Dog, meet tail

The kid's number -- 79 -- is still painted on the grass in the end zone, and inscribed on the flags carried fluttering into the stadium by his teammates. And of course it is carved into the hearts of those teammates, because that is what a team does when one of their own falls.

So at least there is still that bit of decency, where the University of Maryland is concerned.

Of the rest, one can only say there are priorities, and the Maryland board of regents displayed their university's in screaming neon letters yesterday afternoon.

They called a news conference and announced -- inexplicably, unaccountably and apparently with only one dominant thought -- that they were reinstating head football coach DJ Durkin, on whose watch No. 79, Jordan McNair, died of heatstroke last spring. And they were retaining the athletic director, Damon Evans. And they were retaining the school president, Wallace D. Loh, although Loh will step down next June in a move widely interpreted as a forced resignation because Loh, alone among those in a position of authority, advocated Durkin not be reinstated.

And so the university was responsible for Jordan McNair's death, but no one was really responsible. This makes exactly as much sense as you think it does.

Which is to say no sense whatsoever, unless you understand the obvious, which is that college football on the level Maryland plays it is a business, and business supersedes everything else. It is the tail that wags the academic dog, despite the gauzy fables the people who run collegiate athletics love to spin about education and The College Experience. 

And yet ...

And yet even on that level, nothing about this makes sense.

On Durkin's and Evans' watch, for instance, the football program continues to leak interest and money, and -- according to a Baltimore Sun report published last week -- has become something of a black hole, incurring annual operating expenses of about $19 million. Football scholarships accounted for five times the amount for any other team; the $6.2 million budget for the football coaching staff, meanwhile, accounted for more than one-third of spending on all of the school's coaches.

Maybe the regents therefore thought they'd invested too much in Durkin to blow things up so soon. After all, they'd have to shell out another $5 mill to buy out his contract, piling further debt on an already debt-heavy program.

In any case, their explanation for retaining him suggested strongly that the regents had been into something stronger than coffee and Danish. Yes, the atmosphere around the program was toxic, but it wasn't, you know, toxic. Yes, the fired strength coach, Rick Court, was abusive, but that wasn't Durkin's fault, even though he personally made Court his first hire and had known him for years. Yes, the university was responsible for McNair's death, but, you know, not Durkin, who, as a first-time head coach, was deemed not to have given the proper training for his job.

Even though Durkin has been coaching on the college level for 17 years, and worked under the likes of Urban Meyer, Jim Harbaugh and Wil Muschamp. Even though he has been head coach at Maryland since 2016 -- during which time he's gone 10-15 and 5-13 in the Big Ten, not exactly the sort of record you'd think anyone would stand behind so resolutely.

And yet the Maryland regents have. And now Durkin will return to the sideline, despite the fact no one but the regents seems to want him there. Sources told ESPN that several players, including some starters, walked out on him when he spoke to the team yesterday.

This does not suggest the Terps are going to be winning a lot of games in the near future; when a coach loses his team, after all, he rarely gets it back. In which case it doesn't seem likely Maryland football is going to be much of a going concern in the near future, either.

No, sir. All the regents seem to have done here is transform their expensive, under-achieving football program into a full-blown dumpster fire.

In the meantime, Jordan McNair is still dead.

Jordan McNair is still not coming back to his family, or to his friends, or to his teammates, ever again.

"Saturday my teammates and I have to kneel before the memorial of our fallen teammate," Ellis McKennie, one of those teammates, tweeted yesterday. "Yet a group of people do not have the courage to hold anyone accountable for his death. If only they could have the courage that Jordan had. It’s never the wrong time to do what’s right."

Except this time, apparently.

Same old thing

Time now to check in with the National Basketball Association, which has been playing for, I don't know, a month or so already, even though we're still a day away from Halloween.

Speaking of which, is the NBA still this scary place where everyone already knows the Golden State Warriors are going to win again, even though we're still a day away from Halloween and approximately a century from the NBA Finals?

You'll be horrified to know the answer is "Yes"!

When last seen, after all, the Warriors were still the Warriors, and had not morphed into the Anaheim Amigos or Dallas Chaparrals. They were, in fact, laying almighty wood to the hapless Chicago Bulls, who are one of many Happlesses in the NBA, especially when they play the Warriors.

Anyway, the final score was 149-124 in favor of the Warriors. The winners had 92 points at halftime.  They were so Warriors-y, in fact, that Klay Thompson scored 52 points all by himself, hitting a record 14 3-pointers. He did this in just 27 minutes, or three minutes more than a half. And he did this just four days after his backcourt mate, Steph Curry, went off for 51 points and 11 triples in three quarters in a 144-122 beatdown of the hapless Washington Wizards.

In other words, in just those two games, days apart, the Warriors averaged 146.5 points and Curry and Thompson combined for 103 points and 24 threes in just 64 minutes.

So ... yeah. Nothin' new to see here, apparently.

