Beware the machines

 The first time I saw one of those Waymo self-driving cars it freaked me out.

We were in San Francisco and an old friend of my wife's was showing us around -- he lives in Berkeley, just across the water -- and suddenly this car went past and THERE WAS NOBODY IN IT.

"Yah!" I said, or something like it. "Now that is creepy."

My wife's friend chuckled.

"It's the future, Ben," he joked.

"I don't care," I replied. "It's still creepy."

And I stand by that judgment, stubborn codger that I am.

I especially stand by it now that Kyle Shanahan has revealed his Tesla was in autopilot mode -- not exactly the same thing as Waymo, but close enough -- when he caused an accident that (as former Indiana football coach Bill Mallory used to say) boogered him up considerable.

Wound up with a serious concussion, a broken hand, a broken nose, three broken ribs and 40 stitches in his face. Damn near lost an eye, too.

Shanahan said his phone slid off his leg and he took his eyes off the road to look for it, never a winning move in a motor vehicle. This week he added the autopilot detail.

"See?" my inner stubborn codger said. "You can't trust the machines. Doesn't anyone remember how Skynet created the Terminators?"

"Oh, come on," you're saying now. "That was just a movie. Movies aren't real. If they were, 5-foot-7 Tom Cruise and 74-year-old Liam Neeson would be indestructible action heroes."

Well, maybe. But I still don't trust the machines. 

When I'm in a car, I want my hands on the wheel, not some invisible AI Mario Andretti. That's because you'd never know when Mario was going to morph into Fender Bender McGee or someone.

What an epitaph that would be: "He Lived. He Died. He Let An AI Whittington Brother Drive."

No way, baby. I'm not getting a Tesla with an autopilot feature, and not because it boogered up Kyle Shanahan. And I'm for sure not climbing into a Waymo taxi -- yes, they have Waymo taxis now -- unless I'm either unconscious or heavily sedated.

"Where to, buddy?" my invisible taxi driver would say.

And then he'd turn around, and it would be Arnold at the end of the first Terminator, with all his skin worn away and one angry red eye glaring at me.

"Yah!" I'd shout.

If the heart attack didn't get me first.

No-brainer

 There was no way Drew Brees was ever going to wind up in Canton, until there was no way he wasn't. You want to sum up a guy's journey in a single sentence, that would be it.

He was too short and he didn't have a rocket launcher for an arm, and that was before he blew up his shoulder and the San Diego Chargers shipped him off to New Orleans like a sprung couch. Set him out by the curb for the Salvation Army to pick up, and that was the last anyone would hear of him.

Except.

Except now we're 25 years down the road from all that, and, hey, look who's in Canton today. The sprung couch is about to go into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and rarely has there been more of a no-brainer than that. 

Twenty years in the league, a Super Bowl MVP and 13 Pro Bowls will do that for a guy. More than 80,000 passing yards, 571 touchdowns and a ridiculous 67.7 completion rate will. And being the heart and soul and light in the night for a wrecked city after Katrina took N'awlins down to the studs?

Well, that'll do it, too.

Not a bad deal for a guy who came out of Purdue as its latest Bob Griese/Mike Phipps/Jim Everett, only a miniature version of same. Yes, he blew away every passing record Purdue and the Big Ten had, but the tape measure stubbornly refused to declare him more than a smidge over six feet even. And then there was the arm strength thing. And then ...

And then, he languished into the second round of the NFL Draft before the Chargers said "Ah, what the hell" and snatched him up.

Those of us who watched him light up Ross-Ade Stadium for four years couldn't figure it out. Yes, he was short -- at 6-1, I'd never interviewed a major-college quarterback shorter than I was until I met Brees -- but, good lord, and holy gee, besides. Did the draft gurus not see what we saw?

Did they not see Brees-to-Morales for six?

Because the Purdue faithful will always see it, and not just because it beat Ohio State to all but seal the Boilermakers' first trip to the Rose Bowl in 34 years. Brees-to-Morales for six was, for those of us who were there, the first time you could see him in Canton some day.

It wasn't just that it was the knockout blow in a knock-down, drag-out hammerfest between the Big Ten's two heavyweights that year. It was because Drew Brees kept passing Purdue into the lead and then passing the Boilers out of it with four picks -- the last a Mike Doss interception that set up OSU's go-ahead score with a bit over two minutes left.

A couple plays later, with Ross-Ade one giant held breath and all the pressure of a pressurized afternoon bearing down hard, Brees took the snap 64 yards from the end one and dropped back.

He looked at Vinny Sutherland.

He looked at Tim Stratton.

And then, finally, he looked at Seth Morales free and clear downfield, and launched a perfect strike that won it for the Purdues once and for all.

"It wasn't designed to go to me," Morales said later. "Drew looked at Vinny, and he looked at Stratton, and he just came to me."

So it was a third-read touchdown at the biggest moment of an impossibly big day. And a revealing look into why Drew Brees is going into Canton today.

Because he was cooler than Arctic winter when nothing less would do.

Because when the heat was hottest, Mr. Cool went through his progressions like a man studying a bus schedule.

Because if the pros wrinkled their fussy beaks over his arm strength or lack thereof, they missed something else: That Brees' arm was more laser than rocket launcher, capable of throwing a football through a keyhole from ... well, from 64 yards away.

That's why they'll unveil his bust and slip the yellow jacket on him today. And that's why "Well, duh," is the only proper response to that.

Oopsie

 Look, I'm not here this morning to make fun of Tommy McClelland, Purdue's new athletic director. The poor guy came to West Lafayette from Rice. I hear lots of stuff hasn't gotten down there yet.

But ye gods, what a Florsheim insertion into mouth yesterday. You wanna come in swingin' at your fiercest rival in your introductory appearance -- especially when you're coming to a school that could use that sort of feistiness -- at least land a glancing blow. And have, you know, at least a nodding acquaintance with timing.

Here's what Tommy said, which has everyone from Valparaiso to Rising Sun guffawing today (but not me!): "We are here to win championships. If you don't want to win championships, go to Indiana."

Which, of course, just won the only championship that really matters, going 16-0 and beating everybody in the College Football Playoff.

Now, if the Blob were inclined to make fun here (and, really, I'm not!), it would point out what a lot of the online snarkmeisters were pointing out, which is that Indiana has won 24 NCAA titles over the years to Purdue's, um, five. And in the two biggies -- football and men's basketball -- the score is IU 6, Purdue 0.

Conference championships?

OK, there McClelland's on firmer ground. The Boilermakers have won or shared 83 Big Ten titles across the years, including 25 in men's basketball and eight in football. Indiana has won 22 and two-and-a-half in the Big Two, respectively. So neener-neener-neener, Hoosiers.

Also, good news for McClelland, who now has a handy escape hatch for yesterday's oopsie -- which at least one mean IU fan called "the most Purdue thing ever."

Wait, you thought I meant NATIONAL championships? you can hear McClelland saying. Oh, HELL, no. I meant we're here to win BIG TEN championships. Which we have more of in football and men's buckets than Indiana, by the way. So neener-neener-neener.

That would work, right?

Um, riiiight?

American echoes

 "It wasn't long before the attacks (on Irish-Catholics) began. The ranks of the Know-Nothings swelled. What was happening to the United States was a conquest, they claimed, indirect and unplanned, by foreign hordes, unknowing of our ways, with foreign values."

-- Timothy Egan, "The Immortal Irishman", of the Irish-Catholic diaspora of the 1840s

"It's not racist to say you don't want Muslims in America."

-- Current Vice-President JD Vance, not a Know-Nothing as far we, well, know

Someone smarter than most of us once said history doesn't so much repeat as reverberate. Its echoes tumble down the years from one age to the next, fetching up in the present with only the details altered, not the substance.

(And, yes, we're taking a drive outside the Sportsball compound again. Standard protocols apply.)

Which brings us to the two quotations above.

The first, as noted, takes us back to the 1840s, when a political movement grounded in anti-Catholic hysteria decided the Irish fleeing the Great Famine were militant Papists whose goal was not the opportunity America presented for a better life, but its subjugation to Rome.  If the "invasion" of Irish-Catholics was not checked, the Know-Nothings warned, soon all of America would be bowing to the Pope.

And the second quotation?

It advances a theme every bit as hysterical: That Muslims in America are militant Islamists whose goal is not the opportunity America presents for a better life, but its subjugation to Mohammed. If the "invasion" of Muslims is not checked, JD Vance and his ilk warn, soon all of America will be bowing to the mullahs.

In both cases, the assumptions are identical. Roman Catholics/Muslims aren't really Americans; they don't share our common values; they are incompatible with our culture. Or as Egan went on to write of the Know-Nothings' warnings: "No country on earth had tried to form a common bond without common ancestry -- it could not be done. And America was not by design a haven for the world's rejects ..."

At which point the echoes of  1840s America become thunderous. It's as if the anti-Muslim bigots -- no, not racists, but certainly bigots -- are following the Know-Nothings' script word-for-word.

Everything changes and nothing changes, in other words. The fear and loathing that has greeted almost every succeeding immigrant wave from the Irish onward employs the same weary rhetoric, advances the same weary ideology, fuels itself with the same weary ignorance.

And we should be weary of all of it -- or at least recognize it as the divide-and-conquer boogaloo charlatans and scoundrels have employed to hold onto power since the beginning of time.

Speaking of which, let's go back to JD Vance echoing what a lot of his fellow travelers have been saying out loud: That Islam is fundamentally incompatible with American "culture" (despite the fact our "culture" is not one but many), and therefore its followers should be cast out of the country no matter what the Constitution says.

The great irony, of course, is that's exactly the sort of religious bigotry that drove the Pilgrims to our shores to begin what we now call America.  And the other irony?

That JD Vance would so perfectly echo the old Know-Nothings.

Because JD Vance, you see, is Roman Catholic.

Karma sighting

 Your Chicago Cubs took care of the Los Angeles Dodgers yesterday, 7-6, completing a three-game sweep of the Trolley Dodgers in Wrigley Field. Even beat L.A.'s shiny new toy, Tarik Skubal,  by a 5-1 count on Tuesday.

The sweep extended L.A.'s current spiral to six straight Ls, which makes the Blob wonder something now that everyone's saying how unfair it is that the back-to-back World Series champs, already shamefully loaded, were able to pluck a two-time Cy Young winner (Skubal) before the trade deadline.

What I'm wondering is this: Is the Dodgers' six-game skid karma? Or something like it?

Because no  one likes an overdog. And you have to figure the baseball gods don't, either.

