Just going to put this out there: The Browns open at home against Dallas and Pittsburgh, and then travel to Baltimore and Cincinnati. Bye week. Then at home vs. the Giants, and on the road to Washington and Jacksonville. If Derek Anderson and the Browns start 1-6 or 2-5, what are the chances the Pro Bowler is benched in favor of Quinn?

9:35 am -  Tyrone Willingham/QB Jake Locker - Washington
9:50 am -  Jim Harbaugh/C Alex Fletcher - Stanford
10:05 am - Paul Wulff/FL Brandon Gibson - Washington State
10:20 am - Jeff Tedford/C Alex Mack - California
10:35 am - Mike Stoops/QB Willie Tuitama - Arizona
10:50 am - Mike Bellotti/ROV Patrick Chung - Oregon
11:05 am - Break
11:15 am - Rick Neuheisel/DT Brigham Harwell - UCLA
11:30 am - Mike Riley/CB Brandon Hughes - Oregon State
11:45 am - Dennis Erickson/QB Rudy Carpenter - Arizona State
12:00 noon - Pete Carroll/SLB Brian Cushing - USC

This is a a good group of players so it should be interesting to see what some of these players have to say. I wonder what Harbaugh is going to say this year??

Scott Wolf proposes the revolutionary idea of the team-themed cemetery for USC, which is of course based on a real German idea about a Hamburg-HSV-themed cemetery for diehard soccer fans, which is “of-course” worthy since in all matters thanatological the Germans are at the forefront, both in terms of inventing new ways for people to die and in ways of making death a vital nutrient in you daily diet of experience. (They invented mustard gas and DeathTV. QEDMF.)

USC doesn’t seem to be the most promising market, though. Death in L.A. just lets everyone down, because it’s so selfish of you to leave like that, and because you’ll get all old and wrinkled and boring like dead people always are. (You will be, however, very, very thin. Jealous!)

We instead offer alternatives business proposals fresh off the drawing table at EDSBS Capital Development, free of charge because we’ve just got too many ideas to turn them all into spun gold sweatervests, you know.

Tennessee: Tasteful, extra-large vaults overlooking the Tennessee River on 12 acres of verdant prime real estate. Amenities will include Erik Ainge “blessing” your headstone by attempting to hit it, and then missing completely and throwing to a waiting groundskeeper for a crippling INT. Discounts for all plots crapped on by Smokey during visits. Visits by boat only, of course. No Catholics, and no same-sex couples in the “Reggie White Section.” Double-wide plots and orange and white checkerboard sod available for extra fees.

Ohio State: Located within a punt’s distance of the ‘Shoe, Buckeye Timbers promises that when you’re a cloud of dust three yards deep, your stay here will be just like a Buckeye scoring drive: dignified, slow, and as long as eternity itself. Ranked number two in the nation for thre years running, Buckeye Timbers’ special features include vault supports that are the exact thickness of Eddie George’s thighs, audio tribute boxes that answer “I-O” when you cheer “O-H” at them on selected headstones, and the centerpiece of the installation, our signature fountain “Eternal Victory,” featuring a cherubic Woody Hayes urinating on the face of a drowning Bo Schmebechler forever.

Notice: Pepper spray is applied to the ground twice daily, and only during visiting hours.

Washington: Husky Meadows, where you can be as serenely dead as the Huskies football program itself! Long list of features pending, but nothing developed as of yet. We blame former management for the inconvenience.

Oklahoma State: Assuredly already in the works, and thus beyond parody. We expect wind-powered fountains and the option to buried in piles of pure, unmarked bills. Headstones should predictably include epitaphs like “Here lies T. Boone Pickens HE WAS A MAN; HE WAS EIGHTY-NINE.”

Florida. Serene live oaks and waving Spanish Moss welcome you to Gator Arbors, where you will be guaranteed the loudest eternal rest of your lives. A constant temperature of 97 degrees is maintained through the use of 935 individual heat lamps to simulate the actual conditions within the Swamp, and to be sure you’ll be completely at home, at state of the art stereo system blasts crowd noise at 100 decibels at all times. Special features include the Text Tribute feature, where you may send Urban Meyer-esque messages to your loved ones from beyond the grave. (”MSSING U VALHLLA IZ TEH SHIT!”)

