John Blanchette

In his retirement, Jim Sweeney gazed out over the landscape of college football and saw it dotted with his coaching children. Dennis Erickson, Mike Price, Joe Tiller, Jeff Tedford – former players, former assistants, all sending four and five receivers out and chucking the ball with abandon, the horse Sweeney himself had changed to in the midstream of his career. “I’ve got all these disciples out there,” he noted, shifting into a faux regal air. “Wait, maybe you’d better call them apostles.”

Music and art appreciation long ago passed into the Gut Course Hall of Fame, and hereabouts, of course, there is Zag Appreciation. Not the day-to-day adoration and obsession of all things Gonzaga basketball, which can all be a little much. But the point in the senior year of nearly every Bulldog A-lister when his place in the big picture is fixed and he can be appraised for what he is and not for what was imagined for him, and it can be done outside the din and drama of March.

Confession: At the first mention of the “Catholic 7,” the reflexive question was, “When’s the trial date?” Now research has revealed that while rooted in a certain context of protest and revolution, the group is not an evolutionary incarnation of the Catonsville 9 or the original Chicago 8.

The beauty of administrative justice in sports? Investigator, prosecutor, judge, jury – they’re all the same person. Really cuts down on overhead.

The beauty of administrative justice in sports? Investigator, prosecutor, judge, jury – they’re all the same person. Really cuts down on overhead.

It’s National Gonzaga Day, as declared by the home office on the north bank of the Spokane. This is actually something of a misnomer, as there are related events occurring in places like Japan and Zambia, but “International Gonzaga Day” must have sounded too, well, showy.

Spokane’s last look at Jamelle Jones was brief and riveting, a college wrestling match that went from lifeless to wham-bam-slam in a flicker and made him a national champion, again. It was a moment that crackled with possibility, though maybe only Jones himself would see just what the possibilities were.

The Pac-12’s drawn-out inquiry into the sketchy, and in some cases already recanted, indictments that Washington State football is a chamber of horrors presided over by the Marquis de Leach is finished, and it’s a blockbuster.

PULLMAN – So that last 3-pointer: Did it get off in a time or not? Oh, sorry. That’s a call the officials didn’t have a chance to get wrong here Saturday night, but only because Lorenzo Romar believes in fouling in the closing seconds when up by three.

For entertainment purposes only, the godfathers of the NCAA’s Football Championship Subdivision might well regret that they don’t cast their title game by audition. But this is tournament football. Every aria, every cameo is earned.

For entertainment purposes only, the godfathers of the NCAA’s Football Championship Subdivision might well regret that they don’t cast their title game by audition.

The proximity of Eastern Washington’s two extended runs through the FCS playoffs naturally has invited comparisons of the 2010 national championship team to this year’s model. Most of them only mildly persuasive.

The drilling, the repetitions, the video sessions until the eyeballs bleed. The conditioning, the steamy August waltz in the weight room, the endless spring practices when the games seem so far off you can’t see them with the Hubble.

By the time Elle Tinkle checked into the game Sunday afternoon, her sister Joslyn had been on the floor for seven minutes and 21 sprints up and down the floor at McCarthey Athletic Center. To big sis, a breather sounded good.