"All the apple-cheeked babies, captured for eternity in Creamsicle onesies three sizes too big, are nearly grown."

That's the first sentence of what?

The incredibly long and abstruse Sports Illustrated article about Peyton Manning, from which I was unable to extract the reasoning for choosing him as Sportsman of the Year (other than, looking at the sidebar of other possibilities, the lack of anyone more compelling).

When the hell did sportswriting turn into that sort of thing? Babies. Onesies. Should a man even use the word "onesies"? Creamsicle? Come on, people.

But if we're going to talk about football, let's talk about the Green Bay Packers humiliating the Dallas Cowboys last night. Wasn't that a highly emotive experience?

"It took me everything not to cry," McCarthy said..... "I was drained. I don't think people realize what professional athletes put into a contest. Just to see the emotion of guys... what we overcame. I don't have the words. My vocabulary's stuck right now. It was incredible."

Mars needs women. Women have the words. We're more verbal. We can say "onesies" and "babies" and "Creamsicle" and more. But I'll just say "the emotion of guys"... I love that. And... go, Packers, and good for you, Peyton Manning.

ExBadger, Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson receives a handmade-from-duct-tape wallet from a young girl who needs a heart transplant.

A sweet story.

Tom Brokaw, David Gregory, and Chris Matthews daintily allude to Obama's masculinity deficit.

On yesterday's "Meet the Press," Tom Brokaw said it was "just inexplicable" that the Obamacare website "suddenly landed the way that it did, in utter chaos." The President should have pressured "Kathy Sebelius and other people" about the "rollout" which was "going to be our big play for the second term."

"Big play" picks up on that football metaphor Obama used 4 times in his November 14th remarks. "We fumbled," he said, though in real football, it's an individual player who fumbles. But here was this "big play," and somebody fumbled. Was it "Kathy"?

The moderator David Gregory, immediately steps up to frame the next question in macho terms: "Who's got the muscle?" The manly (though 50-years-dead) JFK somehow shoulders his way into the conversation. Gregory turns to Chris Matthews and says:

You were making the point to me this week about, you know, where's his Bobby Kennedy? Who's got the muscle? When the president says, and he did say, "The user experience of this website is everything," who had the muscle in the White House to get it done and make sure the president gets what he wants?

Muscle, muscle, muscle. If a right-winger had phrased the question that way, somebody would call this misogyny. These 3 men — Brokaw, Gregory, and Matthews — are hankering for a muscular man who can nail the big play. He depended on a Kathy when he needed a Bobby. And here's what Chrissy Matthews said:

Everybody goes to their battle stations when there's chaos. 

I'll see you your football metaphor, and raise you a military metaphor.

You always go to where you've been arguing before. But I've always been arguing this president doesn't have a chain of command, a very clear line of authority and unique responsibility. I remember Sebelius, who I like of course, most people do like her, she's a public servant. 

She's liked. Kathy's likeable enough. She's a good servant.

But when she was asked, "Who's in charge?" in that committee, under oath, she started to talk about someone, the head of C.M.S., who handles Medicare and Medicaid. Among 30 or 40 other responsibilities, this person had the rollout responsibilities.

And was "this person" male or female? Female. Marilyn Tavenner. Can you say her name without vaulting back in time to your old macho icons Jack and Bobby? They knew what "responsibilities" to give their Marilyn.

Matthews reaches even further back, to an even manlier man:

Look at Japan, the occupation of Japan, it simple: Put one guy in charge, Doug MacArthur. 

Put one guy in charge. Doug. Call him Doug, not Douglas. Not — in the style of "Kathy" — Dougy. He's Doug. And there was a guy! Put one guy in charge.

You put somebody in charge and they're uniquely responsible for its success or failure. Obama doesn't do things that way. He's got floaters, like Valerie Jarett, floating around. 

Floaters. Like Valerie Jarrett. The disrespect! They can't even spell her name right in the transcript. Floaters, like Valerie Jarrett, floating around. Matthews being a good Democrat somehow feels secure that the double meaning of "floaters" won't bring on the accusations of racism that would surely have burst forth if a Republican had talked about Jarrett like that.

He doesn't want to have a real chief of staff, like a Jim Baker.

