Monday morning blues
A GRIP ON SPORTS
It's sort of difficult to decide what to write about today. There are some choices, from the Seahawks to the Cougars to the Mariners. But no clear-cut favorite. Read on.
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• Really, as I was perusing the web this morning, nothing really caught my eye. There were some interesting items and coincidences, like Art Thiel and Jerry Brewer both writing about the Hawks' quarterback situation and how Russell Wilson (right) has earned a shot against the big boys. Interesting, sure, but not fodder for this space because it already filled that role yesterday morning. So trying to find something to delve into deeply on this Monday turned into an impossible quest. Sorry.
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• Washington State: This may just be the hardest week of Mike Leach's tenure at Washington State. Luckily for him, there is no game at the end of it. The first week of school has always been a challenge for college football coaches, with their players being confronted with all their school responsibilities piled upon their football demands. There is a give-and-take in college. Quarter schools that don't begin classes until the end of September get to practice and play for weeks without the intrusion of school. But the first week of classes usually falls on a game week, splitting the focus at the worst possible time. Semester schools, like WSU, play all their games during the school year, so there isn't as much focus on football early in the season but there also isn't a corresponding first-week-of-school game to contend with. Anyhow, Christian Caple covers the first week ground in his morning blog post. He also covered the special teams in his morning story and yesterday's practice in this blog post. ... We brought you the news yesterday about former Western Washington head coach Brad Jackson joining Lorenzo Romar's staff at UW but we wanted to pass along Steve Kelley's column on the same subject. ... Finally, Yahoo has this feature on Leach and his WSU adventure.
• Indians: As the season winds down with little chance for postseason play, the individual accomplishments start to pile up. Like Royce Bolinger's 20-game hitting streak. Like two home runs for Joey Gallo, including a grand slam. And like a 16-4 rout of Tri-City.
• Mariners: A warning: the "c-word" was used in this Geoff Baker blog post. Yep, "contention" is right there in the headline. Really? OK, so Baker is just speculating about the M's ability to pull themselves back into wild-card contention, but still. Let's see if they can get to .500 first, OK? ... A five-game home winning streak, capped by yesterday's 5-1 win over the Twins, part of a three-game sweep of Minnesota, has pulled the M's within six games of the break-even mark (and at .500 at home which shocks the snot out of me). They also have the best record of any last-place MLB team, so there's that. Clutching at straws, are we? Sure. It's the M's. ... No reason to pass this along other than I thought it was interesting, and makes a San Francisco Giant look bad. I probably should have put a Dodger-fan alert at the beginning of that sentence.
• Seahawks: So what did we learn from the Denver preseason game? And what wasn't answered? Well, we know Deon Butler isn't the biggest receiver on the field but we still don't know if anyone can cover him.
• Sounders: The Sounders' reserves, led by a resurgent Steve Zakuani, rallied for a 3-2 win over Los Angeles.
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• We're back on the radio today, so tune in at 3 p.m. if you can. We'll also be back here tomorrow, hopefully with more to write about. Until then ...
