We have news budgets . . .

Here's a little bit on how the newspaper works.

Everyday we have a news "budget," which notes the staff-written stories we'll have going for the next day.

Tomorrow's budget includes Kernels baseball (gonna teach the boy how to keep score at a baseball game sometime this summer), prep softball (Game 6 of 400), UNI introduces new athletics director Troy Dannen (went to UNI with Troy; for a guy who wore sweatpants to class, he's doing very well) and a story on Iowa State's new logo ("I State," brought to you be Apple).

There are two other items of note.

"Arvell Nelson continuance" -- "Anamosa attorney Jim Thomas has filed a continuance for former University of Iowa quarterback Arvell Nelson, who was scheduled for a pretrial conference Wednesday (tomorrow). . . . A trial date was scheduled for June 16."

You know what else . . .

"Iowa football/Satterfield" -- From Scott Dochterman's story: "Former University of Iowa football player Abe Satterfield allegedly forced a woman to have sex with him and made her available to a former UI teammate, according to police complaints made available publicly Tuesday.

Satterfield, 19, surrendered to authorities early Tuesday morning and appeared wearing an orange jump suit in Johnson County District Court via short-circuit television. He's charged with second-degree sexual abuse and third-degree sexual abuse and faces up to 35 years in prison.

Bond was set at $10,000 cash-only and a no-contact order was issued. Satterfield remained jailed as of late Tuesday morning."

Read Scott's story online and in tomorrow's paper for more. And there's more.

This is the cycle that Iowa football is on right now. Check that, this is the cycle that FORMER Iowa football players are on right now. I'm guessing that "former" is a bit of a buffer for some of you.

These stories have an arc.

The Satterfield/Everson case is going to be a story for a while. No idea how long, but everytime it shows up on cops and courts, it's going to be a headline, probably a big one.

Arvell Nelson and James Cleveland, both of whom were charged for allegedly having drugs in their Hillcrest dorm in February, should time out relatively soon, if Nelson shows up (he has a track record for not showing up in court if you remember from last summer's "failure to appear in court" arrest warrant). Cleveland will go to trial on drug charges July 14. He faces two counts of unlawful possession of prescription drugs stemming from a Feb. 23 arrest.

The Dominique Douglas and Anthony Bowman credit card arrests and subsequent exiting stories (DD's Wal-Mart DVD thing and Bowman's arrival and quick departure in January) have arced. As far as I know, neither is playing college football next year. That would be the next story here, unless Douglas fires up the facebook.com again.

The headlines will range in size and scope, but they aren't going away.

The arc will keep them in the spin cycle. I'd much rather be writing about the fifth-string wideout. Whomever that is (Don Nordmann, Kyle Steinbrecher??) it's got to be a better deal than the lawyer crawl.