So, remember just the other day, when the Blob was saying stuff about Your Indiana Hoosiers like they've finally found an identity, and they're prolly almost for sure a 20-win team (Hey, they're 15-4 and tied for second in the Big Ten!), and how living down low with their bigs was going to define them from here on out?
Well ... um ...
The Blob was partly right about that.
Wednesday night at Penn State, the Hoosiers did live down low, getting a combined 33 points and 20 rebounds from Joey Brunk, Justin Smith and Trayce Jackson-Davis. And they did outrebound the Nittany Lions 44-38. And, well, everything was cool, right?
Well ... um ...
That's if you don't mention the 64-49 tattooing they got, on top of the splendid gag-aroo at home against Maryland -- six-point lead with 68 seconds to play; outscored 7-0 the rest of the way. That's if you don't mention that they still die of thirst outside the paint, even if periodically they give the faithful hope by managing to hit the ocean from the beach once in awhile.
Not Wednesday night, though. Nope, nuh-uh, no sir, negatory.
Here, for instance, were the numbers for starting guards Robert Phinisee and Al Durham: Five points, 1-of-13 shooting, four turnovers. Combined.
Here were the numbers for the guards who also played, Armaan Franklin and Devonte Green: Five points, 2-of-13 shooting, three turnovers. Combined.
That's 3-of-26 from the floor from Indiana's backcourt, if you're keeping score at home. You could make 3-of-26 just blindly heaving the ball at the rim. The Aflac duck could make more than 3-of-26, and he doesn't even have hands.
And I know what you're asking now: "Where does Archie Miller find these guys who can't shoot?"
That is an excellent question. And I don't have an answer. I don't know if Archie has a special Guys Who Can't Shoot app on his phone, or if he just happens to catch them on the one night in high school when they can find their hindparts with search planes. Or if they can find their hindparts with search planes, but magically forget how as soon as they slip on that jersey with "Indiana" on the front.
And, yes, I know, the Big Ten isn't high school. But no defense in the history of man has ever been good enough to make a team shoot 3-of-26 without getting a big assist from the shooters. So, there's that.
There's also this: Apparently Indiana's identity is not just to live down low with their bigs, but to be inconsistent. In which case the Hoosiers appear to be no different than anyone else in college basketball this winter.
A ray of sunshine at last.
Friday, January 31, 2020
Wednesday, January 29, 2020
Your Old Man Shouting moment for today
The Blob keeps a chamber warm in its heart for geezers who shake their bony fists and shout at clouds, because more and more the Blob is one of them. So here's to Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski this morning, that tottery old buzzard.
He's 72 now, and last night he acted his age in that den of iniquity known as Cameron Indoor Arena. Suddenly he started shouting at the Cameron Crazies, telling all those trust-fund Colbys and Wheaton IVs to "Shut up!" That's because, geezer-like, he thought he heard them chanting something they weren't.
What they were chanting was "Jeff Capel, sit with us," which was directed at the Pittsburgh coach (and former Dukie player and assistant), and was actually sort of sweet when you consider the verbal abuse the Cameron Crazies usually shower on opponents.
Alas, tottery old Coach K apparently heard something else. So he started yelling "Shut up!" and "He is one of us!" and shaking his bony fist at his own student section, at least symbolically.
Later, a bit sheepishly, he admitted he, uh, might not have heard right.
"I don't know if I made a mistake on that," he said.
And also: "We got a different look at what the hell was going on. I thought it was something personal ... I apologize to the students for that."
Of course, then he went on to grump, in splendid old-coot fashion: "You shouldn't say that ... in the middle of the first half and an ACC game, this isn't a cutesy little thing. Let's think of a different cheer -- like 'Defense!'"
Well, sure. In his day, dammit, students chanted stuff like "Defense!" and "RE-bound that bas-ket-ball!" and "Two bits, four bits, six bits, a dollar! All for Coach K, stand up and holler!" They didn't chant cutesy little things, not in the middle of a game, for heaven's sake, even if that's what the Crazies are famous for doing.
