Fast Break
NFL
Former Cougar back on field
Rien Long eagerly pulls the bandage off his right ankle and runs his finger over the purple skin surrounding the 3-inch sliver on the back of his leg.
He can’t feel the skin around the hole that was once so open the Tennessee Titans defensive tackle could see his Achilles tendon as if he were looking at a biology book.
Yet Long smiles now. Doctors cleared him Wednesday for limited drills and coach Jeff Fisher expects him to be fully ready for training camp in late July.
It’s been a long time coming after Long went from a promising veteran pass rusher to someone surviving two surgeries and a staph infection that nearly cost him his foot during the 2006 season.
“They didn’t tell me to begin with (about the staph infection), but 24 hours after they were like, ‘It could’ve gone down a different road.’ We could’ve been talking about something else, or I might be missing a foot,” Long said.
“Luckily, it didn’t go down there. It just ate up all my skin. Luckily, I have more skin because I happen to be a big man.”
Long won the Outland Trophy as a junior at Washington State in 2002.
Basketball
Stuckey invited to NBA draft
Eastern Washington basketball star Rodney Stuckey, who decided to enter the NBA draft after his sophomore season, has been invited by the league to attend the draft in New York on Thursday.
That honor generally goes to players expected to be high draft choices. Stuckey has been projected going as high as No. 11 but generally in the 15-23 range.
According to a spokesman for his agent, Stuckey has, or has had, workouts with Phoenix, the Los Angeles Clippers, Detroit, Sacramento and Atlanta.
High schools
Court rules on recruiting
Friday night lights are lure enough for young football players, the Supreme Court said Thursday in a decision that upholds limits on high school sports recruiting.
The high court ruled in a dispute between a Tennessee athletic association and a football powerhouse, the private Brentwood Academy near Nashville.
The school challenged a rule of the Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association, which governs high school sports in the state. The association bars schools from contacting prospective students about their sports programs.
Games have rules, wrote Justice John Paul Stevens in the unanimous decision. “It is only fair that Brentwood follow them.”
The dispute arose from a letter that Brentwood’s football coach sent to a dozen eighth-graders in 1997, inviting them to attend spring training at the school.