Grim flashback

 Remember the names, first of all. Remember the hopes, the dreams, the wobbly first strides. Remember the first Salchows or axels or sit-spins, and how every turn of the blade looked like a future that was just beginning to show itself.

Remember their names.

Their names were Jinna (Han) and Spencer (Lane) and Olivia (Ter) and Alexandr (Kirsanov).

Their names were Jin (Han) and Christine (Lane) -- Jinna's and Spencer's mothers - and Evgeni (Shishkova) and Vadim (Naumov.)

They were teenagers and their parents and their coaches. They were young figure skaters with their lives spread out before them, and those were guiding those lives -- including a couple who had been where the kids wanted to go, and came back to show them the way 

 That was Shishkova and Naumov, coaches now, competitors then. Three decades ago, when their world was young, too, they won the pairs world championship and skated in two Winter Olympics.

It was a life on ice, and it ended abruptly in the icy Potomac. A life on ice, gone between one eyeblink and the next on a clear January night that promised no such fate.

Shishkova and Vadim and 62 others were aboard American Airlines flight 5342 Wednesday night when it collided with an Army helicopter and went down just shy of Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Washington, D.C. They were on final approach when it happened. They were enroute from Wichita, Kan., where Han and Lane had just competed in the U.S. Figure Skating Championships, and with the other young skaters had been participating at a U.S. Figure Skating developmental camp.

There were no survivors. 

The death toll was 67, including the three soldiers aboard the helicopter.

It was the first commercial air collision in the United States in 16 years.

Fourteen of the 67 victims were members of the figure skating community; six of those (the Hans and Lanes and Shishkova and Naumov) were affiliated with the Skating Club of Boston.

"Skating is a very close and tight-knit community," SCB executive director Doug Zeghibe said. "These kids and their parents, they're here at our facility in Norwood, six, sometimes even days a week. It's a close, tight bond.

"This will have long-reaching impacts for our skating community."

Long-reaching impacts.

And here of course I'm thinking of another plane crash on approach, in the wooded hills around Huntington, W.Va., 55 years ago come November. I'm reaching even further back than that, to yet another plane crash on approach in Brussels, just 17 days shy of exactly 64 years ago.

The first crash killed the entire Marshall University football team. The second, which happened on Feb. 15, 1961, killed the entire U.S. figure skating team, which was headed to Prague for the world championships.

Hollywood told Marshall's story in "We Are Marshall," which starred Matthew McConaughey and chronicled how the tragedy nearly tore a community and its university apart, and which left an empty space both remember to this day. The plane crash in Brussels left just as empty a space -- an entire national team, gone in an instant -- and reverberates now, six-and-a-half decades later, with every body pulled from the Potomac.

People say the flashbacks that ricochet down the years most vividly usually aren't the ones about sunny days and blue skies. The vivid ones are the ones that wake us at night with a scream  in our throats. Trauma sticks with us more than triumph, surprise, surprise. That's life -- which sucks and then you die, and all that.

Those flashbacks are just beginning of those left behind by what happened this week. There will be hard days ahead, and harder nights. And it probably goes without saying (though I will) that our oafish Felon in Chief made it no easier with his oafish blame game yesterday, during which he gibberish-ed about Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg and DEI and dwarfism in the control towers and I don't know what all.

Just what those left behind wanted to hear, no doubt, while their loved ones were still being pulled from the water. But then it's always been about the Felon for the Felon, and how he thinks we care how many baldly phony points he can rack up on his dartboard of endless grievance.

Know what, though?

To hell with him. I'll just do what we should all do where the Felon is concerned, which is ignore him. I'll focus instead on the tragedy of all this, and how often it seems to reach out of the past to again become the present. 

How its echoes never really die, but only wait for their moment to sound again.

Pro Bowl time!

 Today the NFL's greatest players, or rather their stand-ins, congregate in Orlando, Fla., for four days of running and throwing and whatever else passes for the Pro Bowl these days. The stand-ins will have a great time avoiding groin pulls and the like. The rest of us ...

Well. It's less than two weeks before pitchers and catchers report, is all I have to say about that.

The Pro Bowl, after all, has long outlived whatever usefulness it had, and in fact has so long outlived it no one can actually remember said usefulness. It's not even in Hawaii anymore, so we don't get to see snarly old football coaches wearing leis and Hawaiian shirts -- which was the highlight of the event, because it was like seeing George Patton in a tutu. Or Napoleon in a Speedo.

And here's the thing: It's not even a football game anymore.

Instead, the weekend culminates Sunday with a flag football game between the AFC stand-ins and the NFC stand-ins. This is just a sissified step above touch football, which is what half of America thinks the NFL is anyway when Patrick Mahomes is playing. It turns the Pro Bowl into the powderpuff game high school cheerleaders used to play the week of homecoming. 

Or perhaps more accurately: It turns the weekend into Field Day.

Remember Field Day? It happened the last week (or the last day) of classes in elementary school, when teachers were out of ideas for how to keep their amped-for-summer pupils from literally climbing the walls. So they took the little terrors outside and had them run races and throw balls and I don't know what-all in hopes of wearing them out.

Seems to me that's what the Pro Bowl is now. 

It's Field Day, except for multi-millionaires who want to keep their market value up. Risk their next contract in a football game no one cares about? Please. Talk to my attorney, Coach.

Anyway, since the Pro Bowl is now Field Day or something like it, the Blob has some ideas along that line. Activities, if you will, that fit the motif:

* Beanbag Toss

Contestants try to throw as many beanbags as possible through a clown's mouth. Just for laughs they can paint the clown so he looks like NFL commissioner Roger Goodell.

*  Fat Kid Race

For offensive linemen only.

* Freeze Tag

In which anyone who's tagged must freeze until no one is left. For extra fun, contestants may take a Magic Marker and draw Snidey Whiplash 'staches, big-ass eyebrows and "I Suck" on the frozen.

* Hide-and-Seek

Pro Bowl stand-ins try to find where the players actually chosen for the Pro Bowl are hiding. Best guess: Not in Orlando.

*  Pin The Tail On The Donkey

Loses some of its appeal when Goodell refuses to be the donkey.

And last but not least ...

* Dunk Tank

 Mahomes and Travis Kelce take turns insulting the contestants ("Look who's in the Super Bowl again, losers!"; "Taylor Swift is hot as hell! Too bad you'll never know!") until someone hits the bull's eye and dumps them in a vat of icy water.

(Postscript: Mahomes catches pneumonia and can't play in the Super Bowl. The Chiefs lose. Their attorneys pin a lawsuit on the donkey, er, Roger Goodell.)

Small victories

 Comes now the news that the United States Air Force, having faced an epic raft of doo-doo for expunging basic training lessons on the Tuskegee Airmen and Women's Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs) during World War II, has decided to reinstate those lessons.

("What does this have to do with sports, Mr. Blob?" you're saying now.)

(Nothing. It has to do with history and the attempted eradication of same, another of the Blob's passions. Those who checked in expecting to see Super Bowl takes may now leave the room. Don't forget your hall pass.)

Where was I again?

Oh, yeah. The Tuskegee Airmen. Women fliers. The eradication, or at least diminishment, of sizeable chunks of our history.

The Air Force, see, initially pulled videos on the aforementioned in response to the Felon-in-Chief's across-the-board ban on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives.  Apparently diversity, equity and inclusion are un-American concepts, despite the fact America is and always has been a polyglot nation. Who knew?

Anyway, the Felon (and his faithful MAGA suck-ups) decided diversity, equity and inclusion had to go in their America. This tracks with their general attitude about "DEI hires", the sneering assumption they seem always to make when a woman or a person of color winds up in a position for which the Faithful Suck-Ups deem them unqualified.

Well, phooey on that. There's a new sheriff/gangster/jailbird in town, by god. And that's why the Felon and his suck-ups have replaced the former Secretary of Defense -- a black four-star general and Silver Star recipient named Lloyd Austin -- with Pete Hegseth, a white man with an apparent drinking and horndog problem who's never held a rank above major.

I suppose it would be unseemly here to refer to ol' Pete, in the same sneering tone of condescension favored by the suck-ups, as a "White Guy hire". But what the hell, I've never been accused of being seemly, so I will.

But back to history, and the backdoor way the new regime's DEI ban makes it permissible (advertently or not) to erase and/or whitewash it.

State and public officials of a similar mindset have been using "DEI" and "CRT" (Critical Race Theory) as cusswords for awhile now, despite the fact the latter isn't being taught in any of their children's classrooms. As the Air Force's actions reveal, the new zeitgeist will only encourage these folks. And while I may be guilty of the same fear-mongering the Felon and his suck-ups so artfully deploy, I do wonder how warped will be the history the next generation will be taught as a result.

Already, out in Oklahoma, the state superintendent of schools decreed students can only be taught about the 1923 burning of Tulsa's prosperous black district so long as no one mentions race -- which of course was the only thing it was about. But that would be "divisive", so, nyet.

Meanwhile, here in Indiana ("The Part Of Mississippi That Isn't Actually In Mississippi") I wonder how much the Felon's regime will affect, for instance, the teaching of Indiana history. In my day we learned only that William Henry Harrison was the father of our state, but not how he became the father of our state -- i.e., by playing divide-and-conquer with the indigenous peoples there to swindle them out of huge tracts of land, against the explicit wishes of President James Madison.

That's part of his story, too, for better or worse, and therefore part of ours. History, as has been noted by people far wiser than the guy driving this sentence, is messy and non-linear. This is especially true of American history, which is not a single story but many stories, each as much a part of the national (or state) mosaic as the others. It is, well, diverse.

Which in the Felon's America is an obscenity, of course. And that makes the small victory over the attempted erasure of the Tuskegee Airmen and WASPs a significant one nonetheless.

It tells us that in America, no matter how unrecognizable it becomes, overreaching will get your hand smacked. May it always be so.

Assembly Hell

 Maybe this will close the book on Mike Woodson, this mess of a botched W under those five banners that look as ancient as Stonehenge these days. It sure feels that way -- although, let's face it, it's felt that way before.

I'm thinking now of that humiliation against Illinois a week or so ago, a 25-point crater job that for more most of the night wasn't even that close. Boos and cries of "Fire Woodson" followed the Indiana Hoosiers off the floor that night, and, yeah, it felt like the end of another IU error.

But yesterday?

Yesterday was worse.

Yesterday was worse, because a good Maryland team was in town for a game Indiana desperately needed to plump up its resume, and the Hoosiers had it right on their racquet with 38 seconds to play. And then ...

And then, they didn't. Then, for want of a better term, they Woodson-ed it up.

