Fire when ready!

Opening shots are, depending upon the level of planning, to see where the damned shell lands or to hit close to the target with adjustment to come. I used to do that professionally. This opening salvo is a confusing mix of both, pretty much what you can expect for the first several weeks because I am not going go ACD on getting to know teams outside the conference on purpose. Kind of like the way my wife sees my house cleaning expertise. I’m retired but still don’t have enough time to get that involved in either endeavor and am in no way fearful I’ll lose my job here on the blog.

My first test comes on August 28 when California hosts Hawaii in Australia. Now that’s the way to host a party; in someone else’s house so nothing important gets broken. As near as I can figure Cal’s defensive philosophy is to hope the other team self-destructs before they score on a drive. On the other side of the ball they hope things aren’t as bad a losing somewhere around 80% of the players who produced on offense last season. In both cases, hope is going to be answered positively in this game. I’m not betting that will hold true for the rest of the season. Hawaii comes in not much better off. Their Offensive Coordinator was the Coach’s center when he played at Hawaii. My gut feeling is Cal winning the game by a touchdown or two.

Southern Utah plays a Thursday night game in Utah. Considering the difference in play level of the two schools this is an easy shoot from the hip trick, at least as far as predicting a win for Utah. The Utes should be able to pitch a shut-out and even their probably anemic offense should score at least three touchdowns. Their defense alone could easily outscore Southern Utah in a game they should win by at least 28 points.

When Oregon State opens the same night in Minnesota they have several things going for them. First is if they lose, only a few of their cow country fans probably have access to the Big10 network, the only place to watch the game. Second is they are playing the Gophers. Farmers know how to handle those. Both teams are in about the same shape. Maybe Minnesota has a QB who can continue to remain a strong mediocre one while we don’t know OSU has. Ryan Nall will run the ball for the Beavs against a bend-but-don’t-break defense and the last time he did so he gained a lot of yards against Oregon. Neither head coach has proven capable of establishing a great recruiting record in their early years at their respective schools so a team making radical improvement won’t emerge. Only because of my anti-east-coast bias will I predict a touchdown or so advantage for Oregon State.  That and the Big 10ish tradition of losing early season games to mediocre teams.

It took more time to find my football magazines (see opening paragraph remark about my housekeeping skill) than to predict a Friday night win by Stanford over Kansas State. Even remembering the Indians’ opening game loss last year to an inferior team I’m sticking to that. That fiasco should serve as a wake-up for this year. KSU predicted to finish 8^th in the 9 team Big 12 is on the road vs a strong contender in the Pac12 north. Wildcat fans are probably happy this is not a home game.

Meanwhile in Colorado it’s a tussle between the Rams and the Buffalo. Common sense says most Pac12 teams should beat most Mountain West teams. The key word here is “most”. CSU has proven a tough opponent almost every year Colorado has been a member of the conference. The last three years CU has watched other teams play bowl games while the Rams have played in them, and probably will again this year while the Buffs probably won’t. Colorado State has a great chance, and will probably capitalize on it, to give their instate rivals a loss by a touchdown or so.

Rutgers plays UW on the first Saturday. While I don’t see Washington as good a team as most prognosticators do, I don’t see the Scarlet Knights as good as the Huskies are. However, if there is a trap game in Week 1, this is it.  In the end the scoreboard should indicate a touchdown or two more for the home team.

UCLA is good match against Texas A&M even on the road. Regardless of how the rest of the season goes the Bruins usually open with a strong showing on the road. They don’t play Oregon this year but this game could be a good substitute. Unless it is high scoring UCLA should be OK. They have plenty of experience facing fast paced read option type teams and TAMU is not going to be a finished product right out of the box. IF the visitors have a quarterback they will pull off an upset by about 10 points. You CAN get ten points in overtime, right?

UC-Davis and Northern Arizona vs Oregon and ASU respectively aren’t worth mentioning except for the fact they are on the schedule. If either PAC12 team loses there is a lot of ‘splainin’ to do.

