It had gone stale by now, 10 years of bumps and bruises and ownership issues, five years without a playoff berth, 14 years since the Colts won the AFC South. There may be gnashing of teeth about the loss of six and potentially seven starters from this Indianapolis Colts team, a major loss of leadership, a significant change of face, and I’m asking myself the following question:

What have they won?

Yeah, Kenny Moore II and Michael Pittman Jr. and Zaire Franklin were all-time good guys, community pillars, unofficial spokesmen for the team when reporters came around.

But it’s like the guy who averages 26 ppg for a 17-win NBA team. I mean, it doesn’t matter how mediocre you are – and the Colts have been the very picture of mediocrity – somebody has got to settle in as a leader. And how much does the captaincy really mean? The Colts named Anthony Richardson a captain his rookie season.

This is a very needed housecleaning.

The draft? As this is being written, it’s the morning after Rounds 2 and 3 and, as expected Chris Ballard traded back and grabbed an additional fourth-round pick.

Then he addressed a massive hole on the defense – before Saturday, could you name a starting Colts linebacker on this team? – by grabbing Georgia inside linebacker CJ Allen. Guess who’s mentioned prominently as a comp for Allen?

Why, it’s Zaire Franklin.

The circle of life.

Essentially, Ballard is getting a younger, faster, less expensive version of Franklin. I don’t know if Allen has a podcast – just a matter of time, is my guess – but like Franklin, he has an enormous presence in every community he touches.

He wore the green dot at Georgia and will wear it starting on day one in Indy. And while he’s said to lack in some coverage areas – just what I read -- he is an instinctive player who makes up for some slight physical limitations with an insistent motor and an intuitive sense for the game.

He led Georgia in tackles (47), tackles for loss (8) and two forced fumbles. Another thing worth noting: Allen didn’t commit a single penalty in 41 college games.

“He stands for all the right stuff,” Ballard said late Friday night. “He’s an athletic, fast MIKE (middle linebacker). He’ll be a green-dot guy for us from the get-go. I mean, he’s a face of the program type of guy. He’s a really special dude now. Loves to play, serious about football. It’s evident when you watch Georgia tape. I mean, he shows up and look, I mean Kirby (Smart) and Will Muschamp…they were effusive in what kind of player this kid is. It’s a good fit for us.”

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With Allen, Ballard very directly addressed one of the team’s greatest needs, if not its greatest need. With Franklin and Germaine Pratt gone, the Colts were in desperate straits.

(Yeah, I know the Colts traded back and gave up the opportunity to draft IU’s DeAngelo Ponds, leaving fans apoplectic. I say: Calm down. Ponds will be a game-changer, but slot corner, while a need, is not a high priority right now.)

With their second pick, in the third round, the Colts didn’t think specifically in terms of need, selecting LSU safety AJ Haulcy. He will bring a big game and, if his post-draft interview with Indy writers was any indication, he’ll bring a big personality, too.

The move replaced Nick Cross with a younger, faster, less expensive version than the Colts’ one-time safety.

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At this point, I’m guessing you were thinking what I was thinking: Why not an edge rusher? Then I dug into some of the draft guides and saw what Ballard would be talking about later that evening: There weren’t any edge rushers in the late-second and third rounds who caught the Colts’ eye. They’d rather address a position of slightly lesser positional need than stretch for another edge rusher who can’t play dead. Expect a defensive end or two to come off the board to the Colts this afternoon. Although unless you’re talking about Robert Mathis, you don’t find uncommon edge rushers in the latter stages all the draft.

What it all comes down to is Ballard, who is fighting for his job in the final year of his contract, has no choice but to ace this year’s draft, which continues this afternoon with picks in rounds 4-7. His most important draft, which he duffed, was selecting Anthony Richardson. This is his second most important draft, and maybe his most important given his fraught employment situation. He’s in the final year of his deal. The writing is on the wall. It’s playoffs or bust.

And he’s got to do it without his first-round draft choices the next two years, having dealt them last year for elite cornerback Sauce Gardner (I know it blew up in their faces last year, but I still think this deal benefits the Colts). It needs to be 2018, when Ballard added Quenton Nelson and Shaq Leonard. It needs to be 2020, when he grabbed Jonathan Taylor and Pittman Jr., both in the second round. Or the 2022 draft, when they grabbed Alec Pierce in the second round and Bernhard Raimann in the third round.

They need an edge rusher (this is a recording), an area where Ballard has invested considerable draft capital with very little in the way of a return. They need linebackers; still, even after the Allen acquisition. They need young interior defensive linemen to eventually step in for DeForest Buckner and Grover Stewart. They could use another wide receiver to replace Pittman, although they’re bullish on the idea that Josh Downs can line up outside opposite Alec Pierce.

It was a quiet free agent period, the Colts adding some depth like defensive linemen Arden Key and Michael Clemons, but after they struck out on Trey Hendrickson, the Colts concentrated on re-signing Jones and Pierce. In other words, Ballard needs to hit some homeruns in this draft.

Here’s what scares me: I don’t yet see how the Colts are significantly better today than they were yesterday. A little faster and younger on defense, but game-changers? Hard to say. And it puts the onus on Ballard to produce with very little in the way of a safety net. There is no margin for error. The Colts are counting on a lot of things to go exceedingly well, like safety Hunter Wohler and cornerback Justin Walley returning after suffering serious injuries last year. Like Jones – that’s Daniel Jones -- recovering from Achilles surgery, like Buckner coming back from neck surgery, like Pierce undergoing the knife, forcing him out the next three months.

Earlier this week, Ballard was asked straight away whether his team has improved over last year.

