The Dam Links 7/26: Pac-12 Media Day Edition

43 days until opening kickoff vs. Eastern Washington...

Eastern Washington factoid: The Eagles are one of two division one programs to have a home field that is not green. You're probably be familiar with the other one.

Pac-12 Media Day is here! The unofficial start to college football media season. Which means we'll have a lot more content coming through here, as will other sites, which I'll be linking to on a regular basis. Hopefully on a Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule as things ramp up, but no promises. It's been a heavy week here at BtD, so a couple of the links below will refer to stories on this site you might have missed.

Don't forget to vote in Connor's best Beaver Play of 2012-2013 tournament. The first entry is Mannion's game winning pass against Arizona vs. Davis and Hayes' back to back HR's against Washington State.

Also of note on this site, Building the Dam's Pac-12 predictions.

Pac-12 preseason practices start soon (when a team plays their first game has an impact on when they can begin practicing), with Oregon St. starting August 5th, also known as "a week from Monday." The complete schedule can be found here.

Brad Fuqua of the G-T has a recap and analysis of Riley's comments at ESPN's car wash. Ted Miller's interview with Riley can be found on ESPN's Pac-12 blog, or embedded here at Building the Dam. Head coach Mike Riley spoke with Chris Fowler while at Bristol on Wednesday. Fowler produces an interesting stat -- since 1971, 15 Pac-12 coaches have gone directly from the Pac-12 to the NFL. In that span, the Big 10 only has one, and the SEC has three. That's quite a discrepancy. In addition to the obvious Sody Maz question, Riley also discusses his opinion on how Chip Kelly is going to do in the NFL.

As Andy noted yesterday, backup corner Tyler Hasty was dismissed from the OSU football team after attempting to outrun police and not succeeding. Hasty, who was mostly known for being the son of former NFL player and ESPN analyst James Hasty, was a redshirt last year, so had not played a down for the Beavers, although he had a chance to see the field this year with some action on special teams and perhaps at cornerback. His court appearance is scheduled for August 19. My legal advice? Stop breaking the law, @$$hole.

The USA National Collegiate Team's season is over, and they accumulated with a 20-3 record, finishing the season off with a five game sweep of Cuba. Michael Conforto batted .302 for the season, going 19-for-63 with 10 RBI and a team leading 3 HR's. Now that he's done with baseball for the summer, he can go back to focusing on more important things, like improving his skills at The Settlers of Catan. Which, incidentally, I can vouch for as being a great game. I can say, without hyperbole, I've played it more than 100 times.

Matt Boyd was promoted out of the Northwest League before ever pitching an inning. He's now going to be a Lansing Lugnut, which is a full-season A team, as opposed to short season A. As near as I can tell, he hasn't pitched an inning since Omaha.

Steve Gress of the Gazette-Times continues his series looking back at last year's OSU football season.

Pacific Takes examines the Pac-12's overall records against other conferences over the past 10 seasons. They have winning records against all but two conferences; while you might be able to guess both, the hard numbers were rather surprising.

In case you missed it, away football tickets are now available through the OSU ticket office for every game except the Civil War. Last I checked, Civil War tickets were available through the U of O website if you bought tickets to a three game mini-plan.

In another article that came out prior to me doing The Dam Links, Andrew Kilstrom of the Barometer wrote a nice piece on Beaver pitcher Scott Schultz, who became a father at 18, and is trying to balance school and family. Note this article came out before Schultz decided to come back to OSU for one more year.

For our daily "Minute or Less" Youtube clip, we're going to break the rules by 18 seconds, since this video is actually relevant. Let's go back to last year's media day, when Chip Kelly got bored and snatched the microphone out of a Comcast reporter's hand and started to interview Jordan Poyer, which was undoubtedly far more entertaining than whatever had otherwise been about to happen. Who knew this was actually a job interview?

Is it OK to admit now that I actually like Chip Kelly? I'm just very glad he's no longer coaching the Ducks.

Speaking of Chip Kelly, vote in the poll below. And if you find any other Beaver related links, post 'em below.