It won’t be that easy in Tucson where BYU will be as loaded as they ever are. 16 starters from a team that went 9-4 last year and a couple former starters returning from injury will populate their line-up. There’s bound to be a returning missionary or two worth mentioning on top of that. I don’t see Anu as a QB who can win a shoot-out, which this might not be if Arizona doesn’t click on offense. Sorry Cat fans, this one is a loss, possibly a smashing one.

Washington State is taking the day off so that leaves only one more game to predicticate. Let’s see  … oh yeah … ‘Bama is visiting USC in a very un-SEC like opening game. Normally before their first tough game the Tide has rolled over a couple of opponents like Sisters of the Poor or the School for the Hopeless  … both as home games. Most people would predict USC won’t fare much better but Saban can do less with more than any other school except USC.  Alabama has the top recruiting class often enough they should win the national championship nearly every year. They win some but not as often as they should. The Trojans aren’t far behind in recruiting but have dropped back a way in winning games or even keeping coaches and AD’s. This may be a turnaround year.

I explained why SC’s loss of scholarships problem is the excuse but not the reason for their records the past few seasons in my last post. They have been a full participation for a couple of years. Now they have a new AD and a new head coach which are past due. I look for them to settle down and play much better. We don’t know how Alabama is going to do with a new quarterback, opening on the road vs a tough opponent. I’m looking for Troy to pull off the upset,

A real close look at 2016

If last year was the year of the quarterback in the Pac12, this year is the year of who’s the quarterback. Even the teams with returning QB’s aren’t bragging about it, at least until last call at the local bar. With Sarkisian gone, they aren’t even doing it there.

When you get right down to it, the best experienced quarterback in the conference is, wait for it – I told you I have a green and yellow bias and I promised you humor –, in Eugene where grad transfer Dakota Prukop was an all-American at the FCS level playing the same type of offense and has been on campus since spring practice. Arizona should step up and argue that with me and Washington fans would if they read this thing.  Anu Solomon has grown up from a flashy freshman to become a journeyman signal caller, but journeyman does not equate with stellar anywhere it is used. “Jake Browning”, “Jake Browning” I hear echoing from up north. Well, Jake was surprisingly good for a freshman (see Anu Solomon, two years ago model) which made him a serviceable quarterback with a lot to prove his second season. The only decent team UW beat last year was USC while the Trojans were still a bit of a hot mess. They did that by two points in a low scoring game.

If the Quarterback is not a dead cinch to carry you, the running backs have to. There are really only two who have the ability to do that. Some guy named McCaffery in Palo Alto and Royce Freeman for Oregon can tote the ball for 100 yards or more most games, against anybody. Miles Gaskin for UW has the potential to join the club if Browning proves to be a good passer. Otherwise, if he is expected to run, he’ll have a tough time getting to that level.

At this point you may have noticed I haven’t high-lighted any southern division schools. USC should stand out from the group. They have had grade A recruiting classes for more years than I have fingers and the only place I am a butcher is in this blog. They have for quite a while produced grade B and C teams. Troy’s diary has a lot of blank pages, at least as far at football games go. They have a coach who should last the season now and will likely start building a machine again, but not this year.

Everybody gets around to talking about wide receivers and tight ends, except me. Those guys break plays, look exciting, and sometimes make a difference in the game, but everybody except Utah has a stable full of them. They are replaceable because, let’s face it most of them are bigger than the defenders, run routes they and the quarterback know are coming, and are fast. Decent ones are good for seven or eight yards per play while better ones make downfield blocks and occasionally break free for long gains. Everybody has lots of those except Utah.

Defense, we are told, wins games. In the Pac12 nobody has one except Utah. Cal relied on one until last year but lost the recipe as well as lot more games than a team with the number 1 NFL draft pick should have. Stanford simulates one largely because they play efficient old fashioned smash-mouth offense and gives their defense more time on the sideline. Oregon State used to try that but, for a while now, have failed to consistently put an offense of any kind on the turf. The Utes can actually hold teams down so their anemic offense can produce enough points to win some games. Otherwise I could drop my opening sentence in this paragraph regarding the conference.

