Art Thiel

Let's reduce the mystery to an analogy many Seattle-area shoppers can understand: The Mariners are trying to make a tasty meal exclusively from the free-sample stations at Costco. Lingering around the chicken-mint ice cream wagon does not make a worthy dinner.

The Huskies had the easier task. The Cougars Saturday established that they are making better progress.

In terms of pressure on a leader to fix wayward local institutions such as Boeing, Seattle Police or the Mariners, Mike Macdonald was down the list a bit. Then...

The Seahawks under new coach Mike Macdonald open Sunday at home against the Denver Broncos, aka the Russell Wilson Survivors Bowl. Participants are expected to share stories and photos and show scars. The more dramatic story is over at Montlake, where the Huskies opened Saturday with a 35-3 thumping of Weber State of the Big Sky Conference.

If longtime readers sense a repetitive theme here, I wish I could offer otherwise. But the top of club ops is the through-point that explains the mortal embarrassment of being the only MLB team without a World Series appearance.

True to form, they seem to have made middling acquisitions at the trade deadline Tuesday. Then again, so did most every team in MLB.

It would almost be easier if these Mariners were like the teams of the 1970s and '80s, which were hapless. Today's Mariners are, well, hap. Or maybe that should be half. As in half good. They can hang, but participation ribbons are faint recompense.

What is known is the convulsion is the result of the rapid onset of professionalization of college athletics.

Well before his broadcast personality made him an ebullient, irreverent national sports-culture hero in his final years, Bill Walton as a youngster was something of a budding sports nemesis....

As you may have surmised by now, a pattern has emerged. Nothing about the current Mariners has gone to standard baseball form. They are as predictable as puppies under a blanket.