In those last 38 seconds, Maryland scored five points to zippo for Indiana, and flat-out stole the thing. Stole it because Trey Galloway missed the front end of a one-and-one -- spotty free-throw shooting, along with much else, has been a hallmark of Woodson's regime -- with a handful of seconds to play and the Hoosiers up 78-76. Stole it because, with two fouls to give, Indiana unaccountably failed to foul on Maryland's next possession, which ended with Rodney Rice dropping a 3-pointer down the throat to give the Terrapins a 79-78 lead with 5.9 seconds left.

It was Rice's fifth triple of the game on seven attempts. The last guy you'd want on the arc with the ball in his hands and the clock getting skinny, and yet there he was.

After that ...

Well, after that, chaos. Indiana called time. Woodson hurriedly tried to run in some subs, Luke Goode and Mackenzie Mgbako for Anthony Leal and Oumar Ballo. That scrambled whatever inbounds play Indiana had cooked up, with the result that Myles Rice ran to the wrong place on the floor and wound up hoisting a desperation air ball as the buzzer sounded.

And Assembly Hall abruptly became Assembly Hell.

The "Fire Woodson!" cries started up again from a crowd that, ominously, was not capacity. The students, spoiled brats that they are, led the chant and booed the team off the floor. Everything about it all reeked of disorganization, indecision, a steady unraveling.

"Yes, we were under the impression we were supposed to foul, and unfortunately we didn't," Leal said in the postgame.

"Under the impression"? The hell does that mean?

And then, of the final timeout ...

"I think we were trying to run a play, but then the substitutions kind of got everybody confused a little bit," Rice said.

He thinks they were trying to run a play? Thinks? The hell does THAT mean?

Holy guacamole. And all of the above isn't even the worst part.

The worst part is, the Hoosiers have now lost four of their last five, three by nine points or more, and in four days they enter the howling cauldron that is Mackey Arena.

Where Matt Painter has figured out a rotation that works, and where consequently the Boilermakers have won eight of their last nine games -- seven of them by double digits, and six of them by 18 or more points.

Friday night, in a clash between two of the top three teams in the Big Ten, they crushed  Michigan by 27. Forced 22 turnovers and made 14 steals. Harassed the Wolverines into 37 percent shooting. Turned it over just six times themselves.

That's who Indiana gets next.

But, hey. At least it won't be in Assembly Hell.

The Great (Non)-Conspiracy continues

I watched a terrific football game between two terrific teams last night, but apparently I was just hallucinating. See, I missed the part where Joe Zebra ran for two scores and threw for another, Jimmy Zebra caught six passes for 85 yards and another score, and Buddy Bill Zebra ran for 64 yards and a touchdown on almost four yards per carry.

Apparently it was the Zebras, not Patrick Mahomes, Xavier Worthy and Kareem Hunt, who did all of that last night in leading the Kansas City Chiefs to their third straight AFC title. Also they played great defense when they had to, being two-way Zebras.

Score it another major heist for the Chiefs in Arrowhead Stadium, where they robbed the Buffalo Bills 32-29 in the AFC championship. My loss, because I missed all that while watching the the two best quarterbacks in football match one another heroic for heroic.

On the Kansas City side, Mahomes was Mahomes, throwing for 245 yards and a score and running for 43 yards and two more scores on 11 carries -- including the 10-yard dash and pass to Justin Watson for the two-point conversion that got the Chiefs the lead back in the fourth quarter.

And on the Buffalo side?

Josh Allen was Josh Allen, your presumptive league MVP, who threw for 237 yards and two touchdowns -- including the 4-yard pass over two defenders to Curtis Samuel in the back of the end zone, on fourth-and-goal, to tie the game again with 6:15 to play.

Hell of a play. Hell of a game, a time-capsule game, an instant-classic game.

Of course, that's if you leave out the part where the Bills got Ponzi-schemed by Joe, Jimmy and Buddy Bill Zebra.

According to the Great Conspiracy believers, the game didn't turn on anything Mahomes or Allen or anyone else did; it turned on two 50-50 calls that both went the Chiefs' way. The first was Xavier Worthy's catch-or-not-catch he pried away from a Bills defensive back on the way to the ground. The second was a critical fourth-and-one keeper by Allen that the Chiefs either did or didn't stop.

You can certainly make a case that the officials got both calls wrong, depending on which angle you viewed them from. On the Worthy play, it looks from one angle as if he had the ball tucked when he hit the ground; from another, it looks like the ball wasn't close to being secured.

The Allen play, same deal. From one angle it looks like he didn't make the first down; from the other, it looks like he did. Happens all the time in football.

However, because the officials ruled in the Chiefs' favor on both plays, and upheld the original calls upon review, the howling started up again on social media.  The NFL is rigged! The fix was in! The entire enterprise is as crooked as our Felon in Chief! 

More rational minds would point out that neither call decided the outcome; Mahomes and Allen and the Chiefs and the Bills did that. More rational minds would also point out that continually claiming the NFL is just handing out wins to the Chiefs like candy does a huge disservice to an impeccable organization by implying everyone in it is a massive fraud.

That is, of course, ridiculous if not out-and-out delusional. It throws mud on Andy Reid, one of the greatest coaches in NFL history, and on Mahomes, one of the great clutch players of this or any era. And it diminishes Travis Kelce, Worthy, many others -- including Steve Spagnuolo, the genius mind behind Chris Jones and the Chiefs' defense.

Two weeks from now, all of them will get a shot at a Super Bowl three-peat. No other team in league history has ever done that. If the Chiefs do it, it'll be time to stop saying they're just lucky, or that Joe and Jimmy and Buddy Bill Zebra have gotten them where they are. It'll be time to start acknowledging greatness when we see it, because not doing so will only make you look like the biggest fool walking.

If you aren't already.

A loogie into the wind

 The football gods are screaming at me.

Right now they're sitting up there in their well-appointed God Cave, yelling like fiends, baying at me like a bluetick hound. Chips and salsa and the bones of dead chicken wings are raining down on my head. They're even throwing the blue cheese.

And what have I done to deserve this?

I've convinced myself the Buffalo Bills are going to win today.

I've convinced myself to pick against Patrick Mahomes, which experience and savvy and logic says you never do -- especially not in Arrowhead, and certainly not in the playoffs.

"Foolish human!" the football gods howl, chucking another gnawed wing at me.

Well, yes. I am. 

I am, because I know every time it's Mahomes and the Chiefs on their playoff menu, the Bills fold like laundry. OK, so maybe not fold, exactly, but somehow lose even when they play really, really well.

All-time, they're 2-4 against the Chiefs in the playoffs. Against Mahomes, they're 0-3, with all three losses coming in the last four years. 

In 2021, Mahomes and the Chiefs beat them 38-24 in the AFC championship game. In 2022, the Bills lost 42-36 in the divisional round. And last year -- this time in Buffalo -- the Chiefs won 27-24, again in the divisional round.

They can't beat 'em, these Bills. They just can't.

And yet ...

And yet, I have this weird feeling that somehow it's going to be different this time.

Maybe it's because Josh Allen is having an MVP season, a Superman season, while Mahomes has struggled behind an O-line that's occasionally been the Seven Blocks of Grated Parmesan. Maybe it's because Allen and the Bills are too good to lose to the Chiefs every single time when it's counted. And maybe it's because they beat Mahomes and Co. 30-21 back in November.

Of course, that was in Buffalo.

And this is in Arrowhead.

And everyone KNOWS the NFL has paid off the refs to make sure not a glove is laid on dear Patrick, and also to make sure the Chiefs get to the Super Bowl again because the storyline -- the Chiefs are going for the first three-peat in Roman Numeral history -- is just too juicy not to have happen.

Me?

I rarely if ever buy the paying-off-the-refs thing, and I'm not buying it this time. I don't believe the refs beat the Texans last week in Arrowhead; I believe the Texans did by letting Travis Kelce run wild and free through their secondary like a gazelle bounding across the savannah. I believe there are too many variables in any game to make it likely a game turns on a couple of lousy/favorable/outrageously biased calls.

All of which I think happens these days in the NFL. Game officials are human, after all. They're also, let's face it, just plain godawful at times.

But I never saw an NFL zebra arrive at a game in a Gulfstream 5 wearing half-a-mill on his wrist. So if they're being bought off, whoever's doing it is getting them for cheap.

Anyway ...

Anyway, I think the Bills get it done tonight. I know, it's a big honkin' loogie into the wind. But I'm a firm believer that when it's a guy's time it's his time, and this sure looks like Josh Allen's time to me.

As for the other game, I'm picking Washington over Philly for the same reason. Also because getting to the Super Bowl would rub salt in sleazy former owner Daniel Snyder's wounds, and I'm not a good enough Christian not to root for that.

Ouch. Man, those chicken bones hurt.

Yeti? Nyeti

The Utah Yetis.

How cool would that have been, no pun intended?

A hockey team named for a mythical snow creature in a state where it snows a lot sounded like a hand-in-glove fit for the Utah Hockey Club of the NHL, but, nah. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office put the kibosh on it the other day, rejecting "Utah Yetis" because there likely would be "confusion" for consumers with other companies and brands that use the name.

"'Confusion'?" you're saying now. "The hell does that mean, Mr. Blob?"

Hey, don't ask me. I'm just your friendly neighborhood conduit for information. Interpreting that information is above my pay grade.

This is especially true when I have no earthly idea what the USPTO is talking about.

First of all, as a consumer, I'm at a loss to name what other "companies and brands" are identified as "Yeti." So I computer-searched it -- thereby violating the Blob's Prime Directive, which states "No research allowed unless absolutely necessary, and then only the bare minimum."

What I found was an outfit out of Texas called YETI Holdings Inc., which specializes in "outdoor recreation products" such as coolers, drinkware and the like. They've been around for 19 years, and apparently are really big with folks who like to hunt and fish and tromp around in the wilderness and stuff.

"But what does that have to do with a hockey team, Mr. Blob?" you're asking now.

Beats me. How consumers would get an NHL team confused with coolers and drinkware is a mystery in this precinct, too. Seems pretty easy to distinguish one from the other, but what do I know?

I'm still trying to figure out how the Detroit Red Wings are allowed to be called the Red Wings when consumers might confuse them with Red Wing shoes. Or how New York gets away with calling its team the Rangers and not have people say "Hey, look, a hockey team named for Ranger Boats!"

Sounds stupid when you put it like that, of course. But stupider than thinking people will confuse the Utah Yetis with coolers?

I think not.

I think the USPTO is doing us a huge disservice here, if only because the marketing possibilities would have been endless. And how about mascots?

You could dress someone in a white furry suit with big googly eyes and call him "Freddy." Freddy the Yeti, popping up out of nowhere (like a real yeti!) behind the opposing team's bench or up in Section 606 or driving the Zamboni, or suddenly showing up in the penalty box.

Unfortunately, that's never gonna happen now. Too bad. Guess the Utah Hockey Club should have suggested a different name -- like, say, the Utah Blizzard.

