Morning Line Archives: July 23-29

JULY 23-29

NFL training camps open this week, starting Monday with the Arizona Cardinals and TheSportsNotebook will lead off the week with a look at how AFC teams spent their offseasons. Isaac Huss grades each AFC team in Monday’s piece, which serves as a companion to his NFC article which ran two weeks ago.

Monday is also the day the NCAA announces sanctions against the Penn State football program in light of Jerry Sandusky’s crimes and the subsequent cover-up. At some point this week, TheSportsNotebook will weigh in. Now that the black-and-white issue of Sandusky’s conviction and life imprisonment is settled, there are gray areas all over the place and we’ll sort through some conflicting thoughts about what it all means beyond Sandusky. I’m not sure which day this article will run—right now the plan is for Tuesday publication, although that can change in light of the baseball landscape. If there are prominent trades made, TheSportsNotebook will cover those, otherwise we’ll have an article evaluating possible trade pieces on Wednesday, followed by an American League and National League playoff overview on Thursday and Friday, with an emphasis on the past week.

On Sunday NASCAR Sprint Cup action resumes after a week off, and we’ll talk to our NASCAR consultant, my brother Bill, who will help preview the race in Indianapolis. You can look for that article on Saturday and then we’ll cap off the weekend on Sunday with another MLB trade deadline article, either an evaluation of moves made or the pros and cons of a particular player on the block.

In the meantime, please check out TheSportsNotebook’s Historical Museum, where we celebrate fan bases that had notable years with their teams, with coverage on each year from 1976-2007. And take a look at the bookstore as well. I’ve got two historical memoirs—Memories of March Madness and The Last New Year’s, that cover the best of the NCAA Tournament and New Year’s Day college football. And there’s two collections of blog postings available. You can follow the 2011 baseball season from Opening Day to October and The Cardinals’ Gold Ring. And follow last college hoops season from The Carrier To Kentucky.  Everything is available for $3.49 or less and can be downloaded to a Kindle or I-Pad from Amazon.