Cougar Football 2017: It’s Opening Week!

Good morning. Cougar Football game week is back. You’ll forgive me if there are a few typos, as I wrote that last sentence with tears in my eyes. We are officially inside seven days until the 2017 version of the Cougs takes the field against Montana State.

Now that camp has officially ended for the Cougars, there isn’t a lot of news on the team front since they’re back to their DPRK-like ways of releasing information. All we can really do is wait to see whether guys like Robert Lewis will be playing come Saturday (he won’t, I’m willing to bet) and how the depth chart matches what we see on the field (probably not very well).

We’ve already seen a couple Pac-12 teams in action as both Oregon State and Stanford took part in Week Zero, with decidedly different results. The Beavers were locked in a tight game with Colorado State at halftime, but that was as close as the game would get. CSU outscored OSU 34-7 (!!!) in the second half and rolled to an easy win.

On the other side of the globe (or further to the left on the flat earth map if you’re Kyrie Irving), Stanford opened with an absolute curb-stomping of Rice, 62-7. Bryce Love had a decent game, piling up 180 yards on just 13 carries. Stanford had 55 points before Rice scored. But the biggest revelation from this game is that Jet Toner (JET TONER) is the name of Stanford’s kicker. Now, I don’t know what you all think, but someone in his family has to have invented the LaserJet printer, yes?

So with those two games in the books, it’s time to get ready for the main course. Next weekend, there will be football everywhere. The Cougs kick at 7:30, as usual, but I’ll be in the Mountain Time Zone for this one, so luckily I won’t have to stay up until zero-dark-thirty to finish it. Hopefully those of you attending the game will leave happy, a feeling not experienced this week since 2011.

Game week is here. Let’s go. Go Cougs

Football

As we said before, there’s a paucity of news on the football team. The biggest piece of info to come out of Saturday was if/where the players and coaches were watching the Mayweather-McGregor farce circus act pro wrestling match ripoff fight. Many players cast their lot with awful human Floyd Mayweather, while some coaches were rooting for the other guy who didn’t belong in a boxing ring. This morning, Twitter told me that awful person Mayweather won, to the surprise of nobody.

Leach correctly predicts Mayweather-McGregor result; Washington State players, coaches enjoy fight together | The Spokesman-Review
Even in this tiny pocket of southeastern Washington, it’s practically impossible to escape the buzz surrounding tonight’s mega-bout between boxing icon Floyd Mayweather Jr. and MMA star Conor McGregor.

College football road trip: Mapping an epic 2017 season tour | SI.com
SATURDAY, SEPT. 16: OREGON STATE AT WASHINGTON STATE AT 2:30 P.M. PT

Basketball

Why Do So Many NBA Teams Try to Trade Their Stars for Klay Thompson? - The Ringer Other franchises seem to believe they can get the Splash Brother for less than his true value, but the Warriors know what their guard is worth

Beer

Best beer I had this week: My 10 weeks in Virginia came to a close Friday, so it was time to head south on I-95. I stopped in Savannah, GA, where I found out that the local minor league team is named the Savannah Bananas, and they have their own banana-flavored beer. It’s not bad! (Aside: RIP the Savannah Sand Gnats. The Mrs. and I saw the Sand Gnats in person on vacation there, and I like the name Sand Gnats. Aside Two: Savannah is a great little city to visit.)

Anyway, I stopped by the World of Beer and tried a couple local brews. One was Scofflaw’s POG Basement IPA. If any of you have been to Hawaii (or even if you haven’t, but it’s HUGE in Hawaii), you know that POG stands for passion fruit, orange and guava. The POG flavors were definitely present in this beer, and it was tremendous.

Craft-beer glut starting to take its toll on sales - MarketWatch
Shipments are still rising for many of those craft brewers that sold themselves to Big Beer, including Lagunitas, which was bought by Heineken in May; Goose Island, owned by AB InBev since 2011; and Ballast Point, which was purchased by Constellation Brands Inc. for $1 billion in 2015.

Non-Sports

Wrong Way | investigations | Tampa Bay Times
He climbed into the car, and he drove away.