Kiffin canned; Pac-12's elite emerge

It never rains at Autzen Stadium, unless it pours

It's to be expected from a Tinsel Town team that if it can't make the news with superior play, grab headlines any way you can.

No news in LA, unlike the rest of the universe, is bad news.

Which is one of the reasons why USC icon and athletic director Pat Haden canned football coach Lane Kiffin less than halfway through the season and just two months removed from his statement of "100 percent" support for the unpopular coach.

SC, and it's spoiled fan base, can't stand to yield the spotlight to anyone for any reason.

The rest of the Pac-12 conference is disappointed that Kiffin was fired, in the parking lot of LAX no less, because he made all the other teams believe they could beat SC. Many did, with amazing ease.

In real news, though, Stanford and Oregon continued their dominant ways. Washington says it's for real, while Arizona State stays relevant for the week, at least.

The jury is out on UCLA, but they should win easily in Salt Lake City on Thursday against a Utah team, that, like Colorado, is not truly ready for the rigors of Pac-12 play.

Of course, Washington State or Cal aren't either, but the Cougars do have a victory in the Coliseum over the Trojans, who have since diminished that Wassu milestone with the blowout loss in Tempe that prompted Kiffin's dismissal.

Which leaves us with Arizona and Oregon State, who will likely struggle to reach .500 in the win-loss column.

Both of these middling teams have one-dimensional offenses, passing for OSU and running for UA, that will be exposed big-time against the heavyweights in the conference.

The Beavers could beat SC at home, but their two remaining "easy" games are against Cal and WSU, both on the road. The injuries are piling up and neither of those "gimme" games are a sure thing.

If Washington doesn't stay healthy after bruising games against Stanford, Oregon and UCLA, the Beavs have a shot at beating UW at home. Otherwise, that could be another loss.

The Wildcats get the conference's bottom dwellers in much of their remaining schedule, but they probably won't be favored in any game, except Colorado.

The big game of this week, though, is Washington traveling to Stanford to take its first beatdown of the season. The Huskies should be able to pull their starters by halftime because they won't want to risk any players getting hurt before the only game on their schedule that really matters to its fan base the following weekend in Seattle against arch-nemesis Oregon.

Stanford is the only Pac-12 team that looks like a team from the SEC with punishing players who could play in the pros.

Oregon is still a finesse team that is prone to injury, like what happened to De'Anthony Thomas against Cal. But, since the offense hogs most of the highlights, most people don't realize that the Duck defense is pretty stout.

That said, Stanford's offense is the real revelation of this young season. It will put up points on the Ducks even after losing so many of last season's offensive standouts to the pros.

If the Cardinal continues its overpowering ways, it could find itself playing for the national championship.

But, and there is always a but, Oregon can still win in Palo Alto if its key players stay healthy and those players get their mojo rolling.

First, though, the Ducks have another date with destiny against the dreaded Dawgs on Oct. 12. Let's just say it could get loud at the rebuilt stadium on Montlake. Washington has a legitimate shot at beating the Ducks for the first time in a decade.

Let's hope that the Ducks make it 10 in a row over UW.

Right now, Oregon and Stanford lead the Pac, with UCLA, Washington and Arizona State vying for third place.

Pay college athlete-students

To echo Time magazine's recent cover on college sports, it's time to pay those athletes who contribute so much financial success to numerous institutions of higher education throughout the land.

Actually, it's way past the time to do so.

The issue of money and collegiate sports goes back decades, before you or I were born.

Let's look at the Pac-12 conference, which includes USC, UCLA, Stanford, California, Oregon, Oregon State, Washington, Washington State, Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah.

From 1915 to 1959, this conference, before the Arizona schools or Utah and Colorado joined, represented the West Coast in the Rose Bowl.

Check out this story of the 1942 Rose Bowl that was moved from Pasadena to Durham, North Carolina, because of the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. Spoiler alert: underdog Oregon State defeated Duke.

Anyway, athletic payola in the conference goes back to at least 1924, but didn't reach a crisis point until 1956 when the University of Washington became the focal point of corrupt college athletics.

It should be noted that the California schools wanted to get rid of the Northwest schools because they considered Oregon, Oregon State, Washington, Washington State and Idaho to have inferior academic standards.

In that sense, much has changed.

In the state of Washington, the government decided to pour most its college money in to UW in Seattle, while letting the other schools in the state system, particularly Washington State,  suffer the consequences.

