Runnin’ with the Pac, Week 6
By: Malamute, Posted 1 October 2002

Malamute is filling in for Lotti Bull this week. Supposedly, he has a quote from Ruth Robbins of realdawg.com about Joey Harrington. Was Mal imbibing last night? He picks USC to win the conference championship, and then changes direction like a dog chasing his tail and picks Washington. Picking the Pac-10 winner boils down to defense versus offense, and Mal can’t make up his mind. In net-speak, he's BBR.

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Here’s my column, Aud. I worked hard on it. Go ahead and publish it, and pleas, no edeting.

• Last season, wide receiver Charles E.T. Frederick felt as out of place at Washington as canned laughter is to a sitcom. Hailing from Boca Raton, he was desperately homesick.

  Comment: Frederick is Washington’s most exciting player to watch since Nip Kaufman tornadoed and twisted his way down the yellow brick road. ET’s TD catches and runs against Michigan (57 yards) and Idaho (74 yards) were right out of Spielberg special effects.

  As far as homesickness goes: E.T. doesn’t need to call home; home is where you make it.

• Now that Pac-10 play commences for the Dawgs, the creampuffs will turn into hard rock candy and the Husky defense and running game—both questionable confectionaries—will either meltdown (be ineffective) or turn into jawbreakers for the opposition, the latter being especially true when you consider the Huskies’ passing attack, which is first in the Pac-10 and second in the nation.

• Ted Miller of the Seattle P-I says this about Cody Pickett. “On the downside, he's compiled those eye-popping numbers against defenses as threatening as Liberace in a barroom brawl.” On the upside, Miller says that if the Huskies go 2-0 in conference play, Pickett will start appearing on those endless Heisman watch lists.

  Comment: Pickett passed for 328 yards against Michigan, which is more like a rough-and-tumble rumble with Arnold Schwarzenegger.

• Miller even used the phrase “Cowboy Cody” in his article.

  Comment: You don’t get a sobriquet like “Cowboy” from the media unless you’ve earned it. And Cowboy Cody--the Caldwell Cowboy--is earning it this season. Pickett, the son of rodeo champion, Dee Pickett, is averaging 376.8 passing yards per game.

• Cody began twirling rope at the age of three, growing up on Chicken Dinner Road in Caldwell, Idaho. Pickett reached the national high school rodeo finals in 1997 and 1998. During his sophomore year in high school he earned more than $30,000 on the rodeo circuit.

  Comment: How did Chicken Dinner Road get its name? Rumor has it that a woman living on the road bribed a county commissioner with a chicken dinner so the county would pave it.

• The Pac-10 crown is USC’s to win or lose because defense wins championships. Norm Chow is having fun at ‘SC. He can tinker and toy with his offense during a game—and with impunity—since the Trojan’s lightening fast defense will bail him out of any bad decisions and no one will ever notice.

  Comment: For all of those Pac-10 prognosticators who picked ‘SC to finish in the middle of the conference race, the handwriting was on the wall last season when USC shut UCLA out, 27-0. The Bruins had 23 seniors on its two deep roster, and the NFL drafted about half of them. This season, USC's defense is number one in the nation.

• Talk about tinkering and toying. According to T.J. Simmers of the Los Angeles Times, tailback Justin Fargus, an admirer of O.J. Simpson, would like to wear number 32 on his jersey, Simpson’s old number. Head coach Pete Carroll says he can wear number 33, Marques Allen’s old number.

  Comment: Heck, there is only one degree of separation, Justin. Or is there?

• The New York Times’ computer poll ranks Notre Dame as number one.

  Comment: The same computer poll ranks USC as number two. Rumor has it that after the computer listed the Trojans, it hung up in the blue screen of death.

• So, am I conceding the conference race to USC? Heck no. The Times’ poll was just another computer glitch. The Pac-10 is too wild and wooly a conference to say anybody is going to win the race at this time. It’s like trying to predict the landward movement of a hurricane. Actually, I like the Huskies’ (third in the nation in Total Offense) chances because people say I’ve been offensive-minded my whole life.

• Joey Harrington is off to a billboard-splashing start with the Detroit Lions.

  Comment: Ruth Robbins of realdawg.com says, “Joey who?” J

ATB, BBFN,

NTH, BBR

Editor’s notes:

-- An avid, unrelenting golfer, Lotti Bull our columnist in absentia says, “The Woods’ are full of long hitters, especially Tiger.”

-- Come on, Mal, did you really get that comment from Ruth? I thought Sonny Sixkiller said that on the Huskies’ replay show: Huskies against the Spuds.

-- Mal's geekery: 

ATB-All the best

BBFN--Bye bye for now

BBR--Burnt beyond repair

NTH--No therapy helpful