TV Games Announced, and More

Quick-hitters for an early-July Thursday…..

FSN has announced five, count ’em, FIVE games for TV next season. Okie State on 8/30, home opener vs. Cal on 9/6, USC on 10/18, and the Apple Cup on 11/22 are the home games that will be shown to the masses. The road game at Baylor on 9/13 will also be shown, making the total of five games. That’s a really, really good start. If we are pretty good next year, ABC and FSN can select additional games that are attractive, etc. But to have five already set in stone is a very good thing if you ask me. Here’s a link to the WSU release.

The old Martin Stadium scoreboard is slowly coming down. The official MartinStadium.org site has some new pics in the photo gallery of the work. I also found this on Cougfan’s message board (tip of the hat to “DamCoug” for this one):

Tear that thing down! All I can say is MORE Homer Simpson WOO-HOO! And will the dancing football make a glorious 2008 return?? I miss the old cougar animation that would run in place over a super-imposed football field. What I’m really interested in is how the school will have their own production truck. Could that ultimately lead to things like streaming highlights over the web of home games? Hard to say but the possibility is at least there.

Speaking of the stadium, Cougfan had a good read on a $400k bronze Cougar statue that will appear at Martin this fall.

The Cougar will be two and a half times larger than life and will be descending a rock at a 30-degree angle with its back 14 feet off the ground. The sculpture will sit on a pedestal near the new Stadium Way entrance, roughly where the old Butch’s cage used to be located.

COOL. Can’t wait to see it. It will be a great addition to that Stadium Way area, with the new entrance as well as the court yard in that section of the stadium. It sounds as though the unveiling will be November 8th. You can bet it will become something of a campus icon. Maybe something like this, at Southern Illinois University – Edwardsville?

Have you seen the football helmet quiz floating around the web? It lists 50 helmets and you have to identify the school. Some are roll-your-eyes simple, but there are some curve balls in there. We did pretty well, our own Hooty topping out at a perfect 50 out of 50. I got a 48, missing a couple. Check it out here.

And on that theme of a quiz and/or test, there is an NCAA football officials test out there. As AOL Sports Fanhouse colleague Adam Jacobi accurately says in his headline, “Take the NCAA Official Exam, Prepare to Fail“. This sucker is HARD. The Pac-10 refs still suck, as the link shows with the video of the Oregon State – UW game blown call last year that almost gave UW a chance to pull that thing out. But give it a shot and see how you do. You can take the test here, and feel free to post your results in comments.

We’ve updated the links on the far-right. We now have a permanent link to the 2008 Pac-10 schedule, with helmets. Also added a current commits list linked from Cougfan, so you can always get up-to-the-moment WSU commitments.

Finally, one more new link appears, and for good reason – ESPN’s Ted Miller, a former Seattle P-I NCAA football writer, has set up shop running a full-time ESPN Pac-10 blog. I know Ted has been ripped in the past by some Coug die-hards for his past UW coverage, but he’s no “homer”. He is more dialed in to the Pac-10 than any writer in the country, and will be something worth reading on a daily basis. (end slurping all things Ted Miller).