Dumb suffers (and whines)

 He's been ESPN's newest flavor for just five months, but already Pat McAfee is calling out the World Wide Leader. Said one of his bosses, Norby Williamson, is a "rat" who's trying to sabotage his radio show. Said it on his radio show -- right there on an ESPN platform, other words.

Which was either brave or foolhardy, take your pick. As someone once observed, they often look the same.

What the Blob will observe is this looks like another marriage that won't last, and surprise, surprise. A huge part of McAfee's appeal has always been his unruliness, after all. And unruliness doesn't play well at the WWL.

They like their talent in neatly packed boxes there, and McAfee has never been a neatly-packed-box sort of guy. Saying whatever crossed his mind at the moment it crossed his mind is pretty much his stock in trade.

However.

However, in the real grownup world, there are sometimes consequences. And guys like McAfee never seem to deal well with consequences.

A lot of his public sniping at his employer, after all, springs from McAfee's paid lounge act Aaron Rodgers saying something on McAfee's show he shouldn't oughta have said: That talk-show host Jimmy Kimmel was probably on Jeffrey Epstein's list of associates and travel partners. In other words, Rodgers was kinda-sorta suggesting  Kimmel was a pedophile.

This obviously didn't sit well with Kimmel, mainly because it wasn't true. So he threatened to drop a nuclear defamation suit on Rodgers and/or his enabler, McAfee, claiming (with a touch of the drama king, admittedly) that Rodgers had put his family in danger. ESPN promptly rolled out a statement condemning Rodgers' spew, and saying it did NOT reflect the opinion or values of ESPN, blar-de-blar-blar-blar.

McAfee's on-air rant quickly followed. You put two-and-two together.

But remember that business about consequences?

Well, in this case, when you pay a certified loon like Rodgers to come on your show every week precisely because he might say something loony, occasionally he will. And when he does ... well, you get what you pay for. Even if it means a late-night star threatening to sue you for defamation.

Them's  the consequences, Pat ol' buddy. Getting all mad at ESPN for apologizing on your behalf and claiming the WWL is sabotaging your show doesn't change the fact you played with fire and got burned.

And that's the attraction with Rodgers, isn't it?

Because if all the guy did was come on and drone about pass coverages and quarterback play like any other future Hall of Fame QB, how long would he have had a regular gig on McAfee's show? A week? Two weeks?

No, it's the goofiness McAfee was after, and God knows Rodgers has an abundance of it.  Occasionally too much, as McAfee has discovered. But again, you get what you pay for. 

No sense whining about it now.

One golden goose, expired

 The NHL Winter Classic -- a New Year's Day staple for the Blob once the BCS and CFP wrecked the day for college football -- pulled its worst TV numbers ever in 2024. And again it was greed, and the stupidity that greed creates, that was the culprit.

Y'see, the NHL, startled by how popular the Winter Classic was, decided well, hell, this thing is a freaking ATM. Think how much dough we could rake in if we played a whole SERIES of outdoor games EVERY SINGLE YEAR?

So of course the NHL did. And of course what made the Winter Classic a freaking ATM to begin with -- the novelty of seeing two NHL teams play outdoors in the elements, just like the players did on frozen ponds as kids -- thus became just another Tuesday on the NHL schedule. And, poof, the uniqueness that was the Winter Classic's principal attraction vanished, and another golden goose died.

Or at least grew withered and sickly and, this year, was worthy only of a cable presence.

Market saturation has done that to more golden geese than you can shake a drumstick at, and yet allegedly smart people keep on saturatin'. Every gambler in Vegas knows you don't keep pumping quarters into the same one-armed bandit immediately after it's paid off, but not these smart guys. They starting pumping in the quarters faster than before.

"Wow, that's really dumb," you're saying now.

Indeed it is. But greed makes dumb guys out of smart guys all the time. Just about every day in fact.

For instance: A lot of of factors have contributed to the diminishment of the World  Series as a must-see event, and most of those have been well-documented. The over-arching monolith of the NFL, sucking all the oxygen out of autumn ... the abandonment of the next generation of fans ... the lure of football and basketball over baseball for potential future MLB stars ...

And one more, at least according to the Blob: The market saturation -- make that over-saturation -- of interleague play.

Shouting-at-clouds geezers like me never did much care for it, but at least once it was an interesting novelty. Now it's such a regular thing it's completed wiped out one of the elements that used to make the Fall Classic the Fall Classic: The mystery.

Back in the day, when the American League exclusively played the American League and the National League exclusively played the National League, the World Series was a leap into the unknown. How would two teams that had never played one another during the season match up? How distinct were the two styles of play, NL and AL? And which would ultimately prevail?

It may be impossible to quantify how much all of that added to the attraction of the Fall Classic, but surely it added some. And now it's gone, because the two World Series participants likely have played one another half-a-dozen times already during the regular season. The World Series therefore becomes indistinguishable from a divisional or league championship series.

Sad, all of that. And, yes, really, really dumb.

Same (stuff), different day

 Well, that was ... not illuminating.

