday was A Tribute to Grover Cleveland Day in West Lafayette, and Purdue just didn't tell anyone. Or perhaps it just the zeitgeist of a day when Tennessee played with its food, leading poor Kent State 65-0 at halftime on the way to a 71-0 win, and The U mauled defenseless Ball State in Miami, 62-0.

Two MAC schools, a combined 133-0 loss. Karma for fellow MAC school Northern Illinois having the temerity to knock off Notre Dame last week? Could be.

Other than that, I'm fresh out of explanations, and so are you. How Purdue can wallop Indiana State 49-0, have two weeks to rest up/prepare and then absolutely fail to show up for a game that's supposed to mean something to it defies comprehension. It also won't quell any suspicions among the Boiler Up crowd (who, like every fan base, is always ready to suspect the worst) that Ryan Walters might be Danny Hope 2.0, or even Darrell Hazell 2.0.

And Notre Dame?

Well, the "Bench Riley Leonard!" cries are apt to get a bit softer, although maybe not. Also, the internet dopes floating the Urban Meyer-for-Marcus Freeman speculation might stifle themselves for the moment.

Or maybe not.

In any case, Leonard, Freeman and Notre Dame have one week to blow raspberries and say "Neener-neener-neener, told ya we were good." Because next Saturday another MAC school, Miami (O.), comes into South Bend.

Buckle up.

(And you Boilermakers, make a tackle. Come on, you can do it. The Blob has faith in you.)

Rebound time

 Notre Dame heads to West Lafayette to play an ancient foe this afternoon, and, I don't know, maybe I'm crazy, but I think Notre Dame somehow will pull out the W over the always dangerous Purdue Boilermakers.

Bold statement, I know, considering the Irish own a narrow 59-26-1 lead in the 88-meeting series, and haven't lost to the Boilermakers in 16 years. But every decade or so Purdue jumps up and beats them, and that's nothing to sneeze a-

Sorry. Not even I can be snide forever.

Truth is, this game has always been more of a rivalry for Purdue than for Notre Dame, and that's coming from a guy whose mom was a Purdue grad and who grew up listening to Bob Griese and Leroy Keyes on Saturday afternoons. And, sure, the Boilers almost always lost to Notre Dame, but as a Purdue kid, it was the times they didn't lose to Notre Dame I most remember.

Like Keyes and them whipping Hanratty and Seymour and them in 1967. Like a backup quarterback named Mike Terrizzi going up to South Bend as a four-touchdown underdog in '74 and beating the Irish a year after Notre Dame won the national title. Like Billy Dicken, defensive back turned quarterback, going up to South Bend in '97 and beating the Irish in Joe Tiller's first year at Purdue. Like the years Purdue ended Notre Dame win streaks of 39 games (1950) and 13 games (1954).

Today will not be one of those days, it says here. And Purdue will have Northern Illinois to blame.

That's because Northern, a MAC school paid $1.4 million to come to Notre Dame lose, refused to cooperate last weekend. In a stunning upset, the Huskies beat the flatter-than-roadkill Irish 16-14 on a field goal with 30 seconds to play. Touchdown Jesus covered his eyes and Fair Catch Corby said "Ah, to hell with it, Imma let the ball roll dead at the 1-yard line."

This was not good news for the Boilermakers, who were off last week after laminating Indiana State 49-0 in their opener.

It's not good news because Marcus Freeman's teams have a pattern, and the pattern says they rebound robustly after losing games they shouldn't oughta lose.

 In Freeman's first season, 2022, they lost at home to Marshall, then beat Cal, North Carolina and No.  16 BYU. Last year, they gave one away to Ohio State, then beat No. 17 Duke on the road the next week. 

Then they lost to Louisville. Then they beat the dog out of No. 10 USC, 48-20. Then they won four of their last five games by a combined score of 199-45, including a 40-8 hammering of poor Oregon State in the Sun Bowl.

Precedent being what it is, therefore, the Irish should beat Purdue today. By 10, the oddsmakers say, although don't be surprised if it's closer than that. Or more lopsided.

After all, it's Purdue-Notre Dame. You never know.

OK. So most of the time you do. But whatever.

The duality of blame

 By now, presumably, everyone in America who cares has seen the bodycam footage of Miami Dolphins wideout Tyreek Hill's arrest Sunday after he was pulled over for speeding before the Dolphins game with the Jacksonville Jaguars. And, predictably, everyone's formed an opinion.

On one side are the people who reflexively say "He should have just complied" when the police escalate a situation. They demand accountability -- unless of course it involves certain politicians, who are elevated to martyrdom when they break the law or fail to comply with court orders.

And on the other side?

On the other side are the people who reflexively (and let's face it, with more than a little justification) say, "Here we go, another black man getting abused by the po-po". They, too, demand accountability, but only from law enforcement and those aforementioned certain politicians.

In between, meanwhile, is Tyreek Hill. Who yesterday steered the middle course the whole deal required.

He admitted, first of all, that he could have handled the situation better. Rolled down his window quicker. Exited his vehicle quicker. Dialed down the attitude. 

"At the end of the day," he said, "I'm human. I've got to follow the rules. I got to do what everyone else would do."

Then he said this didn't mean the arresting officers -- one in particular -- didn't escalate the situation by yanking him out of the car, throwing him to the ground and "literally beat(ing) the dog out of me." 

In other words: He was wrong. But the officer in question was wrong, too. 

And that is absolutely right.

It's sometimes a hard concept to absorb in our polarized, knee-jerk society, but two things can be true at the same time. In fact, they frequently are. The duality of truth, and therefore blame, is about as close to straight gospel as there is in the secular world.

So we can talk all day about the increasing tendency for law enforcement to play the escalator instead of the de-escalator, and that's a talk worth having. The Blob's theory is it springs from the increasing scrutiny in our plugged-in, cellphone video world, and from the proliferation of concealed carry laws in America. Police literally don't know what they're rolling up on half the time now, so they tend to overreact at the slightest deviation from the routine.

Price we pay, I guess, for our cultish worship of the Second Amendment.