“Well, I think our depth up front is better,” he said before he ever got his hands on Friday’s second and third rounds and Day 3 Saturday.

“ I do believe that. I think the additions of (defensive tackle) Colby (Wooden) – like Colby kind of gets washed over a little bit, but like he started. He’s not really a nose, but because of who he is as a kid, he ended up starting for Green Bay at the nose and playing a lot of snaps. But we think he gives us some real versatility, as we do with (Jerry) Tillery. We think he gives us some versatility. So, I do think – and then with the additions of (Micheal) Clemons and (Arden) Key. I think we got better real depth and they’re healthy. As of right now, they’re healthy. So, I think that’s a really positive thing.

“I think on offense, we’re going to bet on some development of players. I mean, that’s kind of what we’ve done. I mean you got to be able to do that. And it’ll – I think offensively with Jalen Travis, we saw enough good stuff at the end of the year that we think he’s got real upside...And then I think the ability on offense to get – I think we’re going to be able to get (Alec) Pierce and (Josh) Downs, I’ve said this numerous times about Josh Downs, I think Josh Downs is good. I’ve always thought he was good. We’ll see how it plays out, but I think getting him and Pierce the ball more is going to be a good thing.”

Yeah, this is going to be a different year, a very different year, more different than any of Ballard’s previous years.

By the end of this afternoon, we’ll have a pretty solid idea what the 2027 Indianapolis Colts will look like, with the requisite roster tinkering in the coming months. I know this for sure: Indy just got faster, younger and less expensive. The problem is, they don’t yet have any game-changers, especially on defense. That worries me. It does. And has for several years.

They are the ultimate team of their changing times, a champion built out of the ashes of 8-24 three years ago by using the portal, NIL and all the tools now available to college coaches and administrators.

Michigan, the national champion after Monday night’s 69-63 rock fight against gritty UConn, became the first-ever team to win the whole thing while playing five transfers at the five starting spots.

It took Dusty May, son of Eastern Greene High School, all of two seasons to replicate at Michigan what he accomplished at FAU. Except this time his team took the final step, and they did it by beating UConn at its own game. Is Darian DeVries watching? Because as we’ve seen from Curt Cignetti and now May, it can be done quickly. Overnight, even.

The old heads tend to prefer homemade teams, teams like Purdue who grow their own, develop and retain top players for all four years. We like players who know the words to the alma mater. But we live in very different times, times that long since passed by Tommy Tuberville and all the dopes who are freaking out because now the players have the power and the freedom. As they should.

Seriously, for all the bitching and moaning about the big money that has come to revenue-producing college athletics, does anybody have a sour taste about a bunch of transfers coming together under a terrific head coach and producing a championship? I mean, isn’t that sort-of what IU did in football? Did knowing that Yaxel Lendeborg makes millions somehow reduce your enjoyment of the NCAA Tournament? Did Fernando Mendoza’s paycheck diminish your joy?

I didn’t think so.

There’s nothing wrong with building the way that May built his team in Ann Arbor. College basketball has become a year-to-year proposition. The old ways can still work – see Purdue – but more and more, we’re going to look at this Michigan team as the archetype.

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BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — On the IU Pro Day during which Fernando Mendoza re-confirmed his status as the No. 1 overall draft choice to the Las Vegas Raiders, the football hit the Mellencamp Pavilion turf just three times during a 20-minute long, 56-pass throwing session. Two passes were dropped. One, a bomb to Elijah Sarratt, fell a half step beyond the IU (and soon to be pro) receiver.

As expected, Mendoza has absolutely aced the pre-draft portion of the schedule, passed the audition with flying colors. Not only did he throw the ball the way he threw it all season, he gained roughly 10 pounds of muscle, weighing in at 238 pounds. Some guys, they win the Heisman and/or they win the national title, they go on the rubber chicken circuit and lose their physical edge. Mendoza did not, and nobody is surprised.

We didn’t have a chance to talk to Raiders GM John Spytek, but I’ve got to think that he and the Raiders staff saw everything they expected to see, a young man in full control of his destiny. Mendoza didn’t just throw accurately to his fellow IU teammates, he did something long-time Pro Day observers have never before seen: Before each throw, Mendoza called out the receiver’s name and the type of route that was being run, presumably to help guide attention to his pass-catching teammates, which included likely first rounder Omar Cooper, Jr, second-day choice Sarratt and later-round pickup Riley Nowakowski.

“Never saw a QB during his pro day call out each receiver by name and announce what the route would be before he ran it during the entire workout like Mendoza did,” TV analyst Louis Riddick wrote on X after observing the throwing session in person. “Every route. WR’s, TE’s, RB’s. Seems insignificant but it’s not. It was his show, in collaboration with his pass catchers. A certain GM was paying attention and noticed. One that is going to pick him.

“Everything matters.”

We talked briefly with Mendoza after his session and interviews with NFL Network, which was airing IU’s unusually well-attended Pro Day, which included representatives from all 32 NFL teams, 10 members of the Raiders’ organization and an overflow contingent of more than 100 media folks. He was, well, typical Mendoza.

“The main goal today was to serve my teammates and I think I was able to do that, be able to put them in a position where they’re able to make plays, show what they got, and very excited for them in the future,” he said. “…I felt like it went great. We have nine eligible guys coming out for the draft, which is a lot more than normal…I just wanted to make sure everybody could showcase their abilities in front of all 32 NFL teams and really run routes that are applicable to the timing that we’re going to be running in the NFL. So I think everybody was showcased. It was amazing and it was great being back in Bloomington one more time without guys after such a fantastic finish (to the season).”

