So here goes 2016 exiting stage left, and the temptation is to run after it and put your hands in its back. No year with its cruel resume should be allowed to leave the premises unassisted. There should be a good hard shove in the process somewhere, preferably into the path of a speeding Humvee.
It is not just that 2016 took Prince and Princess Leia and the Star Voyager, John Glenn, from us. That's just in the wider world. In the sports world ...
Well. It's an awful year that takes Muhammad Ali from us, and then Gordie Howe one week later. And then Arnold Palmer. And, closer to home, Eugene Parker and Bob Chase.
In different ways they put a quiet Midwestern city on the map, took it in national in a way perhaps no one else ever has. Parker was the Concordia grad whose work as a player representative, out of an office in tiny Roanoke, changed the very structure of labor relations with the National Football League. And Chase, of course, was the very voice of winter, taking a minor-league hockey team in Fort Wayne, Indiana -- and Fort Wayne, Indiana, itself -- all over North America via WOWO radio.
If not the face, he was the voice of both his sport and his community, an ambassador for both without peer. As was Eugene Parker, whose moral center and the way he applied it to his work made him admired and loved not only by his clients, but even by those with whom he negotiated so toughly.
In their own way, in their own worlds, he and Chase were as much icons as Ali or Gordie or Arnie. 2016 was a hard year for icons because of all of them, and because of Prince and Princess Leia and the Star Voyager and Merle Haggard and all of the many others, too.
And so out you go, 2016. Don't trip and fall in front of that Humvee.
On second thought, please do.
Saturday, December 31, 2016
Anatomy of a fall
This is how they happen sometimes, these tumbles from the mountaintop. One moment you are invincible and famous and the baddest man or woman on the planet; the next, you are as vulnerable as everyone around you -- and perhaps more because of that lost aura of invulnerability.
Ronda Rousey's went away with one roundhouse kick to the head from Holly Holm13 months ago, and it did not magically reappear last night. This time it was reigning champion Amanda Nunes who took Rousey out, battering her into a TKO in just 48 seconds.
The comeback fight was never a fight. It was an execution, and if onlookers were shocked at how helpless Rousey looked, they missed the essential lesson: That an aura of invincibility, once gone, is gone for good. In its place, stripped of the armor that aura provides, is not just another fighter, but no fighter at all.
She looked like someone who didn't want to be in the octagon anymore. Who didn't, in fact, want to be within a thousand miles of it.
In retrospect maybe that shouldn't have been so shocking, given the way Rousey, once the most media-savvy personality in mixed martial arts, shunned the media in the runup to the fight. She skipped all the pre-fight availability, saying she wanted to focus only on the bout. In an odd way, maybe that was a clue that her heart wasn't in this. Why else would she regard a few sitdowns with the media as a distraction otherwise?
She wanted to focus on the fight because she knew, maybe, that there wasn't enough fight in her anymore to waste a second's focus on anything else. It's as good, or as bad, a theory as any.
So that does that mean she's done?
Hard to say. If she can regain the hunger that made her who she was, probably not. If she can't ...
Well. Pretty easy to finish that sentence.
Ronda Rousey's went away with one roundhouse kick to the head from Holly Holm13 months ago, and it did not magically reappear last night. This time it was reigning champion Amanda Nunes who took Rousey out, battering her into a TKO in just 48 seconds.
The comeback fight was never a fight. It was an execution, and if onlookers were shocked at how helpless Rousey looked, they missed the essential lesson: That an aura of invincibility, once gone, is gone for good. In its place, stripped of the armor that aura provides, is not just another fighter, but no fighter at all.
She looked like someone who didn't want to be in the octagon anymore. Who didn't, in fact, want to be within a thousand miles of it.
In retrospect maybe that shouldn't have been so shocking, given the way Rousey, once the most media-savvy personality in mixed martial arts, shunned the media in the runup to the fight. She skipped all the pre-fight availability, saying she wanted to focus only on the bout. In an odd way, maybe that was a clue that her heart wasn't in this. Why else would she regard a few sitdowns with the media as a distraction otherwise?
She wanted to focus on the fight because she knew, maybe, that there wasn't enough fight in her anymore to waste a second's focus on anything else. It's as good, or as bad, a theory as any.
So that does that mean she's done?
