While I paid attention to granddaughters who were sleeping over Thursday night, then watched the greatest show in sports — the Stanley Cup Playoffs — the NFL began yet another draft.

Once, I would have been riveted to the proceedings, partly due to my job and partly due to rabid interest. These days, the draft is an afterthought for me.

So much ink is spilled in anticipation of the annual talent infusion and so much is wrong. That extends to the teams, who spend untold amounts of money analyzing prospective players and miss about as often as they hit.

Instead of overdosing in speculation, I find it best just to wait until the regular season and see which teams helped themselves and which teams missed the boat.

If you think the NFL draft is an exact science, you haven’t been paying attention.

No position is scrutinized more closely than quarterback. Yet Tom Brady, arguably the greatest pro quarterback of all time, lasted into the sixth round, the 199^th player taken overall in the 2000 draft. Brady was the seventh quarterback drafted that year.

You tell me if that was a mistake.

More recently, Mark Purdy quarterbacked the San Francisco 49ers to the Super Bowl last season despite being the last pick of the 2022 draft. That distinction brings with it the tag Mr. Irrelevant.

You think some other teams might wish they had Purdy? He’s no Brady, but he’s done better than many players taken ahead of him in the draft.

The Steelers had a Mr. Irrelevant success story in Tyrone McGriff, the last player taken – 333^rd overall – in the 1980 draft.

McGriff, an offensive guard, started 10 games as a rookie and played with the Steelers for three seasons before moving to the 1983 USFL champion Michigan Panthers.

Again, no Brady, but surely deserving of a higher draft slot.

Here’s one more draft note from personal experience. In 1985 the Steelers drafted Wisconsin defensive end Darryl Sims, the so-called “Sack Man,” in the first round looking to beef up the pass rush.

In the second round, the Steelers tabbed hulking Nebraska offensive tackle Mark Behning, nicknamed Fort Behning. Yes, the actual Fort Benning was spelled differently and its name since has been changed in an ode to Wokeism because Benning was a Confederate general.

Regardless, Behning the football player was huge and thought to be impregnable when it came to protecting quarterbacks, hence the nickname.

Throughout early training camp, Sims and Behning often squared off in live contact sessions, with one of the pair getting the best of the other on any given snap.

Media types thought the Steelers had landed two keepers.

Then the games began and neither draft pick was particularly good. Both were gone in a few seasons.

Sims is perhaps most famous for missing time due to infected fingernails, and saying his favorite color was plaid.

Before we leave, the Steelers drafted Washington offensive lineman Troy Fautanu in the first round this time. For their sake, let’s pray he’s neither Sims nor Behning.

Late night television host Jay Leno’s shows used to have a recurring feature called JayWalking in which he went out to public settings and asked common people what should be basic questions. Much too often they failed miserably with answers such as the largest country in South America is Africa.

Or the Panama Canal is in the United States, named for the guy named Panama who built it.

I vividly recall one episode from a college commencement service in which the recent degree recipients produced such bon mots as the supposed astronomy major who thought the Sun revolved around the Earth.

The show audience chortled throughout, secure in the knowledge that these imbeciles were exceptions and not the best and brightest among us.

I admit to laughing then and I shouldn’t have, because these functional illiterates represented an unfortunate trend and now are everywhere – arguably the majority.

Allow me to recount some examples.

While watching the Boston-Toronto Stanley Cup Playoff hockey game Wednesday night, I was struck that neither the play-by-play guy nor the stereotypical former player providing insight from the between the benches was proficient in basic math.

Said the the ex-player, noting that it was a physical game with the teams having 48 and 41 hits, respectively, at that point in the game, “The next hit will put them at “100 for the game.”

Because I’m wired the way I am, I immediately yelled to no one in particular that he was wrong. I rewound the broadcast to check myself. Yep. The next hit would be a combined 90, not 100.

