Sublimely ridiculous

 Aaron Judge sent two more baseballs fleeing Yankee Stadium in terror last night, and now he's in monument territory as far as horsehide abuse is concerned. Which is to say, a couple of days ago he passed Yogi Berra (Yogi Berra!) on the Yankees career home run list, and last night he tied Joe DiMaggio (Joe DiMaggio!).

That means only Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle and Lou Gehrig are still ahead of him. Each of whom, Joe D included, has his own personal monument in Monument Park out there beyond center field in the Stadium.

So, yeah, Judge is communing with the statuary now. And he's got a lot of tread left on the tires to commune even further with it.

That's your sublime baseball happening for the week, boys and girls.

And the most sublimely ridiculous happening?

Well, that would be what my Pittsburgh Cruds accomplished the other day.

"Ohhhh, no," you're saying now. "Not the stupid Pirates again. Not-"

Ah, dummy up. Here's a hall pass. Go on down to the caf and grab yourself a big ol' plate of Tuna Surprise.

(The surprise: Does not contain tuna.)

Now where were we?

Oh, yeah. My Cruds. Being sublimely ridiculous.

See, while Aaron Judge was hangin' with all those magisterial Yankee ghosts, the Cruds were achieving their own landmark. With a 2-1 loss in extras to the lowly Orioles, they assured themselves of yet another losing season. It will be their seventh in a row and ninth in the last 10 years.

That is some epically chronic cruddiness (or chronically epic cruddiness) right there.

You don't put up that kind of sustained failure without a ton of want-to, and lord knows cheapskate owner Bob Nutting and his guys have want-to to spare. Consider, for instance, that they have the most dominant pitcher in baseball right now (Paul Skenes), and they still manage to keep losing. Right now they're in the middle of a six-game skid  that's left them nineteen games under .500, 25 games out of first in the NL Central and eight games out of next-to-last.

Skenes, on the other hand, is killing it. In 30 starts and 178 innings this season, he has an MLB-leading 1.92 ERA, a National League-leading 203 strikeouts, and just 38 walks. Opposing hitters are batting just .193 against him.

His won-loss record in those 30 starts?

9-9.

How long before he and his agent start lobbying for someone -- anyone -- to get him the hell out of P-town?

It hasn't happened yet because the Cruds actually decided to pay him not long ago, and also because Skenes isn't the complaining type. But metaphorically speaking, Skenes continuing to pitch for the Cruds would be like Sandy Koufax pitching for the early-'60s Cubs or Senators instead of the Dodgers: A waste of genius.

But enough sad tales. There's too much sadness in the land right now as it is.

Let's go watch Aaron Judge chase some more monuments instead.

The bloody boomerang

 Unavoidably, now, and with ineffable sadness, his own words come back on him. You reap what you sow, and everything right-wing provocateur Charlie Kirk sowed in his young life led, perhaps inevitably, to its end.

He lived by the tenet that living by the gun in America was worth a few dead schoolkids  here and there, and then he himself died by the gun. The irony is cruel and stark and almost perfect in its symmetry.

It was, in fact, just after answering a college kid's question about mass shootings that a rooftop sniper squeezed off a shot and Kirk's neck began to spew blood. He died not long after -- a martyr to the truth on one side of our national divide, and a soulless bully getting his just desserts on the other.

I won't subscribe to either, because the former is the product of delusion and the latter presumes the personally unknowable. I don't know, in other words, if the demagoguery upon which Kirk built a comfortable life was genuine or simply a profitable business model. All I do know is it exploited that aforementioned divide, feeding on all its fear and loathing and blindness and hate.

Sad way to make your bones, casting the marginalized in our society -- immigrants, the homeless, transgenders and gays, "wokeness" -- as depraved, evil predators responsible for the nation's ills.  That was Charlie Kirk's gig, and what a waste of a bright young life. In a tragedy that spreads out and out in concentric circles, that is the seminal one.

And that's what this is, a tragedy. It's the tale of a young man who sent a bloody boomerang out into the world, never imagining he would be its victim. It's the tale of a young man who could have done something affirming with the life God gave him, but chose a different path.

You reap what you sow. And the worst part of all this is what Charlie Kirk sowed continues to bear fruit. Not even his assassination -- a horrific act of political violence that never solves anything and has been the undoing of more than one great empire -- has taught us a damn thing.

Almost immediately, after all, the MAGA crazies took to the Magic Interwhatsis to rail that the Democrats and the media must be made to pay for Kirk's death, that they're all evil creatures who must either be exterminated or brutally suppressed.

And on the other side?

Not a few arch observations wondering where all this right-wing outrage was when a Democratic legislator and her husband were gunned down in Minnesota, and when schoolkids and grocery shoppers and church-goers die at the hands of yet another locked-and-loaded nutjob. A legit question, perhaps, but hardly the time to be asking it.

 Meanwhile, on the day after, we again commemorate what fear and loathing and hate wrought on Sept. 11, 2001. And on the Magic Interwhatsis this morning, I ran across a short video that suggested, not for the first time, that the reason WNBA star Caitlyn Clark has been "targeted" (quotation marks mine) is because she's not gay.

