Tuesday Morning Quarterback: Trump’s War Against the NFL

First let’s bear in mind that Trump was the man who drove the USFL into the ditch, costing fans an alternative to the NFL football monopoly and investors hundreds of millions—about a billion of other people’s money lost, converted to current dollars. Trump is a failure as a manager of a professional sports league, and now lashes out at others who are able to do what he could not. One need not hold an advanced degree to diagnose this as a mental health concern.

Trump’s invective against football players who won’t stand to salute the American flag, and against NBA players who criticize him, seemed—and here’s another un-credentialed psychological opinion—pure narcissism. His goal is to focus all attention on himself, and he succeeds with Twitter-storm after Twitter-storm. Through the weekend, sports fans, the commentariat, and star athletes talked Trump, Trump, Trump. So from his standpoint, the president’s deranged observations were a total success. Anything that focuses attention on Trump is, to Trump, a success. The public good? The national interest? Fuggedaboutit.

Trump’s demand that spectators boycott NFL games in which players won’t stand for the National Anthem is unlikely to be realized. Some fans are steamed, but a national football boycott is not happening. Demagogues always reach a juncture at which their own followers begin to ignore their rantings. Here is the first sign of this transition regarding Trump.

Your columnist always removes his hat and stands facing the flag, in the parade-rest posture, during the National Anthem—even though there are many things about the United States I don’t like, and though citizens should be aware of the shame of slavery and segregation in the American story. Showing respect to the flag is both good manners, and an important civic ceremony. But if someone burns the American flag in protest, I’m okay with that—and the Founders would have been okay with that, too.

The Founders dreamed of a nation in which all were free to express political dissent, including by public rejection of national symbolism. A person who chooses to show respect to the flag can also admire those who choose not to, so long as the choice is a matter of conscience. Sports figures who are angry about what the flag represents could stand quietly during pregame events, then express their political views on their own time—after all, they accept the fruits of the system they say they detest. But anthem protests are American through and through: the Founders, at least, would get that.

As Adam Serwer noted, “It’s telling that resentment toward wealth in sports is always directed at black athletes and not the vastly wealthier franchise owners.” NFL owners embody the sort of entitlement—inherited money, public subsidies, special deals not available to average people—that Trump represents, while NFL and NBA stars are self-made men. The Founders would root for the players, not the owners. And Trump even managed to turn the NFL’s ownership class against him.

The New York Times paraphrases the president as suggesting last week that “football is declining because it is not as violent as it once was;” a year ago, Trump was calling the NFL “crummy.” If football is crummy, that’s just a matter of taste—but if violence is lacking, that is a disturbing notion: not only because there is a significant distinction between playing hard (good) and using violence (bad, for all society), but because any increase in football violence would mainly harm black males.

The past held barbaric spectacles in which it was common for the athletes of the day to be maimed or die—the naumachia of ancient Rome, the various “ballgame” events of the Mesoamerican period. A century ago there were far fewer football games each week than today, but severe injuries were far more common. That sports have grown steadily less violent is an indicator of social progress, especially since the less-violent NFL sets the right example for high school, which is where the most football players are, and where almost no money is.

Some people like to watch prizefighting, whose purpose is harm; in football, harm occurs by accident. I’ve never understood men in tuxedos and women in evening gowns paying premium prices to watch—to enjoy—men inflicting agony on other men. The decline in popularity of prizefighting seems to me social progress, and so does the decision of the football world to ban deliberate helmet-to-helmet hits. There may be some football fans who liked the knockout helmet-to-helmet hit, but that cohort cannot be more than one person in 10, if that. All football fans like hard, clean hits; almost all don’t like dirty, vicious hits. And the President of the United States wants more dirty, vicious hits.

‘Invisible Man’ author Ralph Ellison. (Public Domain)

Since about 75 percent of NFL players are African American, making the sport more violent would mean more violence against black bodies. It is deeply disgusting that the man sitting in the Oval Office favors something that would cause black males to be hurt for the amusement of audiences. Readers know the chilling Battle Royal sequence of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, in which white businessmen, during the Jim Crow era, offer black men prizes to beat each other half to death, and the black men accept of their own free will. Ellison’s point is that this was in some ways even more shocking than slavery, since a slave has no choice, while the Battle Royal participants signed on voluntarily.

