Dream stealers

 The rules are clear and the penalties severe.

- Former IHSAA commissioner Gene Cato

Oh, if only that were so, Gene, wherever you are in the heavens above. If only that were so.

I covered high school sports in Indiana for 40 years, and in that time I heard Gene's famous quote more times than I can count. It was intended to illustrate the IHSAA's strict adherence to fair play and intolerance for the shenanigans that were the enemy of fair play. Unfortunately the reality has always been far more complicated.

Which is to say, the rules are only clear to the IHSAA, and far more malleable than Gene let on. And if the penalties are indeed severe, they can also be thoughtless, and the very antithesis of fair play.

Black-and-white adherence to black-and-white rules only works when there are no shades of gray. And, buddy, life is every shade of gray you can imagine.

Don't know if you've read this, or if the paywall will allow you to, but down in Indianapolis one of the best journalists in the state -- Gregg Doyel of the Indianapolis Star -- posted a meticulously reported story about an extremely gray situation at Indian Creek High School in tiny Trafalgar. It's an ugly story that involves the IHSAA and its rulebook, school administrators, and  a petty old boy network that protects its own at the expense of the kids whose interests it allegedly serves.

You can read it here, if the paywall lets you. If not, allow the Blob to give you the Reader's Digest condensed version. 

It's all about a pretty good high school linebacker named Kohlton Scoggan, who dreamed of perhaps getting a small-college football scholly so he could afford to go to school. He was a member in good standing of Indian Creek's football team until one of the assistant coaches got caught sending creepy Snapchat messages to Scoggan's 15-yer-old sister. After the family quite understandably took out a restraining order against this garden slug, Scoggan was suddenly persona non grata.

According to the family and some of Scoggan's teammates, the head football coach started trying to smear the kid, to the point of coercing some team members to sign statements accusing Scoggan of destroying a mailbox. He apparently didn't do it -- his teammates were making light of his fallen status by basically joking "I bet Scoggan did it" -- and even the school agreed.

Yet it added fuel to a situation that had become untenable. And so, in February, Scoggan transferred to Greenwood for his senior year.

Indian Creek officials immediately contested his football eligibility. Despite the obvious pettiness of this, the IHSAA backed the school's play and declared him ineligible for football. The rules are clear, remember?

Except ...

Except, not really.

As the Blob noted, there's always been a certain capriciousness to that hallowed rulebook, especially where student transfers are concerned. I remember a particular instance from decades back where a standout girl swimmer at Anderson High School transferred to Carmel, allegedly because her dad had taken another job. It was only the purest coincidence that she was transferring to a high school with the state's best girls swim team.

The IHSAA said okey-dokey to that.

It told Kholton Scoggan to take a flying leap, even though the circumstances practically screamed for a little discretion. Not to say compassion.

Apparently, however, that's not in the IHSAA rulebook. Nor, apparently, is it in the hearts of the alleged educators at Indian Creek High School, who contested the kid's eligibility to begin with out of what seems nothing more than childish spite. 

Trying to steal a kid's dream instead of helping it come true: Half my family members were educators, and yet somehow I don't remember that being part of their job description. Perhaps I was misinformed.

Instead, I'm left only with Gene Cato.

The rules are clear, and the penalties severe.

Well. At least he got the second part right.

Up goes the curtain

 The monolithic presence that is the NASH-unal FOOT-ball League returns tomorrow night, not to leave us alone until February. That's a lot of Hank Williams Jr. or Carrie Underwood or whoever's doing the Sunday/Monday/Thursday night bumper music to wade through, not to mention several truckloads of over-analysis and over-analysis of the over-analysis.

And don't forget the usual doomsaying when someone who looked like a Super Bowl contender in August starts 0-2.