Random thought for today.

Copy-cattin'. Or not.

And now ... logo wars!

Which is the Blob's way of introducing the current tiff between Smith & Wesson and the Fort Wayne Football Club, two entities you never thought you'd see in the same sentence until you did.

Smith & Wesson, see, thinks Fort Wayne FC's logo looks waaaay too much like Smith & Wesson's logo, which of course has been around waaaay longer. So S & W is suing the local soccer club for copyright infringement.

I gotta be honest here. I think Smith & Wesson might have a case. 

But only a teensy one.

Yes, the font and calligraphy of both logos are eerily similar. But this does not mean Fort Wayne FC is guilty of copy-catting Smith & Wesson's deal. It just means in an America where corporate logos are thicker than BS in a congressional inquiry, sooner or later lookalikes are going to happen.

Besides, does anyone with a working synapse think Fort Wayne FC intentionally copied the logo of a gunmaker? Or even ran across it when it was trying to come up with something snazzy?

Imagine the conversation ...

FC Artistic Guy: Hey, let's check out some gunmaker logos. Maybe we'll see something snazzy.

FC Project Manager: Do WHAT?

Artistic Guy: Gunmakers! I mean, why not?

Project Manager: I dunno, because we're not a gunmaker? We're a soccer club. Why the hell would be looking at gunmaker logos? Better we should be checking out other soccer club logos so we don't inadvertently copy one and get sued.

Artistic Guy: OK, FINE. I suppose this means you don't want to check out these rad kitchen appliance logos, either. 

And so on.

At any rate, here's hoping some judge tells Smith & Wesson to take its teensy lawsuit and make a paper airplane out of it. 'Cause I, for one, happen to like the football club's logo. So I'd hate to see them have to scrap it for, I don't know, a logo featuring the silhouette of a soccer player leaning hard into a drive upfie--

Jerry West, from somewhere in the great beyond: "Hey! That looks like me!"

Well, crap.

Myths, fables and PCA

 Chicago Cubs star/wildcard Pete Crow-Armstrong (aka, "PCA") was on Kristin Cavallari's podcast this week, and, boy, did he not disappoint. Didja hear what he said THIS time?

(OK, so he didn't say it, exactly. A Seattle Mariners pitcher named Tayler Saucedo said it. PCA was just passing it along as an example of an unpopular opinion.)

Anyway, what PCA said Saucedo said was that, since very little video of Babe Ruth exists, maybe Babe Ruth didn't exist. Maybe he was a myth or a fable, like Paul Bunyan or Vince the ShamWow guy.

This, of course, immediately vaulted Saucedo into the top five on the Stupidest Things An Athlete Has Ever Said list. He's right up there with Kyrie "The Earth Is Flat" Irving now, or maybe even Aaron Rodgers.

Because of course Babe Ruth existed. The reason there's not much video of him is because ... well, figure it out. Start with "it was the 1920s" and go from there.

So, yeah. Babe Ruth existed, he hit 714 home runs, he called everyone "keed" (as in, "kid). He ate too many hotdogs and drank too much beer and one time in the World Series he called his shot, or didn't, or whatever.

Did we mention he hit 714 home runs?

Which PCA implied was less than impressive because, well, it happened in the Before Time, when he never had to face the likes of Satchel Paige on account of the baseball commissioner, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, was a racist douchecanoe who kept black players out of Major League Baseball.  

"People might as well have been like underhanding the ball to that guy," PCA said of the real/mythical Babe.

(Brief pause while Walter Johnson enters the chat. Also Lefty Grove. Also, what the hell, the Babe himself.)

(Lengthier pause while we discuss the door PCA opened with his comment, which is that you can't compare the 1920s to the 2020s because athletes are bigger, faster, stronger and not just white anymore.)

(All of which is true, by the way.)

What is also true, however, is that today's athletes are bigger, faster and stronger because training regimens are different and diet is different and the equipment is different. Saying the Babe, real or otherwise, couldn't compete today takes none of that into account. In the 1920s, he trained on hotdogs, chopped wood to get himself in shape, and thought cardio was the name of that new Italian slugger in Philly. And still, again, he hit 714 home runs.

Imagine a ripped, sleek Babe 2026 model swinging a modern bat crafted exactly to his specifications down to the molecular level. For that matter, imagine, say, Bjorn Borg in his prime playing with today's trampoline tennis racquets instead of the tiny wooden deals he had to make do with.

Why, he'd paint every line in the joint with those laser groundstrokes. It would hardly be fair.

Unless, of course, Tayler Saucedo or PCA or Kyrie claimed Borg never existed, either. You never know with these guys.

Today in turned tables

 Aaron Rodgers, everyone's favorite NFL wackadoodle, was on with Pat McAfee again yesterday, and he had some unkind things to say about Dr. Anthony Fauci, the ditso right's latest boogeyman/scapegoat/Extremely Evil Person. 

Veering off one of his tangents, A-Aron called Fauci an "absolute coward" for refusing to play along with Random Brain Cell Paul's dog-and-pony show last week. Said, like Fauci, he'd "plead the Fifth" when McAfee asked about training camp.

This gives the Blob the opportunity to turn the tables on all the aforementioned ditso's who love to tell left-leaning athletes and coaches to "stick to sports" and "just bounce the ball" when they offer non-sports opinions.

So, here goes:

1. "Stick to sports."

2. "Just throw the football."

3. "Nobody cares what you think of (choose one) Fauci, vaccines, the moon landing, etc."

4. "Could you go do your isolation thing again? 'Cause that would be awesome."

5. "You've been into the ayahuasca again, haven't you?"

6. "Or how about the peyote? Yeah, I bet it's the peyote."

7. "Orrrr ... or I hear your pal RFK Jr. is doing wonderful things with eye of newt these days. Maybe you scored some of that?"

And last but hardly least ...

8. "Bless your heart."

Firing offensively

 Caught this one today on the Awful Announcing website, via FOB (Friend of the Blob) and fellow Indiana sports journo colleague Andrew Smith, aka the Hardest Working Man In Sportscasting.

(Or so I call him).

What Awful Announcing posted, and Andrew re-posted, was an item about Boston College, which just hired Luke Murray as its new basketball coach. It seems among the changes fully expected anytime a new regime takes the reins was one that wasn't expected: In addition to a new staff, Murray also insisted BC fire longtime men's basketball broadcasters Kevin Collins and Josh Maurer, who'd been calling BC's games together for nine seasons.

Rather than stand by their men, BC acquiesced -- on August 1, which means it'll be hard for Collins and Maurer to find another gig for this winter. A profile in courage this wasn't.

A slap in the face to two men who deserved better, however, it was. Not to say completely ridiculous.

First off, and most obviously, Collins and Maurer had no direct connection to the previous regime, or to any previous regime, really. Collins in particular had been calling BC games for 13 years, through three head coaches and five athletic directors. That made him less a specific program institution than a university institution -- certainly more of the latter than anyone involved in firing him.

Any or all of whom should lose their jobs, in the Blob's opinion. For, I don't know, lack of institutional gumption or something.

Look. I get that every new coach wants to bring in his own people, if only to fumigate a program that, one presumes, desperately needs it. But the broadcasters aren't any part of that. All they're doing is calling the games. So to insist they go, too, is not only a supremely dickish move, but a supremely irrational one, too.

(Re the dickish part: It should be noted that Murray came to BC from UConn, where he was an assistant for Dan Hurley, the high priest of college hoops dickishness. So I guess he gets it honest.)

Anyway, shame on Murray. And shame on BC administrators for letting him knuckle them.

Because what someone (ideally the athletic director) should have said when Murray insisted on canning Collins and Maurer was this: "Coach Murray, that's not your call. That's our call. And unless you can show cause -- which you can't, because the whole idea is absurd on its face -- Collins and Maurer aren't going anywhere. And if you don't like it, we can tear up your contract right now. I hear Northwest Eastern Tech State is hiring."

Of course, saying all that would have taken some stones. And some integrity. Both of which seem especially lacking these days in Chestnut Hill.

You've heard of firing offenses?

This one was an offensive firing. Squared.

Wonder Gramps

 The most amazing golfer of our time did it again yesterday, and, no, I'm not talking about Tiger or Rory or Scottie Scheffler, those putzes. I'm talking about our very own Fearless Leader, Donald John "Par Killer" Trump.

Who won his 40th club championship at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J., over the weekend, carding a 2-under 70 that was totally legit and had nothing whatever to do with the fact he owns the club and is, you know, President of the United States or anything.

The only people saying otherwise are jealous losers like all the losers he beat to win yet another title.

"It's called TALENT, and I have it, and they don't!" he crowed on the Mighty Twitter X Machine.

Now, I get it, some of the aforementioned jealous losers might question how a slobbish 80-year-old man managed to shoot 10 strokes under his age on any golf course that wasn't Pirate Mike's Buccaneer Booty Miniature Golf. Is there a clown mouth hole at Bedminster? Did Fearless Leader play the orange ball or the purple ball? And is it true he eagled the treacherous Walk The Plank hole?

Please. Your snark and your cynicism grow wearisome.

Truth is, you just can't accept the fact that Fearless Leader is not only a world-class intellect, but the wonder of his age on the golf course. You know how Dale Earnhardt used to taunt the young Jeff Gordon by calling him "Wonderboy"? Well, Donald John is Wonder Gramps.

Eighty years old and still bringin' it! And, again, enough with all the yap about how it's his own golf course where everyone works for him and therefore knows their paychecks ride on knowing exactly when to look the other way.

Reporter From An Actual News Outlet: Hey, there, Trump National Golf Club employee. Is it true Wonder Gramps kicked his golf ball out of that bunker on the 12th hole? Did he really say "Put me down for a 4" on that par-5 where he actually put up a snowman (i.e., 8)? 

Trump National Golf Club Employee: Hey, man, don't ask me. I was lookin' at this tree over here. Ain't it a gorgeous tree?

That sort of thing.

Well, you know what you can do with "that sort of thing." You can stick it right up there where the sun never shines, along with your doubts about the heinous vandalism of the Reflecting Pool by America-hating antifa commie Muslims. Who you gonna believe, Fearless Leader or Fearless Leader's own Justice Department, which just admitted the vandalism story is total bunk? Seriously, Jeanine Pirro? Who's Jeanine Pirro, besides wanna-be Judge Judy?

Take it down the road, jealous losers. And all hail Wonder Gramps -- 40-time club champion at clubs he owns, and the athletic marvel of the age according to his closest friends and most steadfast political allies.