On the other hand ...

On the other hand, the aforementioned was not really in play in the Tyreek Hill detaining. The officers in question knew who he was because you can see him handing them his license on the bodycam. And, let's face it, they probably knew anyway.

So yanking him from the car, throwing him down and cuffing him for not immediately rolling down his window on a routine traffic stop was way over the top. Simply put, one officer just got pissed off. Police presumably are trained not to do this, but there you go.

Yes, Tyreek Hill should have complied faster.

And, yes, the officer who yanked him out of the car should have kept his cool.

Two things. Both true.

A radio wave goodbye

 I guess this is the part where I go Full Geezer.

I guess this is the part where I put down my morning coffee, set aside my morning gruel, and snarl like Ebenezer Scrooge at what a hellscape the world has become. How Time has eroded the eternal verities, and what the hell, Time? You couldn't just stay in one place? You couldn't wave your magic Rolex and make it so stuff didn't keep happening, and progress was stopped in its tracks, and change was made illegal in all 50 states plus Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands?

Dammit, Time. Why do you have to keep on keepin' on?

I say this because the announcement everyone knew was coming came down yesterday, and there went another piece of my childhood/adulthood. After 71 winters, the Fort Wayne Komets and WOWO are parting company. If you want to listen to the K's, you don't tune in 1190 AM anymore. You tune in something called WXKE, wherever that is on your radio dial.

Everyone called it a simple business decision yesterday, and it is. In every way conceivable, leaving WOWO for XKE makes perfect sense, because it's 2024, not 1955 or '65 or '75. Even in Full Geezer mode, I get that.

But there are simple business decisions, and then there are simple business decisions. And this one isn't simple at all, no matter how blithely it's presented as such.

You air certain programming for the better part of a century, see, you become synonymous with that programming. And 71 years of the Komets on WOWO -- 71 years of them droppin' the gloves and raggin' the puck all the way into the zone and shoot/rebound/SCORE! -- makes them blood kin. 

Play word association across the greater part of those 71 years, after all, and a whole swatch of America knew what "Fort Wayne" meant. It meant WOWO and Komet hockey and Bob Chase. If you knew nothing else about the Fort anywhere in the eastern part of the U.S., you knew that.

I've told this story a million times before, but it bears repeating: One night I was sitting in a hotel lounge in Gettysburg, Pa., and I got to talking to some of the locals, and someone asked where I was from. And when I said "Fort Wayne, Indiana," one woman immediately brightened.

"WOWO! Komet hockey! Bob Chase!" she exclaimed.

Of course, Bob's been gone eight years now, and years before that WOWO's mighty 50,000 watts got powered down. And so WOWO and the Fort Wayne Komets are not conjoined twins anymore in the American mind. If WOWO is known for anything these days, it's for the same endlessly aggrieved babble of right-wing talk radio you can hear in a million other places.

And yet ...

And yet. And yet.

That day. Some thoughts.

 Again, now, the day comes around, and if it remains incomprehensible part of that is because we're now almost a quarter century removed from it. Twenty-three years now, and still it happened yesterday.

And still it remains a dividing line streaked with the blood of innocents, a line between the America before and the America after.

Or so we like to say.

In truth, of course, the America after -- an America fearful and angry and bent on retribution for grievances both real and imagined -- is also the America before, just more atrociously mannered. All September 11 did was make it OK, for those withered souls so inclined, to be ugly right out loud. And the further we get from that blue-sky morning, the uglier they seem to get.

Or maybe you didn't hear a certain angry, addled old man ranting last night about vicious Haitian savages coming to America to eat poor Fido, while an unsettling number of his countrymen complacently nodded along.

Sheer madness. And the exact species of madness, it might be noted, that compelled the 9/11 murderers to fly airliners full of human beings into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and an empty field in Pennsylvania.

But enough of that.

A few years back, see, I wrote something about that day, and the week that followed. And it didn't have anything to do with madness or anger or fear of some shadowy Other, because none of that mattered then. It had to do with shared grief, and how we all tried to process it.

Twenty-three years later, I offer it again:

There's a gleaming new building filling the sky there now, reaching up and up with a singular brassy defiance. There's a museum and a pair of reflecting pools and names etched in polished metal, because that's what you do with days that have become history, days so momentous and awful you remember them in spite of how much you'd rather forget.

September 11 was all about emptiness: Blue sky empty of clouds, a skyline empty of two iconic towers, a city suddenly empty of two thousand-plus souls. And so the way we memorialize it is by trying to fill that emptiness, obsessively and endlessly.

That process started almost before the towers collapsed in a jackstraw heap, and went on all that numbed week. I remember, that aching day, sitting in a hardware store in Auburn listening to a man try to fill the emptiness by telling me about another catastrophe, a fire that had destroyed the store 90 or more years before. And I remember going to a football game on Friday night and again the next day, while debate raged as to whether or not it was appropriate..

That debate goes on to this day. I suppose it always will.

What I've come to believe, however, is that week was all about making the empty go away, and if going to a football game did that for some people, then I'm not going to quibble about whether or not it dishonored the dead. All I can say is it didn't feel like dishonor.

All I can say, going to a football game down in Monroe Friday night and then to another the next day at Saint Francis, is that it felt more like catharsis, and commonality, and the stitching together of  a social fabric torn asunder. That it was a football game that provided the vehicle for this was immaterial; in the end, it was about family, our American family, reaching for each other at a time when we desperately needed to do so. We all could have been at a quilting bee for all the scoreboard at one end of the field mattered.

Could there have been a better remembrance, I think now, than to stand as one as the taped voice of Lee Ann Rimes floated out across the farm fields around Adams Central, "Amazing Grace" spinning out and out into the September twilight?

  Could there have been any dishonor in what happened the next day, when Saint Francis and some team from Wisconsin played a football game that was of no consequence, except for the simple fact that by playing it we had an excuse to come together?

I saw no dishonor in that. I saw none at the tables that greeted you as you came in the gate that day, where donations for the victims were being taken. I saw none in the silver American flag stickers on the back of every Saint Francis helmet. I saw none, at the end of the afternoon, in two young boys throwing a football around down at the south end of the field.

