Author Archives: Sam Ross Jr.

So much of our current world view is fantasy that it boggles the mind and prompts the concern that truth is being rendered an archaic concept.

Consider the online artificial intelligence exercise ChatGBT, which obviously has been programmed to have a strong left-wing bent.

As reported by Forbes, the AI site refused a request to write a positive poem regarding Donald Trump, but quickly was able to praise poetically Clueless Joe Biden, he of the ongoing classified information scandal and the inability to process or communicate information in general. Just this week the Clueless One said “more than half the women in my administration are women.”

Some might argue it was a moment of unusual candor, or a Freudian slip considering Biden’s penchant for appointing sexually confused people. But I’m going with Clueless Joe often speaks like English is a second language for him.

Still on the Biden front, another source, a tech writer posting on youtube, went to ChatGBT to try it out for a poem on Clueless Joe’s feckless son Hunter. You know Hunter, drug user, laptop loser, rider of daddy’s coat-tails at every opportunity.

Sure enough, ChatGBT praised Hunter with “through it all, he stands tall.”

ChatGBT, however, had nothing to offer on outspoken Republican Congress member Marjorie Taylor Greene because it said it cannot take a partisan stance.

Yeah, right. Or should I say, left?

Lest you tend to nod affirmatively about this, not surprised based on your life experience, but wonder why you should care. Here’s why.

Fantasy such as this can and does affect you. Other fantasies have more immediate impact on your life.

Refer to the past Friday’s “blockbuster” January payrolls number offered to you by government bean counters.

Understand this is not a partisan issue. It occurs during Republican and Democratic administrations. But that doesn’t make it right.

These releases are short on actual numbers and very long on backward-looking revisions, projections spit out by computer models and a thing called seasonal adjustments that factor heavily in those models.

The expected January increase was 188,000 jobs added. But, push the button, listen to the computer whir as it factors in its programming (sort of like the tilted programming for that AI site) and you get, voila, 517,000 jobs added and an unemployment rate of just an historically low 3.4 percent.

The number would have been a decline of about 2.5 million jobs. But the seasonal adjustment was more than 3 million jobs, the largest such tweak in history.

This report, released early in the day, supposedly will make the Federal Reserve more determined to raise and maintain high interest rates for longer, which sent stock market indices into frantic back-and-forth action, with all three major averages here closing lower.

Precious metals were hammered relentlessly because of this report and its supposed impact on The Fed.

Government numbers, in general, tend to be fantasy, as is the typical reporting from Lamestream media.

It has become almost a full-time job to try to sort through the propaganda and, sadly, too few members of the citizenry are willing to make the effort.

This makes the job easier for those who would treat us as mushrooms, perennially kept in the dark and fed manure.

By now you know, even if you didn’t want to, that Punxsutawney Phil was hoisted in front of his adoring crowd today, saw his shadow, and thus we are doomed to six more weeks of winter.

I always thought the fix was in regarding Phil. Whether it be sunny or not, the glare of all the electric lighting and those television cameras – plus smart phones videoing the proceedings – virtually guarantee a shadow result on Gobblers Knob.

With all due respect to Phil, I’ve never ventured to Punxsutawney on this day. I did, however, serve as a member of the wedding party 49 years back when my cousin displayed his sense of humor by being married on Feb. 2. He’d gotten engaged on April Fools Day.

My son once did go to the Phil show (Woodchuckstock) as a college adventure and hasn’t been back since (at least not on Feb. 2), which speaks to the attraction of it all.

Regardless, I was amused to hear that Phil might be branching out on prognosticating, beyond practicing meteorology without a license.

It seems Phil could be spreading into political and social punditry.

And so, Phil saw his shadow today and predicted six more weeks of Clueless Joe Biden classified documents being discovered, including in Phil’s burrow – next to Phil’s Corvette.

Phil saw his shadow and predicted six more weeks of Hunter Biden making fumbling, bumbling claims about his laptop, or maybe what is not his laptop, and asking daddy’s justice department lackeys to make all the mean people pay for talking about that laptop with Hunter’s disgusting personal information on it, whether or not the laptop actually is Hunter’s.