I mean, have you seen clip where he dunked on LeBron? Incredible.

Reverse Cruds Alert!*

 (*Because the Rockheads, the Mange-els and the rest of the Cruds are old news now that the baseball season has reached August, its black hole of months)

Checked out the MLB standings this a.m. just to see if it was really August and if my Pittsburgh Not-As-Cruddy-As-They-Used-To-Be's were still playing .500 baseball (They are! 56-56, baby!).Aand guess what?

The Los Angeles Dodgers are not the best team in baseball right now. 

They've actually lost two in a row and are 69-42, half-a-game back of the numbingly efficient Milwaukee Brewers. And, OK, so they're still 10 games up in the NL West, but, listen, it's not like they couldn't use some help. So all you people griping about the rich getting richer and what a joke baseball is now need to dummy up.

Because they needed Tarik Skubal. Yes, they did.

For those of you who don't know who Tarik Skubal is, well, he was the prize of prizes during this trade deadline period, a two-time Cy Young winner who's arguably been the best pitcher in the American League the last two years. And now he's a Trolley Dodger!

News broke last night that the Dodgers and Skubal's former team, the Detroit Tigers, were finalizing a deal that would send Tarik west in exchange for a handful of magic beans, er, prospects. That's what's so annoying about the Dodgers, see: Not only do they have all the money these days, they also have lots of trade bait to dangle from their first-rate farm system. 

"All the money AND a farm system?" you're saying now. "How's THAT fair?"

To which the Dodgers would no doubt reply, quoting a former teammate in our company basketball league: Fair? (Bleep) fair!

Fair's not what's made Dem Bums back-to-back World Series champs, with a likely three-peat waiting in the wings come October. And if you think that's a joke, well, the joke's on you, sorehead. 

Dynasties are good for baseball, see. Grotesquely over-doggy overdogs are the life's blood of the game. I mean, you didn't hear people complaining about Casey Stengel's Yankees when they were winning the Series every crummy year in the 1950s, did you?

(Brief interlude while every other team from the '50s shouts, "Hell, yes, we were complaining! Screw Mantle and Whitey Ford and Yogi Berra and Elston Howard and the rest of those high-hatted bastards! We like World Series rings, too, ya know!")

Anyway ...

Now the Dodgers have Skubal, and just in time, too. After all, it wasn't like they were going to get by with Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamato, Tyler Glasnow, Roki Sasaki and those guys. And where was the run support gonna come from when the only sticks you had were Ohtani and Freddie Freeman and Mookie Betts and Kyle Tucker and Will Smith, and also Max Muncy?

So, yeah, good for them. They've got the best pitcher in the AL now, or one of the best. Which means they'll probably win a pile more games and beat the Brewers or Braves in the NL and then beat, I don't know, maybe the Rays in the World Series.

Or how about this: Maybe the Series comes down to the Dodgers vs. the White Sox.

The Pale Hose, after all, are leading the AL Central by three games right now, two seasons after fielding the worst team in the modern era. How great a narrative would that be, the former schlubbiest of schlubs against baseball's reigning Reverse Cruds?

The White Sox, stealing a Virgil Tibbs' line from "In The Heat Of The Night": "I can pull that fat cat down off his mountain!"

The Trolley Dodgers, stealing King Arthur's line from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail": "Bloody peasant!"

Ah, yes. I can see it now. 

Birthdate of fear

(In which the Blob again says "Later for you, sporty-sports," and sets off into the wider world for awhile. The usual protocols apply to those who don't wish to join me on the journey.)

First of August now, and another summer in the books, or at least it seems so these accelerated days.  The local baseball diamonds are empty. The band kids are in the high school parking lots, sweating under the hammering sun. In 12 days, they'll back in school again, the yellow buses will be running again, and wasn't it just yesterday that they spilled everyone out into what seemed an endless stretch of freedom?

Perhaps. But summer's end is not the end I think about when I think about August 1, and this August 1 in particular.

The end I think about is the end of a certain kind of American innocence, and the assumptions that formed its foundation.

This August 1, you see, is 60 years to the day since a sick man in a high place went hunting human beings.

His name was Charles Whitman, and on Aug. 1, 1966 he hauled an M1 carbine, two Remington rifles, a semi-automatic shotgun and three handguns up to the observation deck of the University of Texas tower -- which still stands, and which they still light up Texas burnt orange after every Longhorns football triumph -- and turned downtown Austin into a kill zone.

He was up there for 90 minutes until a couple of police officers took him down, and in that time, from his high place, he killed 15 people and wounded 31 more. This was after he'd stabbed his wife and mother to death, and after he'd left two victims inside who had the misfortune to encounter him on his way to the observation deck.

For most of his 25 years, he'd been a normal American male, a loving husband and dutiful son who'd whisked his mother away from his abusive father. Then a tumor bloomed inside his brain, and, in 90 terrifying minutes, Charles Whitman became something else entirely: The godfather of the American mass shooter, and the bringer of nightmares we could scarcely imagine in 1966.

Because who could conceive, back then, of an America where you could be shot dead just walking down the street? Where some random human (Even a neighbor, maybe!) could take it in his head to find someplace where other random humans congregate, and just start killing people he didn't even know?

We feared the Russkies and nuclear missiles aimed our way and the damn Commies taking over the world, in those days. We didn't fear one of our own using his Second Amendment rights to stockpile an arsenal of weapons (Two Remmies, an M-1, a shotgun and three handguns? Who needs all that?) and make war on his fellow Americans.

So now we had something else to fear, in a fearful time. And on it went from there -- from Charles Whitman to James Oliver Huberty in a McDonald's down by Mexico; to Patrick Sherrill in a post office in Edmonds, Okla.; to George Hennard in a cafeteria in Texas; to Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold at Columbine High School; to Seung-Hui Cho at Virginia Tech; to Stephen Paddock on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Hotel in Las Vegas, another hunter of humans in a high place.

Paddock killed 60 people and shot almost 500 when he did his deal nine years ago. Five years before that, Adam Lanza murdered 27 people, 20 of them children, at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn. Another elementary school in Uvalde, Tex.; a synagogue in Pittsburgh; a movie theater in Aurora, Colo.; a supermarket in El Paso, Tex., and another in Buffalo, N.Y. ...

The blood trail of Charles Whitman, the madness and the butchery, continues apace. As does the fear that, after so many butcheries, we're either numb to or have trained ourselves not to think about anymore.

But Aug. 1, 1966 was the birthdate of that fear. And then it was very real.

I was 11 at the time, see, and we were on vacation, and that night we went to dinner somewhere. I remember, hazily, seeing a newspaper there, and the Texas tower shooting was splashed all over the front page. And when we finished dinner and walked out to the car, I remember walking very fast, because somewhere in the dark I just knew there was a man with a rifle, and that he was going to start shooting.

Like I said, I was 11 years old at the time, with an 11-year-old's overheated imagination. But I suspect I wasn't the only one who, after that day, felt a chill the next time they walked out into their quiet American lives in their quiet American town. 

And I suspect they weren't all 11, either.

The toll, continued

 Last night I watched "Concussion" again, the flick in which Will Smith plays Dr. Bennet Omalu, a pathologist who's largely credited with discovering CTE, or chronic traumatic encephalopathy. I did it because Billy Ray Smith Jr. and Ahman Green were in the news this week.

Billy Ray Smith Jr. -- whose father, Billy Ray Sr., played on the same Baltimore Colts defensive line with Bubba Smith -- was in the news because he's dead. A former Pro Bowl linebacker for the San Diego Chargers, he was 64 years old and died from what his family says was CTE  dementia.

And Ahman Green?

The leading rusher in Green Bay Packers history was in the news because he announced on a podcast he had early-onset Parkinson's, a neurological disorder that's frequently accompanied by Lewy-Body dementia. I know this because my dad died of it, slipping slowly away from us until he simply wasn't there anymore.

My dad was 91. Ahman Green is just 49. But sure enough, he says his short-term memory is "trash" now.

Green played 12 seasons in the NFL, after high school ball and college ball at Nebraska. Billy Ray Smith Jr. played 10 seasons in the NFL, after high school ball and college ball at Arkansas, where his daddy also played. 

Now, it's far too presumptuous to say Billy Ray Jr. would be alive today, and Ahman Green's short-term memory would be just fine, had they not played what has become our great American game. But it's not presumptuous at all to say banging heads at cartoon speeds for 18, 19, 20-some years is hardly the secret to a long and healthy life.

Football ain't good for you. Which is not exactly a revelation handed down from above.

On the other hand, it's also a multi-billion dollar industry and a cultural touchstone, which means it's not going anywhere soon. The trick is to alleviate the toll without destroying what created that industry and that touchstone.

The Blob is of the opinion it can't be done. Not to everyone's satisfaction, anyway.

The codgers and knuckle-draggers already are shaking their bony/hairy fists at their TV screens on fall afternoons, saying the colleges and the NFL have let pantywaists and sissies take over the game. Can't touch a quarterback anymore. Can't clock a receiver going over the middle. And what the hell is "targeting," anyway?

Why, son, targeting's just sorting through the pile until you find the schlub with the ball, and then knocking the goo out of him. It's what Dick Butkus or Ray Nitschke or Night Train Lane did on every blessed snap.

And the guys who wind up like Billy Ray Jr. or Ahman Green because of it?

Well, they knew the risks. Didn't they?

The problem with that is they didn't know the risks, or at least the worst of them. And the reason they didn't know, at least on the professional level, is the NFL -- the very pinnacle of the American game -- didn't want them to know. It's why the league spent better than a quarter century telling the world concussions were just a bump on the head, and didn't affect brain function at all. Heck, that's what the helmets were designed to prevent, wasn't it?

So the league just kept stacking cash, while at the same time trying to wreck the careers of the Dr. Omalus of the world. It wasn't just irresponsible; it was flat-out criminal.

And meanwhile, CTE kept showing up in more and more deceased NFL players.

In Junior Seau and Andre Waters and Justin Strzelczyk and Dave Duerson, gone before their time.

In old timers like Frank Gifford and Paul Hornung and Ken Stabler; Jim Kiick and John Mackey and, yes, Bubba Smith.

The toll, continued.

The toll, which is unavoidable without pissing off the fan base -- or at least the codger/knuckle-dragger constituency, most of whom have likely never stood on a modern major college or NFL sideline and heard the sound it makes when two 220-pound 4.5-forty cyborgs come together at warp speed.

I have heard it, and it makes a sound like a car crash. Unless you've also heard it, you simply can't imagine.

Look. Football is not going to go away. We've established that. So what is its future?

