CORONADO, Calif. -- The nightmare appears to be just about over for Colorado State wide receivers coach Marc Lubick and his family.

Lubick, whose father, Sonny, is the Rams' head coach, was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer called rhabdomyosarcoma in February.

"I think the doctors are encouraged," Sonny Lubick said Monday at the Mountain West Conference media days. "I've learned to have a lot more respect and empathy for people. You don't realize what people have to go through. Sometimes you all take things for granted, and I hope you don't do that."

Rhabdomyosarcoma usually is found in children 10 and younger. After undergoing surgery and chemotherapy over a two-week stay at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., Lubick then went to Children's Hospital in Denver for more treatments.

"It's amazing to watch those young kids," Marc Lubick told the (Fort Collins) Coloradoan in April. "They are going through things a lot worse than me, but they are always smiling and happy. You can learn a lot from them."

He recently completed a 31-day radiation treatment at the Mayo Clinic. He now is undergoing another round of chemotherapy there, and is scheduled to have his last treatment Aug. 4.

After that, he will slowly work his way back with the rest of the coaching staff.

"I don't want to give him too much," Sonny Lubick said. "He'll be down a little bit, but we're hoping he bounces back."

* WAITING FOR AUGUST -- Mountain West teams consider the summer an important time to prepare for the season.

And many around the league are getting together with their teammates to run and lift.

Not so at Air Force, where players are committed every summer to making that branch of the armed services better. Players are sent all over the world, even to countries such as Afghanistan, to study what occurs at different bases.

It's great for national defense, not so good for run and pass defense.

"Your running backs, your wide receivers, your tight ends and quarterbacks, then all your defensive backs and your linebackers, they're all there at 5:30 or 6 o'clock in the afternoon," Falcons coach Fisher DeBerry said of other programs. "They're building rapport. They're building togetherness. Then they're working their skill, and they're working what they do."

* GOING NATIONAL -- CBS SportsLine.com national college football writer Dennis Dodd is expected to have a column posted today about UNLV quarterback Rocky Hinds. The column talks about how Hinds could have become the starter at Southern California or Texas. He began his college career at USC, and later visited the Longhorns.