Ah, crap. Dairy Queen's on the line.

Today in a**holes

I don't know if tennis player Alexander Zverev is going to win the Australian Open men's singles title this weekend, because I'm frankly not that invested in tennis these days. But I do know what's he already won.

Best Diplomat.

And, no, before you ask, the Australian Open does not have a Best Diplomat award. Not so far as I know, anyway. 'Course it's the Aussies, so you can never be sure.

Anyway, if the Open does have such an award, he gets it, after winning an 81-minute first set against 24-time Grand Slam winner Novak Djokovic in the men's semis yesterday. The match abruptly ended at that point when Joker went to the net, congratulated Zverev and then gathered his things and retired from the match.

This was not because he decided he didn't want to play anymore. It was because he couldn't, on account of a muscle tear in his left leg that was as heavily bound as possible but wasn't enough to allow him to continue. And as a guy who's been playing the game professionally for almost a quarter century, he would know.

And how did the fans react to this?

Not by respecting his judgment and giving him the warm applause a great champion deserved. Oh, hell, no.

Nah. They booed him. Booed him right off the court.

Now, the Blob has written before about fans behaving badly. There's a lot of material there, after all. As a friend of mine is fond of saying, "Fans are a**holes."

I won't go that far. But I will say they certainly can be a**holes, and way too frequently.

Which gets us back to why Zverev wins Best Diplomat of the Open.

That happened when, during the on-court post-match interview, he directly addressed the ... well, the a**holes.

"The very first thing I want to say is, please, guys, don't boo a player when he goes out with injury," Zverev said. "I know that everybody paid for tickets and wants to see hopefully a five-set match. He has won this tournament with an abdominal tear, won this tournament with a hamstring injury. So please show some respect."

Note, if you will, that Zverev twice said "please." Note, also, that it was two times more than he should have used that word. Which means he was being, yes, diplomatic.

A less diplomatic man, after all, might have phrased it differently:

"Listen, you a**holes, knock off the booing. I don't care how much you paid to get in here, you're watching perhaps the greatest player in history trying to play with a muscle tear in his leg, so show some damn appreciation.  You ever have a muscle tear in you leg? No, you haven't, because if you had, you'd be curled up in a ball crying like a puppy, not trying to play a Grand Slam semifinal. So shut the hell up, jerks."

Major props to Zverev for not saying any of that. 

Although it would have been cooler if he did.

Their man

 Everyone knows the one about the New Guy, if they at all pay attention to the arrivals and departures of marquee coaches. The New Guy is always gonna be The Guy.

At least until he's not.

And so we come now to the Chicago Bears getting their New Guy, whom all of Chicagoland is convinced is The Guy. His name is Ben Johnson, he's 38 years old, and what's got the Bear Down crowd high-fiving over their Old Styles is that everyone -- and I mean everyone -- wanted him. 

The offensive coordinator who turned the Detroit Lions into a scoreboard-denting machine was deemed the No. 1 target for NFL teams seeking new head coaches, at least by people who deem such matters. So for the Bears to land him was most un-Bears-like in a refreshingly upbeat way.

"Get ready to be uncomfortable," was Johnson's message to the Bears players at his first news conference. "We're gonna push. We're gonna challenge."

How great was that? And how perfect did the man look standing up there in a Bears-orange tie and a Bears-blue sports jacket with a Bears logo on it?

He looked like a young god, by god. He looked like a winner. He looked like the perfect guy to take Caleb Williams -- who quietly put up superb rookie numbers for a crash site of a team -- to the sometimes mythical next level, and with him the Bears.

"Uh-oh," you're saying now. "We know what's coming next. You're gonna whiz on the parade now, aren't you?"

Um, no. Well, kinda. 

Actually what I'm going to do is remind everyone that once the giddy wears off, reality sets in. And the reality here is Johnson is going to work for the McCaskey Bears, whom past experience tells us could lose a horse race if they were riding Secretariat and everyone else was riding dear old Dobbin. 

Couldn't hit water if they fell out of a boat, as they saying goes. Couldn't swim if they did if they were Michael Phelps. You get the idea.

They are, remember, the brain trust that hired the Two Matts, Nagel and Eberflus. Like Johnson, people thought highly of them as coordinators. And like Johnson, neither had ever been an NFL head coach before.

Johnson, in fact, has never been a head coach at any level. Not at a middle school. Not at a high school. Not as a graduate assistant and tight ends coach at Boston College. Not at first Miami and then Detroit in the NFL.

So this is a step into the unknown for him. Maybe he'll be the next Sean McVay (Rams), Matt Lafleur (Packers), Demeco Ryans (Texans) or Kevin O'Connell (Vikings). Or maybe he'll be Josh McDaniels -- once the Ben Johnson of head coaching candidates, and now back as a coordinator with the Patriots after failing abysmally in the big chair.

It requires a whole different skill set, being a head coach in the NFL. Some guys take to it as if they were born to it. Some guys don't.

A lot of that is determined by the organization that surrounds them. Which is frankly the only reason the Blob is slowing the roll with Johnson.

In a vacuum, he's got everything it takes to be a successful -- youth, energy, smarts, 13 years experience in the NFL. And he seems the perfect fit as the quarterback whisperer for Williams, who in his first pro season passed for more than 3,500 yards, 20 touchdowns and just six interceptions while completing 62.5 percent of his throws.

It was easily the best rookie season for a quarterback in Bears history. And he did it for a 5-12 team that left him running for his life most weekends.

Ben Johnson has a lot to work with, in other words. And if he wasn't capable of that work, half the league wouldn't have wanted him as their head coach.

But it only happens if the McCaskeys and the Bears front office are smart enough to stay the hell out of his way. The track record there ain't good, admittedly. But you know what they say: Hope springs eternal.

Even in the fall, perhaps.

Name games

 Been thinking a bit about our 47th president and his Mad Hatter first couple of days, during which he's signed a series of "executive orders" that reminded me of the Marx Brothers -- which tells you how my mind works, and possibly that of the Felon in Chief.

Remember "Duck Soup", in which Groucho plays a nutcase named Rufus T. Firefly and becomes president of the fictitious country of Freedonia?

I couldn't help thinking the FIC was having a Rufus T. Firefly moment when he decreed the other day that henceforth, just because he said so, the Gulf of Mexico would be known as the Gulf of America. Life imitates art, and all that.

Anyway, this got me to wondering how I, a personage with the me-given right to do so, could just start changing stuff because I feel like it.

For instance, I've decided the Oakland A's and Oakland Raiders shall forever be known as the Oakland A's and Oakland Raiders, no matter how often they move, and to where.

In the same vein, I've also decided to restore the Duluth Eskimos, the Pottsville Maroons and the Canton Bulldogs to the NFL. I mean, if Roger Goodell can decide he wants NFL teams in London, Berlin or (who knows) Madagascar in the near future, I figure all bets are off.

I also decree baseball's National League be renamed the "Los Angeles Dodgers." They own everything else, so why not?

What about the states, you say? Oh, I've got some changes in mind there, too.

Minnesota shall now be called Damn-It's-Cold-Esota, and North and South Dakota will now be known just as "Dakota", because, hell, they're the same place anyway. Ditto North and South Carolina, which together will be rechristened "Sweat-alina."

Texas? That's easy. Texas will now officially be North Mexico, and returned to its rightful owners. 

Mississippi will be declared a failed state and attached to Arkansas, which will say "Why us? Why not Tennessee?  Is it because the Razorbacks upset the Vols this season? It is, isn't it?"

Boston will be renamed "For God's Sake, Man, Take The T, Nobody Wants To Drive In Boston." Chicago will be re-christened The First City, as in, "The First City You Think Of When You Think Of Lousy Sports Teams." Also, "Ward Of The State Of Wisconsin, Especially Green Bay."

Geography? Hey, I've got that covered, too.

The Ohio River, for instance, will now be the Indiana River, because if Ohio can stick its name on a river that flows through several other states, by god so can we. "Rocky" simply doesn't sound right without "Bullwinkle", so the Rocky Mountains will be renamed the Rocky and Bullwinkle Mountains. And Big Sur will henceforth be Big Sir Paul McCartney because I grew up a Beatles fan, so neener-neener-neener.

Of course, the Gulf of Mexico will remain the Gulf of Mexico. No matter what FIC Rufus T. Firefly decides it should be called.

Speaking of Rufus, remember the lyrics to the song with which he introduced himself as the new leader of Freedonia?

The last man nearly ruined this place, he didn't know what to do with it

If you think this country's bad off now, just wait 'til I get through with it. 

Sounds like art imitating life to me.

A lesser loss

 For a few perilous minutes down in Atlanta last night -- OK, so maybe for more than a few -- Notre Dame was what we've grown accustomed to Notre Dame being in these 37 seasons since they were, well, Notre Dame. They were, again, Just Notre Dame.

As in, "Just not good enough." As in, "Just Monopoly money in a big-dollar world." As in, "Just another team with gaudy numbers that's overmatched against the real gaudy programs -- your Alabamas, your Georgias, your Ohio States."

The latter of whom was leading the Fighting Irish 31-7 midway through the third quarter of last night's CFP title game, and looked well on the way to a 45-10, 45-13 blowout.

The latter of whom scored 31 points on five straight possessions after Notre Dame scored first on a novel-length 18-play drive that ate up 9:45 of the first quarter.

The latter of whom ran 44 plays to just 11 for the Notre Dames during that stretch.

Those weren't national championship game numbers. Those were Ohio State vs.  Directional Hyphen Teachers College numbers.

And then ...

And then, the most astounding thing happened: Just Notre Dame became Legit Notre Dame, at least for awhile. It became the Notre Dame that was 14-1 coming in and had peeled off 13 straight wins, almost all by comfortable margins.

First the Irish went 76 yards in 10 plays and scored on Jaden Greathouse's 34-yard catch-and-run. A Riley Leonard-to-Jeremiyah Love added the two-point conversion, and it was 31-15.

Then they recovered an Ohio State fumble, went 70 yards in 12 plays and missed a field goal.

Then, instead of sagging, they shrugged. Forced a four-and-out and went right back to work, going 80 yards in  eight plays to another Leonard-to-Greathouse six, this one from 30 yards. 

A Jordan Faison-to-Beaux Collins bit of trickeration on the two-point, and it was a one-score game, 31-23. With plenty of time left -- 4:15 -- to get that one score.

Alas, it didn't happen. The Buckeyes, clearly the better team, ate up all but 26 seconds of that 4:15 on a 61-yard drive that ended in a field goal. And that was your ballgame, 34-23.