He's saying — it's hardly subtle — that Jarrett's not a real man. You need a man. A man like Bobby or Doug or Jim.

He doesn't want to give authority to people, and I think it's been a real problem.

So what does this say about Obama, not wanting to bring in real men, who take charge, who make the play, who exert authority? He's not man enough to work alongside real men? He needs to play with the ladies, ladies who don't know their place — who dither and float?

"To African Americans on the Dolphins, [Jonathan] Martin was a 6-foot-5, 312-pound oddball because his life experience was radically different from theirs."

"It’s an old story among African Americans. Too often, instead of celebrating what makes us different and learning from each other, we criticize more educated or affluent African Americans for not 'keeping it real.'"

A black WaPo columnist criticizes black football players for siding with their white teammate and not the black teammate (whose parents both went to Harvard, and whose father is a college dean and mother is a lawyer).

ADDED: The Daily News interviewed the Giants' Lawrence Taylor:

"Martin wouldn't be allowed back in my locker room... I understand Incognito may be a bad guy, but all that stuff should have stayed in the locker room. I don't know if I would let Incognito back in the locker room either, but he would be allowed back in my locker room before the other guy would. They are texting each other like two women. I don't understand that.... If you are that sensitive and weak-minded, then find another profession.... That's the way I feel about it. This is the NFL. This is football. This is not table tennis. This is not golf. I don't know how you bully a 350-pound player."...

"If he's calling you n----, there's a whole bunch of black people in the locker room. Call a team meeting," LT said. "You stand up and ask the coach, ‘I want a few minutes,' and ask the coaches to leave." Then you say, ‘I've got to get this off my chest.' That's when people are going to respect you. At some point, you got to be a man. But it's a whole other league now from when I played. Now you got to take your lawyer with you to work. This should have been handled in-house. (Martin) took the dirty laundry out for everybody to see. Everybody is evaluating and investigating unnecessarily."

Taylor said the n-word was tossed around plenty in the Giants locker room. "I have a lot of friends on the team who used the word n---. You know where they are going with it," he said. "If they used it in a derogatory way, then we got a problem. You don't have a problem with just Martin, you got a problem with all of us. That's how you stop that s---."

Aaron Rodgers broke his collarbone!

Oh, no!

Are you still going to care about football? Or are you ready to move on until next year?

(Last night was brutal!)

Wisconsin boy has been wearing his Aaron Rodgers jersey every day for 3 years.

His father set off this effort at record-breaking by mentioning some boy who'd worn a Brett Favre jersey for 4 years. 

We're told the shirt is hand-washed every other day.

As long as we're talking about things that happened in 1983 — note the previous 2 posts — let me add that Aaron Rodgers was born in 1983. Amazing what some people in their 20s are able to achieve. He'll be 30 on December 2nd.

Quelling an obscene chant by threatening to take away UW football's greatest tradition: the "Jump Around."

A proposal here at UW-Madison:

If the offending chant is heard at Camp Randall Stadium before the fourth quarter, then "Jump Around" won’t be played.

If, predictably, the profanities come to life after "Jump Around" is played, then one of the most iconic celebrations in all of college football goes away for the next game — or games.

A description of the chant and the "Jump Around" here. Reasons why this threat would not work:

1. Authorities telling a big group of free citizens what not to say is pretty much forcing them to say it.

2. You'd be punishing everyone in the stadium — including a lot of alumni who come to town for the games — for the yelling in the student subgroup.

3. You can only threaten not to play "Jump Around" over the stadium loudspeakers, but everyone there knows when the song is supposed to play, and if it didn't play, surely they'd sing it. There would be smart phones everywhere to play the song and boost the singing, making it more boisterous than ever.

4. You ought to be thankful you've got students who do yell. What if they didn't?

ADDED: From the scoreboard, October 2011:

"Hail, Hail to Old Purdue!/All hail to our old gold and black!"

"Hail, Hail to Old Purdue!/Our friendship may she never lack/Ever grateful, ever true...."

On a beautiful fall Saturday morning, here in Madison, Wisconsin, the UW marching band can be heard practicing, which includes practicing the opposing team's fight song, and Meade — who grew up in West Lafayette — provides the lyrics, about gold and black and friendship and gratefulness.