Typical Mendoza. They’re going to love him in Vegas. Look past some of the quirkiness – it’s a good quirkiness, mind you – and you’ll find as earnest a soul as you’ll ever meet. His teammates and his new city are going to embrace him with uncommon ardor.

Compare that to the last time the Raiders selected a quarterback No. 1 overall. His name was JaMarcus Russell. The year was 2007. And he was one of the biggest busts in NFL history. Maybe the biggest.

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(It’s a long quotation. Stick with it. Painter has something to say.)

“Really proud of these three guys sitting right here (at the post-game press conference) and everything they’ve done for our program,” he said. “Really set a standard of how to go about their business. It’s going to be hard to emulate that. In today’s game, having three guys come and stick it out and fight through adversity and keep making our program better.

“They got the most wins in school history. They got the most tournament wins in school history. They got two Big Ten Championships. They got two Big Ten Tournament titles. You know, they showed up every day and worked. That’s what you want. A lot of people look at it like, it can’t keep happening, but in today’s landscape, but these guys proved that it can. All three of them will get their degrees from Purdue University, which means something. With the rules and how everything is, it’s diminishing education. It’s one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard in my life, because all of this is taking opportunities in education and helped our lives and helped our families.

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There are a lot of good reasons to root for Purdue to continue advancing in this NCAA Tournament, not the least of which is this one: The Boilers, who are a happy anachronism, operate, build and guide their team in an old-fashioned way that seems almost quaint in these days of the portal, NIL, tampering and the other qualities that make it the Wild West.

They redshirt. I mean, who else does that? Who else has Trey Kaufman-Renn, a stud recruit out of Silvercreek, spend an entire year working on skill development and his body? Shoot, coach Matt Painter was all prepared to red-shirt Zach Edey, until Edey began performing in pre-season camp and Painter realized the folly of sitting him for a year, much less 10 minutes.

They recruit differently. Painter, who discovered Edey, Braden Smith and so many other diamonds in the rough, recruit for fit rather than the number of stars affixed to a players’ name. They’ve had one McDonald’s All-American in Painter’s tenure: the late Caleb Swanigan. Edey was an afterthought, even in his own country of Canada. Smith was overlooked, both by IU and the rest of the Big Ten. He’s now the NCAA career leader in assists.

They’re not reliant on the portal. How long Painter can studiously avoid free agency? Impossible to answer. His retention rate among his core players is terrific, but he’s lost the likes of Myles Colvin and Cam Heide in recent years. All things being equal, Painter wants to rely upon high-school recruiting while filling in the gaps with someone like Oscar Cluff who helps significantly in the rebounding area.

Over time, it’s likely Painter will have to change with the times, rely more heavily on the portal, but that time isn’t now. The beauty of Purdue is the continuity, with this group being led by the three noble seniors, Kaufman-Renn, Fletcher Loyer and Smith. All three could have transferred and chased more money elsewhere; Smith, in particular, could have named his number. All three stayed their entire college career, which is yet another reason to cheer for this outfit. While IU is currently in a spot where they have to rebuild top-to-bottom every year, Purdue is a self-sustaining model for college basketball as it used to be.

If you’re a fan, don’t you feel more of a connection with the Boilers than you do these other teams who rely upon mercenaries who come in for a season, then pursue the paycheck again the next season? With Kaufman-Renn and Loyer and Smith, we’ve seen these guys grow into men – we learned Smith can, in fact, grow one heck of a beard – but we’ve seen their ups and their downs and their journeys to this moment, and the connection between them and their fans is undeniable and strong.

“You may get more money (elsewhere in college basketball), but what’s the dollar amount on the relationships that I’ve built?” Kaufman-Renn said earlier in the NCAA Tournament. “What’s the dollar amount on the values I’ve learned?”

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An NCAA Tournament day on the couch:

Noon – My first thought before embarking on this college hoops journey is that this is going to be a very chalky tournament – again.

Consider, last year there were the fewest upsets (by seed) than in any NCAA Tournament since 1985. And it’s going to happen again this year (I think).

Here’s why: In the pre-NIL and portal days, mid-majors had a superpower: They were older teams with several experienced upperclassmen, and they were getting the best of these highly-ranked power conference teams with lots of one-and-dones and underclassmen. The mid-major teams had guys who had played together forever. The power conference teams often struggled under the klieg lights of the NCAA Tournament. Now, with the portal making teams older and guys staying in school longer to chase the dollars, the mid-majors no longer have the experience advantage.

Now we’ll grab some coffee and see if I’m right. (Probably not). We’ll count the upsets together.

12:05 -- All I hear is bitching about modern day college athletics, how NIL and the portal and big money have ruined our fun and games and turned them into pro sports. But here’s the thing: We still love the games. We still love the players. It doesn’t matter how many millions they’re taking in. It doesn’t matter if they’ve played for three schools in four years. This is a chance to see the super-freshmen do their thing on the biggest stage, a chance to watch elite coaches guide their teams. College sports might be the Wild West – how often have we heard coaches complain about the state of the game? -- but when it comes time to lace them up, there’s nothing quite like the NCAA Tournament.

12:15 -- It’s 9-seed TCU and 8-seed Ohio State at 12:15.

I’m happy. My old Jersey friend Bill Raftery is on the game. Raftery isn’t everybody’s cup of tea, but if I don’t hear “onions” and “organizing those puppies” at least once per game, I feel like I missed something. I think he’s sneaky good. Has been for a long time, going back to his Big East days.

TCU is making Ohio State crazy with its hustling, trapping defense, forcing multiple turnovers. A late 11-0 run and the Horned Frogs lead by 15 at half.