It got worse. Shortly thereafter, a graphic appeared on the screen, recounting total hits for each of the previous two games, along with the current contest’s total.

The play-by-play guy chimed in that the teams had combined for 200 hits in less than three complete games.

The total actually was much closer to 300 – 288 or so as I recall. Technically he wasn’t wrong, just understating.

It reminded me of a former editor who said writers always should strive to avoid mistakes, big or small, in their reports lest they come off as idiots writing for the Village Weekly by those tuned in enough to recognize the errors.

Back then, credibility was important to us.

These days, being uninformed or just plain wrong is no problem and in extreme examples is viewed as some sort of badge of honor.

On zerohedge.com this morning I was treated to a video of some sheep-like Hamas supporters at a protest. Said “student” protest was at New York University (NYU).

One protester, a ring in her nose and hair hanging annoying over her right eye, said she came to support Palestine and didn’t actually know what NYU had done that they were protesting. She professed to be from Columbia (presumably the university not Colombia the country) and just came down to protest because word had gotten out.

She then asked her companion, resplendent in this outdoor setting wearing a COVID-style black mask, what they were protesting specifically regarding NYU.

Admitting to terminal cluelessness on the subject, the masked one said, “I wish I was more educated.”

Chimed in nose ring person: “I’m not, either.”

And therein lies the problem. Packs of people are eager to get out and protest without any knowledge of underlying issues. Too often these protests escalate into violence from similarly uninformed types.

I’m reminded of advice given freely by my late paternal grandfather, who told us to make sure the brain was in gear before putting the mouth in motion.

The Feds are coming for Papa Sheetz.

It’s not because our favorite convenience store chain screwed up Clueless Joe’s order when he stopped at a Pittsburgh area Sheetz outlet last week. But, judging from the way this regime weaponizes the justice and intelligence operations to pursue political foes, it would not surprise.

No, this federal witch-hunt is because Sheetz chooses not to hire criminals. Specifically, two members of the protected class – with criminal records presumably – screamed discrimination when they weren’t hired on to the Sheetz empire.

Blacks, mixed race individuals, and assorted Native Americans were excluded at rates of 13 percent and above due to criminal records according to the Feds. Whites with criminal records supposedly were weeded out at a rate of just under 8 percent of applicants.

Understand, Sheetz is not accused of going out of its way to exclude non-whites as employees. But the Feds are involved because the Sheetz methodology is seen as disproportionately ruling out non-whites even if the intent is not racial discrimination.

I know what you’re thinking, avoiding hiring people with criminal backgrounds doesn’t seem to be that bad a policy. If a disproportionately high percentage of non-white applicants have criminal records, perhaps that speaks to a societal problem.

Social Justice warriors would claim non-whites are arrested more often by prejudiced cops, prosecuted more strenuously by a biased legal system and generally given an unfair experience in life.

Or, maybe the enablers would concede that the crime rate is greater among non-whites, but decry socio-economic conditions that make these minorities desperate due to lack of opportunity and therefore driven to commit crimes.

Another factor, one you won’t hear mentioned in polite company, is how the family structure in the non-white community is in tatters due to an abundance of hit-and-run fathers, irresponsible mothers and, consequently, people who are not the parents raising children. Think aunts and uncles, grandparents, cousins, etc.

Regardless, the persecution of Sheetz for not hiring criminals is a ridiculous governmental over-reach straight out of Ayn Rand’s classic “Atlas Shrugged,” in which clueless governmental types instituted the Anti-Dog-Eat-Dog rule to eliminate competition and thereby penalized efficient businesses to keep the inefficient businesses operating.

It’s a lengthy read, but worth your time to experience firsthand how this book, released in 1957, so accurately predicts the absurdly dystopian status we have reached with governments doing their best to handcuff private industry and generally strip away individual rights and freedoms.