Which implies those depraved gays are out to get us, just like Charlie Kirk said.

When will we learn? When?

I think it's worth (it) to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational.

- Charlie Kirk

Crabby old fart alert!

 "Because it's NEWS, Vincenzo! NEWWWS!"

-- Carl Kolchak, ace reporter

Look, I don't know if Deion Sanders can coach his way out of a paper bag, or if his kid Shedeur and Travis Hunter just made him look like he could.  I also don't know if he's the most objective guy to analyze media behavior in these here 2020s, seeing how he's spent most of his life either basking in its blandishments or warring with it when the blandishments didn't come.

(Cue clip of Deion dumping a bucket of ice water on TV analyst Tim McCarver back in the day, after McCarver wasn't properly fawning in his commentary.)

However ...

However, when the guy's right, he's right, dammit. Even if he's only partly right.

The other day, it seems, he went off on These Media Types Today, sounding not unlike a certain crabby old fart with whom I am sort of familiar. At issue was a report by Pete Thamel that a kid named Ryan Staub was going to start at quarterback for Deion's Colorado Buffaloes against Houston this weekend. Even though Deion admitted Staub had been practicing with the No. 1s all week, he thought Thamel jumped the gun a tad.

Then he said this: You know, in today's media, we don't care about being right anymore. We just want to be first. And there's no subjection to you when you're wrong. Nobody says nothing. You just go with it. I'm not saying that's the case (here), but that's where we are in the media. Nobody gives a darn about being correct and being right ... I would love to have the integrity we once had with media.

OK, first off, as a crabby old fart who once dabbled in journalism: I'd love to have that, too, Deion.

Of course, I'd also love to have integrity on Wall Street and in the billionaire class and in the corporate medical industry and in law enforcement and the DOJ, and mostly in the Meathead Brigade that runs our American show these days.  But one insurmountable task at a time.

Of integrity in media, I'll say this: There's both less than there should be at times, and more than those who've been conditioned to hate and distrust the media believe.

Truth is, America -- or at least its power elite -- has always had a contentious and queasy relationship with the free-press part of the First Amendment, because the closed door is the power elite's bedrock and a free press, if it's doing its job right, exists almost exclusively to kick closed doors open. Sunlight may be the best disinfectant, but the folks at the top of the pyramid are as notoriously allergic to it as a dirty kid is to soap and water.

It's why they spend so much time, effort and money to brand the free press as untrustworthy and dishonest, because doing so keeps that closed door shut tight on whatever griminess they're up to behind it.  The Meathead Brigade and its Fearless Leader are hardly the first to take that low road in America, only the latest and most openly totalitarian. Killing the messenger in our allegedly free society -- or at least de-legitimizing him -- has a rich and shameful history.

Which does not mean, again, that Deion is entirely wrong when he says the media cares more about being first than right. With what constitutes media having become extremely sketchy in the Techie '20s, the chances of getting it first and wrong have grown exponentially. And some of those who do that really don't seem to care all that much, or even understand why they should.

But say NO ONE gives a darn about being correct and right?

That's where Deion and I part company. Not that he'd ever know it.

In my scribe days, see, I worked with plenty of people who gave a darn about being correct and right. I know plenty of people who give a darn about it now. They also work their asses off to get it correct and right, even if some of them are young and crabby old farts like me are supposed to believe the young don't know squat from squadoosh.

Sorry, but not this crabby old fart. I know better. And I know they're in turn encouraged (i.e., "threatened within an inch of their lives") by editors who give a darn, too, just like I was. They also understand why: That Getting It Right is the most valuable coin in the realm for a news entity, because if you get it wrong too often you become worthless in the public mind as a disseminator of information. You become ... untrusworthy.

You become, in essence, exactly what those with a vested interested in discrediting you with the public say you are. And therefore you make their job easier, and whatever skeevy stuff they were doing away from the public eye easier to hide.

Does the media get stuff wrong?

Sure it does. Especially when, as previously noted, it's more concerned with beating the competition to the punch than making sure the punch lands with accuracy and authority.

However.

However, do they get it wrong deliberately, as the Meathead Brigade continually insists to an increasingly credulous audience? Do they actually sit around in newsrooms (or in front of their laptops at home, this being 2025) and say, for instance, "OK, what kind of lies can we spread about President Trump these days? And, sports, how are we coming with that Aaron Rodgers Is A Space Alien piece?"

Hardly ever. Or at least the legit news outlets don't.

No, most of the time when a legit news outlet screws up, it's because whoever was in charge that day was either careless or a chronic numbskull or just, you know, human. To be honest, there's more than the usual quota of the latter two in most newsrooms. 

You can choose to believe that or not. You can choose to believe "legacy media" is a shameless disseminator of propaganda and deliberate falsehood because it reports stuff you don't want to hear. You can, like Deion, believe it has no integrity whatsoever, and every ink-stained grunt out there is a con man and a liar.

Give me a heads up before you say so, though. Just so I know when to shake my head and laugh.