1:10 – Checking out No. 4 Nebraska and No. 13 Troy. Rooting hard for the Huskers, not only because they’re in the Big Ten, but because they’ve never won an NCAA Tournament game in their program history. (Neither has Troy, for that matter.) It’s time for Fred Hoiberg to end that streak. They’re playing in OKC, so it’s a hugely pro-Nebraska crowd, and they’re making some serious noise. There’s a good reason for that: Nebraska’s Pryce Sandfort, the Iowa transfer, is knocking down jumpers from everywhere. The Huskers now lead 41-25 at half.

1:34 – Back to Ohio State-TCU. The Buckeyes are on a 10-zip run and have pulled within 43-40.

1:55 – Over to fifth-seeded Wisconsin and 12^th-seeded-High Point. A lot of the smart college basketball folks loved High Point making a small run after averaging 90 points per game during the regular season…until they noticed that dangerous Wisconsin is their first-round opponent. Badgers lead, 12-5. The tournament is all about guard play, and Wisconsin’s got two of the best, John Blackwell and Nick Boyd.

Should mention, Wally Szczerbiak (didn’t need to check the spelling) is on the call. I was thrilled to watch his alma mater, Miami, win its First Four game Wednesday night, knocking down 16 3’s in the process. Yes, they belonged here – not that there should have been much question. An unbeaten regular season is an unbeaten regular season. I don’t care who you’re playing – and Miami tried to schedule up, to no avail – but you pull that off, you belong in the tournament. Regardless of what Bruce Pearl thinks.

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In a normal Purdue basketball season, when the Boilers are almost never losing at home and are running away with the Big Ten title, the conference tournament is little more than a minor inconvenience. They would get knocked out early and the sense you got from Matt Painter was, “Yeah, whatever.” It meant extra days to rest and prepare. And, let’s face it, winning the Big Ten Tournament rarely means much of anything in terms of the NCAA seeding, or at least it hasn’t in the recent past.

But this is not a normal Purdue basketball season.

After losing just five home games between 2020 and 2025, the Boilers, the preseason No. 1 team, lost five times at Mackey this season. More unsettling, they came into the conference tournament having slumped to 6-7 and were giving up 91 points per game during a recent stretch. So what we’re saying is, they really needed this title run for their confidence, if nothing else. They needed those three seniors – Braden Smith, Fletcher Loyer and Trey Kaufman – to play their best basketball, for Oscar Cluff to continue his dominant work down low, for the Boilers to start playing something resembling defense.

Usually, the Big Ten Tournament is an annoyance for Purdue. This year, it was a high priority.

The Big Ten Tourney championship helped in myriad ways, not the least of which is, they went from a presumptive three seed to a two seed. They will face 15-seed Queens, an Atlantic Sun program based in Charlotte which just made the jump to Division I in 2022. Like a lot of mid-majors, they are largely guard-oriented, play a fast pace and like to shoot three-pointers. Sound familiar?

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All they needed was a victory over a sub-.500 Northwestern team. One victory, this one on a neutral court in Chicago, and the bubble-dwelling Hoosiers likely would have snuck into the NCAA Tournament for just the third time in 10 years. In a season characterized by a Charmin-soft bubble, Darian DeVries’ first team in Bloomington needed to accomplish the minimum, beat Northwestern for the first time in seven tries.

And they couldn’t even do that.

Not even close, falling apart in the second half and losing 74-61 to a Northwestern team that played one night earlier against Penn State.

And so the IU season is over early again, the Hoosiers almost surely missing the tournament for the eighth time in the last 10 years, an unthinkable, unspeakable failure for a program with IU’s increasingly distant history of success.

Has there ever been a more forgettable season and forgettable IU team than this one, at least in the recent past? Aside from Lamar Wilkerson finishing second in the Big Ten in scoring (and the leading scorer in conference games), there was absolutely nothing to recommend this group of low achievers. This is a team that began the season at 17-8, only to watch it all fall apart with six losses in the final seven games.

Which begs this question: Is DeVries the right man for the job?

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You may exhale.

Alec Pierce is remaining in Indianapolis after signing a four-year deal worth $29 million per season, turning down better money to remain in the city where he was drafted.

This is stunningly good news, and while the price point seems a little high – he’ll be the ninth highest-paid receiver in the NFL – he remains well worth it for the Indianapolis Colts. Quite simply, they could not afford to lose him for fear of setting sail on another mediocre season.

Pierce’s signing sends an important message: Daniel Jones is here to stay and will very likely sign a long-term contract in the coming weeks or months. There’s no way Pierce decides to come back without clear assurance from Colts management that Jones will be back under center for this year and several years beyond.

After playing with nine quarterbacks in four years, Pierce has to know that the writing is on the wall regarding a Jones’ signing, at least at some point.

“When both sides are driven to get it done, it usually works out in the right way,” Ballard said at the NFL Combine.

Deadlines spur action. They always do. And they did this time. The Colts got this done almost to the moment that interested teams could come calling for Pierce. According to some reports, he turned down more money to stay in Indy – wait, is that tampering? -- where his younger brother will be playing basketball for Purdue next season.

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What this also means, unfortunately, is that unless Chris Ballard and Pierce’s representation come to an agreement by noon Monday, Pierce will hit free agency in two week…

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If you’re the Las Vegas Raiders, who just left town along with the rest of the league after the NFL Combine, you don’t overthink it.

You submit your selection about 30 seconds after Roger Goodell opens the proceedings, and hand in a card that reads, “Fernando Mendoza.” (Well, it’s not a card anymore, but you get the idea.)

Don’t overcomplicate it. Don’t twist yourself into a mental pretzel. The answer to many of the Raiders’ problems is right there, in their hands. Just a matter of pulling the trigger.

