#8 - Washington State 

#7 - Oregon State

Like Pullman, Corvallis, Oregon, the home of Oregon State University, is a college town without a whole heck of a lot else going on.  Yes, you can visit Portland on this road trip, but given that Corvallis is an hour and a half south of Oregon’s biggest city, it’s certainly not convenient.  However, even if Corvallis were no more interesting that Pullman (and it is, somewhat) and even if Portland were no more interesting than Spokane (and it is), Corvallis would still have the advantages of being both closer and more accessible.

You’ve got two travel options to get to Corvallis.  For the road-weary, it’s a short flight from Oakland to Portland, followed by a short flight to Corvallis.  This option does give you the excuse to check out Portland, a very nice city I unfortunately haven’t spent much time exploring.

However, for those who want a ‘true’ road trip, the drive north from the Bay Area is about 9 hours, most of that spent on Interstate 5.  It’s not a particularly interesting drive, although I think it’s prettier than the drive south to LA, and it gives you 9 hours in the car to rock out to your radio (or recordings of "Big ‘C’"!) and get hyped for football.  Two things stand out about this drive:  first, this sign, probably the most stolen road sign in California:

I know, I know, it’s a tough decision.

Second, off exit 86 in Azalea, Oregon, you’ll find the Heaven On Earth Restaurant.  Tasty food, gigantic cinnamon buns, and a healthy dose of Christian charity make this place definitely worth a stop.  Warning: if you’re one of those godless commies who’s offended by scripture quotations being mingled among your menu options, steer clear.  You don’t have to love Jesus to eat here, but I wouldn’t advertise otherwise.

Once in Corvallis, well, there’s not a whole lot to do besides football.  It’s a very nice place to live, and if you’re into hiking and biking, it can be a great place to visit, but if you’re looking for action, well, maybe you want to hit up a town with a population greater than 50,000.  To give you a better idea of what Corvallis is like, here’s a sampling of the awards and recognition it has garnered:
"Safest Pac-10 Campus"
"One of the 13 best towns to be a vegetarian"
"One of the 10 best cities in which to live"
"9th most bicycle-friendly town in the nation"
"Tree City USA Award"
"Green Power Community" (Only 3rd town in nation to be so recognized)

Corvallis : A very pleasant place to live.

Reser Stadium, home of the Oregon State Beavers, is the smallest in the Pac-10, although it is currently undergoing an expansion.  Perhaps it will be nicer after the remodel, but on my visit to Corvallis, it ranked as merely another in a long line of ‘nothing special’ college football stadiums.

Every day is Halloween on the Oregon State campus.  [Photo by Curtis Reed Photography.]

Reasons to visit Oregon State:
- An enjoyable weekend of football.
- You’ve got family in Oregon.
- The Oregon schools are the right distance away to make a good road trip.
- Like Wazzu, this game may be missed by television programmers.
- No sales tax!
- Beaver jokes just never get old.
- Your SF Giants apparel will fit right in.

Reasons to stay home and hope the game’s on TV:
- Not much going on in Corvallis besides football.
- You don’t have any friends who can stand to be in a car with you for 9 straight hours.
- Interstate 5 sounds to you like a terrible way to spend a weekend.
- You should be heading south as the weather gets colder, not north.
- If it’s raining (and in Oregon, it just might!), they don’t allow umbrellas in the stadium.  Standing in the rain for 3 1/2 hours can be a pretty depressing way to spend a weekend.

Overall, I’d have to put Corvallis on my ‘you should see it once’ list.  It can be a fun road trip, and I certainly enjoyed my visit (even if it was marred by the Giants blowing game 6 of the World Series), but, like Pullman, I don’t have a compelling reason to go back every other year.  Don’t worry, this is the last Pac-10 school I’m going to say that about.

For months now, we’ve been bombarded by preseason rankings, and to be honest, they’re all starting to run together in my head.  They’re all just guesses anyway; why do they even matter?  Well, finally, a preseason ranking that really matters arrived today:  USA Today’s coaches’ poll has Cal at #12!

Now, while I’d normally hesitate to put too much importance on anything printed by USA Today, remember that the coaches’ poll is one of two (along with the mysterious Harris poll) that are used in the BCS formula.  Experience has shown that it’s much more difficult to climb the standings that to drop down into unranked territory, so if you’ve set yourself some lofty goals for this season (such as DeSean Jackson’s national championship boast), you’d better have a decent starting position.  And while there are 11 better starting positions (obviously), #12 still gives Cal a decent shot at the BCS title game, as well as a consolation Rose Bowl should they falter somewhere along the line.