One kid scooted for the end zone, football tucked beneath his arm like a loaf of pumpernickel. The other kid gave chase, catching up with him in the end zone and wrestling him to the ground. And then they rolled around for awhile down there, two American boys doing what American boys do on a sunlit American afternoon.

And, for a moment, anyway, filling up the empty.

Voice of our age

 So now the news comes down that James Earl Jones has died at the full-to-the-top age of 93, and it takes me right back. Takes me back to a particular gray morning in a particular minor-league ballpark, James Earl Jones sitting in a chair and the children sitting around him on cushions because the grass is still wet from the previous night's rains.

Now James Earl Jones opens a book, and he begins to read.

The outlook wasn't brilliant for the Mudville nine that day ...

And here again is the voice, that rumbling, sonorous, familiar instrument. It spans years, that voice. It echoes down through time itself, through epochs and dynasties and civilizations long gone to dust -- a voice as ancient as the pharaohs, and as fresh as yesterday.

On this particular day, the voice is not so much reading as tolling Ernest Lawrence Thayer's great evocation of baseball's past, "Casey at the Bat," to 22 children in Memorial Stadium in Fort Wayne. They're the winners of a reading contest sponsored by Verizon, on whose behalf Jones is in town. Now they listen, fidgeting a bit as kids will, and presently a couple of the Class A Fort Wayne Wizards -- not much more than kids themselves -- drift into the dugout to listen, too.

Because here's the thing, people: James Earl Jones was the voice of our age more than any other, the soundtrack to an entire nation's shared cultural experience. He was, after all, the voice of Darth Vader and Simba's father and Terrance Mann in another great baseball anthem, "Field of Dreams." He was the voice of an entire news network (CNN), and of a communications giant (Verizon).

He played Muhammad Ali's spiritual descendant Jack Johnson on Broadway. Played the blind former Negro Leagues player Mr. Mertle in "The Sandlot." Played Conan the Barbarian's nemesis Thulsa Doom, a worse baddie than Darth Vader,.

When he came to Fort Wayne in 2001, though, it was Terrance Mann you heard in your head, because it was a ballpark and it was baseball he came to celebrate. "Field of Dreams" was Kevin Costner's film, but it was Jones who defined it in that soliloquy "Field" devotees can recite by heart:

The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time ... 

Well, sure. And James Earl Jones?

All he did was mark our time.

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 1

 And now the hardly-awaited return of The NFL In So Many Words, the fashion-forward Blob feature of which critics have said "I don't care what it wears, it needs to go away forever", and also "What the hell are you wearing?":

1. "What the hell are the Giants wearing?" (America, upon seeing the Giants bizarre throwbacks that looked like the Montreal Canadiens and Michigan Wolverines got drunk one night and conceived a child)

2. "Hey! They stole our the unis!" (The Montreal Canadiens)

3. "Hey! They stole our helmets!" (The Michigan Wolverines)

4. In other news ... GOOD LORD WHAT ARE THE BENGALS WEARING?

5. "Aieee! My eyes!" (Everyone watching the Bengals in their screaming head-to-toe orange threads)

6. "Aieee! My eyes!" (Everyone watching the Bengals lose at home to the Patriots)

7. "Woo-hoo! We're goin' to the Super Bowl!" (Patriots fans)

8. "Remember when we guaranteed Deshaun Watson $230 million and a $45 mill signing bonus? Yah, good times. Goooood times." (Cleveland Browns management, after Watson put up a 51.1 passer rating in a 33-17 loss to Dallas, then was hit with another sexual-assault suit)

9. "Hey, Brownies, it could be worse." (Giants, Carolina, Falcons, J-E-T-S Jets-Jets-Jets)

10. "I'm 40 years old and I'm playing for the Jets. Nobody has it worse than me." (Aaron Rodgers)

Of QBs and such

 We begin this morning with two quarterbacks, to whom much was given and of whom much is expected. One of them reminds you of someone, though not the someone you probably think; the other is supposed to remind you of someone, but so far only reminds you that playing quarterback in the NFL, and doing it well, is a hard thing.

One of them is a rookie who played his first real NFL game yesterday. The other might as well be a rookie who was playing just his fifth NFL game in two years. One of them won; the other lost.

The rookie is named Caleb Williams, and he carries all of Chicago on his shoulders. The might-as-well-be-a-rookie is Anthony Richardson, and he plays in Indianapolis -- although the guy he reminds you of played in Chicago 50-some years ago.

Anthony Richardson, you see, can throw the ball a country mile, and he runs like a fullback, knocking defenders over like tenpins. What he can't do, seemingly, is throw the ball less than a country mile.

Maybe it's my advanced years, but to me that sounds a lot like Bobby Douglass, who was a Chicago Bear back when the world was young.

Bobby Douglass: Who could throw a football through the side of a barn but sometimes missed the barn entirely, on account of he had no touch whatsoever. And who frequently ran like the aforementioned fullback, once rushing for 900-plus yards in a single season.

Anthony Richardson is what Bobby Douglass would have been if they'd created him in a lab, like the Six Million Dollar Man. He is bigger, faster, stronger and more ridiculously gifted, by a factor of at least ten, than Bobby D -- or any other quarterback who played in Bobby D's time.

Yesterday, for instance, he tucked it and ran on a fourth-and-goal play, and got the six by just flat cheese-grating a defender at the goal line. And earlier, in the first quarter, he uncorked a throw mortals simply can't make: He dropped back, slipped, then whirled the football at least 65 yards off his back foot and hitting Alec Pierce with an absolute dime for another six.

Sixty-five yards, give or take. Off his back foot. Get out your crayons and draw an "S" on the man's chest.

Then again ...

Then again, Richardson's Colts lost. And one of the reasons they lost is AR could throw a 65-yard dime but couldn't hit an open receiver in the flat, or in various other places. In a league whose rules have handcuffed the defense, and therefore made it almost impossible for even Taxi-Squad Steve not to complete 50 percent of his passes, Richardson ... failed to complete 50 percent of his passes. 