Rand even had ridiculous show trials in her book, along the lines of Donald Trump being persecuted for a “fraud” in which no one was harmed, or a hush money payoff (think Bill Clinton paying Paula Jones $850,000 to drop a sexual harassment lawsuit) in which the apparent problem is that Trump considered the payoff a business expense.

Sheetz officials reportedly have been trying to work with the feds FOR EIGHT YEARS to come up with an equitable solution to the matter of not hiring criminals.

If they’ve been watching Trump’s situation, they should know better than to expect a fair shake from the feds.

Expect the Sheetz chain eventually to bow to the unlimited resources to harass that is our federal government, kiss the ring, and admit to having been selfishly blind to the impact on the minority community of not hiring those with criminal records.

The situation was summed up nicely in a post from Elon Musk, himself once a fair-haired child among the Woke crowd who has become a persona non grata with the leftists and the federal government they control due to Musk becoming a proponent of free speech.

Before his – or your – free speech is cut off entirely, Musk got off this bon mot: “You know The Joker is running things when the law-abiding are being prosecuted by the government for not hiring criminals!”

Have you ever noticed that leftists as a group are about the most intransigent people on the planet? Worse, they fail to recognize this trait in themselves and instead project it onto opponents in discussions.

I run into this often regarding politics. I’m a registered Republican and so am accused of being a doctrinaire fossil, unwilling, unable and unlikely to see the light as preached by leftists.

They, in turn, tend to view themselves as the soul of enlightenment, always making intelligent and informed choices based on facts.

Presumably, this would include the number the crazies rallying to support Hamas and chanting “death to America” on the streets of New York City earlier this week.

Or perhaps we should cite the leftists who are more likely to censor opposition than their counterparts on the right, or even opposition from their progressive ranks. Witness the recent actions at National Public Radio and an endless array of similar situations in which an individual has been ejected from the progressive mob for having the temerity to suggest the groupthink of the moment was not correct.

The topic of closed minds arose while my wife was visiting a friend Thursday, with the discussion turning to a local politician visiting the church Easter egg hunt my wife’s friend had organized and supervised.

A couple of church biddies, presumably on the political right, were outraged that this Democract showed up to hand out comic/coloring books to kids.

Pictures showed up on social media and the church hierarchy felt compelled to post they were not endorsing said politician.

Churches are supposed to be welcoming places, certainly for someone looking to be kind to the kids. But this guy was a Democrat, so no room at the inn, to borrow a Biblical reference.

Understand from this anecdote that I fully recognize some on the right suffer from terminal close-mindedness, too. It’s just not nearly as prevalent as it is among leftists.

Somehow, my name got dragged into the church discussion, as perhaps someone who as a Republican would be similarly hostile to the Democrat at the Easter egg hunt.

No, my wife said, for all my faults, I tend to vote for the person I perceive to be the best candidate. As noted here in the past, I can recite a litany of having voted for Democrats, including this guy.

Two active area Democrat officeholders I have voted for are Cambria County Commissioner Tom Chernisky and State Rep. Frank Burns.

In the past, when I would deign to try to educate leftist acquaintances on this philosophy of voting for the best candidate not for a party label, it was a fool’s errand. I’ve pretty much given up on that.

But, I do try to exhibit a degree of flexibility on issues beyond politics. Some people like dogs. Some like cats. I like them both.

As a car hobbyist, I am a Mustang guy. My first car was a Mustang and I’ve owned Mustangs for significant portions of my life, including two currently.

But I also wanted a C4 Corvette (Chevrolet, not Ford) and recently bought one. Flexibility.

A writer who once covered the Steelers for another newspaper, accompanied the media types and some team publicity people to a Polynesian restaurant in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., many years back. His order – a hot dog and French fries, with vanilla ice cream for dessert.

To borrow from the Seinfeld episode on being gay, “not that there’s anything wrong with that.” I just think sometimes it’s beneficial to branch out, push the envelope, and, when at a Polynesian restaurant, try some of the specialties.

