



HOUSTON — On Saturday morning, Jon Lester walked to his locker and yelled to a clubhouse guy, “Can we put this on GameDay?”



This is Texas, Jon. By law, the TV was already on ESPN’s college football pregame show. Just a commercial.



On the other end of the clubhouse, Jason Heyward and Matt Szczur, a former football star at Villanova, sat and watched GameDay on another TV for most of the morning media access time, with Heyward expressing his admiration for Pitt running back James Conner, who had a GameDay feature on his fight against cancer before the Pitt-Penn State game.



While there was a boring slate of college games Saturday, the NFL kicks off Sunday. And since we were in Texas, someone (OK, me) asked Cubs manager Joe Maddon, a high school football star who played one season of quarterback at Lafayette, who would be gridiron studs on his Cubs roster. You can’t include Szczur, who got an extra bonus from...