Your PSA for today

Thinking this morning of Arnold Horshack from "Welcome Back Kotter", but not because my mind is a strange place cluttered with non sequiturs and random bits of esoterica.

(OK, so not totally because of that).

No, I'm thinking of Arnold Horshack because I'm thinking of NASCAR, which right now is playing the Horshack role in our grand cavalcade of sports.  Remember the way Arnold used to wildly wave his hand and yelp "Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!" to get Mr. Kotter's attention?

That's kinda NASCAR right now.

It's waving its hand and "Oh-oh-oh-oh"-ing because Sunday in Martinsville the last spots were filled in its playoff Final Four, and it wants someone to notice. The four drivers racing for the Nextel Cup crown are defending champion Ryan Blaney, Joey Logano, Tyler Reddick and William Byron.

Byron got in because Christopher Bell, with whom he was tied, did the Ross Chastain thing to pass him late in the race. The Ross Chastain thing, to refresh your memory, is smacking the wall intentionally and then riding around it to build momentum. NASCAR banned that stunt after Chastain did it two years.

So Bell was docked for an illegal pass, and Byron squeaked into the Final Four. Which of course got everyone arguing because it's NASCAR and arguing is its meat and drink.

Bell claimed he only rode the wall to avoid hitting Bubba Wallace, and it was pure coincidence it enabled him to pass Byron. Other folks, including NASCAR officials, said that was a lot of horse pucky. And so on, and so forth.

Anyway ...

Anyway, it's Byron, Blaney, Logano and Reddick for the marbles next Sunday in Phoenix. I have no idea who the favorite might be, because as with most of the country, NASCAR disappears from my radar when the NFL swaggers onto the stage.

I will say this, though: If Reddick wins, it would be a hell of a story.

Not only is he competing in the winner-take-all final race for the first time, he drives for 23XI Racing. That's Michael Jordan's team. So there's a 1-in-4 chance MJ could become the first man ever to win six NBA titles and a NASCAR championship.

Which, you know, would be sorta cool. It would make MJ and Joe Gibbs a sorta cool matched set, Gibbs having won both Super Bowl and NASCAR rings as Washington's head coach and Joe Gibbs Racing's owner.

Your Public Service Announcement for today, Blobophiles.

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 9

 And now this week's edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the master-of-illusion Blob feature of which critics have said "Look! First it's there and then it's not! How wondrous!", and also, "Wondrous my a**, the only illusion is how he gets away with this garbage every week":

1. "Woo-hoo! Jameis Winston is the Man!" (Browns fans, after Winston threw for 334 yards and three touchdowns in the Browns' 29-24 upset of the Ravens last week)

2. "Crap! Jameis Winston is still Jameis Winston!" (Also Browns fans, after Winston threw three picks in the Browns' 27-10 loss Sunday to the Chargers)

3. Meanwhile, the Bears!

4. Lost to the Cardinals, 29-9, as the Greatest Rookie Quarterback In History, Caleb Williams, was sacked six times and couldn't generate a touchdown for the Bears offense)

5. "Hey, where's my offensive line? I was told there would be an offensive line." (Caleb Williams)

6. "But ... but ... we were 2-0 once!" (The New Orleans Saints who lost their seventh straight game -- to the Panthers, for heaven's sake! -- to fall to 2-7, costing head coach Dennis Allen his job)

7. "But ... but ... I had 'em 2-0!" (Dennis Allen)

8. In other news, the Patriots, Dolphins, Cowboys, Giants, and Raiders all lost again. But the J-E-T-S Jets-Jets-Jets beat the Texans, prompting Jets fans to once again declare "We're goin' to the Super Bowl!"

9. "Dude, we're 3-6." (The J-E-T-S Jets-Jets-Jets)

10. "OK, so we're goin' to second place in the AFC East, then!" (Jets fans)

One Average Joe, with questions

 Wait, so ... what was the point of this again?

The Indianapolis Colts use their Great Big Quarterback Pick on a 21-year-old with limited college experience and "project" screaming from every pore, and then they make the horrendous decision to throw him into the deep end right off the jump.

Then the GBQP, Anthony Richardson, gets hurt, and hurt again, and winds up sitting out most of his rookie season. Which means his second season is actually an RSE (Rookie Season Extended).

Then the Colts pull the plug on him after just 10 starts (which makes you think they're already giving up on him even though they say they aren't), and decide 86-year-old Joe Flacco (OK, 39-year-old Joe Flacco) is their best option going forward.