In the final reckoning, the better team gashed the Notre Dame defense for 214 rushing yards -- Quinshon Judkins had 100 of them, plus two scores, on just 11 carries -- and 445 total yards. Jeremiah Smith caught five passes for 88 yards and a touchdown and Emeka Egbuka six for 57 yards against an Irish secondary that had held Penn State's wideouts catch-less in the Orange Bowl.

On the other side of the ball, meanwhile, the Buckeyes' D thoroughly shut down Notre Dame's greatest strength, its running game. The Irish managed just 53 yards on the ground and averaged 2.0 yards per attempt.

And yet ...

And yet, somehow, Marcus Freeman's crew found a way to climb back into it. And yet, they found a way to gash the Buckeyes themselves, with Riley Leonard throwing for 256 yards and two scores and legging it 17 times for 40 yards and another six, and Greathouse catching six of Leonard's throws for 128 yards and those two second-half touchdowns.

They found a way, in other words, not to be Just Notre Dame. Not to be, frankly, some Tall-Hat-No-Cattle imposter crashing the big boys' soiree.

Yeah, the Irish lost. But it was a lesser loss than it could have been, poor compensation though that is. It was a loss that revealed, momentarily, that Freeman's Irish were not Brian Kelly's Irish of 2012 -- when Notre Dame breezed into the BCS title game unbeaten and ranked No. 1,and then got rinsed by second-ranked Alabama, 42-14.

It sounds absurd to say what happened last night for a space of minutes is something Notre Dame can build on, and maybe it is absurd.  But it's more to build than the Irish have sometimes had, and it gives the lie to the assumption, crafted over the almost four decades since Notre Dame stood astride college football, that it simply doesn't have the athletes anymore.

Because if that were true, 31-7 really would have become 45-10 or 45-13.

But 34-23?

Different, it says here. Different.

Da Prediction ...

... in which the Blob wants to side with the loyal sons of Notre Dame, it really does. Really, really.

This is partly because it admits to a shamefully incurable fondness for all that Rockne/Gipper/Four Horsemen stuff, and also because the Loyal Sons, despite their holier-than-thou snootiness, have gone a long time without being able to say "God made Notre Dame No. 1" (speaking of holier-than-thou snootiness). It's also because I can't root against Marcus Freeman, because who the hell can?

Anyway, I want to pick Notre Dame tonight. I want Freeman to outfox Ryan Day. I want the Irish to play slobber-knocker football, and to push Ohio State around like a grocery cart, and I want Riley Leonard to throw for 250 yards and run for another 100 while Jeremiyah Love goes for 180 and three sixes. 

I want all of that.

Unfortunately, I don't think any of it will happen.

What I think will happen instead is the Buckeyes defense will slow down the Irish more than the Irish will slow down the Buckeyes, and Jeremiah Smith or one of the other Buckeye receivers will find a way to break the big one, and Ohio State will win 31-21 or 27-17, something like that. 

This is not because I think the Irish won't make a big play or two themselves, or that the running game that has been their engine all year will be entirely shut down. Or that the defense, their other engine, won't make life as miserable as it can for Smith and Will Howard and the rest of the scarlet-and-gray.

Possibly relevant fact, if you're rooting for the guys in the gold hats: In the win over Penn State, not a single Nittany Lion wideout caught a pass against the Irish secondary. Not one.

Opposing possible relevant fact: Unlike Penn State, Ohio State has the best wide receiver room in college football. Plus that scary defense.

And so ...

And so, Notre Dame will be brave in the attempt, as ever. But the Buckeyes, who've been tearing it up since losing to Michigan, are just better. And just as determined not to be denied.

Sorry, Domer Nation. If it makes you feel better, you may now summon Fair Catch Corby to climb down from his pedestal and kick me in the ass.

I have it coming, after all.

The Great (Non)-Conspiracy

 The meme popped up in the social media swamp shortly after Baltimore tight end Mark Andrews had his Jackie Smith moment last night, dropping a two-point conversion pass that would have forced overtime in  the best of the weekend's divisional playoff games. Instead, Andrews and the Ravens were headed home, and Josh Allen and the Buffalo Bills were moving on to yet another clash of titans against the Chiefs in Kansas City.

 And here came the meme -- or rather, here came only the latest in an avalanche of them.

Maybe you saw it: A photo of a game official, accompanied by the notation that the Bills had just been called for roughing the passer in Kansas City. The joke being, of course, that Bills-Chiefs is a week away.

In any event, it was the latest piece of the obsession we'll call the Great Chiefs Conspiracy,  which has been a hardy perennial since Patrick Mahomes started showing up in the Super Bowl every year (not to mention in every second or third commercial that pops up on the 80-inch Samsung these days). Over-exposure first makes people weary and then makes them crazy, which is how we got to a place where even folks who should know better are lining up for seconds on the latter.

I'm talking Mark Schlereth, former player and now professional analyst. I'm also talking  sports-yap poodle Skip Bayless, although Skippy-Doo is hardly a stranger to goofy pronouncements.

His latest, Schlereth's latest, and half of America's latest is the NFL is rigged because the Chiefs GET ALL THE CALLS. And that's because of TAYLOR SWIFT AND HER SWIFTIES, who somehow have convinced Roger Goodell to LET THE CHIEFS WIN.

The fix is in, in other words. Or, not, if you're of a saner temperament.

Look. No one's denying Mahomes was the beneficiary of a couple of sketchy roughing-the-passer calls the other night against the Texans. He was. So, it should be noted, is every other marquee quarterback in the league. The only conspiracy involved in that is the league wants to protect its most valuable properties.

Or perhaps you've already forgotten the unofficial Thou Shalt Not Touch Tom Brady edict back when No. 12 was playing.

As far as I can remember, there wasn't nearly so much grumbling about conspiracies when Brady and the Patriots showed up in the Big Roman Numeral every year. Perhaps that was because of their sheer undeniable excellence; the Chiefs' excellence, on the other hand, is harder to define. Mostly it's Mahomes magic, a big-play defense and Andy Reid over there drawing up plays in the dirt.

And, of course, paying off the refs from the roll of Benjamins he keeps in the pocket of his Chiefs parka.

Nah, just kidding. Although the Great Chiefs Conspiracy adherents would no doubt believe it.

The idea that game officials are capable of handing out victories on their own is and always has been absurd on its face, but judging from the post-game reactions lots of people buy into it. The Chiefs undoubtedly were aided by some timely flags the other night, as previously noted. But I watched the game, and you know what I didn't see?

I didn't see the officials sacking Texans quarterback C.J. Stroud eight times.

I didn't see an official miss a Texans field goal or get another attempt blocked.

I didn't see an official forget to cover Travis Kelce, who caught seven balls for 117 yards and a touchdown. And I didn't see an official don a No. 15 jersey and throw a dart for that touchdown while flying through the air.

No, sir. That sure looked like Patrick Mahomes doing typically oh-my-God Patrick Mahomes things. Maybe one of the refs magically guided the ball right between the "8" and the "7" on Kelce's chest, but if it happened I missed it.

What I did see is all of the above got the Chiefs home by nine points, 23-14. And the zebras didn't score any of 'em.

Yeah, I know. Hard to believe, right?

Detroit waves ... goodbye*

 (*A riff off the title of a Matt Nathanson song, "Detroit Waves")

So I guess the old saw still cuts true, even centuries on. A million people have said it a million times down the years, and yet the truth of it remains un-blunted.

How does it go again?

There are no guarantees.

Well, hell, no, there aren't.  Not in life, and certainly not in something as random as football.

Which brings us to Washington 45, Detroit 31, and, damn, it hurts to say that if you grew up in the Motor City waiting an eternity for the Lions not to be the Lions anymore. Has it only been a year since the  Honolulu Blue was thisclose to the Super Bowl, leading 24-7 at halftime of the NFC championship game before being overtaken by the 49ers? Has it only been a couple of weeks since they blew through this season 15-2 and secured the top seed in this year's NFC playoffs?

Everyone in town was saying this was the year, finally. Everyone was saying this time the Lions would get to the NFC title game -- come on, they're at home, everyone's got to come to them, no way they're not getting back. Everyone was wearing their Barry Sanders throwbacks and their Herman Moore throwbacks and, what the hell, maybe even their Eric Hipple throwbacks, and looking into flights to New Orleans for the Super Bowl.

And then ...

And then, Washington 45, Detroit 31.

And then, Jayden Daniels, the Commanders' mega-chill rookie, stepping into the Ford Field cauldron and throwing for 299 yards and two touchdowns with zero picks and zero sacks, and legging it 16 times for 51 more yards to boot.

Strapped 31 points on the Lions in the first half, Daniels and Terry McLaurin and Dyami Brown and the rest of the Commanders did. Sent the heavy favorites to the locker room down 10 and presumably in shock. Never looked back.

There are no guarantees.

No, there aren't. Who figures Jared Goff, the imperturbable veteran, would be the one to come apart at the seams -- throwing three picks (including a ruinous pick-six) and losing a fumble besides? Who figures the battered but gritty Lions down seven would fail to lay a finger on the rookie QB? 

Goff hadn't played this poorly since November 10, when the Texans intercepted him five times and somehow the Lions still won. He'd been picked just three times in the eight games since, including zero times in six of those games. In the same stretch, he'd thrown 21 touchdown passes, including one five-TD day and one four-TD day.

Saturday night, however ...

Four of the Lions five turnovers. That pick-six. And on the other side of the ball, an admittedly depleted defense that surrendered 481 yards, 6.6 yards per play and allowed the Commanders to go 4-for-4 in the red zone.

There are no guarantees.

Except, perhaps, for this: When you offload a book-cooking, sleazoid jackass of an owner  (Paging Daniel Snyder ... paging Daniel Snyder) and take a Jayden Daniels in the draft, good things will happen.

Like making it to the NFC championship 20 years after last winning a playoff game. Like matching, in two weeks, the number of playoff games Washington won during the entirety of Snyder's quarter-century reign of error. Like winning 12 games so far this season after finishing 56 games under .500 on Snyder's watch.

So there's that, I guess. Small comfort, though, to all those pumped Michiganders who were expecting so much from a team that, until Dan Campbell showed up, had given them so little.

There are no guarantees.

You'd think Detroit, of all places, should have known that. But that would discount something else a million people have said a million times down the years:

Hope springs eternal.

Chilled machismo

It's supposed to be 17 degrees or so with windchills in the single digits tomorrow night for the Bills-Ravens divisional playoff game, which of course means only one thing to the Bills Mafia: Let the ash get white in the Weber and throw another hunk of meat on there. 

They're hardy folk, these people in the mouth of the lake-effect shotgun. Seventeen degrees? Pffft. Seventeen degrees is Josh-Allen-jersey-over-a-hoodie weather. It's a pair of mittens, a Bills stocking cap, and let's gooooo.