Phil saw his shadow and predicted six more weeks of Democrats whining about Republicans doing to them what Democrats did to Republicans when the Dems held the majority in the House of Representatives.

Phil saw his shadow and predicted six more weeks of pathetically over-the-top emotional displays from Democrats, such as outgoing Biden Chief of Staff Ron Klain, who cried his way through a departure press conference and proclaimed Clueless Joe the greatest father figure he’d ever encountered. Yes, the guy who sired and raised Hunter and now covers up for his errant behavior. I hope Klain’s real father isn’t alive and forced to hear any of his son’s maudlin garbage.

Phil saw his shadow and predicted six more weeks of White House press mouthpiece Karine Gay-Paris (Paree) stonewalling reporters, even those from formerly friendly left-wing Lamestream media operations.

Phil saw his shadow and predicted six more weeks – at least – of machinations over raising the national debt limit. We never can pay back existing indebtedness, short of a hyperinflationary event rendering debt meaningless, so what’s a few extra trillion dollars of shortfall?

Phil saw his shadow and predicted six more weeks of bad economic news. Despite those suspect glowing job reports, and a rip-roaring stock market in which companies on life support such as Carvana are rising meteorically, understand that just today stalwarts like Apple, Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Starbucks and Ford were among major companies reporting significant earnings misses.

And last, with spring training opening later this month, Phil saw his shadow and predicted six more weeks, months, years and decades of bad Pittsburgh Pirates baseball.

You are forgiven if you take in economic reporting and feel as though you are trapped in a version of Charles Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities,” specifically its best of times, worst of times passage.

Fed chief Jerome Powell took to the podium Wednesday to announce a 25-basis points increase in interest rates, as expected. But it was his press conference afterward, in which he dispensed with his fire-and-brimstone warnings on inflation and the economy and instead turned all warm and fuzzy, that was taken as him waving the white flag.

Taking its cue from Powell, the Dow Jones Industrial stock average, down 500 points or so at the worst of the day, rallied to a small gain. Other stock averages did similar turnarounds and even bond interest rates sank a bit in the face of this latest Fed rates raise, a real-life example of the investment world seeing the Fed about to capitulate on its attempt to rein in inflation and resulting speculation in the investment world.

All bark and no bite. All hat and no cattle. Pick the most appropriate cliché for the Feds’ jawboning bluff being called.

The optimists, the bulls, see nothing but sunshine and lollipops ahead.

The pessimists, the bears, see a lot of fools about to be fleeced.

Who is right? How can one tell?

Consider the government Gross Domestic Product (GDP) report for 2022, that saw the biggest drop in consumers’ disposable income since 1932. Because they no longer teach history in schools, allow me to point out that was in the midst of The Great Depression.

But the optimists counter that current individual savings totals, still flush with stimulus handouts, are at all-time highs.

The pessimists’ reply is a simple inquiry: So why are credit card balances at all-time highs? This at a time when interest rates are through the roof and all that debt comes at a huge cost.

Why is the flood of car repossessions taxing the available supply of those doing the repossessing?

The optimists can point to all that spending on stocks in recent weeks, pushing the share prices to near all-time highs.

And then there is the job picture, which is stunningly strong if you believe the government reports.

Yet this comes against a backdrop of huge layoffs, particularly among tech giants. Meta (formerly Facebook) saw its share price rally immensely today based in large part on promises to cut spending, a euphemism for reducing employee headcount.

Although our often moribund Johnstown real estate market seems late to recognizing the reality, rising mortgage interest rates have crippled housing markets across the country.

Ah, say the bulls, this just makes housing more affordable. Perhaps, if you still have a full-time, well-paying job.

We’ve written before that the job reports can distort reality on the ground. Job openings in California don’t necessarily benefit unemployed in Pennsylvania.

Demand for writers of computer code doesn’t help the person whose job skill is limited to asking if we want fries with that fast food order.

