by | January 19, 2012 · 1:45 pm

2012 UW Running Backs

Looking at the current roster, with minimal attention paid to the 2012 recruiting class.

Who They Lose

Only Chris Polk, maybe the best running back in UW history.  On a play-by-play basis, Napolean Kaufman and Corey Dillon and probably a few others may have been more dangerous, but no one was as consistently dominating, punishing and dependable as Polk.  He ran incredibly hard and was the perfect back to run behind a mediocre offensive line.  I wish we could have seen what he would have done with some better running room.

Sarkisian has said several times that no one has better embodied the type of program he wants to run than Polk.  He was mainly talking about his toughness and physicality, but I think it could be applied to Polk’s personality as well.  He’s known as a talker, a little bit brash, but a huge competitor, teammate and leader.  He will be sorely missed and remembered as a true Husky Legend.

Who Is Back

Jesse Callier- Junior

Bishop Sankey- Sophomore

FB Jonathan Amosa- Senior

FB Tim Tucker- Junior

There are other running backs on scholarship (see below), but Callier and Sankey are the two who received extensive playing time last year.  Callier has received a good number of carries the last two years, mostly as a change of pace to Polk.  He gets a lot of end-arounds and runs outside the tackles, and even runs the wildcat (WildDawg!) on occasion.  Callier has been solid, if mostly unexciting.  He doesn’t seem to quite have the electricity to make up for his apparent lack of physicality that keeps him from being more effective between the tackles.  That being said, his chances have been limited and I’ll be curious to see what he can do if he gets more regular carries this year.  He was a ridiculously productive high school player.  I’m skeptical he can be an above-average starter, but he’s an excellent back-up at worst.

Sankey, about whom much has already been written, mainly due to his spurning of the Cougars, received more carries as 2011 went along and made the most of them.  He seemed a bit more effective than Callier at running up the middle, and he showed a good burst of speed to match.  Out of the two, he seems more likely to grab hold of the primary job.  He did nothing to dampen my hopes for him and probably even raised them a few notches by forcing his way into some playing time. Continue reading →

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by | January 19, 2012 · 1:32 am

Catching Up With The Dawgs

It’s been an interesting couple of weeks at Montlake for Sark and his football team.  Matthew wrote about the recruiting aspect a few weeks ago and that combined with all of the coaching news has made for an interesting month since the Alamo Bowl.  Tonight, I’ll take a look at most of the news (date-by-date fashion) and add a few thoughts to it.

December 14th, 2011 – What Happened: Demetrice Martin, who was the cornerback coach at UW, left to fill the same position at UCLA.  He was one of the top recruiters on the Husky staff and his loss was felt immediately in the recruiting realm.  Several commits flipped from UW to UCLA and a few other guys dropped the Huskies from their list.

Looking At It Now:  It doesn’t seem like a big deal now and, frankly, I think it might help the Huskies.  Martin was undoubtedly a good recruiter but I don’t know about his coaching.  Maybe we won’t see our corners lack confidence now?  Maybe they’ll play a little closer to the receiver.  None of the corners have developed under Martin (Q. Rich regressed significantly) and maybe they will under the new coach.  Maybe not, but I think it was time for a change at this coaching position anyway.

December 29th, 2011 – What Happened:  Kevaire Russel, one of the top recruits in the state, announces that he has verbally committed to Notre Dame over the hometown Huskies.  Message boards erupted (I’m talking about you Dawgman) in fury over how Sark can’t recruit.  It was a little shocking and interesting to see that the Huskies couldn’t keep a recruit at home.

Looking At It Now: It’s still a bit alarming that a lot of in-state recruits are turning elsewhere but it was never worth freaking out over.  The Huskies are still in on several big name guys and will probably end up with a very solid class.  I should have saved some of the comments from the Dawgman boards because it’s hilarious how blown out of proportion some were.