On the day, he was 9-of-19 for 212 yards, two touchdowns and one pick. And the Colts lost 29-27 at home to the division rival Houston Texans, whom they'll now likely have to beat in Houston to have a shot at winning the AFC South.

Meanwhile, in Chicago ...

Well, the Bears beat the Tennessee Titans 24-17, a fairly beige W over a fairly beige opponent. And Caleb Williams had a less-than-beige day: 14-of-29 for 64 yards and no touchdowns. He was sacked twice for 29 yards and averaged 3.2 yards per completion.

Needless to say, this was slightly less than what Chicago expected from the man hyped as the Bears first franchise quarterback since Sid Luckman was handing off to Bronko Nagurski.

To his credit, Williams seems to understand this, which is why he apologized to Chicago Sunday for his underwhelming-ness. Privately, he probably understands how ridiculous it all is as well.  These sorts of expectations always are, especially in Chicago, where Bears fans grew up on a steady diet of Douglass and Bob Avellini and the immortal Peter Tom Willis. Williams is supposed to be the reward for all that suffering, Chicago's very own Patrick Mahomes.

Maybe he will be, eventually. Maybe, these being the Bears, he never will. In the meantime, he's just Caleb Williams, rookie, with as much to work on as any other rookie.

Ditto Anthony Richardson, the almost-rookie. Two quarterbacks; two works in progress.

Trapped

 All of which is to say these Irish are going to be a lot more blue-jeans-and-tees than tuxedos most of the time, and that sometime this fall someone likely will beat them ... 

-- Me, six days ago

Well, sure. But I didn't mean this someone.

I didn't mean a guy from a Catholic high school in Fort Wayne (Bishop Luers) bringing a MAC school (Northern Illinois) to the most prominent Catholic university in the nation,  and stunning the No. 5 Irish, 16-14 -- a score that will live in infamy in South Bend, but will be bronzed forever in DeKalb, Ill.

I didn't mean a placekicker whose name (Kanon Woodill) now will also live in infamy in South Bend, just as David Gordon's name lives in infamy. The former drilled the field goal that iced the Irish yesterday with 31 seconds to play; the latter drilled the field goal for Boston College that iced the Irish in Rockne's house 30 years ago. 

Northern Illinois 16, Notre Dame 14.

First observation: Never sleep on a MAC school. Never, ever, ever.

Second observation: Good on Thomas Hammock, the guy from Bishop Luers, who got a career-defining W as a head coach and was overcome with emotion afterward because he knew it. Eons ago he was a truck of a running back for Luers, and later for Northern; now he's the most prominent branch in the Luers coaching tree, if in fact high schools have coaching trees.

Third observation: 

Hmmm.

Maybe it's that I should eat my words from six days ago, when, after Notre Dame gutted out a win at Texas A&M in the screeching sweat lodge of Kyle Field, I wrote that the Irish displayed an element of grit that has not always been in evidence. Of course, that was before they got beat at home by a quarterback with a '70s porn-stache (Ethan Hampton), and a running back (Antario Brown) who found the previously gritty Notre Dame defense most accommodating.

Ran 20 times for 99 yards, Brown did, which worked out to five yards a chunk. Caught two passes for 126 more yards, including the 83-yard score from which the Irish never fully recovered.

Third observation ...

Maybe it's this: Notre Dame paid Northern $1.4 million to come to South Bend to get toe-tagged. Instead, it was "We'll give you $1.4 million to punch us in the face. And no love-taps, either. Make it hurt."

Or maybe it's this: If you should never, ever, ever sleep on the MAC, then this was a classic trap game. Last week you're on the road against a team the wise guys said was the toughest on your schedule; next week you've got decades-old foe Purdue in Ross-Ade Stadium. And in between, the guarantee school.

So you get caught basking in the glow of that leather-tough win at A&M, and looking ahead to a traditional semi-rivalry game. And the guarantee school, which is better than you might have figured, comes in and gets you.

You can blame Marcus Freeman and his coaching staff for that, and certainly there's room to do so. After all, the Irish yesterday didn't look remotely like the outfit that took down A&M a week ago; the defense that was so stubborn in Kyle Field became 11 turnstiles through which Brown and his pals ran for 190 yards, and Northern piled up 388 total yards.

And the Irish offense?

As tough and resilient as Riley Leonard was against A&M, he was just as deer-in-the-headlights lost yesterday. His legs, which sustained Notre Dame a week ago, bought the Irish nothing yesterday; he ran 11 times for just 16 yards, a 1.5-yard average. Throw in the two picks he threw, one of them profoundly clueless, and he looked less like an accomplished field general than a field general who's about to get relieved of his command.

As went Leonard, so went the Irish. After Jeremiyah Love and Jadarian Price ground-and-pounded A&M, they got the call just 15 times between them yesterday -- even though Love averaged 7.2 yards per carry and Price 6.0.  The Irish wound up with 286 total yards, 102 fewer than Northern Illinois, and were just 3-for-10 on third down.

And now Freeman can look forward to a lovely week of howling from the garden of the aggrieved that is social media, and maybe questions about the status of Leonard as QB1. He'll be asked more than once why the Irish looked so woefully unready yesterday. And he'll be asked if Notre Dame will be ready for Purdue, whom history tells us has shocked the Irish a few times itself.

One thing's for sure: No one's going to be talking about the Irish running the table anymore, the way some of the over-reacting network dopes were a week ago.

That was a dose of unreality Freeman didn't need. And now, for better or worse, has taken care of.

Hey, look! Americans!

 Time now for the Blob to take a timeout from the important stuff, such as football, football and, um, football. 

(Sample topics: Why were the Eagles and Packers playing in Brazil? Where did Indiana find a team it could floor-wax 77-3? And why were the Eagles, Packers and Indiana playing on a Friday night anyway, because Friday night is sacred ground that should always, always, always belong solely to high school football?)

Where was I again?

Oh, yeah. Timeout. Change of subject. And, you know, a Patriotic Moment.

