1. NCAA president Mark Emmert has agreed to serve as a peacemaker among the conferences as another round of realignment looms, The New York Times reported Monday night. Emmert either has an inflated sense of what he can achieve or a keening desire to take on a frustrating, ultimately fruitless task. The undeniable joy that Texas A&M partisans are showing at the possibility that the Aggies will leave the Big 12 for the SEC shows the difficulty of getting any league or school to think and act for the greater good.

2. In researching a piece on how far the SEC East has fallen behind the SEC West, I looked at a chart in the SEC Media Guide listing league teams that have been ranked No. 1 in the AP poll. Here’s a startling fact -- the last SEC East team beside Florida to be ranked No. 1 in any given week is Tennessee in 1998, when the Vols won the national championship. Before that? You have to go back to 1982, when No. 1 Georgia lost a national championship showdown in the Sugar Bowl to Penn State. That’s a long time ago.

3. Most teams are full swing into two-a-days and full contact and the serious injuries are beginning to add up. That’s what makes the news out of Oregon State so promising. Wide receiver James Rodgers, trying to return after a devastating knee injury, ran routes without a limp and made hard cuts in one-on-one drills, The Oregonian reported on Saturday. No one is predicting an imminent return. But Rodgers is taking baby steps without incident and hope is alive in Corvallis.