Leave your own suggestions for our capital development committee below.

Ah, Notre Dame. Those two words immediately conjure up images of Rudy, Touchdown Jesus and blowout losses in bowl games (and your favorite Catholic priest joke). Last season must have felt like an epic tragedy (as did this); for the rest of us, it was like making love to a super model. We never wanted it to end.

After taking over the program, Charlie Weis has had two seasons of nine wins or more, but it was last year’s 3-9 run—with two wins coming against Stanford and Duke—that had Notre Dame fans aghast. Last season the Domers endured the struggles that any team would when faced with starting underclassmen at quarterback, running back and on the offensive line. That should not be an issue this time around.

According to Rivals.com, Notre Dame will start 17 upperclassmen this season—including eight seniors and a sophomore QB Jimmy Clausen—and should look drastically different than a year ago. The Chuckster is coming off of three consecutive top-8 finishes in recruiting, which should produce someone who can get the ball into the end zone. Last year Notre Dame tied for 117th in offense, averaging only 16.4 points per game. It was enough to perhaps prompt Weis to go back to spying on his opponents.

While last year’s schedule was daunting, the same cannot be said for this year’s joke of a slate. Notre Dame has six games in which they should triumph —San Diego State, Stanford, UNC, Washington, Navy and Syracuse—meaning all they have to do is beat a bad Michigan team, Purdue at home and a rebuilding Boston College squad to reach nine wins and a trip to a BCS game (fine; maybe that last part was a stretch).

As much I would like to see Weis and his gigantic ego take another hit, I am afraid that Notre Dame should be poised for a seven-to-nine win season. They have the schedule and the experience to make a run which, sadly for us, means that ESPN will trot out bumbling Lou Holtz to offer us up some gold.

I like Notre Dame to finish 8-4 with losses to Michigan State, Purdue, Pittsburgh and USC, giving Lou Holtz a chance to be the first person to campaign for a four-loss team to be crowned national champs.

[Ed. Just for kicks, we've added the highlights from USC-Notre Dame in Oct. 2005. Awesome game.]

One of the really entertaining things about UCLA partisans Bruins Nation is how staunchly on-message it is at all times. It’s apparent some of its founders have political backgrounds. When the message was "Fire Karl Dorrell," no opportunity was missed, no sentence was written that might weaken the campaign. Not even after a 26-point win. Not even if it was November and L.A. could still potentially make the Rose Bowl. Nothing could stand in BN’s path.

Now that the message is "Head Coach Richard Neuheisel Is the Best CEO in America," the tone of the rhetoric has changed completely –– it’s all positive, all the time –– but the commitment to the message is as staunch as ever. Take the site’s official expectations for Neuheisel’s first season, for example.

BN always held Dorrell to a high standard. It was clear about this in 2006, when ringleader Nestor laid out the expectations for that season: No Room for Regression in 2006: 9 Wins & MUST BEAT SC. The loss of Ben Olson, Maurice Drew and four of the five leading receivers would not be counted as an excuse for a backward step after scraping through a string of last-second wins en route to a 9-2 regular season in 2005:

...anyone who has been closely following this program knew that we would have to have to deal with the loss of our top seven or eight players. You didn't need to be a D-A [sic] head coach to see that coming. ... to make the excuse of losing top players for a bad record next season is just ridiculous.

The Bruins upset SC, but clearly did regress overall, to 7-6 and a meh 5-4 in the conference. Off that disappointment, Nestor was equally clear about the expectations of a more veteran team in 2007: win 11 games, beat Southern Cal, and win the Pac-10. His standards came from the mouth of AD Dan Guerrero himself:

After four years Dorrell still hasn't been able to put together that season in which UCLA wins the Pac-10 and beats Southern Cal. However, I do believe he is boxed into such a corner at this point that this season decidedly will emerge as the "show me" season for Karl Dorrell, that will decide his ultimate fate in Westwood.

Morgan Center has already sent out clear cut signals laying down the expectations that they are expecting a football season in which UCLA will win the Pac-10 and beat Southern Cal (by 20 points) in that last game of the season. And this comment from DG (after winning [the school’s 100th all-time NCAA championship]) is consistent with that signal sent out earlier this spring:

Guerrero says when one of his coaches wins a title, it motivates the others. "There's always a buzz in this department," he says. "And the expectations here are very, very high. We expect to win national championships."