December 29th, 2011 –  What Happened:  The Huskies lost one of the most entertaining, frantic, fascinating football games I’ve ever seen.  The Alamo Bowl ended in with Baylor winning 67-56.  I still see that score and am astonished.  Both defenses were absolutely terrible and both offenses were phenomenal.  It’s a shame that a lot of the focus gets put on how horrible the defense was (which I admit, both were horrible) and not put on how good the offenses were.  Watching the national title week several weeks later, I couldn’t help think of how entertaining that game was.  By the way, the Dawgs and Baylor would score touchdowns on LSU and Alabama.

Looking At It Now:  You always want to win.  Let me start off by saying that.  A bowl win is nice because trophies are cool and you don’t want to have 67 points scored on you on national TV.  This game may be responsible for what all happened next and what happened next may be what takes the Dawgs back to the top of the Pac-12.

December 31st, 2011 – What Happened:  Sark fired Nick Holt, Mike Cox and Jeff Mills from his staff.  The Alamo Bowl seemed to be the final straw with the defense and Sark had enough.  It wasn’t much of a surprise and speculation quickly turned to candidates.

Looking At It Now:  It had to happen and it did.

January 2nd, 2012 – What Happened:  The Huskies hired away Justin Wilcox from the Tennessee Volunteers, he was their defensive coordinator.  He brought Peter Sirmon along with him and he will coach the linebackers.  This seemed to be Sark’s first choice and he made the move quickly.  People around the country were impressed by the hire of the up and coming DC and his right-hand recruiting man.

Looking At It Now:  When Sark gave Husky fans a day to speculate about who the new guy might be, Justin Wilcox was my top choice.  Needless to say, I was pleased with the hire.  Wilcox has an impressive resume and seems to know what he’s doing.  His players seemed to love him and he was successful at both of his stops.  He may leave for a head coaching gig soon, but that means that he’d have been successful.  I’m all for this hire and it seems like everyone else is too.

January 12th, 2012 – What Happened:  The Huskies hired Keith Heyward to be their new defensive backs coach.  He is a younger guy who had the same position at Oregon State.  There’s a theme to these hires and it’s that they’re all younger guys.  He was said to be one of the best recruiters on the OSU staff.  I don’t have any examples of his coaching ability.

Looking At It Now:  I don’t have a lot of basis for this but I think this might be the most underrated hire the Huskies made.  It seems like this one was forgotten after all of the news.  Heyward is well liked by recruits and may steal a few from Oregon State this year.  Again, I don’t know much about his coaching ability but he was loved at OSU and was said to be a good hire by many experts.

January 16th, 2012 – What Happened:  The Huskies hired Tosh Lupoi away from the California Golden Bears.  He was their defensive line coach and a pretty successful one.  He is said to be the best recruiter on the west coast and everyone was impressed with the hire.  Many Cal recruits were shocked and said to be opening their recruitment back up.

Looking At It Now:  Well, these last couple only happened a few days ago so there’s not a ton to add except for my opinion.  This is a great hire.  Lupoi probably can’t live up to the hype he has come with because I’ve never seen an assistant coach have so much hype aside from Ed Orgeron, who is the other top recruiting assistant in the Pac-12.  It was the best defensive-line coaching hire Sark could have realistically made.  It was the final piece of, what I consider, the best staff he could have put together.

January 16th 2012 – What Happened:  Nick Montana, the heralded quarterback, decided to transfer from the UW.  He came to the Huskies with much fanfare and didn’t perform very well in his only start (not that it was all his fault).  From what I saw he has a future as a college quarterback.  In fact, from what I saw he could start for Alabama or LSU and win a national championship.

Looking At It Now:  It was inevitable, really.  The guy wants to play and wasn’t going to have much of a chance here.  Watching his demeanor in practice, I was never a huge fan of his but he’s got talent and is a smart kid.  I hope he does well in the future.

January 17th – What Happened:  The Huskies offensive coordinator, Doug Nussmeier, left UW and took the same role at Alabama.  It’s hard to blame him, he’ll get to call his own plays for the defending national champions and he’ll get a raise.  Unfortunately for the Dawgs, Nussmeier was a great coach and they had to fill another position in their staff.  This was the date it became official, it was known quite sometime in advance.