In which case, tune in for our next Association update in, I don't know, 2020 or so.

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 8

And now this week's edition of  The NFL In So Many Words, the Novocaine of  Blob features, the Ambien of Blob features, the Pill They Give You In Science Fiction Movies To Wipe Out Your Memory So You Don't Remember It's The Novocaine And Ambien Of Blob Features ... Blob feature:

1. It's Tuesday morning and Ty Montgomery is still trying to bring it out of the end zone.

2. Oh, wait, he's not. The rest of the Packers have duct-taped him to his locker.

3. In other news, Adam Vinatieri!

4. Passes Morten Andersen as the NFL's all-time leading scorer!

5. "Congratulations, Gramps. Took you long enough." (Morten Andersen)

6.  So the Browns, in spite of a (for them) stellar 2-5-1 start, fire head Hue Jackson and offensive coordinator Todd Haley, and put a guy in charge of the offense who's never called a play in the NFL.

7. "Stupid Browns." (Browns fans)

8. "Stupid Browns." (NFL analysts everywhere)

9. "Wait, what?" (Baker Mayfield)

10.  "Browns, Schmowns. Let's talk some more about how old Vinatieri is." (Morten Andersen)

"T" as in "team." Also "Todd."

Look, I feel your pain this morning, Mr. Fantasy Dude. I, too, am helplessly a-whirl in the fantasy football vortex. And my team ... boy, does my team stink.

How bad does it stink?

Dude, my team is the Raiders. My team is so bad, in fact, the Raiders are sending sympathy cards. It's so bad I'd fire me if I could, but that's not how this works, so I'm stuck with me. Kind of the way the Raiders are stuck with Jon Gruden.

But enough about me.

Let's talk about you, Mr. Fantasy Dude. Let's talk about what a bummer to have a team player in your lineup -- and worse, a team player who has a brain.

That would be Todd Gurley of the Rams, one of the best running backs in the NASH-unal FOOT-ball League. He's worth his weight in Bud Light and fully loaded nachos to Mr. Fantasy Dude. Why, look, there he goes again here in the last minute or so against the Packers, breaking free at the 21-yard line. He's headed for the end zone! Six more points for Mr. Fantasy Du--

Wait. What is he doing?

He's slowing down, that's what he's doing. He's slowing to a bleeping jog, for God's sake. He's running like a hot-damn old lady, letting the Packers catch him, letting them drag him down four yards shy of those aforementioned six more points.

What is he doing??

Using his brain, it turns out. Taking one for the team.

See, by letting himself get caught, the Rams were able to end the game with a kneel-down. They avoided giving the ball back to Aaron Rodgers with a minute to play in a 29-27 game. And Todd Gurley was smart enough to know giving the ball back to Aaron Rodgers in that situation would be like asking to get kicked in the tender mercies. Hard.

So he gave up the six.

It was the right play. It was the smart play. It was the team play. And it was the kind of play that goes a long way in explaining why the Rams are still unbeaten at the halfway point of the season.

Even if it likely gave Mr. Fantasy Dude a coronary. And maybe made him consider, in a fit of pique, to trade Mr. Todd Smarty-Pants I'm-All-About-Team Gurley.

Which would be just fine, if you ask me.

I mean, I could use a running back.

Your moment of transference today

So the Boston Red Sox did what they were supposed to do last night, closing out the Los Angeles Dodgers in five games behind a maligned pitcher who found his mojo and a journeyman slugger, and there was joy unbridled in New England and everywhere overdogs are celebrated.

The Red Sox won 108 games this season and were thus the overwhelming favorite to do what they did, but it was a triumph leavened with irony: The overdogs were led by an underdog, 35-year-old Steve Pearce, who hit three home runs in the Series and was proclaimed its MVP. A man untouched by the limelight the Red Sox have been basking in for 15 years, he's played for eight Major League teams in his career. If he was the MVP of anything in all that time, it was the waiver wire.

And now fame has touched him, much as it did journeyman David Ross two Octobers ago. A Cinderella story in the midst of an anti-Cinderella story, and a storyline worth the telling at last in this Series.

Here's another one: The tongue-in-cheek headline that ran in the Detroit Free Press after the Red Sox closed out the Dodgers.

They Did It! 2014 Detroit Tigers Finally Win World Series!, it read.

This is because, in an age of continual player movement, what goes around eventually comes around for pretty much everyone. Steve Pearce knows that this morning, as a former Yankee (among many others) celebrating as a World Series MVP for the rival Red Sox. And, yes, the Tigers get a piece of it, too, puckishly pointing out that the Red Sox heroes included a liberal sprinkling of 2014 Tigers.

That would include Price, who won two games in this Series, including the clincher. It would include Rick Porcello, another Red Sox starter who won 17 games and struck out 190 batters for the Red Sox this season. It would include second baseman Ian Kinsler. And it would include J.D. Martinez, the anchor bat in the Red Sox lineup, and who along with Pearce and Mookie Betts powered the clinching 5-1 win with homers.

