GETTING BACK INTO THE GROOVE

It has been quite a while since I have added to my blog listings.

I have both reasons, and excuses, for that.

My car reviews now mostly appear at examiner.com, which prefers that I not duplicate the review that appears there on my own blog. I guess I could write something else about the same car, and post other pictures, and maybe I will at times.

That’s a reason.

My excuse is that I have been having to spend a lot of my time on my other regular freelance outlet writing reports about teams for the upcoming college football season. Nine were due last Sunday, and they asked me to do a couple of others that had fallen through the cracks.

If you like college football, here are some things I have picked up in my research:

-- Though picked to win the Big 12, Oklahoma will begin the season with only one wide receiver who has caught a pass at the collegiate level, unless one or more of a suspended trio is reinstated.

-- Miami begins the season still waiting to hear from the NCAA about possible penalties, which may not be as bad as commonly believed. Much of the latest story about recruiting irregularities is based on one iffy source and an anonymous tipster identified as a former employee. Think he may have a motive to put things in an unfavorable light?

-- Florida International is a program on the rise.

-- Florida Atlantic is not.

There is other stuff about other teams as well, but if you care about any of these teams or others, you can look it up yourself and I won’t waste your time here.

Speaking of college football, you may have noticed that Penn State has been in the news recently.

I have two things to say about the penalties that the NCAA levied against the school’s football program as a result of the investigation into the child sexual abuse charges involving a former assistant coach.

No. 1 is that I although I may not agree with all the penalties, I do respect that by taking action, NCAA president Mark Emmert showed leadership and firmness that has been lacking in the past.

No. 2, the part of the penalties I don’t agree with is the four-year bowl ban.

That’s because the ban affects people -- mostly present coaches and players -- who are no longer with the program.

Outsiders may look at the bowl ban as a penalty against the institution, but it’s not like you are penalizing, say, a company for illegal trade practices. The relationship between a university and its athletic teams is different from that. The NCAA is making some innocent people the price for the sins of their predecessors.

One more thing: The NCAA in levying the penalties ruled that players may transfer to any school and be eligible this fall instead of sitting out the mandatory one year as required under the rules, and a couple have taken them up on that. But doesn’t that go against the concept of the student-athlete, emphasis on the student part?

If the participants are students first, then athletes, then they supposedly are at Penn State to get their education there. You can say that’s naive on my part, but it’s not me that calls them student-athletes. It’s the NCAA.