Rams and Bengals and Roman numerals and stuff

 So it's the Los Angeles Rams vs. the dragon-slaying Cincinnati Bengals in Super Bowl Some Roman Numeral Or Other, but you already knew that. The Blob will therefore dispense with the Emergence of Joe Burrow T-boning the Ascendance of Patrick Mahomes, or Matthew Stafford breaking the surly bonds of Lion-dom, or what the hell the Chiefs were thinking down there on the goal line at the end of the first half.

(Although seriously, what was Andy Reid doing, channeling his inner Pete Carroll? First-and-goal at the 1, nine seconds left and timeouts to burn, and you don't just line up and run the football? If Edwards-Helaire or McKinnon don't get in, you call timeout and kick the field goal. Easy-peasy, but nooooo.)

(And who didn't know in their bones that was going to come back to haunt the Chiefs? You knew it would. You just knew it.)

Anyway ... on to some other stuff:

*  No one with a serious grasp of faith believes God sits up there in his heaven on Sunday afternoons wearing a Roger Staubach throwback and flinging celestial popcorn at his big-screen when the Cowboys screw the pooch AGAIN. But something cosmic was surely going on yesterday.

Consider:

1. On Saturday, Johnny Fever from "WKRP In Cincinnati" (Howard Hesseman) passed away.

2. On Sunday, the Bengals shocked America by taking down Mahomes and the Chiefs.

I mean, come on. You don't think Johnny was pulling some strings somewhere?.

* Not to get provincial on y'all, but Rams vs. Bengals means a Fort Wayne showdown of sorts.

On one side, there'll be Rams wide receiver Ben Skowronek (Homestead High School). On the other, Bengals safety Jesse Bates III (Snider). 

Homestead vs. Snider, on the big stage. Live from Spuller Stadium. Get there early before the traffic backs up at Cook and Coldwater.

* For the second year in a row, the Super Bowl will have a home team. While America watches from Sofa Stadium, the Rams will play in Sofi  Stadium, their home digs. Which of course means only one thing to the Bengals, who have won their last two playoff games in the other guy's house.

They've got the Rams right where they want them.

* The last time the Bengals played in the Super Bowl, Ronald Reagan was still president, Donald Trump was still just a sleazy businessman, and no one had yet heard of Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, iphones or "YouTube sensation Your Name Here."

Also, Joe Burrow was minus-eight-years-old.

The Blob refuses to reveal how old it was, on account of the answer might tend to incriminate me.

* But I was 33.

I'm 66 now.

Which means I've lived half my life without seeing the Bengals in the Super Bowl.

I don't know how I've survived. 

Luck be a Brady

 So Tom Brady is apparently calling it quits (maybe ... or not ... yes, definitely), and all the Blob has to say is, why so soon? Three more seasons, he hits the 25-year mark and is eligible for the senior discount at Ponderosa.

OK, so I already posted that joke on another platform. And it's not that good, anyway.

In any case, if this truly is it for No. 12, he leaves as the undisputed No. 1 of all time, although the soreheads are floating a different narrative. Some of them are saying he's not the GOAT, but the LOAT --, as in, "Luckiest of All Time."

I've got news for those folks.

He's both.

This is because greatness and luck have the same father, always have and always will. The great ones make their own luck, but often it arrives with no assembly required. The great ones are great because they know what to do with it when it does.

And so, yes, Tom Brady lucked out in the Tuck Rule game, when the zebras turned a fumble into an incomplete pass. And he was lucky Pete Carroll had sawdust for brains and dialed up a pass on the 1-yard line in Super Bowl XLIX instead of just giving it to his human battering ram, Marshawn Lynch. And he was lucky the Atlanta Falcons decided "Naw, we ain't gonna run no clock" when they were up 28-3 with a quarter and a sliver to play in Supe LI.

Thing is, it wasn't the Falcons who drove the Patriots to 31 points in the last quarter and overtime of LI to steal the game. And it wasn't Pete Carroll who completed 37-of-50 passes for 328 yards and four scores to bring the Patriots back from ten points down in that Super Bowl.

I believe it was Tom Brady who did all that.

And it's not like he's the only lege who knew what to do when luck came calling, either. 

The 49ers' Joe Montana, remember, caught a break when Tim Krumrie -- the key to the Bengals' pass rush -- went down with a gruesome leg injury in the first of Montana's four Super Bowl wins. And is Terry Bradshaw of the Steelers missing one of his four rings if the Cowboys' Benny Barnes doesn't get flagged for pass interference in Super Bowl XIII, or if Jackie Smith doesn't drop a sure six in the same game?