Parallels between the imaginary Battle Royal and Trump wanting more violence in football are too obvious to merit further mention. It’s yet another place in which the president encourages the lowest aspects of our national character, rather than trying to raise the level of public spirit.

There’s an emerging theory, from Ta-Nehisi Coates and others, that Trump’s election was fundamentally about hatred of blacks resurfacing in American life. I think Trump’s election was fundamentally about something different, and must ask your forbearance until April, when my book The Arrow of History lays out a different view. But if what Trump wanted to accomplish last weekend was to convince America that he is animated by racism, he couldn’t have done a better job.

In other NFL news, the general bummer feeling about quality of play plaguing the initial two weeks of the season is no more. Houston at New England was among the highest-quality football games ever played. Giants at Eagles and Falcons at Lions went down to the final snap, and Broncos at Bills was well-played and interesting throughout.

Coaches say that winning fixes everything: For the NFL, staging a few fantastic games fixes everything. And note that Houston at New England and Jersey/A at Philadelphia, both memorable athletic contests from kickoff to final whistle, offered lots of hard hitting but no vicious violence.

Only three weeks have been played in the young NFL season, but already there are no more pairings of undefeated teams possible. Only Kansas City and Atlanta are undefeated, and having met in last year’s regular season, they do not meet in the regular season this year. There could be a pairing of undefeateds if the Falcons and Chiefs face off in the Super Bowl, both at 18-0. But since there’s only been one 18-0 club in NFL annals, the odds that two clubs will do this in the same season are long.

Stats of the Week #1. Jacksonville has won by 22 points, then lost by 21 points, then won by 37 points.

Stats of the Week #2. Undrafted quarterback Case Keenum is 3-0 versus first overall draft choice quarterback Jameis Winston.

Stats of the Week #3. Since the start of the 2016 season, the Texans are 0-3 versus the Patriots, and 12-6 versus all other teams.

Stats of the Week #4. At halftime of the London game, the Ravens had negative-four yards passing.

Stats of the Week #5. There have been 18 NFL London contests so far, and none paired teams that both have winning records. The upcoming NFL London game on Sunday, New Orleans versus Miami, will make it 19 of 19 games not pairing teams that both have winning records.

Stats of the Week #6. The Falcons are on a 9-1 stretch.

Stats of the Week #7. The Browns have not won a road game since October 2015.

Stats of the Week #8. Bill Belichick is 9-0 versus rookie quarterbacks at Foxboro.

Stats of the Week #9. Tom Brady and Matt Ryan, the Super Bowl quarterbacks, both committed turnovers returned for touchdowns. Of course, their teams both won anyway. (Ed: Brady’s TO was ruled a fumble but appeared ambiguous, as his arm was in a throwing motion when the ball popped loose and floated into the hands of Texans linebacker Jadeveon Clowney.)

Stats of the Week #10. Last week, Jake Elliott of the Eagles missed a 30-yard field goal attempt. This week, he hit from 61 yards as time expired.

Sweet Play of the Week. Denver leading 16-13 in the third quarter, the Bills reached first-and-goal on the Broncos 6. Denver had been choking up on LeSean McCoy—on a day he was held to 1.5 yards per carry—so a defensive coordinator might expect a Tyrod Taylor rollout run. Indeed, that’s what Buffalo showed. Two tight ends lined up right; everyone including the tight ends blocked left as the Bills faked a toss left; Taylor sprinted right, and it looked like the action was a naked bootleg right; tight end Charles Clay didn’t just pretend-block but blocked hard at the center of the Denver defense; then Clay pivoted and shot to the end zone, where Taylor found him uncovered for the touchdown that was the game’s decisive snap. Two well-executed run fakes (toss left, bootleg right) before the play goes up the middle as a pass. Sweet.