Consarn those dang kids, anyway. Next thing you know, they'll be traipsing right across his lawn.
He's 72 now, and last night he acted his age in that den of iniquity known as Cameron Indoor Arena. Suddenly he started shouting at the Cameron Crazies, telling all those trust-fund Colbys and Wheaton IVs to "Shut up!" That's because, geezer-like, he thought he heard them chanting something they weren't.
What they were chanting was "Jeff Capel, sit with us," which was directed at the Pittsburgh coach (and former Dukie player and assistant), and was actually sort of sweet when you consider the verbal abuse the Cameron Crazies usually shower on opponents.
Alas, tottery old Coach K apparently heard something else. So he started yelling "Shut up!" and "He is one of us!" and shaking his bony fist at his own student section, at least symbolically.
Later, a bit sheepishly, he admitted he, uh, might not have heard right.
"I don't know if I made a mistake on that," he said.
And also: "We got a different look at what the hell was going on. I thought it was something personal ... I apologize to the students for that."
Of course, then he went on to grump, in splendid old-coot fashion: "You shouldn't say that ... in the middle of the first half and an ACC game, this isn't a cutesy little thing. Let's think of a different cheer -- like 'Defense!'"
Well, sure. In his day, dammit, students chanted stuff like "Defense!" and "RE-bound that bas-ket-ball!" and "Two bits, four bits, six bits, a dollar! All for Coach K, stand up and holler!" They didn't chant cutesy little things, not in the middle of a game, for heaven's sake, even if that's what the Crazies are famous for doing.
Consarn those dang kids, anyway. Next thing you know, they'll be traipsing right across his lawn.
Oh, Super
So I see here on my magic wizard phone that eBay has MANY, MANY BOXES available of Mahomes Magic Crunch cereal (a HyVee product!), and so get on there and START BIDDING NOW.
I mean, who needs wings and pizza at your Super Bowl party when you can serve heaping bowls of glorified sugar frosted flakes?
Thus we have officially entered the Echo Chamber O' Hype that is Super Bowl Week, which always begins with that tasteful display of gang "journalism" (pronounced, "Hey, Bill Belichick, put on this red plastic tricorn hat!") known as Super Bowl Media Day. Or, as it's known now, Super Bowl Opening Night.
Super Bowl Opening Night was a much more somber affair than usual last night, because the sudden death of Kobe Bryant cast a shadow over everything. Everyone asked Kobe questions; everyone answered with stories about having a Kobe poster on his bedroom wall growing up, or drawing inspiration from the Mamba Mentality that was Kobe's warrior code, or becoming Lakers fans because of Kobe. It was a remarkable display of just how much influence Kobe wielded on an entire generation, influence that transcended a particular sport or even sports in general.
So there was that. And there will be five more days of learning everything there is to know about every significant player involved in Super LIV, and endless jabbering about whether or not the 49ers fearsome defense can slow down the incandescent Patrick Mahomes, and finally the Detailed Breakdown Of Who Will Win And Why.
Me, I prefer non-detailed breakdowns. Which is why, sitting next to my laptop right now, looking exceptionally fierce considering they're only an inch tall and mostly head, are a tiny Patrick Mahomes figurine and a tiny Nick Bosa figurine.
They were given to me by a kindly bartender at Casa's, who was in turn given them by a couple of kindly diners. Knowing her regulars, she made me promise not to put them in my mouth. I upped the ante by also promising not to stick them up my nose or in my ear.
(Although who wouldn't want to see that visit to the emergency room? "Hey, doc, come 'ere! We need a Patrick Mahomes extraction, stat!")
Anyway, my Detailed Breakdown, at least five days out from the Big Roman Numeral, is this: When I opened the package Bosa and Mahomes were riding in, Bosa fell out first.
So, there ya go. Looks like it's the 49ers.
And you thought you could get analysis like that just anywhere.
I mean, who needs wings and pizza at your Super Bowl party when you can serve heaping bowls of glorified sugar frosted flakes?