Thursday it begins with the Chiefs and the Lions on national TV, and I hope for the sake of all long-suffering Lions fans their boys don't Lions it up like usual. Lots of folks in lots of places are jacked up about the Honolulu-blue-and-silver, apparently having forgotten that the chronically "meh" Jared Goff is still their quarterback, and that they were 9-8 and not 11-6 or 12-5 or something like that,

Anyway, here's to 'em. Show America you've got what they say you've got, Kittens.

Some other thoughts:

* Speaking of hype, here's to the Noo Yawk Jets, too. Their delusional fan base, along with plenty of delusional TV poodles, think this could be their year now that 69-year-old Aaron Rodgers is helming the offense. They've got Dalvin Cook and Breece Hall in the backfield! They've got 2022 rookie sensation Garrett Wilson at wideout! They've got Aaron Bleeping Rodgers!

(And OK, he's only 39, not 69. The point -- that he's left a lot of tread on the road in almost 20 years as an NFL quarterback -- pertains.)

Anyway, serious people are seriously considering the Jets as a possible Super Bowl team, forgetting they're still the Jets. They'll lose twice to the Patriots because they always lose to the Patriots. The Bills and Josh Allen are still around, and the Dolphins figure to not be a doormat. And that's just in the division.

And don't even try to convince me that if the Jets do the Jets thing and lose a game or two they shouldn't, Old Man Aaron won't start shouting at clouds again.  And the New York media will give him the world's largest bullhorn with which to do so.

I see crushing disappointment ahead for the wearers of the green. But, of course, they're Jets fans, so they're used to that.

* Speaking of the Chiefs, the inclination here is to simply pencil in Patrick Mahomes and Co. for Super Sunday and be done with it. But the injury bug has already bitten them -- Travis Kelce went down with a hyper-extended knee the other day -- and if you believe in omens and portents as fervently as the Blob does, that's not a good one.

Also, Chris Jones, the anchor of their D, is still in holdout mode.

So I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that even though they're the best organization in football right now, this will not be their year.

* And speaking of predictions ...

Here are a few more. Clip and save for future ridicule:

* The Bills will go 13-4 or 14-3, win the AFC East and flame out in the playoffs again.

* Russell Wilson will resume being Russell Wilson even though that mean Sean Payton won’t let him hang with his personal trainer.

* Justin Fields will be much better, the Bears will be much better, but all that means is they'll go 8-9 or 9-8 and fight with the Packers for last in the NFC North.

* Speaking of the Packers, Jordan Love will be OK but not great, and all of Green Bay will complain because he's not an all-timer like the previous two guys - forgetting how unbelievably lucky they were to get two all-timers in a row.

* Dallas will be Dallas. Which is to say, no Supe for you, Cowboys fans.

* Minnesota will be Minnesota. Which is to say, no Supe for you, either, Vikings fans -- although they'll manage to win the NFC North again despite the prevailing sentiment that their time is done.

* In San Francisco, Brock Purdy will not be another Tom Brady after all. But he won't be Cindy Brady, either, and the Niners will get to the Super Bowl this time.

* Where they'll face the Bengals, who'll go on a tear once they get Joe Burrow back.

All for now.

Wading into the revenue stream

 The Blob holds no particular brief for Michigan football coach Jim Harbaugh, who's a trifle slippery and sometimes has too nodding an acquaintance with the truth. It's why the NCAA's on his case and he's sitting out a three-game suspension levied by his university, which hopes it will soften the inevitable blow.

But sometimes the man does have a clear eye. Maybe the clearest.

Last week he got up at his weekly presser and essentially presented a white paper on the current NIL/transfer portal mess, which the NCAA brought on itself. The suits and academics who run the show there couldn't bring themselves to simply declare their workforce a workforce, so they introduced a stopgap measure that would allow the workforce to cut its own financial deals.

Thus, the NIL. Thus, college football and basketball can still maintain the fiction of the student-athlete, and the myth of academic purity that comes with it.

Harbaugh said last week that won't fly.

He said, and not for the first time, that universities and athletic conference should cut the bullspit and institute revenue sharing.

