Ms. BCS

Nice column on Lisa Love by Bill Dwyre in the LA Times today.

"Arizona State is a dream opportunity, a glorious project," she says.

It's GameDay!

No East coast bias this week -- the eyes of the nation are on us!

Keegan Herring is the man!

For those who missed the feature on last week's GameDay, this puts this week's game into its proper perspective. In the world of college football, it means everything; in the real world, it means nothing.

Is it Saturday yet?

Awesome video work from MizzouSunDevil.



I can't freaking wait for Saturday!

A quick tour of the place

Although many of you have probably been visiting Wired Devils for several years, I am sure others are new to the site, so I thought I would take a moment to point out a few key features.

Although I try to blog fairly regularly, the original purpose of Wired Devils was, and remains, to be a source of links to all Sun Devil content on the internet. I started Wired Devils in 1997 because I was finding it difficult to keep all the great sites I was finding organized.

At the top of this page are Sparky's Favorites -- the most used links for Sun Devil fans.

In the top left corner, you will see links to all the other pages on Wired Devils. Main Links takes you to the primary page (including a comprehensive football schedule), and then there are separate pages for Football and Basketball links. Miscellaneous Links is a catch-all page for sites that don't fit into any other category, and the Archives take you to good articles published over the years, many focused on Pat Tillman.

For those of you who surf the web from a handheld device, point your browser to www.wireddevils.com/m/ for Wired Devils Mobile Edition. This page features links to mobile-friendly ASU sites.

You can post comments to any article, and if there is a link you think I should add, feel free to send an e-mail to me at webmaster@wireddevils.com.

Is this a first?

As far as I can tell, this week's game at Oregon is the first time ASU has played a regular season game where both teams have been ranked in the AP top 10 at the time of the game.

Both Rose Bowl games featured top-10 matchups: ASU was #7 and Michigan #4 in the final regular season poll of 1986 and ASU was #2 and Ohio State #4 in the final regular season poll of 1996. The Fiesta Bowl following the 1975 regular season featured #7 ASU versus #6 Nebraska and there may be other Bowl games that I am overlooking.

However, I cannot recall a regular season game where both ASU and our opponent were in the top 10 at the time of the game. Anyone?

Updated 10/31: As best I can determine, this is the third regular season game where ASU and its opponent have both been in the top 10 at the time of the game. Both previous occasions have featured the Huskies. In 1982 ASU was ranked #3 when we played #7 UW, and in 1986 ASU was #7 and UW #6. Thanks to the AP Poll Archive and James Howell for providing great resources.

Tom Hansen is an idiot, part 573

In yet another example of the conference commissioner's ineptitude, it's now Monday morning and there is still no official announcement as to whether ASU/Oregon will be on ABC at 12:30 PT instead of UCLA/au.

How was this decision not made and announced yesterday? Hansen wakes up Sunday morning as commissioner of the conference with the biggest game of the year to date coming up. He should have been on the phone with all the relevant parties and had an announcement by Noon Sunday.

I'm pretty certain we'll hear today that the change has been made, but as of right now, the game is still scheduled to be televised in Oregon and Arizona only.

Updated 10/30: The game will be televised nationally on ESPN (with local coverage in Arizona, Oregon and SoCal). Announcement was made 39 hours after the end of the ASU/Cal game. Presumably, Hansen slept through Sunday and woke up Monday lunchtime to make a few calls.

Updated 11/3: for those of you interested in such matters, the Register-Guard has a good article about the politics behind these negotiations.

It's all gravy from now on

The Cal game was the game we had to win, and we won it in style. What a second half! The key to the game was that despite a poor start, we never trailed by more than 13 points. It's so important to keep games manageable while the chips are down.

And so now many people will point to the Oregon game as the next "biggest game in 10 years" but I disagree. There should be no pressure on us whatsoever. If we go in to Eugene and lose, we will still be in the top-10 and we'll still be able to win a share (at least) of the conference championship.

Oregon is a very good team, but I don't think they are a great team (if they were, they would have beaten Cal at home). I'm sure the Ducks will be favored, probably by 7 or 8 points. The team seems to have embraced the "we get no respect" mantra which, although not really true, is a great way to keep focus.