To the start of NFL preseason football.

With the World Cup over, the Minnesota Twins in the cellar and Tiger Woods failing again to excel at golf, sports fans are in the August doldrums. At least the Minnesota Lynx bring success to Minnesota, but other than that, sports news is filled with baseball and basketball trade speculation, the murder trial for the South African athlete nicknamed “Bladerunner” and some guy named Johnny Manziel. It’s just preseason, but this year, for some reason, NFL fans seem hungry. Perhaps it’s the arrival of a new Minnesota Vikings coaching staff and a new quarterback. We are glad the local NFL franchise is doling out some hope this time around. That’s a plus.

To talk of impeachment of the president.

Good grief, Charlie Brown would say.

Is it going to be where that every time the Democrats get to have a two-term president that the Republicans will impeach him in his second term because he, like them, plays politics? The Democrats didn’t make impeachment a national topic of debate when President George W. Bush’s administration made controversial actions, such as rendition and torture, that some pundits argued rose to the levels of war crimes. And when President Barack Obama took office in 2009, he opted to put the past behind him and not pursue an investigation into the actions of the Bush administration.

Boy, do politicians have short memories.

The biggest beneficiary of a GOP attempt at impeachment — all because Republicans are mad that Obama has opted to pursue change through his executive powers after giving up getting legislation through the Republican-controlled House — would be Obama himself. Such a drastic measure would turn around Obama’s low popularity and condemn the Republicans’ chances of winning the White House in 2016.

Look, like him or not, Obama was elected in 2008 and re-elected in 2012. The American people decided. Let him fulfill his term of office. Any talk of removing him comes across like sour grapes.

To pickleball.

It seems this sport is blasting off. The Albert Lea Parks Department built courts at Frank Hall Park near the city pool. There was a tournament this weekend and local group with regularly scheduled times. Dare we call this group a club? Pickleball’s popularity has swept the nation, even making the “NBC Nightly News.” It’s like playing table tennis but on a full-size court. The ball doesn’t move as rapidly as a tennis ball, and that enables people to return volleys without needing young legs to bound all over the court. Tennis, we believe, made a mistake when it allowed players to use graphite racquets, which speeds up the action. When the sport’s players had wooden racquets back in the 1960s and ’70s, you could find people playing tennis in every small town in America. Perhaps pickleball is filling that void.