A highly compensated worker loses his job and the local eatery hires a waiter. That’s a wash on job reports.

Those reports, by the way, are mostly conjecture and modeling and very little actual counting.

The inflation rate declining is heralded as a huge win. Not entirely. If in 2023 you are paying 110 percent of 2022 costs for goods and services, but the inflation rate drops to 5 percent in 2023, you’re still on pace to pay 115.5 percent of 2022 costs in 2024.

To repeat, a decline in rate of inflation, doesn’t mean you are making up economic ground, only that you are losing ground at a slower rate.

The optimists made a lot of money on their investments today. The more speculative those investments, the more they made.

I made a little bit, too, based on safety plays such as gold and silver rising on the back of a declining U.S. dollar.

I’m still thinking I’m on the right side of the boat for the long haul. But these are curious times, with increasingly insane happenings in the investment world, right along with what’s happening in the world writ large.

It was 1977 and a friend of mine, fresh out of college and earning the big bucks as a polymer specialist with a big oil company, was looking to purchase a car.

I accompanied him on a test drive in a diesel Volkswagen Rabbit, which he was considering because of its great fuel miles per gallon rating (the 1970s were times of multiple gas crises in these United States) and the fact that it ran on diesel.

Believe it or not, diesel fuel back then was much cheaper than gasoline. No longer the case, I know. More on that later.

Also, diesel engines were supposed to provide a longer usage life than their gasoline counterparts.

The Rabbit ran well enough, but on an uphill pull on Eisenhower Boulevard it seemed – to put it kindly – to be emasculated.

Rabbits – gasoline versions – had a reputation for peppy performance. Not so with the diesel.

As I explained to him then, diesel engines have a narrow torque band and need to be kept in that sweet spot in terms of revolutions per minute. That’s why diesel trucks can have 15-speed transmissions, or more.

This Rabbit, as I recall, had just a four-speed manual transmission. You figuratively had to row the car up a hill with constant shifting.

It was a no-sale.

Fast-forward to 2023 and diesel cars are way out of favor. But since the 1970s, pickups trucks have swelled in size to challenge the semi trucks of the past, and diesel is a popular pickup truck option, mostly for engine life and torque. Diesel fuel has spiked well above the cost of gasoline, so owners take a big hit, there.

The Holy Grail now is the electric vehicle. While it costs more to purchase initially, just as diesel cars did back in the day and trucks do now, it is supposed to more than pay for that with cheaper operating costs. And then there’s the saving-the-planet angle.

Why, the government will even give you tax incentives to go electric. Clueless Joe Biden was posted on Twitter earlier this week driving an electric Hummer, a vehicle whose price begins at $87,000 and runs right up to $110,000.

Joe was boasting of those tax credits. The only problem was this vehicle would not qualify for any tax credits, which cut off at a vehicle price of $80,000.

You would expect better from Clueless Joe? Have you heard about his classified information problem?

Today, a report from the Anderson Economic Group said that rising electric power costs have pushed the cost to operate an electric vehicle above that of the traditional internal combustion engine.

That’s just the fuel cost. It doesn’t factor in the fact that so many cars will need a battery pack change 10 years or less into their lifespan, which can run $10,000, $20,000 or even more.

You can replace a gasoline engine for less than either of those numbers.

In addition, it is likely that electric power generation and distribution by our failing grid in this country will continue to be a negative factor, producing rising costs and even the inability to get any juice out of the outlet.

Like the diesel cars of the 1970s, these electric vehicles seem like a good, money-saving option, until you look behind the public relations curtain.

When you reach the point where the rubber meets the road – an intentional car metaphor – the electric vehicles don’t save you any money to operate, cost more to purchase, and leave you with less flexibility of use than someone gets by driving a car they are able to refuel at gas stations sprinkled liberally among cities, towns and villages around the country.

Diesel wasn’t a good choice for a car in 1977. Electric vehicles are similar in 2023.

It’s all about race these days, and we’re not talking NASCAR, Indycar, or any other form of motorized competition.

Everything, it seems, must be viewed through a racial lens, as in skin color.