Obviously we expect DG to hold KD to same standards he holds our other magnificent athletic programs.

Obviously. And obviously, now that UCLA has a real Head Coach rather than an unqualified Doofus, for which BN lobbied so tirelessly, the excuses employed by the Dorrell apologists for the team’s mediocrity over the last five years will not do. Not with a team that returns its leading passer, leading rusher and five of its seven leading receivers –– to make the excuse of losing players for a bad record is just ridiculous, and the Bruins aren’t losing many. No, Head Football Coach/Amateur Guitarist/Innocent of All Charges Richard Neuheisel is the Head Football Coach who will finally push the Bruins over the top and fulfill Nestor’s high expectations in '08:

So, to sum it up right now at this snap shot of time, I expect UCLA to lose against Tennessee, BYU, Oregon, California, Washington and Arizona State. 

I see three toss up games against Arizona, Fresno State, Oregon State and three wins against Stanford, Washington State, and Southern Cal. 

So depending on how the toss up games go, the Bruins could finish either 6-6 or 3-9/4-8 (depending on which "conservative" projection we take as we go through the list above).

In other words, I will be ecstatic if somehow, despite all the questions surrounding this team, the program manages to finish with 6 wins and a victory over Southern Cal.
- - -
[Emphasis mine]

O rly? That’s, uh, quite a change of opinion of the Bruins’ potential in a single year, with a much better situation on the sideline: 6-6 at best?

Look closely at the expected losses and toss-ups. In the former category is BYU. Before the 2006 opener against Utah, Nestor was clear about his expectations of the result against a team from the Mountain West:

*09/02 Utah (w) - there is no excuse for not being able to get a win against some MWC team at the Rose Bowl. I will count this as a must win game for KD
- - -
[Emphasis mine]

About the Cougars, specifically, he was every bit as confident before last season:

BYU (w): BYU has a nice football program. But it has no business winning against UCLA at the Rose Bowl. Considering UCLA footballs teams tossed around BYU football teams even during their halcyon days with Ty Detmer, this game should serve as nice little season opener for Karl Dorrell’s football program ... they should face a huge uphill battle at the Rose Bowl as they will be working with a brand new QB (Max Hall, a transfer from ASU) to replace John Beck. Again this shouldn’t be a much of a game.
- - -
[Emphasis mine]

That confidence was warranted. Healthy, the Bruins beat the eventual MWC champion, as expected, 27-17. In December, extremely banged up, under an interim coach, they outgained the Cougars in the Las Vegas Bowl rematch and only lost on a blocked field goal on the last play. Clearly, a healthy team early in the season under a more competent coach should expect to beat a team that had no business competing with the Bruins under the old, lame duck regime that outperformed the Mormons, anyway:

@ BYU (L): ... BYU will be coming in this game fired up with returning stars such as Max Hall (3,848 yards passing) and Harvey Unaga [sic] (1,227 yards).  This will be another close game. However, I think the Cougars will pull this one out based on their home field advantage. I expect the Bruins to fall to 0-2...
- - -

Er. Well, okay, BYU is getting some nice preseason love, and the game is in the hostile confines of, uh, Provo. But Arizona offers an obvious win, right, since Zona is eight games behind UCLA in conference games in Mike Stoops’ tenure, and since Nestor wrote convincingly (and correctly) prior to 2006:

10/07 Arizona (w) - we need to get this win getting revenge for the embarrassment of last season. Not only was there no excuse for the embarrassment in Tucson last season, there simply was no excuse for losing to the Mildcats.
- - -
[Emphasis mine]

...and in 2007:

at Arizona (w): As the Bruins stumbled into Tucson everyone is going to be talking about what happened last time Dorrell’s team marched in with a gaudy record. If Dorrell has truly learned from his previous stumbles as a head coach, we expect him to have his team mentally ready and pull out a tough win. ... If he is truly worth the money (almost a million bucks a year) UCLA is spending on him, Bruins will bounce back...

