Some­one point the good folks from Rawl­ings in the direc­tion of a calendar.

The Grad­ing the Week staff thinks they might not be aware what month this is. Why? Well….

Rawlings — F

Just about any adult Amer­i­can who didn’t fail high school civics knows there’s a pret­ty big event that hap­pens on the first Tues­day of Novem­ber every leap year.

Appar­ent­ly, who­ev­er is run­ning the show at Rawl­ings isn’t one of those people.

Because on Tues­day night, as near­ly every­one in the coun­try was await­ing the results of one of the most high­ly antic­i­pat­ed pres­i­den­tial elec­tions in mod­ern U.S. his­to­ry, Rawl­ings decid­ed to hand out its Gold Glove Awards.

Yes, that’s right. You might not have heard about it amid the insan­i­ty that has been this past week, but Nolan Are­na­do was award­ed his eighth con­sec­u­tive Gold Glove on Tuesday.

In doing so, Are­na­do tied Scott Rolen for the third most Gold Gloves won by a third base­man in MLB his­to­ry, and also stretched out his record for most con­sec­u­tive Gold Gloves to begin an infielder’s career. Those are incred­i­ble achieve­ments for the Rock­ies super­star — ones cer­tain­ly worth cel­e­brat­ing with a wide audi­ence. But Are­na­do was denied that because the peo­ple run­ning base­ball don’t care enough to prop­er­ly pro­mote the game.

That, dear read­ers, is how a sport finds itself with declin­ing inter­est and a dearth of eas­i­ly iden­ti­fi­able stars.

Pac-12 — C

One week into the Pac-12 reg­u­lar sea­son, and we’ve already seen two games can­celed due to the coronavirus.

That’s a .667 aver­age for those not count­ing at home — which will get you into the Hall of Fame in base­ball, but is less than ide­al if that’s the per­cent­age of sched­uled games you’re suc­cess­ful­ly playing.

One game (Cal-Wash­ing­ton) was lost to strict COVID reg­u­la­tions in the Bay Area, while the oth­er (Utah-Ari­zona) was scrapped fol­low­ing a Utah team out­break (in a state that is cur­rent­ly red­der than its jer­seys on the New York Times’ COVID map).

Wasn’t the entire point of the dai­ly rapid anti­gen test­ing the Pac-12 pro­cured to avoid sit­u­a­tions like this?

As we are con­stant­ly remind­ed, it’s the coro­n­avirus that’s in control.

Steve Addazio — A-

Oh, how quick­ly things have changed for Col­orado State’s new head foot­ball coach.

In his first game lead­ing the Rams, Addazio picked the wrong start­ing quar­ter­back and saw his defense get shred­ded by Fres­no State in a 38–17 loss on the road. In his sec­ond game, he put Patrick O’Brien behind cen­ter, let the defense loose and pulled off some­thing his pre­de­ces­sor, Mike Bobo, did only once in five years: beat Wyoming.

What’s more impres­sive: Daz’s Dudes did it on defense, cre­at­ing a pair of ear­ly turnovers that either direct­ly or indi­rect­ly led to touch­downs and a 14–0 first-quar­ter advan­tage, then held on late with a clutch dri­ve from O’Brien and company.

That’s not some­thing we’ve seen a whole bunch out of FoCo the past cou­ple of seasons.