Looking At It Now:  Nussmeier is a good coach and deserves a ton of credit for the progress Jake Locker and Keith Price made.  With that being said, everyone knows this is Sark’s offense.  He is the creative young mind and he has his system.  I would be surprised if the Huskies felt a huge impact by the loss of Nussmeier.  Best of luck to him at Alabama.

January 18th – What Happened:  The Huskies poached another Cal coach in Eric Kiesau to fill the role of offensive coordinator.  He’s another guy who’s said to be a good recruiter.  He was the wide receiver coach at Cal and will coach the quarterbacks here.  Cedric Dozier, another top recruit in Washington who committed to Cal, is said to be reconsidering because of this news.

Looking At It Now:  Another good hire, although I don’t really think it’s an upgrade from Nussmeier.  Time will tell what Kiesau will do on the recruiting trail and I’ll be interested to see if there’s any drop off in the development of the quarterbacks.  I would guess no, because of the presence of Sark.

Wow, a lot has happened.  When I put it all out like this I’m somewhat amazed.  So, where is the program now compared to about a month ago?  It’s hard to tell without a game being played, of course.  Everyone thinks the staff is better than it was.  The recruiting sure seems like it’s going to gain steam at some point in the next couple of weeks, if not days.  With all that in mind, I think the program is trending up.  These hires have given the Huskies some steam but, as we learned with Nick Holt, some hires aren’t as glamorous as they first seem.  Sark did the best that he could, but you just never know.

Two weeks until signing day!  I love that day.  For now, be careful out there in the snow.  It’s a little crazy out there.  Go Dawgs!

Oh, and Nick Holt Jr. transferred to Montana!

Andrew

 

 

 

 

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by | January 14, 2012 · 2:36 pm

The Value Question

The Pineda-Montero trade is fascinating on so many levels.  Baseball just doesn’t see many trades of elite young players for each other.  If a Pineda or Montero gets traded, it’s for a more established star or, less often, for a package of younger prospects.  The failed Cliff Lee-Montero deal aspect just adds another layer.

When I first heard about the trade, my thought was that it was so obvious that I couldn’t believe it happened.  I remember even asking Dan and Andrew back in the summer whether they would make this trade straight-up.  To me, it seems like both teams are trading from a position of strength to fill a weakness.

Most trade analyses you’ll read have a different focus.  You can literally read for hours about whether Montero or Pineda is more valuable, whether Jose Campos or Hector Noesi is more valuable, about who did better in this deal.  All of those issues are interesting and highly debateable, which makes them fun and worth writing.  I think they occasionally miss the point, however.

The goal of a baseball team is not to add the most valuable pieces, or to win the value war in a trade or signing.  The goal is to build the best team.  Typically, the two go hand in hand.  The more value a team can get in a deal, the better.  If given the choice between Adam Dunn for $14 million a year or an outfield of Michael Stanton, Andrew McCutcheon and Jacoby Ellsbury for roughly a third of that amount, the choice is obvious.  You want the most bang for your buck.  You don’t want to spend huge money on guys who will underperform and you ideally want to underpay guys who are good and getting better.  That’s why building up an elite farm system is so important.

What is obvious in the macro view becomes highly nuanced in practice.  It’s not enough to just say that starting pitcher is a more valuable position than designated hitter, or that Pineda has more value than Montero because he’s had a year of major league experience.  Both of those statements are true and yet, they don’t matter too much for the Mariners.  The Mariners strength is their rotation.  They will miss Pineda, especially if he turns into a Cy Young candidate.  The difference between Pineda and Danny Hultzen, James Paxton or Taijuan Walker is potentially tiny, however.  That is compounded by the Safeco Field effect and the way it can turn mediocre pitchers into average ones.  In Safeco, pitching is nowhere near as valuable as hitting, and adding hitting is much more valuable for the current Mariners because they have so little of it.

