2026-01-20 23:54:16
The thing about "unprecedented events" is that they rarely are. Something weird or unusual that you just saw has almost certainly happened before, usually within about four years, and in pretty much the same form. This isn't to say that strange and new-seeming things aren't happening all the time, but of all the things that human beings are good at, doing the same thing over and over is among the top three, even if it's not by design. People, including those rich enough to own NFL teams, are people.
And so it is with the current NFL coaching mudfight, in which ten teams, some of them quite successful, have decided that the person in charge of that success must lose their gig anyway, either because the team owner wants something else out of disappointment, boredom, or personality defect. Sean McDermott's firing two days after the Buffalo Bills performed their annual postseason flameout seemed unusually precipitous, at least until you remembered that John Harbaugh got fired and Mike Tomlin quit despite having better career records and a bejeweled hubcap where their ring finger usually stands during their tenures with Baltimore and Pittsburgh, respectively.
Also, "unusually precipitous" depends on what you think is unusual. The league abruptly losing three coaches with 500 combined victories and a winning percentage of .619 will catch the untrained eye because it dismisses history for the more kneejerky "what pissed me off today?" methodology of the modern owner. And let's be honest (as opposed to the myriad of times when we just baldfaced lied to you), that's what a firing often is. We know what type of person owns NFL teams, by this point. There's no reason to act surprised when that kind of person does the kind of thing that kind of person does.
2026-01-20 23:22:37
Indiana—yes, Indiana—won a national title in college football on Monday night because they made every single play that they needed to. This was true all year, since Indiana—yes, yes, Indiana!—went undefeated through 16 games. But after a pair of blowouts to get them to the championship, the finale put a bright spotlight on their ability of execute in the clutch. Just one dumb slip-up could have cost them their fairytale ending, but everything went right in the big moments, all the way through to the Carson Beck interception that sealed the win. And for Indiana's Heisman-winning quarterback, in probably his final game as a Hoosier, one decisive drive in the fourth quarter created an indelible image that will follow him for the rest of his life.
Just a few seconds into the final period, Indiana got the kickoff after a Miami touchdown made the score 17-14, Hoosiers. They moved the ball pretty quickly into Hurricane territory, but an incompletion on 3rd-and-five just outside field goal range presented a tough choice. After taking a timeout, Curt Cignetti opted to go for it, and Mendoza confidently completed a back-shoulder throw to a falling Charlie Becker on the sideline. That spectacular example of the team's ability to come up big in high-pressure situations was immediately one-upped on the ensuing series. Two runs and an incompletion made it 4th-and-four on the Miami 12. Again, not an easy decision, and again Cignetti called timeout to think about it. But Mendoza has spent the entire year asserting himself as the guy you want to trust in a do-or-die look, and his coach gave him the ball.
Mendoza had an option to pass, depending on the defense's strategy, but Plan A was the QB draw, and after a second of hesitation he went full speed ahead. There was a chance he could have been tripped up at the line of scrimmage by a defender, or his own blocker, but Mendoza cut to his right. He could have been caught by a pursuing defender before getting the first, but he accelerated too fast. He could have been sandwiched by two Canes in the space between a first down and a touchdown, but Mendoza battered them both, staggering but not stopping as he renewed his efforts for the goal line. Even there, he could have met destruction as he dove across, but his stretched-out body absorbed the heavy hit to his back. He didn't give up the football as he fell toward the earth, and his team was six points richer when he landed.
2026-01-20 23:09:45
You are a supporter of the University of Miami, and that taste of fireplace ash that coats your mouth has not yet gone away. You spent what could have been one of the best nights of your life watching your Cinderella get her arse kicked by a better Cinderella, which in and of itself is a odd enough notion, and now the rest of the nation is doing the bragging-rights slide all over your living room floor. Not even the knowledge that your loyalty wager, Hurricanes plus 7.5, came in is of any solace, for it will be the saddest money you'll ever make. You can't even hate the other guy's quarterback because he is not only aggressively virtuous but also one of you. A one-score defeat has never felt more one-sided.
But there is always the blessing of schadenfreude, of finding a way to define Indiana in victory that can only be truly enjoyed if your are of sufficiently small mind and dark heart, and right now you're in no position to turn down any crumb of solace, even if it still has that sooty aftertaste. You woke up today knowing, absolutely knowing, that this is the best moment Indiana football will ever have, and that everything after this is anticlimactic, maybe even disappointing. There is no better feeling in the world than victory without the burden of expectations, even if you were the pregame favorite, and Indiana's climb from Indianahood is so spectacularly improbable and free of historical context that it can never be topped.
