Grip on Sports: The weekend is over and an uncertain future beckons

A GRIP ON SPORTS • It’s a Monday morning after an eventful weekend. One that included a surprisingly calm Sunday following hard on the heels of a maniac Saturday. Read on.

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• There was no Seahawk game yesterday. It was their open date. Which meant there was time to enjoy a beautiful Sunday if you were of the mind to.

The next 10 Sundays are taken.

But do they really matter?

What is it you want out of the region’s NFL team? For years and years, local fans were happy with winning more than losing, of occasionally making the playoffs, of giving us enough Sundays of happiness to make the early part of winter fly by.

But Pete Carroll, John Schneider and the Hawks’ success changed all that, didn’t it?

All of a sudden Seattle was a contender. A Super Bowl contender. One of a handful of NFL teams that could win the whole thing. The Hawks did it once. They came tantalizing close to doing it again.

But those days are gone. Not forgotten mind you, but gone. No one thinks this team can make the Super Bowl, let alone win it. There are not enough pieces on the field and not enough talent on the sidelines.

So what is enough? What satisfies you? Will a 5-5 mark in the final 10 games be enough? Or do the Hawks have to win seven and make the playoffs? Will even that be enough? A wild-card game, a division matchup, a conference title shot? What is the bar?

• What a weekend in Pullman. We can all agree it was pretty special, right?

But it’s over. And, as anyone who saw the first half of Saturday evening’s game can attest, a hangover has to be avoided.

The Ducks sure looked as if they were still replaying the Washington win in their heads. And by the time they realized it, their hopes for a special season were shot down.

Now the Cougars have to avoid the same fate.

It won’t be easy. They travel to Stanford this week. The Cardinal are coming off a mini-bye, having played on Thursday, which gave them two extra days to prepare. And Stanford played better last week, despite the lack of production from its running game.

Winning at Stanford hasn’t been easy since Jim Harbaugh turned the West’s best academic institution into a football factory. And it will be even harder if the Washington State players are looking over their shoulders at what happened last weekend.

• Is it time for Larry Scott to move on? Conference commissioners, like athletic directors at major institutions, have a shelf life. And Scott may have reached his.

The problem with being a conference commissioner anywhere but in the SEC is successes fade and problems accumulate.

The public doesn’t remember the good stuff. The screw-ups? Those have legs.

Scott did a lot of good for the Pac-12 and its members. Heck, it wouldn’t be the Pac-12 without him. But he missed a chance to make it the Pac-16 and a real power in college sports and that might have been the beginning of the end.

Now all the flaws in the conference office and conference coffers and conference TV are piling on. The latest is a kerfuffle about replay and how the Pac-12 handles it.

In itself it isn’t job-costing bad. But as another example of Scott’s leadership and how he handles crises, it may be the last straw. It will be, it seems, if Oregonian columnist John Canzano has his way.

The whole replay-manual spat seems to be a tempest in a teapot, but it is also an indicator species in a way. It shows Scott at his obstinate worst and allows critics, of which there are many, in and out of the media, to latch onto his stubbornness and to use it as a lever to push him out.

For a guy who is really smart, and Scott is, and has a bunch of really smart people around him, and I’m guessing he does, the last few weeks have been really hard to understand. Now it may just be too late to repair the damage.

• Today is In-N-Out Burger’s 70th birthday. It was born nearly eight years before I was. But our lives have always been intertwined.

Do you know the first hamburger with lettuce I ever ate came from In-N-Out? Or the first time I had a meal with my wife of 39 years was there as well? (OK, I’m not sure about either but, you know, mythology is important.)

What I am sure of is In-N-Out was the burger joint of my young adulthood, which means it will always be the best. Those of you who grew up in Seattle may feel the same way about Dick’s. Or for Milwaukee natives, George Webb’s. Spokane, I’m not sure. Ron’s in the Valley, maybe, or Zips in other places.

None have reached the cult status of In-N-Out, though. And In-N-Out reaching the pantheon of American celebrity restaurants like Shake Shack and Whataburger and wherever Taylor Swift stop, makes me sad. It was so much better when it was a hard-by-an-L.A.-freeway thing instead of a phenomenon.

People like me, however, served as its apostles. Word of mouth, print media (do you know one of the first stories I ever wrote for the S-R was a travel piece on Southern California, which I led with an In-N-Out story? No lie), famous chefs, all served to spread the gospel according to Harry and Esther Snyder.

Sadly, the burger chain isn’t what it once was. Nothing ever is, especially French fries. But it is still special to this guy.

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WSU: Two weeks ago the Cougars were unranked. A bye and a big win over Oregon later, they are the Pac-12’s top-ranked team in the AP poll. No matter if you are a fan or not, that’s crazy. And probably an indicator of what a little national publicity can do for a program. Theo Lawson has a story on the rankings. … Tom Clouse goes in-depth on the biggest play of the game, one we mentioned in our TV Take. … The volleyball team picked up another win, culminating a weekend sweep of the L.A.-area schools. … And, if you want one last look at the weekend, this Adam Lewis story on The Athletic will take you there. It requires a subscription, however.

Elsewhere in the Pac-12, the poll results and power rankings are always worth passing along on Monday, but this week we have the late-Saturday night thoughts of Jon Wilner to share as well. I’m not sure how I missed them yesterday. … Washington did what it had to do Saturday and got an assist from the school across the state. … Oregon didn’t do what it had to do Saturday. … Oregon State hasn’t done it pretty much all season. … Stanford is back in the rankings. … Colorado is on a two-game losing streak. … Utah holds its championship hopes in its own hands. … USC may be down to its third-string quarterback this week. He’s still a prep All-American, though. … UCLA changed quarterbacks as well due to injury. The Bruins still defeated Arizona. … In basketball news, Washington may be better than anyone thought.

Seahawks: The run game has returned, even without a contribution from the first-round draft pick.

Sounders: Another match, another win. Seattle is on a roll.

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• For years I used to order a double-double and a cheeseburger, both with onions and no tomatoes. Or, if I were with my friend Kent, I would just take the tomatoes off and give them to him. Then Kim came along and slowly changed me. Now it’s tomatoes and both type of onions. And no French fires. Not since the company changed to a healthier frying oil anyway. Healthier, yes, but as tasty? Nope. The days of the best French fries anywhere are long gone, consigned to a memory that still makes my mouth water. Until later …