Speaking of hitting, it’s not crazy to think that Montero could be the most productive guy in the Mariners line-up in 2012.  It’s not certain, of course, which is why there’s some risk here.  Still, where the gap between Pineda and Hultzen is small to non-existent, the gap from Montero to the Mariners best hitting prospect, be it Nick Franklin or Vinnie Catricala or whomever, is huge.  It’s debateable whether Montero or Pineda is more valuable in a vacuum, but I think it’s clear that Montero is much more valuable to the Mariners.

This offense is suddenly sort of interesting.  It will still likely struggle in 2012 as all of the young guys (hopefully) come of age, but with Ackley and Montero and Smoak and possibly Carp, they now have a heart of the order that could turn into something scary.  Now Franklin and Catricala and Wells and everyone else only have to be supporting players rather than stars.  The other fun aspect of this trade is what it allows them to do in the future, as Dave Cameron and others have pointed out.  It’s possible but highly unlikely they still sign Prince Fielder, but assuming they don’t, that potentially leaves them with a lot of money to spend in the near future.  Maybe they add a pitcher for a year or two, or maybe they wait until next year to find an offensive guy at a position of need like third base or outfield.  This deal potentially improves the Mariners immediately and sets them up to more easily improve in the future as well.

As with any trade, this one will not be determined good or bad until we see what Montero and Noesi, to a lesser degree, make themselves into.  It’s tough to see Pineda go.  I’ll never forget those early fastballs that looked like they were thrown at about 150 miles per hour.  This deal potentially gives the Mariners tremendous value, however, whether Montero is more valuable than Pineda or not.

-Matthew

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by | January 14, 2012 · 3:42 am

Pineda-Montero Trade Reaction

Earlier today I sat down and was starting to write a post on how we shouldn’t listen to any baseball reporters this off-season.  Part of it had to do with me being frustrated at the hysteria of Prince Fielder being in Texas.  The other part of me was frustrated with the Mariners for the lack of  moves this off-season.  Did I disagree with what they did?  No, but I was just bored.  Sports are entertainment, and it’s never fun when they leave you bored.  The last part of me was just hungry and didn’t even care about baseball reporters because I wanted to eat some chicken.  When I started that post, the Mariners made a trade.  Hey!  A trade!  After 4 months of peeking through the fence at Prince Fielder, the Mariners jumped over the fence, jumped on one of their horses, rode it into town, swapped it for another rancher’s horse, rode that horse back to the fenced-in area they owned, and had a glass of lemonade all in the span of about 10 minutes.  Sorry, about that.  I hope you followed.  My first point of this post, is that you shouldn’t take much of what these baseball writers say as gospel.  They get the reports right every now and then but tonight showed just how fast the unexpected can happen.

As for the trade, well surely you’ve read other people’s reaction by now.  There’s been enough time for you to form your own opinion.  But, if for some reason you’re indecisive on how you feel, and you’re up at 3 AM, a Good Guy is here to help!  I want to cover a few things before I get to my quick reaction.

It seems as if the opinion from people around Seattle is all over the place.  There are people completely against it, people who love it, and people who think it’s strictly average.  Dave ‘Softy’ Mahler had about a 10 tweet rant about how the ownership has to change now.  Mike Salk loved the trade.  (‘Softy’ wasn’t necessarily upset about the trade, but for some reason it sent him over the edge, just for the record.)  I want to caution you on who you listen to about this.  I believe that the Good Guys would have a more intelligent conversation about the Mariners than many of the Seattle sports radio guys.  That’s not to say they aren’t knowledgeable in other ways, but many of them aren’t experts on the Mariners and I think they’d admit as much.  Salk (from Brock and Salk) seems to try to understand more than any other.  Some of them just don’t care and don’t try to understand.  ‘Softy’ had no good reason for his rant and Jason Puckett is way off when he says that this feels desperate because the M’s should have just traded Lee for him.

