Updated (Includes College Basketball article) -- This Week's Monday Column from The Washington Post

Here is this week's Washington Post article, discussing the inspirational Navy team --------



One of the more overused terms in sports these days is "inspirational," which is sometimes used to describe anything from a golfer making a putt to a millionaire athlete playing despite a minor injury. But real inspiration could be found on a football field this past weekend, in South Bend, Ind., where Navy again beat Notre Dame.

Inspiration is a division I-A college football team with a 5-foot-9, 193-pound linebacker and exactly zero future NFL players beating a team that has a quarterback who will go in the top 10 of the 2010 draft, one receiver who is a lock first-round pick and another who won't be far behind.

Inspiration is a team filled with players who weren't offered scholarships or even recruited by any division I-A schools -- kids who are up before dawn most mornings, who spend their summers on ships and who will someday soon be sent overseas to fight and perhaps die for their country -- beating a team that has its very own TV network, more money than any of us can imagine and a coach who thinks Knute Rockne might have qualified to be one of his coordinators.

Click here for the rest of the column: Navy football retains the power to inspire

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When we last left college basketball, North Carolina was cutting the nets down in Detroit, Tyler Hansbrough was ending his collegiate career having won the national title he craved, and Michigan State was the story of the 2009 NCAA tournament, giving the city of Detroit and the state of Michigan a much-need emotional lift by reaching the championship game.

Since then, UNC Coach Roy Williams has written a book, Memphis Coach John Calipari has signed a contract worth $32 million to coach at Kentucky while a second of his Final Four coaching appearances was being vacated (one more and he retires the non-trophy), and most of the usual suspects have appeared in the preseason top 25. Wait, there's more: Isiah Thomas came back to college basketball (at Florida International) and began screaming about unfair treatment before coaching his first game. And Mike Krzyzewski signed up to coach the Olympic team again in 2012, no doubt making his book publishers almost as happy as it made Roy Williams.

So what can we expect from this season, one that began Monday night because going more than four days between the end of the World Series and the start of college basketball would no doubt be more than ESPN could bear.


Click here for the rest of the article: Books, contracts prospects and suspects: The madness is upon us