Luck opened the door for both greats. And both made the plays necessary to walk through it.

So is Tom Brady the greatest of all time, with his seven rings and 876 nautical miles  passing and eleventy-hundred touchdown passes? Or was he just lucky?

Yes.

And, yes.

Mad for coordinators

 I don't know if Matt Eberflus is the answer to the Chicago Bears' chronic mediocrity. I don't know if there is an answer, short of strapping the McCaskeys to a rocket and shooting them into space.

What I do know is they sure do love them some coordinators in the NASH-unal FOOT-ball League these days.

"Coordinators, coordinators, coordinators" has become the NFL's "location, location, location" mantra this hiring season, narrowly beating out "retreads, retreads, retreads." The Bears traded one coordinator named Matt for another, plucking Colts defensive coordinator Eberflus to replace former Chiefs offensive coordinator Matt Nagy. Former Bills offensive coordinator Brian Daboll was just sentenced to hard time as the new head coach of the New York Giants.

And in Denver?

The Broncos have anointed former Packers offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett, mainly because they're trying to lure Aaron Rodgers away from Green Bay. Hackett and Rodgers were tight in the Bay, the thinking goes. So why not get them back together in Denver for a buddy film?

As for the retread part ... well, a bunch of failed NFL head coaches have been sitting for interviews elsewhere lately. Dan Quinn, evicted in Atlanta in 2020 and now defensive coordinator in Dallas, interviewed not only with the Bears and Broncos but with the Giants, Vikings and Dolphins. Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels, who crashed and burned as a head coach in Denver, is being pursued by the Raiders. 

Even Bill O'Brien, who wrecked the Houston Texans and is now Nick Saban's offensive coordinator at Alabama, interviewed for the head coaching vacancy in Jacksonville. Wisely, he's reportedly staying put with the better franchise in Tuscaloosa.

And Eberflus?

Lots of folks in Chicago are wondering if he's just Matt Nagy 2,0, or why the Bears would hire a defensive guy when they've got a a promising young quarterback (Justin Fields) who needs nurturing. The jury is obviously way out on on the first; the second doesn't really have a bearing on anything.

Nagy, after all, was an offensive guy, and he had no clue what to do with poor Fields. Conversely, defensive guys in the head coaching chair in Buffalo and San Diego don't seem to have impaired the development of Josh Allen and Justin Herbert, respectively. 

That's because they hired smart guys as offensive coordinators and quarterback coaches, who have more impact on a quarterback's development than the head coach. The head coach, in the NFL, is the CEO. It's the department heads who make the the thing go.

Which is why NFL teams are mad for coordinators, even if department heads don't always make the best CEOs. It's also why, where Fields is concerned, the most important man in Halas Hall will not be Matt Eberflus, but whoever he chooses as his offensive coordinator.

As the knight said to Indiana Jones: Choose wisely.

No Gurlz (Or Non-Players) Allowed

There are hardy perennials in Sportsball World, and one of them bloomed again this week. Bring on the You Never Played The Game brigade, boys and girls!

This time the brigade's point man was rockhead ex-quarterback Jeff Garcia, winging in  from 1955 to shake his bony fist and tell those damn Gurlz they were Not Allowed. That's because ESPN's NFL analyst Mina Kimes, a Gurl, said this week the 49ers have made it this far despite the play of quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo, who has been ... well, less than spectacular.

I mean, what else would you call 303 yards, no touchdowns and two interceptions in two playoff games so far? What else would you call quarterbacking an offense that generated zero, none, zilch-o TDs in the Niners' 13-10 win over the Packers last week?

Stellar?

 Well, Garcia seems to think Kimes had no right to point that out. And why? Because she never played the game. And if you didn't play the game, you've got no right to criticize anyone who does play the game -- especially if you're, you know, a woman.

Several of Kimes's colleagues immediately jumped to her defense, which of course got the Sportsball Neanderthals all butt-hurt. One of them, some dude named Bobby Burrack on some platform called OutKick, accused them of "shielding" her from criticism merely because they defended her, and claimed (as certain men invariably do) that Garcia's rant wasn't sexist.

Which begs a couple of questions, naturally.