That brings to my next point.  That very point of saying, why didn’t the Mariners just trade Lee for Montero.  For those of you that don’t know, that was very close to happening a few years ago before the Mariners’ decided on Justin Smoak instead.  It’s very ironic that they both ended up here now.  Anyway, it’s ridiculous to say they should have traded Lee for Montero so they could have kept Pineda.  When that traded happened, most baseball analysts thought the Mariners made the right move in getting Smoak.  Perceptions change over a year and a half and that is what has happened here.  Don’t think, “the Mariners made the wrong decision in getting Smoak, since they went out and got Montero now.”  They are 2 separate events and, though our mind’s link them together, they are independent of each other.  The Mariners got the best young hitter they thought they could get for the package they were offering and that had nothing to do with Cliff Lee and Justin Smoak.

Now, on to my thoughts on the actual trade.  I’m somewhere between liking and loving the trade.  Lookout Landing does a good job of summing up the pieces involved (much better than I could do, so read that).  I do think Sullivan may undersell Hector Noesi, who’s the pitcher coming over from New York, a little bit but there’s no way of knowing that.

Noesi seems like a good place to start since I just mentioned him a sentence ago and he’s the least known player in the trade as far as Mariner fans go.  He hasn’t pitched much in the majors, 56 innings last year and was nothing spectacular in doing so.  It sounds like the Mariners will lock him in as a starter to begin the season.  He seems like he’ll be a decent big league pitcher at least, and a few scouts seem to think he’s a very good pickup for the M’s.  Time will tell if those scouts are correct.  That’s a theme for this whole trade.

I’m sorry to see Jose Campos go.  Over the past couple of years I’ve started to follow the Mariners’ farm system fairly closely.  I read a review of each team’s game every night and try to familiarize myself with the top players from every part of the system.  By doing this I start to like players I’ve never watched more than the one’s I watch everyday on TV.  Jose Campos was one of those players.  He’d be rated about the number 5 prospect in the Mariners system and has tons of upside.  He’s only 19 and who  knows what will happen because, young pitcher but if he stays healthy, look out for his name in 3 or 4 years.

Now for the big names!  Jesus Montero is said to be a world-class hitter.  The comparison I’ve heard the most over the last 3 years is Edgar Martinez.  Heyo!  Edgar!  Put him in the Hall of Fame, by the way!  That’s a good comparison.  He’s either a catcher or a DH.  Catcher would be awesome, but his defense is lacking and most doubt that he’ll be able to stay at the position.  As far as his hitting goes, he’s said to have good power to all fields (important for Safeco) and good contact ability.  Yes, he hasn’t had much time in the majors and that’s a little frightening.  Jack Z knows more than me though and I trust his scouting ability above all of his other skills.

Michael Pineda was fun.  It’s sad to see someone fun go and there’s nothing I like more in baseball than a big, young, flame-throwing pitcher.  Man, he was big!  I hope he only gets better, even if he is pitching for the Yankees.   He deserves it.  I’m not sure he’ll ever turn into an elite ace and I’ll leave it at that because most of you who read this know who he is and what he projects as.  Some of you will disagree with me.

I like this because the Mariners got a hitter!  My philosophy if I was a GM is to draft talent (don’t draft for needs) and accumulate it by international signings.  Then trade from internal positions of strength for positions of weakness.  This is exactly what happened here.  Yes, it sucks that Pineda is gone but I think we’ve got a good one in return.

Now what happens?  I have no idea.  I really think the Mariners are still going to go after Prince but I’m in the very small minority.  They have the same amount of money they had when you woke up last week.  No one knows how much that is but it seems to be a fair amount.  If they don’t sign Prince, I still expect some other big move.  I think it will be another bat, but a pitcher makes plenty of sense.  I’d go for Roy Oswalt!  After today, we just have to realize that we have no idea what will happen.  Speculating and projecting is fun, but the truth is that not much turns out how we have it planned in our brain.  In sports, all we can hope for is that our team improves and I think that the M’s are a stronger organization now than they were 24 hours ago.  Not everyone does, but I do.  And hey, there’s still that report that Prince is renting a car in Seattle this weekend.

