The long reach of journalist Blaine Newnham
We were covering a major track meet in Eugene a generation ago, Blaine Newnham and I, and the story of the night, or so I thought, was a long jumper who won in a big upset. “You know,” Newnham said, “there’s never been much of a history...
A hoops program that can’t shoot straight
Having covered University of Washington basketball for 13 years back in another lifetime, I began to perceive a trend in about 2010. The Huskies seemed to be frittering away a lot of talent. What was becoming particularly noticeable was that NBA first-round draft choices were cycling...
An old, familiar saboteur in DeBoer’s departure
Things were going so deliriously well for University of Washington football fans. They were playing for the national championship of big-time college football. They had an offense that was dazzling fans across the country. Their team had put fun in football. It was doing things heretofore unseen...
Don Read and Oregon: The way we were
If you’ve stumbled into this space occasionally, you probably realize that the phenomenon of present-day Oregon football – the Ferrari leather in the meeting rooms, the kaleidoscopic uniform combinations, the largesse of Phil Knight – wasn’t a forever thing at the UO. That came to mind the...
UW perfectly willing to max out all assets
On the night of Oct. 28, Washington’s unblemished season hung in the balance at, of all places, Stanford. Quarterback Ashton Daniels spearheaded a Cardinal offense good for 495 yards, and now, on fourth-and-two at the Stanford 28, the hosts hatched a trick play with 3:20 left, trailing 35-33....
4th down-and-derision: On Dan Lanning’s calls …
College football coaches up in our little corner of the world have been guided over the years by their conclusions to a simple question: WWDJD? What Would Don James Do? The taciturn leader of the Washington Huskies for 18 years, producer of six Rose Bowl appearances and...
Against college football’s excesses, some relief
Sunday, we drove in a rented RV past Pac-12 Conference headquarters. Well, not really headquarters. It was the Whitman County courthouse in Colfax, Wash., a west-facing brick edifice that a day later would host the nightcap of the county’s oh-so-odd weekend doubleheader. In the opener, Washington State,...
Looking back at the Pac-12: Good, bad, magical and mirthful
The forerunner to the Pacific-12 Conference was formed in 1915, and contrary to some belief, I wasn’t outside that meeting room, yelling “Gimme rewrite!” into a phone. A little later, though, I did cover 45 years’ worth of Pac-8/10/12 goings-on. I saw inspiring and awful football (does a scoreless...
To the dustbin of history, the Pac-12
In 1978, the Pacific-8 Conference welcomed in the Arizona schools, and members of the league’s “Skywriters” – a roving band of reprobates who visited the campuses and wrote preseason football, when they weren’t pouring another drink – all were given blue windbreakers. The inscription on the breast was...
Why is the Pac-12 teetering? Hubris
Up and down the West Coast today, I can only imagine how the oldsters are grieving: For the conference that gave us Hugh McElhenny and John Elway and Troy Polamalu, for the conference that annually had a spot in the most hallowed bowl game; for the conference that...