Sour Play of the Week. Leading 30-28 just before the two minute warning, Houston faced fourth-and-inches on the New England 18, the hosts having only one timeout. Moo Cows coach Bill O’Brien did the “safe” thing and sent in the placekicker. (You can’t dance with the champ, you’ve got to knock him down!) Gaining just one yard would have put the contest on ice. Needless to say, taking the “safe” route led to mean defeat. A TMQ rule is that when the opponent is relieved to see your kicker trot in, then you ought to be going for it. Belichick was relieved when O’Brien sent the kicker in.

Sour Player of the Week. What in tarnation was Houston cornerback Kareem Jackson thinking in the closing moments of Texans-Flying Elvii? New England was on its side of the field, trailing by five points with a minute remaining. The Patriots had to go deep. For three consecutive snaps, Jackson simply let his man run free—and deep. It’s inconceivable the defensive call was for the corners to “release” their men deep. On each of those three consecutive snaps, Jackson’s man was open deep. The first time his man dropped the pass; the second time, he converted third-and-18; the third time, he scored the winning touchdown. Just to prove it was no fluke, Jackson then surrendered the deuce reception that put New England ahead by three with 23 ticks left.

Sour runner-up: Green Bay facing 3rd-and-long in overtime, Cincinnati corner Adam Jones simply watched a Packers receiver blow past him, not even attempting to cover, on the 73-yard gainer that set up the winning field goal.

Sweet ‘n’ Sour Game of the Week. The third loss in 366 days to New England was sour for Houston—but it was sweet that Deshaun Watson came of age as an NFL quarterback in just his second start, and on the field of the defending champions to boot. Facing 2nd-and-22 with New England ahead 28-20, Watson evaded two pass rushers and threw a strike to convert first down; then, threw a touchdown pass on the possession. Though the Texans are 1-2, their performance augurs well—I’ll call and raise on my prediction that Houston will reach the Super Bowl.

New York Times Corrections on Fast-Forward. During the 2015 football season, when this column appeared in the New York Times, by the strangest and most amazing coincidence, the running item New York Times Corrections on Fast-Forward did not appear. Then during the 2016 season, TMQ was on hiatus as I completed my next book. Now the item reboots, with some backlog. The Times:

• “Misstated the number of days it takes the planet Mercury to orbit the sun.” This error occurred in an obituary.

• Gave the wrong name for a composer of kazoo music.

• Confused the Balkans and the Baltics. Armies have been making this mistake for centuries.

• Clarified that Italians are not Hispanic. The context was a male model “best known for his Calvin Klein underwear ads.”

• Said Iran exports two billion barrels a day of oil. Million is correct; two billion barrels is more than Japan consumes in a year.

• Became confused about which party controls the Senate. A month later, was still confused about this.

• Became confused about who’s on first.

• Noted very-short-half-life White House official Anthony Scaramucci has five children, not two as the paper had said. “Dad, what the hell—you have three other kids? What the hell!?”Failed to give proper credit for statistics about hot girls in pornography.Took months to correct a series of minor mistakes because “an email from a reader pointing out these errors went astray.” When emails go astray, they are out to all hours with the wrong crowd. The Times newsroom must be a bad influence on emails, since they often go astray there.

• Noted a rudimentary error regarding use of numbers—in an article by a Nobel Prize-winning economist. Bonus! The subject of the article was denunciation of others for not understanding numbers.

• For the second time in a three-year span, fell for a fake name from a kid. The prior time the paper fell for a half-dozen fake names.

• “Misidentified the source of puddles in the gallery on a recent rainy night.”

• Invented the “nanomillimeter,” which would be one trillionth of a meter, or 0.000000000039th of an inch. Nanometer, one billionth of a meter, was intended.

• Confused hundreds of millions of dollars with hundreds of thousands of dollars. The context? A financial column.

• Mistook highbrow publisher Farrar, Straus & Giroux for the Russian secret police.

• Said turf grass planted in America covers an area that works out to a little more than the entire land surface of the Earth.

• “Referred incorrectly to the Montenegro leader shoved by Mr. Trump.”

• Had a copyediting error in an article about layoffs of copyeditors.

• Quoted as “Dr.” someone who has no medical degree or PhD. Subject of the article? Failure to verify academic credentials.