"The current status quo is unacceptable, and won't survive," Harbaugh said. "In my opinion, when we capitalize on the talent, we should pay the talent for their contributions to the bottom line."

Abso-effin'-lutely. Every word.

Seismic conference realignment has forever shattered the illusion big-boy college football and basketball are anything but professional corporate enterprises, so enough with that noise. It's Big Ten Inc. and SEC Inc. and ACC Inc. now, driven by the same imperatives that drive Microsoft or Amazon or Dow Chemical. 

What we've seen the last couple years -- the SEC raiding the Big 12 for its two signature brands (Texas and Oklahoma); the Big Ten initiating a hostile takeover of the Pac-12 -- is nothing more than mergers and acquisitions. It's AT&T swallowing Time-Warner, Google gobbling up Android, Disney scooping Pixar/Marvel.

The ACC, meanwhile, just voted to add SMU and Pac-12 refugees Cal and Stanford, thereby rendering its very name (Atlantic Coast Conference) as obsolete as the Model T.

All of this is about cashing in on the TV money that flows like water and generates billions for the Big Ten, the SEC, the Big 12, the ACC. And all of it the conferences and universities keep because ... well, because revenue sharing with the "student-athletes" who are the product the teevees are buying would mean the end of the fantasy.

But, again, that fantasy died a long time ago. It died the first time one of the big football or basketball schools paid Coach eight, nine, ten million a year just to coach football or basketball. It died the moment they decided Coach was not faculty who actually taught classes (as coaches used to back in the day), but the CEO of an enterprise wholly separate from the university's academic mission.

And if that's what you are, you should operate accordingly. Acknowledge your workforce is a workforce, and pay it accordingly.

Harbaugh, who coached in the NFL and thus understands how corporations work, sees that perhaps clearer than most. Which is why he sees through the sham to the reality.

Enough with the NIL dodge, he says. If you're gonna quack like a duck, be a duck.

Damn skippy.

Rooting disinterest

 I am what you might call an ecumenical college football fan.

By that I mean I love college football, but not necessarily specifically. I went to a MAC school (Ball State) that's occasionally good, sometimes really good, but mostly a shade of beige that blends in well with the autumn palette. Once in awhile the Cardinals will jump up and beat Indiana, but given Indiana's own gridiron history that's not exactly like summiting Everest.

Frankly it's more fun when the Cards tattoo Central Michigan, those schlubs from Mount Pleasant..

Anyway, when I watch college football, it's usually without a rooting interest. Upsets are especially pleasant, but one's no more pleasant than another. And I watch rivalry games as much for what has gone before as for what happens that day, history dork that I am.

However.

However, last night I did have a rooting interest. Or an anti-rooting interest, if you prefer.

I watched No. 5 LSU and No. 8 Florida State hoping to see both teams lose.

I wanted to see LSU lose because I wanted to see Brian Kelly lose. I wanted to see him lose because he's a big phony who denied his way out of South Bend right up until he left South Bend in a cloud of peeling rubber. Told his Notre Dame players (who came there to play for Notre Dame, but also for Brian Kelly) this, essentially: Hey, it's been great, but I'm outta here. Have a great life, because you know I will, seeing how LSU is paying me a hella wad.

Now, I'm not particularly a Notre Dame fan (again, that ecumenical thing). But the way Kelly dropped it like a hot rock as soon as LSU batted its eyes at him rubbed me the wrong way.

And Florida State?

I wanted the Seminoles to crash and burn because of the way they flapped their gums this summer about how they'd gotten too big for their sad little conference. They hadn't done squadoosh in six years, but last season they went 10-4 and suddenly they were swaggering around like Bobby Bowden was back from the dead and it was the 1990s again.

They needed a bigger wedge of the pie, FSU's president said, or the ACC could kiss 'em goodbye. They were, after all, Florida State. They were a brand. Clemson regularly pounded lumps on 'em and Notre Dame, too, a lot of years, but never mind that. They weren't the Seminoles.

You can see why I wanted to see the Seminoles get their arses handed to 'em, too.

