Happy Friday Cougs. Here’s hoping you and yours are ready for an enjoyable weekend around the northwest, as it’s supposed to be extremely nice the next few days! Yours truly has been off the grid for the last week, out of town for work down in Florida (Fort Lauderdale, to be exact). It was a lot of fun and a lot of work, but probably not nearly as glamorous as it sounds. I did get on the beach for a short time one night with some co-workers, and it’s a beautiful setting on that long strip of beaches and hotels in the Ft Lauderdale area. But I’m back home now, and ready to get to the grind, as the Cougs finally kicked off fall camp yesterday! And as you can probably imagine, there’s a lot of stuff to get to, so let’s proceed, shall we?
So, right off the bat I think we’re seeing the true effects of Mike Leach at WSU in regards to media attention. Not only does it appear that there is a lot more interest among the WSU faithful, obviously, but you’re seeing more WSU coverage from the local media and even the national media. In fact, Leach was mentioned on ESPN last night for a Sportscenter broadcast (I wonder if Cindy B had some influence on that one??).
I didn’t actually see it myself, unfortunately, but I saw some tweets that he was going to be on the show? Anyway, there are a lot of stops among the interwebs these days regarding Mike Leach/WSU/etc, and one thing is pretty clear already – it’s going to be a fun ride! Anyway, on to the links:
First, former WSU Football blogger Adam Lewis has this article at SportspressNW.com on Mike Leach (nice work Adam). Adam does a nice job of touching on the new level of discipline and rules that Leach was known for coming to Pullman. It’s been perfectly spelled out in Leach’s book, and cited on message boards and comments time and again, but Leach has a real tough approach to his rules. And if you break some of these fundamental rules, well, we’ve seen what happens. You will be shown the door, period. And that has rubbed both ways, as you see that some come down in the hard-ass approach side of things and say we need to get rid of the bad apples anyway when you’ve lost 40 football games the last four seasons. And others would prefer that they let things play out in the court system, and not be so quick to boot the player in question when maybe another form of discipline would be appropriate. But there is a new sheriff in town, and like it or not we are going to see these players live under these new rules, and, if they step out of line we know what will happen.
Christian Caple at the Spokesman has a long, detailed post with a recap of day one. There is SO MUCH Caple covers in that post that it’s hard to digest it all for just one day of practice, but a great read nonetheless. While it’s hard to get much of a feel for day one, the overall tone anyway was that Leach sounds pleased with what he thinks is progress from some of the guys over the summer:
“As far as our knowledge of offense and defense, I thought it was pretty high right now, and so what that tells me is we had a pretty productive summer. And it’s a good starting point, but it’s a total starting point,” Leach said.
Nice. So it’s early, but so far so good.
The WSU official site has a quick story on the opening of fall camp, including three videos (Leach, Jeff Tuel and Travis Long are all interviewed on video).
Howie Stalwick has this article in the TNT, and touches on some quotes from players who have some lofty expectations for 2012. Also a good quick note on Connor Halliday:
Quarterback Connor Halliday threw the ball well after missing most of spring ball while recovering from a lacerated liver suffered late last season. “In spring ball, I was putting on a pretty good front,” Halliday said. “I was having trouble just walking around. I feel great now.”
And after reading that quote? SO DO I!
All for now. Enjoy your Friday and the beautiful weekend ahead, and as always, GO COUGS!
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