Happy back-to-it Tuesday Cougs. Here’s hoping you all enjoyed the holiday weekend, and soaked in what everyone calls the last weekend of summer. Even if that isn’t technically true as summer lasts until later this month, well, football is back and the kids are back in school so there you go.
Kind of a weird Saturday of college football with the Cougs playing on Thursday night? I caught a lot of the action between projects around the house, and it was kind of weird to not have a game to look forward to. But it was also interesting to check in on all the different games and get a feel for what’s going on the opening weekend of the season without thinking about who we play or when we play them!
Anyway, lots of Coug links and such, so let’s get started this morning….
First up, we submitted our blog ballot after week one of the 2012 season. Pretty interesting weekend, all things considered, but not a ton of “shockers” for week one? Anyway, here’s our ballot:
WSU Football Blog Ballot – Week 1
| Rank | Team | Delta |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | USC Trojans | — |
| 2 | Alabama Crimson Tide | — |
| 3 | LSU Tigers | — |
| 4 | Oregon Ducks | — |
| 5 | Oklahoma Sooners | — |
| 6 | Florida St. Seminoles | — |
| 7 | Georgia Bulldogs | — |
| 8 | West Virginia Mountaineers | — |
| 9 | South Carolina Gamecocks | — |
| 10 | Arkansas Razorbacks | — |
| 11 | Wisconsin Badgers | — |
| 12 | Michigan St. Spartans | — |
| 13 | Clemson Tigers | — |
| 14 | Texas Longhorns | — |
| 15 | Ohio St. Buckeyes | — |
| 16 | Virginia Tech Hokies | — |
| 17 | Nebraska Cornhuskers | — |
| 18 | Oklahoma St. Cowboys | — |
| 19 | TCU Horned Frogs | — |
| 20 | Michigan Wolverines | — |
| 21 | Kansas St. Wildcats | — |
| 22 | Stanford Cardinal | — |
| 23 | Florida Gators | — |
| 24 | Louisville Cardinals | — |
| 25 | Notre Dame Fighting Irish | — |
SB Nation BlogPoll College Football Top 25 Rankings »
Some quick thoughts on week one – REALLY impressed with Alabama, whoa! Did any of you catch their game vs. Michigan? Holy speed and power Batman, those players on the Crimson Tide roster are oozing with talent. Every offseason you hear about how loaded the SEC is, but then when you see it all on display it’s just incredibly impressive. Michigan was a top-10 team too, albeit it’s early in the season but still that wasn’t Portland State out there. And did anyone see West Virginia?? I know the whole Dana Holgerson back story and how he came from Mike Leach’s coaching tree, but watching that offense is just amazing. I know this isn’t smartfootball.com or anything, but looking at what West Virginia does today, I see very little in common with the Mike Leach passing game anyway. I am sure the strategies are the same in the whole “exploiting space” kind of thing, but West Virginia’s offense looks more like an Oregon-WSU hybrid than anything else. If you are ever channel surfing and stumble upon West Virginia in action, I would encourage you to watch it and see what they are doing right now!
Meanwhile out west, I thought USC and Oregon looked as advertised. SC just steamrolled Hawaii, and Oregon had a somewhat misleading final score in their game (up 50-10 at the half, the backups played the entire second half). The new Oregon QB looked pretty comfortable too, Marcus Mariota in his first start threw for 200 yards and 3 TD’s in just about a half of football.
I heard one analyst last week compare Mariota to a bigger, stronger, more athletic version of Jeremiah Masoli. But you can understand why Chip Kelly went with the frosh QB, he looks fantastic early on.
Back on the Coug front, Joe Doyle of Cougfan has a wrap-up of the comments from Leach and several players from yesterday. Two things stand out from that story, at least to me anyway – 1) The body language wasn’t great from several players, and I think a lot of you noticed the same thing during the broadcast, and 2) they are pissed about last week, and they are ready to move forward and put it behind them. There is a lot to clean up as Leach alluded to, but at the same time maybe they aren’t as far away as it might have looked last week. And I will say this, that even after last week, I can’t WAIT to see how they respond this Saturday!
Christian Caple has a bunch of stuff for today, including a look at EWU as well as a notebook from yesterday. EWU has a couple of receivers that could be a big problem on Saturday, but the offensive passing game doesn’t sound like it’s all there yet with Kyle Padron at the helm. As detailed many months ago by our blog and many others, Padron was the QB for SMU back in 2010, when the Cougs headed south to take on the Mustangs. SMU won the game, a game in which Mike Leach did the color commentary.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBcIxkpNcHY&w=420&h=315]
Finally, this week’s game notes have been released by WSU, which you can see here. The depth chart is on page 7, and there are a few changes here but nothing that will blow your mind.
All for now. Enjoy your morning, and of course, GO COUGS!
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