A few brief thoughts about NFL Week 1

 And now the thrilling return of The NFL In So Many Words, the thrilling Blob feature that provokes thrilling overreaction from critics -- such as, "This is the worst thing that ever happened in the history of the entire world!", and also, "It's an extinction event!  Aieee!":

1. And speaking of extinction events ...

2. The Ravens!

3. Thought they could ... thought they could ... thought they could ... couldn't. 

4. "Hey, watch me make a 15-point Ravens lead disappear!" (Bills QB Josh Allen)

5. "Hey, watch me make an 11-point Bears lead disappear!' (Vikings QB J.J. McCarthy)

6. "Hey, where'd our 15-point/11-point lead go?" (The Ravens and Bears)

7. In other news, the Packers whupped the Lions; the Cowboys tried really hard to beat the Eagles, the Chiefs beat, er, the Chargers beat the Chiefs; and the Colts, with Daniel Jones suddenly playing like either Dan Fouts or Bert Jones, laid an almighty woodsheddin' on the Dolphins.

8. "Woo-hoo! We're goin' to the Super Bowl, baby!" (The Packers, the Cowboys, the Chargers, the Colts)

9. "Woo-hoo! Daniel Jones is a GOLDEN GOD!" (Colts fans)

10. "Wait ... what?" (Daniel Jones)

A-Aron strikes back

 I don't know what Aaron Rodgers was saying under his breath at the end of Steelers 34, Jets 32 yesterday, but I bet there was a much-more-than-zero chance it was what Steve McQueen said at the end of "Papillon."

Hey, you bastards! I'm still here!

Right?

I also bet there was a much-more-than-zero chance he was making a few less cinematic pronouncements, such as Bleep you, Jets. Or maybe, Can't play anymore, huh? BLEEP YOU.  Or, maybe-maybe, Here's a four-touchdown hoagie to munch on, losers. BLEEP YOU WITH MY 136.7 QUARTERBACK RATING.

"Gee, Mr. Blob," you're saying now. "I sense a bleeping theme here."

Well, sure. I mean, Rodgers wouldn't be human if he didn't take a certain vicious pleasure in showing up the Jets, who all but declared him washed when they parted company after last season. The guy may be a weirdo, but he's not that weird.

OK. So maybe he is.

But you have to think it was a prime neener-neener-neener moment for him when he took the Steelers right down the field on their first possession and stuck it in the end zone with a throw to Ben Skowronek -- the fabled (or not) geezer-to-Fort-Wayne connection.

At any rate, that was only the beginning of the in-your-face-ing of the Jets. Rodgers went on to finish 22-of-30 for 244 yards and three more sixes, and didn't throw a pick. Only got sacked a couple of times. Finished with that aforementioned 136.7 QBR.

Neener. Neener. Neener.

Also, A-Aron is BACK, baby!

"Yeah, but what about next week, Mr. Blob?" you're saying now. "And the 147 weeks of the interminable NFL season after that?"

Ah. Yes.

That is the question here, as it is every time someone lights it up in Week 1. Has 41-year-old A-Aron discovered a magic portal to his youthful greatness? Or is he just a 41-year-old who had a day?

"Oh, come on," some yinzer is no doubt saying, taking another swig of his Iron City. "Leave us enjoy this for five minutes, why doncha?"

Fine. But then I'm going to take a look back at last year's Week 1, and you know which NFL quarterback had the best day?

Tua Tagovailoa of the Dolphins, who threw for 338 yards and a score against the Jaguars and had a QBR of 101.0.

Know what Tua did the rest of the year?

Played just 10 more games and finished 21st in passing, just ahead of 36-year-old Russell Wilson, Bryce Young and Drake Maye.

In other words: Stay tuned.

Cheap Thrills Week

 Your Indiana Hoosiers beat the mortal stuffing out of poor Kennesaw State yesterday, 56-9, a week after they kinda-sorta beat the mortal stuffing out of poor Old Dominion, and you know what that tells us about Curt Cignetti's team?

Exactly nothing.

OK, so not nothing, but pretty close. New quarterback Fernando Mendoza threw four touchdown passes Saturday, so that was good. Elijah Surratt caught three of them, so that was good, too. And the Hoosiers outscored the Kennesaws 35-0 in the second half, scoring on five straight possessions.

So that was also good, I suppose. Of course, it was a little like scoring on five straight possessions against the cardboard cutouts the citizens of Rock Ridge used to fool Slim Pickens and his gang in "Blazing Saddles," but, still. Pretty, pretty good.

This is not to single out the Hoosiers for being unbeaten and untried, mind you, because that indictment fits a lot of Power 4 teams right now. Purdue, for instance, is off to a 2-0 start as well after doubling up Southern Illinois 34-17. This means, on September 7, the Boilermakers have already doubled their win total from a year ago.

And never mind that Southern Illinois is not, you know, Real Illinois, or perhaps even Real Rutgers. Also never mind the W follows on the heels of last week's 31-0 splattering of my alma mater, Ball State.