Sometimes, NFL executives try to prove they’re the smartest guys in the room and reach for a pick whose selection runs counter to the prevailing opinion. This isn’t one of those times. This is Andrew-Luck-with-the-first-pick easy. My dog could make this selection. He’s a very smart dog, for the record.

Do I think Mendoza is a generational talent like Luck? Not exactly. Not right now. But you see how far he’s come in just one year under Curt Cignetti and his coaching staff, what’s to say he won’t continue to grow and develop at a similar rate under NFL tutelage? What kind of impact might his idol, Tom Brady, have on the former IU quarterback?

I look at Mendoza, and I think his best comparison is to Jared Goff, a fine quarterback, although Mendoza has better wheels. Another decent comp: Kirk Cousins, who made himself hundreds of millions in this league. That said, he could end up being elite. The traits are there. The mental acuity is there. The professional approach is there.

One thing about Mendoza, he won’t get into shenanigans on the Las Vegas Strip. He’ll go out with the boys for a couple of beers, but we all have a pretty good idea, if he’s not a choir boy exactly, he’s awfully close. Some observers seem to think it’s an act, that it’s off-putting, but this is who Mendoza is and has been from the very beginning. This is a young man who brought his Heisman to his Bloomington church to share it with the clergymen. He’s a good egg, is what I’m saying.

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I seem to remember a time when draft analysts questioned how high the ceiling was for Peyton Manning, noted he didn’t have the raw athleticism and arm talent that was possessed by Ryan Leaf. Roughly half the league went on record saying they would have drafted Leaf, whose life and career would disintegrate at a unfortunate and dizzying rate.

I remember the 2011 draft when Cam Newton was the consensus No. 1 pick out of Auburn. A few weeks before the draft, Newton told veteran scribe Peter King that he wanted to become a brand, specifically “a football player, entertainer and icon.”

That comment inspired great gnashing of teeth among NFL personnel, and there were rumblings that the quarterback-needy Carolina Panthers would bypass Newton and go for another, “safer” pick.

Turned out, he did go first, did become a very good NFL quarterback who won an MVP and went to the Super Bowl in 2015.

If I’m the Raiders, the name already has been scribbled on the card. No questions, no hesitation – even if Dan Orlovsky, a lonely voice in the wilderness, believes Alabama’s Ty Simpson has more impressive tape than Mendoza. Take him first and enjoy the next 10-plus years.

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He’s not just the safe pick, the obvious pick, he’s far and away the best pick. Seven of the last eight No. 1 picks have been quarterbacks and 21 of the last 28. It needs to happen again.

Don’t make it harder than it needs to be.

First, you can’t blame Anthony Richardson for wanting out. And I’d suggest the Colts didn’t put up much of a fight attempting to keep him in Indianapolis. I’d go even further and suggest this was a mutual decision altogether, but it sends a better message to prospective trade partners to say it was Richardson’s call.

If any player in the history of the game needs a fresh start more than Richardson, the star-crossed Colts quarterback, I’d like to see him. If it wasn’t so sad – and serious – it would be funny, in an outrageous way. The young man nearly lost his eye in an accident with a resistance band, for crying out loud. Every time he got on the field, it seemed, some cruel fate would befall him. There are just so many freak injuries a player can incur before you mildly suggest he’s injury-prone. What, you have a better explanation?

When he played, however infrequently, he showed tantalizing bursts of otherworldly talent. He ran like a SUV. He had a howitzer for an arm; his back-footed, 60-yard TD bomb to Alec Pierce in the 2024 season opener against Houston remains the best throw I’ve seen, anywhere, from an NFL quarterback in the past 10 years.

But there was a problem. We saw those flourishes of talent maybe 5%-10% of the time. The rest of the time, he was tossing it to the wrong zip code. A quality NFL quarterback completes nearly 70 percent of his passes. Richardson completed 47% during his last stint as a starter.

I remember being at a journalism gala several years ago, and I came across a gentleman who does TV in Florida. The Colts had recently drafted Richardson, and here was this man’s take after several years of covering UF football: “He’s going to get everybody fired.”

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They had everything, the two graybeards in the backcourt, Braden Smith and Fletcher Loyer, a productive big in Trey Kaufman-Renn, one of the top transfers in the nation in Oscar Cluff and an intriguing freshman in Omer Mayer, an international player from Israel. And, of course, they had Matt Painter, who has Purdue in the top 10 virtually every week of every season.

When they ran Texas Tech out of the building early in the season in The Bahamas, it justified their lofty spot atop the polls.

I look now, though, and I don’t see the nation’s No. 1 team, and frankly, they didn’t look anything like a No. 7 team, which is where they were ranked before getting run out of their own gym by Michigan Tuesday. (OK, they lost by nine but it was never close.)

This is the meat of the order for Purdue as it heads down the stretch, fairly safely ensconced as a low-two, high-three in the NCAA Tournament. The Boilers play IU at Mackey Friday night and Michigan State at home next Thursday. There was ample hope that Purdue had found its footing with road wins at Nebraska and Iowa, but the Michigan loss, their second blowout loss at home this year (along with the Iowa State game), surely raised some eyebrows.

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When we last met on these digital streets, I was making the point that the Pacers needed to be a little bit more subtle in their tanking efforts. At the time, I thought they’d be fine sitting all their starters in the second game of a back-to-back against Utah; after all, tanking teams have been toying with their lineups in an effort to earn ping pong balls for time immemorial, and notably throughout this unique season.

Little did I know, at the time, that NBA commissioner Adam Silver had decided, finally, to hold tanking teams’ feet to the fire and fine the Jazz $500,000 and the Pacers $100,000 for giving less than their best effort to win basketball games.

