You know football is just around the corner when it's time for the championship round of the summer baseball tournament at Principal Park in Des Moines.

It should be mentioned that Iowa is one of the few states that has a summer championship rather than spring. For the high school baseball teams, I think this is a very good idea, although there is disagreement about that.

At the beginning of the year, Cedar Rapids Kennedy was rated No. 1 in Class 4A and slipped slightly to No. 2 in the middle of the season behind Ankeny. The Cougars had a super season and will be a team to be reckoned with in next week's state championships.

A tip of the fedora to Bret Hoyer on winning his 600th game in 23 years as a head coach and qualifying for the state tournament by taking out Cedar Falls.

In the substate, Linn-Mar had more competition in a 2-1 victory Wednesday night over Muscatine, and the Lions also send a solid team to Des Moines. So again the Metro area will have two highly regarded qualifiers for next week's show.

IF YOU'RE READY for some football, let me recommend the annual North-South All-Star football game sponsored by the Shrine temples. The contest returns to Jack Trice Stadium for the final time this Saturday night with five Metro football players in the contest representing the North squad.

Those five players are Flynn Heald of Washington, Mark Atwater of Linn-Mar, Josh Jahlas of Kennedy, Jordan Weber of Xavier and Jake McDonald of Marion. For the athletes and coaches, this will be the final use of Jack Trice Stadium for the game.

An NCAA dictum came down this spring that said major college football fields could not be used for high school all-star games because it might attract the ever-present scouts and recruiters who would gain an unfair advantage, if you can believe that.

Which brings to mind this thought: If the NCAA can make rulings of this type, how deep will they go in the Sandusky case?

With that in mind, the Chronicle of Higher Education reports that the Big Ten is considering a plan to give its commissioner, Jim Delany, the power to fire coaches and levy sanctions, including financial penalties, suspensions and termination of school employees as sort of a sports czar. The Big Ten has not responded to requests for comment.

For the 2013 Shrine game, the NCAA will allow the UNI-Dome in Cedar Falls to be the site of the all-star game instead of Jack Trice Stadium, apparently because UNI is not considered a major college football program compared to Iowa State.

It took a waiver from the NCAA for the Iowa Shrine temples to have this year's game played at Iowa State.

Ah, the wonder of it all.

(Bob Brooks is sports director at KMRY and has been one of the leading voices of college and prep sports in Eastern Iowa for more than 65 years. He is a 10-time winner of the Iowa Sportscaster of the Year Award, and was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in South Bend, Indiana in 2004. His sports reports can be heard weekday afternoons at 4:30 and 5:30, and Saturdays at 6:40 for the Hawkeye football wrap-up.)