The greatest enemy of any defense, on either side of the ball, is an offense that runs a play every 20 seconds or so, maybe less. A lot of the conference teams do that because it wears out the opposing defense as the game moves along. Post Chip Kelly, there are a lot of enemies in the offenses out here, some made more dangerous to their own counterparts by the dreaded three and out. With only a minute or two the D has to come back out and ply their trade before they get much time to recuperate. Ask Oregon about the two halves of their bowl game last year.

I like kickers in football as much as I do in soccer so I won’t talk about them except to say, if they become important, several other things need fixing.

It’s always too early to predict the final standings given the injuries and surprise breakout players. Still, us pundits whether anointed or self-proclaimed, have to step up and let loose sooner or later. Here’s my shot.

North

Oregon            Prukop looks like the real thing and is still being pushed for the job, meaning all of the duck eggs are not in one basket. I’m betting Brady Hoke improves the defense.

Stanford          It will be largely the McCaffery show but he is a hell of an actor. They play Oregon in Eugene which could make the difference but the Indians are not unfamiliar with pulling upsets there.

Washington/Washington State          Whoever wins the Apple Bowls finishes third. Washington’s bandwagon has to travel to Palo Alto and Eugene where it will empty out some each time.

California        Because the other northern team is Oregon State

Oregon State   Because they have to finish somewhere.

South

            USC                  Sooner or later all that talent has to do something right.

UCLA               Almost against my better judgment, but they had a couple pretty      recruiting years.

Arizona/Utah   Which ever one can find an offense, or even simulate one, first. I lean toward the Utes

Arizona State   Because the other Southern team is Colorado

Colorado         Because they have to finish somewhere.

Ignore last year .. I'm back for sure in 2016

The most important thing in evaluating a fast approaching college football season is to listen to the talking heads. I assume they have never been mistaken and have proven so reliable they haven’t been far off in any season of the past decade or so. THE go-to guys season after season are going to show up and inform us, accurately enough that we rush out and buy the magazines they are attached to. In defense of the few times they have missed, arm them with the excuse that they begin writing at about the time the clock runs out on the championship game of the previous season, maybe before in some cases. To be fair, there are gurus who are more pensive, or better procrastinators, who put everything together minutes before they start turning out their report the night before deadline. A few of them are good enough they don’t seem to need any research at all.

    That being the case, I’ll introduce you to some of those guys. First I must establish my own credentials. I have never missed a call in this blog in predicting the winner of even a single game. You can attribute that to this being the first year I have prognosticated here if you want to but it remains a fact. Not one of those guys can say that about their past guesses AND … I don’t charge a penny for my thoughts, meaning you are guaranteed to get your money’s worth.

    Now ... to the pretenders.

    Doug Haller takes the helm for Lindy’s, a preseason magazine Lindy Davis started putting on the stands 35 years ago. I’ve got no idea how well they’ve done in the past, but they are wrong this year, at least regarding the Pac 12. I’ll tell you why after I finish my research. Odds are I will be right.

    First of all, he let them put the Pac-12 on page 168 of the magazine. That’s a big one.

    Then, at first glance, I see Christian McCaffery of Stanford predicted to be the conference MVP. BUT … BUT he predicts Oregon’s Royce Freeman to be the best offensive player. Either could be true but Doug, old boy, both play offense. If either of their teams win they could well be the MVP and for the team to do it, that player is probably going to have to be the best offensive player. Are we into new math here, which probably gives Christian the edge, considering Stanford’s academic reputation? It also helps that Stanford has not had a wide array of stars over the past few seasons, just a few who were good enough to win a lot of games, and appears to be in a position to keep doing it. Oregon spreads it out a lot more and looks to be in position to keep doing that.

     Doug, or his crew, then goes on to predict as defensive player of the year and newcomer of the year players whose names I can barely spell, let alone pronounce. What’s with that, Doug?

    When the season ends the individual stars will be a lot easier to predict which is the main reason I’ll wait to pick them. My guess is that Justin and the rest of the crew will have a lot more hemming and hawing to do in explaining their misses than I will.