Anyone see what's happening in the U.S. Open this weekend?

"Didn't they play that in June?" you're saying.

No, not the U.S. Open in golf, silly. The U.S. Open in tennis, which is the last Grand Slam tournament of the year and has been going on in New York for the last two weeks.

What's happening there this weekend is the women's final, which is today, and the men's final, which is Sunday. And what's notable about that is there's an American playing in both of them.

In the women's final, it's Jessica Pegula of the U.S., whose parents own the Buffalo Bills and Sabres, playing in her first Grand Slam final against Aryna Sabalenka from Belarus. This means she's at least the second-best athletic entity in her family, the Sabres running a poor third in that hierarchy.

 And in the men's final?

It's Taylor Fritz against top-seed Jannik Sinner and his nuclear forehand. Fritz is the American; Sinner, the Italian. 

This is a big deal because the last time it happened was 22 years ago, which is is barely conceivable for those of us who can remember a time when Chrissie or one of the Williams sisters was always in the Grand Slam finals, and on the men's side it was always McEnroe or Connors or Andre Agassi or Pete Sampras or Jim Courier or blah-blah-blah, yadda-yadda-yadda-yadda.

Well, not anymore. Except for Venus and Serena, American tennis pretty much vanished from the radar when Agassi quit and Sampras quit and Andy Roddick didn't turn out to be either one, although he did win a U.S. Open once. In fact, the last time an American man played in any Grand Slam final was 15 years ago, when Roddick lost to Roger Federer at Wimbledon in 2009.

This time, Fritz squared off against another American, Frances Tiafoe, in the semifinals. It was the first time two Americans had played one another in the U.S. Open semis in 19 years.

So, yeah, pretty historic stuff. Maybe this means U.S. tennis is experiencing a revival, or maybe this is just a cockeyed year for the U.S. Open. Both Pegula and Fritz, after all, will be heavy underdogs this weekend. But, hey, you gotta start somewhere, right?

And so: Go, USA.

Those darn zebras

 Now that was a finish. 

Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson running around out there in Kansas City ... last crumbs of the clock disappearing fast ... the back-to-back Super Bowl champion Chiefs hanging on by their fingernails to a W that had looked bank-vault safe not all that long before ...

And now Jackson stops and whirls the ball toward the end zone.

And Isaiah Lively goes up and catches it with a Chiefs linebacker draped across his back like Burberry overcoat, as time expires.

The official signals touchdown, which makes the score 27-26, Chiefs. The Ravens are already lining up to go for two and the dramatic comeback win. And then ...

And then, the touchdown is reviewed.

And it's waved off because Lively's big toe, and not much else (if even that), was out of bounds at the back of the end zone.

Chiefs 27, Ravens 20. Game of inches. All that.

It was a grand curtain raise to open the NFL season, and it showed us a couple of things: It's going to take a hell of an effort to keep the Chiefs' hands off the three-peat, and if someone does it's as likely to be the Ravens as anyone.

The two teams that played for the AFC title in January are even better now, the Chiefs maybe exponentially so. They've added speed to an offense that needed it in wideout Xavier Worthy, a crimson blur who scored one touchdown on an end-around and another on a pass from Patrick Mahomes, who was as magical as ever.

Completed 20-of-28 passes for 291 yards and a score. Even completed a pass to himself when one of his throws was batted back toward him and he out-jumped two Ravens to grab the rebound.

And speaking of the Ravens ...

They're better, too. Jackson threw for 267 yards and ran 16 times for 122 more. And he'll be able to that a lot more because the Ravens now have Derrick Henry in the backfield with him, the NFL's most load-y load and a guy who'll run right through you if you get distracted too much by Lamar.

Mr. Inside and Mr. All-Side. That's what opponents have to deal with now when they play the Ravens.

They're gonna be fun to watch this fall, and so will the Chiefs, who always are. Unfortunately, because this is the NFL, you're gonna have to watch the game officials, too.

As night follows day, the zebras were a big part of the proceedings again, because what would an NFL game be without people hollering "That wasn't holding!" and throwing stuff at their 86-inch TV screens? The Ravens disputed the overturned TD, of course, but the zebras also seemed inordinately concerned about the Ravens' offensive formations, which were deemed illegal on more than one occasion.

I'm not gonna say the zebras were wrong, mind you. I'm just saying the Chiefs were flagged six times for 45 yards and the Ravens seven times for 64 yards, with the usual number of big plays being called back. No one can defend a first-down completion/run better than Stripes.

So there was that. But there was also this: Even if it came down to an official's call, it was still a hell of a show.

Onward to tonight, and to the next 65 weeks or whatever it is.

Meh-meh

 The Chicago Cubs no-hit my Pittsburgh Cruds last night, the first no-no by the home team in Wrigley Field since 1972. And all I can say about that is, "Big whoop." 

This is not because my Cruds were the victims and, as a Cruds fan, I'm bitter and sour grapes-y about it.

It's because no-hitting my Cruds is not much of an accomplishment, on account of they're the Cruds.

Also, it's because it took three pitchers to do it, and my opinion of a combined no-hitter is it's more a nah-nah than a no-no. Or maybe a meh-meh.

I would have been much more impressed had Shota Imanaga, who started and went untouched for seven innings, been allowed to complete the game. But allowing starters to finish games went out with flannel unis. It's as dead as Walter Johnson in Today's Baseball.

In Today's Baseball, Imanaga was up to 95 pitches through seven, so Cubs manager Craig Counsell told him to grab some bench, as modern custom commands. Nate Pearson then came on to pitch the eighth and rookie Porter Hodge the ninth to finish off the meh-meh.

And, sure, it's been 54 years since it happened, so I guess it's a big deal. But the last time it happened, Milt Pappas went the distance to ring it up. Plus he came one walk away from a perfect game.

Last night, it took three arms to do what Pappas did. And unlike Milt and his one baserunner, the Cruds put four men on base, taking advantage of three errors by the Cubs third baseman, Isaac Paredes. So there's that.

