Ever been sick, gone back to your normal routine and had people warn you, "Don't rush back, you might have a relapse!''? Ever ignored them, eager to get back into the swing of things, then wish you'd listened to those people? Ever had that happen on a day you intended to blog about what you wrote in that morning's paper, early in the day?

Anyway ... in case you were curious about the panel discussion I referred to in this morning's column about minority hiring in the NFL, here's the streaming video of the panel, from Tuesday morning. Very diverse panel - there was Kellen Winslow from the Fritz Pollard Alliance; fellow Hall of Famer Mike Haynes, an NFL vice president for player development; Cyrus Mehri, the civil rights lawyer and counsel for the alliance; Brig Owens, former NFL safety and player rep; and the Washington Post's Len Shapiro, one of the first journalists to write extensively on the topic in the 1970s. The video is about an hour 18 minutes long, but it's worth watching.

Meanwhile, right after filing that column Wednesday night, I checked out colleague Rick Maese's blog, and by crazy coincidence, he was breaking down the latest stats on who makes decisions about hiring on the college level - and, thus, why the hiring record in college is exponentially worse than the lame record for the NFL. So depending on where you stand on this issue, this has either been a good week for the status quo, or a bad one. I vote for "bad,'' but that's just me.

Having said that, though, what did Gary Kubiak do to someone to keep him waiting as long as he did to get a head coaching job, as he did today with the Texans? Kubiak was the Broncos offensive coordinator for 11 years, through two Super Bowl wins. His name has come up in head-coaching circles for years, and at one time, justifiably, he was deemed not ready yet. But wouldn't he have been ready at some point before now, like maybe after one of those two championships? Wouldn't he have deserved a shot before Marty Mornhinweg did? Or before Norv Turner and Dick Jauron got second chances (not to mention the guy Kubiak replaced, Dom Capers)?

It might not be so much that NFL decision-makers are prejudiced; they might just be stupid. Of course, you pretty much can't have one without the other.