I ask Meade if it's okay for me to blog that and he says, "I think you've already done it," which makes me think I'm being accused of posting first and asking permission later, but he really means I've already blogged — in some past year — about his singing along with the UW marching band playing the Purdue song. I go looking into the archives, and find, first, a post from April 2008, which can't be right, because I didn't meet Meade until January 2009, and the post in question shows New York City, where I was living at the time. The post, called "Morning fog update," shows what was my view of Manhattan. Meade arrives in the comments:

Simon said: "How much are you going to miss this view when your year's up?"

Meade said: "Yes, and how much we will miss these morning fog... updates!"

Ann Althouse said: "Great trees in NYC right now, and I'm about to get a new lens, so look out. Also remember that dead rat on the sidewalk in NY?"

There's a gap in the conversation where a commenter expunged her own comments, but apparently she said something that referred (possibly disparagingly) to things that could be photographed in Madison. And Meade says:

Yes! A marching band playing "Hail Purdue!"

And a dead rodent.

With fantasy fog...

...Where the Wabash spreads its valley,
Filled with joy our voices raise...

I find the old dead rat post — "Things that exploded in Brooklyn Heights recently" — where there's a discussion of how to buy a light bulb in NYC and a couple of commenters who never comment here anymore are advising me about shops in town, and there's Meade:

I hate to risk spoiling a New York hardware store bonding moment for you good folks but back where I come from we have universities, seats of great learning -- where women (and a few unnecessary men) go to become great thinkers. And when they come out, they think deep thoughts -- and with no more brains than you have.... But! They have one thing you might not have! A Google!

I resist my future husband:

Thanks, Meade, but I actually have this other really odd halogen bulb to replace. I don't want to mail order it. I want to show it to some hardware store guy who will give me the right bulb.

Meanwhile, Meade responds to a commenter who said "Yes but do you have swarthy olive skinned counterm[e]n to flirt with attractive visiting professors. Telling her how she would light up when the proper bulb is inserted in her socket. So to speak." With the metaphor in play now, Meade writes:

"Yes but do you have..."

Even better. We have links. Lots of links. Links pointing to pages and pages of swarthy olive-skinned counter[people], if that's what you're into.

Disease-free links. Unambiguously gendered links.

("Unambiguously gendered links" refere to another commenter's wisecrack that some NY hardware store employee is "AC/DC.")

Organic free-range links. Links that would never even THINK of stalking fair-haired Professoras and trying to put their bulbs into sockets in which they don't belong. And links that, frankly, just don't have the nerve to ask, "'ey, YOU! Are you clickin' on me?"

Shy unassuming links just busy doing their jobs and quiet[l]y living their linky lives.

The other commenter says: "Yeah, but [can] you get a link drunk and walk her home and talk your way into her main frame?" And Meade says:

No, but if you give a link a nice slow neck rub, draw the link a sudsy warm bath, and serve up some browned baby-back ribs with a glass of Merlot, she just might let you take a look at what's on her laptop.

So to speak.

And here's a post from August 2009, the month we got married, noticing Meade's comments in a July 2008 thread:

Gee, I'm single now, happily single, and thought I'd just remain that way.

But considering all the benefits, I guess I'd really be a fool not to take a close look if Althouse were to, just out of niceness, propose to pity-marry me.

What could I offer in return? Let's see - I could prune those redbuds, take out the garbage, trap squirrels....

I could fetch her newspaper, scrape snow and ice off her car, shovel the front walk. Draw her bath. Pick her up at the airport. Rinse and dry her wine glasses. Form a circle-of-safety to protect her from Hillary Clinton-type madwomen who randomly come up to innocent people on urban sidewalks and punch them in the back. I make excellent salads, grill superb steaks and vegetables. Play a piano sonata. Pick up dry cleaning. Wait patiently while she shops for shoes....

Fry up some bacon... provide the vocal track when the UW marching band plays the Purdue fight song....

ADDED: Meade reads this post and admires his selection — back in April 2008 — of the Purdue song lyric "Where the Wabash spreads its valley/Filled with joy our voices raise." Subtly erotic, he observes now. Less than a year later, I would meet him in that Wabash valley....

"President Obama’s toughest Syria hurdle: The calendar."