Hard to say. If she can regain the hunger that made her who she was, probably not. If she can't ...
Well. Pretty easy to finish that sentence.
Friday, December 30, 2016
Calling all Peytons
The Indianapolis Colts pack up and go home after whatever happens against Jacksonville this weekend, and we all know what that means. It means that, the next day, head coach Chuck Pagano and general manager Ryan Grigson will likely be sent packing, too.
That's what everyone says, anyway, and they're probably right, because kumbaya moments like last year's don't have any shelf life when a franchise that four years ago was openly targeting the Super Bowl misses the playoffs for the second year in a row. And so there'll be no replay of Jim Irsay getting Pagano and Grigson together and telling the world that, from now on, everyone will be getting along famously.
Instead, they're likely to be getting on down the road.
Which of course has gotten the rumor mill cranking.
There is, after all, a certain man hanging out in his bathrobe these days, a man selling pizza and Direct TV, a man calling his brother on game days and inviting him over for nachos. That would be Peyton Manning, of course. And, except for commercials highlighting that he's not really doing anything these days, he's not really doing anything these days.
And so everyone's wondering if Irsay might be thinking about bringing him back to Indianapolis in some front-office capacity, perhaps even GM. That would require another kumbaya moment, given that Irsay is the guy who pushed Manning out the door to begin with. But Peyton remains an icon in Indianapolis, and he spent the last few years of his playing career watching John Elway, an icon in Denver, successfully run the Broncos. Presumably he learned something.
So this makes all kinds of sense. With a couple of caveats.
One is that the impeccable mind Manning brought to the football field every weekend doesn't necessarily translate to the front office. It has in Elway's case, but every case is different. Dissecting defenses, after all, is not the quite the same as dissecting other teams' front offices on draft day.
And the other caveat?
That hiring someone with Manning's credentials and profile might narrow the field of prospective head coaches.
If you put Peyton Manning in charge of the front office, after all, he's not going to be a figurehead. He's going to be in charge of the front office. Which might chase off a few coaching prospects with lofty profiles themselves, because a lot of those are likely to want some control over the front office as well.
That's not going to happen if Manning's there. It didn't even happen with Grigson and Pagano, and neither of them are Peyton Manning.
So maybe you get Manning in the Elway role and some high-profile coordinator with prior head coaching experience. That could work.
And surely worth a shot.
That's what everyone says, anyway, and they're probably right, because kumbaya moments like last year's don't have any shelf life when a franchise that four years ago was openly targeting the Super Bowl misses the playoffs for the second year in a row. And so there'll be no replay of Jim Irsay getting Pagano and Grigson together and telling the world that, from now on, everyone will be getting along famously.
Instead, they're likely to be getting on down the road.
Which of course has gotten the rumor mill cranking.
There is, after all, a certain man hanging out in his bathrobe these days, a man selling pizza and Direct TV, a man calling his brother on game days and inviting him over for nachos. That would be Peyton Manning, of course. And, except for commercials highlighting that he's not really doing anything these days, he's not really doing anything these days.
And so everyone's wondering if Irsay might be thinking about bringing him back to Indianapolis in some front-office capacity, perhaps even GM. That would require another kumbaya moment, given that Irsay is the guy who pushed Manning out the door to begin with. But Peyton remains an icon in Indianapolis, and he spent the last few years of his playing career watching John Elway, an icon in Denver, successfully run the Broncos. Presumably he learned something.
So this makes all kinds of sense. With a couple of caveats.
One is that the impeccable mind Manning brought to the football field every weekend doesn't necessarily translate to the front office. It has in Elway's case, but every case is different. Dissecting defenses, after all, is not the quite the same as dissecting other teams' front offices on draft day.
And the other caveat?
That hiring someone with Manning's credentials and profile might narrow the field of prospective head coaches.
If you put Peyton Manning in charge of the front office, after all, he's not going to be a figurehead. He's going to be in charge of the front office. Which might chase off a few coaching prospects with lofty profiles themselves, because a lot of those are likely to want some control over the front office as well.
That's not going to happen if Manning's there. It didn't even happen with Grigson and Pagano, and neither of them are Peyton Manning.
So maybe you get Manning in the Elway role and some high-profile coordinator with prior head coaching experience. That could work.
And surely worth a shot.