Milt Pappas, by the way, died in 2016. And if I let my imagination run away from me, I can see Milt and Walter Johnson sitting together in the Great Celestial Ballpark, shaking their heads and uttering one word:

"Lightweights."

And now, the En Eff Ell

 The NFL season kicks off tonight in Kansas City -- Chiefs vs. Ravens! Patrick vs. Lamar! -- and, man, I am stoked. My fantasy team is jacked. I have Patrick. I have Lamar. I have Caleb Williams and CeeDee Lamb and Christian McCaffrey and Anthony Taylor and Taylor Swift's boyfriend and ...

Nah, I'm lying. I don't have any of those guys. I don't even have a fantasy team.

I got out of my league a few years back, even though it was a bunch of us who used to share a newsroom back in the 1990s and therefore was a lot of fun. Lots of inside jokes. Lots of team names only we got. I hung around for five years or so, which is a long time for me to stick with anything on account of I have the attention span of a gnat.

This does not mean Roger Goodell's magic kingdom won't hold my interest for, I don't know, a couple of series tonight at least.

For one thing, I want to see if I can figure out the league's new kickoff rules, which no one seems to understand. The way it works (I think) is the kicker tees it up at his own 35. The other 10 guys on his team line up at the receiving team's 40. Meanwhile, the receiving team must have at least nine players between their 30- and 35-yard lines.

"But Mr. Blob," you're saying now. "How will the kicking team know when they can go if their kicker's behind them and they can't see when the ball is kicked?"

I don't know.

"And how do teams execute an onside kick when everyone but the kicker is already 25 yards up-field?"

Beats me.

"And what's the point, anyway?"

Who do I look like, you friendly neighborhood back judge?

All I can say is, it's the En Eff Ell, where stuff doesn't have to make sense. Catches that used to be catches aren't catches anymore unless you make a "football play" while you're making them. And what's a "football play", exactly? 

A pirouette? Jazz hands? Who knows?

Also, if the ground can't cause a fumble, how can the ground cause an incompletion if the football touches it microscopically while a receiver has both hands securely wrapped around it?

I don't know that, either.

I also don't know what constitutes roughing the passer anymore, unless it's pretty much everything. I once saw an Atlanta Falcon get flagged for it because he landed on Tom Brady while tackling him, which is virtually impossible not to do while tackling someone. Of course, it was Tom Brady, whom the rules said you couldn't tackle unless you did it very gently and didn't leave any smudges. Still ...

Still, tackling in general in the NFL has become something of a lost art -- or, to put it another way, "illegal." Can't hit a guy high. Can't hit a guy low. Can't hit him too hard in between. And you absolutely, positively cannot touch his helmet with your helmet, even if the ballcarrier lowers his head a microsecond before you hit him and thereby makes helmet-to-helmet contact unavoidable. 

Before long, I figure, the league will dispense with defense entirely and just let Patrick and Lamar and Joe Burrow cavort up and down the field unencumbered.

Best jazz hands wins.

Culture shocked

 Curt Cignetti has an inkling now, what he's up against. At least you figure he does if he's smart, and there's no indication he's not.

What he's up against is culture. 

What he's up against began in 1967, and pretty much ended there. For one wacky, dazzling fall, Indiana University was a football school. For one dazzling, wacky fall, football got out from under the planet-sized shadow of basketball in Bloomington, and everyone knew who Harry Gonso was and John Isenbarger and Jade Butcher, and snowy-headed John Pont, too.

And then ...

And then Gonso and Isenbarger and Butcher graduated.

And John Pont moved on.

And Bob Knight came to B-town, and IU built him a swanky new lab (Assembly Hall) to work his magic, and Indiana became a basketball school again, forever and amen.

Well, to heck with that, Cignetti says.

He came to Bloomington pledging to remind everyone IU was once a football school, too, and could be again. He talked big and swaggered bigger and brought in a whole bunch of new, exciting players, and said the days when IU got pushed around in Memorial Stadium were done. And all the people said "Amen!"

And then ...

And then Cignetti rolled out his new team, and it was indeed exciting and aggressive and fearless, especially on defense. The Hoosiers plain knocked the slobber out of poor Florida International, and all the people ... um, all the people ...

Left at halftime. Same as ever.

Oh, not all the people left, but the student section -- the heart and soul of any college football crowd -- emptied out. Went back to tailgating, just like always. And Cignetti got his inkling that (as Clarence said in "It's A Wonderful Life") this wasn't gonna be so easy.

He acknowledged as much at the top of week, noting the halftime evacuation and saying there was still work to do to turn football Saturdays into a happening in B-town. Mind you, he surely understood this walking in the door; only a dope would believe Memorial Stadium instantly could become The Shoe in Columbus or the Big House in Ann Arbor or even Ross-Ade Stadium up at Purdue (whose fans did not bail at halftime Saturday as the Boilermakers laminated Indiana State 49-0). And Cignetti's no dope.

It takes time to build a culture. He knows that. 

What he might not have known, at least completely, is that to build a culture in Bloomington you first have to un-build a whole other culture. And it's a culture that's been calcifying for decades.

It's a culture in which everyone shows up on game days and flies their IU flags and wears their IU gear, and tailgates with the best of 'em. And then the game begins and they ... keep on tailgating with the best of 'em. 

Maybe they'll wander into the stadium, eventually. Maybe they'll still be sitting in the parking lot at halftime, chowing down and popping another cold one.

That's IU football.

IU football is everyone getting psyched about Ohio State coming to town, because half of Ohio will come with the Buckeyes, and they all wear red, too. So for once Memorial Stadium will be a sea of red just like, say, Nebraska is for every home game.

IU football is a particular Saturday a good space of years ago, when a decent Illinois team came to town and Indiana lost but, you know, not by a lot. A sportswriter colleague of mine was walking out next to some IU fans, and later he expressed amazement (and a bit of disgust) that they were all talking about how Indiana had put up a noble fight and didn't lose by that much, and that was pretty, pretty OK.

They were happy they only lost by 10 (or whatever it was), my colleague said, or something similar. That's IU football for ya.

And it's what Cignetti is up against. 

