Weekend Notes

A very busy weekend, at least when it came to me sitting on my ass in front of the TV.

High School Football

A week after being shut out by the best team in Indiana, Cathedral was barely better against one of the best teams from Ohio. The Irish managed just two field goals in a 24–6 loss to St. Xavier. Ohio rankings are weird; I’ve seen St. X ranked anywhere from #2 to #7 in the largest class. Either way, they are very good. We went out to dinner so it was 17–0 when I was first able to listen. CHS ran the ball nicely, amassing over 200 collective yards on the ground, but once sacks were factored in, managed less than 20 yards passing. Just a killer.

The schedule doesn’t get much easier. This week is arch rival, 4A #1 Chatard, who has stomped a couple good teams. CHS usually has a clear talent advantage over their little brothers. Not sure that’s the case this year. For the first time since I’ve been following high school football closely, Chatard is ranked well ahead of CHS in the state-wide, all-class, computer rankings, #5 to #34. Lose that game and it’s pretty easy to see a 2–7 regular season ahead of CHS. A long way from when they went 37–4 over three seasons just a couple years back.

If you’ve been to a high school game this year, you know there is a new emphasis on unsportsmanlike behavior. It seems like if there’s any yapping at all, a flag gets thrown. In the three games I’ve followed I’ll give the refs credit: they’ve generally been smart enough to throw flags on both teams so the penalties offset. But I’m 100% sure that at some point this year a close game will be decided when someone pops off, the refs hear it, and his team in penalized 15 yards for it.

Refs have enough to worry about, and get consistently wrong, in the high school game. Adding this point of attention was dumb.

Return Of Kansas vs. Missouri

I did not have definitive expectations for the first Kansas-Missouri football game in 14 years. Based on the interim in which the schools did not play, my Jayhawks should get blown out in their first trip to Columbia in nearly 20 years. But KU is far better, in every sense, than they were during most of that stretch, and I had no idea how good this year’s Mizzou team was. A line of MU minus a touchdown, give or take a half point, felt right. I think the last one I saw was –5.5, so I wasn’t the only one unsure of how this would play out.

It turned out to be kind of a fun game. The Tigers pounced early, which had me thinking worst case scenarios and how soon I would flip the TV to the US Open and confine the game to my laptop. Then KU scored 21 straight points to take an unlikely lead into the second quarter. A KU fumble, with a ridiculous uncalled penalty, turned into a safety and field goal for the Tigers and KU’s momentum was gone. The game was tied by halftime and it felt like it was just a matter of time before the rout by the home team began.

Only the second half was more settled, and back-and-forth. KU took the lead. Then MU reclaimed it. KU, magically, jumped ahead again midway through the fourth quarter. Could the defense get a stop and pull the upset?

Nope. Mizzou scored four minutes later.

Finally, the inevitable kick in the nads: Emmanuel Henderson Jr. dropping a perfectly thrown third-down pass that would have moved the chains. Crushing. KU still might have lost, but to have their final chance get snuffed out because their best receiver couldn’t hang on to a ball that hit him in the hands was especially cruel. I would have gone for it – KU’s defense was gassed by this point – but Lance Leipold punted. MU seemed most interested in just running out the clock. I would have been fine with a four-point loss. However, the KU defenders lost their mind on a simple running play and allowed a 65-yard touchdown, which made the final score look more comfortable than the first 58 minutes were for Tiger fans.

Despite the dropped passes, the missed blocks, the at times horrific tackling, the confusing refusal to change defensive looks on 3rd/4th down, and a total lack of a running game, this was a pretty good result for the Jayhawks. They had the lead on the road against a bitter rival. They scored 31 points (with a boost from a defensive score) against a defense that is probably as good up front as any they will face this season. They rallied twice, and were doing their best to do it a third time before Henderson’s drop. This loss is going to look really good later in the year, since somehow Missouri got the easiest possible schedule available for an SEC team.[1]

Now a week off before Big 12 play begins. Hopefully the coaching staff can both recharge the team after this loss and clean up some of the errors. There are enough chances for wins on the schedule where not making a bowl game will be very disappointing.

Colts

Colts??? Colts!!! I take back everything I said and admit I was wrong. Starting Daniel Jones was the right move. The offensive line has been rebuilt. The defense was fast and fierce. The Colts scored on their first three possessions Sunday. The last time the franchise did that, they won the Super Bowl. So, clearly, this is a championship team.

Yeah, yeah, Miami really might be trash. Their offense was dreadful, their defense on its heels all day. The Colts took advantage of their trashiness, though, something they’ve not done often the past few years. It was the first opening week win in 12 years, so that counts for something, too. Five of their next six opponents won this weekend – small sample size alert – so we’ll see quickly how real Sunday’s performance was.

Rest Of The NFL

You’ll look dumb real quick if you make too many broad assumptions based on week one. Luckily as I only saw little bits of the other games, I’m not going out on any limbs just yet.

I did stay up to watch Baltimore-Buffalo last night. In the second half, when it looked like the Ravens were firmly in control, I muted it and tried to read my current book. I was having trouble focusing and noticed the Bills were driving, down 15, so figured I’d give the game a few more minutes and then head to bed. Great choice!

