The team will be putting on full pads for the first time this year. Practice starts at 3:15 and it will be open to the public. This is the moment when they start separating out the men from the boys. We will have a pretty good idea a week from now of how this team will look at the beginning of the season.
Following the beat
The local beat writers are at the stadium in full force and here is a sampling of what they have been concentrating on. I found the story on Justin Glenn interesting because it really illustrates just how competitive things have become on this team.
Art Thiel of Sportspress Northwest comments on the Husky Stadium remodel.
"The public building is 92 years old and looks at least 115, making it older and less efficient than even the Washington State Ferry system. For all the sentiment around the relic, it is a decrepit dump. If you don’t believe it, ask any woman who’s ever had to pee there."
Bob Condotta of the Seattle Times writes about the emergence of John Timu at WLB.
"For a guy who has never really played the position, being a high-school quarterback and safety, he is just a natural football player," Sarkisian said. "He has got great instincts. He is very athletic. He can run. He's tough. He has really probably made the biggest impact."
Todd Milles of the News Tribune profile walk on FB Jonathan Amosa.
"Obviously it was kind of challenging for a little bit (last spring), and kind of humbling to be elevated that quickly," Amosa said. "That position had to be filled, and I am glad and honored to fill that position for the team.
Scott Johnson of the Everett Herald does a nice job on this story about S Justin Glenn.
"If you're not on film, you're not going to play," Glenn said. "That's the main reason I know that I have to come out here. I know that I have to put my resume on film because that's what the coaches go and watch every day. If you're not on there, then they're forgetting about you."
Greg Bell from Go Huskies has a great profile on the legendary Gertrude Peoples.
Peoples started the country's first academic-support office for college student athletes, and Mays was just one of hundreds - heck, thousands -- she got on track to graduate. Mays wondered which end was up after transferring to UW from junior college in 1978. Now he's a senior manager in corporate public relations at Microsoft. Peoples was the first woman recruiter for athletics at a major U.S. university. Countless Huskies, especially African-Americans in the 1970s, say Peoples was the reason they came to Washington.
Ted Miller of ESPN who used to be the college football writer for the old Seattle PI has a few comments concerning the remodeled stadium.
The biggest change, at least to me, is the removal of the track that surrounds the field, which always whispered "high school stadium" to my raised-in-SEC-country sensibilities.