Photos: Iowa Hawkeyes Forward Tyler Cook

BUFFALO, N. Y. — The view from outside Denver on Valeri Nichushkin’s situation with the Avalanche is filled with fascination and conflicted feelings. Nichushkin is suspended through at least mid-November and has re-entered the NHL-NHLPA Player Assistance Program. It is his third time in the program since the end of the 2022-23 regular season.

Cake wasn’t on the menu at Arby’s, unfortunately. Four teenagers were out for lunch during a free period in the school day at Prairie View High in Henderson. Zavier DeHoff and Dalton Knecht were friends by then, both juniors on the basketball team. But Knecht was an introvert at heart, and he hadn’t bothered to share that April 19 was his birthday.

Chuck Neinas was hailed four decades ago for letting the beast out of the box. How was he to know darn thing would eventually start eating its own? “At home, I’d been a hero because I was responsible for the Supreme Court (case) with the College Football Association,” the former Big Eight and Big 12 commissioner, now retired in Boulder County, told The Denver Post recently.

Standing behind 20 people, waiting to sign his contract with the Tampa Vipers, an XFL team, P. J. Locke faced a dilemma. It was the fall of 2019, and the hard-hitting safety had just gone through one of the roughest times in his career. In August, the Pittsburgh Steelers cut him after signing him as an undrafted free agent out of Texas.

The ghosts of Canvas Stadium debt are waving receipts in my face and cackling as I type this, but hear Jack Graham out. While the blue bloods are putting the chess pieces in place for a college football super conference, you line up the best of the rest. Oregon State, Washington State, San Diego State, Boise State, CSU, Air Force, Army, Navy, Tulane, UConn.

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