The Dam Links 8/5/2013: Fall Practice Begins Today

25 days until kickoff vs. Eastern Washington.

Your Eastern Washington Factoid: EWU has had 5 names in 131 years of existence. EWU was founded in 1882 as the Benjamin P. Cheney Academy, with 200 students. In 1889, the year Washington became a state, it was renamed the State Normal School at Cheney. In 1937, it became the Eastern Washington College of Education. It 1961, it became Eastern Washington State College. Finally, in 1977, it was officially renamed Eastern Washington University.

Football News

In addition to the start of fall camp (ironically named since we're at the mid-point of summer), single game tickets go on sale today. With Stanford, UW, and USC all coming to Corvallis this year, there's a lot of good games to choose from. For current season ticket holders, they were put in the mail this weekend and should arrive in mailboxes this week.

Lindsey Schnell continued her positional previews on Friday with Wide Receiver, spotlighting Richard Mullaney as the Rising Star to watch in that area. Saturday, she previews safeties and features Ryan Murphy. She finishes her Rising Stars list with Sean Mannion at #1, which seems like an odd choice for a Rising Star considering he's a two-year starter and the most prominent player on the team. But I get where she is coming from, as how high his "Star" rises will likely have a huge impact on the fate of this team.

She also reports that MLB Josh Williams has been dismissed from the team, following his indefinite suspension back in June. Additionally, she provides a look in on the team on the eve of fall camp.

One more (maybe the last?) pre-season award watch list: Sean Mannion is on the 30-man pre-season watch list for the Manning Award. The 30-man watch list is basically a list of the top 30 QB's in QBR last year, which is why Mannion shows up and Keith Price doesn't. Mariota, Kelly and Hundley are on the list as well, representing the Pac-12.

Kevin Hampton of the Gazette-Times catches up with Mike Riley, who is excited to get back to work. He also outlines 5 key questions going into fall camp.

Joe Mixon, an ESPN 300 RB (ranked #100 overall) has narrowed his list to 10, one of which is Oregon State. I wouldn't go out and buy your Mixon jersey yet though, considering the other nine are Cal, Florida, Ohio State, Oklahoma, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas A&M, Washington, and Wisconsin. There were 50 schools that offered, so even being considered on the list is a nice sign for the Beavers.

Paul Myerberg of the USA Today previews Oregon State, and ranks them as the 36th best team in the country.

Baseball

Dylan Davis had a pretty good day on Friday. 3 for 4, two runs scored, and a grand slam contributing to 8 RBI's would be enough for a mere mortal, but not for Dylan Davis. He also pitched a 1-2-3 bottom of the ninth to close the game for the Falmouth Commodores. For the season, Davis is batting .333 with 6 HR's and 33 RBI's in 96 at bats. Although he doesn't lead the team in home runs or RBI's, he only has about 2/3 of the at-bats of the guys ahead of him, due to OSU's extended post-season run. He certainly leads the team in home runs and RBI per at bat.

Other Sports

OSU gymnastics has a new assistant coach.

The fourth and final OSU Orange Perspective video was released Friday, and Bob DeCarolis reviews the mens' and womens' basketball seasons from the brand new OSU Basketball Practice Facility.

The football intro is also out today:

Jamie Weisner of the OSU women's basketball team talks about playing for Team Canada in the U19 world championships in eastern Europe. She also discusses the upcoming season, as well as cultural differences she observed on her trip, and topless beaches.

Flashback to 1998 for the climax of one of the most exciting Civil Wars of all time:

Vote in the poll below, and leave any links I missed in the comments. And celebrate, for fall camp is here. Some fun -- and adventure at last!