Vacation over: Let’s talk sports

Yep, I’m back. Been gone a week, except for a random column on Tuesday (I owed Jenni Carlson a makeup day). I usually blog once or twice a day, even on vacation, but the gods were against me on this trip to Colorado. Shaky Internet at the cabin just this side of Wolf Creek. Backlog of assignments due for our special football preview, which will be published next Sunday and is going to be really cool; when I found the time to work, I had to jump on those assignments. And finally, the granddaughters. Rileybird and Sadiebird took up more of my time this year, and that’s a trade I’ll make every year.

But I’m back, and the twice-a-day blogs will start posting again Monday, but first, let me get some things straight on events while I was gone.

* The SEC played the lawyer card and declined to issue Texas A&M an invitation. Which is no big deal. Sometimes, the best marriages result when girl asks boy. The Aggies apparently have both feet out the door.

* ESPN’s Longhorn Network continues to challenge protocol and NCAA rules but also still hasn’t reached any appreciable cable distribution agreement. Which leads to the age-old question. If a cable channel falls in the forest, and there’s nobody there to actually watch it, does it still change the face of college football?

* Miami U.’s athletic department is in trouble. Booster (and convicted confidence man) Nevin Shapiro provided Yahoo! Sports with enough dirt to take down at least football and maybe everything. Shapiro could be the Miami Vice version of Sam Gilbert, the UCLA sugar daddy of the John Wooden era. One big difference. The Gilbert revelations barely tainted Wooden’s legacy. Rightly or wrongly, Wooden started from much higher ground than do the Hurricanes.

* On June 12, 1995, Sports Illustrated’s cover contained no photographs. Just some stark words: ”Why the University of Miami should drop football.”  Maybe this week’s SI cover could be even more succinct: “Told you so.”

* Someone named Keegan Bradley won the PGA Championship, which was the second biggest upset of the week. The biggest upset of the week? Keegan Bradley is not from Northern Ireland. Swear on a stack of Bibles.