So, yeah. Go Tigers!

And Red Sox. Them, too.

Night baseball

And now a complete list of those in this neck of America who made it all the way to the end of the longest World Series in history last night:

1. Night watchmen.

2. Third-trick factory workers.

3. Bats, raccoons, various other nocturnal creatures.

4. Last-call bartenders.

5. That one guy at the bar to whom the last-call bartender has to say "I mean it, buddy, you have to leave."

Eighteen innings and nearly 7 1/2 hours it took for the Red Sox and the Dodgers to settle things in Game 3, which means neither team understands how this World Series deal is supposed to work. It's supposed to be a best-of-seven series. There is nothing in the instructions that say you're supposed to play the entire series in one night.

Yet that is almost what the Red Sox and Dodgers did, and thank God for Max Muncy. If the guy doesn't finally end it with a walk-off home run in the 18th, they might still be playing. Or not. When you get into territory this uncharted, there really aren't any landmarks. I mean, what would have happened if they'd gotten to, say, the 25th inning with no resolution? Can you imagine the possible scenario?

UMPIRE (after the final out in the bottom of the 25th): OK, that's it. I'm calling this off.

RED SOX AND DODGERS: Wait, what? Why?

UMPIRE: Why? Why?? For God's sake, look around you! The ballpark is empty! Everyone left hours ago! It's 3 o'clock in the morning, and this is the West Coast! People are eating breakfast on the East Coast! People in England who were eating breakfast when it started are having their afternoon tea!

RED SOX AND DODGERS: Yeah, but ... we can't just quit.

UMPIRE: Sure you can! I'm the ump, and I said so! Go home. Get some sleep. Come back in about 10 hours and we'll finish this thing.

RED SOX AND DODGERS: But ... but ... that'll throw the whole schedule off!

FOX TV SUIT: Yeah, that'll throw the whole schedule off!

UMPIRE: I don't care. This is stupid. You've been playing so long Clayton Kershaw's kid is warming up in the bullpen. Half the Red Sox are drawing social security. And Justin Turner's beard is so long Cabela's has made a winter coat out of it. Enough.

FOX TV SUIT (again): But that'll throw the whole schedule off!

UMPIRE: Sorry. We're goin' home. I mean, come on, neither team has any players left. The Dodgers are warming up a beer vendor. The Red Sox just called out to Arizona to see if they could unfreeze  Ted Williams and send him up to pinch-hit. It's time.

FOX TV SUIT: But what about the schedule??

(Looks around. Everyone is gone.)

Hello? Um ... hello?

A lonely word of caution

Six days along, the shine is still not off it, down there in West Lafayette. This is what happens when you capture lightning or magic or the pure essence of fairy tale in a bottle, and so they were still talking about it, still reveling in it, still crowding around all the principle figures.

Purdue 49, Ohio State 20 was the biggest night for Purdue football since Joe Tiller was walking its sideline, and that would have been enough to hang onto the glow for as long as possible. But you add a courageous young man fighting an ugly form of cancer, and the way the football team and the entire Purdue community has wrapped its arms around him, and how by some miracle of God's grace he was actually there to see the big moment he'd predicted ...

Well. That kind of story has no expiration date.

And so Tyler Trent has been on ESPN with Scott Van Pelt and various radio shows and in all the papers this week, and what a great thing that is. And the architect of the signature victory, Jeff Brohm, has been compelled to talk about it all week, and about how he's suddenly the hottest commodity in college football. And that, too, is a great thing, because if you're Purdue University, the last thing you want is a football coach no one else is interested in.

Here's the thing about all this, though: It's still only October 26.

Which means Purdue has another football game this Saturday.

Which means the wonderful story, to remain wonderful, can't have an expiration date yet, either.

To keep this thing going, in other words, the Boilermakers have to go up to East Lansing, Mich., and do last Saturday all over again, and you wonder how that's going to happen when all they've talked about this week, all they've been asked by the outside world to focus on, is what happened against Ohio State.

Michigan State, on the other hand, is a football team that has its own issues with last week. The Spartans are beat up and they're hurting and they've had six days to seethe over the spanking they took on their home turf from that bleeping Harbaugh and those bleeping Michigan Wolverines. And now they get a Purdue team radiating sweetness and light and all kinds of sudden hype?

I would not have wanted to be Coach Brohm this week, trying to get his team ready for that while all anyone wanted to talk about was Ohio State.

Now, I would not be so foolish as to bet against Brohm and his Boilers, at this point. But I would not be equally so foolish as to be shocked if Sparty rises up and smacks them, given everything that's happened in both camps this week.

You can regard that as the Blob trying to ruin someone's party, if you like. The Blob prefers to think of it more benignly.

Call it a word of caution. Nothing more.