Then Joe Flacco puts up zero touchdowns, one interception and a "meh" quarterback rating of 63.7 in a 21-13 loss to the Vikings.

So again: What was the point of all this?

And by that I don't just mean benching the alleged future of your franchise for Average Joe, who at 86 (39) is not even the present of anything, let alone the future.

I mean, what was the point of drafting a project like AR and deciding he was QB1-ready when he clearly was not, then benching him after 10 starts because ...

Well, what? Because you're a .500 football team that stands a better chance of making the playoffs with Average Joe at quarterback? And what then?

Then you lose a wild-card game and exit stage right. That's what then.

This is not intended as a swipe at Flacco, who after all does have a Super Bowl ring. But he's not going to save your season. He's not going to take you to another Super Bowl even if he might still be good enough to get you into the playoffs. 

What. Is. The point? 

Because, listen, now the Colts are in a limboland of their own making. Now they've made the future the past, and the past, the future. Now head coach Shane Steichen stands up there after last night's loss and says Flacco is still his starting quarterback "right now". 

The heck does that mean?

I'll tell you what it means.

It means Chris Ballard 'n' them blew the draft pick you absolutely cannot blow, and they can't bring themselves to admit it.  Eventually they will. Eventually they'll find some way to spin this ... this ... whatever this is.

And the point?

The point is, there is no point. Or at least right now, to quote Shane Steichen.

Family matters

 I wouldn't know sports columnist Marcus Hayes of the Philadelphia Inquirer if he smacked me in the gob with a dangling participle. But I like to think I know a thing or two about sports columnizing, having done it for the better part of 38 years.

What I know is it's your job to occasionally criticize athletes, coaches, administrators and front-office knuckleheads in print. Especially if they've got it coming.

But dragging their family members into it?

Not the job at all. 

This is true no matter how glancing is the mention, especially when one of the family members is no longer with us. It's the surest way to get shoved around by an athlete/coach/administrator/front-office knucklehead, which is apparently what happened to Hayes the other night.

See, Hayes wrote a column, not for the first time, taking 76ers center Joel Embiid to task for his seemingly endless stints on the injury list. And that's OK. It's absolutely in-bounds for a columnist to do that, and it's up to everyone else to decide if he's being fair or not.

Problem is, Hayes mentioned Embiid's brother, who's deceased, and Embiid's son. And that is not OK. 

Now, I don't know in what context Hayes mentioned Embiid's brother and son. But, again, it doesn't matter. You inject a man's (or woman's) family into a piece, you're going to lose the point you're trying to make. And you're going to lose, period.

In Embiid's case, you make him the injured party. You give him carte blanche to ream you out in the locker room (which Embiid did), and you make him a hero for doing so. And if you don't believe me, check out the public reaction when the Sixers duly punish Embiid for putting his hands on Hayes.

Guarantee Embiid gets all the love. And not just because it was one of those bleepity-bleep sportswriters he shoved, speaking as a bleepity-bleep sportswriter myself.

It'll be because Hayes touched that third rail.

Look. I've written about my subjects' family members before. There is a time and place for it. But the time and place is when they're the story in some form or fashion, and when the subject of your piece acknowledges that and willingly talks about them.

But to inject them into a column willy-nilly? Especially one that's expressing a critical point of view?

Bad form. And bad judgment, too, because, again, you make the story about something other than what it was supposed be about. In Hayes' case, about a locker room confrontation with Joel Embiid, and about Embiid's righteous anger.

And the column itself?

Sorry, man. What were you saying again?

Another day, another W

 And now it's a Twilight Zone episode, this Indiana football season.

No, not because the Hoosiers went up to East Lansing yesterday and floor-waxed Michigan State 47-10 in the Old Brass Spittoon game, which most of America and even a healthy chunk of the Hoosier state itself probably didn't know existed. But it does, and now Indiana has the thing, and the more irreverent among us (OK, so me, then) are thinking that between the Old Brass Spittoon and the Old Oaken Bucket, Indiana could use some spiffier trophies.

Anyway, it's not the Hoosiers winning again that turns this into a Twilight Zone episode. Nor is it even that they're 9-0 for the first time in program history.

What makes it a Twilight Zone episode is how ordinary it's become.

As in; "Oh, look, Indiana won again."

As in: "Oh, look, Kurtis Rourke threw four touchdown passes two weeks after having his thumbnail torn off."

