Is it wrong that I have this creeping feeling of dread setting in? I mean sure, some of my concerns for the coming athletic year are legit, because it's not realistic to expect great things out of Skip Holtz in his first year with a bunch of new players and a brutal schedule. Nor is it realistic to expect another 20-win season out of Stan Heath with half the roster turning over and his best player now in the NBA.

Still, though, there's been quite the stream of bummers coming out of Fowler Avenue lately. This is just what's happened in the last week or so. (I almost called this post Worst of the Bull-ogosphere but hopefully it isn't a recurring feature like the other one is.)

• Waverly Austin, who committed to USF way back in November, didn't qualify academically and is going to junior college instead.
• Superbull, a one-night-only camp at Raymond James Stadium for top-flight high school talent to show their stuff to the USF football coaching staff, was cut short by a thunderstorm.
• WR Sterling Griffin jacked up his ankle literally minutes into the first voluntary workout of the summer, further weakening one of the thinnest positions on the field.
• Eniel Polynice decided not only to not go to USF, but to play at Seton Hall instead. When Ken first mentioned the possibility of Polynice spending his final year in Tampa, he pointed out that Polynice was hoping to play near his hometown of Sarasota. Well, he will be achieving that goal by playing in... uh, New Jersey.
• Scott Carter tweeted that now it's only 50-50 that N.C. State receiver Donald Bowens makes it to the USF campus this fall as a transfer, probably because of figuring out the academics.
• Apparently Colby Erskin is sniffing around trying to get back on the team after the NCAA gave him a 6th year of eligibility. There really aren't enough words to describe how I feel about that piece of news.

And that doesn't even get into the Roburt Sallie non-signing, which probably wasn't going to happen anyway. Sallie was playing basketball at Memphis, and getting him in the first place would have required some graduate-school chicanery that would have upset me if the university allowed it to happen. It's graduate school -- there are high admission standards and they shouldn't be bent just because you happen to be good at basketball. Anyway, Louisville signed Sallie (possibly out of Calipari-induced desperation) even though they don't know if he can qualify.

Maybe this is just a flareup of the repressed Bulls paranoia and dread that most of us carry around with us. But this has been a pretty lousy 10 days on the face of it.

I'll let you all settle this for me. Am I coming down with a case of The Fear here? Or is it way too early for this kind of thing?