    Mainly, Mr. Haller explains that quarterbacks have a lot to do with how well the teams are going to do. Amazing.

  Lindy’s picks are for Stanford and USC to meet in the conference championship game. Some other surprises are for Washington to beat out Oregon, who will edge out Washington State for third in the north. In the south, UCLA is their pick to challenge the Trojans while Utah sits above the rest of the watchers.

    Read the mag for all the details. I’m not writing cliff notes for their work.

    Bruce Pasco who also writes for the Arizona Daily Star heads the team for the Sporting News, that has been around for a lot longer than I have been alive, and I have been receiving social security checks for a while now. But, what do they know about football in Tucson, other than that the Cats will usually beat a favored Sun Devil Squad in the annual ‘So What’ matchup. I think they have about one conference football championship between them since they turned the PAC8 into the Pac10 then tried to make it into the Pac8 again.

     Pasco starts out better in getting the conference up to page 116. Of course I have them on page 1, where they belong.

     In just a few different words the Sporting News staff comes up with an identical predicted finishing standing. Are these guys copying off of the Lindy’s group or is it the other way around? In the end they are guaranteed to be equally wrong.

    Phil Steele’s presentation is more geared toward performance on the betting platform, citing results, some of which were produced by players who have moved out of their lockers … some years ago.  Coaches are studied into performance results. It seems a little risky given the coaching staff changes most teams go through year to year. However, if you like two or three letter/number abbreviations in place of frequently used phrases, this is the magazine for you. If you like predictions, he sometimes gets a few right. In fact, he does better than most, but he hasn’t gone against me yet.

    Don’t get me wrong. His is the first magazine I read. He does more real research than most of the others. If research was all that great, I’d have won in a whole lot more fantasy baseball leagues.

   I read ESPN’s magazine later because it hit the newsstands later. Actually, I’m not sure why I read it, only why I read it later. They do move the conference up to about the middle of the magazine which is thinner, in a lot of ways, than the others. In the end their results are about the same as the others with Oregon in third, behind conference champion-to-be Washington and also-ran Stanford. They will meet USC in Palo Alto while UCLA and Arizona gnash their teeth after barely missing out. Utah and ASU fans wonder why they are picked below the Wildcats all of a sudden. Actually, I don’t, but that’s for a later blog.

  Sports Illustrated is going to throw its hat in the ring closer to opening weekend. Being a weekly magazine they have an advantage there. That's their only advantage and they don't use it well. As far as their record of predicting outcomes goes, they always have great sports photographs. I’ll probably see it and giggle a little when it hits the stands. They are to sports what their publishing partner “Time” is to news. 

There have to be some good sites on the interwebz, Everything good and bad is there someplace. Given time and luck, I’ll discover them as the season rolls along. I’m sure they will provide fodder for next year’s opening volley. One I know about now is worth visiting, sbnation.com  The guys there seem to know what they are talking about and have lots of shiny and sparkly charts for those into those sorts of things.

I’m also lazy enough to accept your discoveries and, until the first kick-off, your predictions.

Opening Week … Might as well be closing for a few Pac12 teams

   I’ve let everything fester, or ferment, or something long enough. If I wait another day I’ll start making my thoughts about two games for some teams. While much clearer in my mind, it wouldn’t be a fair way to trot out my prescient thoughts. I’d look better but feel worse, maybe. Anyway my conscience says I must plunge ahead with a review of the games last week.

   Starting with the Northern division favorite, which got a whole lot more favoriter, Oregon took on Eastern Washington in a game that would not have been as interesting if the QB for the Ducks hadn’t abandoned Oregon’s first week opponent, Eastern Washington, as a graduate transfer. The Eagles might have challenged with him still there but, on the other hand, he couldn’t have been a lot more successful than the two QB’s  EW still has in hand, who put up monstrous passing numbers. Their running game was less impressive and their defense even less so.

