John Blanchette

With oddsmakers casting them as 36 1/2-point underdogs, the Idaho Vandals’ season opener at Florida last Saturday was being dismissed as no contest well before kickoff. Now that’s what it is officially.

It took less than four hours for lightning and rain to wash out the University of Idaho’s football season opener at Florida on Saturday. Settling on a makeup date – or some other resolution – will stretch into at least a third day.

Vandals, Florida mull rescheduling options

Lightning, rain wash out Idaho football opener at Florida

SEATTLE – Nothing completes a sendoff quite like a plunge into the Famous Last Words file. The Washington State Cougars called it a wrap on their football donation to the SoDo amusementscape on Thursday night, gifting a 41-38 victory to reward Rutgers for a long trip west even as the game managed to achieve what few of the previous 11 stagings did.

Idaho's Florida connection jazzed to go home again

Chalich, Linehan to share QB duties in opener

A.J. Acosta bills himself as the “world’s fastest barista,” but it’s not because he’s breaking any records whipping up grande caramel macchiatos. It’s for how quickly he can cover a mile on the track, though he confessed that because he hasn’t “done a lot of research” and actually awarded himself the title, it’s strictly unofficial.

The miracle isn’t that Hoopfest took root in the cracks of downtown Spokane’s asphalt and grew into this mighty oak of participatory zeal. There is a flood of new kids on the block every year to see that the tournament is always well-irrigated, so there’s no mystery why it’s lasted 25 happy years. The mystery is how Dave Nelson has.

SEATTLE – The latest 18-year-old millionaire hit town Monday. No, he isn’t another apps prodigy, though you might not have been able to tell from the way he was – or wasn’t – getting around on batting practice fastballs. Alex Jackson, Seattle’s No. 1 pick in this month’s amateur draft, put his name to a $4 million deal, pulled on a No. 10 jersey, hopped in the cage and proceeded to Willie Mays Hayes about a dozen baseballs into the netting above his head. Then he grabbed a seat in the stands, zitzing any notion that his signing was green-lighted as another desperate stab at getting Felix Hernandez an actual run.

Jacob Dingfield took up distance running in the eighth grade, for the most pragmatic of reasons. “It was either that or football,” said the Medical Lake sophomore, “and I was too small for football.”

It is the age of the quarterback – if not the golden age, then certainly as common currency. Hucking and chucking of the football is a high art performed by studied sophisticates. High school quarterbacks transfer if their coaches don’t air it out enough. There are quarterback camps, gurus, combines, institutes and academies, and they’re booked wall-to-wall with middle-schoolers drifting off to sleep going through progressions in their heads.