Its future is maybe abolishing tackle football until, I don't know, middle school or so.

Its future is a game the codgers and knuckle-draggers hate, but that in time will simply be the football succeeding generations grew up with.

Its future is what I saw on TV the other day.

It was a bunch of kids in shorts and T-shirts playing in the National Flag Football Championships, and it was a blast to watch. There was a girls division and a boys division. The football was fat and white and reminded me of the ball they use in Australian Rules Football. There was running and passing and terrific catches and, on one play, a leaping one-handed interception that turned into an amazing pick six.

It's everything athletic we love about football, without brains getting knocked to squash inside skulls. I don't think it'll ever replace the tackle version, but no one who plays flag is going to die not knowing his or her own name.

He or she won't be Billy Ray Smith Jr., or even Ahman Green. Which is how I wound up watching a certain movie last night, and thinking about all this.

An educator's reward

 Drove past the place that will bear Russ Isaacs' name from this fall on, and it's a fine-looking joint. Immaculate emerald turf, grandstands gleaming in the sun on either side, big modern scoreboard looming above the south end zone. There's even a pressbox (Thanks, guys!) done up in the school colors of black and gold.

It's been years and a couple of state championships coming, but Snider High School will have a home field come late August. Should have -- could have -- been done a long time ago, but high school football fields don't come cheap these days, and the money always seemed to be needed elsewhere.

But now the thing is done at a price tag of $30 million, and if the usual codgers will gripe about that ("In our day we didn't need $30 million for a football field, we just used Farmer Brown's cow pasture!"), no one within earshot is griping about calling the place Russ Isaacs Stadium. This is because Snider could hardly have named it for anyone else.

Calling someone an institution is far too easy in these devalued days, but if Russ Isaacs isn't one at Snider High School, they should retire the word. He spent 50 years walking the halls there, for one thing, and during that time he did everything but sell popcorn -- and who knows, he might have done that, too.

Most of us knew him as Snider's head football coach for 18 years, during which time his teams won the school's first state title and were runnersup a couple of other times. But that was just one hat he wore.

He also coached wrestling and taught business and served as dean of students and athletic director at various times, a career arc that virtually made him Mr. Snider. And something more, above all else: An educator.

You could miss that on Friday nights, when Russ prowled the Snider sideline wearing the football coach's trademark glower above his signature Fu Manchu. One of the local teevees once aired footage of one of his fiery locker room speeches, and my wife saw the Fu and that intense gaze and said, "He looks mean."

All I could do was chuckle.

"You couldn't be more wrong," I said.

Because when you got to know Russ you quickly discovered there was more to him than Triple Flood X-Curl On Two. Underneath the glower and the intensity was a man who saw football its proper context -- not as an end in itself, but as part of the educational whole. It's why he always wanted his football players to wrestle or run track or play baseball or whatever, because he realized they'd be better football players and more wholly rounded young adults because of it.

Recently, one of his former students addressed that very thing in a letter to the Fort Wayne Community Schools board, which announced last week Snider's new field would be named for Isaacs, and honored him for his induction earlier this summer into the National High School Athletic Coaches Hall of Fame.

"He had a unique gift for seeing potential where others saw limits," wrote Terry McKinney, a 1989 Snider grad, as quoted in The Journal Gazette. "He pushed me tirelessly to maximize whatever ability I had. And, more importantly, he demanded and encouraged me to become the best man I could possibly be."

In other words, Russ Isaacs did what an educator is supposed to do, if he or she is at all devoted to the calling.

He educated.

The money game

We begin today with this, from ESPN yesterday:

Notre Dame has reached a multiyear deal with SoFi Technologies that will place the financial service company's brand on the Fighting Irish's jerseys in every sport starting this season, the university announced Tuesday.

The six-year deal is worth about $18 million to $20 million per year, according to industry sources, and is believed to be the richest in college athletics history ...

And so it goes, and so it goes, as Kurt Vonnegut was so fond of saying.

So it goes, as our congress critters put their shaggy heads together to figure out what to do about college athletics, now that college athletics has gone full professional. As usual with the politicians, they're about 30 years too late.

See, the road to athletes-for-hire and unrestricted transfer portal warfare didn't begin yesterday, when Notre Dame signed on with a financial services company and Ohio State finalized a $17 mill deal to plaster its student-athletes with (speaking of financials) JP Morgan Chase logos. No, indeedy.

It began the first time a school cut some chunky deal with an apparel company, and turned its student-athletes into billboards for its corporate partners by outfitting them in Nike swooshes and the like. It began when schools started selling some rocket-launcher quarterback's jersey in the school bookstore, and Rocket Launcher didn't see a dime.

It began when the college pashas decided it was OK for video game companies to use images of student-athletes without the student-athletes' permission, and again without any compensation for them. And it began the first time a Nick Saban or Dabo Sweeney signed an eight-digit deal to coach football, or the Big Ten or SEC or Notre Dame inked their own eight-to-ten-digit agreements with ESPN or NBC or Fox or CBS.

So, yeah, it's a money game now for the sis-boom-bah set, and what else is new? Other than the worker bees getting to negotiate their own fat arrangements these days.

Which, let's face it, is why the politicians are suddenly in a dither about Saving College Athletics. Don't recall any of them palavering about College Athletics needing Saving when the universities started paying the Sabans and Dabos like CEOs.

Look. There's no denying the current system is unsustainable, if for no other reason than it's not really a system. Thanks to the NCAA's benign neglect, it's Judge Roy Bean and the Law West of the Pecos now. Which of course is no law at all.

But that's hardly the fault of the "student-athletes," who are only following the example set for them over the years by their colleges and universities. You reap what you sow, and the reaping has scorched the earth. So at least some structure would be, you know, nice.

Letting Congress pokes its nose in, however, is hardly a solution. Especially under the current Regime, which rivals Larry, Curley and Moe in its ability to make a bad situation worse.

You want to "fix" college athletics?

Great. Turn the clock back.

Let the SoFis and Morgan-Chases contribute to a school's scholarship and career development programs without using the student-athletes to promote their businesses. Make the coaches part of the university again by paying them like any other member of the faculty and requiring them to teach academic courses, the way they used to. And tell the ESPNs, CBSes   and NBCs they're welcome to televise the games, but the schools reserve the right to decide where and when.

"Oh, come on, Mr. Blob," you're saying now. "That's totally unrealistic. You might as well  try to bring back the Model T."

Maybe so. But you know what?

At least the Model T was reliable.

An ancient lament

 Some guys re-invent the wheel. Others just re-invent complaining about how boring the wheel can be when you put it in the wrong place.

And so here I am today, cruising the tangled undergrowth of the interwhatsis per usual. And here are all these folks saying what a shame it was NASCAR couldn't put on a better show at motorsports' holiest of holies ... and, gee whiz, what a snooze-fest that was ... and, boy howdy, how embarrassing was it when the cameras went wide-angle and it looked like you could hit most of the grandstands with a grenade launcher and not harmed a soul?

One wiseass even compared the Brickyard 400 to the Tournament of Roses parade, and said if he squinted just right he could see Goofy running fifth on the City of Pasadena float.

Oh, wait. That was me who wrote that.

Fifteen years ago.

In a column I wrote about the president of Fox saying the problem with NASCAR was its races were just too darn long.

In other words, all this chatter about the Brickyard -- even about the length of races, which Kyle Larson brought up on Sunday -- is as old as the sands of antiquity. So as I hacked through the aforementioned undergrowth, all I could do was smile and shake my head and mutter, "You guys been living in a cave somewhere?" 

Because the Brickyard's been a lousy venue for the stock car boys since practically forever, and you can credit Dale Jarrett and Robert Yates for exposing that. Back when the world was young -- OK, so when the Brickyard 400 was, anyway -- Yates brought all those muscle-y Fords to Indy, and in 1999 Jarrett just drove away from everyone in one, rendering comatose the six-figure crowd broiling in the early August sun.

Jarrett led 117 laps that day, as everyone else hopelessly gave chase. And there, perhaps, you had the birth of the ancient lament: Gee, this is a really special place and all, but, man, the racing is BORRR-ing.

And then along came 2008, which killed the vibe for good. Two calamities showed up at once that year: One, the economy crashed, hitting the working class that has always been NASCAR's base hardest of all; two, Goodyear brought a marshmallow to Indy instead of a racing tire, turning the Brickyard into a series of half-hour episodes punctuated by mandatory yellows to switch out the Stay-Pufts.

That was the end of the mega-crowds, and the beginning of advertising and American flags covering vast swatches of the Speedway's miles of seating. The race still draws 70,000 or so every year -- other venues would kill for that sort of turnout -- but 70,000 in the vastness of IMS looks like empty. Horrible visuals, in other words.

Anyway, 18 years have passed since 2008 stuck a fork in the Brickyard 400. Which of course makes the internet chatter the last couple of days very old news to those of us with long memories.

"What a boring race!" they cry, or words to that effect.

Well, yes, and what else is new?

"What a terrible venue for NASCAR!" they cry.

Yes, and water is wet.

"Not a single green-flag pass for the lead!" "These races are too long, especially this one!" "It's all the fault of this terrible Next Gen car!"

Replies, in order: Been there, done that ... What, you're just noticing? ... No, it's not exclusively the fault of the Next Gen car. Because the Brickyard was an afternoon nap when the Original Gen car was was tooling around the place.

So what to do about it?

Nothing, because no one's going to tear down IMS and start over again. Although I suppose what might help, at least for the race-length part of it, is getting rid of the idiotic stage system -- a wholly artificial construct which brings everything to a screeching halt twice a race for made-for-TV restarts, and which everyone ignores except the talking heads who are paid not to.

Quick: Who won Stage 1 and Stage 2 on Sunday?

That would be Ty Gibbs and Ross Chastain. But you'd never have known that if I hadn't told you just now.

So, yeah, offload it. As for the rest ... it is what it is. 

Which is a phrase I hate like Brussels sprouts. But it seems to fit here.

Heim time

 I wouldn't know  a genuine phee-nom these days if he went upside my head with his phee-nomness, this being an era of supercharged hype. But I think I saw one yesterday, tooling around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in a stock car.

His name is Corey Heim, he turned 24 just three weeks ago, and if he's not the next big star in NASCAR Cup racing, he sure played one on TV yesterday. Driving the 67 car for Michael Jordan and Denny Hamlin's team, 23XI Racing, he qualified seventh for the Brickyard 400, passed his boss (Hamlin) for the lead on the last restart, and led 58 laps -- including the last 35, when Christopher Bell and an onrushing Joey Logano were filling his mirrors and every nerve in his body must have been singing arias.