Meanwhile, in those other bowls ...
This is not the time to raise certain questions about the bowl system, like when the Peach Bowl became a major bowl instead of what it's always been, which is one of those bowls that's played on December 28 or thereabouts and features the likes of 6-6 Whatsamatta U. vs. 7-5 Directional Hyphen Tech.
(I mean, OK, the Fiesta Bowl as one of the national semifinal games I get. But how did the Peach Bowl get the other one? The Peach Bowl? When it did it crash the Fiesta-Rose-Sugar-Cotton-Orange nexus?)
Anyway ... this is not the time to ask those questions. Instead, it's the time to ask Razorbacks tight end Jeremy Sprinkle what he was thinking the other day when he did what he did.
Here's what Sprinkle did, see, to get himself kicked out of the Belk Bowl: He shoplifted. From a Belk store.
He shoplifted from a Belk store, even though, as part of his bowl swag, he got a $450 Belk gift card to spend. And not only that, but among the additional $280 worth of items he got nicked for shoplifting was ... a pair of socks.
A pair of socks?
OK, sure, so maybe the kid really likes socks. And maybe they were really nice socks. But come on. Who shoplifts socks?
I guess it was a good thing he got caught when he did. Who knows how many packages of underwear he could have spirited away?
(I mean, OK, the Fiesta Bowl as one of the national semifinal games I get. But how did the Peach Bowl get the other one? The Peach Bowl? When it did it crash the Fiesta-Rose-Sugar-Cotton-Orange nexus?)
Anyway ... this is not the time to ask those questions. Instead, it's the time to ask Razorbacks tight end Jeremy Sprinkle what he was thinking the other day when he did what he did.
Here's what Sprinkle did, see, to get himself kicked out of the Belk Bowl: He shoplifted. From a Belk store.
He shoplifted from a Belk store, even though, as part of his bowl swag, he got a $450 Belk gift card to spend. And not only that, but among the additional $280 worth of items he got nicked for shoplifting was ... a pair of socks.
A pair of socks?
OK, sure, so maybe the kid really likes socks. And maybe they were really nice socks. But come on. Who shoplifts socks?
I guess it was a good thing he got caught when he did. Who knows how many packages of underwear he could have spirited away?
Wednesday, December 28, 2016
Your surreal moment for today. At least.
So, you think 2016's been like the kind of dream you have when you scarf down a pizza with everything right before going to bed? Like that dream where you wake up the morning of that chem final and realize you haven't gone to class all semester, and then you show up and you're not wearing pants, and suddenly it's not a chem final but an NBA game from the 1980s and you're playing for the Celtics with Bird and McHale, and they're both pointing and laughing and getting mad because Magic Johnson keeps stealing the ball from you.
We've all had that dream, right?
Um ... right?
OK, so maybe not. But, admittedly, 2016 has been plenty surreal, and not just because Prince died and Princess Leia died and John Glenn died, and the Russians and the FBI helped put a raving loon in the White House. Now comes the most surreal moment of all.
An NBA player actually defended the league's refs!
No, really. Kevin Durant actually did that.
And the really surreal part is he's right.
He's right that the NBA's "Last Two Minute Report" is bullpucky, mainly because it's so rampantly hypocritical. As KD points out, players get whacked with chunky fines if they so much as clear their throats about the league's officiating. But it's OK for the league to turn the lens on their officials for the last two minutes of a game and then publicly pick them apart for any misstep they make in those last two minutes?
As KD also points out, what about the rest of the game? What if, for 46 of the 48 minutes, Stripes has called an impeccable game? And then, in the last two minutes, he misses a call? The NBA's selective lens, and its exposure of same, leaves the general public -- which already thinks NBA officiating stinks on ice -- with the impression that NBA officiating stinks even more than it thought.
The thing is, it doesn't. Do NBA refs miss calls? Yes, they do. Do they miss them any more egregiously than officials at the college or small college of high school level? I've never seen any data that supports this. Show me that data, and I'll buy in.
But the NBA isn't doing that. In fact, its approach to officiating is completely bipolar. On the one hand, it defends its game officials and punishes any coach or player who criticizes them. On the other, it puts out for public consumption an analysis of that officiating that does a disservice to those game officials by presenting a distorted and utterly incomplete picture of their work.
