Thursday Dots: Realignment Shenanigans

Happy little Friday Husky Fans!

If you’re like me, grab that 3rd cup of coffee and let’s dive into the dots.

• With the Pac-12’s media day and the greater CFB realignment chatter drowning out Husky-centric news, it’d be pretty easy to miss the surprisingly frank interview Coach Lake had this week on 950 KJR. Quite the intriguing quotes on the WRs...

• Its pretty telling when a HC makes as blunt and critical of a statement as that. While it can be debated how much the WRs affected the outcome of those NY6 games, what’s clear is that Lake’s raised the expectations of Junior Adams’ rebuilding of the position. My main takeaway was from the first quote and that Lake views our portal acquisitions as an upgrade at WR. Could it be possible that the turnover at the position was at least a partially calculated roster move rather than a reaction to the departures? And is it possible that we all misinterpreted the departures as an indictment of Donovan’s offense rather than a realization of where certain certain guys stood on the depth chart? Listen to the full interview and decide for yourself.

• Christian Caple of The Athletic ($) had a great recap and summary of his takeaways from the KJR interview, Pac-12 media day, and all things Husky related that’s come out over the last week.

• Circling back to the on-going Big 12 drama, Pete Thamel broke news yesterday of damning allegations against ESPN regarding potential collusion with Texas, Oklahoma, the SEC, and the AAC to void their TV contract with the Big 12 and Texas & Oklahoma’s conference departure fee via the dissolution of the conference.

• What does any of these new Big 12 developments have to do with UW? Well its widely known that UW has not been in the good graces of ESPN, and in fact we’ve largely been dismissed by the media giant. Given the allegations that ESPN is orchestrating potential league-ending realignment moves despite being an active media partner of the league, Kliavkoff would be wise to tread carefully with ESPN.

• On the recruiting front, we’ve extended a new ‘22 offer to TJ Hall Jr. (DB/ATH, 6-2, 175) out of Fresno, CA. Hall has been offered as a DB, but he’s shown to be a good athlete seeing time at QB and as a returner. He’s got great length that we seek in our DBs, and he’s a pretty fluid natural mover. It’ll be interesting how this recruitment plays out as this is an offer pretty late in the ‘22 cycle (likely in response to more recent DB recruiting developments), and Hall is currently committed to Arizona.

Bonus Dots for your Thursday:

• Bow Down to Washington ranked their Top 5 Husky Stadium Home Games over the last 100 years and I’m sure most of us have either attended or watched at least one of these live. I for one was at the #4 game, and I can’t wait to be back this fall.