ELMONT, N.Y. – The disrespect started on July 3, 2011. That was the first time I'll Have Another ran a race, and the first time the betting public failed to fall in love with him.

I'll Have Another is bidding to become the first horse in 34 years to win the Triple Crown. (Reuters)It was the second race on a Sunday at Hollywood Park in Inglewood, Calif., a 5 ½-furlong sprint for 2-year-olds that had never won a race. The purse was $55,000, with $33,000 going to the winner. The race that day was named in honor of Hollywood park patron Jim Truschel, who was celebrating his 84th birthday.

There was no buzz about the race, no inkling that such a nondescript event would launch the star thoroughbred of 2012.

The track handicapper favored Scorpion Warrior, a well-bred colt who was bought for $125,000 in a 2-year-old sale, making him a strong 7-5 favorite. I'll Have Another, who was purchased for a mere $35,000 at 2, was the second choice in the morning line at 3-1. By post time, Scorpion Warrior had been bet down to 4-5, while I'll Have Another's odds had floated up to 5-1.

I'll

Ask Mario Gutierrez what his favorite possession was growing up in Veracruz, Mexico, and his soft, accented voice becomes incredulous.

Mario Gutierrez reacts after winning the Preakness Stakes aboard I'll Have Another. (Reuters)"Are you kidding me?" he asks. "I was just happy I had something to wear. To have a pair of shoes, that was awesome."

Possessions beyond the most basic human needs were considered extravagant luxuries at the farm where Mario and his three siblings lived with their parents, Mario Sr. and Paulina Gutierrez. Basic appliances – refrigerators and televisions – were beyond their reach.

"We used to have nothing," Gutierrez tells Yahoo! Sports. "Absolutely nothing."

Today he is intoxicatingly close to having absolutely everything a jockey desires. Win the Belmont Stakes on Saturday aboard I'll Have Another and Gutierrez will have unimagined wealth by his childhood standards. He will have fame that crosses over from niche sport to mainstream America. He will have the welcome-to-immortality achievement of winning a Triple Crown.

[Related: I'll Have

We are in the home stretch now of the hardest three weeks in sports.

For the human connections to a thoroughbred chasing the elusive Triple Crown, the 21 days between the Preakness and the Belmont is when the quest truly becomes difficult. When the pressures mount. When the scrutiny intensifies. When the joy ride teeters on the verge of becoming a forced march.

Trainer Doug O'Neill (R) looks on as I'll Have Another is washed after a morning workout at Belmont Park. (Reuters)I'll Have Another and his people are at that stage right now. Since the colt dramatically ran down Bodemeister in Baltimore May 19 to complete the first two legs of the Triple Crown quest, the list of what's gone wrong is a lot longer than the list of what' s gone right.

As we move into the final days of preparation for the Belmont and I'll Have Another's anticipated coronation as the first Triple Crown winner in 34 years, the following events have transpired:

• New York racing stewards said they will not allow the colt to wear the nasal strip he wore in winning both the Kentucky Derby and Preakness.

• I'll Have

Look at the calendar and congratulate yourselves, college football fans. We're inside of three months until kickoff of the first games.

The regular season starts Aug. 30 and won't end until Dec. 1. Then, pretty soon it will be Christmas, and New Year's, and the BCS championship game. See? Football will be here before you know it.

With that in mind, this seemed like a good time for 40 observations on schedules from coast to coast, from have to have-not, from soft to suicidal.

Chip Kelly and the Oregon Ducks will hit the ground running.

1. Oregon will be wearing out tape of non-conference games from its first two Pac-12 opponents. The Ducks open league play with the radically revamped offense of Arizona under new coach Rich Rodriguez, then get the radically revamped offense of Washington State under new coach Mike Leach. Defensive coordinator Nick Aliotti will be working overtime for those games Sept. 22 and 29 – and then comes new-look Arizona State two games later on Oct. 18.