Look, the things the Jazz and Pacers were doing in recent weeks definitely deserved a slap on the wrist. The Jazz benched all their top players in the fourth quarter of a tight game. The Pacers benched all their top-line guys in a winnable game against the same Jazz.

Is it ironic the Pacers, of all teams, got popped with a penalty? Absolutely. Throughout their history, the Pacers have studiously resisted the temptation to tank, even when tanking was in their best interest. How often have the Pacers been a middling team because they insisted on putting their best foot forward even in lost seasons? Owner Herb Simon doesn’t often talk to the media, but when he’s done so in the past, he’s made it abundantly clear he will not sit idly while his team tanks.

But this is a very different kind of season. This is a season with three, four stud prospects waiting at the top of the draft and is viewed as a generally strong draft throughout. The Pacers then put more pressure on themselves to tank (lose creatively) after having acquired Ivica Zubac in exchange for Benn Mathurin, Isaiah Jackson and two first round draft choices – including one in 2026 that is protected spots 1-4, conveys to the Clippers 5-9 and then goes to the Pacers 10 and beyond. That creates an enormous amount of pressure for the Pacers to go back to their early-season struggling ways, which is going to be a challenge given the fact they’re 9-9 in their last 18 and slowly getting healthy late in this season. This is going to be a tightrope walk for Rick Carlisle and his staff, how to massage the roster in such a way that it doesn’t draw the ire of the league.

The commissioner has been loath to penalize tanking teams in the past, but he’s decided the time to start is now. Why? Silver answered that at the All-Star Game in Los Angeles.

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While it’s always enjoyable watching the Pacers take down the Knicks, as they did Tuesday night at Madison Square Garden, it does the local franchise no good to do so. None at all. You know this: They’re supposed to be tanking, positioning themselves to earn more ping pong balls for a draft that features three of the best prospects to come along in a while -- A.J. Dybantsa, Darryn Peterson and Cameron Boozer.

And then to try and tank, they sat all the front-line guys one night later in Brooklyn…and still knocked off the Nets.

So while some teams are out-and-out tanking, like the Jazz, who sat their top three players (Lauri Markkanen, Jaren Jackson Jr. and Jusuf Nurkic) in the fourth quarter of a close game Feb. 9 against Miami, the Pacers are engaging in the time-honored practice in a significantly more subtle way. So subtle in fact, you can’t even tell they’re trying to tank. (It should be noted that the Jazz won the game on a buzzer-beater, so ball don’t lie.)

I’m not here to tell you the Jazz are sleazy while the Pacers are noble. I mean, the Pacers did sit all their usual starters Wednesday night in Brooklyn, leaving them with seven healthy bodies in their game against the Nets -- yes, even with the All-Star Game break just a day away. But, in their defense, I would note that they’ve done this in back-to-backs throughout the season. And their starters did play heavy minutes in the overtime win over the Knicks.

I would also expect that this Ivica Zubac ankle issue is going to linger for a very, very long time. And when we get down to the final stretch of the season, I would expect the Pacers’ injury list to be longer than “Infinite Jest”. (I never finished it, for the record. Not even close.)

It’s tanking, sure, but it’s not in-your-face tanking, like what the Jazz are doing these days.

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Just months after Myles Turner left for greener(?) pastures in Milwaukee, the Pacers have their franchise center in former Clipper Ivica Zubac. Yes, Kevin Pritchard, who remade this team through masterful trades in recent years, has done it again. The message is clear: The Pacers, who figure to be whole next season with Tyrese Haliburton’s return, are taking full advantage of this championship window.

Now, if they can tank effectively enough to earn a top-4 draft pick, the Pacers will be absolutely loaded as they prepare for next season. If there’s a concern, it’s that they figure to be a better team this year with Zubac in the lineup, which may imperil their shot at a top-4 pick. I would fully expect there will be a lot of load management and nagging injuries as we embark on the latter part of the season.

Did they give up a lot? Yes and no.

I’ve never felt that Bennedict Mathurin was a fit in Indiana, and the Pacers, who failed to sign him to an extension before this season, knew that in their bones as well. For years, Mathurin has tried and tried to alter his game, be less one-on-one oriented, play to the Pacers strengths. But it never quite happened.

He’ll go to LA and be a 20-plus-point-per-game scorer, but my question with Mathurin has always been this: He can score lots of points, but does he impact winning? I’ve always seen him as a guy who can score 22 a game for a team that wins 25 games. He had moments, a number of them (24 points in Game 7 in Oklahoma City), and it’s always tough to trade away a 23-year-old player who was the Pacers’ highest draft selection since George McCloud in 1989. But Zubac is worth the investment.

I will admit, I gasped initially when I saw all the details of the trade: Beyond Mathurin and Isaiah Jackson, the Pacers are also giving up next year’s first-round pick if it falls between Nos. 5-9 – plus an unprotected first rounder in 2029. So basically, if the Pacers earn lottery spots five through nine, that pick goes to the Clippers and the Pacers’ unprotected first conveys to 2031.

Bottom line: Root for losses. Lots of them. That’s an imperative.

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Woke up this morning, checked X, and I saw what I was expecting to see:

No, not a Benn Mathurin trade, although I’m keeping my eyes peeled for that to happen today or by the trade deadline tomorrow.

What I saw instead was a chorus line of Washington Post reporters and editors denouncing the death of the paper’s sports section, the diminution of the foreign desk and the cancellation of the Sunday Books section, among other journalistic atrocities. The list of reporters included an old friend and IndyStar colleague, Candace Buckner, who is one of the best young columnists in the business. (And I’d be shocked if she wasn’t hired somewhere in about 10 minutes).