Ralph Waldo Emerson put it best when he wrote: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.”

Leftists, in particular, should take note.

The whining about how little Caitlin Clark will earn on her WNBA contract reached the “Fast Money” financial show I watch nightly on CNBC, with the stereotypical outrage being expressed at her relatively low contract numbers.

Clark is the Goddess of women’s basketball, the all-time leading college hoops scorer, man or woman, with 3,685 points, surpassing the legendary ‘Pistol” Pete Maravich.

Clark has brought unprecedented interest to the women’s game, with the women’s championship contest even outdrawing the men’s title contest in terms of TV ratings.

Oh, Clark’s Iowa team still lost to South Carolina in the national championship game, 87-75, despite her 30 points.

Clark has gone on to be the No. 1 overall pick in the WNBA draft and has signed a four-year contract worth a total of $338,056 with the Indiana Fever, which sounds more like a disease than a professional sports franchise.

The outrage being expressed centers on noting that the first overall pick in the past NBA draft signed a four-year deal worth $55 million.

The easy solution would seem to be just have Clark try out for an NBA team and use her abundance of talents to make a roster there. The NBA minimum salary is a bit more than $1 million.

Problem solved.

Failing that, before you feel too sorry for Clark, understand she’s already a millionaire based on NIL (name, image and likeness) revenue, the bastardization of college sports that allows so-called “amateur” athletes to benefit from endorsement deals while still performing for their college teams.

Disgust with what NIL and the transfer portal are doing to college sports was among the reasons legendary Alabama football coach Nick Saban said influenced his decision to retire.

Even while Clark was firing up shots from every angle for good, old, Iowa, she had NIL deals worth $3.1 million as estimated by the financial folks at Dow Jones News Wires. Admittedly, it’s not $55 million, but is a lot more than $338,000 and change.

This would put Clark well into the top 1 percent of earners we all are supposed to envy and despise.

But the NIL money is given short shrift in the outrage reports. Doesn’t fit the narrative.

Predictably, Clueless Joe Biden took to social media to support equal pay in sports. Of course, Biden would do anything to deflect attention from our porous borders, persistent inflation, his troubled son Biden, the bleak situation in Ukraine, etc., etc., etc., and to buy votes.

Get your student loan forgiveness here. How about a GoFundMe for Caitlin?

And Joe doesn’t have a problem with trans guys being girls and dominating women’s sports, a curious contradiction in his professed push for fairness between men and women.

Interestingly, the public whining about pay mirrors Clark’s career, something of which I was unaware until lately. An internet search for “Caitlin Clark whining” brings up a TikTok post with 65.1 million views, and, unexpectedly, among other citations, a post on psycho-cybernetics.com by a self-professed Iowa alum who is “not a fan of her whining and complaining.”

Wanting to see what all the excitement was about, I had watched an Iowa game in the NCAA tournament. In just a few minutes, I saw Clark twice commit turnovers, miss three of four shots and generally be less than anticipated.

Just a bad day, I presume.

But, looking at the complete box score for the championship game loss to South Carolina, I saw Clark hit just 10 of 28 shots from the field, a tick under 36 percent. The remainder of her team was good on 15 of 35 shot attempts, a tick under 43 percent. Hmmmm.

It seems Clark, like Maravich, never met a shot she wouldn’t take.

In researching this blog post, I found a humorous story about Maravich and Larry Bird from Bird’s rookie season with the Boston Celtics.

The tale, as relayed by their teammate at the time, Cedric “Cornbread” Maxwell, was that the veteran Maravich chastised Bird for forcing up a shot while being double-teamed.

Shot back Bird, “If you were any damn good, they wouldn’t be double-teaming me”

Like the Blanche DuBois character in the play “A Streetcar Named Desire,” the Penguins find themselves depending on the kindness of strangers, at least as far as their Stanley Cup playoff hopes are concerned.

