The Monday Morning Wash - Pac 12 Media Day

Conference media days are usually pretty mellow or scripted unless one of the coaches happens to be sitting on a hot seat for one reason or another.

Chip Kelly happens to be one of those guys this year because of his personal involvement and friendship with an alleged street agent named Willie Lyles.

This will be the media's first crack at asking Chip Kelly about the incident. It will be interesting to see how Chip handles it and how insistent the media is going to be. Chip just may simply say no comment and elaborate that he can't comment because of an ongoing NCAA investigation and leave it at that.

Rick Neuheisel is on the hot seat for not winning enough at UCLA during his three year tenure. He radically rebuilt his coaching staff during the off season and I expect that to be the main focus of his interview before he starts commenting specifically on his squad.

Paul Wulff has a very good chance at starting the season 5-0 and stealing another win along the way to become bowl eligible. If he doesn't get that done chances are pretty good that WSU AD Bill Moos will pull the trigger and bring in his own guy even though Mooswas on the advisory committee that hired Wulff in the first place.

Dennis Erickson's Arizona State Sun Devils are one of the favorites to win south division crown. Erickson needs to at least get to a bowl game to earn some sort of extension. His contract ends after the 2012 season. I am betting on Erickson getting it done this year.

Ohio State Decision is Surprising

The NCAA surprised me with its decision that they could not find evidence of lack of institutional control in its investigation of Ohio State. Taken at face value this sounded like a much more serious case than what happened at USC. The Trojans were absolutely hammered by the NCAA.

Coach Tressel seems to have taken the majority of the punishment for Ohio State by resigning. The NCAA will decide on August 12th if the self imposed penalties tOSU has given itself are enough for the crime. I expect that they will add more sanctions at that time but it won't come close to equaling the USC penalties.

Ohio State likely won't face the most severe charges possible in the memorabilia-for-cash and tattoos scandal that cost football coach Jim Tressel his job.

NCAA investigators said they found no evidence that Ohio State failed to properly monitor its football program or any evidence of a lack of institutional control, according to a letter sent to the university and released Friday.

NCAA investigators also said they have not found any new violations.

ESPN

Pac 12 Media Day Line-Up

• Arizona - QB Nick Foles - Mike Stoops
  
• Arizona State - QB Brock Osweiler - Dennis Erickson
  
• California - WR Marvin Jones - Jeff Tedford
  
• Colorado - QB Tyler Hansen - Jon Embree
  
• Oregon - TE David Paulson - Chip Kelly
  
• Oregon State - S Lance Mitchell - Mike Riley
  
• Stanford - QB Andrew Luck - David Shaw
  
• UCLA - RB Johnathan Franklin - Rick Neuheisel
  
• USC - QB Matt Barkley - Lane Kiffin
  
• Utah - OT Tony Bergstrom - Kyle Whittingham
  
• Washington - RB Chris Polk - Steve Sarkisian
  
• Washington State - WR Jared Karstetter - Paul Wulff

Future Husky Schedules

We had a nice discussion last week about which schools we would like to see AD Scott Woodward schedule in the future. Schools in the SEC were prominently mentioned along with teams from the Big East and ACC. Penn State of the Big Ten was mentioned prominently by quite a few posters.

One of our regular posters (206) made this comment which truly sums up what the Huskies have done in the past and will likely do in the future as far as scheduling goes.

Traveling to East Coast or Deep South for a regular season game is bad business. It's tough for the team to show up prepared (see LSU in Seattle), the majority of hardcore UW fans are on the West and most can't travel as far during the regular season as they do for bowl games so the home field advantage will be even worse, plus there's no huge recruiting boost when Seattle is so far it might as well be on another planet.

UW shouldn't go any further East than the Midwest/Big 10 for a regular season game. Michigan, Notre Dame, and Texas are all best options for media exposure and competition without sacrificing competitiveness.