I love the smell of Quack Fix in the morning... smells like... victory.
- Renee Baumgartner's name might not ring bells with everyone, but she's leaving her post in the athletic department to take a deputy AD/chief of staff role at Syracuse. For those seeking some background, she championed the proposal to add Competitive Cheer as a women's varsity sport and was a former women's golf coach. We also have the view from Syracuse. I'm a little confused as to why the Bachman piece mentioned a desire by Rob Mullens to "contain department costs". Baumgartner, nor Bachman herself don'tt come right out and say that money was a factor so that note appears slightly out of left field without elaboration.
- Far away from all of the NCAA Basketball scandals that no one is talking about, the new coaching staff at Oregon is plugging away trying to garner top notch recruits. Brandon Ashley is ranked by ESPN as the no. 6 player in the country and has Oregon in his top 7 destinations. He's transferring to Findley Prep for his senior season, the same school that Jabari Brown played for in 2009.
- Our friendly neighbors to the north have an interesting preview of Oregon Football's 2011 season. Point seems to be that if the Ducks can get past a slow surface at Stanford, and deal with a hostile Husky crowd on the road, then Autzen is hosting a Pac-12 title game. I was a little surprised at no mention of Oregon State's chances in the Civil War or how things shape up there. Lot of weapons coming back, that's for sure but it wouldn't be football season if we weren't worried about our line play, especially going into LSU.
- You thought you would escape without reading some Willie Lyles news. You thought wrong. Turns out Willie gave a big sack of crap to LSU as well even though they paid far less. My personal favorite was the youtube videos that Lyles sent. Another nugget to consider, LSU already had a recruiting service in Texas and since the NCAA doesn't allow you to have 2 services in one region [Update: According to Bylaw Blog, you aren't limited by region, just prohibited from multiple subscriptions from a single service.], Willie became a JUCO scout even though LSU only wanted to talk Texas. So apparently Oregon and LSU both got bogus/semi-bogus material from our "recruiting service CEO in training" Willie. What say you Cal? Haven't heard much on what you got for your 5k and how super awesome it was.
Enjoy your Thursday and remember something throughout your day. SportsByTMZ has 43 days left in his prediction that there was "zero percent chance that Chip Kelly will be on the sideline this year". I can't wait to see what happens!