Ironically, DuBois speaks the line “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers” to the doctor who arrives to take her to a mental institution, ostensibly to have a lobotomy.

Considering the rabid nature of too many Penguins fans – one of whom once offered to let me cut off his leg in lieu of money if he lost a bet he wanted to make with me on the Penguins – a failure again to reach the playoffs might crowd area psych wards.

Washington and Detroit each enter NHL play tonight with 89 points, tied for the second and final wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference, although Washington is ahead on a tiebreaker. The Penguins are a point back at 88 points. All three teams have one game remaining.

The kindness of strangers referred to earlier entails depending on other teams to beat playoff rivals.

Specifically, the Penguins need both Philadelphia to defeat Washington and Montreal to down Detroit Tuesday night to give meaning to the Penguins’ season finale Wednesday night vs. the New York Islanders.

The Penguins and their supporters had to watch helplessly as Washington buckled down defensively and beat the Boston Bruins 2-0 Monday, a 1-0 game until a last-minute, empty-net goal provided a misleading final margin. Boston had beaten the Penguins 6-4 over the past weekend.

Even more painful emotionally for Penguins interests, Montreal had jumped on Detroit 4-1 Monday. But the Red Wings rallied to tie the game late in regulation and win, 5-4, even later in overtime.

The Penguins recently had blown a two-goal late lead vs. the Red Wings and the point Detroit salvaged by losing in overtime makes part of our current drama possible.

Philadelphia at 87 points also technically is alive in the wild-card chase, but needs a lot of stuff to happen to get into the playoffs, beginning with beating Washington tonight in regulation.

If either Washington or Detroit wins tonight, the Penguins cannot make the playoffs, despite a heroic rally from being 10 points out a playoff spot on March 4 and going 8-1-3 in the past 12 games.

Penguins fans suffered playoff trauma about this time last year, ending a 16-season playoff run by losing, inexplicably, at home, to the largely hapless Chicago Blackhawks.

It would be ironic in the extreme if both Washington and Detroit lost, but the Penguins came up short vs. the Islanders Wednesday. By the way, the Islanders figure to be less than motivated having clinched their playoff seeding. They might rest some key players, and other players might not be as interested in giving 100 percent as they would be were there something to be gained. That should be a huge advantage for the Penguins.

The people at moneypuck.com give Washington a 42.8 percent shot at making the playoffs. Detroit is next at 36.8 percent. The Penguins are rated at 14.6 percent and the Flyers, 5.9.

Let’s drop the puck and find out.

The federal income tax filing deadline looms Monday, prompting a look at just how the government is spending all of our tax dollars.

Data from the U.S. Bureau of the Fiscal Service, for the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 2023, is both informative and scary.

According to the fiscal services people, the leading claim on tax dollars is Social Security, at .22 of every dollar.

Medicare, also largely an expense for the aging, is in a tie for second place at .14 of each tax dollar. The other category coming in at 14 cents per dollar is a catch-all labeled health. Mostly, that is federal money funneled to states to support Medicaid, which is medical care for low income people – increasingly illegal immigrants!

So, between Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, we’re up to about half of every tax dollar being spent.

Much-maligned national defense comes in at 13 percent, along with another vague category entitled “income security.” And that “income security” would include, according to the story, such things as unemployment compensation, nutrition assistance and housing assistance.

By now, if you’ve been paying attention you probably have some questions, just as I do.

Workers have Social Security tax collected from their paychecks and their employers pay a matching amount. Supposedly, the money is invested in special treasury bonds, which pay interest. In effect this is the government lending out retirement funds to itself.

Is that 22 cents of annual cost out of each tax dollar to fund Social Security above and beyond all the revenue collected?

This is a significant point because as recently as March of this year the government issued a financial report putting unfunded future obligations to pay Social Security and Medicare at $73.2 trillion. That’s money that must be borrowed and you wonder why the programs have been allowed to fall so far into arrears.