Everything they do from this moment will be measured against last night and be found wanting, because you can only be perfect after a century of nothing the one time. The 1969 New York Mets are still the best thing to ever happen to the Mets whether you were alive for it or not, and no, you may not use the "Well, I wasn't born in 1969" argument to make yourself feel better. The 1981 San Francisco 49ers who went from 2-14 to 6-10 to the Super Bowl are still the warmest memory that franchise has ever emitted. The 2016 Leicester City victory in the Premier League as a 5,000-1 shot is light years better than anything before or since. History does not give a salamander's damn about your birthdate, because it was going on before you showed up and will go on after you're stiff, unless of course Satan's emissary manages to irradiate the planet over fucking Greenland and takes us all out. There's only one first time, and get your mind out of the gutter, you creep.
2026-01-20 23:04:07
Indiana vs. Miami for a national championship was the story of two magical runs colliding. The kind of thing that feels engineered by some mysterious "they" in order to sell the value of this sport to its shareholders and potential Saudi buyers. But it really happened, and it ends with the most inexplicable thing in the world: national champion Indiana Hoosiers. Curt Cignetti pulled off his miracle.
With a final score of 27-21, this was a perfect kind of national championship game. A defensive slugfest for the sickos who hate points for about three and a half quarters, and then an offensive onslaught in the fourth where two immovable forces finally started to give. Fernando Mendoza got his ass handed to him by the Miami defensive line and yet he continued to get after it, culminating with an instantly iconic fourth-and-4 QB draw that he ran in for the game's decisive touchdown. There was something in the air, and the stars were bright for Fernando. His final stat line was 186 hard-fought yards on 16-of-27 passes. His only touchdown came on that run. And yes, he got emotional afterwards. He's such a dork but I can't help but love him, and I hate that he's going to be punished with Raiders football soon.
As for Miami, they gave a classic "valiant effort in a loss," and added another heartbreaking entry in their prolific history of national championship losses. Carson Beck, who had been on his best behavior all postseason, ended Miami's season with a bad interception. His birthright and true legacy. But Miami gave Indiana its toughest playoff battle, and, depending on the quarterback they can wrangle, there's no reason to think they can't be right back in the fight next season. Or it could be a one-off; you never know for sure.
2026-01-20 22:50:17
The new year is not yet three weeks old, but it is already rife with signs. Signs and portents. I have examined the flights of birds. I have consulted with the Pythia at Delphi (she says hello). I have completed a correspondence course and trained my newly certified haruspex skills upon the nearest sheep liver. The universe is trying to tell us something.
It began, as it often does, with the children. Out of the fists of babes, as the King James Version nearly says. Last weekend, a local youth hockey league was selected to be the Mites on Ice at an AHL game, having a quick game of shinny during the Hershey Bears' intermission. This is common enough. So too, is people from Pennsylvania engaging in antisocial behaviors. But the combination of the two was something new: a line brawl featuring children.
Those 8-and-unders were really whaling on each other! One kid got so riled up he started pummeling his own teammate. If you've watched any youth hockey before, you know these fisticuffs were staged by the fact that no one jumped in to separate the skirmish schoolboys. But the extent of the conspiracy is still unclear. The owner and president of the youth league put out a statement claiming that no adult took part in planning the fighting, and instead the children interpreted their moment in the spotlight as "show time." Still, the governing body is investigating.
2026-01-20 01:30:56
For a year without many new and exciting head coaching candidates, there sure are a lot of head coaches getting canned. The Buffalo Bills announced Monday morning that they had fired HC Sean McDermott, two days after the team lost to the Denver Broncos in overtime. It'll be the 10th head coaching change within the NFL this season.
Across his nine seasons with the Bills, McDermott had a 98-50 record in the regular season and an 8-8 record in the postseason. In his first campaign, he snapped the franchise's 18-year playoff drought, and Buffalo would continue to play well into January with him and quarterback Josh Allen at the helm. Crucially, despite all this success, he never led the Bills to a Super Bowl appearance. For quite a while, the Kansas City Chiefs would crush the hopes of most other AFC contenders in the playoff bracket, but this year, with Patrick Mahomes injured and his team eliminated from contention, the excuses for the rest of the conference dried up. For another example, see John Harbaugh with the Ravens.
McDermott and Allen's long-term success helps to cover up the fact that, by their recent standards, this was a down year for the Bills. They were a very popular Super Bowl pick before the season started. Instead, they went 12-5 and didn't win the AFC East for the first time since 2019. The Patriots earned two more wins and also advanced further in the playoffs. If McDermott were a newer coach, this season would've been an admirable effort. In a playoff field with no Mahomes, no Joe Burrow, and no Lamar Jackson, it felt like a wasted year of Allen's prime.