Well, you know what happened. Brian Kelly and LSU went down like the Hindenburg, which was more than OK. But it was the Seminoles who torched 'em, 45-24, and that left me thinking "Oh, crap, now they're really gonna run their mouths."

In fairness, they looked damned good, and like all teams these days who look damned good the transfer portal has been kind to them. Jordan Travis threw for 342 yards and four scores, and 226 of those yards and three of those scores came from Keon Coleman and Johnny Wilson, who caught 16 balls between them. 

Coleman's a refugee from Michigan State. Wilson came to Tallahassee by way of Arizona State. So it goes.

And so it went last night, with the corresponding mix of emotion. Watching Kelly get trounced on national TV was all kinds of fun. Watching Florida State do the trouncing, not so much.

But you know what?

Give me a mix of emotion over no emotion any day.

Prime's time

 Oh, hell, let Deion Sanders gloat all he wants. He earned it yesterday.

That was, after all, a great big howdy-do to Great Big College Football yesterday, taking the Colorado Buffaloes down to TCU and strapping a 45-42 loss on a team that played in the national championship game last year. It was the biggest W folks in Boulder had seen in several epochs, and proof (at least for now) that Coach Prime isn't just sequins and glitter and over-the-top branding.

So, yeah, let him say I told ya so. You can even let him say it over and over and over, the way he did yesterday in the posrgame.

However.

However, let's also acknowledge its disingenuousness.

Deion had a right to tell us making his kid his starting quarterback wasn't nepotism after all, because the kid (Shedeur Sanders) threw for 510 yards and four touchdowns on 38-of-47 passing, setting the school record for passing yards in a game in his very first start. Travis Hunter, playing both ways, caught 11 of Shedeur's throws for 119 yards and had an interception as defense.

Coach Prime, who brought both players with him from HBCU Jackson State, crowed that, see, he told you his Jackson State guys could play at any level you threw at 'em.

However.

However, it should be noted that Hunter was the No. 2 recruit in the country in 2022 and turned down Florida State to play for Deion at Jackson State. So it wasn't like he was your typical Jackson State recruit.

Same with Shedeur, who was a four-star recruit coming out of high school. Same with a whole pile of other Colorado kids, hardly any of whom played for the 1-10 dumpsite that stunk up Boulder last year.

Fact is, that Colorado team is effectively gone. The one that took the field in Fort Worth yesterday was brand new, because Coach Prime brought in 86 new players -- all of them way better players, presumably.

So, yeah, let the man gloat. But pull the reins on the hype a bit.

I know. Too late.

A different kind of same-old

 Saturday afternoon, and I'm watching Indiana assume the position for its usual racking from the Ohio State Buckeyes, and ... wait, what?

Is that an IU guy blasting an Ohio State running back into next Wednesday?

Is that another IU guy taking down another Ohio State running back behind the line of scrimmage?

Is that yet another IU guy swatting down a slant pass seemingly destined for six?

"Dang, there's 44 (Aaron Casey) in Ohio State's backfield again!" I'm saying. "He should rent a condo."

Then I'm looking at the score, which says Ohio State 10, Indiana 3 as halftime approaches. Then I'm wondering if that's an actual defense I'm seeing on the Indiana side, because I've never seen one and thus am not quite sure.

Well ... it is. I think. We'll see.

All I know is this was a different Indiana team I was watching yesterday (thanks, transfer portal!), and also the same Indiana team. Which is to say the defense gave Ohio State fits for awhile instead of fits of laughter like usual, but the Hoosiers lost anyway, 23-3.

But at least they lost differently.

Back in the day, see, Indiana could score points in bunches in its good years, but they'd lose anyway because the defense gave up points in bushel baskets. Yesterday all that was reversed.

The Indiana D was aggressive, it stuck people, it was nasty until the Buckeyes wore it down, Casey had a whole season in one day, making nine solo tackles, 11 total and one tackle for loss. The Hoosiers held all-world wideout Marvin Harrison to just two catches for 18 yards, and had five tackles for loss.

