I'm Enjoying it While I Can

Continuing on from my earlier post regarding the rest of the nation taking notice of Sun Devil football, here's some sound bites from others outside of the state of Arizona:

"But with 14 starters back from last year's 7-6 disappointment, Erickson has instilled a belief system that has made ASU this week's talk of the nation. How much did the players believe in the coach who turned around Idaho, Washington State and Oregon State, and won two national titles at Miami (Fla.)? Not one player has quit or transferred." The Denver Post

"Conventional wisdom said Dennis Erickson would get Arizona State to play with physicality and toughness. Conventional wisdom also said the Larry Brown of college football wouldn't achieve greatness this quickly." FoxSports.com

Even Tucson is smart enough to know a good thing when they see it:

Things we cannot ignore about Arizona State, after rallying past California:

The Sun Devils are more persistent than ants. They have trailed Colorado 14-0, Oregon State 19-0 and California 13-0. But they've outscored opponents 153-29 in the second half . . . Freshman Thomas Weber has not missed a college field goal yet, hitting all 15 . The Tucson Citizen

"Staying in the Pac-10, the undefeated Arizona State Sun Devils have given up more than 20 points just once this season, thanks in large part to the play of underrated senior OLB Robert James. Standing just 5-foot-11, 228 pounds, James covers a lot of ground, is a sure tackler and has excelled in pass coverage." Mel Kiper, ESPN

Oregon sports information David Williford took a break from calling security to send along a note from his colleague Mark Brand at Arizona State. Brand says the only way for reporters to talk to Erickson will be on tomorrow's Pac-10 teleconference. Why? "He has had over 60 interview requests in the past nine days and I have him booked solid for the next three weeks." The Oregonian

So what does all this mean? Absolutely nothing but after 10 years of not being talked about nationally to any large extent, it's nice to get some national spotlight shining on the program. Even if we lose to Oregon this weekend, I'm going enjoy reading about my Devils in something other than the Arizona Republic this week.

Nation Taking Notice of the Devils

In addition to the reporter in Alabama who keeps voting ASU number one in the AP poll, others are finally starting to take notice of ASU football. Ivan Maisel wrote this story for ESPN and this picture was running on the ESPN homepage tonight.
Haven't seen this much love for ASU football since the '96 squad and their run. Don't blow it boys, you have a rare near sell-out this weekend for a game not against the University of Tucson and it's prime-time recruiting season with a coaching staff that actually knows how to recruit. The result of Saturday night's game against Cal will have an impact beyond this season.

Chandler Cracks Up

Perhaps it was the fact that she was overwhelmed with excitement for this weekend's Cal-ASU match-up or just the fact that she's a silly 7-year old, but nevertheless Chandler took a spill from the bar swing pictured below.

She landed awkwardly on her arm and the result was a five hour visit to the emergency room and this picture.

The doc said there is a "subtle" crack somewhere in those bones. Guess they have a special class on finding cracks at med school because I can't see it anywhere. But I saw the swelling and that was good enough for me.

The end result is Chandler gets to wear the multi-color cast she is proudly displaying here for the next three weeks.

Torain is out, but that's ok ... I think.

Sun Devil football is taking the weekend off to reflect on their 7-0 start and how it means nothing more than the fact that they are now eligible to play in the Las Vegas Bowl. Hopefully Erickson will have the team more ready to play coming out of bye weeks than his predecessor did. In his last three seasons, Dirk Koetter was 0-3 coming out of mid-season bye weeks.

The Devils bad news of the week was the loss of leading rusher Ryan Torain for the season. Fortunately for ASU, RB was probably the position where we have the most depth with Keegan Herring and Dimitri Nance ready to step in and fill the void. This isn't like what would happen if we lost Carpenter at QB for the season. However, neither one of these guys brings to the table the wear you down style of running that Torain delivered, at least not what I've seen from either of them thus far, both are speed guys. Truth be told, it was always Torain who got the ball in the 4th quarter when the wearing down was needed and we frankly don't know what either Herring or Nance can do in similar situation.

Nance and Herring will be playing for the starting spot next season, so let's hope the competitive spirit shines through and they both step up.

Good luck in the NFL RT.

Favorite lyric I heard today

From Mat Kearney's What's a boy to do?

"Funny which words stick around 20 years down when you’re driving alone"

Devils Still Undefeated; Number 8 in first BCS ranking

The Devils took care of business Saturday night against Washington and have now officially beat all the teams they were supposed to beat. After their upcoming bye week, the soft part of their schedule officially ends.

The match-up with Cal on Oct. 27 was supposed to be a premiere match-up of undefeated teams but unfortunately Cal did not deliver on their part of the bargain. Sure their starting QB was hurt but legit top 5 teams are supposed to overcome those type of things against weaker competition, particularly on their home field. Way to screw up an opportunity to be number 1 Cal and hand the top spot to an overrated and undeserving Ohio State. People want to say ASU is overrated because we haven't beaten anyone yet, but Ohio State has beaten an even more unimpressive schedule of nobodies.

I'm trying to be realistic about ASU. Here's my realistic prediction -- 3-2 over the next five games with wins against Cal, UCLA and U of A with losses to Oregon and USC. 10-2 record results in trip to Holiday Bowl.

Drama Queens Win!!

Chandler's softball team played FIVE games today over a span of about 12 hours - 8 am to 8 pm. They went 4-1 over those games and won their championship game 12-5.

