The National, 4/27/12: Slow News Day.

Coming in early today because there are things which have to be done (H8U lawn). Obviously, the biggest storyline today is the NFL Draft, coverage of which you are certainly inundated by at this point. 85 minutes in the car this morning provided 55 minutes of Dan Patrick and then Jim Rome talking about the draft, 5 minutes of Jim Rome talking about hugging, 5 minutes of Jim Rome veering off into a bizarre tangent about Family Feud, and 20 minutes of commercials.

So we're not going to talk about that, mostly because the thought of revisiting the Chiefs selecting a player from #Mumphus 14 spots before anyone at all was taken from the Big Ten is too painful to contemplate.

How to Move Up by Moving Down: So, Tim Jankovich has parlayed his disaster at Illinois State into an assistant job at Southern Methodist. Except it's not just an assistant job; Jank's been officially designated as SMU's next head coach (clearly with the intent of taking over when Larry Brown gets the sudden urge to coach the Charlotte Bobcats). It's actually a good move for Tim; he'll get to learn some more and refine his approach under Brown, and after Larry gets bored he'll suddenly find himself coaching in the Big East rather than the Valley.

The Death of the Wonderlic: Mo Claiborne is not retarded. Mo Claiborne simply decided that since he's no longer pursuing an education he just didn't give a rat's ass, and didn't bother trying. Frankly, I think he's got a point. You want to give these guys psychological tests? That makes sense. The Wonderlic isn't that. What it also apparently isn't: an obstacle to getting paid.

I Always Said Unions Were Evil: On the Dan Patrick show this morning, David Stern made it clear that he wants the NBA draft age further restricted, forcing players to wait two years after high school before being draftable. Why can't he get it done? The players' union, whose opposition is mind-boggling and non-sensical, just like everything else the NBA players' association seems to do. Here's a hint, union guys: you're supposed to want it to be harder for whipper-snappers to come in and steal your jobs.

A Quick Recovery: Weber State moved rapidly to seal the hull breach caused by John L. Smith's sudden departure, naming defensive coordinator Jody Sears as the interim head coach. Sears joined the staff this spring after three seasons as co-defensive coordinator at Washington State; before that, he'd spent time at Eastern Washington and Iowa State.

Lowering the Bar: The NCAA is apparently poised to grant more leeway to "low-resource" schools who aren't meeting the APR. Those scare quotes are pretty much code for "HBCUs and urban commuter schools catering to at-risk students". I am probably going to get in trouble here, but if a school doesn't have the resources to educate its athletes, perhaps Division I is not the place to be right now. I understand that there are reasons why many of the schools in question have problems, and I do not mean in any way to detract from that; it's something that needs to be fixed, not only because, well, it needs to be fixed, but because I think the HBCUs are a very important part of this nation's educational culture. Still, I have to think that slicing a subset of Division I off into what's basically an analogy for remedial classes should be an idea vastly more offensive than me suggesting they should drop down to Division II where they can actually compete rather than digging their financial hole even further trying to chase unreachable goals.

Send Prayers: Cody Fanning, a 20-year-old junior linebacker at Doane College in Crete, Nebraska, was killed yesterday when he was thrown from the bed of a pickup truck. Teammate Cody Barnes, the driver of the pickup, was arrested on DUI charges. Although we can't let this pass without screaming "Don't drive drunk" and "don't ride in the bed of a pickup, especially when the driver is drunk", it's still a horrible tragedy. Thoughts and prayers to Fanning's family and the Doane community.

Diablerie: John Infante, late of the By-Law Blog, has hatched a whimsical alternate reality in which the NCAA basketball world has an NCAA Cup and a College Basketball Champions League. In his version of the 2012-13 CBBCL, our Wildcats have advanced to the group stage after an aggregate win over Saint Louis, led by a nice game from The Void.