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33 days until kickoff vs. Eastern Washington...
Eastern Washington factoid: Famous alumni include Colin Cowherd, Jim McElwain (current Colorado State head football coach) and Todd McFarlane. McFarlane, although primarily known as a comic book artist and toy designer, once spent $3 million dollars on Mark McGwire's 70th home run ball.
OregonLive put together a bunch of AP photos in a photo essay showing Ducks and Beavers working out for their NFL teams. Markus Wheaton and Jordan Poyer are prominently displayed. Markus Wheaton is already feeling behind the 8-ball a bit, although due to no fault of his own. Basically, he missed the first training camp because:
The trimester system used at OSU didn’t end until after the completion of organized team activities and minicamp.
NCAA bylaws prevent players from practicing with professionals until their academic year is over.
I wonder if the late academic year finish for Oregon State (and Oregon) has ever hurt a player's status in the draft. I'd like to think not, but who knows? Regardless, Markus has gotten into a great situation in Pittsburgh with Wallace leaving and no clear #2 WR, so he's got a great chance to make something happen.
Want to predict the entire outlook of the Pac-12 standings? You can do that at Oregon Live. You can also post here at BtD in this thread. If we get enough, we'll do some sort of follow up at the end of the season on it.
Lindsey Schnell has a follow up article on Lawrence Mattison, and how Mike Riley is focused on helping him get through Butler Community College and get to OSU. I really hope it works out.
Lindsey has been very busy the last few days, and she's going to be spotlighting 10 potential rising stars for 2013 for the Beavers. Friday was the first in the series, and featured junior kicker Trevor Romaine. She also provides a projected depth chart for special teams. Saturday's post was on junior tight end Connor Hamlett, who you might remember catching the game winning touchdown against Arizona. Sunday is Gavin Andrews, and she uses the opportunity to preview the offensive line.
OregonLive has a whole ton of stuff from Media Day. The Pac-12 poll, in which Oregon is picked to win the division and Oregon State picked to finish third. Larry Scott on Direct TV and other Pac-12 Network issues. Football practice contact restrictions. Lindsey Schnell provides her insight. Coach Mike Riley's comments at Media Day. What Brandin Cooks said at media day. What Rashaad Reynolds had to say. And Lindsey Schnell also has a report on how many times the QB question came up. Spoiler alert: A lot. Looks like the Oregonian/Oregon Live has produced 12 Beaver related articles since the start of media day. Well, that escalated quickly.
Steve Gress of the Gazette-Times has some reaction as well.
Dylan Davis played in the Cape Cod League All-Star game. Although his West team lost 9-3, Davis performed well, going 2-for-2 with two singles and a run scored.
OSU has a new band director, Dana Biggs.
Sometimes, there are more important things than sports rivalries. The SBNation team is a small, tight-knit group, and when something affects one of them, they stick together. Luke, over at Coug Center, wrote:
"Hey folks,
Good morning. I know yesterday we mentioned an SB Nation community member who was battling his second bout with cancer and we all shared in providing our positive energies, thoughts, and prayers to lift them up.
Today, one of our own in the college league has something that I think is an even more focused way for us to help make a difference, this time helping children hampered by the terrible affliction.
If you weren't aware or don't venture over to CougCenter very often, our stalwart Washington State blogger Jeff Nusser's 4 year old son, Trystian, has been battling Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. While I was on vacation last week, I don't even exactly remember how it happened, but a couple of stray clicks (I think on Twitter, actually) led me to Jeff and his wife's blog. Definitely a must read, and it will most certainly get awfully dusty, awfully quickly. Jeff and his family are unbelievably strong and young Trystian is far braver than almost anyone you'll meet and an inspiration to us all.
Anyways, because of the tremendous, selfless people at the Make-A-Wish foundation, Trystian got to make one of his dreams come true, and was able to meet Micky Mouse at Disneyland (I promised it was about to get dusty) a few weeks back. To try and make a difference in the lives of an individual/family in a similar situation, CougCenter is trying to group source making someone's else dream come true. Think Woody Hayes' old pay it forward mantra. Football's a copycat sport, and there's almost nothing better we could be trying to repeat.
If anyone from your community would like to give, you can again find all the details here.
Anything you can do to help would be appreciated. The Make-A-Wish people do good things, let's help them out.
The second matchup of the Best OSU Play of 2012-2013 concludes Tuesday, so be sure to vote in that. Today it's Eric Moreland's monster (ill-fated) dunk against the Hoops Ducks against Michael Conforto's grand slam against the Diamond Ducks. And check in every other day for a new matchup.
In the spirit of that, let's look at what I think was the best play of the 2011-2012 year. If someone could find (or make) a video of this call with Mike Parker's play-by-play, I would buy that person a beer. The only other version of this I could find was the Pac-12 announcers, and this version is much better.
Vote in the poll below, and post any other links you may have in the comments.