Dots: welcome to the end.

It was Seneca that wrote the famous line “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.”

Today is the last day of the year 2018 and, effectively, the end of the football campaign for the University of Washington. The practices are all in, the recruits are all signed and the game plan for tomorrow’s Rose Bowl match against the Ohio State is installed. All that is left to do is to play the game.

Win or lose, we’ll look back on this team and this season as the end of the new beginning for Washington football. Whether we are talking about Greg Gaines and his record 54 games started, Myles Gaskin and his ascension to the ranks of all-time NCAA greats with the possibility that he might join Ron Dayne as the only two players to ever post four 1,200 yard seasons, or Jake Browning and the way he embodies all of the successes and the failures of his classmates over the last four years, this group of Huskies seniors will forever be known as the class that brought Washington back. And that is a great thing.

The result of tomorrow’s game will determine whether UW goes into 2019 as a championship team with more runway to traverse in front of them or a team stocked with young talent whose seniors took them as far as they could go before passing the baton. Either way, it will be a new beginning born from this very end.

So let’s enjoy it. And on with the Dots.

Football Dots

• Adam Jude kicks off our morning noting that wind might be an issue to start the game tomorrow. While the degraded state of the OSU rushing attack has been significantly overstated, one would still have to conclude that windy conditions would have to favor UW if for no other reason than it would help contain tOSU’s advantage in generating explosive offensive plays.

• Don’t miss John Sayler’s UW Q&A with the folks over at Land Grant Holy Land.
• There are some pretty decent Rose Bowl previews circulating the Internet today. The Athletic ($) has a very nice advanced stat oriented preview noting, among other things, that this is one of the most evenly matched games of the entire Bowl season.
• For those of you more interested in traditional stat kinds of previews, the Score’s Rose Bowl preview by Oliver Connolly is the best one that I’ve read yet. That may be because there was a Salvon Ahmed sighting in it.
• Danny O’Neil delivered this post yesterday on why this Rose Bowl is such a big deal for Chris Petersen.
• Take a trip inside Dwayne’s Brain

• Surprisingly, not all of the news coming out of Montlake is about the Rose Bowl. Christian Caple captures the buzz surrounding the Dawgs only 5-star player ... Jacob Eason. I pretty much couldn’t stop drooling after reading the quote about throwing darts 70 yards down the field. Enjoy

• Looks like Steve Sarkisian is on the market looking for a new job. I wonder if he’ll find his way back to college in a manner similar to his pal Lane Kiffin. The Temple job might be an opportunity.

More Dots

• There sure is a lot of scrutiny being applied to Larry Scott and his job managing the PAC 12 conference. The latest “stunner” is this report that Scott might be looking to sell a 10% stake in the conference for a valuation of $500 M. I realize that many people have a gut reaction to pan anything involving Scott at this point, but this may not be a horrible idea. It all depends on what that $500 M is meant to fund. I can assure you that if this actually happens it won’t be money that simply goes back into the universities or into the conference coffers. Fundraising of that nature always has a specific venture it is meant to support. We’ll talk more about this as the offseason takes effect.
• ESPN reports that the PAC 12 has delivered the worst December of any conference among any of the major conference over the last twenty years fresh on the heels of five conference teams losing games, four of which qualifying as “significant” upsets. The state of PAC 12 basketball currently falls somewhere between “dumpster fire” and “flaming shit show”.
• One of those losses was UCLA at the hands of Liberty. Buh-bye Steve Alford.

Happy New Year’s to all of you who are out in Pasadena as well as to all of you Husky fans who will be enjoying the Rose Bowl among friends and family. Have fun, please be safe and don’t forget to help a Dawg in need should you come across someone in need.

Cheers!