Sexual orientation is coming on strong in virtue signalling and forced perspective, but race still is the prime consideration.

Watch some TV shows, or the omnipresent commercials that split those shows into tiny segments. The ads must have over-representation of blacks, Hispanics and even Asians compared to their numbers in the general population.

An acceptable substitute, on occasion, is an overabundance of women, or obviously gay folk – as in two guys holding hands or two women caressing each other.

A spinoff is the proliferation of the mixed race couple in ads, an outsized trend apparent even to Clueless Joe Biden judging by his June 2021 speech in which he said, “eight to five — two to three out of five (commercials) have mixed-race couples in them. That’s not by accident.”

Biden thought this was a good thing, indicating improvement in racial relations. Come on, man. These are actors, not real-life couples.

The Clueless One is right in one respect, it isn’t by accident. It’s advertisers pandering to those who would make racial representation the litmus test of whether an ad, or product, is acceptable or not.

Perhaps you have heard that Philadelphia will face Kansas City in the Super Bowl, Kansas City having gotten there with a huge helping hand from the zebras.

A prominent theme you will hear between now and the game is that this is the first Super Bowl with two black starting quarterbacks.

Like Barack Obama, KC quarterback Patrick Mahomes has a black father and a white mother, but for purposes of racial demagoguery, he’s black.

When a mass shooting occurred in California recently, targeting Asians, Lamestream media was quick to run with the hate crime angle, figuring it was the stereotypical angry white male.

But no, the alleged shooter was either Vietnamese or Chinese. Accounts vary. All agree, he was Asian.

And still newspapers in California, and likely elsewhere, continue to try to paint this as a racially motivated attack on Asians.

It’s no different regarding Memphis, where an arrest turned into a beatdown of the suspect by police and that suspect’s eventual death. Murder charges have been filed against police officers.

The suspect was black. So, too, were the five police officers who were charged.

Despite this, a Washington Post story decrying racism basically said “so what?” that the cops were black.

At least one of those crazed pundits from a leftist cable news outlet maintains those black police officers were motivated by racism.

This is the narrative, that the nation is a boiling pot of racism and likely always will be. Don’t let any facts to the contrary change that narrative.

No fact-checking here. And it emboldens those who would continue to inundate us with claims of racism, even when such claims are patently ridiculous.

Yes, there is racism in this country. But not to the degree it is portrayed.

More to the point, the situation never can improve as long as race is elevated to the prime consideration in evaluating and coloring the perception of each and every one of life’s occurrences.

Cheers for the advancements in the medical world, as evidenced by my brother’s relatively pain-free present state.

Said brother had his gall bladder removed Saturday by the laparoscopic technique, which simply put means four small incisions to insert a video camera and small robotic instruments to do the actual cutting and removing of the diseased and inflamed organ, along with any gall stones.

I happened to be present when a day before the surgery a doctor was giving my brother the standard background and what-can-go-wrong talk to get permission to do the deed. At that time, it was presumed the laparoscopic approach could be used, but if not, then there would be the more traditional abdominal incision made to provide access.

Even at that, he stressed it would not be that invasive. The doctor held his hands maybe four inches apart to indicate the size of the cut.

At this point I told him that was amazing, since my gall bladder surgery, admittedly performed in the relatively distant medical past, had produced a much bigger cut. He seemed to be incredulous, so I raised my shirt to show him the scar, which I have since measured at 10.5 inches, give or take.

Must have been done by a resident, he said dismissively, indicating perhaps I had not been worked on by a skilled surgeon. Or maybe there were complications?

No and no. My surgeon, since retired, was highly regarded at the time. His daughter apparently now does this sort of thing. She had spoken with my brother, but she was unavailable Saturday due to it being a weekend.

I pointed out to this doctor who my surgeon had been and he did some quick verbal backtracking.

Some background on my case is in order. Back then I’d been going to the hospital with chest pain that felt like I’d been harpooned. This was in the early 1990s and I was in my mid-30s. The presumption was heart trouble.