Similarly contradictory is the income security category. Employees and employers pay into unemployment funds. If those contributions are even close to paying the bills, apparently they are overwhelmed by handouts such as Section 8 housing vouchers and SNAP food programs. Flooding the country with illegal immigrants only worsens this problem, too.

Denver just reported it won’t be filling job vacancies and otherwise failing to deliver accustomed services in order to have money to divert to funding illegal immigrants.

There was a boob who once wrote a vanity column for the local paper. Call her Sister Moonbeam. She cobbled up a figure of illegal immigrants paying billions of dollars in taxes and so deserving benefits.

Like most of her ilk, she was short on details, such as how exactly she documented that figure since illegals, by definition, are operating under the radar and won’t have things such as Social Security cards, won’t be on the record of employers’ books, and won’t file tax returns.

Illegals are a large, and growing, expense for a nation already living too far beyond its means. If this country were an individual it already would be in bankruptcy proceedings.

The report of how tax dollars are spent measures interest expense at .11 of each tax dollar, but doesn’t note that we are borrowing an ever increasing amount of money to fund federal spending and that figure only stands to increase.

The Bipartisan Policy Center reports the federal deficit for the month of March was $236 billion. So far in the current fiscal year, which began Oct. 1, 2023, our cumulative federal budget deficit is $1.1 trillion.

We’re in a financial hole as a nation that we never can escape, short of hyperinflating the money so the debts can be repaid in virtually worthless dollars. And every day, we dig the hole that much deeper.

Pay your taxes with a smile. Remember, Uncle Sam desperately needs the money and there are millions of illegal immigrants depending on you.

Back in my days as a sportswriter covering the Pittsburgh Steelers, aspiring players in training camp who eventually got cut often were told the decision was a “numbers game.”

The implied message was that while they were skilled and competent, they played a position at which the team was overstocked and hence fell victim because one roster only can include so many defensive tackles, or running backs, or cornerbacks, or whatever.

The actual message was that in the meritocracy of professional football, if this player had been good enough, someone else would have been sent packing with the numbers game explanation. But the numbers game story helped take the sting out of being cut.

These days, the numbers game has become a favorite tool of the current Biden regime to manipulate, obfuscate and otherwise render virtually useless the periodic data dumps, particularly economic-related items.

Let’s look at some recent numbers.

3.2– The February 12-month total consumer price index inflation rate as a percentage increase.

3.5– The March CPI 12-month total rate announced Wednesday as a percentage, an unhappy increase in inflation rate.

422 – The number of points the Dow Jones Industrial Average tanked Wednesday in the wake of the CPI release.

2.1 — The Thursday Producer Price Index rate increase for the past 12 months as a percentage.

2.2 — The anticipated 12-month PPI increase.

6.3 — The actual increase in gasoline prices as a percentage.

Minus-3.6 – The “seasonally adjusted” decline in gasoline prices that helped produce the 2.1 reported figure, just under 2.2 expectations.

271.84 – The point increase in the NASDAQ Thursday, to an all-time high of 16,442.20, based on optimism over positive (if only due to statistical chicanery) inflation news.

13 – The percentage-point jump in electricity bills in January from California’s Pacific Gas And Electric.

12,000-plus – The value in dollars of pork stolen earlier this week from a truck parked at a suburban Philadelphia truck stop while the driver slept.

10,771 – Futures prices per ton for cocoa, a record high, recorded Thursday morning for the vital chocolate ingredient.

0 – The amount of faith you should put in government economic statistics.

A young lady stopped by the house Wednesday stumping for Frank Burns and caught up with me sitting on the front porch.

I was taking a break from digging a grave for a neighbor’s dog and was in the mood to vent about the sad state of affairs locally. She listened and it turns out that despite an obvious monstrous gap in age, we tended to agree.

Such revelations are heartening, because too often I find that interactions with members of younger generations leave me wondering what planet they might call home.

