Happy Monday Cougs.  After some time away from this space, here's hoping you and yours are hanging on in your corner of the world.  

Ya know, I thought about the blog quite a bit lately, about losing some passion here and there and how it's a slow/dead time at the moment for all things WSU football.  And you know what?  I realized something that is pretty important - whether it's a dead period or not, whether it's slow or not, you just can't have a blog if YOU DON'T WRITE(!), know what I mean?  But some time away can be a good thing, and not just in a recharge-the-batteries kind of way either.  I know our content is down and likewise, the blog traffic right along with it.  But it is what it is, and this is a blog where we share thoughts and ideas and such.  It might not be life-altering content on a regular basis around here, but this space is here for what it is.  And if you don't write, well, what's the point of even having a blog to begin with??

Anyway, while I can't fully speak for the rest of the writers around here, I will do my best going forward with posting in the morning hours with "stuff" that might be interesting to you and yours?  It probably won't be every day, but I can say it will be more than it has been in the last few months.  So there's that.

With that, happy SPRING FORWARD MONDAY (read: today sucks).  It's weird but in years past, the first Monday after the time change isn't the hard one for me.  Where I usually feel it is on Tuesday for some reason.  Maybe it's just that you are in the mode of "I can get through this" on that first work day after the change, but then reality hits the following day when you realize your body clock just isn't quite there yet?  I guess we'll find out tomorrow, but in the past today isn't usually too bad.  

Moving on to your morning drip stuff......

Eighteen years ago famed music producer Rick Rubin staged an elaborate funeral service for the word "def". With Reverand Al Sharpton presiding over the ceremony and stars such as Tom Petty in attendance, "def" was laid to rest in a Hollywood cemetary. As I was remembering this strange event it occured to me that we Coug fans could use a similar vocabularical purge.

Friends, loved ones, curious passers-by; today we lay to rest one of the most tired tropes in all of Cougar fandom... the idea that some fans are "afraid of winning". Rest in peace you silly, rediculous bit of total nonsense.

Fans show their concern that the Cougs might stage a comeback and ruin everything.

Let's be clear; Nobody is "afraid of winning". You will not find a Coug fan who would rather be 5-7 than 12-0. They don't exist. This trope is trotted out to bully fans who express concerns about the cost to the instiution that some methods to achieve wins come with. It seems the "win at any cost" camp isn't interested in those concerns, so to cover for their shameless disinterest in fairness, integrity, loyalty and just about anything else that scholastic athletics are supposed to promote, they create the ultimate straw man; an imaginary legion of (old, weak, sad, pathetic, etc.) fans who form a fifth column dedicated to keeping their own team down. Suddenly a 30 year multi-sport season ticket holder and CAF member who has dedicated a good portion of their lives and income to supporting the Cougs is "afraid of winning" since they don't agree with you that coach X should be fired. Nevermind that when the Cougs won conference championships, this fan didn't exactly burn all their gear. Rather they booked their flight to Pasadena before the clock hit 0.00 on the last game of the season.

Right now there is a tension between fans who are demanding success now and those who can somehow make it through an entire basketball game without throwing the remote through a window. I live in both camps at different times and sometimes I inhabit both during the course of a single game. But lets just drop this false premise that only the angry, fed up fans "want to win". We all want the Cougs to win every single game they play. We disagree with how they can, or should accomplish that, but that's it.

Just because "def" was dead and buried doesn't mean that zombie "def" doesn't continue to stock the earth, and  I don't expect  "afraid of winnning" to stay 6 feet deep in the Palouse clay either. But at least now we can acknowledge that all its good for is lurching about snacking on the brains of the living.

RIP, "afraid of winning". You will mos def not be missed.