I even had catheterizations and balloon angioplasties done. But my Pittsburgh heart specialist at the time said although I had a congenital narrowing of a major blood vessel in my heart, through the years I’d formed a natural bypass due to the collateral blood passageways becoming enlarged. I had some arterial plaque, but nothing to account for my symptoms.

Eventually, I kept having these painful incidents and it was diagnosed as gall bladder trouble. Given the option to have it removed, I jumped at the chance.

Ironically, the laparoscopic methodology was on the near horizon locally, but no one mentioned that.

Instead, I was cut stem to stern and let me assure you, it was not pleasant. All the talk of core muscle training for athletes rings true because my core muscles were compromised and you use them for just about any movement.

The bonus was I was unable to work for six weeks or so. The time off – with pay – gave me great insight to the attraction of not working. I had not been idle for that long in the work place since age 17, when I began part-time work at the Post Office that became full-time temporary during summer months.

I soon transitioned to my first full-time newspaper job and kept right on working.

It was during that time off following surgery that I resolved to save, invest, and retire early. I hit that goal at 53 and a half years of age.

You might say my gall bladder surgery was a mixed blessing, ending my pain and acquainting me with the attraction of not working.

Since this was not a factor for my brother, I’m glad he got to have his gall bladder problem addressed the comparatively easy way.

Just as cars, appliances, computers, cell phones and all else have come a long way in the past 30 years, so, too, has this surgical procedure. And that’s the good news.

There is a significant chunk of the population, the thinking part, that is beginning to see COVID as a convenient Deus Ex Machina for elites seeking to control the rest of us.

In short, the term Deus Ex Machina stems from ancient theater, when supposed Gods were lowered to the stage, or raised, via mechanical devices. The description has been broadened to describe times when unsolvable conflicts or points of tension magically are resolved by the unlikely appearance of characters, devices or actions.

The progressive left was having trouble getting the rest of us to follow blindly their socialist dictates. Then came COVID and even some of the more individualistic types became bleating sheep following orders, no matter how absurd they might have been.

Freedom was relegated to being no more than an outdated concept.

Economies and travel were shut down. Families were ordered not to congregate. Churches were shut. Businesses sat idle, but workers got paid to stay home – an important component of the plan.

And masks had to be worn, no matter the evidence that they did little they were claimed to do. Same with vaccines, which went from purportedly guaranteeing the recipient would not be stricken with COVID, to being maybe if you add a booster shot or two, to OK, you still will get COVID, but the symptoms will not be as bad.

We eagerly await the mea culpa on all the adverse side effects of the vaccine that are cropping up and now are being reported upon by some independent members of the scientific community.

This sort of public blind obedience to leftist agendas has been preached for decades to our school children, with that indoctrination having ramped up since COVID. Coincidence? I think not.

The emboldened left has seized on COVID as a great enabler. You can find videos of Hanoi Jane Fonda doing a television interview in which she proclaimed COVID to be “God’s gift to the left.”

She seemed to be talking about the pandemic awakening people to societal wrongs. It’s hard to tell because Fonda’s sanity ship seems to have sailed.

But she is correct that many in the left do view COVID as something of a gift, not necessarily from God since so many on the left are not the most religious sorts.

If you think this opportunistic use of COVID isn’t working, think again. People have been more than happy to abdicate control of their lives to the government, or just others in general.

The New York Times last week ran some sort of crazy opinion piece from a woman missing her time spent in China when the government told her how to raise her children. Co-parenting with a tyrannical Chinese regime was a good thing in her warped sense of reality.

People unable to display critical reasoning, to make decisions for themselves, is something widely evident on social media.

I do not have a Facebook account, but I log on using a family member’s account to check marketplace for cars. I have bought three there for myself so far.

But the postings are absurd any time a few flakes of snow fall. One group my son belongs to is overrun with requests for road conditions and whether the timid soul should attempt to get from Point A to Point B. Someone just tell me what I should do!

Predictably, there are some who find this somewhat pathetic and post as much. They are in the minority, however.

