Welcome to Monday morning and the beginning of Apple Cup Week. The Huskies will finally be the favored team when they arrive in Pullman next week to play what some say is the only team worse than the Huskies in the country.
I have a few things planned as usual for this week even though most of us have lost interest in everything but the coaching search which should be picking up a little steam this week as far as speculation goes.
The rumors we are hearing is that they are still putting a full court press on Jim Mora as they take a look at some other candidates such us Chris Petersen, Kyle Whittingham, Mike Leach, and Jeff Tedford to name a few.
The Huskies picked up a couple of verbals this weekend which might have been the biggest surprise of the week. TE/OL Grant Cisneros from Sumner and TE Marlion Barnett from Corona, California did the deed on Saturday with AD Scott Woodward. Both players picked the school over whoever is going to coach in the future.
The move is smart because both save a place in line before the new guy comes in and re-evaluates who he wants to go for on his own. Both players are possibilities at TE but are likely to end up playing elsewhere. Barnett is a little small for the position and could end up at WR or LB. Cisneros is a project who has a lot of work to do on his lower body to get ready for Pac 10 ball.
One of the odder things about last Saturday was the scripted Neuheisel family parade at the end of the football game on Saturday. Greg Johns of the Seattle PI reports on that and the final home game for the seniors.
As Rick Neuheisel paraded out of Husky Stadium on Saturday night with a scripted departure straight out of a bad Hollywood movie -- wife and kids in hand, waving to a crowd that had mostly already departed -- far more sincere exits were taking place away from the cameras.
I thought the Neuheisel exit was pretty strange but then again I haven't been publicly fired and put through the media circus he and his family were either. The judgment handed out against the NCAA and UW was really the only vindication that he needed.
Nathan Ware of the PI Dawg Blawg is searching for words.
The story of the game was Washington's defensive line getting dominated by a horrible UCLA offensive line. Their offensive line didn't look horrible last night but they've looked horrible in every other game this year. We made them look great