As KD said. Surreal or not.
We've all had that dream, right?
Um ... right?
OK, so maybe not. But, admittedly, 2016 has been plenty surreal, and not just because Prince died and Princess Leia died and John Glenn died, and the Russians and the FBI helped put a raving loon in the White House. Now comes the most surreal moment of all.
An NBA player actually defended the league's refs!
No, really. Kevin Durant actually did that.
And the really surreal part is he's right.
He's right that the NBA's "Last Two Minute Report" is bullpucky, mainly because it's so rampantly hypocritical. As KD points out, players get whacked with chunky fines if they so much as clear their throats about the league's officiating. But it's OK for the league to turn the lens on their officials for the last two minutes of a game and then publicly pick them apart for any misstep they make in those last two minutes?
As KD also points out, what about the rest of the game? What if, for 46 of the 48 minutes, Stripes has called an impeccable game? And then, in the last two minutes, he misses a call? The NBA's selective lens, and its exposure of same, leaves the general public -- which already thinks NBA officiating stinks on ice -- with the impression that NBA officiating stinks even more than it thought.
The thing is, it doesn't. Do NBA refs miss calls? Yes, they do. Do they miss them any more egregiously than officials at the college or small college of high school level? I've never seen any data that supports this. Show me that data, and I'll buy in.
But the NBA isn't doing that. In fact, its approach to officiating is completely bipolar. On the one hand, it defends its game officials and punishes any coach or player who criticizes them. On the other, it puts out for public consumption an analysis of that officiating that does a disservice to those game officials by presenting a distorted and utterly incomplete picture of their work.
As KD said. Surreal or not.
Tuesday, December 27, 2016
A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 16
And now this week's edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the Blob feature that just goes on and on forever, like the cosmos, like "Law & Order" reruns, like time itself until Time Itself finally says "OK, that's enough. Knock it off and go to bed.":
1. Hey, look! It's the Browns!
2. And they won!
3. No, really. I'm not kidding this time. I'm not.
4. Meanwhile, the Chargers will spend this week reworking the marketing plan that introduces them to Los Angeles by saying, "You know the Browns? We're better than them."
5. Hey, look! It's Tony Romo!
6. Still lookin' good in that ballcap, big guy.
7. Finish this sentence: The Bears were so bad on Christmas Eve that the fans in Soldier Field A) booed lustily; B) booed lustily for Jay Cutler in particular; or C) implored Santa Claus just to go ahead and give the place a miss this year, on account of the Cubs won the World Series so no one really cares about the Bears anymore, anyway.
8. The correct answer is "D", "Fans in Soldier Field? You mean there was more than one?"
9. Finish this sentence: The Texans won the AFC South ...
10. ... because not everyone could lose it.
1. Hey, look! It's the Browns!
2. And they won!
3. No, really. I'm not kidding this time. I'm not.
4. Meanwhile, the Chargers will spend this week reworking the marketing plan that introduces them to Los Angeles by saying, "You know the Browns? We're better than them."
5. Hey, look! It's Tony Romo!
6. Still lookin' good in that ballcap, big guy.
7. Finish this sentence: The Bears were so bad on Christmas Eve that the fans in Soldier Field A) booed lustily; B) booed lustily for Jay Cutler in particular; or C) implored Santa Claus just to go ahead and give the place a miss this year, on account of the Cubs won the World Series so no one really cares about the Bears anymore, anyway.
8. The correct answer is "D", "Fans in Soldier Field? You mean there was more than one?"
9. Finish this sentence: The Texans won the AFC South ...
10. ... because not everyone could lose it.
Saturday, December 24, 2016
Merry Christmas and such
It's Christmas Eve now, and time for the Blob to knock off for a couple of days of revelry and assorted other merriment. But because the Blob is a cultured joint, I'll leave you all with a line of prose poetry from Dylan Thomas, whose "A Child's Christmas In Wales" is the Blob's favorite Christmas work:
“All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged, fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in the snow and bring out whatever I can find ..,”
May all your Christmases (or holidays in general) roll down toward the two-tongued sea. Joy to all.
“All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged, fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in the snow and bring out whatever I can find ..,”
May all your Christmases (or holidays in general) roll down toward the two-tongued sea. Joy to all.
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