Anyway, all of this happened Wednesday, but we’ve known for some time the hammer was going to fall. It seems that Jeff Bezos, the heartless, gutless multibillionaire, succumbed to both business pressures and pressure from the Administration and tore the newspaper asunder. It’s terribly sad when any news-gathering operation ceases to exist or sees its staff get cut (see: the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette), but the Washington Post was, and is, different. It’s an American institution, a true journalism behemoth that speaks truth to power and was responsible for exposing Watergate, which brought down the Nixon presidency.

It’s not just sports. It’s Metro. It’s Sunday Books. It’s the foreign desk with several foreign correspondents getting the boot, some learning the news while they were reporting in war zones.

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Maybe it’s just me, but after watching the national champion IU football team suck all the oxygen out of the room for months on end, it felt like the IU basketball team just started their season in earnest Monday night against Purdue.

It’s not that we haven’t been paying attention – IU fans would care about hoops if the planet was in the throes of the apocalypse – but Hoosiers’ fandom has lacked the kind of ardor and single-minded focus that’s usually dedicated to IU hoops.

We were reminded again of the football team’s incredible feat – the team was introduced to the Assembly Hall crowd prior to the game – but watching the game, listening to the crowd, it looked and sounded like Hoosier Nation had turned the page.

Good timing, then, for IU to play its best game and earn its most important win of the season Monday night over No. 12-but-flailing Purdue, beating the Boilers, 72-67.

Let’s be clear: Until Monday night, the Hoosiers were headed into “First Four Out” territory in all the NCAA Tournament brackets – or worse. They hadn’t won a single Quad 1 game, hadn’t beaten anybody of great consequence, although they played their best road game of the year Friday while beating the brakes off of struggling Rutgers in their gym.

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All these days later, I’m still trying to wrap my head around what just happened in college football, how the Indiana Hoosiers, the very last team you’d ever expect competence from, slayed all its opponents, most in a dominant fashion imaginable on the way to a 16-0 national title.

What bellwether sports events even come close to what we saw Monday night at Hard Rock Stadium and, for that matter, the entire season? What compares?

For me, as a one-off event, the most unlikely upset I’ve ever seen was the U.S. Hockey Team’s 1980 Miracle on Ice against the then-Soviets. We’re talking there about an American team populated by college kids. Conversely, the Soviets were using their world-renowned professionals, ostensibly to wipe the floor with all their Olympic opponents. The geopolitical backdrop – the Cold War was still raging – made it even juicier. The Americans had previously gotten blown out by the Soviets in a final pre-Olympic meeting and everybody figured they’d get rolled once Olympic competition began. But then goaltender Jim Craig stood on his head in the net, the Soviet goaltending faltered – I’ll never understand why they pulled goalie Vladislav Tretiak -- the Americans generally played out of their minds and the U.S. won, 4-3 on Mike Eruzione’s game-winning goal.

As major upsets go, that will always remain my number one.

The other unlikely feat that comes to mind was Butler’s back-to-back national title game appearances. If Gordon Hayward’s half-court heave had hit the rim and dropped in as the clock sounded, that would have been one of the greatest stories of all time; as it is, with Butler losing both games, it’s one of the greatest sports feats of my lifetime.

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MY COUCH, Ind. – If this isn’t the greatest rags-to-riches story in American sports history, I dare you to show me something more outlandish, more unthinkable, more audacious. From perpetual Homecoming guests to national champions. From a .419 winning percentage from 1887-2023 (BC – Before Cignetti) to 16-0, the first undefeated team since the 1894 Yale Bulldogs. From worst to first, and in what seemed like the blink of an eye. From college football’s perpetual doormats to a perfect season.

Anything is possible.

The Indiana Hoosiers, 27-21 winners over Miami Monday in the national title game, are the embodiment of a team.

Look who the heroes were:

• Charlie Becker, the master of the contested ball, who was a special teamer before breaking out in stardom the latter half of the season after Elijah Sarratt was injured.

• Mikail Kamara, a no-star athlete and one of the JMU 13 who followed Curt Cignetti to Bloomington, emerging after an unimpressive season, and blocking a punt that resulted in a game-altering touchdown.

• Fernando Mendoza, a two-star from Miami who wanted desperately to walk on to his hometown team and was denied. He wasn’t great Monday – Miami’s relentless pass rush had a lot to do with that – but he was great when he absolutely had to be. His dive into the end zone for the winning score will end up on T-shirts all over the state, an iconic moment if ever there was one. Move over, Michael Penix’s dive to the pylon against Penn State. That was fun, but this was, well, downright inspiring. And it gave IU a 24-14 lead with 9:18 remaining, at which point, they hung on and sent Kirkwood Avenue’s denizens into hysterics, engaging in a primal scream that had been bottled up for more than a century.

“He ran a linebacker over,” Cignetti said later. “His will, he wasn’t going to be denied.”

Said Mendoza: “I would die for my guys.”

• And then there’s Cignetti, who pulled off the unimaginable, taking a 3-win team in Tom Allen’s last year, reaching the College Football Playoff his first year and then winning the Cig-natty in his second. It was less than 15 years ago that he was an underpaid, do-everything head coach at Indiana (Pa.), followed by reclamation projects at Elon and James Madison.

“When I was waxing staff tables at IUP when school was shut down, I never really thought this was possible,” Cignetti said. “But I just kept working and things happened and here we are.”

When it was over, Cignetti finally broke into a broad smile and gestured skyward toward the heavens, where his father, the late Frank Cignetti, Sr., was certainly watching.