In Oregon, the University of Oregon and Oregon State both floundered as they tried desperately to stay out of the "Bottom Ten" of collegiate football.

Idaho, after 1959, was never invited back to the conference.

From the 1960s to 1990s, USC, UCLA, Stanford (briefly) and Washington dominated the conference in football.

UCLA owned the NCAA basketball tournament from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s.

Flash forward to 2012.

The University of California, Berkeley, which first labeled the Northwest schools academically inferior, came in last place in the Pac-12 in terms of academic performance of its football athletes.

Meanwhile, Oregon graduate Phil Knight founded Nike, which is now the dominant athletic shoe and apparel company in the world.

Beginning in the 1990s, Knight has poured about $300 million into UO. Most of that moolah has gone to ahtletics, but he also paid for the new school library, law school and numerous endowed professorships.

This came at a time when the state of Oregon cut its support from higher education from the 80 percent range to the 10 percent range.

In order to balance its budget, UO accepts almost as many out-of-state students (49 percent) as in-state students

Consequently, the average GPA of incoming freshman has risen to more than 3.5.

That's not to say that the school has improved that much, but the student population sure has.

Anyway, Oregon has upped its game, both academically and athletically.

The Pac-12 conference, which calls itself the "conference of champions" for all the NCAA titles it owns from basketball to football to volleyball and water polo, has emerged as one of the "power" conferences.

Along with Big 10, Big 12, ACC and SEC, the Pac-12 is considered an "automatic qualifier" (AQ) conference in the annual BCS rankings.

These five conferences absorb almost all of the financial windfall from football and basketball television contracts.

In the Pac-12, each member school gets more than $20 million per year from its television contracts.

The other AQ conferences get that much or more.

This obscene amount of money is what's fueling the current call for legal compensation of athletes.

As we've seen with the Sports Illustrated take-down of Oklahoma State University and it's blatant disregard of NCAA regulations, the game of college football is as corrupt as it's ever been with players being paid cash for tackles or touchdowns.

The minimum GPA requirement for schools in the SEC, the dominant football conference, is 1.8.
In the Pac-12, it's 2.7. Consequently, the SEC is the NFL's minor league.

The SEC pays its best players and the NCAA is powerless to do anything about it because the SEC commands the most television revenue of any conference in the country.

Money talks.

The NCAA, though, selectively enforces its rules on conferences, from the Pac-12 to lesser non-AQ conferences, that don't make as much money from television.

Is it fair that the SEC can get away with paying its players while the other conferences, save the Big-12, cannot?

Obviously not. That is why it would level the playing field if all the conferences could pay their players, particularly in the revenue-generating sports of football and men's basketball.

The complaint against such a plan is the fact that these athletes get a college education, where at some schools it could cost up to $200,000 for four years, for free.

Well, that would be a persuasive argument if a college degree meant more than the paper its printed on.

The fact of the matter is that, aside from a handful of colleges, a degree for the average football player isn't worth much.

In the Pac-12, only a Stanford degree has the cachet to be of use to a football player.

In the Big-10, only Northwestern comes close.

In the Big-12, there are no schools of lasting value to a football or basketball player, or even to a non-athlete.

In the SEC, Vanderbilt has some credibility in the South, but not much elsewhere.

In the ACC, only Duke can approach Stanford. Duke, though, is pathetic in football, but transcendent in basketball.

As for Harvard, Yale or other Ivy League schools, sports are clearly secondary to academics, unlike all the AQ schools.

At the very top schools, such as Cal Tech and MIT, sports don't matter at all.

But, without football and basketball TV revenue, most AQ conference public schools would be hard-pressed to keep tuition below $30,000 a year for all students.

We have long passed the point where there are student-athletes in college. They are athletes first, and students second, if at all.

It's ridiculous to claim otherwise.

It's time to pay them for the money they bring in and for keeping college a tad more affordable for all students.

Horner rides for the aged

Horner makes history at age 41

As Diana Nyad showed recently in her swim from Cuba to Florida, age is a state of mind.

Today, Bend cyclist Chris Horner won the Spanish Vuelta, the Iberian equivalent of the Tour de France.

He becomes the oldest rider to ever win a major cycling stage race. He turns 42 next month.

Ride on.

Get rid of the huddle in football

The huddle was last needed during the leather helmet days

One of the reasons Chip Kelly was hired to coach the NFL's Philadelphia Eagles was that his style of offense brings eyeballs to the television screen.

