Noting the sports world:

• Panthers offensive coordinator Rob Chudzinski is going to get a head-coaching interview in Jacksonville – and maybe in other places, too. That recognition is well-deserved, for “Chud” utilized rookie quarterback Cam Newton and the rest of the Panthers’ offensive weapons masterfully in 2011.

But ultimately, I predict Chudzinski will return to the Panthers for the 2012 season. I just don’t think it’s his time quite yet. He may need one more year – one in which the Panthers make the playoffs – to get over the head-coaching hump that Ron Rivera finally surmounted. Rivera had more than a half-dozen NFL head-coaching interviews before earning the Carolina job.

That Chud will come back is simply a prediction, not a fact. But I’m feeling a little better about my on-and-off forecasting skills, having predicted in this newspaper one week before the 2011 season began that Newton would turn around the offense and that Carolina would go 6-10.

• It sounds to me like Bill and Chris Polian got a raw deal in Indianapolis, where the Colts’ father-and-son front-office team was abruptly fired Monday by team owner Jim Irsay.

Indianapolis had one awful year in 2011, yes, but what about the decade of success before that? Doesn’t that count for something?

Bill Polian was the primary architect of the Panthers’ 1996 team that made it to the NFC championship game and he still maintains many Charlotte ties.

• With the Panthers playing five of their last seven games on the road, I spent a lot of time in airports. I’m surfacing with four recommendations for the book lovers among you.

• Gene Wojciechowski’s “The Last Great Game: Duke vs. Kentucky” chronicles the 1992 NCAA overtime thriller won 104-103 on Christian Laettner’s buzzer-beater after Grant Hill threw an 80-foot baseball pass on an inbounds play, on which Kentucky coach Rick Pitino famously didn’t guard Hill.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of what is thought by many to be the best collegiate game ever, and Wojciechowski’s excellent reporting turns up all sorts of anecdotes. The portrait of the Laettner – who was both brilliant and borderline cruel, even to his own teammates – is particularly well-drawn.

When Wojciechowski made his pitch for extended interview time with Laettner for the book, the former player agreed, saying: “I can talk about myself all day.”

• If you remember or just want to learn about the old “Dixie Classic” – the basketball tournament championed by former N.C. State coach Everett Case that served as a Big Four basketball bonanza in 1949-60 – Bethany Bradsher’s new book is a must-read.

“The Classic: How Everett Case and his Tournament brought Big-Time Basketball to the South” evokes that time and place beautifully and doesn’t shy away from the point-shaving college hoops scandal that shut the event down.

• Stephen King’s fictional “11/22/63” (in which time travel and the JFK assassination are threaded together) and Jeff Pearlman’s “Sweetness” (an unblinking account of Walter Payton’s life and career) are also well worth your time.