Obviously, if HFCAGIOACRN is expected to earn his salary –– which with perks is triple what Dorrell earned –– he’s expected to trounce the still-struggling Mildcats and their injury-prone, pocket-bound quarterback in ‘08:

Arizona (T): ...Arizona beat up on the Bruins last year in Tucson by beating up on a hobbled Pat Cowan and running rough shot [sic] over DeWayne Walker’s offense [sic].  It will be interesting to see how the Bruin D with its young cubs matchup against the 'Zona offense and whether Walker has an answer for an athletic, multi dimensional QB like Tuitama. The optimistic part of me thinks that the Bruin D will rise to the occasion and the offense will click a little in its third game under Chow.  But, still, this is a toss up game in my book.
- - -
[Emphasis mine]

Well, UCLA has lost to Arizona twice in three years, albeit both times on the road, but okay. What about last year’s tenth-place finisher, Washington, which has barely a third of UCLA’s conference wins since Ty Willingham took over in 2005, and about which Nestor wrote in 2006:

09/23 @Washington (w) - there was no excuse for the pathetic performance against Washington at home last season when we eeked out a win. ...their lines are still a joke. This is a game the Bruins should be able to win on the road against one of the lower tier teams in the Pac-10.
- - -
[Emphasis mine]

.. and in 2007:

Washington (w): ...this time if Bruins find a way to choke like they did in Seattle, DeWayne Walker and his colleagues in the coaching staff will not be able to get away by playing a pathetic blame game. We will expect another Bruin win...

The Bruins did win, convincingly, scoring 34 points in the second half. Without question, a team with a real Head Football Coach for a change will be expected to have his team prepared to sustain that success against the worst team in the conference:

@ Washington (L):  The Bruins head up to Seattle where the entire Husky nation will be out for CRN’s blood. Willingham may be fighting for his coaching life and the Huskies will be anxious to feel better about Barbara Hedges’ follies by exacting "revenge" (in their minds) against Neuheisel. They will get their wish.
- - -

There’s Oregon State, then, about which we know from 2006:

*11/11 Oregon St (w) - ...a well-coached UCLA football team should never lose to Beavers at home.

Accordingly, Dorrell’s team beat the Beavers by 18 points that year, then demolished OSU by 26 last year in Corvallis. Dorrell easily out-recruited Mike Riley every single season according to Rivals. Almost every magazine picks UCLA to finish ahead of the Beavers. Obviously, an easy, easy win in the Rose Bowl...

Oregon St (T):  ...If the Beavers live up to their pre-season hype, they should be the favorite to win this game. But the Bruins have had their number in recent years.  Again, this is a toss up game and right now I am not sure what to expect.
- - -

So, uh, California, which lost six of its last seven conference games, including a nine-point loss to Dorrell’s incredibly mismanaged Bruins?

@ California (L): ...By this game, I would assume Jeff Tedford’s QB situation will become clear, in which (IMHO) Kevin Riley should emerge as the unquestioned number 1 QB in Strawberry Canyon. I think Cal is positioned to have a decent season next year, but in this game IMHO they will be the favorites at home. The Bruins fall...
- - -

And so on. Nestor’s own tally says it all: whether UCLA wins three or six games, it would only match Dorrell’s worst season at best. Whether it wins three or five Pac Ten games, it would only match Dorrell’s worst season at best.

My first thought when Neuheisel was hired was, "How long will it take for Bruins Nation to turn on him?" Obviously, with an all-out investment in coach-worship of this order, it’s going to be a long, long time. Most fans have high hopes for immediate improvement under a new coach, but they don’t understand how to protect that investment. Nestor does. People don’t give a motorcycle gang of angry sumo wrestlers this wide a berth.

Specifically: A loss to Washington must be a regression. After all, there is no excuse for losing to one of the lower-tier teams in the Pac Ten (the lowest tier, actually). A loss to BYU would be directly in line with the underachieving mediocrity that generated so much vitriol through the last four seasons. So would a third loss to Arizona in four years. After all, there is no excuse for not being able to get a win against a Mountain West team, and no excuse for losing to the perpetually lame Mildcats (again). A 6-6 regular season would be another sideways step in the unacceptable status quo. After all, obviously Bruin fans expect Dan Guerrero to hold CRN to the same standards to which he holds UCLA’s other magnificent athletic programs.