But the kid stayed cool, the kid stayed chilly. Despite his ride getting looser with every lap -- and despite the veteran Bell hanging within half-a-second of him all the way -- he just kept getting into and off of Indy's notoriously quirky corners, never giving Bell enough of an opening to get a run on him.

It was a masterful piece of wheel work from a young driver who A) isn't even a full-time Cupper yet, and B) had never so much as seen IMS until this weekend.

And yet there Corey Heim was at the end, kissing the bricks, kissing his girlfriend and kissing the trophy as if Indy were, I don't know, South Hog Wallow Speedway or somewhere. He'll run all of 12 Cup races this season, and already in his first eight starts he's  won two of them -- including, yesterday, one of the series' crown jewels.

Last guy to win twice in his first eight Cup starts?

Some dude named A.J. Foyt. Perhaps you've heard of him.

So who is Corey Heim?

Well, he hails from Marietta, Ga., and last season he won NASCAR's Craftsman Truck series in a blowout. Won a series-record 12 races, and led at least a lap in every race on the schedule. 

Everyone knew the kid was special, in other words. But this special, this fast?

Hoo boy. 

Now, it must be said here that Heim's win was only the culmination of a weekend in which youth was well-served. Carson Hocevar, who started on the pole and finished ninth, is just 23. Tyler Gibbs, also just 23, started fourth and led 46 laps. So there's that.

There's also this: At 24, Heim is the youngest Brickyard winner since ... well, since a dude named Jeff Gordon, who was just 23 when he won the first Brickyard 400 in 1994.

Perhaps you've heard of him, too.

A too-close encounter

 (In which the Blob departs Sportsball World for a brief excursion to Wackadoodle World, or something like that. The standard hall pass/library procedures apply to all those who don't want to make the trip.)

I've always wondered what a certified loon of the MAGA variety would sound like in person, not being one who runs in those circles. Thanks to a trip to the supermarket to replenish my ice-cream bar stash, I wonder no longer.

 See, I bumped into this guy walking out. And out of nowhere he turned around and asked if I knew how long it would take to count to a trillion. 

"A while?" I guessed.

"THIRTY-TWO THOUSAND YEARS!" he bellowed.

He was a raggedy sort who looked to be about my age (71), with gray aging-hippie hair and a gleam in his eye that was genial with a touch of ... well, crazy. And as we stood there, he launched into a tirade about the trillions the government spends, and how we needed to "cut the head off the snake" because the Deep State and the New World Order were coming for us, and also the damn Muslims.

"They ARE the New World Order!" he cried, or words to that effect. "And, boy, if you don't believe the way they believe they'll cut your head off! That's gonna happen here if we don't do something about it! You know what I'm sayin'?"

I said, sure, absolutely (or words to that effect). and we parted ways in the parking lot.  After which I said to myself, "Well, THAT was interesting" and headed home before the ice cream bars melted.

Later still I surmised that my too-close encounter of the nutso kind was with a man who was likely mentally ill and off his meds, if in fact he'd ever been on them. I also suspected (entirely without evidence, mind you) that he spent an inordinate amount of time watching Fox News or Newsmax or one of the other hard-right propaganda outlets, which daily stoke the sort of paranoia and nutso-ness my friend displayed in all its glory.

Can a steady diet of Laura Loomer or Laura Ingraham or Dan Bongino literally drive you insane? An interesting hypothesis.

In any case, now I know what a certified MAGA loon sounds like. As they say, you learn something every day.

A narrative derailed

 Team Spoon beat Team Coop 129-122 last night in the WNBA All-Star game, and, hey, look, none of those mean black girls (or mean white girls) punched out Caitlin Clark. Why, there's even a picture here of All-Star game MVP Jonquel Jones holding the trophy in one arm and hugging Caitlin with the other.

And when Caitlin dropped back-to-back logo threes on her way to 17 points?

Paige Bueckers from Team Coop -- one Clark's "rivals" who allegedly are just eaten up with jealousy of her -- didn't sneer or make a snippy comment or turn green with envy.

Nah. She just laughed and said "You goin' for MVP? Damn!"

This was bad news for the yapping sports talk poodles and other media poop-stirrers who've been working overtime to sell the narrative that poor Caitlin's being roughed up and persecuted by (choose one or all) hate-filled lesbians; hate-filled black lesbians; or  hate-filled established stars who can't stand that this relative newcomer is stealing their starlight with fame she doesn't deserve.

So they're playing rough with her because it's a jealousy thing or a black-white thing or a gay-straight thing, and not because, well, it's a rough league and has been for a long time -- mainly because the officiating stinks like Christmas leftovers in March.

It's a narrative that ignores the fact CC sometimes brings it on herself, because she's a platinum-grade chirper and an enthusiastic seller of fouls. And then chirps at the officials when they don't buy, which is why she's one tech away from a game's suspension.

None of this is criticism, mind you, at least explicitly. After all, Clark's hardly the first player, nor will she be the last, to bring a certain combativeness to her work. You could even argue it's part of why she's so good.

But when the media and grandstanding politicians choose to refract that through a black-white, gay-straight lens, they're using Clark to push an agenda, not reality. And that rightly ticks her off.

"I think there's just like a false characterization of who I am sometimes," she said in an ESPN interview Friday. "And I get it, like as a reporter or blogger, you can write an opinion piece and that's your job and whatever, but at the same time, you don't know me. We've never had a conversation.

"I get people have a job to do, but at the same time, like don't make accusations about my character and who I am when you don't know me."

Absolutely. And the villains in this manufactured narrative could say exactly the same thing.

Perhaps last night they did.

Brickyard memories

It's either a measure of my own squishy mind, or the continuing diminishment of one of NASCAR's crown jewels, that the Brickyard 400 just flat snuck up on me this week.

It was Thursday before I realized the stock cars were at Indy again this weekend, and that's a hell of a note for someone who spent the first 20 Brickyards sweating through his shirts in the midsummer IMS heat. Covered Jeff Gordon's first win at Indy in the first Brickyard, and covered his last win there in the 20th. Not that I was going for symmetry or anything.

In any event, they're runnin' the big track again today, and it's not Gordon or Dale Earnhardt or Jimmie Johnson bringing them to the green. It's some kid named Carson Hocevar, who hails from Portage, Mich., just south of Kalamazoo. Carson Hocevar is 23 years old, which is the same age Gordon was when he won the first Brickyard in 1994.

Not that I was going for symmetry or anything.

Anyway, I know next to nothing about Carson Hocevar, except that if you'd asked me I'd have guessed he centered the second line for the Montreal Canadiens. I also know next to nothing about the team he drives for -- Spire Motorsports -- except that it's not Hendrick or Gibbs or Penske or Michael Jordan's team.

What I do know is I'll probably watch the Brickyard anyway, on account of those 20 years I covered it and the memories they stir. Which I suppose means this is as good a time as any to resurrect what I wrote two years ago on the 30th anniversary of the first Brickyard ...

Thirty years on now, and ye gods, time is a mighty river. It rolls and rolls and now it's 2024, and 1994 seems as far away sometimes as Model Ts and bathtub gin.

It  is not, of course. I know this even though Rick Mast is 67 years old now and owns an environmental cleanup service down in  Rockbridge Baths, Va., and he hasn't strapped into a stock car in 22 years.

Rick Mast, you see, brought the field to the green as the polesitter in the first Brickyard 400 on the first Saturday in August in 1994. This weekend the Brickyard turns 30, but Rick Mast is where this all starts for me, because I was there for the first one and somewhere I have a photo of Mast in his black-and-white No. 1 diving into the first turn on the first lap. 

If I dug that photo out of whatever box it's in now, it would all come back to me: The 250,000 Mass O' Humanity; the newness; the blare of Detroit iron rocketing off those cliffs of grandstand running the length of the most famous main straightaway in motorsport. 

I close my eyes now, and I see a forest of Confederate stars-and-bars fluttering above the campers along 25th Street, because NASCAR gonna NASCAR. I see the thin smoke rising from the morning campfires. And I see the men and women in their Dale Earnhardt Goodwrench shirts and Ricky Rudd Tide shirts and Terry Labonte Kellogg's Corn Flakes shirts watching the morning bacon sizzle, and cracking open the first cold one of the day. 

Oh, it was some show, that first Brickyard. The Journal Gazette sent four (or was it five?) of us down to cover the thing, and all four (five?) of us crammed into one tiny hotel room clear across town from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. It was just about the only lodging left in the whole blessed town.

Out at the track, meanwhile, there was this prevailing sense of wonder ("Holy gee, Martha! Stock cars at Indy!") to everything, and not a little out-of-body weirdness. It wasn't just looking up and seeing Rudd or Earnhardt or Rusty Wallace rumble out of the garage area in their Fords or Chevies or Pontiacs. It was looking up and seeing Indy 500 veterans Danny Sullivan and Gary Bettenhausen and Stan Fox wheeling stock cars around, and A.J. Foyt trying to stick a Barney-the-Dinosaur-purple car in the show.

Eighty-six entries showed up looking to get in the field, and some of them were driven by  ancients. Fifty-two-year-old Morgan Shepherd was there. Fifty-seven-year-old H.B. Bailey.  And then there was 66-year-old Hershel McGriff, who'd started racing when he came back from the war in 1945.

Everyone wanted in on this, in other words. Everyone was acutely aware history was riding shotgun with them in a way it perhaps never would again -- and that included me with my little cheapo camera, and all the other media who crammed into the tiny cinderblock building  that served (inadequately) as the media center then.

What we all got from that first Brickyard was not only history but a decent race besides, and none of us then understood how rare a thing the latter would become. The stock-car boys barreled down those long, long straightaways and through the squared-off, one-groove turns, and there were some fascinating storylines. 

Who could forget the Battlin' Bodines, Geoff and Brett, who wrecked one another and then went public with their brotherly feud? And who could forget the finish, when it got down to Ernie Irvan, Rusty Wallace and young Jeff Gordon?

Irvan was leading when he had a tire go down, opening the door for Gordon, who grew up eight miles down the road in Pittsboro. The kid blazed home to the checkers, and it was as if the narrative was ordained by the racing gods: (Almost) hometown boy wins the first Brickyard 400.

Now it's 30 years later, and Jeff Gordon is a 53-year-old racing exec and elder statesman. And I haven't been to a Brickyard 400 since 2015, long after the shine wore off and the multitudes stopped coming because the racing frankly stinks, becoming a really loud parade of sponsor billboards more often than not ...