Which got splattered again Saturday by Auburn, 42-3, in another human-sacrifice-for-dollars game. Those of us who have diplomas from BSU will take comfort in the fact that at least the Cardinals scored this time, a sure sign they're improving.*

(*Sarcasm Alert) 

Thing is, in defense of IU and Purdue, this was Cheap Thrills Week for a lot of Power 4 teams. (Notre Dame, the state's other football biggie, had a bye. Reportedly, the Irish were supposed to play the The Little Sisters of the Poor Only Littler And Poorer, but canceled the game because they figured Bye would more boost their strength of schedule.) 

At any rate, there were some truly ridiculous matchups. Ohio State batted Grambling around like a ball of string, 70-0. Florida State edged East Dillon, er, East Texas A&M 77-3. Alabama played with its food against Louisiana-Monroe, 73-0; Texas Tech paved Kan't, er, Kent State, 62-14; Utah tracked mud all over Cal Poly, 63-9; Tennessee staked out East Tennessee State on an anthill, 72-17.

Oh, and Arch Manning, whom everyone declared a generational talent before declaring he was the WORST GENERATIONAL TALENT EVER in that 14-7 loss to Ohio State?

Threw for four touchdowns and ran for another in Texas' 38-7 goring of its live sacrifice, San Jose State. So there, sort of.

"But ... but ... what about South Florida upsetting Florida, Mr. Blob? Or the Ohio University Bobcats upholding the honor of the MAC by taking down West Virginia?" you're saying now.

Only proves that if you play Payola For Patsies often enough, the football gods are going to say "Why the hell are you playing these guys?" and allow These Guys to take a bite out of you.

Otherwise ...

Otherwise, except for the dough (which admittedly is not inconsiderable), what does East A&M get out of being a hot lunch for Florida State? Or Grambling for lying down on the white line and letting Ohio State run over it? Or my alma mater's athletic department for telling the football program, "Quit whining and get your asses down there with the lions. It'll only hurt for awhile, and we need the cash."

And thus the East A&Ms, Gramblings and Ball States wind up with 0-2 starts and, presumably, longer casualty lists than they would have otherwise had this early. 

And what do the Power 4s get out of all this comic opera?

Beats me. Ask Minnesota, which dragged a directional school (Northwestern State) up to Minneapolis so the Golden Gophers could enjoy a 66-0 meal. Or ask Nebraska, which brought Akron in so Big Red could pelt the poor schmucks with corncobs, 68-0.

I fail to see how any of these mismatches advances the development of the muscle programs. Yeah, Purdue is 2-0 under new head coach Barry Odom, but what does that mean? Yeah, the Mendoza-Sarratt connection was dazzling for IU, but against whom? 

I will say this, though: Oregon beat someone 69-3 yesterday, and it wasn't the Oklahoma Institute of Learning How To Type Fast. It was Oklahoma State, a supposedly legit Big 12 school. So at least the Ducks had something to quack about.

Unless.

Unless, of course, that really was the Oklahoma Institute of Learning How To Type Fast, and part of the deal was dressing up as Oklahoma State so everyone would think the Ducks were really, really good.

Instead of, you know, just pretty, pretty good.

Down for the count

 Caitlin Clark officially announced Thursday night she was done for the season, and there goes that fairy tale finish. The force of nature that put the WNBA on the national radar  a year ago chose, along with her team, the force of nurture. 

In other words: Take the rest of the season off, kid. Heal up. Don't hurry back on our account, because our account ain't as hefty as we hoped it would be.

No, it's not. What began with some fairy-tale ruminating -- Can Caitlin lead the beefed-up Fever to the WNBA title in her second year? -- has devolved into a quiet and mostly mundane reality: This Fever team isn't going much of anywhere.

After Clark went down for good on July 15 (although no one knew it would be for good at the time), and her enforcer/sidekick/provocateur Sophie Cunningham went down with a season-ending knee injury, the air went out of all those lofty hopes. Those injuries and a spate of others, the defection of DeWanna Bonner, and head coach Stephanie White's odd periodic absences have resulted in a win-a-couple, lose-a-couple season in which the strobe-lit Fever has become just another .barely-above-.500 basketball team.

They'll likely still make the playoffs, because they still have players: Kelsey Mitchell, Natasha Howard, Aliyah Boston, Lexie Hull. But they're more and more looking like a first-round bow-out, same as last year.

Do you rush Clark back for that?

Absolutely you do not.

So she's done for 2025, and, meanwhile, the league goes on without her drawing power and, frankly, without all the racially-charged they're-pickin'-on-Our Caitlyn noise. Down in Dallas, Paige Bueckers is having a Caitlyn-esque rookie season; if she's not quite the phenomenon Clark was a year ago, she's proving every bit her on-court equal. Aja Thomas and Brianna Stewart and Sabrina Ionescu are still around. And Angel Reese is still stirring things up as the semi-official Lightning Rod of Chicago.

