The Louisville jerk store called — it got its men

Louisville coach Chris Mack is suspended for six games after being found to have violated university guidelines while being extorted by former assistant Dino Gaudio, who was sentenced Friday to a year of probation and a $10,000 fine for doing said extorting.

The takeaways here seem to be to follow protocol when attempting to keep evidence of your previous breaches of protocol — the recruiting violations that Gaudio threatened to expose — from reaching the media. Also, if you’re doing extortion, keep it in-state, because Gaudio’s guilty plea was to interstate communication with intent to extort, over a text message that traveled over state lines.

Duly noted, and how pleasant it is to see a story where a couple of jerks were jerks to each other, nobody got hurt, and both jerks faced some consequences for their jerkery.

It’s a busy world, full of stuff going on, and you can’t possibly read all the content that goes up on the World Wide Web on a daily basis. Including these news items, which I did not read, but have chosen to react to based entirely on their headlines…

Oregon announces starting QB for Fresno State ( Duck Territory): It seems rather unfair that a team would get to name its opponent’s starting quarterback, but there’s nothing in the rules that says they can’t. [Ed. note: Bad-dum-tss… oh, I see how this is gonna go — Rich O.]

How Mets went from first place to collapsing in the second half ( USA Today via Yahoo): Losing a lot of games. Like last night. And the night before that. And the two nights before that, too. And a whole bunch more over the course of this stupid month.

Kurt Busch joins 23XI Racing to drive second Cup car in 2022 ( NASCAR): Driving one race car seems hard enough, but it’s worth taking on the challenge of a second because if you can be your own drafting partner, you’ll absolutely dominate the competition. Just know which car you’re driving to the win, because it would be a shame to see it all fall apart on a last-lap passing attempt gone awry. Like they say in racing, you’ve got to check yourself before you wreck yourself.

Boston Red Sox infielder Kiké Hernández tests positive for COVID-19 ( ESPN): Enrique Hernández tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus.

Braves lineup is what it is for opener with Giants ( Talking Chop): It would be really troublesome if it wasn’t what it was, as that would potentially rupture the space-time continuum. Atlanta won, 6-5, so the lineup, which was what it was, was good enough.

The reason Ron Rivera hasn’t named a starting QB yet ( NBC Sports Washington): He’s waiting for Oregon to do it. Bad-dum-tss