• Admitted to a fictional sentence. Subject of the article? Denunciation of fake news.

• For the 11th consecutive year mistook a woman for a man and mistook a man for woman.

• A chart regarding “gender identity at the University of Vermont renders four gender-neutral pronouns incorrectly. The pronouns are zirs and zirself, not zis and zieself (for his/hers and himself/herself); sir, not sie (for him/her); and eirself, not emself (for himself/herself).” Even gender confusion is confused!

• Admitted more confusion about gender confusion.

• Not only couldn’t tell the boys from the girls, couldn’t tell the girls becoming boys from the boys becoming girls.

• “Misstated the mathematical formula in the plaintiff’s lawsuit to determine whether more than 10 percent of a garbage can’s contents should have been placed in another bin.”

• Got mixed up about the difference between the number 561 and the number 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

• Was off by $435 billion, which is more than the entire U.S. GDP in 1955.

• Corrected that “it is the unnamed speaker of the rhyme (not the sheep, of course) who says, “Baa, baa, black sheep, have you any wool?” This was a correction of a crossword puzzle.

• Inadvertently said a rice-paper artist begins her work by setting the paper on fire.

• Admitted a reading-comprehension error—in an article about the SAT.

• Mistook the Dead Sea for the Red Sea. “Yo Moses, shouldn’t we stop and ask directions?”

• Bill Clinton had somebody call the New York Times demanding a correction that depended on what the meaning of “drive” is.

• “A review about Notes on the Death of Culture, by Mario Vargas Llosa, in discussing Vargas Llosa’s relationship with the journalist and model Isabel Preysler, stated that Vargas Llosa announced the relationship on a Twitter account and that he sold related photographs and an ‘exclusive’ story to Hola, a popular Spanish magazine, for a large amount of money. After the review was published, Vargas Llosa contacted the Times to say that none of these assertions were true.”

• Offered an epic 368-word explanation of coverage that “may have left readers with a confused picture.” The explanation was, itself, incomprehensible.

• Mistook a metropolitan of the Eastern Orthodox church with Pope Francis. In earlier centuries, the editor making this mistake would have been sent to a torture chamber.

• Declared that an arts festival called the Venice Biennale is held annually.

• Inadvertently invented the science of “positive emission transverse tomography”

• For the fifth time since TMQ has done this item, couldn’t tell Iran from Iraq. The CIA makes this mistake, too.

• In this garble, the original misuse of million works out to a typical car emitting more than two tons carbon dioxide per mile.

• Couldn’t tell New York from New Jersey.

“You know, coach, they call us the ‘New York’ Giants, anyway. Maybe they really should call us ‘Jersey/A.’” (Photo by Elsa/Getty Images)

• Said Donald Trump was married to Ivanka.

• Fixed an error regarding “an inflatable chicken that was displayed near the White House.”

• Corrected an error from the year 1630.

• Inflated numbers regarding a balloonist.

• “Described the fictional planet Origae-6 incorrectly” and also admitted error about the fictional planet Helliconia. This means the paper managed to be wrong about places that don’t even exist.

• Sort-of more-or-less retracted an article regarding “the German Christmas pickle.”

• Clarified that a deceased woman’s father was “a lawyer, not a junk dealer.”

• And, finally, “Misstated, in some editions, the name of a strip club in Manhattan. It is the Diamond Club, not Diamond’s Gentleman’s Club.”

Great Moments in Spin. It’s good that the NFL arranged to have players and coaches link arms before kickoffs Sunday to show defiance to Donald Trump. But the league’s attempt to sell the linked arms led to public-relations absurdity.

Repeatedly through Sunday, NFL Network announcers declared that players were engaged in a “show of unity” or “strong unity in response to Trump;” TEAMS SHOWCASING UNITY TODAY appeared on the NFL Network chryon. As this happened, the videos cut to scenes of the Saints, Ravens, Browns, Giants, Patriots, and Dolphins refusing to stand for the National Anthem, while the Steelers, Titans, and Seahawks refused to come out of the locker room.

So there was “unity” on disgust with Trump, but also unity on not displaying respect for the American flag. As James Fallows noted for the Atlantic, only Trump could convert athletics into such a worst-case turn of events.