Thus we have officially entered the Echo Chamber O' Hype that is Super Bowl Week, which always begins with that tasteful display of gang "journalism" (pronounced, "Hey, Bill Belichick, put on this red plastic tricorn hat!") known as Super Bowl Media Day. Or, as it's known now, Super Bowl Opening Night.
Super Bowl Opening Night was a much more somber affair than usual last night, because the sudden death of Kobe Bryant cast a shadow over everything. Everyone asked Kobe questions; everyone answered with stories about having a Kobe poster on his bedroom wall growing up, or drawing inspiration from the Mamba Mentality that was Kobe's warrior code, or becoming Lakers fans because of Kobe. It was a remarkable display of just how much influence Kobe wielded on an entire generation, influence that transcended a particular sport or even sports in general.
So there was that. And there will be five more days of learning everything there is to know about every significant player involved in Super LIV, and endless jabbering about whether or not the 49ers fearsome defense can slow down the incandescent Patrick Mahomes, and finally the Detailed Breakdown Of Who Will Win And Why.
Me, I prefer non-detailed breakdowns. Which is why, sitting next to my laptop right now, looking exceptionally fierce considering they're only an inch tall and mostly head, are a tiny Patrick Mahomes figurine and a tiny Nick Bosa figurine.
They were given to me by a kindly bartender at Casa's, who was in turn given them by a couple of kindly diners. Knowing her regulars, she made me promise not to put them in my mouth. I upped the ante by also promising not to stick them up my nose or in my ear.
(Although who wouldn't want to see that visit to the emergency room? "Hey, doc, come 'ere! We need a Patrick Mahomes extraction, stat!")
Anyway, my Detailed Breakdown, at least five days out from the Big Roman Numeral, is this: When I opened the package Bosa and Mahomes were riding in, Bosa fell out first.
So, there ya go. Looks like it's the 49ers.
And you thought you could get analysis like that just anywhere.
Legacies
Tears, so many tears, spreading out and out in concentric circles Sunday afternoon. Spreading out and out across the country and around the world from that fogbound hillside north of Los Angeles, where the Sikorsky S-76 helicopter augured in at 184 mph and nine souls departed this earth in an eyeblink.
Tears in L.A., of course, where Kobe Bryant was an icon among icons in a city of icons.
Tears across the width and breadth of the NBA, where every team playing Sunday honored the Mamba by standing and letting the 24-second clock run dry on their first possessions -- 24 seconds, of course, for Kobe's No. 24, which hangs in the Staples Center rafters along with his No. 8, the two numbers he wore for the Lakers.
Tears in Bloomington, In., where Indiana gagged away a win over Maryland and Archie Miller's eyes were red for another reason entirely. Tears from Dwyane Wade and Doc Rivers and so many, many others.
Tears on a basketball floor in Corvallis, Ore., where the best player in women's college buckets, Oregon's Sabrina Ionescu, wept openly because like so many others she had lost a friend and a mentor.
Ionescu went on to lead No. 4 Oregon to a road win against No. 7 Oregon State, on any other day a cause for celebration because it was the first time Oregon had beaten its in-state rival at Corvallis since Ionescu arrived four years ago. But not on this day.
On this day, the day Kobe Bryant died, Sabrina Ionescu wept and dedicated the rest of her season to the Mamba. On this day, Oregon coach Kelly Graves explained that Bryant and his family had been close to Ionescu, that he and his basketball-playing daughter Gianna had been to see her play at USC last year and struck up a friendship, and that Kobe had communicated with her several times a week.
Gianna was on the helicopter with her father yesterday, and so she is gone now, too. Also John Altobelli, a legend in his own right as the baseball coach at Orange Coast College, and his wife and their daughter. Also four others.
So much loss. So much achievement and promise and bond of family erased like that, poof, in one freighted instant.