No, my child, we don’t expect any better. Great question, though.
- - -

It’s not that these projections are destined to be wrong –– without going into the returning roster in extreme detail, I happen to think, as BN has always maintained, that L.A. should always expect a winning season, including this season –– but in context, they are staggeringly hypocritical. Karl Dorrell never had a regular season worse than 6-6. He never had a losing record in Pac Ten play. Inheriting a team that finished 4-7, 6-5, 7-4 and 7-5 from 1999-2002, he was not given a mulligan for a 6-6 debut –– his record was 10-10 when the current clan at BN first took the drumbeat virtual at Fire Karl Dorrell midway through the 2004 season. The subhead of that blog, summarizing the worst losses of the early KD era, was, "12-13. FRESNO STATE. WYOMING. UCLA DESERVES BETTER." Three years later, the same folks appear very willing to accept losses to the high end of the Mountain West and to Pac Ten bottom-dwellers –– teams Dorrell’s last team defeated, as expected –– as a natural step in the rebuilding process. Six-win seasons were completely unacceptable for Dorrell, but HFCAGIOFACCRN can take all the time he needs.

What this is, really, is an admission that the "expectations" for Dorrell were ridiculous –– intentionally constructed to be beyond not only any independent projections but beyond the realistic grasp of anyone in his position. They were entertainingly obsessed with the subject, often mean about it, but I never disagreed with Bruins Nation that Dorrell should probably be canned. I still don’t. The hyperbole wasn’t necessary to reach that conclusion. But where did I get the idea they expected progress as a result?

Most 12 team conferences divide along geographic lines. Indeed a North South division structure is the standard model of an expanded PAC 10. The ACC developed a rivalry based division structure with each team having a crossover to optimize the preservation of its large number of rivalries. This was a unique situation for the ACC and does not fit the PAC 10, as the rivalry structure is much simpler in the PAC 10.

I believe the PAC 10 would not need to form divisions at all. Each rivalry pair would rotate home-away games. All other teams can be arranged so that each team hosts every other team once every four years. This creates a four year cycle and uses 6 games per year, 3 home and 3 away. The remaining games can be generated after the season ends to match teams by the previous year’s results to create more competitive matches.

A seventh game could be added to the cycle to allow pairs of rivalry pairs to compete every year. For example the California schools could play every year, while the Oregon schools play the Washington schools and the Arizona schools could play, say, the Utah schools. Every year each team plays the three teams in there group plus two teams each from the other groups over a four year cycle.

One could think of this idea as allowing the groups of rivalry pairs to act like 3 divisions. Every year, each team would play one team from every rivalry pair on a four year cycle. Home and away would alternate every year while the team played would rotate every two years. If Oregon State is hosting UCLA then USC is hosting Oregon that year. This is the most symmetric implementation of the four year cycle.

It would be desirable to have the extra home game be out of sync with the rivalry game; if USC hosts UCLA one year then UCLA has 4 conference home games while USC only has 3. If you are short a home game, you get it when it counts most.

If the current 9 game schedule is retained, this leaves two conference games available for scheduling. These can be used to increase the competitiveness of conference games by matching teams with a similar performance in the previous year. By arranging the teams by conference wins the previous year, one can choose the pairings that minimize the total difference in wins between teams. Let the contenders play the contenders and the bottom dwellers play the bottom dwellers. These games could be used to guarantee that no team has more than one team on their schedule they did not play the year before.

One could question how to rank the new teams the first year of expansion. Laplace observed that the best approximation for determining the probability of an unfair coin given a limited number of trials is given by (W+1)/(N+2). The current PAC 10 teams would have played 9 games. Multiplying this estimate by 11 and subtracting one regenerates the original number of wins. If only games versus PAC 10 teams are considered, a fair comparison of the new team to PAC 10 wins would be (W+1)/(N+2)*11-1. A team that went 2-0 vs. the PAC 10 the year before expansion would have the equivalent of 7.25 PAC 10 wins. 1-0 would get be equivalent to 6.333 wins. Even would be 4.5 wins.

Disadvantages to this plan include the likelihood that the championship is a rematch from earlier in the season is 9/11 instead of 2/3 for a Division structure, assuning a 9 game season. This could even include rematches in back to back weeks if two rivals dominate the league (1/11 probability.) A division structure allows each team to be more familiar with their opponents as they see the same teams every year.