Football Bad News Roundup. So far this season two football players have died as the result of game or practice injuries, including Robert Grays of Midwestern State. This is heartbreaking. But swimming, shoveling snow, crossing the street—many routine activities can cause a death that is heartbreaking to family and friends yet lacks any larger warning.

My 2015 book The Game’s Not Over examined mortality statistics from football. Here is the conclusion, based on the most recent statistics that were available in 2015 (today’s are about the same):

Ken Belson of the New York Times reported that former New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez, who committed a murder then killed himself in prison, had late-stage CTE, though he was only 27 years of age at death.

Most people who commit murder, or who kill themselves, have never been football players, so whether there is a direct link between Hernandez’s CTE and his crime and suicide is hardly self-evident, especially since CTE is a newly discovered condition that is not well understood. That CTE can happen because of football is established at this point; whether head impacts in youth or in the pro are the primary risk factor, and whether CTE also happens to people who have never participated in contact sports, is unknown. There’s money at stake in the Hernandez case, about $6 million owed to someone—his estate, and if so, who is his estate?—by the Patriots, plus the possibility of a large settlement from the NFL or its brain-trauma fund. The money at stake gives lawyers for those claiming to be the estate, and for the league, reason to advance various agendas.

The Hernandez situation is sui generis: Persons at the top level of sports or entertainment don’t commit murder, and then suicide, with any statistically significant frequency, thank God. What does happen with statistically significant frequency regarding football and brain trauma will be the subject of the entire October 10 edition of Tuesday Morning Quarterback.

Buck-Buck-Brawckkkkkkk. Winless Cincinnati was leading 21-17 when the Bengals faced 4th-and-2 on the Packers 28 in the fourth quarter. Victories don’t come in the mail, go win the game! But Marvin Lewis did the “safe” thing, and defeat followed.

Buck-Buck Bonus: when the game went to overtime, a five minute rest-and-recoup period was held. As soon as play resumed, Cincinnati called time out.

Adventures in Officiating. Officials seemed correct to allow New England’s last-minute Brandin Cooks touchdown that defeated the Texans. Officials also seemed correct to overturn the last-play Detroit touchdown that appeared to defeat Atlanta. But the 10-second runoff the zebras ordered, which ended the contest, seemed unfair to Detroit, since had officials properly ruled that Detroit’s Golden Tate was down at the one, there would have been a few seconds remaining for the Lions to attempt a frantic final snap.

The Giants’ Sterling Shepard touchdown disallowed by the zebras just before halftime at Philadelphia—Jersey/A ended up scoreless on the possession, and ultimately lost by three points—sure looked good to me. Shepard took three full strides in the end zone holding the ball tightly, took three full strides out-of-bounds, then fell, and the ball bobbled. That was a touchdown! The is-it-or-isn’t-it a catch rule still needs work.

Buffalo leading Denver 23-16 midway through the fourth quarter, a Bills 3rd-down pass fell incomplete. Von Miller, who had cleanly hit Tyrod Taylor as the pass was released, bent over to help him up, then pulled his hand away and made a gesture that might have been a taunt. Officials flagged Miller for unsportsmanlike conduct. Instead of a 4th-and-6 punt, Buffalo had first down; on the possession, the Bills would score the field goal that iced the contest. Miller should have helped Taylor up, but his gesture didn’t look like anything that deserved a major penalty. Officials called this game very tight, including a questionable major penalty against Buffalo that turned an expected Denver punt into a first down. Still, any Broncos enthusiast has a complaint—and let’s hope Miller has a lesson about showboating with the game on the line.

“Dahlink, what about hitch and go?” (YouTube)

In One Episode of Rocky and Bullwinkle, There’s a Football Recruiting Scandal at Wossamotta U. Recent months have seen the passing of two storied, if little-known, figures from the Golden Age of Silliness (as pertains to celluloid, not politics): voice actress June Foray and stunt man Haruo Nakajima.