A bunch of Ws will help. Regular bowl game appearances will, too. When Indiana's good -- when it takes the Bucket from Purdue or beats a Penn State or scares the bejabbers out of a Michigan or an Ohio State -- the fans come and they stay and Memorial Stadium rocks with their sound, same as anywhere else. 

But it's going to take awhile for that to happen every Saturday. It's going to take awhile before the football becomes the attraction and not the socializing, and before the students stick around and turn Memorial Stadium into Thunderdome, and no one, at the end of the day, leaves happy that Ohio State helped turn the joint into a sea of red, but leaves pissed because Indiana didn't send the Buckeyes home on their shields.

That day will come, Cignetti promises.

And what a great shouting day will it be if it does?

The big chowdown

 I ate two hot dogs on Labor Day (with mustard and diced onion!), and, you know, that felt normal, that felt like America. So in a way I felt closer to the essence of our great nation, the very bedrock of its soul, than perhaps I ever have.

The bedrock of our soul, see, is two guys seeing how many hot dogs they can eat in 10 minutes. 

It's a Netflix live stream of the event on a national holiday.

It's hyping Joey Chestnut, one of the guys, vs. Takeru Kobayashi, the other guy, as if it were, I don't know, Ali vs. Frazier, Napoleon vs. Wellington, Burr vs. Hamilton.

It's stupid, it's awesome, it's traditional American values: Gluttony, conspicuous consumption, ginned-up drama to distract the masses. Chestnut-Kobayashi! The Super Bowl Of Stuffing Your Face! Showdown Of The Chowhounds! Munch Madness!

Oh, it was a hell of a show, all right, not to say the height of American silliness. In this corner, Chestnut, the world champion of that great contradiction in terms, competitive eating. In the other corner, Kobayashi, his longtime Japanese rival who's all but retired now.

It wasn't so much Ali taking on Frazier in Manila as Ali taking on Joe Louis in 1970 or so, when Joe Louis was pushing 60. The results, therefore, were entirely predictable: Joey smoked Takeru 83 dogs to 66, setting a new world record in the process.

And every American's heart swelled with pride.

Or acid reflux. Coulda been that, too.

Karma strikes back

 So, remember when you were a kid, and you started acting up in the grocery store, and your mom went Defcon 1 on you with words that would probably get her arrested today?

If you don't stop crying, I'll give you something to cry about.

Yeah, well. I think Football Karma is playing that one on your Florida State Seminoles right now.

The 'Noles, if you  recall, ran the table last season and then threw a grocery-store fit when the committee hosed them in the College Football Playoff? Jumped Alabama right over them, the committee did, and sentenced the 'Noles to the Orange Bowl.

All of Tallahassee cried and moaned and rent their garments. Complained their 'Noles were too good for the low-rent ACC. Complained, or at least implied, that their unbeaten, untied football team was too good for the sorry-ass Orange Bowl.

Guess we know how Football Karma dealt with that now, don't we?

If you don't stop crying, I'll give you something to cry about.

Boy, howdy did they.

First off, because they couldn't get over being left out of the CFP, half of Mike Norvell's team opted out of the Orange Bowl. And so Georgia obligingly hammered the remains like they were Mayberry Community College, 63-3. 

Then the new season rolled around, and there were the Seminoles sitting right up there in the top ten again in the preseason polls. Off they went to Ireland to kick off things off with a low-rent ACC game against low-rent  Georgia Tech, -- you know, one of those schools for which they were too good now -- and low-rent Tech jumped up and beat them, 24-21.

Ah, but no worries. The Seminoles were still ranked 10th, and coming up on Labor Day they had another crummy conference opponent, Boston College. Who worries about Boston College?

Heck, the Eagles were even less qualified to share a field with mighty Florida State than Georgia Tech. If Tech was low-rent, BC was a van down by the river. The Eagles were no-rent.

And then: Boston College 28, Florida State 13.

So now Florida State has lost its last three games, and the Seminoles are 0-2 in this new season. Not only that, but they're 0-2 in the conference they felt was holding them back when they missed out on the CFP last year.

If you don't quit crying, I'll give you something to cry about.

Apparently someone did.

An Italian job

 Maybe you missed it with everything else going on over the weekend, which is understandable. The attention span fills up fast when you've got people Labor Day-in' and college football college football-in' and the best golfer on the planet (Scottie Scheffler) winning the PGA Tour championship, and an American (Frances Tiafoe) reaching the quarterfinals of the U.S. Open tennis tournament.

Oh, yeah. And throw in Carlos Alcaraz and Novak Djokovic both losing early in the same tournament ... and Chase Briscoe winning one of the oldest prizes in NASCAR (the Southern 500 at Darlington) ... and Alex Palou all but wrapping up his third IndyCar title in four years despite having a car that wouldn't start at the start up in Milwaukee.

All of that happened over the weekend.

Meanwhile, half a world away, so did this: A Frenchman born in Monaco became the king of Italy.

His name is Charles Leclerc and he's been Ferrari's No. 1 driver in Formula One for awhile now, and yesterday, for the second time in five years, he did something for which they erect statuary in Italy: He won the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, out-strategizing the faster McLarens of Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris, who finished second and third.

Ferrari winning the Italian Grand Prix. 

If you're an Italian, you know what that means. And if you're not, you couldn't possibly.

Ferrari winning at Monza, that's Christmas morning in Italy. It's New Year's Eve and Mardi Gras and the Fourth of July and every blowout wedding at which you over-indulged. 

Leclerc did it this time by employing a one-pitstop strategy that jumped him in front of Piastri and Norris, who were on a two-stop schedule. The Ferrari camp was gambling Leclerc's tires would last long enough to keep him in front, and the wager paid off; although his 11-second lead shrunk to 2.6 seconds across the last seven laps, 2.6 seconds and seven laps were enough to light the national party lamp.

"Mamma mia!" Leclerc exclaimed on his radio as he took the checkers.

Ferrari wins in Italy, and the Frenchman gets his lines right. Now that's a day.