Oh no! Our leader, assailed by the calendar!

Obama will sit Monday for interviews for six TV news programs, which will air within an hour of what had promised to be the week’s most highly anticipated Washington event: the NFL Redskins’ season opener against Philadelphia....

If Monday Night Football pushed Obama’s address to the nation on Syria to Tuesday, odds are low for the president to have the nation’s attention to himself the rest of the week either.

The Sept. 11 anniversary comes Wednesday, the same day the Senate could vote for cloture. Yom Kippur begins Friday night.

Oh! That pesky September 11th anniversary, randomly popping up as a "tough hurdle" on Obama's — what's the metaphor? — race toward war! And this year, it's not just the usual anniversary of the day the terrorists declared war on the United States, it's now the first anniversary of the attack in Benghazi. Oh, my lord! The double 9/11 and football.

Obama won’t even have Tuesday to himself. Hillary Clinton is due to deliver a speech that afternoon in Philadelphia. Voters in New York City will head to the polls for that city’s primary elections. And the new iPhone event scheduled for that day has become an annual media spectacle.

Fate has no mercy on this man, this once-golden savior of the world! The double 9/11, football, and Hillary gives a speech in Philadelphia. A speech! In Philadelphia! (I wonder if she'll talk about Benghazi? What difference at this point does it make?) The double 9/11, football, and Hillary gives a speech... and New York has a primary... and Apple has the audacity to do another one of its PR events.

Here's Bill Clinton's old press secretary Mike McCurry:

“How do you hold the attention of the American people when it is increasingly hard to do so with the distractions of the NFL season and religious holidays and back-to-school nights?” 

Increasingly? Is football new? Is going back to school new? Is Yom Kippur new?! (Note: Only 1.7% of Americans are Jewish.)

“This is the challenge of the presidency, the ability to gather the nation around a common campfire is just not there anymore. You have to go for the sporadic bursts of attention and deal with the perpetual A.D.D. that people have.”

And now we are to be blamed for A.D.D.! People are tired of 12 years of war. It's not A.D.D. to react with an instinctive "no" to another war, a war that should have been explained already.

Why would a normal person — with a normal attention span — believe that Obama will tell us something new on Tuesday? Why didn't he look us in the eye and explain everything clearly when he first proposed it or when he said he was submitting the question to Congress? It's not A.D.D., it's common sense to reflexively turn away.

Timing has worked against the White House from the very start. The Aug. 21 attack that prompted the administration to gear up for a Syria strike left Obama violating his predecessor’s key rule on selling the public on a war: Don’t do it in August.

Politico writes as if war is funny and the real issue is the little things that bug Obama.

Denver trounces Baltimore, after Baltimore thwarted Baltimore.

The Baltimore Orioles kept the Baltimore Ravens from having what they'd earned: a home game for the opener. 

The N.F.L. hung a banner of Ravens quarterback Joey Flacco above Denver’s stadium...

But it wasn't quite the same.

"Ronney Jenkins cannot be sure whether chronic traumatic encephalopathy is clawing through his brain tissue right now, but he suspects that it is."

So begins a CNN medical news report about football and brain damage.

"I'd be talking to a cousin of mine, disagree with him, and I'd just want to do something to him," Jenkins said. "I don't know why I had those thoughts, but I wanted to hurt him."

Jenkins cannot shake the feeling that these and other symptoms he has add up to CTE, but he will never be sure. The only way to diagnose CTE is after death -- by analyzing brain tissue and finding microscopic clumps of an abnormal protein called tau.

"12-Year-Old Girl Banned From School Football Team for 'Inciting Lust.'"

Another questionable WaPo headline. Why is "inciting lust" in quotes? First, we get something the mother of girl said:

"In the meeting with the CEO of the school, I was told that the reasons behind it were... that the boys were going to start lusting after her, and have impure thoughts about her," [Paige’s mother, Cassy Blythe] said. "And that locker room talk was not appropriate for a female to hear, even though she had a separate locker room from the boys."

So even in the mother's statement there's only a reference to what the boys "were going to" do — "start lusting" — not any accusation that the girl was "inciting." But the mother is paraphrasing what the CEO said, and we don't know how diplomatically he put his references to sex. Did he say "lust" — that 7 Deadly Sins word? The school is Strong Rock Christian, so readers are invited — incited! — to think that this is old-fashioned religion.