In the latest episode of What Angel Craziness Is This, she voiced her frustration in the Chicago Tribune with her miserable Sky, saying the team had to get better players and that they "can't rely" on point guard Courtney Vandersloot to come back from an ACL tear "at the age she's at."  This undoubtedly landed with a booming thud in the Sky locker room, and it got Reese suspended by the ballclub.

So the WNBA still has that going for it, I guess.

As for Clark, her sophomore season wasn't so much a sophomore slump as a sophomore wash. Plagued by both left and right groin injuries and a quad strain, she played in just 13 games, averaging 16.5 points, 8.8 assists and 5.0 rebounds. But she shot just 36 percent from the field and under 30 percent from the 3-point arc, where she made her rep as the Step-Back Logo Three Girl.

In this truncated season, unfortunately, she was more the Step-Back Logo Brick Girl. Or the Damn, She's Hurt Again? Girl.

It was both dismaying and shocking, considering she'd been injury-free at Iowa and in her spectacular rookie season in the Dub. The Blob's pet theory, which is likely as full of sawdust as most pet theories, is that what happened to her this season might have something to do with how hard she worked in the gym to bulk up during the offseason. More muscles, more muscles to strain or pull or tweak.

And, no, I'm not a doctor or a physical therapist or a trainer. I don't even play one on TV.

Sadly, Caitlyn Clark won't be playing a Genuine Phenomenon on TV anymore this year, either. It's the smart play. It's also, needless to say, a damn shame.

Geezer-cuffs

 Exciting news today from the world of boxing -- which used to be the World Of Boxing until MMA stole its capital letters, along with its fan base.

Mike Tyson is going to fight again!

Also, Floyd Mayweather!

"You mean, like, each other?" you're saying now.

Hell, yes, each other. Preliminary plans are in motion to have them fight an exhibition sometime next spring, with date and site to be determined. This despite the fact Tyson was the heavyweight champion when Tone Loc was a thing, and Mayweather was the middleweight champion -- the undefeated middleweight champion -- when Facebook, Twitter and TicToc were not yet a thing.

In other words ...

In other words, Tyson is now 59 years old, no longer Iron Mike but Iron Supplement Mike. And Floyd is 48, and no longer Money Mayweather but Barter System Mayweather.

"So who's on the undercard? Jim Braddock and Max Baer?" you're saying.

Not as far as we know.

"Also, how's this going to work? Tyson outweighs him by almost 70 pounds," you're saying.

Yes, but he also out-years him by a decade. So he's got that not going for him.

Besides, it's an exhibition. Nothing's on the line except bragging rights, and even those are slim pickings. It's not like there's a ton of demand for "I Beat Up A Senior Citizen" bumper stickers, after all.

"So who's gonna watch this thing?" you're saying now.

Beats me, although if there's a market for professional cornhole -- and there is -- there's probably a market for geezer-cuffs. Guys who can't get dates on Saturday nights, perhaps. Fans of Grit TV, the western movie channel. People who watch Turner Classic Movies all day, or scour YouTube for old-school roller derby. Hey, Myrtle, come 'ere. The San Francisco Bay Area Bombers are on!

Or ...

Or maybe, instead of pay-per-view, there'll be reverse pay-for-view.

You shell out 35 bucks or so, and HBO or whoever will block the feed. Pay up or they'll make you watch.

Works for me.

A few brief thoughts ...

 ... on the NFL, because the NFL is BACK, baby!

Got off to a whiz-bang start last night when Jalen Carter SPIT IN DAK PRESCOTT'S FACE, after which Jalen's Super Bowl champion Eagles spit in Dak's Cowboys' faces, 24-20. But, look, the Cowboys outgained the Iggles! And Dak out-passing-yard-ed Jalen Hurts! And the Iggles had 110 yards in penalties, which proves once again the officials will punish anyone who dares beat the Chiefs!

(Which the Iggles did, remember, in the Super Bowl)

Anyway, it's time once more to fill your Sundays and Monday nights and Thursday nights and -- this week anyway -- Friday nights with NFL action. To place your prop bets that the Saints will surely kick a field goal on This Very Drive. To curse yourself for deciding to start Joe Flacco instead of Joe Burrow in the home opener for your fantasy team, Mahomie Don't Play That.

A few thoughts, as it all begins again ...

* The Senior Bowl happens on October 12.

That's when the Pittsburgh Steelers, quarterbacked by 57-year-old Aaron Rodgers, play host to the Cleveland Browns, quarterbacked by 72-year-old Joe Flacco.  It will be Walker Night in Heinz Stadium. The featured stadium cocktail will be an Old Fashioned. Rodgers will reach back to his youth, when he was only 42, to throw a couple of touchdown passes in a 27-12 Steelers win.

Shedeur Sanders will make a brief appearance for the Brownies. He won't play, he'll just make a brief appearance on the sideline, wearing a cowboy hat and Wrangler jeans and a clipboard slung low on his hips.

* Daniel Jones will be the Colts starting quarterback. Until he's not.

Despite assurances from head coach Shane Steichen that Jones is his season-long QB1, precedent tells us this will not be so. Jones will play until he proves he's still the same "meh" dude he was with the Giants, and then Anthony Richardson will play until he throws another souvenir into the stands and/or gets hurt. 

