Twelve years.

That's how long it's been since the Washington Huskies have appeared in a Rose Bowl game. That number also represents a span of time in which Seattle has seen four different college football head coaches, two Holiday Bowls, one Sun Bowl, one Alamo Bowl and one Maaco Bowl Las Vegas.

For some teams, seven bowls in 12 years is a pretty successful run. Four head coaches in 13 years? Well...not so much. Washington is yet again at another turning point in the football program's direction, only this time it's under head coach Steve Sarkisian.

And the program's current location status? At the intersection of Mediocrity Street and Winners Boulevard. Which way will Washington turn? 

Sarkisian is now in his fifth year at Washington and five years is about the time when an athletic director decides whether or not his head coach is making a positive impact on the football program.

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According to Athlon Sports, Jim Mora is the eighth-best head coach in the Pac-12 and Lane Kiffin is only better than a coach who has never been a head coach before. 

Is this too harsh? Or spot on? Athlon ranks the coaches in this order:

1. David Shaw, Stanford

2. Mike Riley, Oregon State

3. Rich Rodriguez, Arizona 

4. Todd Graham, Arizona State

5. Mike Leach, Washington State

6. Mike MacIntyre, Colorado

7. Steve Sarkisian, Washington

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Angus McClure has been at UCLA since then-head coach Karl Dorrell hired him as the Bruins' tight ends coach in 2007. McClure has seen a mind-boggling amount of staff changes at UCLA and yet he has managed to avoid being a victim of collateral damage after Dorrell and his successor, Rick Neuheisel, were both dismissed.

McClure was Neuheisel's recruiting coordinator but after Neuheisel's dismissal, new head coach Jim Mora kept him on staff.

McClure has been invaluable to UCLA's recruiting efforts and Mora recognized the importance of a great recruiting coordinator. 

Recruiting coordinators aren't just recruiters—all assistant coaches are recruiters and usually have a designated area that they are responsible for. Usually their area of responsibility is a region where they have established ties or developed pipelines to local high schools and their coaches. 

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The Oregon Duck basketball season has ended. Time to usher in its football season under new head coach Mark Helfrich.

Like his predecessor Chip Kelly, Helfrich will ban fans and media from spring practice. So technically, we won't know anything from observations. According to an Associated Press report, Helfrich called his first practice on Tuesday as head coach, "weird, at points." More: 

The tweaking Helfrich referred to is probably the most interesting tidbit of the day. What the heck needs to be tweaked? Is he going to instill an even more uptempo offense? Dial down the tempo? Go heavier on the pass? Never, ever punt again?

Oregon's offense doesn't need much tweaking. The defense, however, could use a little adjusting.

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UCLA football begins today. Spring practice, that is.

The Pac-12 South champions will start their first official practice of 2013 on Tuesday with high expectations and a new sense of urgency.

UCLA will be gunning to play in the Rose Bowl not just six Saturdays this fall—it wants to play a seventh game in early December and an eighth on January 1, 2014.

Head coach Jim Mora has probably stewed over some of the Bruins' losses from last year and will be focused on how to fix what wrong in those games. The biggest issue for the Bruins was a lack of killer instinct—they had their moments, but they weren't consistent. 

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He's sitting on the hottest seat in college football. 

So, what's it going to take to power down those rocket boosters under Lane Kiffin's chair?

A bowl berth in the 2013 post season is a good starting point, but before USC can even think about that it must concentrate on winning the Pac-12 South.

That's not going to be easy. While the league's North seems fairly contentious between Stanford and Oregon—but don't count out Washington or Oregon State—the league's South looks like the SEC West in terms of brutal competition.

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Five-star defensive tackle Kenny Bigelow is already turning heads at USC's spring practice. The 6'3", 295-pound true freshman enrolled early at USC to get a jump start at moving up on the roster and challenging for playing time this fall. 

Bigelow has been practicing at nose tackle with the Trojans' second team and has made some outstanding plays, including two sacks in last Saturday's practice. More from USCTrojans.com: 

That adjustment Kiffin referred to is a big one—Bigelow played at defensive end and tight end while at Eastern Christian Academy but is now playing in the nose tackle position. So essentially, Bigelow went from a 4-3 to a 3-4 defense and instead of being responsible for the line's outside edge, is now responsible for the interior.

Bigelow is a sack machine, but Bigelow's new position offers him a new challenge: operating with no space around him. Simply put, instead of having only one guy next to him, Bigelow is now surrounded by two defensive ends, one on each side of him. See diagram of 3-4 defense below:

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Football in Berkeley, Calif., will look a lot different this fall. 

It'll be exciting for sure, but excitement isn't always a positive thing in college football—Michigan fans can attest to this. Whenever Denard Robinson cocked his arm for a deep throw, it was pucker time. 

Cal has a new coach in Sonny Dykes, and his former team, the Louisiana Tech Bulldogs, was exciting to watch. His offenses at Tech were ranked No. 1 in total offense in 2012 and No. 51 in 2011. In two years, Dykes took a 5-7 team and turned it around to a 9-3 team.

So far, so good. 

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