John Blanchette

It is coming up on 27 years now since the best of all Boston Marathons, the extraordinary “Duel in the Sun” in which Alberto Salazar willed himself ahead of Dick Beardsley at the finish line – 26 miles decided by 2 narrow seconds. Our sprinters weren’t that close to Usain Bolt in the Beijing 100 meters.

The Junior Beleaguerers have retreated for cover, to re-emerge with their told-you-sos whenever he makes his first trip to the disabled list or scuffles through a .215 April. And they’ll be entitled.

If this is February, then the Gonzaga votary must be aggrieved that the objects of his devotion aren’t 50 points better than the Little Dons of the Poor, if not pitching a shutout. If this is February, Mark Few must be lamenting the outsized mandate under which his program labors.

The one undeniable positive should Ken Griffey Jr. return to the Seattle Mariners is the way it will pucker the backside of Howard Lincoln. The cult of Junior made the starched Mariners CEO absolutely crazy … as did the Cult of Lou, the quick-draw mouth of Jeff Nelson and any other baseball employee who didn’t blend into the bland. “You can’t have prima donnas,” Lincoln once famously intoned about the Stepford Mariners as he doled out merit badges and toyed with changing the uniform color to beige.

In the roil of rationalizations after the NCAA fired a cannonball through the mainsail of Eastern Washington University’s football program Wednesday swam a goodly number of putative victims. The football coach who was trying to do the right thing but was overwhelmed because of too little administrative help, no compliance officer, too much turnover at the top. The extra coaches who put Eastern in violation even though they may have made only $5,000 and held down other gigs to pay the rent. The waves of academic non-qualifiers Eastern welcomes into its program yet obviously has difficulty accounting for and their need for this oasis of opportunity – since they didn’t, you know, study in high school. Eastern itself and by extension Washington State, where the football coach works now – two more small fry corralled by NCAA gumshoes who lack the courage to bust USC and Reggie Bush.

The 2009 football season won’t go into overtime at Eastern Washington University. Citing ineffective rules compliance and former head coach Paul Wulff’s “inattention to certain aspects of his program,” the National Collegiate Athletic Association on Wednesday affirmed a number of penalties the Eagles had self-imposed for violations and hit them with a bigger one – a one-year ban from postseason play.

The shame of Alex Rodriguez’s soulless mea pee-in-a-culpa Monday – or one shame, since there is so much to go around – is that he spilled it (sorry) for Peter Gammons on ESPN. This would have been a home run on “The Colbert Report.”

In the dreadful aftermath of his team losing the national championship last April by self-inflicted wound, a text message showed up on the phone of Memphis basketball coach John Calipari. The sender was Gonzaga’s Mark Few. The message, boiled down, was something along the lines of, “Hey, you won that game.”

Lost in the academic hand-wringing and presidential apology at the University of Idaho this week over assorted vulgarities perpetuated by students and others at the recent basketball cotillion with Boise State was a bulletin of Richter magnitude. There were fans at a Vandals game?

Paul Hornung and Gale Sayers share assorted memories and stories, membership in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, an agent, 40-year-old aches and duties as the featured guests at Sunday’s Super Bowl festivities at the Northern Quest Casino. They also shared a brilliant afternoon of one-upmanship.

Cards on the table: Gonzaga didn’t beat the Saint Mary’s JVs Thursday night. But even the hyper manic Kennel Club lost some of its juice when the Gaels’ Patrick Mills came out of the locker room at halftime with an icebag balanced on his right wrist.

Sheesh, these Games of the Century sure come around fast. Not even 11 months have passed since the West Coast Conference staged its previous one. Now we could be looking at another in two weeks.

Not quite a year ago, as Spokane and Tri-City engaged in their slippery debate as to which was the best team in the Western Hockey League, Americans coach Don Nachbaur noted an appreciated evolution in a rivalry now two decades old. “Now it’s more about skill and passion for the game,” he said.

PULLMAN – Manning the tiller, Tony Bennett will not pick a wave and navigate by that, knowing it’s merely a passage to being lost at sea. Or how is it that he put it Thursday night?

It is neither fair nor correct to suggest that what’s happened to Eastern Washington’s 2009 basketball season is subtraction by addition. But something isn’t adding up.

The score crawled across the bottom of TV screens from Ocosta to Ocala, followed by the inevitable chorus. “That’s Gonzaga,” they said, “in that soft-touch league of theirs.”

The Western Hockey League’s trade deadline came and went at 2 p.m. Saturday, and it likely will come as a disappointment to the vocal legion that clamored for the Spokane Chiefs to swing the big deal. Swapping this season for last.