Andrew

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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by | January 8, 2012 · 8:06 pm

UW Quarterbacks

I’m going to run through positional overviews for the Dawgs for next year, starting with quarterbacks.  I thought about waiting until the new recruits are in, but most of them will redshirt and, as I said in my last post, I don’t really know much about them anyway.  I’ll mention recruits if I think I have reason to, but the aim of these posts is to see what the Huskies have on hand for 2012.  Enjoy!

Who They Lose

No one.

Starter

Keith Price– Junior: Price just completed his first season as starter, and it’s hard to imagine what he could do for an encore.  His 2011 was arguably the best season by a Husky QB in history.  He set virtually every single-season record except for yardage, which Cody Pickett holds.  It did take Pickett a lot more attempts than Price, so I’d argue that Price’s season was better.  He showed a significantly stronger arm and better accuracy than most expected, and his impressive knowledge of the offense was a popular topic of conversation.

The lone drawback with Price is a lack of durability.  He only missed one game, and he probably could have gutted that one out, but he spent nearly the entire season with leg injuries that hampered his mobility.  The Alamo Bowl provided a glimpse of Price’s running ability, and if that can be a more permanent part of his game, he’s going to be incredibly scary.  It’s easy to say that he’ll put on 15 pounds this winter and be more durable, but I don’t know if he can even do that or how much it will help if he does.  Whether he can run free or not, another year to continue to mature and improve, coupled with the progression of Kasen Williams and Austin Seferian-Jenkins, should make Price into one of the premier college QBs in the country.  This position is in better hands than any other on the team.

Depth

Nick Montana– Sophomore

Derrick Brown– RS Freshman

Thomas Vincent- RS Freshman

Entering 2011, Montana and Price both had a shot at the starting job.  Price won it, of course, and when Montana filled in a few times later in the season, it was easy to see why.  Montana looked mostly overmatched, with arm strength and accuracy issues.  Starting him over Price against Oregon State, when Price was hobbled with bad knees, probably cost the Huskies the game.  It was easy and popular to say that Montana would never be an elite quarterback in the Pac-12, and many speculated that he would transfer now that Price has cemented himself into the position seemingly until Montana’s senior year.

No one will argue that Montana was unimpressive, and it’s hard to say what he’ll become.  It’s easy to forget that he was only a redshirt freshman, though.  He has plenty of time to improve, and most people who know think he will.  It’s possible that he transfers, but there’s been no indication that he is thinking about it.  I would expect that he’s here to stay, and I think he’ll be dramatically improved and serve as a solid backup in 2012.  Brown was a somewhat unheralded recruit in 2011, but he’s drawn some raves since stepping on campus.  He’s a big, athletic guy with possibly the strongest arm currently on campus.  Hopefully, he won’t be needed this year, but he shows a lot of potential.  Vincent is a walk on who will likely never see the field in his career, but he sounds like he has some genuine talent and athleticism, even if it’s only ever used to run the scout team.  He walked on with the Huskies over some lower level offers, which is always welcome.

Incoming Recruits

Jeff Lindquist and Cyler Miles

As I said, I won’t mention too many recruits, but these two are hard to pass up.  Both committed early to the UW, and both are ranked around 15th among quarterbacks in the nation, and that may be a little low with the way they’re playing in the postseason events.  Both are athletic guys with big arms.  Both won the MVP awards in national high school all star games last week.  It’s pretty rare to get two elite quarterbacks like this in the same class.  Both seem very solid in their commitments to the Huskies, but every school on the west coast will be coming hard at them this month.  Lindquist, from Mercer Island, seems certain to stick with the Dawgs.  Miles seems like more of a question, but only because he’s from Colorado.  He’s given no indication of looking elsewhere.  Right now, they are the gems of the UW recruiting class and should keep the Husky quarterback position in good hands for the next half a decade.

