John Blanchette

It’s a big month for Tiara Brown. The Florida-born, D.C-based fighter will be back in Spokane next week to defend her featherweight championship in the 2015 USA Boxing Elite National Championships. At tournament’s end, she’ll “retire” to reinvent herself as a lightweight for a year-long mission to make the 2016 U.S. Olympic team – the Olympics having no room for her weight class in their indefensibly abridged program for females, despite the pleas and politicking of Brown and others in the same boat.

SEATTLE – More seismic activity at CenturyLink Field on Saturday night. No shattered windows, though. No cracks in the concrete. No towers toppled. But then, in the singular tectonics of planet Seahawks, the shock and shudder from Kam Chancellor’s impact registers well below the surface.

The sign – lovingly made and prominently displayed Thursday night at McCarthey Athletic Center – read, “Pangos 4 President.” Not sure what that was all about – this not being an election year, the candidate lacking the requisite citizenship and his approval ratings being far too high for serious consideration anyway.

The life-sized Randy Johnson growth charts that were once prized Kingdome giveaways have been peeled off closet doors, the kids who once measured themselves beside his image having long ago topped out. Just not at 6-foot-10. One old poster would be the perfect tchotchke for the Baseball Hall of Fame – the wrinkles and torn edges and notches in ink every half inch or so proving a real player-to-fan connection that can’t be captured in soulless bronze.

The staggered start of college basketball’s conference schedules is upon us, much to the relief of Big Five or Big Six conferences – however many of them there are and whatever they’re calling themselves these days. Relief, because now they can go back to losing to one another without any particular loss of face.

SEATTLE – About the time the first strains of “It’s a Holly, Jolly Christmas” were heard over department store Muzak, the Seattle Seahawks were 6-4, three games out of first place in their division and discounted, if not dismissed. Today?

The fan had crumpled at the bottom of the steps that bisect sections D and E of the main grandstand at Roos Field, and almost instantly everything stopped. The game. The scoreboard clock. The noise for a comeback by the home team that still seemed halfway possible, and the slow leave-taking of those who had reluctantly given up on that possibility.

No one was calling it the Lame Duck Bowl because, well, you don’t say that about retirees – or about a guy whose future’s so bright he has to wear shades, even on a stony gray day. Still, there is every chance that the next time Eastern Washington and Montana meet on the football field, someone new could be in charge on each sideline.

We interrupt college football – championships being pursued, scapegoats being fired, coaching raids in broad daylight and the dead of night – for the best game of the weekend. Maybe. No guarantees.

We interrupt college football – championships being pursued, scapegoats being fired, coaching raids in broad daylight and the dead of night – for the best game of the weekend.

A late-night infomercial between reruns on Pac-12 Networks. A white erase board is the backdrop, showing plays diagrammed in X’s and O’s.

Is Chalich in or out? Don't ask the coach

SEATTLE – The grunt work of Armageddon Cup week – Apple Cup, sorry – is bringing the noobs up to speed. Like Chris Petersen.

SEATTLE – The grunt work of Armageddon Cup week – Apple Cup, sorry – is bringing the noobs up to speed. Like Chris Petersen.

SEATTLE – The week started for the Seattle Seahawks with Marshawn Lynch returning some poor fool’s lost wallet, and ended with a new team shibboleth. “Why not us?” is now “I love you, man.”

Pro tip for the Kennel Club: Kids, when there’s a 74-year-old Naismith Hall of Famer on the visiting bench, the proper etiquette is, “Sit down, Mr. Brown!”

Idaho Vandals hit rock bottom in loss to Troy