   Meanwhile Oregon ran and passed at will, piling up over 700 yards of offense, mostly via the ground game. Adams (the itinerate QB) threw for a high percentage of completions, a couple of which were TD’s, and ran for just under one hundred yards. He probably ran for at least one too many times, providing an EW defender an opportunity for a cheap shot that took him out of the game which was already well under control

   Oregon hid two facets from their 2^nd week opponent, pass defense and punting. Neither did much. The punter might as well have worn flip flops to the game. The defense just flopped.

   USC, the consensus favorite, but not mine, played “Fight On” and probably left a trail of road apples on the sidelines. After 60 minutes of clock time they had a big win over a little team, Arkansas State, at home. I don’t like the Trojans so I’m not got going to write anything good about them, at least this week.

   Arizona State was the apple of a lot of eyes, but they were a small minority in a ‘neutral site’ game in Houston where Texas A&M made apple sauce out of them. The inevitable ‘but it wasn’t really a neutral site’ excuse fell pretty flat as far as I am concerned. Didn’t anyone in Tempe know they would be more than slightly outnumbered in the stands playing a Texas team in Texas.

   That the Sun Devils were out-numbered on the field wasn’t much of a surprise either. They have not demonstrated the ability to stop up-tempo spread type teams in the past, and continued to write that story in game 1. ASU always looks like a strong contender, and then underperforms up through their annual loss to Arizona during the last day of the scheduled season.

   Speaking of Arizona, they have a better scheduler. A decent test with UNLV provided the opportunity for a winning warm-up. They might have picked the best week possible to lose Scooby Wright for a few weeks. He may be the best defender in the conference. If he returns after sitting out, with an injury, a couple of games vs cupcakes, in time for the UCLA game. If not, things could get ugly early in conference play. UCLA is not going to lose many games this year.

Which, of course, segues me right into the Bruins. UCLA returns what could be the most impressive group of returning players south of Eugene. What they might have been missing is a quarterback who could handle the opportunity. It’s hard for a freshman quarterback to step into the starting spot at the Pac-12 level. If last week was an indicator, Josh Rosen just might do it. His composure and skills were all the Westwood faithful could have hoped for, vs a decent opponent. One more week like that and the Bruins will be my new Southern favorite.

   A little farther north the press is always looking for excuses why Stanford is going to eclipse Oregon in the north. Most of the excuses on the field, vs a mediocre Northwestern, were playing for the Indians’ (I will never go PC and call them the Cardinal) version of offense. It was a little more than a run run pass failure, a game plan which the Boilermakers see regularly in the Big-10ish. They evidently overcame their disappointment at not becoming the Boilermaker Union and sent Stanford home to their schoolbooks, which I presume they handle much better than they did the football. Kevin Hogan must have had his mind on the first day of class rather the first football game of the season. Go figure. He’ll probably make a whole lot more money doing something else next year.

   Utah, who most Michiganans designated the opening cupcake, probably due to Big Blue’s usual scheduling pattern, surprised them much more than they did me. After all of the Harbaugh hype, everyone ignored the probability that a team who sunk as far Michigan did is probably in a submarine rather than a battleship. Coach recruited well but has a bit more work to do.

 They’ll have a better idea of how big that job is when they host Oregon State this week, led by a very familiar, very successful coach they faced as he coached Wisconsin last year, and his new Beavers who are in a transition of style, with players not recruited to run the new game plan, The Corvallis crowd did better than expected in their opener. Seth Collins was the other Pac-12 Freshman quarterback who stood like a man in his first college game. Neither team is ready for prime time. Which one will nose ahead this week? I have a premonition they will be wearing Orange and Black, or whatever color Nike hangs on them now that they have joined the new age. The Beavs played a little better defense.

   Something else (well, one of the many somethings else) I don’t have a clear picture of is the California Bears team. They used a good quarterback and an undefinable rest of the team to a steamrolling of Grambling, who has not been a big challenge for quite a few years now. This week they will get some more practice time vs San Diego State, and I still won’t have a good handle on them. When they play Texas after that, I should be able to sound a little more like I know what I am talking about when they are the subject of my babble. Good scheduling, Bears.

   And now to the wait til next year squads.