But 30 years ago?

Well, I've got this photo here to remind me how different it was. And hanging in my closet I've got an inaugural Brickyard 400 polo I bought that weekend, with a gold-and-purple crest that forever reminds me of the date: Aug. 6, 1994 ... 

Time like a mighty river, carving its path.

Writer-ly sins

I once wrote a line in a column that spoofed a player's unusual name with bathroom humor unworthy of a sixth-grade boy. So I know how it feels when you try too hard to be clever or deep or, heaven forbid, writer-ly, and wind up stepping in a big ol' pile of goo.

"You're better than this," my sports editor told me at the time.

He was absolutely right. I was.

And Nancy Armour is better, too.

By now social media has been all up in our faces with its usual performative outrage about what Armour wrote the other day in a USA Today column about Caitlin Clark. The gist was that Clark's own performative victimhood -- i.e., her flopping -- was inciting death threats and possible violence against black players in the WNBA from the lint brains who see white folk as the new persecuted class.

It's an interesting theory, but one that tightropes the rational in the Blob's opinion. And Armour didn't help her cause by pointing out that the WNBA All-Star Game was in Chicago this weekend, and Chicago was Emmett Till's hometown, and there's a display there right now about Till and what his life would have been like had he not been brutally lynched in Mississippi in 1955.

So here's a national columnist trying to make her point about possible threats to black basketball players by invoking one of the most notorious acts of racial violence in American history. It was not only a bridge too far; it was the saboteurs blowing up the bridge over the River Kwai at the end of the movie.

It was, in short, a big pile of goo, and Armour stepped in it. So much so, she issued a statement the next day admitting the Till reference was "unartful" while defending her original point.

Which, again, in the Blob's opinion, contains a grain of truth, but perhaps only a grain.  Plus it contributes to the damaging and largely phony black-vs.-white narrative the media and certain performance-art politicians (Come on down, Marlin Stutzman!) seem hell-bent on pushing about the WNBA.

Look. I don't know Nancy well, but I met her at several sporting events, and she always struck me as a kind, soft-spoken and incredibly intelligent person.  Someone who doesn't deserve the venom she's drawing from the usual buttheads for whom mining outrage is not only their brand, but their only discernible talent.

As one of my dearest friends and former colleagues pointed out with his usual laser perception, a good copy editor might have saved Armour from herself, or at the very least  have said, "Whoa, Nance, Emmett Till? Really?" But, as this friend also pointed out, the vandals who've either destroyed or gelded so many media entities these days -- including Gannett, for whom Nancy Armour works -- have laid waste to copy desks in the process.

You reap what you sow, in other words. Nice goin', dummies.

And Nancy Armour?

Yeah, she blew it this time. But you know how they say if 10,000 monkeys typed for 10,000 years, one of them would produce the works of Shakespeare?

Same applies to columnists, only in reverse. If you write 10,000 columns, sooner or later you're gonna write one that clanks. And Armour's written about 9,999 that didn't.

Even if, human nature being what it is, they only remember the one that sucked.

Today in irony

 Which involves our illustrious fear-mongering senator, James "Jimbo" "The Fear-Mongerer" Banks, who posted a photo of his ownself with NCAA president Charlie Baker that highlighted the pleasant chat they had about, among other things, how to "protect girls sports."

Protect them from what, he didn't have to say. Because by now we all know what.

It's those evil transgenders, who are invading girls and women's with their sick gender-confusin' transgender-in'. Not that Banks, butt-hurt former swimmer Riley Gaines or any of the other bigots have anything against transgenders, mind you. Oh, heavens, no.

Now for the irony.

The irony is the guy Banks is so proudly posing with is on record as saying there only 10 or so known transgenders competing in NCAA athletics. Ten out of 554,298 athletes circa the 2024-25 academic year.

In other words, Banks said he discussed this issue with a guy who says it's not really an issue, and has the numbers to back it up.

So we're back to the original question: Protect girls and women's sports from what?

Because claiming you're protecting them from transgenders is like claiming you're protecting Nebraska from killer whales. That is all.

Autumn whispers

 Listen close this fine summer morning, and you can hear it coming. Coming on little cleated feet, to cadge from Sandberg.

Football, boys and girls. And here you thought autumn was a ways off yet. 

To be sure it's a mere whisper of a whisper just now, a stir in the breeze under July's fierce sun. But sooner than you think -- so much sooner -- the little cleated feet will be clackety-clacking into our ordered lives again, and then the clackety-clack will become a CLACKETY-CLACK, and pretty soon it will be a CLACKETY-CLACKETY-CLACKETY-CLACK that fills the world.

I know this because ESPN's website is telling me this morning that NFL training camps are officially open.

I know it because the major college football conferences are beginning to roll out their annual preseason media ragers again.

I know it because I dreamed it last night.

Dreamed I was covering a high school football game between a local school (I won't name it, but the team wore orange) and some school I'd never heard of, and the local team's quarterback was throwing touchdown passes and catching touchdown passes, and a bunch of college coaches were there to watch him.

As dreams will do, the details have gone tattery around the edges here in the light of day. So I don't remember who the coaches were, only that they were big-deal guys. I've also lost the quarterback's name. the name of the school the orange team was playing (only that it was weird), or what the final score was (although the orange team won big).

What I do remember is the quarterback looked a little like Arch Manning, only he wasn't Arch Manning. And I remember he threw 54 passes and only completed 21, but four or five were for touchdowns -- including one that seemed to cover half-a-mile in the air before hitting the receiver in stride. Also, Not Arch Manning caught six passes for 72 yards, though I don't remember seeing him do it.

In other words, it was as ridiculous as dreams tend to be.

But it stayed with me long after I awoke, and now I'm thinking about football. About training camps opening up. About all those high school Friday nights -- including the night I got locked in some area school's stadium and had to climb an eight-foot fence to get out. And about our college mercenaries telling a mob of phones and tape recorders about the great season their latest whistle stop will have -- if in fact they can remember which whistle stop it is.

Yeah, we're gonna kick some prime booty here in Columbus this year. Wait, did I say Columbus? I meant Corvallis. Or maybe College Station. One of those "C" places.

Whatever, dude. In any event, I dreamed of football last night, and when I got up this morning it was 53 degrees outside and the windows were open and it felt almost ... kinda-sorta ... a wee bit like autumn. Like a Friday night, or a Saturday afternoon, or a Monday/Thursday/Sunday night.

And I know if I walk into a supermarket in the next few days, I'm going to see pumpkin spice Cheerios or something on the shelves. I know it.

The Republic of the SEC

 SEC commissioner Greg Sankey dropped a warhead the other day at the conference's preseason football soiree, and all the Blob has to say is, it's not like we haven't seen this before. Bunch of southerners talking about secession?  Old news, baby.

Yet that's what we've got here, because the warhead Sankey dropped was admitting that, hell, yes, the SEC might just go out on its own, and for much the same reasoning South used back in 18 and 61: Because a Union isn't working for them. The Union, in this case, being the NCAA.

Which admittedly has made total hash of college athletics here in the new age of NIL and unrestricted transfer portal warfare, to the extent that the college game is now just the pro game without any guardrails. The high-end talent goes where the money is, and, unlike the NFL or NBA or MLB, it can go there two, three, four times in four years if it wants to.

Free agency on that other level at least has some rules. Not so in the NCWildWest.

Which is why the SEC, or at least its leadership class, is seriously contemplating telling the NCAA to go fly a kite. And to form, I don't know, the Democratic Republic of the SEC or the Kingdom of Sis-Boom-Bah or the Confederate State U.'s of America or some such thing.

This of course would blow the current college construct to matchsticks, and it's a measure of just what a cluster that construct has become that a good chunk of America would say, "It's about damn time." And unlike that previous secession, it wouldn't carry the seeds of its own destruction from the jump.

The SEC could pull it off, see. It has the beefiest network in its corner (ESPN); its TV numbers are consequently the biggest; and you can't dial up March Madness, the College Football Playoff, or any other tournament in the revenue sports without tripping over six or eight SEC schools.

So, yeah. The Democratic Republic of the SEC could do its own thing -- and by its own rules, which it no doubt figures it could enforce better than the NCAA enforces its rules. If in fact it actually has any worth the name anymore.

A noble sentiment. But what happens then?

This is where the reception gets a bit fuzzy.

If the SEC goes out on its own, how long would it be before the other super conference -- the Big We-Can't-Count Ten -- breaks away, too? And if that happens, whither the Big 12, the ACC and so on? And speaking of the ACC, what would Notre Dame do if its longstanding deal with NBC either didn't survive the big shakeup, or would at least be significantly altered? 

What if Stonewall Jackson had been at Gettysburg?

Questions upon questions. For instance, if the SEC breaks away, would it stage its own March Madness? Its own CFP? Would it entice schools from the NCAA to participate with cash on the barrelhead and other incentives? And if it did, would the NCAA retaliate by trying to poach SEC schools for its tournaments by saying, fine, play with yourselves if you like, but wouldn't you rather be national champs?

Because you know the NCAA would claim whoever won its March Madness or CFP would be the REAL national champions, and not just champions of the Democratic Republic of the SEC.

"Nuh-uh!" you could imagine Sankey and the SEC responding.

 And there we'd be, with two different schools calling themselves national champs. Why, we'd be right back to the days (in football at least) when the AP poll declared one team the national champion, and the coaches' poll declared another team the national champion.

Voila: Dueling "We're No. 1!" bumper stickers.

Which actually was kinda fun, come to think of it.

Hmm.

The LeBron Watch

 So, then ...

Spain won the World Cup over a bunch of butt-hurt toddlers from Argentina.

A guy named Ryan Fox won The Open Championship by dunking a birdie putt on the 72nd hole ... after playing Royal Birkdale12-under across the last three days ... to become the first New Zealander to win the Open since Bob Charles way back in 1963.

The Boston Red Sox have won 14 straight games. Some guy is winning a bike race over in France. Caitlin Clark put up 45 points and 10 assists for the Indiana Fever the other night.

And still we don't know where LeBron James will be playing basketball this season.

"So?" you're saying now.

Also, "Is this like The Decision, only more annoying because LeBron's 41 years old now and it really doesn't matter where he plays basketball next year?"

Also, "In other words, who cares?"

The Blob's answers, in order: "What do you mean 'so'?" ... "Maybe" ... "'Who cares'? I'll tell you who cares -- Adam Silver."

