John Blanchette

So the Arena Football League reinvented itself this year, with a new fiscal model that is (A) sane and prudent, if you’re an owner/investor, or (B) a full-time gig at hobby wages, if you’re a player. That new teams – or old, mothballed ones from the previous incarnation – already are signing on for next season suggests that somebody thinks the salary structure is the league’s salvation. But the question remains – can the AFL, with such limited payrolls, still attract the kind of talent that would unearth the next Kurt Warner?

Just me and the guy on the next barstool, finding something to complain about other than a pint going for 4 bucks: Me: Worst. Contest. Ever.

For every person who checks the standings before he heads to the Fairgrounds ballyard, 99 check the weather forecast. Actually, it’s more likely to be a 100-0 shutout. It’s just a fact of life in the low minors, where the yearly roster churn erodes the common baseball attachments to players and winning, and weighs the ballpark allure to other delights. As long as the turnstiles continue to move, all’s well.

So Robert “Bob” Kustra, the foreman at Boise State University, believes college football rivalries are meant to be civil, and that all involved are “to act like grownups.” I would have sworn these sentiments came from press release to announce that post-graduate degrees would now be offered in the prestigious BSU School of Alternate Realities, or that it was a preface to NCAA passing legislation subjecting college presidents to random drug testing.

The new guy hasn’t yet lived through a basketball season in Spokane when it’s all Gonzaga, all the time. But Donny Daniels is getting the idea. There are hints dropped every day – like having a reporter knocking on his office door in July, for instance.

It’s a stretch to say that the World Cup brought Hoopfest to a standstill. Maybe a slight pause. But while downtown eateries and saloons normally fill up around noon on a Hoopfest Saturday, they were a little extra jammed this year with televisions tuned to the knockout-round match between United States and Ghana.

Jurickson Profar is 17 years old, looks 12 and plays like he’s 22. Just ballpark figures. During the brief training camp of the Spokane Indians this week, the kid shortstop from Curacao emerged from a meeting of the position players with his glove perched on his head, a halogen-lamp smile and an air of “What’s not great about this?”

Disregarding the still-annoying ping of bats that are mined and smelted rather than chopped and lathed, college baseball has it all over the pros in one respect: labeling the starting rotation. Numbering pitchers 1 through 5 – in order of purported ability – is not just boring and dehumanizing, it courts failure on the back end. Nobody has any expectation of the No. 5 guy; why should he have any of himself?