Then Jones will reappear long enough to remind Steichen why he benched him in the first place. Then Riley Leonard will get a shot. Then, heck, maybe they bring back Bert Jones or someone.

* Kansas City will not make it to the Super Bowl again, no matter what the Grassy Knoll Brigade thinks.

All signs point to a step back for the Chiefs, even if they do get all the calls because the zebras are on their payroll. Travis Kelce, preoccupied by wedding plans (Gardenias or African violets?), will take a step or two back himself because that's how many steps he's lost. This means Patrick Mahomes' only safety-valve option will be either the ghost of Otis Taylor or the ghost of Fred Arbanas.

Which leaves the road to the Big Roman Numeral open for ...

* ... Lamar Jackson and the Baltimore Ravens.

Or, maybe ...

* ... Josh Allen and the Buffalo Bills.

Could this finally be the year for the Ravens/Bills?

"Don't we hear that every year?" you're saying now.

Well, yes. But this time it could really, really happen. Really.

* Who will be the league's breakout rookie?

If you said Jaxson Dart of the Giants, you're wrong. I mean, it's the Giants.

Cam Ward of the Titans?

No. Because, again, the Titans.

Tyler Warren of the Colts?

Nope. See above.

I'm picking Ashton Jeanty, stud running back from Boise State. Yeah, he's playing for the Raiders, who are still the Raiders. But there've been hints he could be special in a Christian McCaffrey/Saquon Barkley sort of way. We'll see.

And last but not least ...

* The NFC North.

Undisputedly the toughest division in football, it will be a gorgeous bloodletting from Week 1. The Lions are still as nasty as ever; to prove it, head coach Dan Campbell  floated the idea of having an actual lion lead the team onto the field each week. The Vikings have J.J. McCarthy back. The Packers stole Micah Parsons from Dallas. Even the Bears might be formidable if new head coach Ben Johnson can get them to stop doing Bears things.

Monday night they open against the Vikings. Then it's on to Detroit to face the Lions. Be there or be square.

Once upon a Komet

 Always now, I suppose, it will be an April night in 1991, and Lonnie Loach will be 23 years old, slogging up ice one last time. Slogging up ice on dead legs like everyone's legs were dead by then, because the thing had gone on and on and it badly wanted an end.

And then here was Lonnie Loach, with the end on his stick.

One final rush, one final slow-motion breakaway, and then he was re-directing a shot Indianapolis goalie Jimmy Waite -- who'd handled everything through the long night -- couldn't handle. The puck found the back of the net, the red light glared, and at last it was over.

Fort Wayne Komets 4, Indianapolis Ice 3. Game 7. Eighteen minutes and twenty seconds into overtime. A first-round IHL playoff series going to the K's over their most bitter rival, by the skinniest of margins.

Also, the greatest hockey game I ever saw in person, in 38 years as a scribe.

Waite was grab-your-head magnificent at one end. Stephane Beauregard in the Komets net was equally grab-your-head magnificent. They traded magic tricks all night long, as the Ice and Komets skated up and down and banged on one another and took everything out of one another either had to give.

And then, finally, Lonnie Loach ended it.

And now he's gone.  

Word came down today that he died on Monday at his home in Ontario, at the still-young age of 57. This of course is impossible, because Komets 4, Ice 3 happened just yesterday. Or the day before, perhaps.

In any case, there was first shock when I heard the news -- Lonnie Loach? What? No way -- and then that one particular night came flooding back fresh from the wrapper. I remember thinking it made all kinds of sense for Loach to have ended it, because he ended so many games that year with his sniper's eye. In 81 games he scored 55 goals and assisted on 76 others, and led the Komets to the Turner Cup finals in the first year of the Franke family's ownership. 

It energized the city, and its iconic franchise, a year after the former almost lost the latter. Did, actually, for a couple of days, before the Frankes bought the defunct Flint franchise and brought it to Fort Wayne to replace the team the previous owner had whisked away  to Albany, N.Y.

Thirty-four years later, the Komets are about to enter their 74th season. Only the Hershey Bears of the AHL have been around longer in minor-league hockey.

And Lonnie Loach, who was so much a part of keeping it going?

Still the last Komet to score 50 goals in a season, he went on to play 56 games with three teams in the NHL before retiring in 2006. But once upon a time, on one special night, he was a once-upon-a-Komet. 

May his weary legs forever be 23 years old. And blessedly un-weary.

Swiftie Derangement Syndrome alert!

 I'm with Vice-President Mini-Me, doggone it. I'm fearfully afraid (or afraid-ly fearful) Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce getting engaged is just a super-secret plan to get the Kansas City Chiefs to the Super Bowl again, and therefore commissioner Roger "The Hammer" Goodell needs to be super-duper vigilant about any such nefarious designs.

No, really. Mini-Me (straight name, J.D. Vance) said just that the other day.

Admitted he's a Bengals fan, at least, and thus naturally biased against the Chiefs, who used to beat his Bengals back when the Bengals still mattered. So that was big of him.

