Ok so we're through with fall camp.  We know who the starters are, who's qualified, who's not, who's got their head strait, units have gelled.  Finally we're ready for some FEETBAWL!  Except the one question that hangs over the season like the bubonic plague, the 500 lb gorilla in the room, the inescapable conundrum (yeah a few too many metaphors): Can the Cougs get 6 wins, go to a bowl and save coach Wulffs job?  To get my head around that I needed to try to quantify their chances a little.  So here goes:

The games WSU needs to win to reach the mythical "bowl eligibility".

Rated in order of likelihood, grouped by necessity of winning.

1 - most likely win
12 - least likely win

Win - will win these or there's no hope
1 - ISU
2 - UNLV

Should win - need to win these to have a good chance at a bowl, or at least 2 out of 3.
3 - Colorado
4 - Cal
5 - OSU

Could win - not likely wins but need to grab one or more of these upsets to make 6
wins.
6 - UCLA
7 - SDSU
8 - Utah
9 - UW

No - not going to happen
10 - ASU
11 - Stan
12 - UO

The problem is that most of the critical games are on the road for the Cougs so this will be a fairly tall order.  I believe that they have made enough progress to make this possible but the improvement we've seen in fall camp will have to continue or increase during the season for them to get to the magic number of 6 wins.

The interesting thing is if I'm right, (and I seldom am), they should know by the time they play Stanford whether there's a good chance of getting to a bowl.  The way I see it, if they're not 4-1 at that time their chances are low.  In particular, they need to be 2-1 on the road stint to SDS (Students for a Democratic Society?) never mind, UC, and UCLA.  Those are three possible wins, which will show whether they have the stuff to get to a bowl game.  If they don't, they have to win 3 of 4 against Cal, OSU, UU, and UW - a pretty tall order if you ask me and tough for a team that was 1 - 2 against SDS, UC, and UCLA unless there's major improvement in this team.  Oh yeah and they can't have major injuries.

Ok so there's good reason to play close attention to the first 5 games and not so much after if they aren't 4-1, unless you start seeing them making major strides after Stanford.

Of course I could be totally foc on ranking the opposition, in which case completely ignore this.

Did any of that make sense?