In this way they symbolize the America we're supposedly getting Monday, an America of flex and swagger and look-at-us-cross-eyed-and-we'll-kick-your-ass. It's the America of the Ice Bowl coming back in full throat, an America of Tom Landry, Vince Lombardi and the Cowboys and Packers toughing it out on a frozen field in minus-13 tempera-

I'm sorry, what?

Oh. I see.

Turns out the flex-ers and swaggerers of the incoming second Trump regime are more talk than substance, same as their fearless leader. No winter soldiers, they, it seems. With the forecast in Washington calling for a high of 23, the festivities are being moved inside to the Capitol rotunda, giving their chilled machismo a chance to thaw out.

Twenty-three degrees, for pity's sake. Somewhere Tom and Vince must be holding their sides and howling, and somewhere else Jersey Guy surely is calling them sissies, paper tigers and big ol' weather wimps.

"Alpha males, my ass," he's sneering. "More like Alpha-Bit Males."

And, sure, I get it, none of the oligarchs and tech bros who are about to cash in want to see doddery old Fearless Leader catch his death and check out like William Henry Harrison. William Henry, after all, lasted only a few weeks because he decided to shed his overcoat on a freezing Inauguration Day and caught pneumonia. Some would say that was a stupid thing to do; those of us from Indiana would simply regard it as typical Hoosier behavior.

Anyway, Donald John Trump will take the oath in cozy comfort, and henceforth will be known as Big Hat, No Cattle Don.  Or Bluster-No-Muster Don. Or Not As Tough As JFK Or Barack Obama Don, considering we're reminded JFK took the oath on the Capitol steps in windchills of 7 degrees, and Obama in roughly the same in 2009.

Meanwhile, in Buffalo, the forecast is not only for 17 degrees at gametime, but also the possibility of some snow from a weak band off Lake Erie.

To which Jersey Guy and the rest of the Bills Mafia would undoubtedly sneer again: "'Some snow'? Hell, if ain't a foot, it ain't snow."

No phony toughness in that.

Survival of the grittiest

 Ninety years old, for God's sake. How the hell does A.J. Foyt Jr. still walk among us, at such an ancient age?

How did he survive those lovely but wicked old front-engine Offys, which were immovable objects meeting another immovable object when they got up into a speedway wall? And which vibrated so badly at speed A.J. said he had to occasionally bang his hand against the cockpit to get some feeling back in it?

How did he survive getting upside-down in a stock car at Riverside one day, and would have died right then if Parnelli Jones hadn't scooped a bunch of dirt out of his airway? How did he survive the day, in his racing dotage, when his brakes failed going into a corner at Elkhart Lake and he plowed into an embankment so hard it nearly destroyed his feet?

Told the first track workers on the scene to just hit him in the head with a hammer, ol' A.J. did. Even the toughest man in motorsports wasn't up to dealing with that kind of pain fully conscious.

And yet ...

And yet here he was turning 90 yesterday, the living embodiment of survival of the grittiest. Still ambulatory. Breathing less fire than in the  olden days, but still breathing nonetheless. Still showing up at Indy every May with his race team, for whom a kid almost young enough to be his great-grandchild now drives his iconic No. 14.

Santino Ferrucci, after all, is 26 years old. That's 64 years younger than his race team's patriarch, if I've got the math right. And yet here the patriarch still is, keeping watch.

They say A.J. Foyt Jr. never met a race car he couldn't drive the wheels off of, and he's got the resume to prove it. The man won the Daytona 500 in a stock car and the 24 Hours of LeMans in one of Carroll Shelby's Ford GT40s, and of course the Indianapolis 500 four times in an IndyCar. Had he ever gotten the urge to hop the pond and race Formula 1, he probably would have won a couple Monacos or Zandvoorts, too.

The corollary to all of the above, of course, is if A.J. never met a race car he couldn't drive, he also never met one that could kill him, either. 

You can call that luck or skill or plain old barbed-wire contrariness, because as fascinating and (dare we say) charming as he could be when he was in a good mood, he could stop a rattlesnake with one Texas Death Stare when things weren't going well. What was astounding about that, naturally, was how often it coincided with the appearance of some callow reporter with a microphone or a tape recorder.

Quick story: Once many years ago I was following a young radio reporter who was following A.J. back to Gasoline Alley. The poor kid might have been even younger than I was, and I was a mere pup. Anyway, he sidled up to A.J., matching him stride for stride, and stuck a mic under his chin while asking him questions in what was, frankly, an annoyingly obsequious whisper.

After a few steps, A.J. pulled up short and rounded on the kid.

"Get that f****in' thing outta my face," he snarled.

I like to think that's why the man is still with us, at 90 years of age. I like to think, all the times death waved its infamous scythe at him through the years, that A.J. Foyt Jr. looked him square in the eye and once more snarled, "Get that f***in' thing outta my face."

If the man ever needs an epitaph, I say that's it.

The soul of the game

 The news reports all say Bob Uecker was 90 years old when he passed yesterday, but that only paints the outside corner of the truth. He might have been 90 as the chronology flies, but we all know he was really 90 going on 12.

No one loved a thing that didn't love him back the way Bob Uecker loved baseball, a child's game for which Ueck never lost the joy of a child. If his playing career was notable only for its lack of notability, everything that came after was peanuts and Cracker Jacks  and everything else wonderful about our most American of pastimes.

If the game had a soul, Ueck was it. That's all the eulogy the man needs, really.

Making fun of his undistinguished playing career was his main schtick, but playing baseball for laughs was only a side hustle. If his devotion to the game went no deeper than that, he'd never have spent more than half a century calling Milwaukee Brewers games, almost until the day he died. He'd never have become known as "Mr. Baseball" for doing that, nor been inducted into the Hall of Fame as a broadcaster.

His service to baseball, in other words, went far beyond Miller Lite commercials and cracking up Johnny Carson with funny stories on the "Tonight" show. That served the game, too, of course, simply by making us see it through the wondering eyes of that aforementioned 12-year-old.

For the former, he will forever be venerated. For the latter, he will forever be cherished as the grown man who took us all back to the days when baseball was a cracked bat held together with nails, and Billy's jacket and Jerry's sweatshirt were the bases, and we were all Ernie Banks or Al Kaline or Roberto Clemente or Willie Mays.

There was magic in that, somehow. And Bob Uecker, bless his inner child, brought it home to us.

Which means Ueck's most iconic Miller Lite bit, and his iconic line in it, had it wrong all along, you see.

Turns out he was always in the front row.

Diminishment

 On Monday night in Atlanta, Marcus Freeman will become the first black head coach to take part in a football national championship game, although it's no longer politically correct to bring that up. It's Just Not Relevant anymore, don't you see.

This is the new zeitgeist in America, this diminishment of achievement by traditionally under-represented minorities. It's never framed that way, of course. Rather, it's framed as something we don't need to hear anymore, because we're now a color-blind nation that regards recognition by class or race as passe, if not racist itself.

Which, to borrow from Steely Dan, is pretzel logic of a particularly devious variety. Or so it says here.

Understand, it's not that we shouldn't be a nation in which achievement is color-blind; Freeman himself has taken that position on his historical significance. And to be clear, Coach is absolutely right when he says this.  

However.

However, to paint it as bad form even to mention that significance takes us in the opposite direction of the diminishers' alleged ideal. Whether that's by design, or just a lack of awareness, depends on who we're talking about.

For instance: There is a certain species of American who clearly uses this kumbaya vision  as cover to reset whatever hegemony it thinks it's lost. We all know who these people are; they rarely try to hide it anymore. They're the point of the spear in the current effort to Protect Our Children (because so many societal muzzlings are justified that way) from "pornography", if not the insidiousness of the written word itself.

The written word, surprise, surprise, often being the word written by minority authors or those who explore minority themes. Your Toni Morrisons, your James Baldwins, your Maya Angleous, even your Mark Twains or Harper Lees.

The people who want to keep these authors away from their kids often cite "woke indoctrination" as their justification. In so doing. of course, they're practicing their own de facto indoctrination, an obvious hypocrisy they always miss.

And, yeah, OK, before you say anything, I know it seems I've strayed a good ways from my original point. Perhaps. But even if no one else does, I see a thread running from "Why do we always have to mention it when a black person does something for the first time?" to  "Why do we need to expose our children to authors who explore 'divisive' themes? Give 'em books about Columbus instead."

Presumably only the "In 1492, Columbus sailed the blue" version, of course.

An Indiana sighting, Part ...

 ... oh, never mind.

Never mind, because last night, in the archeological dig that used to be Assembly Hall, even the students quit on your Indiana Hoosiers. According to published reports, they started heading back to their dorms at halftime, with the Hoosiers down 28 to an Illinois team that had just lost at home to a fairly beige USC team.

By the middle of the second half, everyone else had quit on the Hoo-Hoos, too, with the place two-thirds empty by that point, again according to published reports. This can be excused, frankly. Doesn't everyone leave when a game is over?

Pretty soon it actually was, with Illinois on the high side of a 94-69 blowout. It was the second 25-point loss for Mike Woodson's crew in 72 hours, and the final score was something of a cheat; the Illini led by 32 before head coach Brad Underwood cleared his bench and the Hoosiers knocked down a couple of threes in the last five minutes or so.

One supposes the latter was the law of averages at work. No one can miss 'em all -- not even an Indiana team that was 0-of-13 from Threeville before Trey Galloway finally got one to bed down with 5:50 to play.

They finished 4-of-18 from the arc, a 22.2 percent clip that sadly is more or less a typical success rate for the Hoosiers these days.

Illinois, on the other hand, made 11 threes in 32 tries -- many of them uncontested because Indiana consistently was late on switches and less than zealous in getting out on the shooter. It was emblematic of the entire evening, as the Illini consistently beat the Hoosiers to loose balls and rebounds, outboarding them 51-37 including 16-8 on the offensive glass.

Rebounding, some wise old X-and-O guy once said, is nothing but effort. Draw your own conclusions from that.

Oh, Indiana did show some life, briefly, scoring the first 10 points of the second half to cut the gap (OK, so it was more of a chasm than a gap) to 18. But before long Illinois had pumped it back up to 28, 29, 30 again, and that was that.

But what was that, exactly? And where did back-to-back blowout losses come from after the Hoosiers had strung together five straight victories and risen to a tie for third in the Big Ten standings?

Woodson had no answers last night, an increasingly prevalent response to Indiana's bewildering no-shows. All he could say was he had to make some changes, which is what he always says.

What those changes might be is anyone's guess. Steve Alford's in his 50s now and busy coaching his own team, and ditto for Calbert Cheaney, who's now Indiana's director of basketball operations. So no help there.