It can be argued that social media in general is nothing more than a dumbing-down process, distracting the sheep from significant issues and instead producing a bunch of navel-gazing ovines who are much easier to be herded in the preferred direction of the political left.

There are reports of people rebelling against ridiculous mask mandates, just as there is a severe backlash of county sheriffs refusing to enforce unconstitutional gun laws that socialist governors and state legislators have chosen to enact.

But it’s not enough to demonstrate hope that the majority of the population will refuse to be treated like sheep and fleeced accordingly.

Perhaps the Clueless Joe Biden regime should send some jawbones to Ukraine instead of high-tech tanks, the better to defeat the Russians.

Clueless Joe clearly believes in the power of the jawbone, in the metaphorical sense. He yammers away to pillory his enemies, most recently taking Chevron to task for having the temerity to return profits to shareholders through stock buybacks.

Clueless Joe has emptied our strategic petroleum reserve trying to tamp down the price of oil and, by extension, gasoline prices. Now, because oil prices are rising again due to China reopening its economy by abandoning idiotic zero COVID policies, Clueless Joe is out of bullets (again metaphorically, but as our military soon may be literally after all the Ukraine aid).

So, populist Joe, the guy who can’t keep track of all the classified documents he’s misplaced through the years, is taking to the bully pulpit to get the nation inflamed about a company actually making money and sharing the wealth with stock owners.

It must really wound Clueless Joe and his witless Green pals that they can’t kill coal or oil and gas industries, as he so proudly has promised he would.

Unlike the Biblical tale of Samson, who is said to have slain a thousand or so Philistines using as his weapon the jawbone of an ass, Clueless Joe’s jawboning is all talk.

Jawboning is, however, an appropriate metaphor since the Democratic symbol is the donkey, AKA, an ass.

The Clueless Biden regime is desperate to turn the conversation to something other than his ongoing classified information problem, or our porous southern border.

On that second point, the Biden regime insists there is no problem, despite copious evidence to the contrary.

Now Biden, who at the height of the gasoline price rise claimed it was not a problem, or if it was a problem, it was Trump’s fault, blames oil companies.

The Biden regime’s answer to our nation’s energy problems is to put out talking points about eliminating natural gas stoves. They encourage us to buy electric vehicles to cut down on oil and gasoline use, failing to explain how our failing electrical grid could handle a ramp up in EV usage and necessary recharging.

Clueless Joe and his lackeys are pitching smoke and mirrors over substance.

They have nothing concrete – other than Joe’s classified problem – and so they seek to muddy the picture with various tangential crusades.

Protect corrupt Ukraine at all costs. Resource companies are evil personified. And, of course, mean-spirited Republicans are going to eliminate Social Security and Medicare because they won’t give the Clueless One a blank check to plunge this nation yet more trillions of dollars into debt.

The sad news is, Clueless Joe’s tactics might work because the average American voter is a bit of a fool, totally absorbed in self-interest.

You give them a free lunch and they whine it isn’t a free dinner.

They envy success, but aren’t willing to put in any real effort to achieve it.

For them, Clueless Joe pointing out any success stories are merely oppression of the morons is music to their ears.

In this case, Clueless Joe is using his jawboning to preach to asses.

Classified document possessors would do well to co-opt the hashtag MeToo label.

First, it was Donald Trump, arguing about his right to possess classified documents and enduring an FBI raid at his Florida estate that, on a personnel scale, dwarfed the number of combatants sent to take down Bin Laden.

Then it was Clueless Joe Biden, whose lackeys dribbled out, months after the fact, admissions that the Clueless One had classified documents at one house.

And in a garage. And in an office. And . . .

“No regrets” said Clueless Joe with his usual arrogance, based on no real accomplishment.

Now Mike Pence, vice president under Trump, has entered the classified confessional and cried out Me, Too!

Someone ought to tell these guys holding classified documents outside legal limits is not cause for bragging.

It’s almost as though they just want the attention. As my cousin is fond of saying: “Beat me, bore me, but never ignore me.”

