Happy Friday Cougs, and welcome to the end of another week. It is supposed to be a fantastic weekend weather-wise around the great Northwest, so here’s hoping you get out of the house and soak it all in while it lasts!
There is a lot of “stuff” out there that surfaced the last day or so, points of interest and such. You know, lists, predictions, etc, pretty much the best off-season “fodder” a fan of the sport might enjoy this time of year. So we might as well round it all up for you, link style? Here we go:
So the big list of NCAA coaches was posted by the Sporting News! Yep, all coaches from 1 (Nick Saban, Alabama) to 124 (Charley Molnar, UMass) can be found here.
Yeah, there are some easy choices near the top. I mean who’s going to argue against Nick Saban? Did you know he’s an amazing 28-4 in the big, bad SEC the last four years!? That’s amazingly good. But of course, while the whole list is interesting, we focus on the Pac-12:
1) Chip Kelly (6th overall)
2) Mike Leach (17th overall)
3) Lane Kiffin (20th overall)
4) Kyle Whittingham (21st overall)
5) Steve Sarkisian (30th overall)
6) David Shaw (32nd overall)
7) Rich Rod (39th overall)
8) Mike Riley (55th overall)
9) Jeff Tedford (57th overall)
10) Jim Mora (68th ovearll)
11) Todd Graham (75th overall)
12) Jon Embree (106th overall)
You can likely find the reactions all over Twitter, the web, etc, after the lists were pumped out yesterday. And you can probably predict the reaction of fans of the Pac-12 teams? You know, towards the top of the list it’s like “Hey, you know these Sporting News guys, they sure know their stuff. Looks about right.”
Meanwhile those towards the bottom of the list are all “The Sporting News is A BUNCH OF MORONS!” And on and on it goes. Such is the life of fandom in 2012, and lists are just that – lists. They are the opinion of a couple of writers, and that’s really it.
That said? OK, I’ll admit it – it’s cool to see Mike Leach at #17.
RISE!
And I did like what they had to say towards the end of their little write-up on Leach:
Trending: Up. Football fans around the country will actually be paying attention to the Cougars now. Yo ho ho, we’ll have a bottle of whatever Leach is drinking.
So the list, does it mean anything? Will it help the team win a bunch more games under Leach? Will it help Leach recruit? No, of course not. It’s highly doubtful Leach would walk into a living room, waving the Sporting News article in someone’s face, “See!? SEE!!?! I’m #17!!” But it’s good off-season fodder, I guess. I’m sure UW fans hate it that their guy is #30, or Cal fans are flipping out over Jeff Tedford coming in at #9 in the conference. But it is what it is.
Anyone wonder where Paul Wulff would have landed on this list, had he somehow survived to coach again? Not to trample on his WSU coaching record, but I think triple digits might have been about right. Maybe nestled somewhere around Mike Price at #104, and Jon Embree at #106?
Speaking of Paul Wulff, there was a rumor from Cougfan’s message boards last night that CPW has landed a non-paid coaching gig with the San Francisco 49ers. There hasn’t been any confirmation – at least not yet – but if true, that sounds like a nice landing spot for Wulff. Maybe he is destined to be an offensive assistant in the NFL, helping coach up an offensive line, something like that? But it would be nice if the story is true, and we wish him luck.
Moving on, the amazing Bud Withers has a decent look at the Pac-12 North. Withers trudged through the conference, post-spring style, and took a look at every team in the Pac-12 (some really great details on his recaps, including this one on WSU). While you may not be exactly thrilled with his selection of WSU coming in at #5, his reasoning is sound. The offense looks strong, the D……well, we’ll see.
So the Gameday vote is now over. And unless they found some voting machines in a ditch somewhere last night with about 100,000+ votes for WSU, well, it doesn’t look like the Cougs will be hosting a Gameday commercial. Per Teddy Football, the Cougs were buried in third place, about 100K behind the leaders. But don’t hang your heads in shame, Cougs. An excellent showing from the Crimson faithful, once again showing strong passion for all-things-WSU!
That’s it for today. Get out and enjoy the weekend weather, and as always, GO COUGS!
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