In any event, the hot seat is toasty warm again under Woodson's hindparts, just when it looked as if he finally had things going his way. He has three days now to figure it out before the Hoosiers hit the road again for Columbus, where a beatable Ohio State club awaits. Then it's on to Northwestern, back home to host Maryland, and off to Mackey Arena to face perpetual nemesis Purdue and finish out the month.

Maybe by then the "Fire Woodson!" cries that drifted out of the Disassembly Hall expanse last night will have faded. Or maybe they will have grown into a full-throated chorus.

As always with Woodson and these Hoosiers, you can flip a coin.

Not so wild

 Raise a glass this day to Jayden Daniels and your Washington Commanders, because here's what they just did: They saved the weekend for the NASH-unal FOOT-ball League (as Howard Cosell used to call it).

No, really. They did.

What Daniels and the Commanders did, see, was beat the Tampa Bay Buccaneers 23-20 on a walk-off field goal -- and not just any walk-off field goal, but one that banked in off the goalpost. Scored 10 points in the last 10 minutes to rally from a 20-13 deficit, the Commanders did. Drove 51 yards in 10 plays to Zane Gonzalez' winning doink, as Daniels played like it wasn't the first playoff game of his career but, I don't know, the 15th. 

His numbers on the day: 24-of-35, 268 yards, two touchdowns, no interceptions. If he wasn't already the presumptive Rookie of the Year, he certainly is now.

And not just because of what he did Sunday. Because he and the Commanders (and the Buccaneers) were the only ones who did it.

Which is to say, wild-card weekend was pretty much a bust for the NFL, because everything besides Washington-Tampa was Blowout City. Every other game was a two-score game. Every other game was ... well, not wild.

It began with Justin Herbert throwing four picks as the Texans eviscerated his Chargers, 32-12. Then Derrick Henry ran for about 9,000 yards (OK, so only 186) as the Ravens drummed the Steelers out of the playoffs 28-14.

After that, Josh Allen and the Bills dispatched the Broncos with, um, dispatch, 31-7. Then it was Eagles 22, Packers 10. Finally, last night, a Vikings team that two short weeks ago was 14-1 got paved by Matthew Stafford and the 10-7 Rams, 27-9.

Not a lot of suspense in any of that, unfortunately. Without Commanders-Bucs, the biggest news out of Roger Goodell's fiefdom was Jerry Jones firing Mike McCarthy and the rumor mill immediately churning out Deion-to-Dallas grist.

(Which, frankly, the Blob is rooting for, being a longtime fan of chaos. Deion and Jerry occupying the same space?  Can you imagine what a car crash that would be? Everyone else in the organization would suffocate because those two galactic egos would suck the oxygen out of every room in the Jerry Dome.)

Anyway ...

Anyway, on to next weekend. Jerry can't fire his head coach again, so Goodell and Co. better hope for more walk-off doinks.

Monday mysteries

 Another cold Monday morning here in this part of the world, and the Blob is pondering the Big Questions again, like why we can't have January right before Christmas instead of right after. At least then we'd have something to look forward to.

Also, looking at all that lovely crisp snow out there, would it be weird if I hauled the sled out of the garage and took my almost-septuagenarian ass on a short flight down the nearest hill? Or would someone swaddled in a parka, mittens and big ol' boots emerge from the nearest house to tell me to knock it off and act my damn age?

These things I wonder.

And, of course, these things:

* So I see Roger Goodell is planning on sending the Jaguars, the Browns and the Jets to play in London next season, and I think, geez, Rog, let the poor Brits up easy. We already got 'em back for Banastre Tarleton, and also the Intolerable Acts. Wasn't making Cornwallis surrender at Yorktown enough?

This is not to say England doesn't forever have it coming, because of course it does. Trying to starve the Irish to death during the Great Famine, and subjecting half the world to mushy peas and warm beer, surely can never be repaid in full.

But, really, now. The Jags, Browns and Jets?

This is punishment beyond the pale, and not terribly astute of Roger the Hammer, either. If you're trying to shove your product down the world's throat, it at least ought to taste good. Which means you don't send three of the worst teams in the league to London as your goodwill ambassadors. 

Combined this season, after all, the Jags, Browns and Jets went 12-39. The Jets were the stars of that collective show, stampeding through a mighty 5-12 campaign. The Browns (3-14) and Jags (4-13) were somewhat less impressive.

This is who the NFL is using to pry British eyes away from Liverpool, Arsenal and the rest of Premier League footie? What's the marketing pitch?

"The NFL: Not All Our Teams Suck This Bad." That'd be my guess.

Speaking of the Premier League, I just looked at the standings. The Liverpudlians and Gunners are at the top. At the very bottom, and in line for relegation, are Wolverhampton, Ipswich, Leicester and Southampton, which is is an appalling 1-16-3.

I think the Premier League should send the latter on a U.S. tour. It would only be fair.

* Saw the other day the NHL has selected the Florida Panthers to host the 2026 Winter Classic, and also the Tampa Bay Lightning to host a Stadium Series outdoor game. And right off I thought, "Ah, another Gary Bettman triumph."

Bad enough that the ill-considered Stadium Series has muffled the sense of occasion the Winter Classic once gave us, on account of it was the only time in a season the NHL played an outdoor game. But the initial success of the Classic made Bettman and the boardroom gang greedy, and they decided if one outdoor game was such a hit, a half-dozen or so others would be an even bigger hit.

Um, no. All it did was dilute the product.

And now they'll play the Classic in south Florida, which is not so much dilution as parody.

The entire thrust of the Classic, after all, was to take the game back to its Canadian roots, when kids learned the game skating on frozen ponds in an icebox Canadian winter. You put on gloves, you tugged a toque over your ears to keep the frostbite away, and off you went.

You lose something in translation when you do it in a place people go to escape all that. 

It's apt to be 75 or so in Miami the day of its Winter Classic, which means the audience will be decked out not in toques but shorts, Hawaiian shirts and Ray-Bans. And instead of shoveling snow off the ice to make it playable, the organizers will have to crank up the refrigeration to make sure it doesn't melt.

This is not what the Winter Classic was supposed to be, on account of it was supposed to include actual winter. Even all those Canadian snowbirds might struggle to get into the spirit, having memories of the aforementioned.

Ah, well. Maybe the NHL can make a buck or two off that sunscreen sponsorship.

* I've been keeping track of the Chicago Bears' ongoing search for another sucker, er, head coach, and I have to say it's harder than it ought to be. Sure, they've interviewed some guys I've heard of, like Ron Rivera, Pete Carroll and Mike Vrabel.  But they've also brought in some milk-carton types, too.

Most of these are current assistant coaches, which dismays because you'd think the Bears would have learned their lesson after hiring the two Matts, Nagel and Eberflus. But, nah. Let's bring in Drew Petzing, whoever that is (Hint: Not Drew Brees). Also Mike Kafka, aka Not That Kafka. Also Anthony Weaver.

Of course, they've also interviewed both Detroit Lions coordinators, Ben Johnson and Aaron Glenn. The two of them have done wonders in Detroit, but that's in Detroit, where the Lions have a front office and ownership that knows what it's doing. In Chicago, not so much.

As for Vrabel, the hottest available name, interviewing him was a huge waste of time. Anyone with an eyedropper of sense knew he was going to wind up back in New England, where he helped win Super Bowls as a player for Bill Belichick. And sure enough, the news broke over the weekend that the Patriots have welcomed back to the fold.

Rivera might work, if you're looking on the bright side. And Pete Carroll's a quarterback whisperer from way back, which would be ideal for Caleb Williams. But at 73, how long could the Bears reasonably expect him to stick around?

Besides, they're the Bears. Which means you know exactly what's going to happen.

They're gonna bring back Abe Gibron.

Yeah, he's dead. But there were moments this season when you wondered the same about Eberflus, so there you go.

An Indiana sighting, Part Deux

 In which the Hoosiers, well, disappear into the night out there in the flat expanse of Iowa.

The Hoosiers had won five straight coming to Iowa City, fooling even the Blob ("Not much of a feat," you're saying) into thinking that these were different Hoosiers, more reliable Hoosiers, the kind of Hoosiers who were as likely to make a deep run in March as they were to make their connecting flight home after one tournament game.

And then, this: Iowa 85, Indiana 60.

And then, an epic flameout two nights after kicking USC to the curb by 13 -- the same USC who beat No. 13 Illinois by 10 in Champaign yesterday.

Same old song. Different verse.

And as they say, everyone contributed. Luke Goode, who scored 16 points and was 4-of-5 from Threeville against USC, had this stat line: three points on just four shots, zero rebounds, zero assists, zero steals in 22 minutes. Fellow starter Trey Galloway was even more inert; in 20 minutes, he took just two shots, missed them both, and finished with zero points, zero assists, zero steals, zero blocks and one rebound. He did have four turnovers, however.

Among the regulars, only Oumar Bello (a 10-point, 13-rebound double-double) and Myles Rice (12 points, five assists) scored in double figures. No one else did, although Mike Woodson subbed liberally, playing Bryson Tucker 23 minutes, Kanaan Carlyle 22, Anthony Leal 21 and Langdon Hatton 16 -- which is exactly the number of minutes Mackenzie Mgbako played in scoring six points.

You can surmise from this, if you're a more generous soul, that some sort of creeping crud is running through the Indiana locker room and Mgbako and several other Hoosiers have come down with it. This would explain a few things.

Of course, you can also surmise from this that Indiana was already down 10 at halftime and Woodson was sick, too -- sick of watching his starters flounder. I lean toward a combination of the two.

In any event, away we go again. Tuesday Indiana gets Illinois in Assembly Hall. If I were a betting man, I'd put some coin down on  the Hoosiers to win. It would be just like them.

Or, you know, just like the usual Hoo-Hoo-Hoosiers. Heaven forbid.

A well-titled title match

 So, then: Notre Dame vs. Ohio State, for all the cookies.

Couple of heavyweight "brands", as we like to call them these days.  Couple of programs with history hanging off them like Spanish moss. The Book of Kells vs. the Bayeux Tapestry, if you will, for the historically inclined.

Also, two, shall we say, devoted fan bases. They must be turning handsprings up there in Bristol, Conn., where ESPN's massive and apparently inescapable reach originates.

Why, they must think they've died and gone to the Big Sportscenter Set In The Sky, getting these two for the endgame. Knute Rockne! Woody Hayes! Rudy and the Four Horsemen and Hopalong Cassidy and Archie Griffin, oh, my!

It happened because a guy with a name straight out of Mark Twain -- Jack Sawyer -- shook the football out of Texas quarterback Quinn Ewer's grasp last night, scooped it up and returned it 83 yards the other way to seal a 28-14 Cotton Bowl win for the Buckeyes. Until then, overtime was lurking, because the minutes were getting small and Ewer had the Longhorns on Ohio State's doorstep looking to tie it at 21. 

But, nah. Sawyer forced the fumble, took it home and put the Buckeyes in the title game.