Today will be all about Kobe's impact on the game, on his 20 years with the Lakers and his standing as the fourth-leading scorer in NBA history -- LeBron James passed him for third on the list just 16 hours before Kobe died -- and as the man who holds almost every significant career mark the Lakers have. It will be about his impact on the current generation of players, on LeBron and Joel Embiid and Trae Young and everyone who tweeted yesterday that they grew up wanting to be Kobe Bryant.
That is how it should be.
And yet the image you keep coming back to is all those young women in Corvallis standing together at center court with their arms around each other, weeping. And of a father and his daughter heading off to the daughter's travel basketball game.
There is irony to this, fate or coincidence coming back around on a man and giving him exactly the path he needed. Because the thing that will not come up often today, the part of Kobe Bryant's resume we're not supposed to mention, is what happened in a hotel room in Colorado.
Where a young Kobe Bryant, once upon a time now 17 years gone, was accused of rape.
Where it went away because the alleged victim decided not to pursue the complaint.
Where Kobe Bryant, presumably, learned something, because no such allegations ever darkened his life again.
He went on and time went on and one day he woke up as the father of four daughters, and maybe that's a cosmic balancing of the scales and maybe it isn't. What I do know is being the father of four daughters surely must give a man certain sensibilities he might not otherwise have. Which is how Kobe Bryant wound up an icon not just to young men but to young women, too.
Tears, so many tears, spreading out and out in concentric circles.
Tears in L.A. Tears across the width and breadth of the NBA. Tears from grown men everywhere.
And from young women in Corvallis, Ore., too. Oh, yes.
Tears in L.A., of course, where Kobe Bryant was an icon among icons in a city of icons.
Tears across the width and breadth of the NBA, where every team playing Sunday honored the Mamba by standing and letting the 24-second clock run dry on their first possessions -- 24 seconds, of course, for Kobe's No. 24, which hangs in the Staples Center rafters along with his No. 8, the two numbers he wore for the Lakers.
Tears in Bloomington, In., where Indiana gagged away a win over Maryland and Archie Miller's eyes were red for another reason entirely. Tears from Dwyane Wade and Doc Rivers and so many, many others.
Tears on a basketball floor in Corvallis, Ore., where the best player in women's college buckets, Oregon's Sabrina Ionescu, wept openly because like so many others she had lost a friend and a mentor.
Ionescu went on to lead No. 4 Oregon to a road win against No. 7 Oregon State, on any other day a cause for celebration because it was the first time Oregon had beaten its in-state rival at Corvallis since Ionescu arrived four years ago. But not on this day.
On this day, the day Kobe Bryant died, Sabrina Ionescu wept and dedicated the rest of her season to the Mamba. On this day, Oregon coach Kelly Graves explained that Bryant and his family had been close to Ionescu, that he and his basketball-playing daughter Gianna had been to see her play at USC last year and struck up a friendship, and that Kobe had communicated with her several times a week.
Gianna was on the helicopter with her father yesterday, and so she is gone now, too. Also John Altobelli, a legend in his own right as the baseball coach at Orange Coast College, and his wife and their daughter. Also four others.
So much loss. So much achievement and promise and bond of family erased like that, poof, in one freighted instant.
Today will be all about Kobe's impact on the game, on his 20 years with the Lakers and his standing as the fourth-leading scorer in NBA history -- LeBron James passed him for third on the list just 16 hours before Kobe died -- and as the man who holds almost every significant career mark the Lakers have. It will be about his impact on the current generation of players, on LeBron and Joel Embiid and Trae Young and everyone who tweeted yesterday that they grew up wanting to be Kobe Bryant.
That is how it should be.
And yet the image you keep coming back to is all those young women in Corvallis standing together at center court with their arms around each other, weeping. And of a father and his daughter heading off to the daughter's travel basketball game.
There is irony to this, fate or coincidence coming back around on a man and giving him exactly the path he needed. Because the thing that will not come up often today, the part of Kobe Bryant's resume we're not supposed to mention, is what happened in a hotel room in Colorado.
Where a young Kobe Bryant, once upon a time now 17 years gone, was accused of rape.
Where it went away because the alleged victim decided not to pursue the complaint.
