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I wanted to keep it in the fairway for this blog. I was thinking something safe. I was thinking pigskin. True, we're two months before the first meaningful game of the college football season, in which Virginia Tech will block at least one kick and upset Southern Cal in Blacksburg.

But the college game is my main gig at the magazine. Angling for ideas, I cruised to the College Football section on SI.com, clicked on News and ... frowned. The headlines included: Oregon placed on two-year probation; UCLA dismisses two players for violations; Miami recruit pleads no contest; Two Miss. State players dismissed for violations; Mississippi fullback indicted; Penn State player facing prison, rehab.

The only good news was that Stewart Mandel's Mailbag is back.

My next cool assignment is to fly to France for a certain bike race. Just pulled this week's issue out of the mailbox and devoured S.L. Price's cover story on L'Homme, The Man, Lance Armstrong, whose quest for a sixth straight Tour de France victory begins in -- whoa! -- nine days.

Price looked on as the 32-year-old Texan struggled to a fifth place finish up his old nemesis, Mont Ventoux -- a hideous, exposed moonscape of a mountain that rises from the fields of Provence and has tormented Armstrong through the years. This was the fourth stage of the weeklong Dauphine Libéré, which Armstrong and other top riders use as a tune-up for the Tour. The event on Ventoux was a time trial, with riders racing individually against the clock. Cycling fans had long been pointing toward it as an indicator of what might unfold on July 21.

On that day, the 16th stage of the Tour de France, riders will ascend the infamous Alpe d'Huez, climbing nearly 3,000 feet over just nine, lung-searing miles. For the first time in the 101-year history of the Tour, the 21-switchbacked beast will be contested as a time trial.

So how'd things go in the preview, on Ventoux? There's no other way to say this: Armstrong got smoked, finishing in fifth place, nearly two minutes behind a talented young Basque named Iban Mayo, and more than a minute behind Tyler Hamilton, who finished fourth in last year's Tour despite riding for three weeks with a broken collarbone.

What does it all mean? "I'm a little disappointed," USPS team director Johan Bruyneel told CyclingNews.com. "Not in Lance, but in the differences between him and Mayo. It shows [we] are still not ready for the Tour."

I never know how to interpret Armstrong's setbacks. What would demoralize a weaker athlete seems to steel his resolve. Adversity feeds the contrarian in him. He showed up for last year's Tour with remnants of a virus; rode nearly a hundred miles of one stage with a brake pad rubbing, became disastrously dehydrated in an important time trial -- and still won.

This offseason has brought more bad news: Roberto Heras, his top escort in the mountains, bolted for another team. Tour officials tweaked the rules of the Team Time Trial, limiting the damage a strong squad, such as USPS, can do to lesser ones. Jan Ullrich, who has been Mario Lemieux to Armstrong's Wayne Gretzky for much of the past five years, rejoined his former team. That squad, now named T-Mobile, is much stronger, even without Alexandre Vinokourov, the powerful Khazak who finished third last year but crashed out of the Tour de Suisse, and will not race in the Tour de France. Ullrich, meanwhile, won that race in Switzerland, and enters the Tour in his best June form in years.

Earlier this week, a French judge threw out Armstrong's suit against the authors of a new book, L.A. Confidential: The Secrets of Lance Armstrong, which accuses the Texan of using performance-enhancing drugs. Armstrong, a cancer survivor who has never failed a drug test, denies the allegations. But the book renews suspicions, particularly among the French, and creates an ill-timed distraction for the five-time champion.

Is his run over? Armstrong watchers have long pointed to his wiliness. It was suggested, after he struggled up Ventoux earlier this month, that he was merely lulling his foes into a false sense of security. We'll see.

The guy can't keep winning this race forever. But he might just snatch one final victory next month. Armstrong is never more dangerous than when people doubt him.

Austin Murphy covers college football and adventure for Sports Illustrated.