Bottom line, I’m a registered Republican, but have voted for the Democrat Burns in the past for state representative and will continue to do so. I assured her as much.

I liken Burns to Donald Trump in that both his party and the opposing party seem aligned to defeat him for having had the temerity to challenge special interests. The biggest sin on Burns’ record is going against those vested interests to expose the behind-the-scenes machinations of the Myopia 2025 people to bring Afghan refugees to the area.

The fact that Myopia 2025 thought this sort of thing had to be done in secret reminded me of a favored maxim of my late mother, that being if you are afraid to do something openly, probably you shouldn’t be doing it.

Myopia 2025 is an arm of the elite swamp that runs our area, a band whose power base is the countless charities, foundations, non-profits, not-for-profits and general beggars that dominate the area scene. They seek donations, private or public, and redistribute them to maximum political benefit.

Extremely high salaries are paid to the lords of these organizations, rates of pay not in keeping with the charitable theme.

These well-heeled types subsidizing their lifestyles by shaking the begging bowl rubs me the wrong way.

Operating in secret, based on the belief that area common folk are just too stupid to know what’s good for them, similarly bothers me.

So does having the local news media running interference for it all. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that the former publisher of the Johnstown newspaper left to work for Myopia 2025.

The Republican opposition for Burns is a former media member.

Hmmmmm.

Bless Burns for doing something about the attempted Afghan invasion. He’s done more, according to the handout door-hanger card the young lady left with me, and I know he has from the public record.

Yet I am bombarded with messages in the mail from Republican-supporting organizations painting Burns as a do-nothing layabout who doesn’t show up for work and gets nothing done. The ridiculous hyperbole is entertaining in a sad way.

Projection, perhaps?

While many Woke acquaintances of mine indulge in orgies of self-congratulation over studying elections and voting for the best candidate, I’ve yet to have one give me a concrete example of voting for a Republican for significant office.

On the other hand, I have voted for the late John Murtha multiple times for the U.S. House, for former Pa. Governor Ed Rendell on his first run, for Cambria County Commissioner Tom Chernisky, for Burns, etc., etc., etc.

I will not be voting for Burns’ Republican opponent based on blind party faith, nor should you.

The Republican Party organization, locally and nationally, has been a raging disappointment.

I’m hoping (praying) Ronna McDaniel being out as chairman of the Republican National Committee and Lara Trump in as a co-chair will be positive move.

There are enough Democrats worthy of demonization for the Republican operation to target. Wasting time trying to punish Burns for going against the elites is a bad look — for Republicans and Democrats alike.

The NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament concludes tonight or, as one coach christened it, the UConn Invitational.

And the UConn Huskies are seven-point favorites to win it all for the second consecutive season, with a significantly fresh cast of characters.

Standing in the way is Purdue, a serial tournament disappointer in the recent past that finally made it to the title game.

I’m thinking the seven points is not nearly enough to tempt me to back Purdue in this game.

The Boilermakers’ guard play, particularly at the point, stunk in a semifinal win over Cinderella story North Carolina State. The glass slippers finally turned to pumpkins for that No. 11 seed. It was as much a case of NC State blowing the game as Purdue winning it.

UConn was kept close by Alabama going into the second half of the other semifinal, but eventually won going away.

The Huskies’ edge in guard play vs. Purdue is immense. They have the size on the front line to match up with Purdue and 7-foot-4 center Zach Edey.

It’s possible Purdue could win, just incredibly unlikely.

I figure I will watch at the start, hoping to be proved wrong by Purdue. But, my hand will be on the remote to seek out alternative viewing if and when UConn begins to take control.

Lest you consider risking cash money on any of this thinking, understand that my best bracket in the CBS challenge ranked 308,000 and change out of I don’t know how many entries. I did somehow have Alabama and Purdue in the Final Four and had Purdue advancing to the title game, even winning there. But . . . I’d change that in a heartbeat now.