Indiana went out to Nebraska last night to play another football school, and once again the Hoosiers got abused by said football school.  Lost 86-70, and it wasn't that close. Lost for the same reason they always either lose or struggle, which is where the not-illuminating part comes in.

To wit: Hey, did you hear the Hoosier guard play sucks?

Yeah, only about 500 times so far this season, mainly because it's true and rarely changes. Last night the Indiana backcourt directed an especially unkempt floor game, turning it over a staggering 19 times even though sixth-year senior Xavier Johnson was back in the lineup, at least for awhile.

Alas, he's still the same X, with a layer of rust thrown in for good measure. Which is to say, in 14 minutes he missed all three of his shot attempts, grabbed two rebounds, dished three assists and turned it over four times -- most a result of the sort of ill-advised decisions a sixth-year senior shouldn't be making.

Meanwhile, Nebraska guard Kesei Tominaga flamed the Hoosiers with 28 points in 27 minutes, confirming once again that Indiana's guards can't, well, guard.

How bad was it?

So bad even Mike Woodson, who tends to avoid publicly calling out his players,  declared the obvious in the postgame.

"They outplayed our starting two guards, who were awful tonight," he said.

A recurring theme that, let's face it, shouldn't be recurring this deep into the season.

Woodson keeps talking about how the Hoosiers are still young and unfamiliar with one another, but after 14 games all the tread's worn off that excuse. And the guard play remains the biggest issue, just as it was 14 games ago. 

Only sporadically has it made strides, usually against teams that presented favorable matchups. Against a backcourt led by Tominaga, one of the best guards in the Big Ten, it looked ... well, as awful as ever, to use Woodson's word.

And that, boys and girls, is on the coaching staff.

In the meantime, you can keep spinning the same record with these Hoosiers. Same (stuff), different day.

The silliness of what if

 Saw the other day that Vegas put out a hypothetical betting line on a hypothetical Georgia-Michigan national championship game, and I immediately had two thoughts:

1. I had no idea there were so many butt-hurt, we-shoulda-been-in-the-CFP  University of Georgia grads working in Vegas.

2. Beating a horse this dead is not only sad and pathetic, it's downright silly.

Because, listen, people, and I'll put this in all caps so you'll be sure to hear it: GEORGIA'S NOT HERE. You can wish the Bulldogs were, you can say they were clearly one of the best four teams in college football this season, but they lost the one game they couldn't afford to lose.  

Say what you will about Michigan and its real natty opponent Washington, but they didn't. They ran the table -- Washington in arguably the nation's toughest conference. So they deserve to be right where they are.

Running fake betting lines inserting Georgia for Washington not only disses the Huskies, it's just plain silly.  Harmless, sure, but silly.

Although the implication behind it -- that Georgia is the ACTUAL best team in college football -- presents an interesting exercise in logic if you extrapolate it on out.

For instance ...

* The Texas Rangers won the World Series, but the real champions were obviously either the Atlanta Braves or Baltimore Orioles. They were, after all, the two best teams in baseball this year until, like Georgia, they lost when they shouldn't have. That made the Fall Classic between the Rangers and Arizona Diamondbacks the Faux Classic, right? 

* Fairleigh Dickinson beat Purdue last March in a stunning NCAA Tournament upset, but, like Georgia losing to Alabama,  that was just a big ol' fluke so Purdue was your real regional champion and should have assumed its rightful place in the Final Four. I mean, the Boilermakers would have pounded Florida Atlantic or San Diego State, right?

* Wyndham Clark won the U.S. Open golf tournament in 2023, but, come on, it's not like he's better than Rory McIlroy, who finished second by a stroke. Just like, you know, Alabama wasn't better than Georgia, even though it beat the Bulldogs in the SEC title game.

*  The best team in the NHL last year was the Boston Bruins, so they should have been playing Las Vegas in the Stanley Cup Final. They didn't, but they should have been. And, look, even Vegas had them favored over the hometown team in this totally legit fake betting line!

And last but not least ...

* Trump won! Trump won! Even though he lost!

Speaking of totally legit fakes.

A milestone worth forgetting

 So remember last month, when North Dakota State's men's basketball program embarrassed itself by first scheduling, and then beating 108-14, a National Christian College Athletic Association school with an enrollment of 100?

Grambling's women went the Bison one better last night. Or maybe three or four times better.

In case you missed the Grambling women set an NCAA record by beating College of Bible Studies by a Division I women's record 141 points.

No, that's not a misprint. The Gramblings really did win by 141 points. The final was 159-18.

Grambling, which is 6-5 on the season, led 34-0 before College of Bible Studies scored a point. The halftime score was 82-10. They should have stopped it right there, like a referee stopping a lopsided fight.

And if you're wondering here "Who is the College of Bible Studies, and how did the NCAA let Grambling schedule a middle school?", let me be the first to tell you College of Bible Studies is not a middle school. It's a Division II NCCAA school from Houston. It has an enrollment of 431 students, of whom only around 123 are full-time. 

Its nickname is the Ambassadors, and last night the Ambassador women committed 57 turnovers and shot just 18.6 percent (8 of 43).

This is not to shame the Ambassadors, mind you. It's to shame Grambling for scheduling someone it clearly had no business playing.

