The conceivably meaningful portion of the college basketball season is about three weeks old, telling us little except what we wanted to hear. The news is pretty good — not that it means anything.  

Following the University of Cincinnati football team used to be one of life’s simple pleasures, a private and personal window on sports through which the wins and losses didn’t matter as much as the laughs, groans and occasional sense that these kids might be getting somewhere.  

The length of the NFL season really shows on a team like the Bengals. A high school team at 0-8 sees the end in a couple weeks. A college team at 0-8 can still make its season in November by beating the rival. The Bengals are 0-8 in the NFL. They're not reaching the end of this dark tunnel until Christmas.  

Maybe the Bengals still have a pulse, which means they're not quite as desperate as those no-good outfits from the 1990s - but they're still 0-3, they're still going to have their hands full with the Cleveland Browns Sunday, their quarterback still is no better protected than David Klingler and the season still is a long way from hopeful.   

Though he became famous as host of BET’s Comic View, Hamilton native Gary Owen didn’t have what one could call an urban upbringing. “We lived in a little trailer park on Highway 27 called Island Lake Mobile Community,” he says. Shortly after graduating from high school, a friend rousted him out of bed and took him down to the naval recruitment office.