As in: "Oh, look, the Hoosiers fell behind for the first time all season and then scored 47 freaking unanswered points, and isn't that the sun rising in the East again?"

Because now Indiana winning football games is every bit as natural an occurrence.

Now the Hoosiers are expected to win. Now everyone has gotten used to the fact they're a real boy, and they win because they have real players, and their No. 13 ranking isn't Monopoly money after all.

What Curt Cignetti has wrought, in just nine games, is an Indiana program that expects to go up to East Lansing and strap 47 on Michigan State, and is in turn expected to, if not exactly do that, at least expected to win.

And, yes, that's a hell of a Twilight Zone episode for a football program with so much beige in its palette.

Fun fact, now that the Hoosiers are 9-0 for the first time ever: Across 137 years of playing football, Indiana is 200 games under .500 (512-712-44). It has lost 58 percent of the games it's played. It has won two conference titles and three bowl games in 137 years.

No wonder its fans and alums became notorious for never making it inside Memorial Stadium from the pre-game tailgate. No wonder the ones who did make it inside became notorious for expressing the following post-game sentiment: "Hey, Illinois only beat us by two touchdowns. That's pretty good."

Now the Hoosiers have Michigan coming next week, and those same fans and alumni fully expect to lay a sheep-shearin' on last season's national champs.

Now the IU alum sitting next to me at the bar last night is seeing the 47-10 score go final, and -- thinking about a certain game in Columbus, Ohio, in three weeks -- saying, "You know, Ohio State is beatable."

An Indiana guy is saying that.

Same sort of IU guy who used to be satisfied with losing by only a couple scores.

And now here comes Rod Serling, cigarette smoldering between his fingers, regarding us solemnly from beneath those sinister eyebrows.

Meet the Indiana Hoosiers, a football team for whom losing has always been as instinctive as breathing. But now a man named Curt Cignetti has arrived on campus from a tiny school in Virginia, and something remarkable is about to happen: The Hoosiers are not only going to win, but everyone will soon start EXPECTING them to win. Tonight's sojourn into the gridiron section of the Twilight Zone ...

Right?

Casualties

 North Side High School will play another football game tonight -- maybe the last of its season against undefeated Concord in Class 5A sectional play -- and that is normal, that is everyday, that is Friday night lights and American autumn at its most elemental.

The Legends, however, will be missing one of their own. And that, too, regrettably, is as normal as those Friday night lights, and an America not just for autumn but for all seasons.

The missing Legend, see, died of a gunshot wound to the chest 13 days ago.

It happened at a Halloween party.

The deceased was a North Side athlete who arrived packing a gun, forced his way into the suburban home where the party was being held, and began blazing away until another partygoer pulled out his gun and shot the shooter.

This according to the police report. This from the officers who arrived that night to find a war zone, with one North Side student dead and nine others wounded.

And how many times have we seen this?

How many shootouts at the OK Corral or a Halloween party or a supermarket or an elementary school does it take before we become numb to it, before it becomes just part of the day-to-day American tapestry?

Before, in other words, it becomes normal?

I've got news for you, or perhaps not news.

We passed that mile marker a ways back.

Normal in America now is children shooting children at a Halloween party, and grief counselors at high schools, and looking up at Walmart and seeing some GI Jethro with an AR-15 on his back. 

It's form-letter thoughts and prayers from politicians who apparently think this should  be normal, and from at least one vice-presidential candidate who says, well, yeah, that's just America now, and we just need to get used to it.

It's road rage that turns into a shooting gallery because of course both the principals are carrying  ... and hysterical cries of "They're comin' for our guns!" whenever someone suggests maybe we ought to make it a little harder for children to turn a party into the Earps vs. the Clantons ... and more thoughts and prayers, thoughts and prayers, thoughts and prayers.

And body counts, body counts, body counts.

The Blob doesn't have a lot of articles of faith, but one of them has always been that we get the country we deserve in a democratic republic. And so, yes, this is apparently the country we deserve, because we keep electing representatives who at the very least are comfortable with it. And who think it's perfectly normal for GI Jethros to patrol the frozen food aisle with military-grade weaponry, and for the average Joe or Josephine to stockpile enough firepower to outfit a battalion of Marines.

And why do they think it's normal?

Because it is.

Because tonight there will be a high school football game, and maybe there'll be a moment of silence and maybe not, and someone will win and someone will lose. And in another town and another place, children will shoot children again, and God bless America.

Because someone sure needs to.