Sin City Shazam

 They say there are some killer floor shows in Las Vegas, but, ladies and gents, they ain't seen nothin' like this. Ain't seen nothin' like a football team with decades of lore hanging off it sitting just inside midfield with 18 seconds to play, overtime looming large, maybe we should just run out the clock and get to it ...

Those were your 23rd-ranked USC Trojans last night.

Cut to your LSU Tigers, ranked 13th, and what they might have been saying over there on Brian Kelly's sideline.

Ha! We got 'em now. Not even Jan Garo Tom Dempsey Stenerud could nail the field goal from there.

Eighteen more seconds, boys, and we beat 'em in OT.

Couple more snaps, D, couple more snaps. Just stay semi-conscious and we'll be fine.

And then ...

And then, this: What th-?

Because here was USC quarterback Pat Haden, er, Miller Moss rearing back and chucking the ball down the sideline toward, Lynn Swann, er, Kyron Hudson.

And here was Hudson making a juggling, one-handed circus catch between two LSU defenders for a 20-yard gain.

And here was one of the two defenders getting dinged for targeting, tacking on another 15 yards to the play.

And suddenly USC is at the 8-yard line and all they need is a chippy field goal to win it, but first, let's give the ball to Woody Marks and see if he can get it a couple yards clos-

Wait, what?

Woody is through the crush at the line. He's blowing past one, two, three non-reactive LSU defenders. He's ... in the end zone.

Touchdown, USC. 27-20, USC. And it took all of ten seconds.

Add some lore to USC's overstuffed collection. Call it, I don't know, the Vegas Voila! Or the Sin City Shazam!

Whatever. Any label you hang on it, it was a hell of a finish to the Modelo Vegas Kickoff Classic, even if LSU likely didn't think so. Matter of fact, Kelly was some kind of pissed about it in the postgame, banging his fist on the table and doing his usual Brian Kelly thing, throwing his players under the bus while trying to make it sound like he wasn't throwing his players under the bus.

"We had some guys play their butts off tonight and we're sitting here again, sitting here again talking about the same things!" Kelly griped. "About not finishing when you have an opponent in a position to put them away ... I'm so angry about that I've got do something about it."

By which he meant, he's got to coach 'em up again -- again! -- and better. By which he might or might not have meant: Because they're a bunch of lint-brains who haven't gotten the message even though I, Brian Kelly, have done MY job by telling them over and over about this. 

Maybe that's an unfair read. But it's a read you surely can make.

In any event, Kelly and LSU go back home 0-1, and Lincoln Riley and USC go back home 1-0. And we all got yet another example of why college football is a gazillion kinds of wonderful.

As if we needed any reminders.

What you see ...

 ... is not always what you get. I suppose we should know this by now when Labor Day weekend rolls around and you sit in some sports bar and 9,000 TVs are tuned to 9,000 college football games, most of them cupcake feedings.

Purdue laminating Indiana State over here. Pitt boat-racing Kent State over there. Maryland dog-piling UConn and Ole Miss tenderizing Furman and Alabama, Tennessee, Auburn, Indiana and a bunch of others chowing down on your basic Directional Hyphen kibble.

I don't know what we learned from all that, frankly. I don't even know if Notre Dame is a legit No. 7 team in the country, or is carrying a fake ID the way Notre Dame has so often done in the recent past.

What I do know is this, after ND 23, Texas A&M 13 down in College Station last night: If you want that No. 7 ranking, you're gonna have to fistfight the Irish for it.

What I know is they marched into Kyle Field with Reveille the dog and all of that 12th Man business, and they, well, took care of business. Went barbed-wire-defense-to-barbed-wire-defense with the Aggies all night long. Fell behind, tied it; fell behind again, tied it; took the lead ... lost the lead ... put it away, finally, when the clock got skinny and putting it away in a place like Kyle Field is the hardest.

Tied at 13 with six minutes to play and everything screaming "overtime", the Irish marched 85 yards in eight plays, all but two of them on the ground, then got the six when Jeremiyah Love burst through a seam on the left side and was in the end zone a blink of the eye later. 

That made it 20-13 with less than two minutes to play, and the Irish added a field goal at the end after ruthlessly shutting down A&M's next possession. 

So, 10 points in the last 1:49, on a night when points came dear in as hostile an environment as exists in the college game. That says something, I suppose. It says that even if  the Irish aren't one of those Georgia/Alabama/Ohio State juggernauts yet, they're at least something else.

They're ... gritty. 

Gritty, last night, was winning a game in which they slopped around a lot (11 penalties for 99 yards) and got punished at times by a punishing Aggies "D", until it came time not to slop around and get punished. Gritty was a defense that attacked and attacked and attacked, anchored by a secondary that gave A&M and quarterback Connor Wiegman barely a sniff. Stole two of Wiegman's throws, broke up some others, forced him into a 12-of-30 passing night.

Gritty was Marcus Freeman saying "Screw it" and going for it twice on fourth-and-short on his side of the field. And it was quarterback Riley Leonard, who kept going down and bouncing up and making plays, throwing for 158 yards while running for 63 more on 11 carries notable primarily for their bullheadedness.

He's never going to be a Caleb Williams or Jayden Daniels, or even a Terry Hanratty or Joe Montana. But he won't have to be if he can keep handing the ball to Love and Jadarian Price, who spearheaded a running game that averaged nearly six yards per carry and ground-pounded A&M for 198 yards on 34 attempts.

Thirty-four running plays; 30 passes. Pretty Holtz-ian stuff, that.

All of which is to say these Irish are going to be a lot more blue-jeans-and-tees than tuxedos most of the time, and that sometime this fall someone likely will beat them. Maybe a couple of someones. This despite the fact the yappers in the ABC booth were already pumping the usual helium into the Notre Dame balloon last night, looking at the schedule and declaring that, by golly, the Irish could run the table and be right there in the mix for the national title.

Way too early for that sort of wild talk. It is, remember, Labor Day weekend.

When we Labor to decipher Big Deal U. vs. Whatsamatta U. When What It All Means must wait for another weekend, another game, another Saturday in the sun.