Where Kobe Bryant, presumably, learned something, because no such allegations ever darkened his life again.
He went on and time went on and one day he woke up as the father of four daughters, and maybe that's a cosmic balancing of the scales and maybe it isn't. What I do know is being the father of four daughters surely must give a man certain sensibilities he might not otherwise have. Which is how Kobe Bryant wound up an icon not just to young men but to young women, too.
Tears, so many tears, spreading out and out in concentric circles.
Tears in L.A. Tears across the width and breadth of the NBA. Tears from grown men everywhere.
And from young women in Corvallis, Ore., too. Oh, yes.
Sunday, January 26, 2020
Hand-me-down turn-down
Raise a glass this morning to the Los Angeles Dodgers, who proved this week that if there's no honor among thieves, there is among their victims. They don't want your stinkin' charity, dammit. And you know what you can do with your pity.
Since it got out a couple of weeks ago that the Houston Astros are a bunch of cheating louts who conned their way to the 2017 World Series title, lots of folks have wondered if Major League Baseball's response was enough. To be sure, commissioner Rob Manfred landed on the Astros like a grand piano, meting out punishments that were unprecedented. But shouldn't he have gone further?
Shouldn't he have stripped the Astros of their title? And given it to the Dodgers?
That was the Los Angeles' City Council's idea, and as with most intersections of politicians and sports, it's as hare-brained as hare-brained gets. The council, see, decided to pass a resolution maintaining that the Dodgers should be awarded the title. It's not worth the paper it's written on, of course, but its political suck-up quotient is high. How better to get pissed-off Angelenos to vote for you next election cycle?
To their credit, the Dodgers themselves ain't playin'.
"We don't want a trophy," third baseman Justin Turner scoffed. "We don't want a fake banner hanging in our stadium. We didn't earn that. We didn't catch that final out to win a championship. We don't want that."
He is, of course, absolutely right. They didn't earn it, even if the Astros didn't either. None of them are happy about the latter, but there's a difference between winning and not losing.
You could say the Dodgers did the latter. But you can't say they did the former.
And so any 2017 World Series banner going up in Chavez Ravine would be constructed from whole cloth. It would be as empty as the wrapper of a Dodger Dog, post-consumption. And, in its own way, it would be as ludicrous as hanging a few other banners:
New Orleans Saints 2019 Wild-Card Champs Because Everyone Knows Kyle Rudolph Pushed Off On That Touchdown In Overtime.
Or:
Indiana Hoosiers 1992 NCAA Champions Because Everyone Knows The Officials Robbed Them In The Second Half Of The National Semifinal Against Those Cheating B******* From Duke.
Or:
Dirt Clod Middle School 2017 City Champs Because That Johnny Kid On The Other Team Traveled, Everybody Saw It, So That Basket Shouldn't Have Counted.
Good for the Dodgers for not playing along with such lunacy, and for saying they'd turn down the hand-me-down trophy. Because only winning is winning.
Since it got out a couple of weeks ago that the Houston Astros are a bunch of cheating louts who conned their way to the 2017 World Series title, lots of folks have wondered if Major League Baseball's response was enough. To be sure, commissioner Rob Manfred landed on the Astros like a grand piano, meting out punishments that were unprecedented. But shouldn't he have gone further?
Shouldn't he have stripped the Astros of their title? And given it to the Dodgers?
That was the Los Angeles' City Council's idea, and as with most intersections of politicians and sports, it's as hare-brained as hare-brained gets. The council, see, decided to pass a resolution maintaining that the Dodgers should be awarded the title. It's not worth the paper it's written on, of course, but its political suck-up quotient is high. How better to get pissed-off Angelenos to vote for you next election cycle?
To their credit, the Dodgers themselves ain't playin'.
"We don't want a trophy," third baseman Justin Turner scoffed. "We don't want a fake banner hanging in our stadium. We didn't earn that. We didn't catch that final out to win a championship. We don't want that."
He is, of course, absolutely right. They didn't earn it, even if the Astros didn't either. None of them are happy about the latter, but there's a difference between winning and not losing.