Chandler had a great day at the plate and knocked in the winning run in the semi-final game.

It was a long day for everyone in addition to the players. Clancy was a trooper all day, as were we the parents who endured hard bleachers, lots of dust, a few questionable calls and no diet soda or popcorn at the concession stand. I'm pretty sure Chandler had a good time and winning the championship made it that much more special for her, I truly do think she will remember this day for a long time. I know Tricia and I will.

Congrats sweetie! Mommy and daddy are proud of you.

LCP Softball tourney

Chandler's team is 2-1 at the Leander-Cedar Park softball tournament today. As of this posting, they have to win one more game to make the championship!

Chandler has been hitting the ball well today and caught two pop flies in the first inning of the second game.

Pundit Predictions on ASU - UW game tonight

I always like to humor myself and read the scouting reports and predictions on ASU football games in not only The Arizona Republic but also the local paper(s) of the school they are playing that day. It's always interesting to compare and contrast the perceptions of the teams.

Oddly enough in this case, all three papers (The Arizona Republic, Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer) have ASU winning and all have the Sun Devils scoring 31 points. In my opinion, this is not a good sign for ASU.

Here are their predictions:
Arizona Republic
Seattle Times
Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Another Blow to the Recording Industry

Following in the footsteps of Derek Webb, Radiohead is selling their latest album via the Priceline approach of the customer naming their price to buy it. Given the publicity they have gotten already, even if they average $3 bucks a download, I'm pretty sure they will make money and the record companies will not see a dime of it. Plus, I'm sure Radiohead will clean up when they go on tour. Particularly considering what people are willing to shell out to see Hannah Montana.

Suddenly the Pac 10 conference is up for grabs

Now that Stanford has pulled off the upset of the year -- apologies to Appalachian State, aka the "other" ASU -- the Pac-10 has a wide-open football race.

There are now only three unbeaten teams in conference play - Cal, UCLA and ASU. Cal clearly is the favorite now and may very well be the number two team in the country on Sunday. If ASU takes care of business next week against Washington in Tempe and Cal does the same against Oregon State and UCLA, all eyes will be on the Cal-ASU match-up on Oct 27. Will Corso and the ESPN gameday crew possibly make a trip down to Tempe?

I'm probably getting way too ahead of myself here. If ASU plays like they did today against Washington State, they wont beat UW. This is a good Huskie squad Ty Willingham has and they have something to prove after barely losing to USC last week.

ASU was lucky to leave Pullman with their 23-20 win. If anyone watched the game (my condolences for enduring the torture that is the FSN broadcast crew of Barry Tompkins and Petros Papadakis) you repeatedly saw the non-TD call that went against the Cougars in the first half. If that catch is ruled a TD, like it probably should have been, then ASU probably doesn't win the game.

I think the officiating crew tried to make it up to the Cougs with a bogus roughing the kicker call against ASU in the 3rd quarter but even that went ASU's way. Justin Tryon ran an interception back for TD on the very next play. Btw JT, that taunting crap you pulled on the run into the end zone was completely bush.

It wasn't pretty, but the Sun Devils are 6-0 and escaped a hostile environment with a 'W'. In the end, that's all that matters. Also the fact that Bill Doba got his words shoved down his throat was quite refreshing to see. Being on the wrong end of a comparison to UofA is not something Sun Devil nation takes lightly and if Doba is still with the Cougs next season when they visit Tempe, I'm sure he will be reminded of it over and over again.

Friday night sugar rush

Chandler and Clancy got to frost their Halloween cookies Friday night. Hard to believe that Halloween is only a few weeks away, particularly since it is still 90 degrees here in Austin.

If you watch Clancy toward the end, you will clearly be able to see the effects of being tired and having licked the frosting knife repeatedly.

We were the lucky ones

Craig Biggio played his last major league baseball game on Sunday. While the Astros won the game, it was the emotion of Bidge's 20-year career ending, all as a member of the Astros' organization, that will be remembered most about the day.

As expected, Richard Justice penned a great column in Sunday's Houston Chronicle to celebrate and reflect on the significance of Bidge being an Astro his entire career. In the lead paragraph he wrote:
Craig Biggio once said he was fortunate to be able to play his entire major league career with one team. Truth be told, we were the lucky ones.

Amen. I know I was lucky to have spent half of my Astro rooting life being able to follow this guy's career. While watching the game on Sunday, I interrupted Clancy's current Star Wars' adventure and picked him up into my arms and had him watch Bidge's final at-bat of his career with me. I was shocked that my four year old son actually paid attention and listened to me tell him about how Bidge was the best player ever to put on an Astros' uniform and how if he continues his little league career he should always pretend to be Bidge.

Bidge ended up grounding out at to Chipper Jones in his last AB, but trust me when I say it was the most emotional groundout you will ever see when you look at Bidge's face and constant ovation he was given by the Astros' fans. For me personally, watching that moment unfold with my son is one I'll never forget.

In what was considered an awful season from a standings and results standpoint, the Astros still managed to draw more than 3 million fans. Drayton can personally thank Bidge and his quest for 3000 and eventual retirement announcement for those numbers. Frankly, credit must be given to the Astros' marketing department which milked the Bidge retirement tour for everything they could.

I will miss you Bidge and so will baseball for that matter, not just the Astros. I truly hope you are involved with the Astros in some way, shape or form moving forward.

See images from the day here.