It's that time of the year...

As this picture clearly illustrates, we're now in the dog days of summer.  The coaching carousel has pretty much come to a halt, the recruits have signed, and essentially at the mercy of tweets from the lucky ones in attendance at all these summer camps. 

Today alone was undoubtedly an ESPN producer's nightmare.  No baseball highlights, little movement in the NBA free agency period, and a lull before NFL training camps open.

As bloggers search high and low for content (Jordan Crawford facial aside), here are some clips we have come across recently...

• Karen Sypher is back in the news, reading cue cards, and fighting a losing battle with these extortion allegations from Rick Pitino. Doesn't she get it yet? She's wildly over matched.
  
• As far as I can remember, this is the first season where the Worldwide Leader has designated a special section for the (basketball) summer recruiting trail.  Many of the familiar faces were on hand at the Lebron James Skills camp.  Jared Sullinger seems have been the consensus top player at the camp -- according to many of the usual suspects. Heck, Gary Parrish has a man-crush on the Ohio State prize. This week all eyes are on the Peach Jam in Augusta, with the attention squarely on Ames, Iowa product Harrison Barnes. 
• After grabbing the bronze medal at the World University Games, Head Coach Bo Ryan and & Co. reportedly got caught up in some foreign affairs while in Serbia. Ryan tells Andy Katz about some animosity his team caught while abroad.
• Louisville Courier-Journal's Rick Bozich is blogging -- and he says we can expect a Billy Gillispie tell-all book soon.  It will be co-authored by retired sports writer Steve Richardson.
• Coach K clearly seems to be committed to USA Basketball. That's great, but Duke also needs to get some of that swagger back. You wonder if this will be at all distracting, or invigorating?