First of all, if Kimes was being "shielded" from criticism, how come EVERYONE ON THE FREAKING INTERWHATSIT saw that criticism? And by going after Kimes's defenders, aren't the Bobby Burracks of the webiverse trying to "shield" Garcia from criticism?

That's a horse that pulls two ways, it seems to me.

And the other question?

If Garcia's criticism of Kimes wasn't sexist, why single her out? After all, dozens of male-type people who Never Played The Game have been saying the same things. What, he just went alphabetically or something?

Look. Mina Kimes needs no help from the Blob. She's gotten where she's gotten because she's smart and perceptive and she works her ass off. She's a summa cum laude graduate of Yale who cut her journalistic teeth as an award-winning business reporter before coming ESPN in 2014 from Bloomberg. 

I'd say someone with that resume could figure out a few things about football. But what do I know?

See, I Never Played The Game, either. Or Coached The Game. But you know how I always responded when people pulled that card on me?

"You're right, I didn't play or coach the game. But what I know about it (football, basketball, etc.) I learned from people who did. So if you're saying I don't know anything about it, they must not either."

Which brings us back, sort of, to the "shielding" of Mina Kimes, and who was doing the shielding.

One of the shielders, see, said this a few weeks back when another No Gurlz Allowed type went after Kimes: "Absolute trash. Mina is fantastic at her job and has earned everything she has at ESPN. I can also tell you that I have reached out to Mina a number of times so that she could teach me about the use of analytics in football."

The "shielder" who said that?

Jeff Saturday.

As in, "Six-time Pro Bowl center, four-time All-Pro and Super Bowl XLI winner with the Indianapolis Colts." That Jeff Saturday.

Stranger HOF things

 So Big Papi is in the baseball Hall of Fame, but not for the reason a bunch of folks are claiming. They're saying the writers voted for him because he's a good guy, and Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens are not, and that's why Papi is in and Bonds and Clemens, their final shot now exhausted, have been cast into outer darkness.

The Blob's official position on this is it's ridiculous.

Bad guys get into the Hall of Fame all the time, starting with the first HOFer, a raving sociopath named Ty Cobb. And if it's such a popularity contest among the voting writers, how did Ted Williams and Steve Carlton get in, considering how much they hated the writers?

Silly. Completely silly.

The whole idea, first of all, disses David Ortiz, suggesting as it does it was his winning smile and not his baseball skills that put him over the top. This is also ridiculous, because David Ortiz got in on merit, and would have even if he regularly threw stuff at, say, Dan Shaughnessy -- which he probably should have, given that Shaughnessy is the only Boston writer who didn't vote for Papi, a dick move if ever there was one.

And Bonds and Clemens?

Saying they didn't get in because they, too, warred with the writers is a simpleton's view that obscures the real reason they didn't get in. And the real injustice.

The Blob has long maintained that a Hall of Fame that doesn't include one of the top five players in history, and the best pitcher of his generation, is a Hall of Fame that doesn't accurately reflect the game's history. And if you've ever been to Cooperstown, that's a serious charge, because Cooperstown is a shrine to history.

But of course there's the PED thing, and Clemens' alleged affair with a 15-year-old girl, the latter of which would be far more legitimate grounds to keep out the Rocket. It just won't do to be putting accused statutory rapists in the Hall, no matter how many other miscreants of various stripes already reside there.

But the PED thing?

Well, that's a judgment based on innuendo and rumor, considering neither Bonds nor Clemens ever showed red for PED use. That they juiced is probably undeniable, but, still. Due process ought to mean something in this country, quaint as it seems to have become.

Look. If I'd had a vote, I'd have voted at least for Bonds, on the theory that he was one of the top five players of all time long before he allegedly got frisky with the Cream and the Clear. And in any case, denying Bonds and/or Clemens for doing something Major League Baseball didn't initially give a hang about seems unfair -- and opens up an enormous can of worms.

Because if you're going to deny entry to the juicers from baseball's Steroids Era, what do you do with all the players you've already voted in from the Greenie Era? And by that I mean, all the players in the '60s, '70s and '80s who gobbled amphetamines like M&Ms to help get them through day games after night games.

Don't tell me that wasn't better baseball through chemistry. Please.

In any case, Bonds and Clemens now join Pete Rose as baseball's most famous outcasts. Pete, of course, would be in already if he could just stop lying. I mean, how absurd is it to bar him for gambling when baseball is now all in on gambling?

I mean, MLB now has not one but two Official Sports Betting Partners -- DraftKings and BetMGM. Good grief, there's even a sportsbook setting up shop right outside Wrigley Field.