Who is, of course, the commissioner of the NBA, and who the other day issued a public statement about the free agent negotiations of a single player. I can't say if this was unprecedented, but it was fairly extraordinary. And it demonstrated once again that LeBron James is one of the two or three greatest players in the history of basketball, and certainly the most significant player of his generation.

What Silver said, essentially, is LeBron needs to quit screwing around and tell everyone where his landing spot is for next season, which presumably will be his last. That's because where he lands will impact NBA scheduling, his auld-lang-syne season obviously requiring premo TV dates. So it would be nice to know which team to pencil in for those dates.

"Come on, LeBron," Silver said. "Poop or get off the pot."

OK, so he didn't actually say that. But the sentiment was there.

In response, of course, LeBron's close friend Rich Paul said King James will not be rushed, by Adam Silver or anyone else. He'll decide when he decides, and he'll go public with it when he goes public. This assumes he hasn't already decided where he's going, which a lot of NBA watchers suspect he has.

So perhaps this really is a sequel to The Decision, a ruinous public relations splatter that made LeBron appear incredibly self-absorbed, not to say high-and-mighty and I'm-LeBron-and-the-rest-of-you-peons-aren't, and who knows what all.

"What an a**hole!" was America's reaction.

And now?

"What an a**hole!" is both America's and Adam Silver's reaction.

(And, OK, again, Adam Silver never said that. But I'll put good coin down that he's thinking it, or something like it.)

In any event, LeBron ain't sayin' nothin', and there's nothin' even the commissioner of the NBA can do about it. Which makes the Blob imagine all sorts of ridiculous news items ...

NEW YORK, August 15 -- With LeBron James still not revealing where he'll play this season, NBA commissioner Adam Silver is busily working the phones trying to figure it out on his own.

"Is it you?" he asked the Philadelphia 76ers.

"Is it you?" he asked the Cleveland Cavaliers.

"Is it you?" he asked the Miami Heat, the Golden State Warriors, the New York Knicks, even the old Syracuse Nationals and Rochester Royals.

All of them declined to comment.

"Oh, come on, you guys!" Silver reportedly cried.

Or perhaps there'll be this ...

LOS ANGELES, September 3 -- LeBron James called a news conference today to finally announce where he'll be playing this season, as the entire NBA waited with baited breath.

"Looks like I'll be taking my talents to ... the Kentucky Colonels!" James announced.

And then, with an exaggerated wink: "Nah. Just messin' with ya. I just wanted to see if I could get you all out here."

"What an a**hole!" the assembled media cried.

"What an a**hole!" concurred Adam Silver.

And this time he meant it.

Espana!

 Generalissimo Francisco Franco may still be dead, but Spain is alive and well and, when last seen, was holding up the World Cup.

(Not to dredge up an ancient Chevy Chase bit or anything.)

Spain dunked defending champion Argentina 1-0 in extra time in the final yesterday, and consider it justice served. The best team doesn't always win in Sportsball World, but it surely did this time.

La Roja won because it's a precise and disciplined side that controls the ball and squeezes the life out of its opponents with the remorselessness of a python, or some other overheated metaphor. They spread you out and pounce on every ball that isn't as well-placed as theirs, and all of that was on full display Sunday against an Argentine squad that was mostly helpless against it.

Some numbers: In a game contested almost entirely in the Argentine end, Spain put 12 balls on goal to, incredibly, zero for Lionel Messi 'n' them. Only the brilliance of Argentine keeper Emiliano Martinez -- who made 11 saves, a record for a World Cup final -- kept it from being a blowout.

Spain did what Spain does, in other words. It made accurate passes an astounding 89 percent of the time, and compelled an increasingly desperate Argentina side to ugly up the game with ridiculous fouls and theatrical appeals to the game referee.

It wasn't a good look for the defending champs, nor was their unsportsmanlike postgame petulance. And Argentina paid for it, playing a man down for the 30 minutes of extra time after Enzo Fernandez was red-carded for two profoundly witless decisions. 

He drew his first yellow card for mockingly clapping after a foul call; then he drew the second, and his walking papers, for recklessly charging Spain's precocious 19-year-old center back Pau Cubarsi and flattening him with what amounted to a body block. Dumb and dumber.

Fernandez' red card happened three minutes into stoppage time. Eleven minutes into extra time, Nico Williams headed a slick backward pass from the end line to Ferran Torrez, who rocketed the only goal of the day into the top of the net.

Game, set and match for Espana, which is now 2-for-2 in World Cup finals. Incredibly, in eight games this time around, it surrendered just one goal -- against Belgium in a 2-1 quarterfinal win.

I know how most of us spell domination, in the wider world. But in the futbol world, on this warm July morning, it begins with "S".

A world united

The young man's name was Ishaan and he was wearing a Morocco soccer jersey, but today was not about Morocco. Today it was Colombia vs. Switzerland on the big screen in the back room of JK O'Donnell's here in the Fort, and Ishaan was rooting for Colombia.

"I put $20 on Colombia to win," he said proudly.

The seven or eight men and women dressed in Colombia yellow nodded and smiled when he said that. Then they went back to laughing and watching intently and moaning whenever Colombia -- which was forcing the action -- got a chance that came thisclose to a goal, but not close enough.

None of them were speaking English. 

Yet all of them seemed to understand whenever Ishaan expressed admiration for the way Colombia played this game of futbol, which of course is why we were all here in the middle of the afternoon on a Tuesday.

"Colombia's really good," Ishaan declared, and the men and women in their Colombia gear all nodded as if to say, "Thanks. And you're damn right we're good."

Something occurred to me just then.

It occurred to me that this World Cup business has been great for the human business, because it's knocked down all those flimsy, artificial barriers of language and culture and ignorance. In English or Spanish or German or Portuguese -- in French, Korean, Persian or Norwegian -- there is a universality to a man kicking a ball to another man. In every language on the planet, there's a way of saying, "That IDIOT! How did he misplay THAT ball??"

It's the mossiest cliche in the forest to say sports stitches us together like few other things, but we've seen the truth of it in close-up in America this past month or so. Foreigners our float-brain leaders encourage us to fear and loathe in other contexts have, in the context of the World Cup, seen the real America. And they have embraced it as readily as the real America has embraced them.

The Tartan Army of Scotland taking over Boston, and Boston returning the favor. The Clockwork Orange of Netherlands discovering barbecue in Kansas City. Another town in Kansas -- Lawrence -- embracing the Algerian team and fans as if they were its own.

We have learned about each other, in other words. And about ourselves in the process.

The Scots and Dutch and Norwegians and Algerians, first of all, have learned not just about barbecue and (go figure) ranch dressing; they've learned that Americans are not the worst of us.  We are not the bigots and xenophobes and bullying loudmouths who regrettably have become the official public face of our country here in the second Trump abomination. 

We are not Those Asshats, in other words. And Those Asshats do not speak for us.

So hooray for the Tartan Army, decorating Boston statuary with traffic cones and drinking up all the Sam Adams. And hooray for Norway's Erling Haaland, the Viking-est Viking ever, and the Viking row the Norwegian team and fans did everywhere they went.

Hooray for Lionel Messi and Kylian Mbappe and Mohammed Salah and Lamine Yamal, and for Switzerland's Breel Embolo and England's Jude Bellingham -- whom the English fans in their face paint and chain mail and Three Lions costumes saluted with a chorus of "Hey, Jude" after his two-goal performance against Norway, because of course they did.

Hooray, finally, for Ishaan in his Morocco jersey and the Colombian fans in their Colombian jerseys in the back room at O'Donnell's. I don't speak Spanish, regrettably, and I don't know how much English they knew. But we understood one another anyway.

Because when I got up to leave and said "Good luck",  they smiled and nodded and gave me a thumbs-up. For one small sliver of time, we were a world united.

Blessedly so.

Kickin' it with history

 England plays France today in the World Cup third-place game, and the history geek in me could not be more geeked. This is the Seven Years War and the Hundred Years War and the Second Hundred Years War all wrapped up in a tidy corner kick, or perhaps a setpiece starring Harry Kane or Kylian Mbappe.

"That's just silly, Mr. Blob," you're saying now. "France and England haven't made war on each other in decades. This is just another soccer match between two strong European sides."

Is it, though? Is it REALLY?

Because the Blob's over-caffeinated imagination (and confirmed history nerdity) envisions something else when the French and English square off today. 

Like, if Mbappe scores for France, will he taunt the Brits by shouting "Cornwallis ... paging Lord Cornwallis ..."?

And if Kane or Jude Bellingham score for England, will the English fans pantomime shooting arrows while chanting "Agincourt! Agincourt!" in a mocking sort of way?

Will the French respond by raising a banner that reads "We Killed Nelson And We're Not Sorry"? Will the Brits retaliate by raising a white bedsheet that reads, "National Flag Of France"?

Oh, the insults will fly then ...

"You lost India to a guy in a loincloth!" the French will mock.

"Thanks for the Northwest Territories! Nice of you to surrender them to us!" the English will reply.

"Hastings!" "Waterloo!" "They shall not pass!" "Vini, vidi, Vichy!"

On and on.

"Silliness," you're reiterating. "Pure, undiluted silliness."

Yeah, well. Sorry not sorry.

Cruds alert!*

(* -- Pittsburgh Pirates not included.)

(*-- Because my Buccos are a .500 baseball team now, and we're already more than halfway through July. So kiss my Rennie Stennett/Iron City/Primanti Brothers hindparts, y'all.)

Now where was I?

Oh, yeah, cruds and their cruddiness. Which today features not your Colorado Rockheads, not your New York Mutts, but an exciting new entry in the Cruds Alert pantheon.

Come on down, you Don't-Say-Sacramento Athletics!

The Athlessics were riding a nine-game losing streak going into last night's clash with the "meh" Washington Nationals, after which it became a 10-game losing streak. And not just any 10-game losing streak, boys and girls!

No, this one was achieved with a football-score 23-4 loss to the Nationals, the Athlessics  apparently having scored their points on two safeties. The Nats, meanwhile, got four touchdowns, er, four hits and eight hundred yards, er, eight RBI from AndresChaparro in the win.

The A's, meanwhile, now are 41-56 and just 31/2 games clear of the AL West cellar, which is occupied by the horrific Los Angeles Angels, who are the worst team in baseball right now by a percentage point or two.

But at least the Angels (Mange-els?) have a home city. The Athlessics are not allowed to. In the standings they're just the "Athletics", because apparently MLB regards Sacramento not as a real MLB city, but as a B&B or Super Eight or something as the A's make their eventual way to Las Vegas.