There are 16 weeks left in the regular season but we might have already seen the game of the year. A wild, wild, wild ass final four minutes, with the Bills scoring three times to win at the final gun. Baltimore was awesome for the first 50–55 minutes. Derrick Henry looked unstoppable. Their defense was stout. Lamar Jackson was flinging the ball around. And then Josh Allen went into super-duper hero mode and the Bills pulled a bunch of magic to steal the game.

A fun game, and perhaps a massive one, if it is the difference maker that has a January rematch played in Buffalo rather than Baltimore.

US Open

We caught much of the second set of Saturday’s women’s final as it lined up with halftime and the first drive of the second half of the KU game. I was not surprised that Aryna Sabalenka won. She’s the best player in the game, her only fault being she gets in her own head too often. She really seemed to be locked in the second week of the Open. She did have some outbursts, but in her final two matches you could see her making a conscious effort to control her emotions and to channel her anger. A couple times Saturday she even gave wry smiles when she made errors. If she can continue to harness those emotional demons, the rest of the tennis world is in trouble.

Funny how we kind of missed the biggest story of the tournament. First it was Venus Williams’ return. Then it was Naomi Osaka’s comeback. Then it was Amanda Anisimova’s elevation. All along the real story was Sabalenka maybe solving the biggest flaw in her game. I guess we’ll find out next year if this change was real and permanent.

I did not watch Sunday’s men’s final. Partially because I was watching football. Partially because we were prepping to have friends over for dinner. And partially out of protest of the USTA’s ridiculous request that media covering the event not publicize any reactions related to the visit of a certain tyrant/toddler. We get a little closer to becoming Hungary, China, or North Korea every day and roughly half of our country thinks it’s just fantastic. I know not tuning our TVs to the match didn’t make a difference in ABC/ESPN’s ratings, or register in any way in YouTube’s algorithm. Most people were, like me, watching football anyway. But it felt like the right thing to do.

It was a rough end to two good weeks of tennis. I jotted down some other notes from the tournament. For the one or two of you who might care, look for another post focused on them in the next day or so.

Fever

Somehow things got worse for the Fever last week. Thursday, Chloe Bibby, one of the many players signed to replace an injured starter who had flashed great shooting in some of her minutes, was ruled out for the rest of the season because of a knee injury. She was the fourth Fever player to get knocked out for the season.

A few hours later, just as the Thursday night NFL game was starting, Caitlin Clark announced she would not return this year. Make it five players.

Sheesh, what a nightmare season. Despite all that the team clinched a playoff berth over the weekend. They’ll sneak in as one of the final seeds and likely get dispatched quickly because of their makeshift lineup.

The whole CC thing has been weird, for sure. Our local newspaper columnist, who is kind of wacky, decided to dive into the weirdness. It was one of the most disjointed, wild columns I can recall him producing. He got into why the true nature of her injuries was kept so quiet. He whined about how when she suffered her most recent setback, in July, the team said she was “day-to-day,” but here we are in September and she hasn’t played in six weeks before finally being ruled out for the rest of the season. He got into her change in availability for the All Star Game and 3-point shooting contest. I think he was basically saying the Fever had been lying about the true nature of her injury to keep selling tickets without being brave enough to actually say that clearly.

Then he went on a tangent about how she had never been injured in her life before this season, connecting that to her efforts to bulk up in the off season to protect her against the physical defense she faced. Again, I think he was basically calling her/the Fever out for being dumb in training without straight-up saying that. The most asinine part of this angle was that he said she faced physical defense in college, too, and it never caused her to breakdown. As if being guarded by 18–21 year olds when you are the best player at that level is anything like being guarded by physically mature women in their late 20s and early 30s. He also made some other comments that were so vague, yet ominous, that I wonder if he’s accusing CC of intentionally sitting out the season because she was fed up with how she was officiated, mad at the Fever training staff, mentally worn out, or some combination. But, again, he never comes right out and says any of this stuff so the reader is left to wonder what the hell he meant.

For those of you not in Indy, this was the same columnist who was suspended and banned from covering the Fever Clark’s rookie year after he asked her a bunch of weird/cringey questions at a press conference early in the year.

There are legit questions in his piece. Maybe she did put too much stress on her body and needs to adjust her training methods going forward. Maybe the Fever did hide the true extent of her injuries. But his arguments were framed so poorly that they get lost and you spend more time shaking your head that his editors didn’t tell him to go back and try another draft.

Anyway, a lost second season of the Caitlin Clark era. We’ll see if she can get her body functioning properly again next year and then what the Fever look like with a new CBA expected to change how the entire league looks.

I keep waiting for some old cranks – and this state is full of them – or right-wing radio hosts to suggest Clark’s disaster season is the result of the WNBA being “woke,” or because it’s filled with militant, Black, lesbians who hate a “perfect white girl” like CC. Or because there’s fluoride in the water. Or because she’s been vaccinated. You know, stuff that used to be whispered about by the true nutjobs but has become a normal part of our daily discourse.