   A couple of years ago Washington brought over Boise State’s miracle worker, Chris Petersen, but this is not a league peopled by such as the little sisters of the poor. He has well over half of his team with two or less years experience.  That may or may not have been a good plan. During Year 2 of the experiment the Huskies are going to be challenged by all but their next two opponents, at least in theory.

   Opening away, on the Smurf Turf in Boise, very little promise emerged for his offense. His version of a first year quarterback looked more like that deer-in-the-headlights frosh you’d expect. While UW defense kept them in the game, Jake Browning, seemed to have little idea where he was. Recruiting windows close quickly at the Pac-12 level and Petersen’s is closing really quickly, especially when about the best class he can hope for this season (without a BIG turnaround) could well be between sixth and ninth best in the conference.

   Even so, Washington may not be the worst in the state. WSU has at least an equal grip on the honor after a loss to Portland State to open the season. The Vikings people a mediocre team in the next best division in major college football, the one at the bottom. Maybe the Cougars should recruit a running back and draw up some plays for him.

   When looking at the teams in the conference, a lot of people forget about Colorado. This would be a good year to do that.

The Absolutely Unofficial, Unsanctioned, Unneeded Unwanted PAC 12 sports blog

 

This blog really ought to start out with apologies to all who really write sports stuff, know what they are writing about or work for a living. On the other hand, I’d spend most of my life apologizing if I dealt them out everywhere they are due. Instead, let’s get right to it.

I’ve got sort of a legitimate place in the world of Pac12 sports. I’ve been around since it was the Pac8, suffered through the years they admitted Arizona and Arizona State (who early in their membership tried to jettison some of the northwest schools), and stick around now that it has metamorphosed into a north and south monster. I umpired baseball in the Pac10, and have, or at least had (haven’t checked in a while) my picture in the University of Oregon Sports Hall of Fame.

Needless to say, you might find some of what I’ll write here a bit biased toward Oregon, a little biased against Oregon State, and maybe downright hateful toward the University of Washington.  Neither do I have much use for Trojans. That’s not to say I wouldn’t sit down with a beer to talk sports with Beavers and Huskies. I just wouldn’t buy the beer. I wouldn’t sit down with a Trojan unless I was already drunk.

I’ll also unload on the Big10ish and the SEC whenever opportunity knocks. If you are a Pac12 fan, you’ll grow to love me. Otherwise, probably not. Part of my agenda is to balance the world against the hated EAST COAST BIAS, which doesn’t do much better at understanding the Pac12 than they due at pronouncing ‘Oregon’.

With little more knowledge of what I am writing about than I have about what the next paragraph is going to be about, I promise you nothing but the straight stuff, delivered with a straight face, straight from the rear side of my Levi’s. I have a humor blog called Untie Me Now here on Blogspot, so if you want the humorous stuff, you’ll have to trot over there. This blog is for the serious business of sports.

I’m happily stuck up here in Maine now, so you won’t find any interviews, which usually don’t amount to much anyway. You can probably provide the same answers to the canned questions that the players and coaches do. The others you can probably handle better, or at least more honestly. Occasionally the voices might provide something they whipped up in their chem lab, when they aren’t too busy burning popcorn. They know both endeavors annoy me. Best not to quote the quotes when they sneak into the posts.

I don’t think the Pac12 will mind my mentioning their name from time to time as I long as don’t claim to represent them. Otherwise you’ll find me among the dirt they dig up over on ESPN being held up as an example of what not to do. I also don’t have anything to do with them or any other group of talking heads. We wouldn’t have each other.

Another warning; get used to typos sneaking in as I seldom catch them all. If anything you read doesn’t make sense, it’s probably a typo.  Nothing I write should not make sense if you wrap your head around it the right way, or believe everything you read. If that all works for you, you might want to become a follower of this blog so you get warning when I post something. I really need followers other than the detectives and psychiatrists who are following me now.

Don’t follow me everywhere though, like right now I am going out to do the heavy research it takes to review all of the conference football teams. I don’t want too many people crowding me and freeloading the beer and pretzels. (Especially the Beavers and Huskies)