-Matthew

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by | January 7, 2012 · 10:21 pm

The State of the Husky Basketball Team

Yes, I still write for this blog.  Welcome back, you say?  Why thank you.  How have you been, you say?  I’m doing well.  The main reason I haven’t written much lately is that I wanted to make sure that I was still writing on here for the right reasons.  All four of the Good Guys’ write on this blog as a hobby and nothing more.  We aren’t paid for what we write (nor should we be) and we aren’t the most popular sports blog in Seattle (again, we shouldn’t be).  We just do this for fun and we are hopeful that our readers find us entertaining and somewhat informative.  In the last month I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t writing just to see how many blog hits we could get.  I wanted to make sure that I didn’t think of it as a chore.  Most of all, I wanted to make sure that I enjoyed sports more while writing about them than not writing about them.  Now, I’m back!  Yes, I’ve missed writing and, having wasted about 200 words already, it’s time to get on with this post!  There will be more in the future and, hopefully, not as many breaks in the future.

I was driving back to Seattle today and caught the last couple of minutes of the Husky basketball game on the radio.  After watching their blowout loss against Colorado on Thursday, I was hesitant to even turn it on but I’m a Dawg and will always be.  Despite the Huskies best effort to lose the game to a terrible Utah team, they edged out a close victory.  It was their first road win of the year.

After the game had ended I spent a few minutes about what I thought ‘Husky basketball’ is.  In recent years I think the program has been successful enough to earn an identity and I think Romar, Bob Rondeau and Harry the Husky would agree.  What is that identity?  I would peg it as in-your-face defense that takes risks, fast paced offense that thrives off of penetration and shooters, and a dive on the floor to get the loose ball mentality.  Most of all, I think it’s that last part.  That’s what makes Dawg fans stand up and bark.  Since the program has been on the upswing, there is no doubt that Romar has taught his players to want it more than their opposition.  Sure, that hasn’t been the case every single game but I think most Husky fans would agree.  So what’s different about this year’s team? Continue reading →

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by | January 7, 2012 · 8:33 pm

What’s The Deal With Recruiting?

I’m usually kind of hesitant to write about recruiting, for a few reasons.  For one, I don’t really know anything about these players, how good they are or what they’re thinking, and neither do most other people, whatever they might tell you.  Outside of a few Youtube clips or maybe a single game here or there, I’ve never seen these guys play, and even if I have, I’m no talent scout.  A couple of years ago I went with Danny and Andrew to watch Bothell play O’Dea.  I could tell that Zach Fogerson was kind of special.  Michael Hartvigson and Colin Porter were huge and stood out.  I’ve also been to plenty of games where guys really stood out and weren’t anywhere close to being D-I recruits.  I can’t usually tell the difference.  If you’re relying on me for scouting, you’re in trouble.

The second reason I hesitate to write about recruiting is that it’s a pretty charged topic.  The management aspect of sports has grown almost as compelling as the game itself.  Prince Fielder and the Mariners roster construction  has received far more attention than the Mariners’ season, and that’s not just because the Mariners were terrible.  With fantasy sports becoming so popular, we like to play general manager.  That’s hard to do with college sports, and so we speculate on recruiting.

That’s not necessarily bad.  Continue reading →

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by | January 4, 2012 · 10:04 pm

Montlake’s Going Crazy!

The last week has been a wild one for University of Washington football.  Between the Alamo Bowl, coaching changes, and recruiting news, there have been no shortage of emotion swings.  I’m going to save the recruiting talk for a future post, but I want to offer some thoughts on the rest of the news.

Plenty has already been said on the Alamo Bowl, so I’ll keep it short, but it’s hard to ask for much more out of a bowl appearance.  Besides a win, that is.  Everyone expected a shootout, but this one went to a completely different level.  I’ve heard people say that the lack of defense was embarassing, and I suppose that it probably is.  I certainly wish the Huskies would have pulled out the win.  Still, I can’t get overly upset about it.  That was one of the craziest things we’ll ever get to see.  I talk a lot on here about how I increasingly watch sports for the chance to be amazed.  Winning is great, but I want to see great performances and events that surprise me.  The Alamo Bowl had both. Continue reading →

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