“Then when the Big Ten Network asked me about him, I said, `Oh, you’re trying to get me all choked up, right?’ “ Cignetti said.

You’ve heard this all before, but it’s worth noting again: Alabama, Oregon and Miami have an abundance of four- and five-star recruits. Indiana has eight, all of them four-stars. Now they join the undefeated 1976 IU basketball team 50 years after Bob Knight’s team accomplished that feat. Yes, humble lil’ Indiana, the second-losingest program in college football, running through Alabama and Oregon before finally meeting their match in the national final game, out-lasting a violent (sometimes illegally violent) Miami team.

It almost doesn’t seem real.

It is, right? That actually happened, correct? I didn’t crash on the couch and dream this. Tell me, an IU alum, I didn’t just dream this.

“I didn’t think it was possible, I can’t lie,” Kamara said. “But to be here today, it’s just surreal.”

Cignetti spoke after the game, quickly disavowing people of the notion that IU suddenly found deep pockets and bought a national champion. The money is on the way – just waiting for the Mark Cuban check to clear – but it’s not like IU is rolling in the dough.

Yet.

“Our NIL is nowhere near what people think it is, so you can throw that out,” he said. “…But we’re 16-0, national champions at Indiana University, which I know a lot of people thought was never possible. It probably is one of the greatest sports stories of all time. But it’s all because of these guys and the staff. A great night.”

The Hoosiers won because they weren’t afraid of the moment, and because Cignetti was willing to put himself on the line with two fourth-down conversions on the game-winning drive. With fourth and four at the Miami 12-yard line with more than nine minutes remaining, he ran the field goal unit onto the field for a chip-shot try and a six-point lead, but then he called timeout, yanked the field goal team off the field and went for it on a daunting fourth-and-four.

“I didn’t feel really good about kicking a field goal there,” Cignetti said. “The play before they were in the coverage for the quarterback draw, which we put in specifically in the medium package in the low red (zone) against that look. We had to block a little different than we normally do, and that was about a 45-minute discussion in the staff room how we were going to call it and do it.

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“…Let me tell you, Fernando, I know he’s great in interviews and comes off as the All-American guy, but he has the heart of a lion when it comes to competition. That guy competes like a warrior. He really got smacked a few times in this game…”

All he did, all his teammates did, was make the high-leverage plays that counted the most. Whether it was late against Iowa, late against Penn State, late against Ohio State, the Hoosiers made good things happen late against Miami, their steel will propeling them to this national championship.

How exciting was this? After the game, Mendoza stood on the victory podium with a microphone in his face, at which point the All-American boy dropped a big, healthy bleeping F-bomb.

“Sometimes I’ve had these cookie-cutter responses, media-trained responses – on to the next game, on to the next play – and now we did it,” Mendoza said later. “At that point, I think it was only fitting to open the floodgates per se, break my stereotype.”

Cignetti, sitting to Mendoza’s left in the post-game press conference, laughed.

“He’s been around Coach Cig too long,” he joked.

As Kevin Garnett once bellowed, “Anything is possible.” But it was outlandish to think IU – yes, IU – could pull off the most magical season in college football history. Of all the teams, all the programs, and IU (bleeping) did it. This doesn’t happen in Bloomington. Except it just did, and it did with a bunch of guys who weren’t supposed to be here and a coach who bet on himself at age 50, when he began his slow rise by coaching at Indiana (Pa.) in Division II.

“I think we sent a message to society that if you keep your nose to the grindstone and work hard and you’ve got the right people, anything’s possible,” Cignetti said. “…This team, the whole was greater than the sum of its parts.”

He continued. “If I was smart, I’d probably retire; then I’d really be a story. But we need the money. What would I do? What would I do? I don’t know if I’ll have a beer in the teal chair. I had one after the game. That’s enough for me. We’ll be back at it. I love what I do. I love football. I’m a football guy.”

For the record, his beer of choice is (what else?) Hoosier beer from Upland Brewery in Bloomington.

“Absolutely the best beer I’ve ever had in my life,” Cignetti said. “And made me want to have another.”

He wasn’t the only one imbibing adult beverages Monday night.

Said linebacker Aiden Fisher, one of the JMU 13: “It’s just been an unbelievable journey. You take those 13 (JMU) guys, I don’t think any of them had great offers coming out of high school. We had a coach who took a chance on us once, and then the opportunity arose to do it again.”

It wasn’t just the players and coaches who were willing to pay the price Monday. Starting Sunday, IU fans started camping out on Kirkwood Ave. in sub-freezing temperatures to get a seat at one of the nearby bars. This team took the school, the city and (most of) the state on a wild ride, and damned if they were going to let a little frostbite get in the way of this once-in-a-lifetime moment.

“This is something you write a book about,” Kamara said. “You write a movie about it. To do this in real life and do it with these guys that I love, it’s just amazing.”

If movie makers Angelo Pizzo and David Anspaugh tried to sell this as a script to Hollywood, they would be laughed out of the room for presenting such an outlandish script.

I mean, the guy, Cignetti, comes in and talks all this crazy talk about reaching the Big Ten title game, about Purdue sucking (along with Michigan and Ohio State), saying thing like, “It’s simple. I win. Google me.”

And then he delivers. Immediately.

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What seems like mythology is reality. Revel in it, Hoosier Nation. The dream – hell, it wasn’t even a dream; it was too ridiculous to be a dream – well, it happened. Now the fans in Bloomington can thaw out and get ready for a parade. Who’d have thought it was possible? Greatest come-from-nowhere story in American sports history. They did it, and all these hours later, I still can’t wrap my head around it. But I’ll try. I promise, I’ll try.