Not sure if anyone noticed, but it happens to be Apple Cup on the Hardwood week for our Cougs with a game at UW on Sunday afternoon. While our season thus far has been forgettable, the Huskies have not been lighting the world on fire themselves and leaving Seattle with a win is still a distinct possibility. Would it heal all the wounds from a season that has been the sports fans’ equivalent of rooting for Walter Mondale in the ‘84 presidential election? Not really, BUT it would definitely feel better than losing (Like nabbing those electoral votes from Minnesota, right?). All you have to do is harken back to football season to appreciate the magical healing power of beating the Dawgs. Still, it makes one wonder, is there anything left to salvage from this season besides a smidge of pride in beating our rival? Hmmmm, If there is I will let you know after the jump...

Hello Followers.  Hope you’re having a great week.

Today, I continue my solo album-esque series called “Losing Your Lunch.” The name of the game:  Write as much nonsense as possible in 20 minutes, paste it onto the Penguin (Bloguin) Platform….

And fire the stuff into cyberspace…

Today, I take a quick peak at a current football issue that should be instructive to all of us moving forward.   Read on.

Might I use this this picture forever more?  YESSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hello Followers.  Hope you’re doing great.

In the midst of taking a lunch break, I stumbled across a little bit of e-football news via that fancy little thing called Twitter.

After thinking about it, I decided to take a few minutes and throw together a new type of post, which I just decided to call “Losing Your Lunch.”  This series will represent a hodgepodge of things that may or may not fit together.  My goal:  Get out whatever comes out until such time that my lunch break is over (I will have 25 minutes to get this done).

Now, will I ever launch another such post under this moniker?  I don’t know.  But for today, I am going to write a few sentences about why the Big Ten sucks.  Read on.

Happy Hump Day evening, Cougar Nation! I've interrupted a pretty intense game of FIFA 13 to tune into Cougar hoops for the first time in what feels like weeks. I'm thinking this is because it's been weeks. It's good to be back. Really, I'm happy to be watching anything at all. My tv died over the weekend so this post comes with a huge shout-out to my buddy Paul for coming through with a n extra flat screen at a moment's notice. First world problems resolved, let's watch some hoops! I'll take you through the action as I saw it. Just be warned that I may be blogging about the season premier Survivor if this thing gets ugly. More after the jump...

Hello Followers.  Hope you’re doing great.

As for me, well, the last several weeks of this has pretty well taxed my ability to become the super-human blogger that I almost entirely never am.  But today, I am back in the saddle...

After the jumperoo, I will offer the most incredibly poignant analysis of the state of Cougar basketball that has graced these pages since yesterday...

Read on.

If a Bone falls in the Galen Center and nobody is there to see it, did it actually happen? Apparently it did. I'm somewhat ashamed to say I've seen literally 0 minutes of any of the last three Cougar basketball games. Some of this involves a new special lady with DirectTV, but honestly I don't know that it would make much difference. Game days come around and I typically am not even sure who we play. Does Coach Ken Bone survive this? Is it Ernie Kent time? I don't know, but the program needs a shot in the arm. Badly.

Go Cougs.

Happy Post-Signing Day Cougs, as we hope all is well with you and yours.  Quite a day yesterday, hmmm?  The Cougs ended up with 27 commits from yesterday, with 24 of them announced as actually signing their letters of intent, and overall it was a pretty good day as Mike Leach reeled in the #39 ranked class in the country per Scout.com.  Not exactly the highest rated class to walk the earth, but on paper anyway it's the best rated WSU group to sign on the dotted line since 2004, when the Cougs finished with the #21 ranked class coming off the 2003 Holiday Bowl win and a 30-8 record from 2001-2003.  That 2004 class, btw, included the likes of Michael Bumpus, Jerome Harrison, Tyron Brackenridge, Jed Collins, Dan Rowlands, etc.....as well as the now-infamous Randy Estes and JT Diederichs, two highly touted guys who helped pump up the recruiting rankings but never played a down of football in Pullman!  So you just never know.

I think overall I am personally happy with what looks to be a good haul of players where there are some weaknesses on the current roster.  In particular, of course, the offensive line saw six new additions, and some good size in the group as well.  As a group, they average 6-5 1/2, 300 lbs collectively, and that seems to fit in how Leach likes the good-sized o-linemen. There were five d-linemen as well, and that is a good number any way you cut it.  