And we get Knute and Woody and all that business. We even get William Shakespeare.

No, not because he once wrote "A fullback! A fullback! My kingdom for a fullback!" Because William Shakespeare -- OK, so he went by "Bill" -- was the actual name of an actual Notre Dame quarterback once, and he was the hero of the day the last time Notre Dame and Ohio State played on an occasion this big.

The year was 1935, Ohio State was undefeated and ranked No. 1, and Notre Dame was also undefeated but regarded as slightly less so. They met in Ohio Stadium on November 2  in front of 81,000 fans, and Ohio State jumped out to a 13-0 lead. But the Irish rallied, and with 32 seconds to play good old Bill Shakespeare threw the touchdown pass heard 'round the world (or at least in South Bend) to Wayne Millner, lifting Notre Dame to the 18-13 upset.

Forsooth, and all that.

Anyway, they called it the Game of the Century, and maybe it was, up until that time. And nine days from now the Irish and Buckeyes meet again with No. 1 on the line, and somewhere Bill Shakespeare and all the rest will be looking on. 

Somewhere else, meanwhile ...

Well, somewhere else, the usual cranks will be whining that this is why the expanded College Football Playoff is a dismal failure, because we're getting a team that lost to Northern Illinois vs. a team that lost twice. The logic of this, of course, eludes comprehension, because no one ever says the same about March Madness, which routinely produces champions who were not the favorites when the whole thing began.

So, yeah. It's the No. 8 seed vs. the No. 7 seed for the championship. Big whoop. All that means, as it sometimes does in March, is the committee under-seeded both teams.

In the end, all that matters is the Irish and the Buckeyes were better than their presumed betters when it counted. Which is exactly how a playoff is supposed to work, in case you've somehow missed every playoff ever played.

This one?

Come on, now. Notre Dame vs. Ohio State for the big prize?

How's that work out any better?

Next legend up

 You had your pick of lore as it all got late down in south Florida last night, and that was a hell of a thing for the loyal sons of old Notre Dame. What lore would be their favorite lore? What moment in a stuffed evening of moments would get to join the statuary watching over all that cherished history and mythology?

Does Jeremiyah Love get a spot in Loreville for plowing through one, two, three Penn State Nittany Lions on a bum knee, refusing to go down until the football was over the goal line?

Does Steve Angeli for coming in when Riley Leonard got his head bounced off the turf and directing the Irish to their first three points of the long, tense night?

Does Leonard for coming back in and finding Jaden Greathouse in lonely splendor to bring the Irish from behind yet again? Or Greathouse for juking the last Penn State defender to the ground on his way to Six City? Or Christian Gray for reading Penn State quarterback Drew Allar like a dime novel and making a diving interception to set up Mitch Jeter's game-winning field goal?

Or how about Jeter for coldly banging that puppy through with eight seconds to play?

They all did their bit as Notre Dame beat the Nittany Lions 27-24 in the Orange Bowl, earning the right to play for a national championship for the first time in a dozen years. It was Next Legend Up all night for the Irish, and the tenders of all that Notre Dame lore have been warned: Expansion is coming, and that right soon.

The Irish got down 10-0 in this one, scored 17 straight points to take a 17-10 lead, surrendered 14 straight to go down again with 7:55 to play. Leonard tied it again at 4:38  on the 54-yard strike to Greathouse. Then Gray picked Allar with 30 seconds remaining, and Jeter -- who's missed just one kick in eight attempts in the playoffs after missing four of his last five in the regular season -- came on to stick the game-winning 41-yarder.

By that time, of course, a lot of other stuff had happened. Love had run out of a tackle in the backfield, then fought through three other Nittany Lions at the goal line to open the fourth quarter. Leonard had wobbled off the field after a big hit, and Angeli had come on to complete his first four passes and 6-of-7 total on a 13-play, 52-yard drive that ended on a Jeter field goal, sending the Irish to halftime down 10-3 instead of 10-0.

I suppose this means Angeli goes down in the pantheon as The Backup Who Saved Us. And Love's run becomes simply "The Run." And Greathouse's move on the final tying score becomes "The Juke", and Gray's pick becomes "The Pick", and Jeter's kick becomes, naturally, "The Kick."

Because here's the thing, boys and girls, and it's why all those loyal sons in their Joe Montana throwbacks are smirking right now: At Notre Dame, no one has to pick what lore is his or her favorite, or which moment deserves the Father Corby/Knute Rockne/Lou Holtz/Frank Leahy bronzing.. As the loyal sons will tell you (with just the right amount of  that smugness the rest of us finds so infuriating), they all deserve it. 

Even more infuriating: This time they're right.

An Indiana sighting

 Down in Bloomington last night your Indiana Hoosiers punked USC by 13 in a Big Ten  basketball game, which is still such a weird concept a lot of us may never get used to it.

("Wait'll the Big Failed Basic Math and the SEC merge into one gelatinous mass," you're saying now. "You really WON'T ever get used to that!")

Yeah, well ...

As I said, Indiana beat USC by 13, and now the Hoosiers are 13-3 and 4-1 in the conference, with only Michigan and Michigan State are ahead of them in the standings. They're tied for third with Illinois, they're on a five-game winning streak, and no one in the conference has more wins so far this season than their 13.

So, good on them. Could be they might actually be a tough out by the time March rolls around.

I say this not to honk off any candy-striped loyalists, but to acknowledge what Indiana watchers have grown used to the last few seasons: Waiting for the other shoe to drop. It's what happens when you're as maddeningly inconsistent as Indiana has been recently, following up encouraging victories with getting blown out by Whatsamatta U. 

So far this season, though, that generally hasn't happened. All those transfers Mike Woodson brought in from hither and yon are slowly rounding into a cohesive unit, mainly Woodson seems to have found a cohesive rotation. 

Arziona transfer Oumar Bello went for 23 points and eight boards last night, and has combined with the currently-injured Malik Reneau to give the Hoosiers the force inside they've been missing since Trayce Jackson-Davis left. Washington State transfer Myles Price added 19, nine rebounds and six assists -- Braden Smith numbers from up the road at Purdue -- and gives Indiana the steadying point guard play it's been similarly missing.

Luke Goode, meanwhile, is now a regular starter and was 4-of-5 from beyond the arc last night, filling the purpose for which he was intended when he left Illinois to come to B-town.

This is not to say the Hoosiers can suddenly hit the broad side of a naval broadside from Threeville. They can't yet, at least not consistently. Aside from Goode, after all, they were 2-of-16 from deep last night. You could blindfold Mister Magoo and spin him around three times and he'd shoot better.

So, there is work to be done yet. But Whatsamatta U. hasn't blown them out yet, so  there you go. 

Saturday night they're in Iowa City to face the 11-4 Hawkeyes, and next Tuesday they get Illinois in the Hall. Collect a couple of Ws in those two, and then we'll start to know something. We'll know, or at least strongly suspect, they're actually good-good, and not just conceptually good.

I can't speak for Hoo-Hoo-Hoosier Nation. But I suspect they'd take that.

And your winners are ...

 ... hell, I don't know. Notre Dame and Ohio State. Penn State and Ohio State. Ohio State and Ohio State.

And if you're inferring from that I'm at least reasonably comfortable with picking Ohio State over Texas in tomorrow night's Cotton Bowl, congratulations. I think the Buckeyes are going to win the whole schmear now. Thus I crawl out on a limb, chainsaw in hand.

As for Penn State-Notre Dame ...

They are too alike, the Nittany Lions and Fighting Irish. Both play smash-mouth football. Both their defenses are like barbed wire six layers deep in front of the German trenches. Notre Dame likes to run it down your throat with Riley Leonard and a squadron of gnarly running backs; Penn State counters with its gnarly tight end, Tyler Warren, who lines up everywhere and comes in six different flavors of mean.

So I'm gonna make the homer call  and pick the Irish, by either an eyelash or, more likely, a mangled knuckle. I'm guessing the score will be some Bo/Woody 12-10 production, but this is one of those games that'll end up 34-31 and we'll all wonder how.

Anyway.

Anyway, if I'm right, it's a Notre Dame-Ohio State national championship game, if I'm right. Or Notre Dame-Texas if Ryan Day blows again, or if the Longhorns get their backs up about hardly anyone pickin' 'em.

Otherwise, I have no further insight. Which will happen when you're trying to get your 69-year-old head around the fact Notre Dame is playing in the Orange Bowl a week after it won the Sugar Bowl, and Ohio State is playing in the Cotton Bowl a week after it won the Rose Bowl.

Now that I never could have called, back in the day. Strange new worlds, and what-not.

And now ... the Greenland Cup!

 The Blob has never been your home for great ideas so much as your home for stupid seventh-grade-boy ideas, so I'm not going to present the following as anything but the latter. And I'm certainly not going to pretend to know if our president-elect, Donald John Training Wheels Mussolini Trump, is as batshite as he appears or just trolling us all.

I say this because Training Wheels did an interview the other day and said all manner of goofy stuff, like how we were going to buy Greenland and annex Canada and rename the Gulf of Mexico the "Gulf of America". And also force Panama, at gunpoint if necessary, to give us back the Panama Canal -- which was turned over to the Panamanians almost 50 years ago on account of it's in their own damn country.

(That bit about making Canada our 51st state, though, I'm pretty sure is just Training Wheels playing with us. Surely by now someone has told him you can't just make an entire sovereign nation another state. Presumably someone has also told him we already tried to do that twice, and Canada kicked our hineys back across the border both times. So we're 0-2 vs. the Great White North in the forced annexation biz.)

Anyway, if Training Wheels really does think he can pry Greenland away from Denmark by force or protection-racket diplomacy ("Youse got a real nice plot o' land here, Denmark. Be a shame if somethin' happened to it. Or to you."), the Blob has a less Gambino-ish solution. Why not play soccer for it?

The Denmark men's national team vs. the U.S. men's national team. Best-of-three series. We could call it the Greenland Cup. Sell tickets. Give Training Wheels a 70/30 cut, because you know he never goes for anything unless he personally can make a pile from it.

"Why, that's the stupidest seventh-grade-boy idea I ever heard!" you're saying now.

Yes, but is it? Is it REALLY?

See, I've actually done the bare minimum of research on this, and what I've discovered is the Danes kinda suck at soccer. They didn't so much as qualify for the World Cup until 1986, and they've missed out on it entirely three times since.

 As for the other six times, they haven't exactly made anyone forget Argentina or Brazil; twice they failed to get out of their group, and they've never advanced beyond the quarterfinals. And they did that 27 years ago, way back in 1998.

In the most recent World Cup, 2022, they finished 28th and bowed out in group play. Heck, they couldn't even score against Tunisia, with whom they played a 0-0 draw.