That sound you hear is an especially bitter cackle from Charlie Hustle.

David Ortiz, on the other hand, is just laughing that big laugh of his. As he should.

Frozen in the past

 You can't legislate the asshat out of people. Enlightenment, and simple human decency, has to come from within, not to get all Dalai Lama on ya or anything.

And so the other day I was watching that viral YouTube clip of Jacob Panetta of the ECHL's  Jacksonville Icemen making a monkey gesture at South Carolina defenseman Jordan Subban, who is black and the brother of the NHL's PK Subban. And it took me right back.

What's it been now? Twenty, 25 years?

Memory fails. But it doesn't fail enough that I don't remember the fans in Indianapolis dangling bananas over the glass to taunt the Fort Wayne Komets' Steve Fletcher all those years ago.

And so it goes, and so it goes. Dismayingly so.

You'd think in 2022 people would be better, the way Star Trek imagined humans would be in its hopeful vision of mankind's future. That seems impossibly quaint now, of course. We're still, some of us, the same bunch of racist s***heads we've always been.

Hence Panetta and his monkey gesture, a timelessly vile meme. If you watch the vid, you can also hear the fans chanting the n-word at Subban -- lineal descendants, as it were, of the fans in Indy with their bananas.

And ain't that charming.

The Icemen, God bless 'em, did what they could. They cut Panetta with blinding speed, just as the San Jose Barracuda of the AHL immediately suspended forward Krystof Hrabik after he made the same monkey gesture at another black player, Boko Imama. It's safe to say neither Panetta nor Hrabik will ever find gainful employment in professional hockey again.

I wish I could also say this means we'll never see the Subbans and Imamas subjected to racism on the ice again. But I can't.

We live in a world, after all, where a member of congress (the sensationally knuckleheaded Lauren Boebert) can openly slur Muslim colleague Ilhan Omar, snidely wisecracking that she wasn't scared of Omar because "she wasn't wearing a backpack" -- a broad hint that Omar, because she's Muslim, is probably a terrorist. Because, you know, they all are.

And Boebart's fellow Republican congress critters? Did they publicly reprimand her?

Oh, hell no. They just shrugged. 

Boebart's constituents, meanwhile, no doubt chuckled, and will now vote for her even more enthusiastically.

I'd like to think otherwise. But I see the Former Guy eagerly stoking white resentment over imagined wrongs, and I see his acolytes following suit just as eagerly, and ...

And, well. This ain't Star Trek's America, boys and girls. Let's just say that.

Now, maybe that's just the natural pessimist coming out in me. But you know what?

Looks to me like it's not just hockey that's frozen in the past.

Earth pays a visit

 Come on, now. Admit it. Part of you saw this coming, right?

Thursday night, the bust-out W against those (bleeping) Purdues, Phinisee With The Phinisher joining Watford For The Win in the pantheon. And those banners at one end of the Hall suddenly looking not so much like artifacts from the days of the Crusades.

Sunday afternoon, and ...

Earth to your Indiana Hoosiers: Welcome back.

And what you take away from Michigan 80, Indiana 62 is the Big Ten is a mean old place that does not allow for either celebratory hangovers or giddy assumptions -- the assumption in this case being that the Hoosiers had revived the program and all would be well from here on out.

Well ... no. It doesn't work that way.

Michigan came in a struggling 8-7 basketball team, but a basketball team with a lot of kids who can play the game off its feet when they're right, and finally they were right Sunday. Hunter Dickinson scored 25 points and dominated the Hoosiers on the low blocks. Stickout freshman Caleb Houstan added 19, including five threes on seven attempts. The Wolverines jumped out to an early 17-7 lead and it never got much better for Indiana.

And Robert Phinisee?

Thursday's hero scored two points on 1-for-5 shooting in 18 minutes.

In that, he was the perfect reflection of the Hoosiers, who perhaps learned yet another lesson to file away for future reference: Heroics don't automatically transfer from one game to the next, and past performance does not guarantee future results, especially in a conference which grinds down everyone in the long January-to-March slog. 

Which is to say, Mike Woodson has taught this team to compete, and even to win. Now comes the part about winning consistently and putting whatever happened last time behind you, whether it's a bust-out W or a bust of an L.

Sunday afternoon, Earth paid a visit.

Wednesday, Penn State does likewise.

The grind goes on. And the education.