2. Auburn and Alabama will have to earn it early. The winners

A brief, semi-fictional history of hysteria in college athletics:

Big Ten commish Jim Delany has 12 schools in his conference. (AP)From: Chancellor Harvey Perlman
To: Select donors, boosters and alumni
Date: June 6, 2010.

Fellow Cornhuskers:

I wanted to let you know that Nebraska is formally preparing to leave the Big 12 for the Big Ten. There is more money to be earned in that conference, thanks to the Big Ten Network, and we can't tolerate any league-office favoritism that doesn't favor us. If anyone asks you about the move, say it's a 100-year decision based on what's best for our institution. Then blame the ransacking of tradition and loss of rivalries on power-hungry Texas. And if anyone brings up our slip in prestige over the past 10 years – thank you, Bill Callahan – blame that on the Longhorns, too.

Keep those checks coming.

Harvey

From: Chancellor Phillip DiStefano
To: Select donors, boosters and alumni
Date: June 10, 2010

To all friends of Colorado athletics:

Nebraska's impending move to the Big Ten has dangerously

Now that I'll Have Another has another scintillating, validating victory on his résumé, thoroughbred racing has another storyline it craves: a live Triple Crown shot.

Unfortunately, this one is likely to end the way the last 11 Triple Crown bids have ended: with heartbreak at the Belmont Stakes.

Mario Gutierrez guided I'll Have Another to victory in the Preakness. (Reuters)Since Affirmed won the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont in an epic series of duels with Alydar in 1978, racing has been on an unprecedented Triple Crown drought of 34 years. Since then, 11 horses have come to New York with a chance to achieve racing immortality and failed. It has become the biggest buzzkill in sports.

And frankly, if Spectacular Bid (1979), Pleasant Colony (1981), Alysheba (1987), Sunday Silence (1989), Silver Charm (1997), Real Quiet (1998), Charismatic (1999), War Emblem (2002), Funny Cide (2003), Smarty Jones (2004) and Big Brown (2008) couldn't sweep the Triple, neither can this horse.

Some of those were great horses. A couple of other greats during this

DALLAS – USA Basketball honcho Jerry Colangelo says he plied Mike Krzyzewski with late-night pizza and wine in a Chicago restaurant to coax him into coaching the Olympic team one more time.

"I'm a cheap date," Krzyzewski quipped.

A cheap date for a potentially costly assignment. For the second and final time, Krzyzewski is willing to accept the high-risk, low-reward job of coaching a team that must win gold or be ripped from sea to shining sea.

Specifically, the coach who loses would be the first guy ripped.

For the second and final time, Mike Krzyzewski is coaching the U.S. in the Olympics. (AP)

That's the way it works in Olympic basketball: The players win and the coach loses. Ask the guys who oversaw miserable American international efforts in the 2002 FIBA World Championships (George Karl), the 2003 Pan American Games (Tom Izzo) and the 2004 Olympics (Larry Brown).

It was an even more perilous assignment if the coach came up from the college ranks to lead a bunch of pros. At least Izzo had the good sense to bomb in the relatively low-profile Pan Am

Editor's note: Yahoo! Sports will spend the next year chronicling the three teams widely expected to be ranked 1-2-3 in the 2012-13 preseason polls: Indiana, Kentucky and Louisville. The three regional rivals have a combined 15 national titles and 30 Final Four appearances, but never have they entered a season with a monopoly on the top spots in the rankings in the same season.

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – Kentucky played Indiana in baseball Wednesday. On campus.

The timing and location of that game brought wry smiles from people in the Indiana University basketball office at Cook Hall. Just days after one of the marquee hoops rivalries in the nation was halted because the Wildcats refuse to continue playing the Hoosiers on campus, there was a UK team showing up at IU.

So somebody from Lexington still is willing to visit Bloomington to compete. And even win, as it turned out. Kentucky took a 12-inning thriller, 6-5.

Christian Watford provided the signature moment of IU's resurgence when his buzzer-beater sank Kentucky. (AP)

There will be no basketball thriller between the two traditional