Time to start up the Pac-10 Roundtable with questions from fellow bloggers around the Pac-10 answered by none other than myself. This should start to be a regular thing, so if there is a question that you want answered by other bloggers around the Pac-10, feel free to e-mail me and I'll throw them around. Here we go.
1. Is it too early to start thinking about the NFL draft? Tell us about one of your players expected to go in this year's draft.
As posted last week here, there are only Eben Britton and Mike Thomas were invited to the NFL combine. Of those, Eben Britton has got to be the most highly sought after Wildcat. Scouts, Inc. has him as the 41st best player in the draft and the 6th best tackle in the nation. Eben is slated to be a late first round/ early second round guy.
2. Who is the Pac10 B-Ball Player of the Year so far? Show your work.
I hate to be a homer on this, but it's got to be Jordan Hill. He is a monster. He averages a double double with 18.3 ppg and 11.5 rebounds per game. He creates havoc for opposing big men and alters shots of anyone driving into the paint. Oh yeah, he also averages 2.0 blocks per game and is up for the Wooden Award given to college basketball's player of the year.
3. Football season is over, no one cares about basketball anymore because Oregon is 0-12. How is your school doing in sports that may not get the publicity that Football and Basketball get?
Arizona has incredible lacrosse (Props to Nate Schmidt) and Ice Hockey. That's a testament to the number of "snow birds" that come to Arizona and our club sports that have turned into such good teams that they are not even considered club anymore.
4. Give us a random fact about your University that people may not know. The more juicy and scandalous, the better! Extra points for it being true!
I visited The University of Arizona in the summer of 1998 after graduating high school in Austin, Texas. I applied to every SEC school and even visited Ole Miss and Tennessee. When I stepped on to the campus in Tucson, I knew that was where I was going to attend college. Beautiful weather, Top 20 business school, and more hot girls centrally located on the UA Mall than I had ever seen in my life. I chose to go to school in Arizona for one of those three reasons. (I hate the heat and am a lawyer. Can you guess which one?).
The one thing they don't tell you about Tucson is that Speedway is basically the "dividing line" between north and south Tucson. South Tucson is a little unknown gem of a hell hole where there are over 90 active gangs (as of the freshman english essay, December 1998). I heard 9 gunshots outside of my window at Coronado dorm. There were students that got robbed. Students that got beat up. Oh yeah, Mexico is only 45 minutes away so there are plenty of drugs and drug dealers in Tucson. My senior year, the SWAT team raided my neighbors house and said that he had been driving out to the desert and cooking up meth for months.
Go figure.
5. Ragnarok over at the California Golden Blogs wrote this magnum opus about a Faustian re-organization of college football entitled "A Total College Football Reorganization."
I think that Ragnarok spent more time on that piece than I have in 2 weeks on my blog. With that being said, I think that it is incredible. Although, I have a problem with the end scenario, I think the build up is well thought out. I am from Austin and don't think that Texas and Oklahoma should be canceled. Ever. The Southwest conference is real tight.