Perhaps there's a logical explanation for this. Perhaps Grambling, which after all has only played 11 games, is playing only a partial schedule. Perhaps a scheduled opponent had to bail at the last minute and the Tigers had to scramble to find someone to play.

But all that is giving Grambling more benefit of the doubt than the Blob is willing to give it. Beating a College of Bible Studies 159-18 is like Dad beating his 5-year-old daughter 159-18 in the driveway: Pretty disgusting, honestly, and reflecting very little good about Dad.

Shouldn't count as an official W, if the Blob's keeping the won-lost stats. And that record 141-point margin?

One milestone far more worth forgetting than remembering.

A few brief thoughts, College Division

 (In which the Blob opines on Michigan beating Alabama in a Rose Bowl worthy of its distant descendants, and Washington beating Texas in the Sugar Bowl despite trying its darnedest to give it away at the end)

1. Tell me again why Michael Penix Jr. isn't at the top of the quarterback draft board, and Caleb Williams and some guy from North Carolina are. Guy throws darts. Laser-guided darts. Best pro prospect in the country.

2/ Blake Corum's touchdown run in overtime is going straight to the top of every Rose Bowl  montage from here on out. He was not gonna stay out of the end zone on that play. He just wasn't.

3. Alabama shoulda been flagged for egregious use of a timeout at the end of overtime. You delayed the deciding moment to basically call a quarterback keeper into the teeth of the Michigan defense? (And, yes, I know, a 'Bama guy botched his assignment on the play). That was the best Nick Saban could come up with?

4. Somewhere last night there were about ten NFL quarterbacks wondering why they couldn't have nice things -- i.e., wide receivers -- like Penix has.

5. Michigan got fat on a lot of kibble this fall in a kibble-y Big Ten, but down at the end, after 'Bama had dominated the second half, the Wolverines made the plays they had to make to win it. That said something about them.

6. Yeah, the SEC also-rans beat up on the Big Ten also-rans in the bowls. But in the end, the Big Ten won the only head-to-head that mattered. So there.

7. Two national semifinals, two games that came down to one last stop. Hell of a day for the CFP.

8. In a battle of two elite programs that get the sort of linemen who make them elite, Michigan won up front. 'Bama wasn't able to bully the Wolverines on the line of scrimmage the way it does almost everyone else; in fact, Michigan's defensive front bullied the Tide. Must have come as a shock.

9. "Now THAT'S football by God." (Bo and Woody in heaven, watching a Rose Bowl dominated by the run game and defense)

And last but not least ...

10. /After all that, the national championship is just another Big Ten game.

Good riddance

It's New Year's Day on our frail little rock, and I suppose that means resolutions and Little Baby 2024 putting Tottery Old Man 2023 on the street (How cruel we are to our seniors!), and hope in our hearts that the new year won't be as big a shiteshow as we all know it's going to be.

But first, a few last words about 2023.

You really decided to whiz in our cornflakes on your way out the door, didn't you?

One last day to show some damn contrition for all those you took from us across your 365 days, and what do you do? You take one more. And not just any one more, but a freaking legend in his proscribed universe.

You took Cale Yarborough

He died on New Year's Eve, at the well-lived age of 84, and, listen, young'uns, he was a hell of a man. Grew up in little ol' Timmonsville, S.C., where he played high school football and boxed a little and wound up wrestling stock cars around back when NASCAR was Richard Petty and David Pearson and two Yarboroughs spelled different -- Cale Yarborough and Lee Roy Yarbrough, which is how you knew they weren't related. 

NASCAR was a lot cruder in those days, not all corporate and glossy the way it is now. It was Southern boys makin' up for Gettysburg by leadfooting a bunch of Plymouths and Pontiacs and Mercurys and Dodges on both asphalt and dirt, and occasionally settling matters with their fists.

Speaking of which, it was Cale and the Allison boys doing a bit of the latter that took NASCAR national back in 1979.

It was the weekend of the Daytona 500 and half of America was snowed in by a massive winter storm, and the Great American Race was aired flag-to-flag for the first time. With nothing else to do, America watched. And what America saw, down there at the end, hooked it for keeps.

What America saw was Cale and Donnie Allison bangin' door handles on the last lap as each went for the win, and finally crashing one another out. Then Donnie's brother Bobby came screeching to a halt next to them. And then, as Petty took the checkers half a lap ahead, there they all were out of their cars throwing hands and feet and even a racing helmet in a full-on brawl.

"What the hell is THIS?" America thought, presumably.

And kept watching from then on.

And while The Fight might have been how NASCAR and Cale Yarborough wound up on the national radar, the irony was it happened at the end of a decade dominated by the latter. He won three straight Cup titles in the '70s, the first man ever to do so. When he retired after winning six races and finishing second in the points in 1980, he'd won Daytona four times, the Southern 500 five times, and 83 Cup races in all.

In 2012, all that got him into the NASCAR Hall of Fame.

And now he's gone, a man from a wholly different era to whom the current era owes much. One last kick in the tender parts from 2023, the treacherous old coot.

Good riddance. Don't let the door hit ya, and all that.