Today's big news (or should I say... yesterday's big news) was that former Oregon State center Sean Carter has transfered to UMass. Not surprising news, but we'll spend more time on this later today.

The ACC has become the first conference to implementing injury reports (a la the NFL) for college football. The reports will classify injuries by four categories (out, doubtful, questionable, probable) and will be issued twice a week. NFL injury reports are most often used by gamblers, but the ACC said that wasn't their motivation for implementation (thank goodness). It was done to keep coaches from having to comment on injuries on a daily basis:

"I don't have any problem with it," says Virginia coach Al Groh. "That means I don't have to answer those stupid questions during the week."

ESPN is attempting to rank the best college basketball programs of the modern era in what they're calling the "Prestige rankings".  This means they're only evaluating the teams from the 1985 on. Why, you ask? ESPN has the answer:

The 1985 postseason was the first NCAA tournament that was expanded to the 64-team format (precursor to the current 65-team format), in which a champion must play at least six games to win a national title. That span -- 24 seasons -- is a large enough sample size to get a true barometer of a program's recent history.

Teams earn points with things like National Championships (25 points each), Elite eight appearances, conference tournament wins, losing season (that'll subtract three from your score (oh shoot, we're screwed)) and so on. 

The Beavers come in at 241st, well behind schools like Caisus (214), Towson (210) Liberty (203), and many, many, others. The 241st place finish even qualifies the Beavers as one of the "underachievers", which are members of the "Big Six" conferences not in the Top 150 overall teams. Arizona State, Washington State, and Oregon State are the underachievers from the Pac-10.

Craig Robinson! Help us!

Ever really wondered what a coaching staff (even better, the Washington coaching staff) does in the off-season? SeattlePI.com's Molly Yanity has the answer.

Lastly: Pac-10 Media Day is tomorrow. The Mountain West Conference had their Media Day on Monday, and BYU was the overwhelming favorite to win the conference. Non-conference opponent Utah comes in at second.

GO BEAVERS!

--JB--