Advantages of this arrangement are that all arrangements of teams are possible in the championship. Situations where one division dominates another, such as the Big 12 of late, are avoided. Each team would get to see other teams on a fairly even basis, with more games against teams with a similar strength. Specifically, all teams get an equal number of guaranteed games in southern California, except obvoiusly the Califorina schools.

I might have gone into a bit much detail, especially for someone completely on the outside of the issue. Indeed few are likely to get to this paragraph. My main point is if I can sketch a reasonable outline of how a schedule could work certainly the powers that be can find something that works. If they want to hire me as a consultant to implement the above ideas … well we can all dream can’t we?

Comment on PAC 10 Expansion: Scheduling Issues...

Here's a class-by-class breakdown of the 13 scholarships and current walk-ons for 2008-09.

SENIORS

1. RouSean Cromwell
2. Keith Wilkinson
Terence Green (walk-on)

JUNIORS

3. Taj Gibson
4. Dwight Lewis
Marcus Johnson (walk-on)
Daniel Hackett (walk-on)
Ryan Wetherell (walk-on)

SOPHOMORES

5. Kasey Cunningham (redshirt)
6. Marcus Simmons
7. Angelo Johnson
8. Donte Smith

FRESHMEN

9. Mamadou Diarra (redshirt)
10. DeMar DeRozan
11. Leonard Washington
12. Romeo Miller
13. Nikola Vucevic
James Dunleavy (redshirt walk-on)

Washington told The Times last weekend that he was deciding between USC, Indiana and Kentucky. The 6-foot-6 forward spent last season at Compton Marshall High after previously attending high school in Lake Charles, La.

-- From a report by Ben Bolch --

The Game: USC at Washington State, October 18

Before: Arizona State

Why it Will be a Trap Game: Arizona State appears to be main contender in 2008 to end USC’s hegemony in the Pac-10. QB Rudy Carpenter will be in his senior year, it’s the second season under turnaround specialist Dennis Erickson, and the Sun Devils have seven returning starters on both sides of the ball. Given what Oregon has lost, ASU is the clear No. 2 in the conference this fall.

The week after that crucial game for USC comes a road match in Pullman, Washington. Washington State’s team is a bit thin in the first year of the Paul Wulff regime, and he is installing a new offense and defense there. His no-huddle spread offense could be dangerous against USC if the Trojans are napping the week after a big game.

Plus, USC won by only six the last time it played at Washington State, and if they can lose to Stanford last year they can lose to anyone. If things click for the Cougars by mid-October, they could be dangerous in this game.

Why it May Not Matter: Did I mention Washington State’s team is thin? It is, and it lost scholarships to Academic Progress Report-related penalties. Plus, there has been a rash of disciplinary and academic problems there. If injuries strike at all, they could torpedo the Cougars’ season entirely. Besides, the new schemes may not have gelled by this point, severely limiting Washington State’s chances in this game.

So I guess the takeaway here is that USC may or may not lose to Washington State.

Fred Davis apologized for missing his last day of mini-camp before a Redskins press conference saying "It felt like I was about to go to the principal's office or something."

USC is planning to tell the NCAA it was unaware of any improper exchange of money/gifts between promoter Rodney Guillory and Trojan basketball star OJ Mayo. In addition "USC will emphasize to the NCAA that it had banned Guillory from receiving tickets to USC games in order to avoid any accusations of impropriety involving Mayo."

The USC women are "keeping it querque" taking an early 5-stroke lead in the NCAA Division I Women's Golf Championships in Albuquerque, N.M. And they're right on top of #2 UCLA...where they belong.

So who does Phil say has the most difficult schedule? Georgia

See if you can find a trend in Steele's top 10 difficult schedules:

1 - Georgia
2 - Florida
3 - Arkansas
4 - UCLA
4 - Alabama
6 - Auburn
7 - Ohio State
7 - Kentucky
9 - Colorado
9 - Baylor
9 - Washington
9 - Oregon State

Again, I don't think this is the proper way to rank strength of schedule, but... it's a Monday in May and ya take what you can get, ya know?

Comment on Ranking the 2008 schedules...