Insult added to injury, if you ask me. And boy are the Athlessics good at injury, if nothing else.

Bloviators in the wind

 (In which the Blob, like Andy Dufresne, once again crawls through half a mile of s***-smelling foulness to escape Sportsball World. Those who wish to leave the room know the standard protocol.)

Sometimes the cross you bear for being from Indiana is having to admit you're from Indiana. We remain, after all, the state that once tried to legislate the value of pi.

Therefore, this morning, I declare this: Yes, I am from Indiana.

And, yes, one of my senators is the illustrious Jim "Bag O' Hammers" Banks, who recently joined several other bags of hammers to venture into the realm of satire without realizing it.

Here's what Jimbo said: "Every Summer, Canada burns. Every summer, we have to deal with their heavy smoke & hazardous air quality. Every Summer, they tell us they'll take action to fix this mess & they never do. Our patience has run out, the time for excuses is over, & if they won't fix this, we will."

Before you ask, no, this is not The Onion. Or Babylon Bee or an Andy Borowitz post or that of any other satirist. Jimbo and his fellow bloviators in the wind actually said this.

Being a former journalist, I can already envision the headlines.

Banks Decries "Invasion" Of Canadian Wildfire Smoke; "This Aggression Will Not Stand, Man," He Says, Unwittingly Quoting The Dude.

Banks Demands Canada Put The Damn Fires Out; Says "We Can't Breathe," Unwittingly Quoting George Floyd.

And so on.

In any event, Banks and his fellow BOHs say it's merely a matter of better forest management on Canada's part, and if the hosers refuse to to do it, why, the U.S. will step in and do it for them. We are, after all, masters at forest management. It's why, every Summer, we have only 13 times more wildfires than Canada does, producing mega-volumes more smoke.

Of course, Banks doesn't address that. And he doesn't say exactly how the U.S. would "step in and do it for them." Do we send in the 82nd Airborne to seize Canada's forestry service? Invade western Canada with an army of patriotic Americans wielding giant brooms? Build a wall of mammoth industrial fans to blow all that Canadian smoke back across the border? ("Mass deportation NOW!" you can imagine the MAGA crowd howling).

Now, I'm not saying the wildfire smoke isn't bad. It is. Even here in Fort Wayne, hundreds of miles from the fires, you can both see it in the air and smell it right now. It's frankly pretty crazy it's this bad this far away.

But what do Banks and the rest of the clowns want to do, start a war over it? Demand that Canada control the jet stream or we will? And what about the smoke from our own wildfires?

Because Canada isn't the only place that's burning this summer. So is Minnesota. And that smoke's blowing northwest to southeast, too.

Look. I know Banks and the rest of the dopes think they can control nature, but there's a long and disastrous history of what happens when humans try. Especially when the humans in question are our elected pinheads, and what they come up with is as vague and frankly absurd as this is.

 See, the bottom line here is you can't stop wildfires from happening, because they've been happening for millennia with or without forest management. You can't stop their smoke from riding the wind, because, well, it's the wind. And the bad part is they're only going to get worse as the planet warms and folks like Jim Banks deny human activity has anything to do with it.

Because climate change doesn't exist, you know. It's all a myth cooked up by commie socialist fascist libtards to keep America from being great.

So there goes one solution, or at least a mitigation, that might actually work.

Another, of course, is sending American crews to Canada to help fight the fires -- just as Canada (and Mexico) has done for us. But, nah, we'd rather threaten people. Because that's what our muscle-y new America is all about these days.

Unfortunately, as Bag O' Hammers and his ilk demonstrated this week, some of that muscle is in their heads.

Now about that jet stream ...

Non-preventive measures

 You play ... to win ... the game.

-- Herm Edwards

You tell 'em, Herman. And by "'em", we mean "those poor victory-averse Three Lions from England."

Who pulled defeat from the arse of victory again yesterday, just when it seemed they were about to bury 60 years of frustration in a well-marked grave. Anthony Gordon came off the bench to score an artful goal -- you try controlling an awkward cross with the side of your foot while steering it into the net in the same motion -- in the 55th minute yesterday, and suddenly England led Argentina 1-nil in the second World Cup semifinal.

If the Brits hung on, they were headed to their first final since 1966. Which is also the last time they won the whole deal. 

For 30 minutes, they did hang on. For 30 minutes, we were looking at a Spain-England final.

And then ...

And then Lionel Messi happened.

With five minutes to play plus stoppage time, the world's best player found Enzo Fernandez at the top of the box, and Fernandez ripped a gorgeous fade into the far top shelf just beyond the leaping reach of England keeper Jordan Pickford, who'd been bravely staving off Argentine attacks for half an hour.

Six or so minutes later, two minutes into stoppage time, Messi collected Alexis Mac Allister's ricochet off the near post, eluded two defenders and placed a flawless cross to the far post and Lautaro Martinez, who headed it home.

And just like that, Argentina, not England, was going to the final, its second straight. Just like that, the defending champs went from deceased to Not Dead Yet with yet another miraculous resuscitation.

And England had no one to blame but itself.

Remember what ol' Herm said?

You play ... to win ... the game.

England did not.

England, after Gordon put it ahead, unaccountably went into turtle mode, surrendering the attack to Messi and Argentina and retreating to what American football fans recognized as a prevent defense. And, just like 99 percent of the time in the NFL, the preventive measure didn't prevent anything at all -- except the "W," of course.

Instead of doing what had given it the lead to begin with, England chose to do the opposite. It began pulling attackers off the field for defenders with an astounding 18 minutes to play, giving Argentina all the opening it needed to storm the English gates.

 Which it proceeded to do for the next 30 minutes. 

Crosses and corners went into the box. Shots pelted Pickford, slid just wide, spanged off crossbars and goalposts. It seemed inevitable that one of them was eventually going to find a home.

And eventually one did, in the 85th minute.

And eventually another did. 

And not quite 10 minutes later, England was going home again, the latest victim of playing not to lose disease.

As for Argentina ...

Well, it was another high-wire act in a tournament full of them for the defending champs.

They needed overtime to knock out tiny Cape Verde in the round of 32. Trailed Egypt 2-0 with 11 minutes plus stoppage time to play in the round of 16 before scoring three goals in 14 minutes for a miracle 3-2 win. Needed overtime again to beat Switzerland in the quarterfinals, even though the Swiss were playing a man short for the last 48 minutes thanks to a dubious red card for diving against Breel Embolo.

Now, somehow, they're in the final again. Spain, European champs and an absolute machine that thoroughly smothered Kilian Mbappe and France in the other semi, will certainly be the favorite.

However ...

Ah, yes. However.

A hometown vote

 The Open Championship begins tomorrow at one of those courses not named St. Andrew's, and the Blob will not be doing the red-white-and-blue thing, 250th anniversary of America's founding or no 250th anniversary of America's founding.

I suppose this would earn me a flogging in some of the more deranged precincts of our great nation. But, sorry, it's just too easy to pick Scottie Scheffler.

I'm not picking Rory McIlroy, either, even though everyone always picks him to win The Open, on account of he's Rory McIlroy. And even though he had the quote of the year last week at the Scottish Open, after he hit a very un-Rory-like shot.

"Oh, my God, I'm so bad at golf!" cried one of the best golfers of his generation.

You gotta love that. However ...

However, I love Tommy Fleetwood better.

He's British, he's got way cool hockey-flow hair, and he's one of the more genial players on tour. Also, he's come thisclose too many times this season for the golf gods not to let him off the mat for once.

Oh, yeah.  Also, he's the hometown boy in this Open.

He hails from Southport, site of Royal  Birkdale, which is where The Open is being contested this week. Southport is a seaside town in Merseyside. What I know about Merseyside is Gary and the Pacemakers wrote a hit song called "Ferry Cross The Mersey" in the 1960s.

All the more reason to pick Tommy, I figure.

He's playing mostly terrific golf. He'll have the gallery behind him. He's even got his own song, sort of.

So, yeah. Fleetwood's my guy. If he wins -- or if, say, it's fellow Brit Matt Fitzpatrick, who's been one of the hottest golfers on tour in 2026 -- he'd be the first Englishman to win The Open since Nick Faldo in 1992. And he'd be the first to win it in England proper since Tony Jacklin at Royal Lytham & St. Annes.

That happened 57 years ago, in 1969. Which means somebody must be due.

Why not the hometown boy?

Today in un-jinxes

 The American League shut out the pathetic Nationals 4-0 in a dud of an All-Star Game last night, which you can take one of two ways by the Blob's lights.

One, it was a a complete failure of occasion by the Pastime in America's 250th year.

Two, it was exactly what host city Philadelphia deserved after its subhuman, pelting-Santa-Claus-with-snowballs fans booed everyone but the Phillies' Kyle Schwarber in the Home Run Derby.

But moving right along ...

Moving right along, it's on to the second half, and to an episode of ... well, I don't know what you'd call it. Harmonic convergence? Karmic transference? Sportsball cross-pollination?

Here's the deal: On July 1, the Boston Celtics traded Jaylen Brown -- Robin to  Jayson Tatum's Batman, or vice-versa -- to the Philadelphia 76ers for a washed Paul George and some magic beans. At the time, the Boston Red Sox were 11 games under .500 and dead last in the AL East.

Since the day of the trade, however, they've won nine straight games, and were the hottest team in the majors at the All-Star break. They've gone from last to third in the division, and are now just two games below water at 46-48.

So, Boston's basketball team trades a key player, and Boston's sorry-ass baseball team hasn't lost a game since. Honestly, what would you call that?

"Witchcraft?" you're saying now.

Clever. Way to work in the whole Salem thing.

"An interdenominational un-jinx?" 

Ooh. Good one.

"A mere coincidence?"

The un-sexy truth, perhaps.

See, the Jaylen Brown trade just happened to fall right before the schedule sent the Red Sox on a road trip, and not the sort of road trip where you get squashed on the center line like an armadillo. This was the other kind of road trip.

The kind where six of the nine games were against two of the worst four teams in MLB, the stinkin' Los Angeles Angels and the odiferous New York Mets. And so of course the Red Sox swept them both.

On the other hand, the other three-game set was in Chicago against the White Sox, who are no longer the What Sox but a slightly-better-than-.500 club that, owing to the "meh"-ness of the AL Central, are locked in a seesaw fight with Cleveland for the division lead. Still, the Red Sox swept them, too.

So three road series, three broom jobs. And 9-0 since the Jaylen Brown trade.

They ought to send the guy flowers. The Angels, Mets and White Sox could probably use some, too.