You Can Breathe Now. College Football Starts Tonight.

We’re so late today, we’re just gonna dive right in.

Tonight. 9pm CT. ESPN. Cal vs Hawai’i, live from Sydney, Country Where Everything Can Kill You. You’ve waited eight long months for the chance to watch real live college football again, so you have no reason not to tune in.

On the home front, Ken Corbitt at the Capital-Journal notes that the linebackers will be the backbone of the defense. He also provides important details on when and where you can catch the preseason TV special with Wyatt Thompson and Bill Snyder. (Spoiler: you’ll have a dozen chances to watch it.)

At Today’s U, Wendell Barnhouse previews the Wildcats. Unfortunately, he misspelled Dante Barnett’s name. Twice.

Elijah Lee is one of sixteen Big 12 defenders on the 2016 Lombardi Award watch list.

At the Star, Ashley Scoby has the scoop on the new high school football playoff system in Kansas, which has involved the four-team district format for so long that it was in place before your benevolent despot rampaged through the hallways of Shawnee Mission North. Districts are gone now, and the season has been reduced to eight regular-season games from the historical nine. That ninth week, everyone plays a playoff game, with all 32 teams in each classification seeded 1-16 in their half of the state. This is a huge change, not least because of how long the old system was in operation.

And in a sad bit of academic news, the Capital-Journal’s Celia Llopis-Jensen reports that state budget cuts are hitting Hale Library in the gut. Hale will no longer be open all night except during finals and the library is having to cancel a slew of journal subscriptions.