Musing and Cruising the Pac 10

Like many college football fans, when the media starts talking about the opening of summer camp, my heart skips a beat like my Dave Matthews Band Live at Luther Hall CD does now after thousands of plays. I’m giddy with anticipation and my mind swirls with the possibility of a BCS title.

My wife is annoyed and says I’m a “fanatic.” I don’t hear her and dutifully climb up into the attic looking for something that will circulate the hot summer air. I climb down empty handed wondering why she’d store a fan up there anyway.

I comb the internet for news of my team. I scour Yahoo sports, cbssportsline.com, and espn.com for any nuggets related to summer conditioning, injuries and with loathing, any criminal reports. For some reason I can’t bring myself to pay the $9.95/month Rivals.com wants for access to my schools’ inside scoop.

I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I have this sneaking suspicion that it may not contain enough of an inside scoop to satisfy me. But, I understand the quality of an inside scoop is partly in the eyes of the beholder and I have friends who shell out the lunch money to find out which high school junior is whittling down his choices to either my school or Florida.

I wonder if the price were dropped to $4.95/month whether that would be enough of an enticement to get me to commit. After all, that’s just a Taco Bell lunch for goodness sakes.

I also survey the other PAC 10 schools’ reports to gauge the competitiveness of the league this coming fall. I see that the UCLA offense will likely struggle again under the leadership (or lack thereof) of another mediocre quarterback.

UCLA may not be a major football program, but it does have enough of a national awareness and a stellar location, that one would think some top flight recruit would be interested in becoming a Bruin.

You know things are tough when Norm Chow can’t get Joe Montana’s boy to matriculate at that fine academic institution. I’ll have to write a note to Mitch Mustain to the effect that he may have an opportunity to start across town.  

I note that Mike Stoops is getting another chance this year. The Arizona media and the Wildcat nation believe this is the year U of A will be in the mix. Having watched his teams over the past few years I don’t have any faith his team will play consistently enough to threaten the PAC 10 leaders.

I worry about Jacquizz Rodgers again this year. Trying to locate that spider-mite is like trying to find Waldo in less than a minute under threat of physical pain. It’s just hard to do.

I remember last September 25 when I was driven to delirium after shouting over and over “Stay in your lane! Stay in your lane!"

Unfortunately that was my wife’s birthday; she despises Jacquizz now as well.

There is always Cal; the Golden Bears. So close, yet so far away. They could give us fits, but can they represent the PAC 10 in the bowl season? But, I suppose that Tedford knows Best.

And of course, what discussion of the PAC 10 can be complete without reference to the tree people up in Palo Alto. Hate that tree. Although it’s hard to imagine that Harbaugh will ever be able to develop those smarty-pants into anything other than an occasional spoiler.

What with the coaching changes, graduation and the NFL draft, USC is vulnerable; particularly early in the season at Ohio State. And of course we can always count on a hiccup along the way.

I suspect that will always happen with Pete Carroll teams as he avoids the fiery oratory in lieu of the internalized, compete within your self, philosophy. I see a bad moon rising on Halloween as the Trojans travel to Autzen Stadium. Southern Cal has had trouble with mobile quarterbacks (read: Vince Young, among others) in the past and this may be their undoing this year. If they would just stay in their lanes...