A GRIP ON SPORTS • A weekend in late July. It’s more than 90 degrees outside. Are these the proverbial “dog days of summer?” Read on.

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• Yes they are. If you’re referring to sports stories to catch up on. Even being dogged in pursuit of said stories doesn’t yield a lot. But it’s about to end. Sort of. The PGA Championship finishes up the major golf season this week. The Olympics begin soon. Baseball has its non-waiver trade deadline and then the pennant races really start. But even more important is the NFL opens training camps. And the colleges are right behind. The pros start today, actually, and most colleges will be in camp the first week of August. So our long national nightmare – weeks and weeks without football – is about to be over. It’s about time. Maybe, just maybe, football news will kick political talk out the back door. I’m sure if Karl Marx were around today, he would call football the opiate of the people. And he would probably be right, worldwide. It’s just two different sports. But it also gets us through the long cold days of late fall and early winter – at least here in the U.S. (And, to a lesser degree, the next few weeks.) There is nothing wrong with that. If your team is playing well, spending Monday through Friday looking forward to Saturday and/or Sunday is better than concentrating on work. Isn’t it? Think about how hard it would be to put together Lumbergh’s freaking TPS report or rake the mountain of leaves without football to fantasize about or listen to. It might be downright impossible come mid-October. But football has been the one constant through the years, Ray. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a whiteboard, rebuilt and erased again. But football has marked the time in 10-yard increments. As George Carlin once said, football is a 20th century technological struggle that begins in the fall, when everything is dying. But it gives all of us life when we need it. The days may be hot now, but as the weeks and months roll on, the weather will turn nasty. It will be nigh on impossible to get through the work week. We will though. We will have the weekend’s football games to look forward to. To argue about. To contemplate. Doggone it, that’s great. 

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• WSU: Speaking of football, the Cougars begin preseason camp next week in Lewiston. Luke Falk will be in control of the offense, of course. He’s pretty darn good at it. ... California will open with Hawaii in Australia the end of August. There is a reason for that. About a million reasons, actually. ... Utah’s basketball program would like a little quiet for a while.

• Gonzaga: So BYU is trying to get into the Big 12 – at least for football. And the school is “willing” to leave its other sports where they are now. As this Salt Lake City columnist calls it, the other sports would be “stuck in the WCC.” That must sound great to other WCC schools.

• Idaho: A Vandal soccer assistant has earned a promotion.

• Indians: There is no hotter team in the Northwest League than the Everett AquaSox. They won their season-high fifth consecutive game last night and it came at the expense of Spokane. Josh Horton has the game story from Everett’s 3-1 win at Avista Stadium along with a notebook on the blog. ... Host Boise rallied from a five-run deficit and defeated Eugene 8-7.

• Volleyball: The area’s biggest recreational volleyball tournament is this weekend. It’s the 25th year of Spike and Dig. Tom Clouse has this advance.

• Mariners: The last couple games haven’t been good one for the M’s pitching staff. After getting blown out in the Pittsburgh getaway game, Seattle lost 12-1 yesterday in the series opener at Wrigley. ... Guillermo Heredia was called up in time for the game and made his major-league debut.

• Seahawks: Training camp opens today in Renton. The Hawks seem to be the model of stability. But they still have questions. Lots of questions. Especially on the offensive line. Sound familiar?

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• Sorry about messing with the memorable “Field of Dreams” speech. It just seemed appropriate. Until later ...

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