Things I'd rather watch than this year's Apple Cup

Boy is this year gonna suck in Seattle for the Apple Cup, where you have a crapalicous WSU Cougars team versus a stinkerpile UW team in the bragging rights for the best football team in the state of Washington. Whoopdedoo, I wan't the Seattle Sonics back.

Now, I'll probably skip the game altogether and end up watching these things.

1. EWU playoff game - Oh wait, better scratch that best football team in state of Washington thing with UW and WSU. I would venture to guess that Eastern and Central Washington are much better football teams regardless.

2. The View - Yes, I would rather watch Starr Jones talk about childhood obesity than Paul Wulff talk about his 120-pound halfback and how much promise he's showing

3. Big 10 Football - You know, they haven't figured out this who "passing" thingy or this whole "scoring more points than your opponent" gimmick, but at least Jim Tressel wears a cool sweater vest.

4. Baseball - Who wants to watch the Arizona Fall League with roughly 20 people in attendance at the games? Oh Goodie! Me!

5. Golden Girls - Hey, it's a good show.

6. Televised Scrabble - Can you imagine the calls? "Oh Good God! That's a double word score! A double word score! Go crazy folks, go crazy!"

7. TCU Football - At least this team in purple is actually good at football.

8. Gonzaga Drinking Games - Sure every student is drunk after two beers, but that's what keeps the Gonzaga Drinking Games ticket prices down. Thank god for preppy students with no alcohol tolerance.

9. ESPN's Latest Game Show "Who's going to get fired next for sleeping with a chubby intern?" - I hear Bill Clinton is on the show.

10. This YouTube Video - ...awesome

WSU makes ESPN Commercial

Saw this on Huckleberries.


Alright, EWU alumni, when are our Eagles going to make a commercial? I'm thinking a Rodney Stuckey "This is SportsCenter" commercial. You know it's coming...

WSU Cougars unveil new uniforms

So the WSU Cougars unveiled their new uniforms for the 2009 season and I have to say that the changes are a little underwhelming. They're still awesome uniforms mind you, but not much changes. They just switched from the "Cougar" script to the famous WSU logo on the helmet, added white pants to the away uniforms and played around with shoulder striping.

Let's play a game shall we? Home Jerseys before:

And the Home Jerseys after:

Away Jerseys before:

Away Jerseys after:

New Alternate Away Jerseys:

Again, I think the general scheme is awesome, this just isn't much of a change from the jerseys they had before. At least they didn't go back to the early stripping mess of the early 00s that made me seasick.

Recruiting Class hype is lame

Other than providing this rather embarrassing photo of Paul Wulff yesterday, National Signing Day doesn't do a whole lot.

Whereas the NFL draft gives you a list of players you know will make an impact for your team, you really can't put a finger on who will be good and who wont.

Look at the top recruiting classes, thanks to Bloomberg.

ESPN SCOUTS INC.     RIVALS.COM            SCOUT.COM
1. LSU               1. Alabama            1. Ohio State
2. Alabama           2. LSU                2. Alabama
3. Texas             3. USC                3. LSU
4. USC               4. Ohio State         4. USC
5. Florida           5. Texas              5. North Carolina
6. Georgia           6. Florida State      6. Texas
7. Miami             7. Michigan           7. UCLA
8. Florida State     8. North Carolina     8. Georgia
9. Ohio State        9. Georgia            9. Oklahoma
10. Michigan         10. Florida           10. Penn State
11. Oklahoma         11. Miami             11. Michigan
12. South Carolina   12. South Carolina    12. Texas A&M
13. North Carolina   13. Oklahoma          13. South Carolina
14. Notre Dame       14. Arkansas          14. Stanford
15. Tennessee        15. Michigan State    15. Auburn
16. Penn State       16. UCLA              16. Mississippi
17. Clemson          17. Mississippi       17. Florida State
18. Virginia Tech    18. Auburn            18. Mississippi State
19. UCLA             19. Stanford          19. Miami
20. Arkansas         20. Notre Dame        20. Arkansas
21. Rutgers          21. Texas A&M         21. Florida
22. Mississippi      22. Miss. State.      22. Tennessee
23. Miss. State      23. Tennessee         23. West Virginia
24. South Florida    24. Virginia Tech     24. Notre Dame
25. Auburn           25. Penn State        25. South Florida

Great, you know what - those all are pretty big-time college programs on that list, so of course they're going to do well because they have the facilities, the money and the coaching. I remember ESPN's Colin Cowherd complaining about how it seems that a kids stock goes up when they're recruited by Notre Dame (and boy have they had sucess in the past two years :D).

What you get is over hyped kids, who don't perform later down the road. Hence, the Irish sucking. Throw out all the recruiting rankings because they've been wrong when it's come to Notre Dame, every single year. Watch their games, they have mid-major talent maaaybe. Seriously, watch them get outrun by any top program in the country. Yet they keep getting these "Top ranked recruiting classes."

And another thing to chew on is how much a recruiting class will affect a program. These are all top tier programs, they all get top tier kids. It's not going to make to significantly better because they're already on the mountain top.

But what about the programs nipping at the heels of these top programs, why can't we get coverage on how well they did - because the media sells more when they cover the top programs, cough, cough - and how much ground they made up. That's more important than learning that Texas brought in another kid that can run a 4.2 fourty. WOWEE! Tell me something I don't know.

So lets look at what we know: Eastern signed 33 kids-and that's it, you really don't know how those kids pan out until a few years down the road. Although I'm a little concerned with how many "all-state honorable mentions" are on their list. Honorable mentions? Isn't that given out to the kids that just hussle a lot? Now WSU is drooling over how much they kicked UW's butt with in-state recruiting. That's true, six of ten top state prospects went to the Cougs which could be a huuuge advantage for them over the next couple of years and could shift the balance of power from UW to WSU in terms of who wins between those two teams, but the Cougs are still in a conference with schools like USC - which could probably convince guys from the NFL to come back and play for them.

And that it. That's all we know from this recruiting class. You can't read anymore into it because of injuries, how many actually see playing time, and how well these top high school athletes do against other teams with top high school athletes. It's a wash.

But hey, at least Paul Wulff out recruited the Huskies, that's all I got to say.

If you have a pulse, you live in Eastern Washington and like sports...

Then you'll be watching Washington State host Gonzaga next Wednesday. Why?

- Because you can't get tickets to Eastern Washington's drive to a Big Sky Championship title (or because their games aren't on TV)

- Because Jeremy Pargo dunking on tall people and having him shove his crotch in their face is just funny.

- WSU students always make good television. Still waiting for the Pullman version of COPS.

- Aron Baynes probably goes cow-tipping.

- It would be nice to see the Seattle Times and PI scramble with their unbiased journalism to somehow make it seem like the Huskies are still the most important basketball team in the state.

- Tri-Cities is not involved in any way.

- It's better than watching WSU Football