"But Mr. Blob," you're saying now. "Don't we kinda suck at soccer, too?"

Well, yes. We do. Or at least the men do.

But at least they've reached the Round of 16 twice in the last four World Cups, which Denmark can't say. We also beat the snotty Iranians in group play in 2022, before getting smoked 3-1 by the Netherlands in the Round of 16.

So, yeah. Bring on the Greenland Cup. And for those conversant with Shakespeare, the Blob even has a slogan all ready to fire up our lads in red, white and blue: Make The Danes Melancholy Again.

Works for me.

Silence is golden ...

 ... or, you know, maybe the democratic process proceeding democratically is, at least in a nation with decency and laws and rituals sanely upheld.

I write this as I sit at the kitchen table with the light coming up, revealing the classic January tableau: Gray on white on gray, and quiet in a way it never is during the bellowing growing time. The earth is deeply asleep now in this part of the world, and as always it inspires this crazy urge to tread softly and talk in whispers lest you wake it up.

Which brings us back to silence being golden, and the democratic process.

Yesterday, after all, was the fourth anniversary of one of the most shameful days in American history, a day when plain insanity got right out in the open. A mob of flag-waving loonies attacked the seat of American government, egged on by a deranged narcissist all butt-hurt because he lost his presidency.

And so here came his acolytes, knocking down barricades and assaulting police who tried vainly to stop them, breaking windows and otherwise vandalizing the Capitol building in an unfocused attempt to stop the certification of a presidential election. It was an insurrection no less worth the name because it failed, and it failed because it was fueled not by coherent thought but by the equally unfocused rage of its delusional source.

Anyway, January 6 passed as quietly as today's dawn this time. And you know why?

Yeah, OK, because this time it was the deranged narcissist whose election was being confirmed, so no need to assault the Capitol building, hunt down Nancy Pelosi or spin fantastical tales of corruption and electoral fraud. Amazing how quickly reform can happen when the vote comes out right. 

But you know how else Jan. 6, 2025 was not Jan. 6, 2021?

Because the losers didn't act like losers.

Because Vice-President Kamala Harris, who lost by a touch more than a percentage point to Donald Trump back in November, dutifully conducted the certification of her opponent's victory. Because the losers behaved liked grownups. And, most of all, because they understood the American way of doing things, and acquiesced to it.

I find that refreshing, after the madness of four years ago. I find it ... encouraging, as if there's yet hope for our battered national experiment.

As if, however mad the coming madness gets, we'll survive it.

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 18

 And now this season's final edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the recurring Blob feature of which critics have said "Yah, recurring like gout", and also "Yah, recurring like a spike being hammered into your forehead every week":

1. "Yippee, we don't have to watch this team anymore!" (Giants fans, Jets fans, Patriots fans, Raiders fans, Browns fans, Colts fans)

2. "Yippee, we finally beat the Packers!" (Bears fans)

3. "Yippee, we're goin' to the playoffs and you're not!" (Packers fans)

4. "So it's over now, right? I can leave now, right?" (Aaron Rodgers)

5. "Yes, Aaron, you can leave now. Fat lot of good you did us anyway." (Jets fans weary of all the A-Aron drama)

6. In other news, Joe Burrow!

7. Had still another lights-out day as the Bengals beat the Steelers to keep their playoff hopes ali-

8. "Not so fast, chuckleheads!" (The Chiefs, cackling madly as they played their backups plus, who knows, maybe some guys from their Super Bowl IV team, and laid down for the Broncos, 38-0. Which put the Broncos in the playoffs instead)

9. "Thank you, God!" (Broncos fans)

10. "I'm not God. I just play him in State Farm commercials." (Chiefs head coach Andy Reid)

Same old ...

 ... aaaand you know the rest. Begins with "same", ends with "old."

Same old, same old.

Also "What th-?!". Because that fits, too.

Not even a handful of hours, see, after the Indianapolis Colts wheezed past the cruddy Jacksonville Jaguars in overtime to end their crash site of a season, owner Jim Irsay announced they were going to stay the crash site-y course. Head coach Shane Steichen, who lost his locker room when he benched Anthony Richardson, then restored him to QB1, will remain the head coach. And as for general manager Chris Ballard ...

Well. He's stickin' around, too.

No, I don't know why. Maybe he has naked pictures of Irsay doing heinous naked things. Maybe he stole a guitar from Irsay's frankly awesome collection of musical artifacts and is holding ol' Les Paul hostage.

Nothing else makes sense about keeping Ballard in particular, who built this glaringly flawed mess of a team and looks increasingly like the guy who blew the crucial franchise quarterback pick in 2023.

The Blob will reserve judgment on that one for now, because Anthony Richardson is still only 22 and still has played quarterback for only a handful of those years. He's a kid who was in high school just four years ago. You can tell that by the way he hasn't figured out how to lead a professional football team, on account of him asking out of a game with his team in the red zone and, according to others in the locker room, not putting in the proper off-the-field work.

"Then why did the Colts draft him when he was still just 20 years old and then anoint him the starter right out of the gate?" you're asking now.

Beats me. Go ask Chris Ballard -- and maybe Shane Steichen, too.

Who does not seem to know what to do with the poor kid, even as he somehow wrung eight wins out of this dog's breakfast. For that he can thank the AFC South, which was even more tumbledown than usual because the Jags were woeful and the Tennessee Titans virtually inert this season.

Of course, the Colts still managed to lose to the Jaguars in Jacksonville, where they haven't won since the conquistadors ran the place. They also lost to the worst team in the NFL, the New York Giants, when a "W" would have kept them in the playoff hunt.

On the other hand ... every other loss was to a team that made the playoffs: The Packers, the Vikings, the Bills, the Texans, the Broncos, the Lions. So there's that, I guess.

As to everything else, who knows? Irsay retaining the same brain trust that's so badly mishandled its prize quarterback pick, and which thought they got a steal back in April when they landed edge rusher Laiatu Latu with the 15th pick, suggests only more chaos to come. 

Latu wound up being mostly invisible this season.  And by season's end, Steichen's locker room was full of grumbling veterans who openly questioned the Colts leadership and lack of vision. 

Yeah, boy. Sounds exactly like a course you want to stay. Kinda like the Titanic's, you know?

Of course, Irsay being Irsay, the course might not stay stayed. It's possible the backlash from his announcement yesterday will be so fierce (and the cancellation of season tickets so voluminous) he might just throw up his hands and say. "Just kidding! OK, everybody out."  You never know with him.

All we know for now is this: That iceberg's gettin' closer by the minute.

Super sub

 We've all had the Walter Mitty dream before. Come on, admit it.

Like the character in fiction with the hyperactive imagination, we've all fallen asleep and dreamed we were, I don't know, a fighter pilot or renowned surgeon or a basketball player who could elevate like the Otis company cooked him up in a lab somewhere.

Bob Knight sends us in to save the day and we're Michael Jordan, or at least Jordan Hulls. Roger Penske sticks us in Will Power's ride and we win the Indy 500. We write a Notre Dame game story that wins the Pulitzer Prize.

(OK, so that's just my fantasy)

Anyway, you get the gist. But you know what's even better than all that?

It's when someone becomes Walter Mitty in real life.

You probably didn't watch Texas State hold off North Texas yesterday in the SERVPRO First Responder Bowl, on account of it was Texas State and North Texas playing in the SERVPRO First Responder Bowl. Which means you've probably never heard of a young man named Drew Mestemaker, and likely still haven't.

That's too bad. Because yesterday the kid lived that dream we've all had.

A freshman walk-on who hadn't started a game at quarterback since his freshman year in high school, Mestemaker found himself starting his first game in four years for North Texas because the starter had transferred. And, wonder of wonders, he set the place on fire.

Completed 26-of-41 passes for 393 yards and two scores. Broke off a 70-yard run for another six. Compiled 448 total yards on the day.

Only thing Mestemaker didn't do, sadly, is win the game for North Texas. The Mean Green fell 30-28 as Mestemaker threw an interception in the waning seconds that ended it.

Nonetheless, it was a dream-like day for the kid. Even if he did remind everyone he was still human by ralphing into a sideline garbage can after his 70-yard sprint.

Somehow that made the super sub even more super. A super-duper sub, if you will.

Now all he's got to do is write that Pulitzer gamer. Piece of cake.

Slobber-knockers

 Somewhere Lou Holtz was surely having an out-of-body experience, seeing 35 or so years fall away so magically. Riley Leonard? Hell, no, that was Tony Rice. Jeremiyah Love and Jadarian Price? Heck, that was Ricky Watters and Tony Brooks and Anthony Johnson, with Rocket Ismail taking kickoffs on occasional cross-country sojourns.

The Fighting Irish of Notre Dame?

Shoot, man. Why, they beat up on Georgia same as Lou's crew used to beat up on Miami and West Virginia and the University of Navy, as Lou liked to call it.

The final from the Sugar Bowl last night was 23-10, and it was Notre Dame's first New Year's Six Bowl win since 1993. Rick Mirer was your QB1 then. Reggie Brooks and Jerome Bettis were trampling on everything in sight. And the Irish knocked the slobber out of Texas A&M in the Cotton Bowl, 28-3.

Good times for Holtz and Notre Dame. Gooood times.

Last night was more good times for the Irish, who indeed looked like Holtz's punch-you-in-the-mouth teams from the glory days. Leonard ran 14 times for 80 yards -- 5.7 yards per carry if you're keep score at home -- and occasionally lowered his shoulder to get them. He also completed 15-of-24 passes for 90 yards and a score. And the Irish defense indeed knocked the slobber out of a Georgia team that also prided itself on its physicality.

Some numbers: Georgia was 2-of-15 on third and fourth down against the Irish D, and 0-for-3 on the latter.

Some more numbers: That same defense virtually obliterated the Georgia run game, which scratched out just 62 yards and averaged a pitiful 2.1 per try -- as thorough a silencing as you'll see in such a high-stakes game.

In short, this was a back-in-the-day "W" for Notre Dame, predicated on back-in-the-day principles that have carried the Irish to a school-record 13 wins so far this season. It's a team built on defense, the run game and the occasional lightning strike -- last night it was Jaden Harrison's 98-yard return of the second-half kickoff, shades of the Rocket himself -- and if that wasn't the formula Holtz used to deliver N.D.'s last national title in 1988, I'll eat one of Lou's beloved Zagnut bars.

OK. So I might not go that far.

Still, the Ghosts of Tony Rice And Ned Bolcar Past were surely aloft last night, and now it's on to the semifinals against Penn State. Beyond that, if there is a beyond that, it could be a national championship date against perhaps Ohio State, who gets Texas next and right now looks as inevitable as inevitable gets in football.

Texas, Ohio State, Penn State and Notre Dame. That's who's left now.

Sounds like more back-in-the-day to me.