You could say the Dodgers did the latter. But you can't say they did the former.
And so any 2017 World Series banner going up in Chavez Ravine would be constructed from whole cloth. It would be as empty as the wrapper of a Dodger Dog, post-consumption. And, in its own way, it would be as ludicrous as hanging a few other banners:
New Orleans Saints 2019 Wild-Card Champs Because Everyone Knows Kyle Rudolph Pushed Off On That Touchdown In Overtime.
Or:
Indiana Hoosiers 1992 NCAA Champions Because Everyone Knows The Officials Robbed Them In The Second Half Of The National Semifinal Against Those Cheating B******* From Duke.
Or:
Dirt Clod Middle School 2017 City Champs Because That Johnny Kid On The Other Team Traveled, Everybody Saw It, So That Basket Shouldn't Have Counted.
Good for the Dodgers for not playing along with such lunacy, and for saying they'd turn down the hand-me-down trophy. Because only winning is winning.
Bleeding 'em dry
Say this about your venture capitalists, your daddy's trust-fund moguls, your hedge-fund destroyers of worlds: None of 'em ever met a last dime they didn't want to squeeze until all the juice was out of it.
Which brings us, naturally, to the Nash-unal FOOT-ball League, whose standing motto seems to be "We can always get more players. That's why we have a draft every year."
And so of course the owners want to add a 17th game to an already over-long season, because, well, MORE MONEY. Their brutal, chew-up-the-resources season already stretches from August until past Christmas, but, hey, look how much we're paying these guys. Gotta get some return on the investment, right?
Anyone who's ever plunged foolishly into the quagmire that is fantasy football knows what's wrong with that, because every week your quarterback goes on the shelf or your running back or two wide receivers or a tight end. The game eats its own like few others, which will happen when it involves ridiculously large human beings running into each other at the speed of light. The carnage is so bad these days more and more players are used up by the time they're 30, or decide they're tired of being used up and quit by that time.
Not that this matters a lick to the rich guys. They can always get more players, remember?
Problem is, the current ones have run their cost-benefit models, and a 17th game doesn't compute for them. And the owners will play hell at the bargaining table convincing them otherwise.
"When I talk to the guys, I don't think many people want to do it," defensive end and Jacksonville player rep Calais Campbell told ESPN this week. "Really, you talk to guys and I don't think anybody wants to do it. It's going to be very, very tough."
Translation: The owners better be prepared to give something up, and it better be a meaningful something. Eliminate the last preseason game, perhaps. Hell, eliminate all the preseason games, which are nothing but a vestige of that gone time when players used them to play themselves into shape.
That hasn't been the case for a long time, not in an era when there is no meaningful offseason. You've got your minicamps now and your OTAs and your supplemental mini-camps, and then training camp. No one spends his offseason anymore selling insurance or beer distributorships and spending the rest of his time eating anything that moves.
Rod Woodson, for instance, once told me he took all of two weeks off at the end of the season, then jumped right back into his workout program. Of course, Woodson was famous during his playing days for being the fittest man in the NFL. But the motivation is universal: Gotta protect the assets.
Odd that this would come up this week, considering it's the week of the Pro Bowl, the most glaring example of superfluous risk in the entire NFL empire. Campbell's comments originated in Orlando, where the game is being played today for reasons known only to the Shield. It's not like anyone cares, or that the players, no dummies, won't approach it as if it's the Tag You're It Bowl, the Don't Hurt Me Bowl or the Hey, Watch The Knee Bowl.
Of course, people will still watch. Which means the Shield will make money. Which means the most glaring example of superfluous risk will keep happening every year.
And the 17th game?
It's superfluous, too. Not that that matters.
Which brings us, naturally, to the Nash-unal FOOT-ball League, whose standing motto seems to be "We can always get more players. That's why we have a draft every year."
And so of course the owners want to add a 17th game to an already over-long season, because, well, MORE MONEY. Their brutal, chew-up-the-resources season already stretches from August until past Christmas, but, hey, look how much we're paying these guys. Gotta get some return on the investment, right?
