Happy Humpday Morning Cougs, as we hit the midway point of the week and a crazy 12/12/12 on the calendar. Why is 12/12/12 significant? Well, because it only happens once every 100 years, but like Y2K it really is meaningless (unless your wireless router keeps resetting, which mine was doing this morning?? Yeah, it's not because it's a piece of crap router, it MUST BE 12/12/12!).
So the Wazzu Morning Drip, you know this morning thing we've been doing lately? We'll keep it rolling, but just be forewarned – it's kinda/sorta hard to find good Coug morning links all the time, especially in the offseason. I know you probably don't want me to regurgitate recruiting articles-n-such, so I will try and be creative in what we look at each and every morning of the week. Sound good? Good.
By the way, way off topic here but my heels/Achilles tendons have been sore for the last three+ weeks, ever since that half-marathon. I have been trying to power through it and it isn't unbearable pain, but it also doesn't seem to be going away either. Any "real" runners out there with advice? Right now we are lifting and running 4 days a week (Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday) and around 4-5 miles each workout. I've been googling it and finding everything under the sun, from ice to heat to rest to taking like a month off, so anyone who's run into this, please feel free to share.
Moving on to today's links…..
Athlon's has a SUPER-WAY-TOO-EARLY-ARE-YOU-KIDDING-ME?? look at the projected top 25 for 2013. For a nerd like me who loves college football it's kind of cool to look ahead though at who the experts think will be something to deal with next year.
As to the Pac-12 teams on the list, here's the way it breaks out:
Oregon – #3
Stanford – #10
UCLA – #18
USC – #21
Oregon St – #24
ASU – #25
That's about it, but they do also list Arizona and UW as teams just on the outside looking in. So that's six ranked teams for 2013, and two that aren't too far away in AZ and UW. Hmm, looks like a pretty strong league again next year, and who's to argue with the logic?
Oregon will still be strong, even if/when Chip Kelly moves on and Mark Helflich takes over and keeps the pedal to the metal, for they have a ton of talent coming back. Stanford I'm not as sold on, simply because of the losses out of their defensive front, clearly one of the best in the country in 2012 and a huge reason they are going to Pasadena. But UCLA, USC, OSU and ASU are legit picks for success next year.
If you want to pick a sleeper for 2013 though? I think you have to include UW in the conversation. They have basically EVERYONE back from a 2012 bowl team, a favorable schedule, opening up in new Husky Stadium. As Sutra and I have been telling each other since the summer, if UW were to go 9-3 at worst in 2013 it wouldn't be a surprise.
As to the Cougs?? WELL, we've got like 9 months to figure that one out. But given the schedule and uncertainty at QB, it's hard to make a call right now (WAY TOO EARLY!).
Moving on, so the attendance numbers from 2012 have been released and analyzed for FBS team, and guess what? As wildly popular as college football happens to be in terms of TV ratings and such, attendance actually dropped to the lowest levels since 2003! Now there are certainly a lot of reasons as to why this is, from TV to the economy to higher ticket prices, to whatever else you can think of. But there are some head-scratchers in there too, such as Stanford (a 10% drop in attendance in a newish facility and a Pac-12 champion??).
Overall the Pac-12 actually went up to an average of over 53K per game, but as the article points out, you can attribute much of that to Cal moving back in to their regular home stadium vs. playing at SBC Park in San Fran.
In terms of WSU, we actually went up 5% from the prior year to just over 30K per game (30,252), with the official numbers per home game:
EWU – 33,598
CU – 31,668
CAL – 27,339
UCLA – 28,110
UW – 30,544
Maybe not the splash, or the sizzle with the steak or whatever else you want to come up with in talking about Mike Leach's first year. But out of five Pullman home games in a really disappointing season, we still saw over 30K in official attendance in three out of five games. We topped 30K just once in 2011, 30,843 for homecoming vs. Stanford. But we only drew over 30K once in 2010, and just once in 2009 as well. So in 2012, we drew 30K+ in one season as much as we drew that much in the last three combined. So even with a down economy and the Pac-12 network and a lousy 2012? Hey, at least we showed up!
That's it for this morning. GO COUGS!
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