The rest, though, was your standard Swiftie Derangement Syndrome, a malady folks with Mini-Me's particular ideology are especially prone to. Taylor Swift is a woman, after all, and worse than that, she's a woman with so much money, clout and common decency Mini-Me and them can't drag her down to their level. What are they gonna do, bash her for donating armloads of cash to local food banks at all her concert venues?

Ah, but now she's not just dating, but is actually engaged, to a bleeping-bleep Chief. Cry havoc and loose the dogs of paranoia, or some such thing.

"I hope that the NFL does not put a thumb on the scale for the Kansas City Chiefs just because Travis Kelce is now getting married to maybe the most famous woman in the world," Mini-Me said, noting that the NFL could arrange a "Super Bowl wedding" by making sure its game officials play extra nice with the Chiefs.

Let me say this about that, as Richard Nixon used to say.

One, even if the Chiefs somehow jacked around and reached the Big Roman Numeral again, there's no way the Kelce-Swift nuptials would happen Super Bowl week. Travis might miss what used to be called Media Day, and that's a burn-'em-at-the-stake offense in the NASH-unal FOOT-ball League.

Two, the national scribes and TV yaks would raise six kinds of hell, because, dammit, it would cut into their Super Bowl party time. Also, while they're writing/yakking about wedding stuff, they might miss the 2,345th Patrick Mahomes feature at least a hundred of them were planning to write/yak about.

Three, Roger 'n' them already get a raft of doo-doo about the shoddiness of NFL officiating. Even though everyone who's not a Chiefs fan already thinks it's BLATANTLY OBVIOUS the Chiefs get all the calls, not even the NFL is dumb enough to make sure they actually do get all the calls. This isn't the WWE, for God's sake. Yet.

Of course, the league could avoid all this simply by making sure Mini-Me's Bengals get all the calls. Or, more likely, those eternal bridesmaids the Bills.

In which case, Josh Allen Derangement Syndrome would become a thing.

Prove me wrong, America.

Those other Cruds

 And just when you thought the Blob was going to stop torturing you with tales of my Pittsburgh Cruds, on account of they're not nearly as Cruddy these days as the Colorado Rockheads, Chicago What Sox or, heck, even the Miami Merlins ...

How 'bout my alma-hardly-matters, the Ball State Cardinals/Cruds 2.0?

("Not another one!" you're saying now)

("Please, no one cares about stupid Ball State!" you're saying)

("I mean, it's in Muncie, for God's sake!" you're saying)

Well, TOO BAD. Imma gonna talk about my Cardinals/Cruds 2.0 anyway. 

They have, after all, achieved some national pub this week, after that splendid 31-0 rollover against, geez, Purdue last weekend. It was Geez, Purdue's first win since shutting out Indiana State 49-0 in last season's opener, and their first FBS win since beating Indiana in the Old Oaken Bucket Game on Thanksgiving weekend of 2023.

All of which, I noticed, landed my Cruds 2.0 at No. 8 on ESPN's satirical Bottom Ten list this week. Yes, sir, there they are -- Baller State, just behind No. 7 the FA(not I)U Owls and the Charlotte 0-and-1ers.

The good news?

The Cruds 2.0 have an excellent shot at moving up in the rankings this week, because they follow up their trip to Ross-Ade Stadium with a trip to Jordan-Hare Stadium at Auburn. Frying pan, meet fire.

Of course, the Ball State athletic department will get to add $2.5 million to its bank account thanks to these voluntary human sacrifices, guarantee games being what they are. And at least my Cruds 2.0 aren't skeered of the big boys like those pansies down in Bloomington, who opened the season against Old Dominion and now must prepare for the mighty Owls of Kennesaw State.

Who, I notice, are an honorable mention (as Kennesaw Mountain Landis State) in this week's Bottom Ten.

Lose on, you Owls!

Beli-chucked

Hey, didja hear the one about Bill Belichick?

Knock-knock.

Who's there?

Bill Belichick.

Bill Belichick who?

Bill Belichick who is the Dean Wormer of college football.

Because Chapel Hill was ready to get down last night, ready to par-tay, because Belichick was making his college football coaching debut and every Tar Heel who was any Tar Heel was there. Roy Williams was there. Mia Hamm was there. Hey, look, it's Lawrence Taylor! And MJ! And a bunch of guys who didn't even go to North Carolina, the University of!

It was gonna be a celebration, a coronation, a big ol' powder blue lord-it-over-you-ification. Prime-time game. Labor Day evening. ESPN, which was on the Full Hype  setting, constantly rolling out graphics about all the Super Bowls Bill Belichick had won with the Patriots, and all the division titles and all the games he'd won, and OMG, look, the Tar Heels marched right down the field and scored on Bill Belichick's very first possession!

And then ...

And then, Bill Belichick went all Dean Wormer on them.

Which is to say, no more fun of any kind.