Foray voiced Rocket J. Squirrel and Natasha Fatale on Rocky & Bullwinkle, Nell Fenwick on Dudley Do-Right, and other memorable cartoon characters. Born in 1917, she attended the wonderfully named Classical High School in Providence, Rhode Island, and did some radio, eventually becoming an accomplished voice actress. The Netflix series BoJack Horseman is praised as cutting-edge for mixing cartoon animals and people making political jokes; it’s well to remember that The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle was mixing animals and people making political jokes in 1959. Foray’s Natasha Fatale—her signature line, “Dahlink, vat about moose and squirrel?”—would fit right in with the Trump-Russia investigations.

Nakajima, a stuntman in samurai B-movies, wore the initial Godzilla suit to stomp on models of Tokyo when the idea of a man in a monster suit seemed ridiculous, not the beginning of one of film’s top franchises. Yuri Kageyama of Associated Press reports Nakajima studied the movements of elephants and bears, to make Godzilla’s stride believable.

In the 1954 original, the tormented Japanese scientist who invents the bomb capable of killing Godzilla—after tanks and fighter planes fail, of course—decides that to prevent the governments of the world from seizing his invention for war, he will take the bomb, and all plans, to the monster himself, and die along with Godzilla in the explosion. Not only is this sly commentary on the Manhattan Project scientists who did not keep their invention from government, the movie’s final scene shows the monster accepting the scientist’s decision, and reaching out to him as a fellow lost soul. The world could never understand either of them! A very Japanese plotline.

Donald Trump Projects Negativity on All Known Wavelengths. Space constraints prohibit listing all the things Donald Trump does not understand, but with the president going out of his way to insult football and basketball stars, it’s worth noting that he is insulting the very persons that millions of Americans dream about being. Athletes may have too much stature: better we should admire inventors, artists, crusaders for liberty and justice. But there’s no doubt large numbers of Americans, adults as well as kids, project themselves onto sports stars. Trump’s default position is the sneer. When he sneers at sports, he’s sneering at that which Americans daydream about.

In addition to daydreaming about hitting the home run that wins the World Series, Americans daydream about the money professional athletes earn. An indicator of this is fans and sports reporters rooting for stars to get huge contracts. Your columnist is in Colorado Springs at the moment. The sports section of Sunday’s Colorado Springs Gazette—the local 7-11 had the printed version, though no longer carries the New York Times, which one could purchase in 7-Elevenss in Colorado a few years ago—was a full-page graphic of Broncos quarterback Trevor Siemian with the headline, PAY THE MAN.

The article argued that even though Siemian is a third-year player who has started just 17 games, the Broncos should offer him a megabucks long-term extension. Americans fantasize about hitting the lotto; we project this on sports stars, whom we want to see extremely well-paid, even if small raises for everyone would be better than windfalls for a few. When Trump denounces Stephen Curry, the president not only disrupts the Walter Mitty daydream of hitting the long three that wins the NBA title, he disrupts the daydream of being paid like Curry. It’s remarkable how much the current president does not get about sports.

Dateline “San Francisco.” Those lovely aerial shots, on CBS and on NFL Network, showing the Golden Gate Bridge during the Thursday night broadcast of the LA/A-Squared Sevens contest gave the impression the game was being played in San Francisco. The location was an hour’s drive away, in a different county. For NFL purposes, “San Francisco” might as well be a sound stage in New Jersey. San Francisco may have lost its NFL team, but still gets to pretend to have one, without showering the franchise with public subsidies. A best-case outcome!

Last week’s TMQ podcast included yours truly and TWS EIC Steve Hayes discussing the declining quality of offensive line play in the NFL: “Modern offensive linemen are plenty strong in the muscle sense, but often seem not to know what they are supposed to be doing.” Hayes and I attributed this to reduced practice hours—offensive lines must engage in coordinated protection schemes, while defensive lines are just trying to disrupt. The former take more practice to learn than the latter. The day after our podcast, Bill Belichick said pretty much the same.