Last Saturday, when Oregon destroyed Virginia 59-10, most of the nation saw this game on ABC.

Ohio State, a storied program with a huge following, was relegated to ESPN at the same time for their blowout win over San Diego State.

Clearly, Oregon plays a style of game that people want to watch. It is fast-break, no-huddle and if you blink, let alone change the channel, you'll miss a touchdown.

Which leads to the obvious: A no-huddle offense makes the game better. It brings urgency to the action.

It's compelling and dramatic, unlike most pro football teams that rely on huddling after every play.

In fact, it is tortuous to watch a football game when one of the teams huddles after every play. When both teams huddle, it is unwatchable.

Last year, when Stanford lucked out in beating Oregon State at home, I couldn't watch the game because of all the slowness brought about by both teams huddling.

Good grief!

As Kelly's offense displayed during its Monday night demolition of the Washington Redskins, the huddle is a useless ritual from a bygone era.

Get rid of it.

The best way to do that is to penalize a team five yards for delay of game for huddling after a play.

If American football is to ever challenge "futbol" throughout the world, it must get rid of the huddle.

People want action, not committee meetings.

Everyone is an expert on sports

Will the Ducks ride to another BCS game?

To quote Stephen Colbert, "You know I'm a born sportsman. I have been told by many doctors that I have athlete's feet."

Corny as that joke is, I still love it.

And, in spite of every reason to hate sports for their commercialism and to despise athletes for doping, I'm still a fan.

I've got a well-worn TV remote control that gets a bit of a workout during the fall when college football appears on every sports channel on almost every day of the week.

In fact, my fingers are exhausted from last weekend's slate of games that finally ended Monday night.

And, the real athletes think they have it tough.

Actually, they do.

Watching football players slam into each other at hyper speed can be painful.

I always hate to see players get injured.

Such is the case of Beau Hebert of Nicholls State who was knocked out of the game by Oregon's Terrance Mitchell while sliding toward a first down.

Yes, Mitchell deserved to be kicked out of the game because of the new "targeting" rules enacted this season. It wasn't a cheap shot, but it was avoidable.

Hope Hebert recovers quickly.

Meanwhile at Oregon State, the Beavers managed to do what few ranked teams do: lose to a lower division team, this time Eastern Washington.

For some reason, the Beavs always manage to start painfully slow. They overlook inferior opponents and get burned.

So ends the talk of starting 7-0.

In fact, no team in the Pac-12 is certain to start 7-0.

The Ducks could lose this weekend at Virginia.

San Jose State could shock Stanford.

The uncertainty of college football makes it so compelling to watch.

Unlike pro football, where every team plays the same dull way, college football is far more exciting with a variety of offensive styles of play.

There is hurry-up, spread, pro-style and pistol, to name a few.

The defenses have their work cut out for them.

Yet, pro football dominates the national discussion, particularly on ESPN.

The main reason is ratings.

In the Northeast, where most Americans live, there is no noteworthy college football team. In fact, no college team from the Northeast, including New York, Maryland and Pennsylvania, are ranked in the top 25.

Conversely, some of the best teams in pro football are in the Northeast, such as the New England Patriots, New York Giants, Pittsburgh Steelers and Baltimore Ravens. And, of course, since the Jets are based in the New York area, we must suffer through all the meaningless blather about the Jets, who haven't won anything since 1969.

So, ESPN and sports talk radio cater to pro football.

And, it's easy to tune out.

Pro football, like most pro sports, offers little excitement because the outcome is pre-ordained by the gambling powers-that-be. Since so much money is at stake, the outcome has to be controlled by organized crime or the NFL, if there is any difference.

Yes, there is gambling on college games, but, most of the time, it means little.

Oregon State was a 24-point favorite over EWU and lost by 3 points.

The Oregon Ducks were favored by at least 59 points and covered the spread, 66-3.

But the spread, including the over and under, are meaningless at the college level because college kids are so fickle. In fact, I've never understood the over or under.

Gambling on sports, particularly college sports, is for fools, or those who have more money than brains.

Actually, since the pro game is so rigged, you would be an idiot to bet on pro football as well.

So, this blog is not about gambling or odds that your favorite team will win or lose.

It's about pointing out the obvious in an age where such things are often greeted with suspicion.

Pro sports are fixed.

College sports, mostly, are not.