Friday Afternoon Follies

A few things leftover from a dark week to be a sports fan:

- Furman alum Brian Bratton returned a punt 79 yards for a touchdown Thursday night to help Montreal defeat Toronto, 26-13, in Canadian Football League action;

- Braves fans may be interested to know that as Friday afternoon wore on some of the national know-it-alls were reporting that Texas' asking price for Mark Teixeira could be coming down. Atlanta has apparently offered Jarrod Saltalamacchia and two other top prospects for the former Georgia Tech star, while the Rangers are also mulling offers from a number of other clubs.

Something to remember where Teixeira is concerned. If the Braves have decided to let Andruw Jones walk at the end of the year, they'll have some extra money to toss around. Teixeira, a free agent after 2008, would be worth a long-term investment seeing as how he's just 27 years old.

The roadblock? Both Jones and Teixeira share the same agent - Scott Boras.

So whatever the Braves do, it's not going to be easy.

- High school football practice began across the Upstate today. Be sure to check in to Cruise Control over the next couple of weeks as we have a number of prep coaches on the air discussing their teams.

- Be sure to check out TigerNet (www.thetigernet.com) in the coming days for transcriptions of interviews recently conducted on Cruise Control with Clemson head football coach Tommy Bowden and his assistants - Brad Scott, Dabo Swinney and Billy Napier.

The audio of the interviews can still be heard on The Drive's website - www.wccpfm.com.