However it's not all great news, if you want to know the truth.  As Sutra asked in comments, where are all the corners in this class who look ready to play?  After all the DB's weren't exactly stellar last year, particularly out on the edge, so one hope was that they would land some instant impact-type DB's who could be ready to go this fall.  But there were just three cornerback commits yesterday, and two of them haven't sent in their LOI's yet in Markell Sanders and Marcellus Pippins.  But per Cougfan, it looks like Sanders and Pippins will be headed for the greyshirt route, meaning they won't even be in the program until January of 2014.  So, it doesn't appear immediate help is on the way this year for the cornerback position!

I found that pic of Russell Wilson on Twitter today, as Darren Rovell tweeted it out as a cold-shower reminder before people get too jacked-n-pumped on recruiting rankings.  Russell Wilson, the guy people just can't stop talking about and thinking about around the great NW, was a 2-star unknown from Virginia.  So again, you just never know what's going to happen.  Signing them is one thing, and it's a very big, important step in rebuilding your program or maintaining your excellence if you are already at or near the top of the mountain.  But it's always been, and always will be, all about what happens once they step foot on campus and begin their own personal journey as they grow from boys to men.

Much like many of you, I don't want to get too high or too low on recruiting rankings.  But I think it's pretty fair to say that they are pretty accurate at the very high end of all the analysis.  I mean you look at the consensus top 10 teams and their rankings from yesterday, teams like Alabama, Florida, Ohio State, LSU, etc, and there is at least one clear truth out there - the best teams usually sign the best players available!  Sure, there are the Russell Wilson's or even locally, the Marcus Trufant's, Rien Long's and Will Derting's of the world, you know, the unheralded two-star types who rise above it all.  But the best teams traditionally sign the best high school hotshots, year in and year out.  Sure, we can pick out the outliers ourselves and try and shoot down the star "hype" and all that, but that's just confirmation bias more than anything else, know what I mean?  

That said, Mike Bellotti was on ESPN radio yesterday with Colin Cowherd, and he touched on a few of those things in regards to getting TOO excited over recruiting rankings.  I would HIGHLY recommend you take 5+ minutes out of your day today and give it a listen.  Bellotti spells it out pretty well about not just the so-called "flips" we saw yesterday by some high-rated recruits and why that happens, but also the traps and pitfalls of the 5-star types and what they are about to face as they go on to the next level.  I know Bellotti isn't exactly Mr. Popular around the NW schools, but it is a very good listen about what signing day is really all about.

For reactions-n-such around the web on the Cougs, let's check out some links, shall we?

Good morning, Cougs and welcome to Signing Day 2013! As it's Hump Day, I had to at least chime in to say hello, but by some unfortunate series of events, I ended up being scheduled with an all day meeting on one of my favorite days of the year (at least the college football year). For the last couple weeks, I'd resigned myself to the fact that today would be void of surprises. Our Cougs had piled up the verbal commitments at a pretty high rate and looked to have just about a full class. Then the drama kicked in. First, there was the Myron Turner saga (for whatever reason, our staff pulled his scholarship offer just after his official visit and his high school coach got real mad). Next, there was the Chidobi Awuzie ordeal (reportedly, he committed, then waffled and the staff decided to quit waiting on him. Another offer pulled). There were plenty of near misses and it was looking like Signing Day would go out with a whimper. Out of nowhere, the Cougs picked up a huge commitment (literally) from Riley Sorenson and then our BFF's at Cougfan reported that Wazzu may now be the favorite to land the services of former Utah verbal Marcellus Pippins. Just like that, my usual Signing Day excitement was back in full swing. 

The WSU Athletics official site has their usual signing day central where you can keep up with the LOI's as they roll in. My main man Longball should be along later to insert analysis as only he can (hopefully read, "afternoon drunk"). I'll be getting my leadership workshop on, then flying home from Portland, but I hope to join in the fun when I can. Here's to the class of 2013, a fairly random collection of teenagers that we're all counting on to make us happy. Go Cougs.

Longball's live updates after the jump...