The offense, meanwhile ...

Well. The offense looked as if it couldn't have moved the football against thin air.

IU coach Tom Allen started Brendan Sorsby at quarterback, yanked him after two impotent series for Tayven Jackson, and generally gave every evidence that he doesn't really have a starting quarterback. Maybe that's why naming his starter was a gametime decision.

Jackson was marginally better than Sorsby, but only marginally. In the end, the Hoosiers huffed out just eight first downs and 153 total yards, were 4-15 on third down and 0-2 on fourth, and averaged just 2.2 yards on the ground. Simple forward motion ought to get you 2.2 yards a carry, but, nah.

So to sum up: The defense gave the offense a chance for once instead of the other way around. But the offense said (again), nah.

I don't know if this means we'll see the usual Indiana this fall, only wearing its clothes backward. I'm betting yeah, but I was betting Purdue wouldn't give up 39 points to Fresno State yesterday and lose its home opener 39-35. So what do I know.

A few collegiate thoughts

 I knew the first full weekend of college football had commenced because the air coming in the windows last night was September-cool, and on my TV screen something that looked vaguely like a Big Ten game was happening.

It was Nebraska vs. Minnesota wallowing around up there in Minneapolis, and, man, it was as beige you can get. I think Minnesota won, 13-10. Everyone who watched it lost, because, as is usually the case on Labor Day weekend, the football was ... well, not what it will be come October.

But, hey: College football is college football. And now that it's back in full, here are a few Blobby thoughts to get the holiday weekend started:

* My Ball State Cardinals open at Kentucky of the SEC, part one of the administration's plot to kill the football team in the womb. That's because next week the Cardinals travel to Athens, Ga., to play the top-ranked and back-to-back national champion Georgia Bulldogs.

And here we thought live sacrifices went out with the Aztecs.

Of course, there's always the chance this is the Blob's natural pessimism talking, and the Cardinals put a brave fight tomorrow and next Saturday. And maybe half the team does not wind up on the disabled list with old rival Indiana State coming to Muncie in week three.

In any event. that guarantee-game money should fatten the athletic budget in fine style. Tennis and field hockey and the rest of the "non-revenue" sports thank you for your service, gentlemen.

* Speaking of live sacrifices, Indiana opens the season in Bloomington tomorrow against an Ohio State team that's apparently as Ohio State-y as ever. 

There's been the usual quantity of happy talk out of Bloomington this offseason about how nasty and get-after-it the Indiana defense will be and how the transfer portal -- which brought quarterback Tayven Jackson and nine defensive linemen to town, among others -- has been extremely generous. I guess we'll see.

The Blob's pessimism suspects what we'll see is something like Ohio State 35, Indiana 10. But, you know, that's just me.

*  In West Lafayette, Purdue unveils the Ryan Walters Era in Ross-Ade against Fresno State, and we'll see if the happy talk coming out of Boilerville this offseason is justified, too. Walters has installed the defensive system that gave opponents fits at Illinois last year, and Quarterback U. has Texas transfer Hudson Card all ready to plug into Aidan O'Connell's old spot, and running back Devin Mockobee is ready for more after a breakout redshirt freshman year. 

(For what it's worth, I like Purdue's prospects better than Indiana's at this point. But, again, that's just me.)

And last but not least ...

* Up in Ann Arbor, meanwhile, Michigan takes on East Carolina in the Big House, the first of three games head coach Jim Harbaugh has to sit out thanks to a self-imposed university suspension. It's the cringe-mode strategy schools always employ when the NCAA's about to drop the hammer on a misbehaving coach and they're trying to soften the blow.

Of course, it's no kind of penalty at all. The three games Harbaugh will have to sit out are lunch items: East Carolina, UNLV and Bowling Green. Fielding Yost could hang up Ws in those three games, and he's been dead for 77 years.

Some punishment phase, UM.