Anyone who's ever plunged foolishly into the quagmire that is fantasy football knows what's wrong with that, because every week your quarterback goes on the shelf or your running back or two wide receivers or a tight end. The game eats its own like few others, which will happen when it involves ridiculously large human beings running into each other at the speed of light. The carnage is so bad these days more and more players are used up by the time they're 30, or decide they're tired of being used up and quit by that time.
Not that this matters a lick to the rich guys. They can always get more players, remember?
Problem is, the current ones have run their cost-benefit models, and a 17th game doesn't compute for them. And the owners will play hell at the bargaining table convincing them otherwise.
"When I talk to the guys, I don't think many people want to do it," defensive end and Jacksonville player rep Calais Campbell told ESPN this week. "Really, you talk to guys and I don't think anybody wants to do it. It's going to be very, very tough."
Translation: The owners better be prepared to give something up, and it better be a meaningful something. Eliminate the last preseason game, perhaps. Hell, eliminate all the preseason games, which are nothing but a vestige of that gone time when players used them to play themselves into shape.
That hasn't been the case for a long time, not in an era when there is no meaningful offseason. You've got your minicamps now and your OTAs and your supplemental mini-camps, and then training camp. No one spends his offseason anymore selling insurance or beer distributorships and spending the rest of his time eating anything that moves.
Rod Woodson, for instance, once told me he took all of two weeks off at the end of the season, then jumped right back into his workout program. Of course, Woodson was famous during his playing days for being the fittest man in the NFL. But the motivation is universal: Gotta protect the assets.
Odd that this would come up this week, considering it's the week of the Pro Bowl, the most glaring example of superfluous risk in the entire NFL empire. Campbell's comments originated in Orlando, where the game is being played today for reasons known only to the Shield. It's not like anyone cares, or that the players, no dummies, won't approach it as if it's the Tag You're It Bowl, the Don't Hurt Me Bowl or the Hey, Watch The Knee Bowl.
Of course, people will still watch. Which means the Shield will make money. Which means the most glaring example of superfluous risk will keep happening every year.
And the 17th game?
It's superfluous, too. Not that that matters.
Friday, January 24, 2020
Your mascot moment for today
In which a mascot is being accused of breaking the Mascot Code, which states mascots are duty-bound not to scare little kids or invoke fear and loathing, but only to prompt reactions such as "What the hell is that thing supposed to be, anyway?"
The miscreant in this case, we're sad to say, is one of the nation's newest rockstar mascots: Gritty, the Philadelphia Flyers mascot. It came out this week that Gritty is being investigated for allegedly punching a 13-year-old boy during a November photoshoot.
Here's Gritty's mugshot. Frankly I don't how anyone could believe he's guilty, even if he is wielding a weapon.
One hopes this is all a big misunderstanding, and Gritty was merely demonstrating to the kid how Dave Schultz used to throw hands back in the Broad Street Bullies days. Nonetheless, police are investigating, which raises the delicious possibility that they'll put Gritty in the box and bring in detectives Benson and Stabler to sweat him.
I'm guessing they'll play hell getting Gritty to talk, though. Another codicil of the Mascot Code, don't you know.
The miscreant in this case, we're sad to say, is one of the nation's newest rockstar mascots: Gritty, the Philadelphia Flyers mascot. It came out this week that Gritty is being investigated for allegedly punching a 13-year-old boy during a November photoshoot.
Here's Gritty's mugshot. Frankly I don't how anyone could believe he's guilty, even if he is wielding a weapon.
One hopes this is all a big misunderstanding, and Gritty was merely demonstrating to the kid how Dave Schultz used to throw hands back in the Broad Street Bullies days. Nonetheless, police are investigating, which raises the delicious possibility that they'll put Gritty in the box and bring in detectives Benson and Stabler to sweat him.
I'm guessing they'll play hell getting Gritty to talk, though. Another codicil of the Mascot Code, don't you know.
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