Cruising around the sports universe

Notes and quotes while feeling amazed that it’s Valentine’s Day, and baseball is already upon us.

A lot of players have reported early for spring training, and the whole shebang begins officially at the end of the month.

Didn’t the Cubs just win the World Series, like, two or three weeks ago?

IT WAS really interesting how Idaho coach Paul Petrino outlined the ways you can maneuver to stretch scholarships and make your 65 more valuable once the school drops to the FCS in 2018.

Great plan, but does anyone believe that Petrino will be around to juggle those numbers in the Big Sky?

Nah.

Idaho always has been a jumping-off point for coaches on their way up – think John L. Smith, Dennis Erickson, etc. - and now that Petrino has taken the program from some bottomless pit to a bowl game in just four years, he will be in demand at bigger schools.

Petrino has enough talent to log another winning season this fall, and then it will be sayonara.

It’s actually a bit of a surprise that he hasn’t moved already.

Plenty of BCS programs could use Petrino, and one of them will put money on the table in the near future.

SO THE undefeated Zags were handed the fourth No. 1 seed in early voting by the committee that will determine the field for the NCAA tournament.

The announcement came before Gonzaga ignored the usual hostile crowd at St. Mary’s and dispatched the No. 22 Gaels with all-business efficiency.

I doubt that result would have changed anything, though.

The committee is in love with defending champion Villanova – for good reason – and Nova will get the top seed unless there is some stumbling down the stretch.

Gonzaga could grab the third No. 1 seed, however, since Kansas and Baylor have to duke it out for the Big 12 title and the loser could fall to the last spot on the top line.

And then you have the ACC.

Only once in the past 11 seasons has there been a tournament without an ACC team as a No. 1 seed.

If the Big 12 runner-up loses a couple of times in that slugfest conference, you easily could see Villanova, the Big 12 winner (I’m guessing Kansas, out of habit), Gonzaga and the ACC champ filling out the No. 1 seed line.

My question: Why are they bothering to announce “possible seeds” this early in the process?

Simple promotion to pump up the tournament, I guess.

I TRULY wonder if Wazzu coach Mike Leach experienced a sense of déjà vu while watching the Super Bowl.

A recurring weakness of many Leach teams and his “Air Raid” offense is that even when they’re scoring points, they do it in a hurry.

When they don’t score, it’s just as quick.

In other words, the defense is on the field for what seems like forever.

That’s what happened to Atlanta in the Super Bowl collapse. The Falcons, despite scoring plenty of early points, never had the ball very long.

With all due respect to Brady and Co., anybody could have cut that Falcons defense to pieces down the stretch – because those guys were thoroughly gassed.

No pass rush, arm tackles, defensive backs a step slow on every play – that was a classic case of a team that hit the wall on defense.

It’s a horrible sensation that Leach has experienced too many times.

And by the way, the same thing happened to mighty Alabama in the college title game, as Clemson ran an astonishing 99 plays from scrimmage.

In the words of the legendary Vince Lombardi: “Fatigue makes cowards of us all.”

Steve Cameron is a special assignment reporter for The Press. He has covered sports at all levels for more than three decades. Reach Steve at [email protected].