The Morning Haul: 9/9

The bye week is officially over, and I can’t tell you how glad I am. After the long off season of waiting and writing dozens of “what-if” or “it could happen” posts over the spring and summer, it felt amazing to see the Huskies in action, and it felt just as great to have recent football to write about. Then all of the sudden there was a full week off of that, and it felt like the off season was back upon us. Well, no more. It’s time for Illinois.

Stories Especially Worth Reading:

To start, here’s three things that Ryan Kraemer over at the Writing Illini learned from the win over Cincinnati.

The Dawg Pound brings up an interesting discussion: Pac-12 hate for Coach Sark. I honestly hadn’t thought about it much, but I suppose it’s true that several fanbases do not enjoy Sark. The obvious rivals like WSU and Oregon, of course. But there’s the now-lost connection to USC that could fuel Trojan dislike, and the Tosh Lupoi/Shaq Thompson issue that has turned Cal into a hotbed of Husky hate.

The ESPN Pac-12 Blog has new conference bowl projections up that include Washington to the Alamo Bowl. That would mean the Huskies finishing as the third team in the conference behind Stanford, projected to the BCS title game, and Oregon, projected to the Rose Bowl. That is a testament to the depth of the Pac-12 North and the wide-open, parity-rich environment of the Pac-12 South. In fact, if the Huskies played in the South, only UCLA could be considered a favorite over the Huskies based on current AP ranking, and that edge is very slight.

Didn’t mention this earlier as high school football isn’t really my territory other than how it pertains to recruiting, but Bellevue destroyed Skyline 45-7 in the second football game to be played at the new Husky Stadium. Both schools are local powerhouses and have a rich tradition of UW alums.