How does our schedule stack up in the poll?  Well, USC is king of this poll as well, although it was not unanimous; LSU, Florida, and Michigan all received first place votes.  Tennessee slots in at #15, UCLA is right behind at #17, and no other Pac-10 team is ranked.  However, both Oregon State and Oregon received a significant number of votes, which would have placed them at #33 and #36, respectively, so if things go well for them early (especially Oregon’s visit to Michigan in week 2), we could face as many as 5 ranked opponents this year.  Finally, rounding out the poll, both Arizona and Washington State received a single vote, meaning somebody somewhere out there is thinking they might be a sleeper.  Of course, Duke also received a vote, meaning somebody somewhere out there is thinking that it’s almost basketball season.

Also, in case you’re wondering who actually votes in the poll, USA Today does publish the list of voters at the bottom of its rankings; Pac-10 voters include Mike Bellotti of Oregon, Bill Doba of Washington State, Mike Riley of Oregon State, Tyrone Willingham of Washington, and yes, Jeff Tedford.  Unfortunately, whiny Mack Brown gets a vote too.  So does Les Miles.

Some notes from Marshawn, notes on our coach, and notes on quarterbacking in general this week:

• Pat Forde has a column here about the pressure placed on a quarterback on, oh, every single play.  This is notable because Tedford is the main subject of the article, in that it describes the five things that he looks for in any potential quarterback (which have been discussed before in previous articles) and discusses his successes at the college level.  Of course, for people who want to pick apart why his proteges haven’t had success at the pro level, we’ve gone over that too.
• Bruce Feldman also gives his take here on the top QB mentors in college football, with Tedford ranking #2 behind Steve Spurrier.  Spurrier is an interesting comparison to Tedford, because I’d almost place Spurrier more in the June Jones/Mike Leach school of quarterback mentoring, where his quarterback’s production is almost entirely the result of the system that he runs.  There’s nothing especially fancy about the sets or scheme that Tedford uses, and though Tedford quarterbacks have failed to make it big in the NFL, at least they made it to the NFL at all.  It’s an interesting discussion, and Spurrier certainly has a long list of names that he has made extremely productive, but I’m not entirely convinced that he isn’t Mike Leach with a longer track record.
• Len Pasquarelli writes about the danger of being a system QB, specifically mentioning Tedford, without stating that, really - there is no system.  He runs a pro set.  Believe it.  The numbers aren’t inflated, so I don’t really know what the problem is.  Maybe it’s that they put up good numbers in a pro system, which makes scouts think they’re ready for the NFL, when they’re not.
• Todd McShay (the idiot) goes over all of the elements that go into being a successful quarterback, and says our man Nate Longshore has the best release in the college game today.  He goes on to say that a quarterback’s release is all about mechanics, so how come there’s no grumbling here about the funky way that Tedford quarterbacks hold the ball?  Oh, Todd.
• Peter King talks up Marshawn again, essentially calling Deion Sanders a misinformed idiot, and praising him (Marshawn) for his humility.  Since he is about as humble a guy with a grill bigger than my fist can be.
• More Mark Schlabach slobbering over our Bears here, where he answers not one, but two questions about our Bears.  Amazing.
• Stewart Mandel calls out Jim Harbaugh for being full of…you know.  It’s hard to call a team the best of all-time when just the year before, they put up 9 points in a loss to UCLA.  Come on now.
• And more of Harbaugh being full of…you know in an interview with Scout.com where he quotes outdated numbers for Cal’s graduation rate.  Main takeaways from this: 1) Harbaugh is using a reputable source, but he didn’t check to back up the source - which isn’t entirely his fault, but he should have done so once the issue was raised, 2) our graduation rates have increased dramatically since Tedford was hired, and 3) Holmoe’s teams not only sucked on the field, they sucked in the classroom as well.
• Another very in-depth article from Scout.com (again, all empirical information) with a bunch of quotes from all of the usual suspects for Bay Area Media Day.  Basically a lot of the same information and soundbites from last week’s Pac-10 Media Day, with a few more nuggets like Tedford’s take on the NCAA banning text messages to recruits, the transition to Jim Michalczik from Mike Dunbar at offensive coordinator, among others.