I truly was hoping that when the time came to return to the Press, it would be with something lighthearted, mildly amusing or at least witheringly sarcastic. After all, the posting that sat here for three-plus weeks while I got a little more medical fine-tuning, was about Javon Walker being drenched in teammate Darrent Williams' blood last New Year's Eve. Now, it's the opening weekend of the NFL season, and who wasn't looking forward to that for some relief from this continually miserable sports summer?

Then, halfway through the first set of the first Sunday games, this news comes across: Bills special teamer Kevin Everett, possibly paralyzed making a tackle on the second-half kickoff.

I give up. Not on the blog, mind you, although a lot of you understandably were wondering; since I last posted, a couple dozen new blogs on this site alone got started, and apparently all of them are written by Milton Kent. ('Bout time. He had to be getting tired of coming out of the bullpen all the time.)

No, I give up on this sports year. This last weekend was a perfectly good example. There was so much opportunity to begin the week by piling ridicule on Michigan and Notre Dame, to start the official countdown toward the Orioles clinching their 10th straight losing season, even to the growing list of names in BALCO II (or is it III, or IV?), the now-infamous Signature Pharmacy (yes, the site is still up), alleged suppliers of the first-ever performance-decreasing drug.

And goodness knows there was plenty of material coming out of most of the NFL schedule yesterday. I mean, the Raiders and Lions played each other. To borrow a phrase the immortal Chad from "Wedding Crashers,'' that's like fishing with dynamite.

Then, a guy almost got killed on the field.

To think what's gone on in the six weeks since I wondered on this site whether we'd just experienced the worst week ever in sports. It's obvious now that a change in seasons isn't going to stop the mind-numbing march of misery. It's as if the sports gods are saying, "Oh, you think that's funny? Try this on for size'' -- and something terrible happens that slaps everybody back to reality. I have to think that's exactly the way it happens. Here I am on Saturday night pondering the depth of comedic gold to be mined from the fact that Charlie Weis is 0-2 and Ty Willingham 2-0, and less than 24 hours later, I'm seeing the Bills and Broncos players kneeling at midfield.

Come to think of it, you can't even laugh at "Wedding Crashers'' the way you used to anymore.

OK, I think I brought everybody down just about enough on a Monday morning -- just hours before the Ravens opener in Cincinnati. (And it turns out that Everett, the injured Bills player, is from The U, which means he'll be on the minds of a few of the Ravens tonight.) Sorry. Hey, tonight might brighten things up. But I'll just be happy if the game ends with nobody getting arrested, suspended, indicted or driven off the field in an ambulance. I'm setting the bar kind of low.