You are forgiven for wondering just who might be next to have their underlings confess that they, too, found classified documents among stacks of old newspapers and magazines – or wherever the next caches of purloined documents might be found.

There certainly are candidates to show up with classified material.

Start with any of those high level Ukrainian government officials who have resigned amidst allegations of widespread corruption.

You remember all those billions we’ve been sending to Ukraine, with minimal control of how the money is being spent? Well, now it seems it was going for expensive cars, mansions and luxury vacations for these governmental elites.

Bad look, especially when the war now seems to be going badly, with soldiers and citizens alike lamenting their deprived status. Yet, all the while, these governmental types have been living the A-list lifestyle.

Maybe some classified documents were among the money they purloined?

Closer to home, the scandal-plagued FBI has a fresh candidate to have classified information found in his home, car, storage unit or briefcase.

That would be former special agent Charles McGonigal, who was involved in the Trump Russiagate hoax, but now is charged with taking money – wait for it – from a Russian oligarch, that term an update on the robber baron label formerly applied to exploitative U.S. business leaders.

If, as alleged, McGonigal was taking money from the people he was supposed to be investigating, surely it might be possible some of the classified documents he handled for the FBI stuck to his sticky fingers.

We can hardly wait to awake tomorrow and see what fresh prominent name is revealed as having his or her hand caught in the classified cookie jar.

Victories inspired by emotion are a staple of sports lore.

The Win One For The Gipper speech by Notre Dame coach Knute Rockne in 1928, burned into the historic record by numerous written and movie recountings, likely is the most well-known example. The underdog Irish, inspired by the tale of Gipp on his death bed in 1920 wishing for an against-the-odds win in his name, rallied in the second half after Rockne’s talk to beat favored Army.

Yes, back in 1928 Army was a national power in college football.

But football doesn’t have a monopoly on such things. Recall stories of Herb Brooks and his motivational speech to his underdog U.S. hockey team in the 1980 Olympics (also recounted on film), or Willis Reed hobbling onto the court for Game 7 of the NBA Finals in 1970 despite a leg injury and inspiring his New York Knicks to a championship win over the Los Angeles Lakers.

I recall the time another sportswriter and I decided to take a betting stab at the USC-Cal game in 1977. Back then USC was college football royalty and Cal just tried to be competitive.

We went with USC and gave the points, only to be stunned when Cal beat the No. 10 Trojans. It turns out this was the Joe Roth Memorial Game, a tribute to the former Cal quarterback who had died with cancer in February 1977 after having played the previous season knowing he had terminal melanoma.

Score one for emotion.

But, for all those memorable times when emotion fueled teams and individuals to heights thought unlikely if not impossible, there are many more times when it all failed to produce the Hollywood ending.

I thought of this today as the Buffalo Bills lost badly to the Cincinnati Bengals in a snowy NFL playoff game played in Buffalo. It was these very same two teams who were playing a regular-season game a few weeks back when Bills player Damar Hamlin nearly died due to a cardiac event following a big hit. The game never finished.

Hamlin survived and likely will make a full recovery. His story has captivated the sporting world and how many times since the incident we have heard the Bills were going to win for Hamlin.

Hamlin was in a luxury suite at the stadium Sunday, and his presence was featured on the broadcast. Reportedly there was a pregame visit by Hamlin to the Bills locker room.

And yet the Bills lost in rather one-sided fashion. Inspiration was not evident.

The 1978 World Series comes to mind as another prominent example of emotion coming up short. Long-time Los Angeles Dodgers player and assistant coach Jim “Junior” Gilliam had died just before the World Series due to a brain hemorrhage.

Patches bearing Gilliam’s number 19 were on the Dodgers uniforms and after wins in the first two games, the dedication of the Series victory to Gilliam was being spoken of prominently.

The New York Yankees then won the next four games in succession and the Gilliam angle couldn’t change that.

Emotion and momentum are important to sports. But so is talent.

This recalls the corruption of a Bible verse, the spin on this having been attributed to various sources, including famous sportswriter Damon Runyon: “The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong; but that is the way to bet.”