Then, the WaPo "social reader" writer Dan Carson opines:

I’m no philosopher, but when you ban preteen girls from being around boys while wearing shoulder pads, “inciting lust” sounds like a flimsy reason. After all, the rest of the girls on school grounds are wearing skirts and polos and aren’t covered in reeking hand-me-down padding.

If it sounds like a flimsy reason, consider that the mother — who wants her daughter on the team — had a motive to state the reason in terms that would sound flimsy. Carson ought to know about the meaning slippage that occurs in restatement, because — as you see there — he's the one that came up with "inciting." Carson's use of the quotes is defensible, but really confusing. It's not a quote of what anyone else said, but quotes used to indicate paraphrasing.

"I can kill someone with this ring."

Said Vladimir Putin, stealing the Super Bowl ring of New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft.

RGIII is getting married... to a woman who and his mom texts him a scripture before every game — "whatever the Lord lays on my heart..."

"... to let him know that this is just another battle and you’re gonna do this with God’s help. And it works for us."

And his mom says, "he still has that shyness to him and that quietness to him... He loves being at home, quiet and to himself. That hasn’t changed."

Football!

ADDED: As KLDAVIS corrects me in the comments, it's the mom who texts the Bible verses.

"We will never change the name of the team. As a lifelong Redskins fan..."

"... and I think that the Redskins fans understand the great tradition and what it’s all about and what it means, so we feel pretty fortunate to be just working on next season. We’ll never change the name. It’s that simple. NEVER — you can use caps."

Where golf meets football.

Masters on tv makes me want to golf. When does winter end in wisconsin??#globalwarming

— Aaron Rodgers (@AaronRodgers12) April 14, 2013

"Why didn't the opposing team stop the very small and sick child from scoring? The milk of human kindness?"

"Yeah. That and — seriously, would you want to be the guy who tackled a kid with brain cancer?"

Purchase of the day.

From the April 3, 2013 Amazon Associates Earnings Report:

When Pride Still Mattered: Lombardi [Paperback]
David Maraniss (Author)

By using the Althouse portal, you can buy things you want, pay nothing extra, and make a contribution to this blog. We notice. We appreciate it. And only if you tell us will we know it's you.

The Althouse Amazon portal: always on "Lombardi time" – 10 or 15 minutes early, so you're never late.

Meade watches the NCAA tournament, but I do not.

I don't like it. And I do watch baseball and football. Not as much as he does, but enough to prove that I'm not averse to all spectator sports. But I do not like basketball. Meade tells me he guarantees that if I were to take a little time to learn a few things about what's going on in basketball that I could enjoy it.

He compares it to his learning to like "Survivor." At first, he spurned it. A fake endurance contest. Why, he's done real endurance races — 24-hour mountain bike races. What's this voting people off an island? But — motivated to share time with me — he learned some details — the strategy, the edit — and it became interesting. If I would learn a few things about basketball, I wouldn't just be putting up with it. I would actually enjoy it, as he now enjoys "Survivor."

"Did you ever notice how the women on 'Survivor' are all wearing bikinis?" I ask. The whole implied argument is painfully obvious. Basketball players in their slinky, baggy tank tops and immense, swishy skirt-pants.

But maybe women don't care so much about what a man looks like. It's the functionality of the body. The performance. This is Meade's theory.

I resist the theory. There's performance on "Survivor" too, I say. But would you enjoy "Survivor" if the women were all wearing big baggy T-shirts and big loose pants?

We compare football, which women are especially fond of watching. The big shoulders, the tight pants (bulge-enhancingly light-colored and shiny). There's something to see. That's a spectator sport. The men look like men. Basketball players are dressed like very unattractive women or horribly oversized children.

"And they're always falling on the floor, and then Dad comes over and gives them a time out," I say. "It's completely not sexy."

Purchase of the day.

From the March 23, 2013 Amazon Associates Earnings Report:

Portable Soccer Net by Bow Net

... and 33 other items purchased — at no additional cost to the buyers — through the Althouse Amazon portal.

SCORE!