Not long after Belichick, er, North Carolina scored on its first possession, see, here came Josh Hoover and TCU. On their second possession the Horned Frogs went 58 yards in just six plays, and Hoover dropped a throw right down the bucket to Jordan Dwyer for six, and the air went out of everything. Hoover kept completing passes and transfer running back Kevorian Barnes kept punching holes in the Tar Heels' D, and over on the sideline, ESPN kept cutting to Belichick with his brow all knit up, looking down at his play sheet as if it were written in Klingon.

Meanwhile, TCU scored to go up 14-7.  And then, as ESPN comically kept running Belichick graphics, the Horned Frogs turned hanging curve from North Carolina quarterback Gio Lopez  into a pick six to go up 20-7. And then Barnes opened the second half with a jaunt down the sideline that seemed to cross three state lines on the way to the end zone, and TCU kept scoring, and suddenly the Horned Frogs had reeled off 41 straight points and the Belichick Tar Heels looked like just another cruddy college team the couldn't stop anyone and couldn't move the football.

Final score: TCU 48, North Carolina 14.

Final stats: Twenty-nine first downs for TCU; 10 for North Carolina. Five-hundred forty-two total yards for TCU; 222 for UNC. Hoover was 27-of-36 for 284 yards and two scores. Barnes lugged it 13 times for 113 yards and the cross-country TD, an 8.7-yard per-carry average. The Horned Frogs 7.4 yards per carry as a team.

Which meant Carolina couldn't stop the run or the pass, and it couldn't run the football, either. Offensive coordinator Freddie Kitchens' old-school plan to establish the run went kablooey as soon as TCU got the Tar Heels down, and the plan wasn't such a great one anyway.  Not when you get no push up front and average a barely-visible 1.8 yards per carry.

Meanwhile, ESPN was telling us Belichick's 13-man coaching staff includes seven assistants with extensive NFL coaching or playing experience, including Kitchens and Belichick's sons, Steve and Brian.

Maybe they shoulda got more college guys.

The college game ain't the pro game, after all, and at least now Belichick knows that. There is less you control, because you're dealing not with grown professionals but with 19-, 20-, 21-year-old college kids who occasionally do goofy college-kid stuff. Also there is the utterly ungovernable transfer portal to deal with. Also Gio Lopez and his (at least last night) more competent backup, Max Johnson, are not, you know, Tom Brady.

Who was not Tom Brady, either, when he was a college backup at Michigan.

The good news?

At least Belichick doesn't get the Chiefs or the Ravens next week. He gets Charlotte, which went 5-7 last season and lost 38-20 to the Tar Heels. Then he gets Richmond. Then he gets Central Florida.

Lot less likely he gets Beli-chucked in those three. Lot more likely he'll be 3-1 heading into the showdown with No. 4 Clemson.

In the words: Hang onto that hype.

Jerk of the year

I wouldn't know Piotr Szczerej if he snatched me bald-headed, which by all available evidence he would. But he's exactly the sort of self-absorbed, entitled rich guy who gives other self-absorbed entitled rich guys a bad name.

Szczerej, it seems, is the CEO of a Polish paving company, and last week he almost literally stole candy from a baby. Then he sneered like a self-absorbed, entitled rich guy at everyone who called him on it.

The candy in this case was a hat, which Polish tennis star Kamil Majchrzak was handing to a small boy after a recent match at the U.S. Open. As the boy reached for it, however, Szczerej, an allegedly grown man, leaned over and grabbed it away, leaving the poor kid gaping helplessly with his hands outstretched.

The moment, as pretty much everything is these days, was caught on video. A shitestorm of social media reaction quickly followed, with one poster after another correctly identifying Szczerej as a giant douche. Szczerej then assured himself first-class accommodations in the Giant Douche Hall of Fame by posting a response to his critics fairly brimming with self-absorbed, entitled rich guy hubris.

"Yes, I took it," he bragged. "Yes, I did it quickly. But as I've always said, life is first come, first served ... It's just a hat. If you were faster, you would have it."

He then wrapped up this douche-y gem by threatening to sue anyone online who dared call him ... well, a giant douche.

The Blob's response: Good luck with that, pal. Maybe.

As a big-deal CEO, see, Szczerej is a public figure, and public figures are and always have been fair game for public ridicule in these United States. Or at least they were until the Great And Terrible Oz got himself elected President/Supreme Leader again, and brought the privileged ethos of the gated community to American governance.

In other words, we're Piotr Szczerej's kind of place now. The evidence is a handful of responses to Szczerej's response that actually backed the hat stealer's play, reasoning that it was a teachable moment for the young victim. See, kid? Bein' selfish and grabby ain't wrong. It's how you get ahead in the world.

No, really. A couple of folks actually said that.

Now, this being the world we live in now, the standard caveat must be stated: Not only is it possible the aforementioned posts on the Great Social Media Whatsis might be deep fakes, but Szczerej's might be, too. Anything's possible here in the mad days of 2025, when even the official pronouncements of the Regime sound like badly-written fiction. And frequently are. 

But given that there's visual confirmation of Szczerej's heinous act, his subsequent post  sounds just like a guy who'd steal a kid's hat. In other words, a giant douche.

Sue away, Piotr.