Now it’s two days later, the Thursday night game in “San Francisco.” Midway through the second quarter, Santa Clara has 2nd-and-12; the Rams rush three; six men are available to block three, yet quarterback Brian Hoyer is sacked pretty much as the snap arrives at his hands. On the play, LA/A defensive end Morgan Fox lined up across 49ers tackle Joe Staley and guard Laken Tomlinson. At the snap, Staley turned outward, while Tomlinson turned inward to double-team the nose tackle. The result was that no one even tried to block Fox, who had an unobstructed path to the quarterback. Offensive linemen sometimes turn the wrong way, but this seemed an especially egregious example of poor offensive line play—and Staley and Tomlinson both were first-round draft choices.

On Sunday, Chiefs at LA/B, the decisive snap was a sack of Philip Rivers on third down with three minutes remaining. The entire Chargers offensive line seemed confused about who was supposed to block whom, leaving Justin Houston, Kansas City’s best front-seven guy, a path to the LA/B quarterback—another egregious example.

The 500 Club. Reader Robert Sullivan of Wichita notes that versus West Virginia, Kansas gained 564 yards of offense, and lost.

The 700 Club. Quarterback Alex Huston of Glendale High in Springfield, Missouri, threw for a hard-to-believe national record 824 yards in a 69-58 victory over Parkview High. Reader Troy Jennings of Clever, Missouri, notes that Parkview passed the velvet rope into the super-exclusive Tuesday Morning Quarterback 700 Club—the Vikings gained 705 yards on offense, and lost.

Reader Animadversion. Last week’s TMQ proposed that government officials want bodyguards and private jets in order to make themselves seem more important, and gave examples from both major parties. Many readers, including Marlene Goodman of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, noted this story from late last week reporting that new EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has a full-time security detail of 18 people, all taxpayer-funded. Are deep greens really threatening Pruitt with physical harm? This seems hard to believe. But Pruitt wants you to think he’s putting his life in danger by signing memos, because then he’s more important—and this can justify the bodyguards that allow him to speed through red lights, cut to the heads of lines and enjoy the “make way, make way, royalty coming through” treatment.

Obscure College Score. Carnegie Mellon 37, Thomas More 17. The Tartans of Carnegie Mellon—arguably America’s most interesting college, as its strengths are engineering and theater, quite the combo, while its location is Pittsburgh, and who would have guessed Pittsburgh would become hip?—have posted consecutive winning seasons and are 4-0 so far in this campaign, despite the super-seriousness of the school’s academics. That makes Thomas More the obscure college in the pairing. Located in Crestview Hills, Kentucky, Thomas More College offers a spooky Preview Day.

Single Worst Play of the Season—So Far. You’ve seen the highlight: Running for a seemingly uncontested length-of-the-field touchdown, Chicago’s Marcus Cooper came to a halt at about the Pittsburgh 5 and started acting like he’d already scored. A Steeler caught up and punched the ball loose. Cooper is now fated to see himself over and over again, in highlight reels and on social media, botching this play. Minnesota’s Stefon Diggs started waving the ball in the air at about the Buccaneers 15—don’t do that unless you want to become the next Single Worst Play!

Here is the official scorer’s rendition of the Chicago Pittsburgh craziness:

1-10-CHI 18(:06) (Field Goal formation) C.Boswell 35 yard field goal is BLOCKED (S.McManis), Center-K.Canaday, Holder-J.Berry, RECOVERED by CHI-M.Cooper at CHI 29. M.Cooper to PIT 1 for 70 yards (V.McDonald). FUMBLES (V.McDonald), ball out of bounds in End Zone, Touchback. PENALTY on PIT-J.Berry, Illegal Bat, 10 yards, enforced at PIT 20. Play Challenged by Replay Official and REVERSED. (Field Goal formation) C.Boswell 35 yard field goal is BLOCKED (S.McManis), Center-K.Canaday, Holder-J.Berry, RECOVERED by CHI-M.Cooper at CHI 26. M.Cooper to PIT 1 for 73 yards (V.McDonald). FUMBLES (V.McDonald), ball out of bounds in End Zone, Touchback. PENALTY on PIT-J.Berry, Illegal Bat, 0 yards, enforced at PIT 1.

Next Week. Donald Trump bitterly denounces Albert Schweitzer, Madame Curie, and Elie Wiesel.